by John Sayles
“Like pretend?”
“No, but– let’s say you can emphasize an aspect of your personality you really like, and just jettison anything that embarrasses you.”
“You like who you are here?”
This kid doesn’t take any prisoners.
“Uhm– I have had my moments. Kind of made a stand– this is who I am, deal with it– and that I feel good about.”
“Here’s where your colony is.”
Leia would have passed it without noticing.
“It’s called a coterie– the little subsection I was observing.”
“Are they nocturnal?”
“Let’s see.”
Leia pulls to the side of the road, jockeys the car around so her low beams spread over the field.
Not a furry soul.
“Too many predators out at night,” she says softly. They aren’t too far from where the girl was attacked, which makes sense if she was walking home. “So they’re diurnal under normal conditions. But of course conditions haven’t been exactly normal up here for quite a while.”
Jolene studies her face for a moment.
“Are you going to stay? Now that your project is finished?”
“For a while.”
“Why?”
It is flattering in a way, a kid, a thoughtful kid like this one, asking you questions about stuff that counts.
“Okay, don’t laugh at me, but I met a guy.”
“In Yellow Earth?”
“There’s possibly-cool guys everywhere. Few and far between, sure, but if you get lucky–”
“So you’re in.”
“I am testing a hypothesis,” she says. “And most of those don’t work out. But you always learn something by seeing it through.”
Jolene nods, looks at the empty field. Behind them, on the other side of the road, sits an oil derrick with a few lights here and there but no workers on it, towering over the section where the whole town used to be. No activity, no pumping, no noise– Leia wonders what the deal is.
“So it’s called a coterie.”
“That’s right.”
“And they live right on top of each other.”
“Shoulder to shoulder, if they actually had shoulders.”
“They must feel really safe together.”
“Maybe,” says Leia. “But they’re not, honey. That’s the sad thing. Not even from each other.”
HE TAKES HER OUT of town and onto the Indian reservation, parking in a spot where they can look out on a lake. Like always he doesn’t like to talk till they get there, which is fine with Jewelle, who needs the time for her face to wake up. She must look like hell.
“Weird-looking lake,” she says. The Hummer has a huge windshield to see through.
“It’s man-made.”
“Oh. Is that what it is. I could tell there’s something wrong with it– like a guy who colors his hair.”
“You color your hair.”
She looks at him. “You know that?”
“Sure. Women your age don’t still have that shade of blonde.”
“My age.”
Randy Hardacre, or ‘Heartacher,’ as the girls at work tease her now that they know, smiles. “Digging myself in pretty deep here.”
“That’s what you do. Dig.”
“I drill, actually. It’s a little bit more to the point.”
She looks back over the water. Here it comes–
“So,” she says, “you wanted to see me.”
“I always want to see you.”
“–really early in the morning. So this must be where you tell me you’re married.”
“No, I am extremely divorced. As a matter of fact, I think my ex-wife used the same product. L’Oréal.”
“You like blondes.”
“If you turned brunette overnight, my feelings wouldn’t change a whit.”
His feelings, whatever they might be–
“So.”
“So I’m supposed to go back to Houston for a while.”
“A while.”
“They only booked me one way, so they haven’t decided how long yet.”
“Something the matter?”
“Naw, just– this whole circus, the leases, the drilling, the fracking, depends on international price per barrel.”
“How much is in a barrel?”
“Forty-two gallons, and we’re over a hundred ten dollars a barrel right now. But there was some thought that OPEC would jack their prices up.”
“OPEC?”
“Oil Arabs.”
“So they need you in Houston to figure this out? I’m impressed.”
“The Company likes to get everybody from different stages of the process together in a room, give our opinions, tell our stories, then one or two guys who weren’t even there will make a gut-guess on what to do next. But their asses have officially been covered if it comes up at a stockholder meeting. ‘After exploring all options– ’”
“When?”
“I fly out tomorrow.”
There are no ducks on the lake. Maybe it is too windy or too cold for them, maybe there’re all in Florida, but the lake would look a lot better with ducks on it. What there is is a very big, very white boat, like a yacht on steroids, sitting propped up on dry land just across the water.
“Who do you think owns that boat?” she asks.
“Well, we’re on the reservation.”
“Indians have yachts?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I picture them in, like, canoes.”
“It’s the twenty-first century. I got my job in the oil business cause I’m good at computers.”
“You’re like a big deal, huh?”
“Not so big.”
“Bigger than the guys who come into the club.”
“How would I know? You still haven’t invited me to.”
“I told you, it’d make me self-conscious, having a real person there.”
“The customers aren’t real?”
“Not as people. They’re like– I don’t know– like a herd of cattle sometimes, and sometimes like lions and tigers, in the cage with the guy with the whip and the chair.”
“Wow.”
“I’ll tell you, it doesn’t make you crazy about men as a species.”
“We’re just a sex,” says Randy. “Same species as you.”
“Not in Bazookas you’re not.”
She can’t imagine Randy in the club any more than she can imagine herself on a real oil platform in her tool belt and hardhat outfit.
“So there’s some chance you’re coming back.”
“No telling, but if I do I hope you’re still here.”
“If you’re still drilling, I’m still dancing.”
She’s socked away a bundle since she’s come up here, and unlike these idiot roughnecks she’s not going to spend it on pretend sex with strangers.
“We were just getting started, I think,” he says.
He doesn’t say I’ll call you every day, or would you like to come to Houston with me and forget about the dancing, or any of the other things that might change her life. He’s the best man she’s met up here, the best one she’s met in a long while, but when the music stops the ride is over.
“At least you didn’t buy a house,” she says.
Across the wind-whipped water, a figure pops out from under the tarp on the boat and clumsily maneuvers a ladder to the ground.
THE ACTION FACTION LOVES Leonard.
“Nina, Nina, the in-betweenah!”
He is fast, good-looking, and wired in to the job. There’s never much hedging at his table and he’s a wizard with the proposition bets, so the action flies along, lots of chips down on the come out roll, an easy fifteen to twenty more rolls an hour than any other stickman on the floor.
“Fiver, fever, don’t believe her.”
Lady is on her break, watching him wield the stick. She’s never worked the craps table, too many bets to keep track of, too many hyp
er bettors at your elbows, not her rhythm. But Lenny was born for it, eyes everywhere at once, stick changing hands on the roll, the patter inexhaustible–
“Jimmy Hicks from the sticks, rolls the dice and wins on six. That’s six, six, six, wasn’t sleazy, it came easy.”
The casino hired him on sight, had him in harness the minute his background check cleared. He looks good in the uniform, has already made friends with all the dealers and the boxmen, and the high-octane players are drawn to his table like moths to a flame.
“Mr. Natural, pass line wins.” He offers the bowl to the next shooter. “Pick your bones, Jones,” he says, and then when the dice are being shaken, “Hands high, let ‘em fly!”
They try to work the same shift in order to see more of each other, but it’s not always possible. And at least here there’s only the one casino– in Reno and Vegas she’d never hear the door creak till the dawn’s early light. Lenny is breaking in a new dealer tonight, gently, working instructions and reminders into his spiel without embarrassing the kid, controlling the vibe of the table.
“Boxcars, pass line loses, push on the don’t pass.”
He never bends to mop the dice around, moving only from the elbows out, but the rocks never sit still for long–
“Aces, double the field.”
He was a little distant the first couple days, distracted, just getting the feel of the town, of the vast, underpopulated reservation, the silent lake and the raucous casino. And then she came back from work one night and he was the old Lenny, the old good Lenny, smiling and relaxed and full of plans.
“Eighter, eighter, see ya later, eight is the point.”
He’s in the same groove now, acknowledging each player with eye contact, urging them along, goosing the volume on a hot roll, coaxing the tough bets from the vets who know the odds–
“Three craps out, don’t comes win.”
He is high as a Georgia pine.
“Little Joe from Kokomo, tell your daddy what you know! That’s four the hard way, folks, shooter rolls again.”
The thing is, he’s never been good to live with when he’s straight. Even totally cleaned out, not sick, he stays anxious, not really with you. Something is missing and they both know it. They’ve talked it to death, with and without the drug counselors, but a junkie is always a junkie. ‘I wish I was addicted to brake fluid,’ he always jokes, ‘so I could stop whenever I wanted.’
“Pay the don’ts, double the field.”
With both of them working, the expense won’t be overwhelming. This new habit is so much better than the crystal, the highs and lows less extreme, no temper tantrums, and he’s willing to eat at least one full meal a day. He claims to just be a dip-and-dab man instead of carrying a King Kong habit, and she has only found him unconscious once, getting the lecture when she drove him to the ER at Mercy. “If I still got a pulse, baby,” he told her, “just let me dream.”
“Hard ten, the ladies’ friend, no one wins unless they spend. Dice are in the middle, folks.”
Lady looks into the too-bright eyes of the players glued to the rail. Adrenaline freaks, all of them, hooked on the tumbling cubes, the colored chips, the noise, Leonard’s play-by-play chatter–
“That’s yo-leven, feels like Heaven, somebody paid the light bill.”
When he is in the Zone like this he can skip sleep, food, trips to the bathroom. Now and then, at a certain stage of the downslide, they’ll make love. ‘Want to make sure I can feel it, Lady,’ he tells her. ‘Even if I’m starting to get ragged.’ She hopes whatever connection he’s made here is a safe one, but has learned not to ask. There should be enough shit floating around that it’s not too expensive, decent quality. She’s learned to tell when he’s gotten something laced with another drug, too speedy or talking in slo-mo. He’s always been shy of needles, sensible about the health issues and the wear and tear on his veins. So the apartment is full of beeswax candles and aluminum foil, she keeps the cardboard tubes when the toilet paper is gone–
“Came easy, bet it hard!”
Lady turns to head for the break room. Lenny and his posse at the craps table will always want more. Need more. And you can have more, you can, but you have to pay the price. Not right away, maybe, but it will catch up to you. This whole crazy oil field, this drilling, pumping, this rush of money and people, cannot stay in the air forever. Gravity exists. The House always wins.
“Up pops the devil!” calls Leonard, raking snake eyes off the rail. “Shooter goes down.”
THE MOUNTAIN LION IS looking a little scruffy. Not that they aren’t scruffy out in Nature– dirty, scarred-up, hide full of ticks– but most stuffed animals get a makeover before they’re put out in public. Ruby wonders if this one was actually killed on the reservation and when that might have been. If it was in the last two years the thing would have tire marks from an oil truck on it.
Harleigh, on the other hand, has his look totally together as he stands at the lectern behind the big cat. Hat pushed back on his head so you can see his eyes, fringed buckskin jacket over a red cowboy shirt, silver and turquoise flashing from his fingers.
“The Three Nations,” he says, “is the leader in tribal oil produced in the continental United States.”
There’s always a little wonder at the Alaskan tribes holding out for their own nomenclature, just because they came late to the party and are sitting on an ocean of the black stuff. Alaska Natives. Hard to imagine a place with more brutal winters than here.
“And we’ve only just gotten started!” Harleigh crows, and there is clapping and whistling and stomping of the feet. The Events Center is filled mostly with oil people and wannabe oil people, and then the enrolled members who’ve signed leases and want to get rich, or in a few cases, richer.
“There’s a family,” Harleigh tells them, voice dropping into the tale-swapping frequency, “in the Middle East called the Sauds. A family that’s got their own country, which with all the troubles over there, never seems to get invaded by anybody. Their sovereignty remains unviolated. Now why is that?”
In three corners of the Events Center there are mock-ups of the traditional dwellings of the three tribes, little kids allowed to go in and play inside them during the Christmas shows and winter powwows. Newly added, to the far left and far right, are facsimiles of early twentieth- and early twenty-first-century oil derricks, each with Do Not Lean or Climb signs on them.
“Is it because they have a large and expensively maintained military? Oh, they do– they bought over sixty billion dollars’ worth of weaponry from our government and solved their unemployment troubles by keeping a hell of a lot of men in the field. They bought that army, they bought that sovereignty with oil. Their freedom and self-determination comes by the barrel!”
More applause and a few shouts. Ruby has never heard the Saudis get this much love.
“It doesn’t matter what you think of their culture, it doesn’t matter what you think of their politics, when folks think of Saudi Arabia a big sign starts flashing that says ‘Hands Off’!”
She sees Rodney Pierce, who had one of the first frack jobs come in on his acreage, jump to his feet and throw a fist in the air. Rodney saw combat somewhere, Panama maybe, and has a collection of sexist T-shirts, though today he’s opted for a simple ‘Drill Her Deep and Pump Her Hard’ over an American flag.
“Oil and gas extraction on the reservation,” says Harleigh, looking around as if he could actually see individuals with the hall darkened and the spotlight trained at him, “is not only supplying America with its energy needs, but it is forging a new and more respected status for our tribes– not a poor cousin, not a ward of the state, but a strong and self-governing nation within a nation!”
The oilmen, the Texans and Okies and pipeline people from Alaska, are applauding harder than anybody. Harleigh is hosting this expo for them, with the same lure of fewer rules and tax-free operations that bring the casino people here, or the firecracker peddlers in states where they’re r
estricted, or the outlaws and cattle rustlers who used Indian Territory for their personal free-trade zone, thumbing their noses at Hanging Judge Parker. Ruby can hear the digital cacophony of the slot machines from the back of the hall, the Events Center connected to the casino by a short walkway, not only for comfort in the hard, wind-whipping winter months but so people never have the fun parlor out of their minds. To the oilmen it must sound like money falling into the coffers-Harleigh should have taped some oil-pump thumping and played it here to get their blood up even more.
“We live in a corporate climate,” Harleigh tells them. “There are businesses with more financial resources than most of the countries in the world, with more employees than most armed forces, with more power”– he does a nice dramatic pause here, looking around the hall, letting this sink in to the enrolled members present– “than most of the outfits making trouble on the nightly news. What I have tried to do in my capacity as Chairman is let the world know that the Three Nations are in the game, that we are open for business!”
More people stand to applaud now, believers in the gospel he is preaching. Ruby’s Aunt Earline got caught up with the evangelicals for a while and took her to a couple mass revivals in Santa Fe. There was the same near-ecstatic vibe in the room, the same sense of belonging to something big together, Aunt Earline shaking and testifying even though most of it was in Spanish, which she didn’t speak. Like a Burning Man concert with bad music. And Harleigh eats it up, loves to hear the amens hollered out. He had only nodded to Ruby when they passed backstage before, caution in his eyes now. She has sent him a half-dozen self-serving letters, detailing her concerns about his oil service activities, his executive measures taken without council deliberation, his drift into what might be considered influence peddling. Her concerns and cautions are on record, held in duplicate, in a volume thick enough to legally cover her ass. She has put feelers out, mostly to southern and southwestern tribes, discreetly letting it be known that she is open to a move. You want to leave before the ship is obviously sinking, when the feces might be already launched in the air but have yet to contact the whirring blades.