The Only Good Indians (Jones)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was the book group's pick for September, and I read it already. It was a bit of a quick read, and a strange one as well. I'm not that much into horror, so this was a little out there. (That said, the historical romance a few months ago wasn't what I generally read, either, but that wasn't so bad.)
It starts with a Blackfoot Indian named Ricky, who has left his reservation, leaving a bar to pee outside because there's too long of a line inside. Out in the lot, an elk starts jumping on and damaging trucks. When angry bargoers head outside, all they see is an Indian, so they want to get the Indian. Ricky tries to flee the angry mob and almost makes it, except he runs into a herd of elk. That's the last we hear of Ricky. Next thing we hear, he's been killed by the mob.
Next we get to Lewis who's been off the reservation for a decade and trying to live a normal life. He's a postal worker and his girlfriend Peta directs planes at the airports with those two big lit cones. Lewis is trying to fix a light and while looking through a fan, he sees the image of an elk on the floor. He falls off the ladder but Peta saves him. Life suddenly starts getting weird as Lewis is obsessed with the elk. Enter Shaney, a Crow woman working at the Post Office. She can see the elk in the floor and even helps lay down tape to outline it.
Lewis confesses to Shaney about the night nearly a decade ago that he and three friends, Ricky (now deceased), Cassidy and Gabe, illegally shot up a bunch of elk on a part of the reservation where they weren't supposed to be. One that Lewis shot was pregnant and kept jumping back up to protect her calf. I can't relate to the scene so I can't really relate it here. However, Lewise thinks he's being haunted by that mother elk. He swore that every piece of her would be used, and now he's wondering if all these years later, some elder found a piece of that elk wrapped in the back of their freezer and gave it to the dogs.
Speaking of dogs, Lewis's dog gets killed and it was stomped, like by an elk, but an elk couldn't get in the garage. He discovers that his own boots were used to do the deed, and concludes that it was either Peta or Shaney that had done it. It takes a turn for the weirder when [SPOILERS] he kills both of them as runs off with a elk calf that he cut out of Peta (with whom he had unprotected sex just a couple of nights ago.)
He's shot down by militia who are out looking for him along with the state police. The calf isn't collected and runs away.
The story then shifts again to the reservation where Cassidy and Gabe live. Cass has a Crow girlfriend, Jo, who's turned his life around, and Gabe is enstranged from his daughter, Denorah, who lives with her mother and her new dad. The elk calf has grown into a girl and then a woman (who looks like Shaney and calls herself that). The elk woman plots revenge to kill everyone, including their cubs.
Much death ensues. It drags out a little toward the end, trying to get to a lake and ending up in the same ditch where the story started all those years ago, coming full circle.
It seemed a little disjointed to me, jumping all over the point from one POV to another. Also the elk woman parts were written in Second Person, just to add the the confusion. I can see the draw for horror fans, but this wasn't my cup of tea.
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