Yellow Earth

by John Sayles

  Marjorie keeps to Dollarhide’s dirt road as long as it goes, not an oilfield truck in sight, then has to join the parade, squeezing in behind a crude-oil-hauling armada heading east. The buffalo grass on the road shoulders, usually impossible to kill, is looking bad, suffocating under a layer of dust. And up on a rise to the left are three coyotes, sitting, looking at something down on the other side. You don’t often see that many together in the daytime.

  IT ISN’T EXACTLY A vision quest. For starters, it was never really a woman’s tradition, and Teresa is not planning to cut off a joint of her little finger, or any other part of her body, to offer the Spirits. But she needs guidance, some indication of what to do, which way to turn.

  It takes her an hour to find a place where there are no drill rigs visible, a little bowl made by some rock outcroppings. The old places, the holy places her father told her about, are mostly under the lake now.

  Teresa sits on a flat spot on one of the rocks. She’s been fasting for two days but has brought a thermos of water. It’s a bit warmer in here, out of the wind, and the sky above is clear in patches. She doesn’t try to conjure anything, just kick back and free associate, see what comes.

  A certain amount of it was metaphor of course, recognizing traits in the animals– swiftness, strength, stealth, persistence– that you admired and then tried to emulate. Probably why so many sports teams are named after predators. If your life was ruled by the availability of game, the cycles of weather, your observation of those things went beyond practicality. Science and religion were one.

  But another part had to be that you did it in isolation, you as an individual were touched by a greater power, a power that found you worthy of visitation. The Christians are always praying for Jesus to come into their lives, to talk to them, to sign on as their Personal Savior. As much as the People depended on each other to survive and lived on top of each other in earthen huts, as much as it takes a village and all that, there was always a hunger for individuality, to sing your own unique song. You had it both ways. When you came back from your quest there was a shaman of some sort to help you interpret the vision, and your family and your tribe were eager to take you back in and to learn how you had changed, what they should call you now.

  The Spirits have lost interest in us, thinks Teresa Crow’s Ghost, and we belong to nothing.

  She can hear machine noise on the wind now. It isn’t traffic– she’s too far in from the highway– so it must be one of the oil rigs, or the pipes with gas burning up from them day and night, or even the pump jacks, bobbing up and down, up and down. The Earth has been stabbed and is bleeding, she thinks, there’s a metaphor for you. But stabbing and bleeding was no rarity in the old life, and the problem can’t be just a matter of scale. There is no ceremony to this taking, no more than there is at a slaughterhouse when the cattle are run through it. Cattlemen talk about the worth of the ‘carcass’ that will be left, while the animals are still growing. With the buffalo each bull, cow, or calf was a manifestation, a gift from the greater spirit of Buffalo, and the hunt was celebrated with dances before and after. Now there are only commodities.

  When buffalo cross her mind the image is of the patchy old bull in the petting zoo in Fargo, the first live one she ever saw, an animal that seemed embarrassed to have its picture taken with small children perched behind its hump. She closes her eyes and other images come, more recent ones, trucks and other heavy equipment rumbling and growling, afraid of nothing on earth or in the sky. Consuming. Consuming. Teresa begins to sing one of the river songs, softly, the words simple but the melody always making her want to cry.

  You can’t go backwards in time. Even if you could, there are negative things, role expectations, the whole Crips-versus-Bloods aspect of tribal warfare, that she is glad are over. Young men don’t have to kill an enemy to gain status, to impress the young women anymore. Not that they don’t enlist in the military, but that’s something that happens far away. There was a sense of being part of a whole then, of your destiny being attached, being an important part of that, of the People–

  Somebody is singing along with her.

  Teresa opens her eyes to see Danny Two Strike, in his badge and uniform, standing a few feet away from her.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Search party.”

  “Searching for what?”

  Danny is one of the success stories, a pretty wild kid who straightened out, has stayed to give something back.

  “White guy who went missing a while back, used to work for ArrowFleet. Marjorie is all over it, she’s hosting the guy’s family.”

  “You’re being pretty thorough.”

  Danny shrugs, looks around. “I was trying to think of a place not in sight of any of the drilling operations.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  He sits by her on the rock. “Yeah. We used to come up here to get out of the wind, smoke weed.”

  Teresa shows him her hands.

  “I’m not holding.”

  He smiles. “Anyhow, we’re finding all kinds of stuff lying around that shouldn’t be there, but so far no bodies.”

  “Would you share that information? So I can bring it up at the next council meeting?”

  Danny is too polite to ask her what she’s doing here. A good boy, such a shame his marriage didn’t work out–

  “Sure. You know more about the environmental stuff than me, but it just doesn’t look right, what they leave behind.”

  “Sovereignty by the barrel.”

  “Not the worst idea.”

  “Turn the Three Nations into Saudi Arabia.”

  Danny laughs. “I wonder what it’s like for those people– I mean the real people, not just the oil sheiks driving Rolls-Royces around the desert. I hear nobody has to work, they bring in people from Egypt and the Philippines.”

  “I haven’t noticed any great uplifting going on.”

  “Me neither. How’s Ricky hanging in?”

  “You lie down with dogs,” says Teresa, “you get up with fleas.”

  Danny stands, brushes off the seat of his pants. “Well– I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Take care, Danny. I hope you find– you know. I hope he’s alive somewhere.”

  A turkey buzzard floats overhead. If she stays here a while, doesn’t move, there will be a half-dozen in no time, circling lower and lower to see if she’s ready to be picked at.

  Teresa begins to sing again, a song about the grass, and the animals that will come to eat it.

  THE OLD EKSTROM PLACE has been empty for thirty years, but the probate is tangled enough that it hasn’t been torn down. What had been a mowed yard around it is overrun now with spurge, Canada thistle, yellow foxtail. The composition board tacked over the missing widows has begun to curl apart, tall weeds have grown up through the cracks in the porch planks and several hundred bats fly out of the top story every night until mid-November. You can’t see the house from the highway, which was only a wagon trail when the first Ekstrom in the county built it. The structure has begun to lean heavily to the west, as if it wants to lie down.

  The coyotes come down the hill cautiously, the lead one, patchy and yellow-brown, whining a little. The dead smell is stronger every day, cutting through the other, the reek of oil. The coyotes come to within a few yards of the big gap that has rotted under the porch, and sit again, heads low, the tips of their tails wiggling like fishing lures.

  There are toadstools growing in the dark of the crawlspace beneath the old house, and critters, the rodents growing curious about the smell from what is wrapped in the oil-splotched plastic tarp. A tiny bar of light reaches it once a day through holes in the roof, second floor, and ground floor, all lining up for a few minutes every afternoon, the tarp shining blue where it isn’t stained, and then the Earth keeps rolling and it returns to darkness.

  DICKYBOY IS REHEATING THE pizza in the galley oven when he hears the car door slam. He’d had a vision of Timmy Coates who delivers for the Hut bringing it all the w
ay out to the yacht, climbing up the roofing ladder with the box balanced in one hand. He’d be a legend for at least a week, the balls of it, and then probably in jail. As it was, having Timmy meet him at the casino with the hot pie after work will be good for a day or two of gossip at school. He’s been mostly using the oven to thaw and heat frozen dinners, as cooking on the stovetop presents a venting problem sooner or later with the boat cover laying over everything. He finds his flashlight and steps out on the deck, bending under the rain-puddled tarp, sagging with the weight between frame supports, moving to the side of the boat facing land rather than water. He wiggles into his observation post, taking up the binoculars he stole from the Sportsman’s Warehouse and scanning around. He’s studied the yacht from the ground enough to know that you’d have to be accidentally looking directly at the spot where he’s loosened the boat cover to notice the slight bump the binoculars make, and has watched plenty of people drive up to check out the Savage Princess without them knowing it.

  It’s Brent Skiles, standing next to his red Corvette, looking pissed about something. From this height you can see he’s really starting to lose his hair on top.

  With Dylan off the road, Wayne Lee missing, and the Bazookas bouncer gone with the wind, an alteration of income flow was inevitable. They’re hiring pretty much anybody in the enrollment who can breathe over at Bearpaw, and as long as he can call himself Spa Attendant instead of Towel Boy he’s resigned to work for only three bucks an hour over minimum.

  It’s only a minute or so when Fawn’s stepfather pulls up in his Denali and gets out, standing to talk to Skiles over the hood of the Vette.

  “Chief. How’s it going?”

  Mr. Killdeer does not look pleased.

  “You’re using my name.”

  “Negative on that. There’s people who might assume that we’re still– “

  “ArrowFleet is dissolved.”

  “Yeah, I saw the paperwork you sent over, the notice in that excuse for a newspaper you got here. If we weren’t so busy I’d have the boys change the logo on the trucks.”

  “I want you off the reservation.”

  “No can do, Chief. You know how it works– somebody signs an oil lease, the driller gets access, hires service companies at their discretion. We got contracts to fulfill.”

  “You’re still hooking in investors.”

  “The free market. It’s what makes capitalism great.”

  And Fawn is letting this guy do her.

  The council chairman just stares at Skiles for a long moment.

  “Wayne Lee Hickey. Your boy.”

  “Hey, dude worked for me for a while, then he didn’t. Happens a hundred times a day up here.”

  “I’ve got his relatives stumbling around out in the fields, plastering the reservation with his photo.”

  “People watch too much television. They imagine things.”

  “He’s missing.”

  The binoculars make the two men look like they’re right on top of each other, like one could reach out and strangle the other, even with the car between them. Puffs of frozen breath come out of their mouths as they speak.

  “Wayne Lee was missing when he was here, missing a shitload load of brain cells. The dude lacked focus. Look, he probably just got bored, or got some local chick pregnant, and he bugged out.”

  “I heard you had a screaming fight with him.”

  “More than one, but nobody threw a punch. He could piss people off.”

  “Was he dealing drugs for you?”

  It’s Brent Skiles’s turn to stare at Chairman Killdeer.

  “You should keep in mind,” he says evenly, “that loose talk is kind of like an oil spill. Sticks to whoever and whatever is close to it.”

  “I don’t make people disappear.”

  “You see,” says Skiles, “it’s a matter of loyalty. What Wayne Lee and people like him don’t understand is that once you’re in, you’re in, balls and all. Or else you got to face the consequences.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  It is all Dickyboy can do to keep from grabbing the flare gun he found in the cabin and taking a shot at the fucker. Not that Chairman Killdeer is like a daddy to him, or like he was anything but Fawn’s practice partner for making out in the eight grade, but you fuck with the Nations–

  “Relatives are out looking for him, huh? That’s unfortunate. So much space out here to get lost in.”

  Skiles slides into his Vette then, and drives away.

  Harleigh Killdeer stands thinking for a minute, then seems to look straight up at Dickyboy. Dickyboy holds the binoculars steady, doesn’t budge. The council chairman walks to the yacht, reaches up to lay a hand on the hull.

  “Soon,” he says, softly, then gets in his car and leaves.

  Dickyboy can smell the pizza now, crisping in the hold below.

  EVERY ONCE IN A while they need an attitude correction. Remind them how things stand. Bunny has been on the ride long enough, you’d think she’d know the rules by now. The idea of waltzing back from a shopping binge in Jackson Hole, barely laying her credit card trophies on the floor before she’s on his case, screaming at him. Screaming. Brent flexes his hand on the steering wheel, knuckles starting to swell. He should have brought the arnica along, but she’d already made him late to leave.

  He’ll zip across the top of the rez, get his head together, then turn north through Minot and across the border. And please give me no shit about getting into your second-string country, as if I want to go to fucking Winnipeg. The Russian insisted, maybe got some border issues of his own that keep him out of the States, and a face-to-face means he’s close to taking the plunge. Big chunk of change, looking for somewhere legitimate to park it.

  He did remember the copy of his birth certificate, folded in the glove compartment, in case they actually patrol that crossing. It will be his second foreign country, if you count Tijuana as part of Mexico and not just Duty Free for sleazebags.

  Brent eases off, coasting down under eighty, sees that he’ll need gas. Chuck’s, where he ambushed the Chairman that first time, is up ahead.

  He made her try to wiggle all her teeth, make sure nothing was loosened, and got her one of the ice packs he uses for his knees, wrapped in a towel. And she apologized, even if she didn’t exactly have her heart in it. Good to have a business trip though– go to your separate corners, let her start to miss you, wonder if you’ll ever come back–

  He pulls into the pumps. Premium, he always puts Premium in the Vette, is down to three-forty a gallon, which even here on the rez seems low. A guy with a limp steps out.

  “Fill her up?”

  “Premium.”

  The man flips open the compartment, twists the gas cap off. “Nothing but the best for this baby, huh?”

  “How’s Chuck doing?”

  “I would imagine he’s doing just fine. Sitting on a beach somewhere in Florida. Retired.”

  “He sold this place?”

  “To me.”

  “You’ll make out like a bandit.”

  “That’s what I thought,” says the man, watching the numbers on the pump roll. It’s the old-fashioned kind, no digital readouts. “Volume is way off from when I checked it out last year.”

  Brent has set up a dummy corporation, bought Chuck’s main competitor on the south side of the rez. The ArrowFleet trucks all fuel up there, you dicker with the numbers a little and it’s good on both sides of the equation. Only an idiot can’t make a killing during an oil boom.

  “Want me to get that windshield?”

  “Thanks, but I got to roll,” says Brent, handing the man cash. He’s been paying cash whenever possible these days, leaving as few tracks as possible. Like spraying yourself with scent elimination before you go hunting.

  “Good luck, here,” he says to the man as he fires the Vette up. “Bound to pick up again, any day now.”

  The Vette is running smooth. Decent mechanic, way over in Fargo, has a nice touch with engines. Since
he bought it from the lease company it’s behaved pretty well, but high-performance machines need even more attention than moody women. Can’t solve a carburetor imbalance with a love tap.

  Shadows, which means mostly telephone pole shadows out here, are getting long. He’ll miss dinner, which is fine, feeling a little thick lately, get up to the hotel there and take a shower, go over his plan of attack. Get up early, do an hour in their gym, clean up, and meet the Russian for breakfast. This is the game-changer. This is Showtime.

  He’s thinking about the case he’ll present to the Russian when he passes the patrol car, different markings than the Yellow Earth units he sees all the time. Going what– ninety at least. Shit.

  He could take the chance that the cop, whatever they’re called out here, didn’t get his plate number, but the Vette stands out like red meat on white carpet and with the chief on the warpath– better to take it and roll with the punch. He slows to sixty-five. If he can’t catch up to that he’s not trying.

  Brent pulls over the minute he sees the flasher in his rearview mirror, steps out of the car and waits, pulling his license out. Make it quick and simple.

  The patrol car stops a car length behind and the prick at the wheel leaves him standing there for at least five minutes. Psychological warfare, like he’s calling your plate number in to higher authorities. When he gets out it’s an Indian about the Chief’s age, in good shape, wears his hair cut short.

  “I know, I know,” says Brent, holding his license out. “I’m sorry. When there’s nobody on the road you start to space out.”

  “Nobody but a couple hundred trucks,” says the rez cop, who from the plastic shield on his uniform is their chief of police. Brent has heard his name, maybe even had Harleigh point him out–

  “You know I’ve driven across here a bunch of times with your Chairman, and he always goes–”

  “I know who you are,” says the cop. “And Harleigh holds it to five over the limit.”