Free Buffalo Jump Blues by Keith McCafferty Page A

the man in the bar, but he was gone by the timeI changed. Vic handed me this. He said the man had told him to give it to me.”
    â€œThat’s all he said?”
    â€œThat’s all, just to give it to me.”
    â€œAnd you think John Running Boy made this.”
    She nodded. “He learned flint napping from a man whose name I can’t remember, an Indian with a white name. Anyway, this man lived up the lane from the trailer where John lived with his aunt. Even when he was seven, he napped beautiful points. Sometimes he’d give me one. I had a collection in a goldfish bowl.”
    â€œDo you still have them?”
    â€œNot the ones in the bowl. When the goldfish died, my mother got in one of her moods about cleaning things out and she dumped the bowl into the trash. She said she didn’t know the points were in there, but she did. She never liked John. She said he stunk like an Indian.”
    â€œBut she was mostly Indian herself. Right?”
    â€œShe didn’t mean how he smelled. She meant his circumstances, living with his aunt in a trailer. John was just a village dog to her, running with his shirttail flapping. She wanted me to do better than him.”
    â€œSo you don’t have any of his arrowheads except this one, which a man who reminded you of him gave to someone to give to you.”
    â€œBut I do have another one. I have one here, see?”
    She fingered a thin oval chain from under her shirt and lifted it over her head. The arrowhead was small and dark, with a silver base cap soldered to a ring to hang it from the chain. She placed it beside the one on the desk. “No two arrowheads can be exactly alike, but as you see, these are very close.”
    Sean nodded.
    â€œHe gave this one to me the night before we moved. He had two of them and let me choose. He’d keep the other one. They were like engagement rings. I had the cap made a few years ago.”
    â€œYou talked about marriage and you were twelve?”
    â€œWe were in love.” She said it as a fact.
    â€œAnd you were still in love when you had the cap made?”
    â€œNot really. It’s a piece of nostalgia now, something that grounds me in my past. I lost my mother a few years ago, it was a complicated relationship, and my father, he’s out of the picture.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    She shook her head. “No, there’s nothing to be sorry about. But people change. I don’t know who John is now, if he still carries a torch or has some kind of fixation on me.”
    Sean leaned back, cupping his hands behind his head and kneading his skull. It was a habit he’d picked up from Martha Ettinger, who said it got the blood moving and made her smarter. It had never had that effect for him, but it made him look like he was thinking, in any case.
    â€œWill you find him for me?”
    â€œYou had me at ‘duplicitous.’ But why not try yourself first? Can you still get in touch with the aunt, or maybe the man who taught him how to make the arrowheads? There must be people around who knew him.”
    â€œYou’re trying to talk yourself out of a job.”
    â€œI told you—”
    â€œI know. Honesty is one of your more dependable virtues.”
    Her face became serious. “I haven’t decided, that’s the thing. If I really
do
want to see him again. But still, I’d like to find out why he was in the bar, why he left before I could speak to him, why he came back. Something to give me an idea what his intentions are. It makes me feel vulnerable not to know.”
    Sean brought his hands forward and interlaced his fingers. He said, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll have you sign a standard contract. But I’m going to cut my daily in half because I don’t want to be responsible for you dropping out of school. If I can’t get any traction by this weekend, we’ll reconsider. No, don’t argue. I’m not