Free Salvage by Stephen Maher

I’ll call his cousin, see if he’s in town.”
    She picked up a telephone, dialed, and spoke in Mi’kmaq. She looked Scarnum up and down as she talked.
    â€œWhat you say your name was again?” she said.
    â€œPhillip Scarnum,” he said.
    She repeated the name into the phone, listened, and then asked him, “Why you want to see him?”
    Scarnum thought for a minute. “Angela sent me,” he said.
    The woman hung up. “His cousin is going to come and get you.”
    Scarnum thanked her and went out to sit in his truck, smoking and looking at the trailers and tumbledown houses of the reserve.
    After fifteen minutes, a teenager drove up on a four-wheeler, his long black hair blowing in the wind behind him.
    He skidded to a stop in the gravel next to the truck. “Scarnum?” he asked.
    â€œYou should wear a helmet,” said Scarnum. “Them things is dangerous.”
    The kid laughed. “Follow me,” he said.
    Scarnum followed in his wake of dust down a series of potholed dirt roads. Donald Christmas’s house — a 1970s split-level — sat at the top of a meadow hundreds of yards back from the road. There was a huge garage built onto the side of the house. The flag of the Mi’kmaq Warriors — a red flag with the profile of a brave in the middle — flew from a pole in front.
    The kid got off the four-wheeler and unlocked the padlock on the steel gate at the bottom of the long lane, waited until Scarnum drove through, then locked it behind him.
    Donald was waiting for him, sitting on the front stoop. He wore work boots, jeans, and a Tupac sweatshirt.
    â€œYou should tell your cousin to wear a helmet,” said Scarnum, when he pulled up to a stop in front of the garage. “Them four-wheelers is deadly.”
    Donald laughed and walked over and they shook hands. “How’s Angela?” he asked.
    â€œOh, ’bout as well as you’d expect,” said Scarnum. “She’s carrying Jimmy’s baby.”
    Donald nodded. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “When’s she due?”
    â€œAround Christmas.”
    â€œMust be tough on her,” he said.
    â€œYuh,” said Scarnum.
    Donald led him around the house and up onto a big back deck overlooking a steep gully. Someone had cut all the trees down a few years before, almost to the edge of a stream at the bottom of the hill, and the alders were growing in among the stumps.
    A clothesline ran down the hill to one big pine that had been left standing in the chopping. A .30-30 rifle with a scope and big box of ammunition lay on a table at the edge of the deck.
    They sat down in plastic chairs overlooking the gully.
    Donald called out and a Mi’kmaq girl came out onto the deck. She was slim and beautiful, about eighteen. She wore black leggings and a yellow halter top. When she opened the sliding glass doors, Scarnum could hear Snoop Dogg from inside the house. Donald spoke to her in Mi’kmaq.
    She came back in a minute and put two beers on the plastic table. Neither she nor Scarnum looked at each other.
    â€œSo, what can I do for you?” said Donald.
    Scarnum took the pillbox of cocaine out of his pocket and put it on the table.
    Donald lifted it up, took the lid off, licked his finger, and put a bit of the cocaine under his upper lip and swirled it around his mouth. He put the pillbox back down on the table and looked at Scarnum hard.
    â€œI don’t know you too good,” he said. “We used to have a bit of fun at the Anchor in the old days, partying with Angela, but come down to it, I don’t really know you.”
    He held out his brown hand in front of Scarnum and pointed to the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, where there were three black, tattooed dots.
    â€œDorchester,” he said. He pointed to each dot in turn. “One year. Two years. Three years.”
    Scarnum looked at him and