by John Sayles
He waves to Joe Dixon.
“Good to see you come out, Joe.”
“It’s so colorful.”
“Yeah, they put on a good show.” The Antelope Society are out in the middle now, fancy dancing, all swirling feathers and footwork.
“And it all means something, right?”
“Any big hunt, big move, big battle, we had a dance for it. Get everybody involved, put all our spirit behind it.”
“Weddings and bar mitzvahs?”
Harleigh smiles. “We had our version of all of that. And like the beadwork you seen on the women– everybody understood the time and effort that went into that, that it wasn’t something you could buy.”
“There ought to be an oil-shale dance.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Joe is something like a coordinator for the Company, seeing that the needed personnel and equipment move from well to well in the proper order, that nothing falls through the cracks.
“Listen, you know the PeteCo-Cloud Number Four.”
“Still producing like a champion.”
“You had a pit dug there.”
“For the fluids, right.”
“Shouldn’t it be gone?”
Joe takes eyes away from the dance in the arena. “It hasn’t been filled in?”
“Still there, still holding residue.”
“But that’s your outfit.”
“My outfit?”
“Subbed to do the clean-up. Your outfit with Brent there, the body-builder character. What’s it– ArrowFleet.”
It’s the third job he’s heard of left undone. And then the Parker brothers saying they quit because they hadn’t been paid for a couple hauls–
“You sure of that?”
“We subbed everything we could on the reservation to you. Keep it in the family.”
They are pretty good old boys, the Company crowd, but are dead serious about their business.
“Well then, I got to get on somebody’s tail, don’t I? Thanks for clearing that up.”
“Any news on that situation up north?”
The reservation is big enough to have regions, and Joe must mean the Looks for Water family, who hold mineral rights on a big area up at the top but can’t stop fighting with each other long enough to settle on a lease agreement. Marjo-rie is the only intelligent one in the whole outfit but tends to have her head stuck in the latest conspiracy theory.
“Last I heard there was a brother they thought was dead, showed up from California wanting to claim his acreage. I’d say your best bet is to offer just what their closest neighbors got.”
“The Mortensons.”
“Right, and put the money in escrow for them to sort out later.”
“You think they’ll go for that?”
“I think enough would want to make a deal if you could get them all into the same room without a fatality.”
“I don’t want to be in that room. Don’t you have some kind of mediation panel–”
“The old days, there’d be elders, there’d be the community and people would be shamed into getting right. Might not be a word spoken. But these days–” Harleigh shakes his head. “And the money bug has bit, which doesn’t make it any easier.”
“There’s one fella outside of Yellow Earth, just flat turned us down.”
“Clemson Dollarhide.”
“Notorious crank, I take it.”
“No, he’s well thought-of. Son and daughter-in-law were hit by a truck on the highway.”
“Not one of ours?”
There has been an increase in traffic fatalities, a few involving oil service vehicles.
“This is some years back. Stock-hauler, headed for Fort Peck.”
“So he’s what, bitter?”
Harleigh shrugs. “Philosophical. Like some of our traditionalists, don’t like to see Mother Earth tore up. But here people are a lot hungrier.”
Joe cocks his head, getting up his nerve to ask something. They’re shy about the Indian stuff, so much bad feeling in the past.
“If you could turn back the clock,” says Joe, nodding toward the Antelope Society men whirling in the arena, “go back to those buffalo days, would you do it?”
“Before the Company came?”
Joe grins. “Before Lewis and Clark, let’s say.”
It’s something he’s thought about. He loves to hunt and fish, but when he’s come home empty-handed there’s still always something from the fridge to put on the table. And you don’t have to worry about the Sioux raiding anymore, or starving if the snow is too deep for too long–
“Sure,” says Harleigh. “From what I can tell, that was a good life.” He indicates the performers and the spectators around them. “All this week people been getting ready for the powwow, they feel good. But lots of days they get up, and there’s nothing they look forward to. No purpose. Buffalo days, everybody had a purpose. Even the kids were expected to pull their weight, were eager to get involved and earn people’s respect.”
“Hell,” Joe nods, “I’d go back to that.”
Harleigh claps Joe on the arm and moves away.
“Then we’ll meet up there in the Happy Hunting Ground, buddy,” he winks. “Bring your own toilet paper.”
Harleigh meets and greets with a half-dozen other little gatherings of spectators then, enrolled members mostly, some of them even thanking him for his efforts in bringing the oil. A few have hit the jackpot, hundreds of thousands in the bank and still pumping, while others are guessing at how the tribal-lease money will shake down. He’s hoping to come up with some projects that benefit everybody– not the hospital, the Feds still owe them that– but improvements the tribes can use. If you start to divide the money up into cash payments to the enrollment it can get messy. Why are you giving cash to a person everybody knows has a drug addiction, why should the members who’ve already struck it big be included in the People’s Pool profits, can you qualify for membership if you haven’t been living here for years, maybe for generations? At the big conferences he hears about membership purges in other tribes, people calling each other out, some even surrendering to the cold percentages of DNA tests. The Three Nations, like many others, have a long tradition of intermarriage and adoption. Was Quanah Parker a Comanche? Was John Ross a Cherokee? Can his cousin Nils, who looks like that Swedish guy Rocky had to fight in one of the sequels, qualify just because he’s one-sixteenth and has been the pipe-bearer of the Kit Fox Society for twenty years? Things used to be so bad that the joke was ‘Who would ever pretend to be an Indian?,’ but first the Dawes Allotment and now this oil boom have attracted some pretty marginal types and pretenders.
Danny Two Strike is motioning to him from the edge of the arena, where groups are assembling for the Grass Dance. Danny is in his police uniform but with some of his military buttons and badges hung in front. He doesn’t look like he’s celebrating.
“We should step out of sight.”
“It’s powwow, Danny.”
“You need to hear this.”
Harleigh throws up his hands and lets Danny lead him under the bleachers. The drums have a strange echo here, the steady beat less certain, jumpier.
“I’m getting complaints from your former employees.”
“I don’t have employees.”
“You own ArrowFleet Services.”
“Co-own.”
“Well, in the last week three different people, all of them enrolled members, have come to me complaining they were fired for asking your co-owner for their paycheck.”
“You know I went out of my way to make as many TERO hires as possible, and some of those people–”
“These aren’t deadbeats, Harleigh. They picked up other work right away.”
“So, problem solved.”
“They say they’re owed for services rendered. Two, three weeks in a couple cases, one guy who filled his truck with diesel for a haul and was never reimbursed.”
“They’re bringing criminal charges?”
“They say your co-owner has surrounded himself with a bunch of hard cases and the workers are afraid to stand up for themselves.”
“Trucking is a rough business to begin with, Danny, and you throw in the shifts these guys are working, the pharmaceuticals they may be taking to stay in the game– I’d want a few muscle men backing me up.”
“Every one of the fellas who come to me said the same thing. ‘Somebody’s gonna get killed.’”
“All right, I’ll have a word with Brent.”
He hasn’t seen Brent in that command mode ever, but can imagine his Cross-Fit training kicking in. Steroids? Those are supposed to affect your moods–
“How much do you actually know about the guy?”
Harleigh shrugs. “You’ve met him. Charming, a real go-getter. Like a Navy SEAL without the weapons system.”
The last time he went by the shop it was hard to see who exactly was running the day-to-day– trucks coming in and out, lots of guys just hanging around, Brent on the phone yelling about what sounded like a lease-flipping deal he was trying to finance. Harleigh just gave him a wave and left a note about the oil socks piling up on his property.
Danny looks away as they hear the Grass Dance begin.
“My father and his family, even my older brothers when they were little,” he says, “used to ride here for the powwow every year. The ladies would come later in a wagon. But the men, they’d have their ceremony at home in Makoti and mount up, ride all night. People be waking up in their tents– it was army surplus tents in those days– and our men would ride in, bare chested, sitting tall without a saddle. The women there already would all drop whatever they were doing and step out to raise up a cry.”
They listen for a moment, standing among the candy wrappers and plastic soda bottles that have been dropped though the bleacher seats, imagining the dancers, imagining the swaying of the grass.
“No saddles.”
“Just a blanket and a hawser. At night, whether there was a moon or no. When only the spirits are supposed to be out.”
“That was a hell of a long ride.”
“Just cause things get easier,” says Danny, “doesn’t mean they’re better.”
IT TAKES A LITTLE while to jockey around the drive-thru line, which hooks out to the shoulder of the main road, and get into the crowded parking lot. The Golden Arches have extended their hours, like all the other fast-food joints in town, and Wayne Lee is glad to see it is as mobbed inside as outside. Fargo is already standing in line to order.
“Throw a double cheeseburger onto whatever you’re getting,” says Wayne Lee, handing him a five, “and one of those chocolate sludgy shakes.”
He takes the strap of the backpack from Fargo, swings it over his shoulder as he heads for the men’s room. The more people crammed into a place the less they pay attention to anyone else. There’s no line for the bathroom, three guys inside pissing, one stall open– perfect.
Wayne Lee locks the stall door, sits and starts opening compartments in the backpack. The bulk of it is weed, pressed together in a lump the size of a basketball. Mexican maybe, anything better than what they try to grow up here. He opens bottles and packets and takes inventory. Some coke powder for the old-school party hounds, meth in pills and crystal, anabolic steroids, Ecstasy, and a little taste of crack. He repacks, steps out and washes his hands, checking his hair in the mirror.
By the time he hits the floor again, backpack slung casually over one shoulder, their order is ready. He and Fargo take their trays out to the picnic tables out front, alone with the truck exhaust and the wind.
“Where you in from?”
“Last stop was Denver,” says Fargo, a bearded, red-eyed character who smells like an ashtray.
“Get to see the sights?”
“Couple hours.”
“Bookstores, brew pubs, six-story buildings, you can get a massage–”
“I slept in my cab while they got my load ready.”
“Ah– the knights of the highway lead a glamorous life.” Wayne Lee slips the envelope with the money under Fargo’s tray, unwraps his double cheeseburger.
“You don’t like it here?”
Wayne Lee indicates the crawl of pickups and water haulers on the street before them. “What’s not to like?”
“How’s the snatch?”
Wayne Lee hesitates. He’s been thinking about Tina all day, the girl telling him she’s ready to really get into it. Tina, who would never sleep if you gave her two hours in Denver.
“About what you’d expect,” he says. “When’s your next run?”
Fargo is opening ketchup packets, ready to deal with his mountain of fries. “Last trip.”
“You’re getting out of the business?”
“No, but Brent says no more deliveries, so why should I run all the way up here?”
“Why would he say that?”
“Shit if I know. He got that service company with the chief, I heard he’s fronting for oil leases on the reservation, maybe he don’t want to risk it for some side money.”
First Brent taking him off the long runs, now this. Brent said nothing to him this morning, just that he’d be out of town till late and that Bunny was still in California.
“Could be,” says Wayne Lee. “But what if I fronted the money, made it worth your while?”
“Step around Brent?”
“If he’s not buying product anymore I’m not stepping around him, am I?”
Fargo leans forward, serious. “I would think twice before making a move like that, my friend. You know Brent.”
BRENT HAS TO WALK away from the noise of the backhoes till he can hear Tillerman’s voice on the cell phone, stepping through high grass. Dollarhide’s property, he thinks with satisfaction. The old fart doesn’t want to let them build an access road through his worthless cow pasture, fuck him, we’ll run it along the edge, meticulously surveyed. Brent looks to the Dollarhide farmhouse, just a hundred yards up the rise.
“You still there?” shouts Tillerman on the other end.
“Just had to find another spot. These oil wells start paying off, they make a lot of noise.”
Actually, the pumping is one of the quietest phases of the operation, but Tillerman is just a coupon-clipper in fucking Idaho and wouldn’t know.
“So what’s this about?”
Always better to do these things in person. He’s read how Lyndon Johnson used to back senators against the walls of Congress, hang an arm around their necks, and steer them in the direction he wanted.
“What it is, Hal, we’re closing one door and opening another. The Mandan 27 well–”
“My investment.”
“–that you were one of the many investors in, has attracted somebody who wants to shout for the whole package. You can understand how when we bring a production company in they’d prefer to be doing business with only one entity, one set of paperwork to deal with when the royalties have to be paid.”
“You have my money,” says Hal Tillerman.
The Russians don’t want anybody else on the lease, that’s a dealbreaker, and without them he’s only got eighty-five percent of a sure thing.
“Which is convenient,” says Brent, stepping around a dried-up cow pie, “because it puts you in first position for an even better deal. Due to my privileged position here on the reservation, which I might add is the result of a substantial amount of diplomacy and cash outlay on my part, I am able to offer you–”
“You have my money in the bank,” says Tillerman flatly. “Papers have been signed.”
“Technically, until Mandan 27 is fully capitalized, no one investor–”
“You told me I was the last one in.”
“Look, contracts are rewritten up here every day. It’s a fluid situation.”
“I own thirty percent of Mandan 27. You have guaranteed it will be drilled within six months. If you’ve got anything different to tell me, my lawyer should hear it first.”
“I’m
trying to help you here, Hal. These opportunities open and close so quickly–”
“The only deal I’m interested is outlined in our contract.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. The Russians need to hear by Friday, saying they might buy a hockey team instead, and it won’t be long before the word escapes that not every inch of the reservation has oil under it.
“You don’t want to get in the way of these people, Hal.”
There is a pause on the other end. Brent turns and watches his machinery scrape out a new access road, waits to hear which way Hal will break.
“Is that a threat?”
“The first one who utters the word ‘lawyer’ is making the threat, Hal. I’m offering you the same deal, possibly a much better deal, or to wire your money back right now. Your alternative, to be honest, I wouldn’t wish on an enemy, much less a business associate.”
“His name is Andrew Wertheimer,” says Hal. “Nicholson, Bridges, Bodine, and Wertheimer. I’ll e-mail you his contact information.”
The thing is, he’s got everything tied up in this deal. If the Russians come in it’s a massive score, but if it falls apart–
Clemson Dollarhide steps out of the farmhouse, looking down at the phalanx of backhoes reshaping the landscape at the very edge of his property. Another asshole who won’t listen to reason. Brent makes a pistol with his thumb and forefinger, points it up at the old man.
Pow.
“I GOT YOUR WORK schedule from that coffee place.”
So he knows about that.
Her grandfather is at his easel, head back the way he holds it for focus, able to see fine without glasses even at his age. So he knows about her job. Tough it out.
“Why would you need my schedule?”
He holds the brush halfway down on the handle, arm extended. “You shouldn’t be relying on other people for rides. I’m going to teach you how to drive, get you something cheap but roadworthy, and I need to know when you’re free.”