The Only Good Indians

Lewis works on his motorcycle in the garage to avoid thinking of Harley. Two police officers arrive, and he doesn’t go out to meet them, leading to them approaching cautiously. Lewis is aware that they could harm him and tell whatever story they wanted to after the fact. They have come to check whether Harley is a threat, which is mandatory after Silas’s visit to the hospital.

He leads them to the grave out behind their fence and makes up a story about burying him there because “he liked to bark at the train” (78), worried that the truth won’t be accepted. They question if he used an illegal gun or fired a weapon in the neighborhood, and he tells him the dog choked himself to death. When he puts his hands up in his hair, they draw on him, perceiving it as a threatening gesture. The police tell him that he needs a permit to bury a dog on railroad property, tell him he may need to dig Harley up again for confirmation, and ask if they can search the house to confirm Harley isn’t being hidden. When he balks, they say they will return with the proper paperwork.

When he returns to the garage, he sees that Shaney has dropped off two of the books he loaned her. He puzzles over why the cow elk has returned to haunt him now and how it might be doing so. He tries to convince himself Harley wasn’t killed by hooves by looking for a suitable weapon in his garage; he finds the pair of rubber snow boots he shares with Peta covered in what he thinks is gore. He panics, unsure now if what he saw was real or if he can trust Peta. He goes out to the backyard and begins digging Harley up with his bare hands but stops before unwrapping him from his blankets. The train goes by, and between the cars Lewis sees a human figure with the head of an elk wearing his wife’s work uniform. When the train passes, it’s gone.

Lewis pretends to sleep as Peta leaves for work. After she goes, he puzzles through what it would mean if she was the one behind his haunting. He sees several pieces of evidence—her arrival on the reservation soon after the incident, her vegetarianism, and her desire to not have children because of something that happened in her past.

He hears something coming up the steps and freezes in bed, watches the reflection in the window for an intruder. He sees something, but when he turns, nothing is in the room with him. He convinces himself to get up and goes downstairs, investigating the elk hide on his table before having a grilled cheese for breakfast. He eats over the sink because he’s become afraid of the living room and its spotlight.

When he’s finished eating, he sees that another of the books Shaney borrowed is on top of the refrigerator. He takes it upstairs and discovers she’s written in it. He looks through her notes and see that they’re about the cow elk; he wonders what destiny he ruined by killing it while pregnant. He thinks this haunting may be happening now because the last of the elk’s meat (which he gave away to the elders) may have been thrown away instead of eaten, violating his promise to make sure it was all used.

One of Shaney’s notes reminds him that an elk’s canines are ivory, and one way to see if Peta is the cause of the haunting would be to check her teeth. When she gets home, they play basketball in the driveway, and he realizes it’s exactly what he needed, that Peta is herself, leading to them making love in the garage.

Lewis continues rebuilding his motorcycle, thinking that he will need to use Harley as an excuse for missing so many days of work. He decides that Peta is not behind what he’s dubbed “Elk Head Woman,” leaving Shaney as the only suspect (96). He believes that the haunting has been deliberately trying to make him think it’s Peta’s fault.

He steps outside and sees another one of the loaned books. There are no notes in this one, and he puzzles over what the series of books might have to do with the Elk Head Woman, coming up with nothing. He decides he needs to get Shaney alone with him to confront her. He calls her on the pretense of her delivering a bike part to Silas on her way to work the next day.

Peta takes an extra shift to make up for the work Lewis has been missing, so he spends the evening alone, thinking about what he will do once he confronts Shaney and she reveals her true form.

Lewis sees that something has dug Harley’s body up; he tries to convince himself it was coyotes but can’t stop picturing Elk Head Woman doing it. The thought nauseates him to the point of vomiting.

He decides to inspect the elk hide before Shaney arrives, hoping for some marking or sign on it. He unrolls it and finds the trading post knife from the day of the incident. He then sets up the scene in his living room the same way it was when he first saw Elk Head Woman, waiting on the ladder for Shaney.

When she comes in, he pretends to be working on the faulty light, but he drops his screwdriver. He realizes he has the trading post knife with him, so he uses that. Shaney makes small talk and goes over to turn off the fan, saying she’s saving his life. He convinces her to turn it back on, but she doesn’t step into the right space. He gets off the ladder, seeing suspicion in her every action. She tells him the light is just a loose connection, and he fixes it by jamming the knife into place to hold it in contact.

He makes up another excuse to get her into the garage with him. She follows him, but she thinks he’s acting strange. He mentioned a detail from the books she’s borrowed, and she doesn’t understand, confirming to Lewis that she isn’t who she says she is. He tells her he wants to show her the new tail pipe on the half-assembled bike and asks her to hold the vacuum tube in place while he turns the engine. She sees his awkwardness as a mishandled sexual advance, but he is determined to start the engine.

He tells her, “I know who you are” and starts the engine in first gear, and the rear wheel begins to spin (114). The wheel catches Shaney’s hair, breaking her neck instantly and scalping her.

In the shower, Lewis thinks his life can finally begin now that he’s avoided paying for his crime against the cow elk. He doesn’t think of himself as a murder, as he doesn’t think Shaney was a real person. Doubts begin to creep in, though, as he rethinks what led up to her death. Everything he thought was suspicious about her behavior could be explained, either as coincidence or as her attempting to sleep with him.

He thinks that maybe she read the beginning of the book series he loaned her and decided it wasn’t for her and returned them all at once. Then someone else may have been using the books to mess with him. He decides he needs to check her teeth to ensure she’s Elk Head Woman. He violently dislodges two of her teeth with a screwdriver and sees that they look normal. His doubts grow, and he begins to think she doesn’t have the scar he saw that he interpreted as a wound from when he field dressed the cow elk.

Before he can act further, Peta comes into the house through the front door. He covers up Shaney’s body and goes inside to see Peta up on the ladder, investigating the now-working light. She looks down at him and sees the blood on his hands. Worried that he’s injured, she stumbles off the ladder and lands with the back of her head on the brick fireplace, which kills her.

Standing there, Lewis begins to believe that she was, after all, Elk Head Woman, staging this grand tragedy to ruin the rest of his life. He goes over to her and violently removes all her teeth, seeing that none of them are ivory, either. He sees that something is moving inside of Peta’s stomach. He slices her stomach open, and a hoofed leg emerges. Lewis pulls the creature out and flees.

Two days later, Lewis is halfway back to the reservation. The calf hasn’t moved, but he knows she will once he takes her to land that she knows. Under a rock ledge, he is found by four men with rifles, and as he tries to explain, they shoot him, which brings the calf to life.

This section of the novel closes with a newspaper article documenting what happened to the four men: As they were driving back to town with Clarke and the calf in the back of their truck, a young girl stood up in the back of the truck. The driver slowed to keep her safe, but she leapt into the cab, resulting in the death of three of the men and the severe injury of the last.