EPISODE ONE

Two Crows

Chapter One

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind

And you know that you can trust her

For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

Saturday morning – 2023. Lucky Two Crows

A roll of thunder wakes Lucky from a most comforting dream. Sweet perfume. Tender kisses. Hopeful wishes. 8:15 am. 

Yesterday’s weather forecast called for a weekend of non-stop torrential downpours. Lucky checks the news on his iPhone. Portland’s annual Gay Pride Parade has been cancelled. He moans, and then snuggles under his down quilt, wishing his fantasy dream would come true. He never sleeps this late. It’s time to surrender to the new day thoughts. Reality.

Eyes open, now on his back, fingers twined behind his head, he stares into the skylight. Listens to the pitter-patter of raindrops. For a few precious no-hurry moments, he’ll allow himself to surrender to old day thoughts. He thinks about his life as a full-blooded American Indian detective, a defender of native people who need more help than the majority will ever admit. Most gentrified Portland Indians can’t relate to his passion; his lone ranger desire to make their wrongs, or the wrongs against them, right. Just be grateful, they say. He takes in a deep breath and wonders what his life would be like if he had spent it in Browning, Montana. He thinks about his mother, wondering if she’s still alive, still living on the Blackfeet reservation, still drinking. Growing up without a loving mother saddens him. He remembers the day the BIA took him from her. He was only six years old. He recalls some and has long forgotten most of his foster parents. He rebelled against their strict authority, spawning anger by ruining one too many of their computers. So, the BIA shuttled him from one home to another for ten years, and after his Boise “parents” beat him for talking back, he ran away for good.  

Still savoring these moments of falling rain above him, Lucky thinks about his childhood, working on so many computers in the early morning hours. He chuckles about this intense pre-pubescent study, which self-taught him how computers work, and how to build one from scratch. Early one morning, half-way into this sixteenth year, a kind truck driver picked him up and left in a Portland street that afternoon. He found shelter and soon got work repairing computers for money. 

Lucky fondly thinks about his dear friend and mentor, Jimmy Meriweather, Portland’s Police Captain of Homicide and Missing Persons. He remembers the day he found Jimmy’s Aikido dojo and soon became the sensei’s protégé. Jimmy always had a bed in back for Lucky, and kept him away from alcohol, drugs and juvenile prison. In the beginning of the next ten years, besides repairing computers, he learned to ride a horse and shoot arrows. A full-blooded Blackfeet warrior, strong and athletic, he fit in perfectly, performing in powwows, bare-chested, galloping in on his horse, chanting, dancing and shooting arrows, as if he were a mirage from the 19th century. 

Lucky recalls the day at age twenty-six when he was hired by the prominent Portland Indian Rights attorney, JJ Jones. For the past three years, since the great pandemic of 2020, their workload has been sporadic; the Natives too complacent, or too poor to ask for help. This prompted Lucky to open his own business, L&P Investigations, a private-eye detective agency. And more.

Still lying in bed. 8:30. Lucky thinks about his stallion and the police horses whose prayers were answered. They won’t get soaked today. They’ll stay put with warm wraps on their backs, secure in their stables. He thinks about his beloved black stallion Shaka, safe and secure at a good ranch in Beaverton.

Tonto, a stray black cat, has wondered in and now lies on Lucky’s chest, purring away, she too surprised he’s still in bed. He likes stray cats like Tonto, who are free and independent, who take good care of themselves. They aren’t needy like most of the women he’s briefly experimented living with, in the past. Tonto is grateful for the big bag of cat food which Lucky keeps under cover on the back porch. Poison bulkheads keep the ants away, and if a rat comes anywhere near, Tonto is quick to the feast. She’s a survivor, like Lucky, and at this moment he feels as wild and free as her.

It’s now a quarter to nine and Lucky doesn’t want to get up, but his tummy begs to differ. He decides to get up and go to Mary Jane’s, his favorite Portland café; his favorite rainy-day destination for comfort, security and a hearty meal. After his shower and shave, blow-drying his long hair, he puts on his blue jeans and denim long sleeve shirt. Jeans tucked in, he laces up his mid-calf boots, secure from the rain as mukluks in an Alaskan blizzard. All his leather has recently been oiled and waterproofed. He slips on his Scully’s dark leather long coat and sets his matching wide-brimmed Stetson as low as it will go. He looks like a renegade long rider in a spaghetti western. Before heading out into the storm he checks himself in the mirror. “I’m one bad-ass Indian.”