“Oh Little Bird, Little Bird.” He smiled and crossed himself. “The police are the last people we want here tomorrow.”
“I understand you had that kind of trouble back in Nashville.”
“You never leave it behind. It’s a war, and it’s on-going.”
We all went back to town and Gentle bought ice cream cones, which he handed around, for a job well done.
I went to the motel to rest. Having my lover of only a few days before turn up as an impersonal director was unsettling. The two Gentles kept overlapping. I kept seeing the sweetness and the laughter, while keeping my mind stony against him.
And what was all this about trouble, security, lookouts? Had he thrown me to the wolves? Growing up in Alberta, I knew about wolves. You hear them howl in the night; in the day you see their tracks and their scat. Sometimes you come across a carcass they’ve left. Wolves aren’t kind. They rip their prey apart. Would the audience do that to me? To my songs? To the message we sent?
I tried to analyze the various possibilities separately. The message of the benefit quite simply asked that a wrong be righted, that what had been taken be given back. I couldn’t see the harm in that. Yet this was the source of the threats against Jim, the potential violence.
The rest of what I felt was pure nerves. But putting a name to it didn’t seem to help. It didn’t change the fact that I’d be experimenting before thousands of people with a strange, atavistic kind of music. I remembered how it had struck the band when they first heard it. It was a rocky start. The intonation, the beat of the Cree threw them. Timing was off, entrances missed…a debacle. I remember Gentle holding up his hand, calling for quiet. Then he asked if I would start the Wind Song a capella.
Somehow I got it together—a few bars and the drum fell into sync, the slap bass followed, the guitar was with me. We were making music. The question was, would this audience here in South Dakota, lying, sitting, sprawled on blankets in a high valley, surrounded by the Black Hills, which at the noon concert would be starkly white…would they get it?
I laughed ruefully; in the old days I would have gone on stage withut turning a hair and sung my songs. Now I worry about everything. I think it’s finally being grown up.
Gentle joined us for dinner at a sort of refrito-tortilla cafe, where there was plenty of beer and red wine. The performers crowded in with the electrical crew and some of our local sponsors. The upcoming performance was heady for everyone, but it meant different things to each of us.
The day was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. The word was, a large audience was assembling.
I did a couple of runs and then a trill in the bathroom to limber my instrument and psych myself up. I looked in the mirror and tied a wind-band across my forehead. Remembering Mac’s mantra, I repeated, “Start high and go higher.”
Kissing my reflection, I told myself, “You’re great, Kathy Little Bird, and you’re going to wow them.” I went out determined to give the performance of my life. After all, I was singing for Mum and her people…my people.
The crew, working since before dawn, had rigged a backstage area that was very nicely curtained off. The first set was up. I stood listening to the spirit of the music that would enfold me when the moment came and lead me onstage. Just before this happened, Gentle caught me in his arms. His kiss seared my mouth, fierce and loving at the same time. It brought back the turmoil, the love, the passion that had been between us.
But something besides music reached me, raised voices where the prop men and the electricians stood. Something was going on. Was it the trouble Jim had alerted me to? He went over to quell the disturbance.
Three police and a marshal were huddled with the stage manager. When Gentle approached, the marshal took out a sheaf of papers and waved them angrily under his nose.
Someone said they were going to stop the show. Was that how bully boys operated? I could see Jim was furious. He had spent one entire day at the town hall getting proper authorization, putting up bond money, and having the correct people sign off on it.
“Count the house,” Jim was saying in a harsh undertone. “Can’t you see the crowd we’ve got out there? There’ll be money—money to pay everyone…”
The marshal was unmoved. “I have a court order here. It has the force of an injunction.”
Apparently someone had gotten to the owner of the property and convinced him he was consorting with radicals. He was now claiming he’d been promised payment in advance.
Desperately, Jim agreed to this and started to take up a collection from the cast while our business manager began counting the receipts in front of witnesses so as to turn them over.
As the argument escalated, several worlds burst into each other’s orbit. I heard my cue and walked out on stage, letting that inner force that I could always call on sweep over me. I had to make my audience see Elk Woman smoking her pipe. My sound would ascend with the smoke and I would sing creation stark, after the bombardment and fireworks of the Big Bang.
I let out the first tentative note into a world still barren, waiting for the Creator to bring life. I sang first seeds and first flowering. I sang the animals in nests and burrows.
People came next, the notes rich and resonant but verging on discord. At the lightning-struck climax the audience reacted with a roar…pierced instantly by a response that was mechanical, abrupt, harsh. Repetitive, nonhuman.
Gunfire.
Someone was firing into the air.
Gentle had said, “Continue singing.” That’s what I tried to do.
Pandemonium.
People flung themselves toward the stage, tripped over wires. My mike was disconnected.
They were climbing over each other, screaming, clawing through the press and bulk of bodies. I stood trapped in chaos and horror.
You don’t think at such moments. One brutal scene after another is highlighted and brought before your retinas. Someone grabbed me. Thank God, Gentle. But a club of some kind, I think it was a rifle butt, smashed his face. He went down and they were all over him.
Who? Who was? Who were they?
A wave hit me, a living wave, jammed together, surging, screaming, cursing, yelling, striking out with heads, arms, shoulders, beach chairs that had been ripped apart for battering rams.
I fell over something, no—someone.
Looking up I saw boots, and clogs, and patent-leather dress shoes coming down on me. I turned my face to the floor and raised my hands to shield my head.
A blow. A jar through my whole body. Streaks of pain that ran the length of my nerves like the flick of a lash.
The vortex of cries and pain receded and became distant.
A final realization. I’m dying.
Chapter Fourteen
I WOKE up not dead at all, but feeling sick to my stomach and with a miserable headache. I refused to rest there in the hospital as the doctor suggested. I was badly shaken up but had apparently escaped serious injury. I was lucky; half a dozen people had been trampled and there were two fatalities. I inquired after Gentle, only to be told he’d been taken into custody. No one I spoke with knew on what charge.
I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I didn’t feel too bad; a bit light-headed, as though I walked a foot or so above my body. At the airport I picked up a paper. They came down hard on Gentle, who was described as a well-known radical and troublemaker. Some enterprising reporter found out that he had been hospitalized for “a drug habit.”
I didn’t fare much better. “Little Bird was the lead singer for this sorry event, which was to be held for the purpose of raising money to overturn recent BIA policies intended to integrate reservation Indians into the general population. Someone should tell Little Bird we don’t appreciate Canadians coming here, making a mint, and telling us how to run the U.S. of A. Where oh where is the sweet country girl we know from her many recordings?”
I crumpled the page. But it was only the beginning.
I was met by both Mac and Trimble. Anabel got me
to bed, and I slept the clock around. I was just out of the shower and had slipped into a bathrobe when I heard an altercation at the front door. I went in to see Trimble arguing with a young man. “What’s going on?”
The young man turned wet, doggie eyes on me. “Kathy Little Bird?”
No sooner had I said yes than a summons was thrust into my hands. I was to appear at an INS deportation hearing on Wednesday, June 13, 1979, at 2:00 P.M., Room 19 Federal Building, Judge Eleanor Cooke.
I sat down slowly.
Trimble looked back at me with a blank expression.
Not Mac, he had plenty to say. He was livid and I-told-you-sos poured out of his mouth. The wen at his temple turned purple. “How could you get hooked up a second time with that druggie? Well, they got the goods on him this time, found a cache of stuff in his apartment. They’ll throw the book at him for probation violation.”
“He was on parole?” I was aghast.
“He forgot to mention it?” Mac asked sarcastically. “I suppose it slipped his mind. According to the latest edition, he did time for inciting a riot back in the early seventies.”
“Oh my God.” Nightmare was sucking me under. “But how do I figure in this? I didn’t do anything illegal. I just wanted to sing my songs.”
“Remember all the phone calls? You held it together while Gentle was ODing—and you’re down on the program as organizer.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Jim did all the work. I only stepped in at the last moment when it looked as though the whole thing would collapse. I couldn’t let that happen—we’d put in so much work.”
Mac cut through all that, his practical mind in gear and working. “Now you’re not to talk to anyone until your lawyer gets here.”
“Mr. Harriman?”
“Not him, he’s an entertainment lawyer, only good at interpreting commas and semicolons in contracts. He wouldn’t be of help here. No, I’ve hired Wendel Morris. He’s the best in the business. Oh, I’ll need a five-thousand-dollar retainer for him. And while I was at it, I’ve rearranged your assets slightly. We may need a large sum of cash. In cases like this, it helps. But not to worry, you’ve a good hunk that only you can get at—just in case the market falls, or someone drops an H-bomb, or I take off with what I can lay my hands on.”
He laughed and I laughed with him. “You’re such an idiot, Mac.” But I felt better; I felt he would handle everything.
He assured me of this himself. “Leave it all to me, the newspapers, lawyers, your fans.”
“My fans? They will make an auto-da-fé of my albums, and toss my singles on for a better blaze.”
We waited for Wendel Morris most of the afternoon. He arrived suave and unapologetic, saying to Mac, “I’ll need a brief conference with my client.”
Mac grudgingly moved to the far side of the living room and poured himself a whiskey.
Wendel took my hand and patted it. “Now then, Kathy.” He sounded like a kindly uncle. I’d never set eyes on him before, but if he wanted to be my uncle, that was okay with me. He made a very good uncle. “Now then, my dear, they’ll put some questions to you. But it will be in my presence. If there’s something improper, something that I feel they’ve no right to ask, I’ll say so. As for the rest, answer straightforwardly and to the best of your ability. Keep your answers short, and do not, I repeat, do not volunteer anything.”
I went back to bed feeling I was on trial for murder.
It was a full week to the hearing. Everyone pretended it would be fine. They tried to keep the newspapers from me, but I slipped the desk man fifty bucks.
I was unprepared for the deluge of hate-filled articles. Pictures I had posed for and those I hadn’t, photos shot from car windows and from behind fences, all appeared in the tabloids. Not only the supermarket scandal sheets but mainstream magazines carried the story.
An ugly story about a Canadian singer who had clawed her way to the top in this country, became wealthy in this country, and then turned on it. Espousing far-out Indian causes, such as Red Power, she had attempted through an ill-fated concert to raise money to fight the United States government. The article ended with the same refrain: Does Little Bird think she knows better than homegrown U.S. citizens how this country should be run?
The newspapers fell through my fingers. My life had been turned into pulp fiction. And the efforts made to protect me were washed away in the tsunami that engulfed me.
Optimism and good spirits continued to surround me, but I could imagine the gloomy confabs behind my back. Were they looking for new jobs yet?
Because the worst was just beginning to trickle in…my fan mail. I had joked that they would turn on me, but I hadn’t really believed it. The pleasure they took from my fall from grace was unbelievable. They were howling for my blood.
Mac refused to acknowledge this. “Your fans are out there,” he comforted. “They’re different now, that’s all, a different bunch. They’ll be curious to see you now that you’re controversial.” He went on to propose the old idea of a European tour while this blew over.
“They don’t have newspapers in Europe?” I snapped.
“In Europe they’re sophisticated. They don’t give a damn about stuff like this.”
My head was aching. “All right. Maybe,” I said to get him off my back.
The thirteenth came, and I fortified myself with Valium. It was an ordeal, although not what I expected. The press was there en masse, along with a crowd waving signs. My troops, consisting of Mac, Morris, Trimble, and Freddy, closed around me and attempted to spearhead our way through.
They led me with what decorum they could muster to Room 19. It wasn’t grand enough to be a courtroom, just a plain room with chairs and a table, like a teacher’s at the head of the class. The judge, a woman of about sixty, conducted the proceedings under an American flag.
People were called up before her. A federal marshal came in and stood beside them and a court reporter took everything down, but they spoke too low for me to hear what was happening. As far as I could tell—nothing.
We waited around until lunchtime. Everyone ate in the cafeteria. A sort of cease-fire was in evidence; lawyers from opposing sides shared a table.
Back in Room 19, Wendel Morris smiled soothingly and murmured the mantra of the day: “Don’t worry, Kathy, everything will be all right.” He made a very good uncle.
More people came in and took seats. Everyone spoke in whispers. The judge entered and the clerk rapped for order. I decided Eleanor Cooke looked like a judge. She had youthful brown hair framing an old, lined face. She looked intelligent, but on the grim side.
We were sitting closer now and I could hear better. I intended to pay strict attention. But they spoke in paragraphs, long, dry, and boring. This, from what I could gather, concerned people who were convicted felons, people who had overstayed their green cards, and people here in the country illegally.
That was the extent of it. Hour after hour wore away. Finally, at about four o’clock, Wendel Morris was allowed to approach the judge. They talked at length. Afterward I was told they wouldn’t get to my case today, that the hearing was postponed to the twentieth.
Mac was pleased. He told Morris things had gone well, and explained to me, “We’ve got a continuance. Time to prepare our case and for things to die down.”
I got up, stretched, got into my coat, and turned to see the deputy at the rear of the room attempting to evict someone. That someone was…Abram.
“Abram!” I shrieked.
He tried to wave, but the bailiff caught his arm.
“Abram!” I ran up the aisle and flung myself at him and the bailiff and hugged them both. Part of this configuration squirmed loose, but Abram hugged back.
Abram stood there looking big and blond and solid and—and Mennonite. He had a beard. Sure enough, “Praise the Lord!” were the first words from his lips.
I patted his arm and kept patting it, to make sure this was my Abram who had come to get me out of this mess.
For the first time I had a flash of hope that I might weather the storm and not flounder and go under.
Mac and Morris, Freddy and Anabel all came up.
“This is my friend Abram Willems,” I said, and didn’t let go of his arm and didn’t stop patting it.
My coterie of semi-friends-semi-employees didn’t like someone from my past showing up. They were cool and unhelpful. This was wasted on Abram. He didn’t notice.
Between us time stood still. I was seventeen again and he was Abram as he had always been.
I didn’t want to talk about what the papers had done to me. I didn’t want to think about it.
I took Abram back with me to the hotel. Mac was being purposely difficult. He refused to be shucked off and stuck like glue, not leaving us alone for a second. I could see he was trying to figure Abram’s angle. For Mac everyone had an angle. I was impatient with that and said pointedly that Abram and I had a lot to catch up on.
When we were alone I couldn’t stop talking. I talked so I wouldn’t have to say anything.
“So what are you doing these days, Abram?”
“I work in a bookstore.”
“A bookstore. I like that. You and books always went together. Does it make money?”
“Well, we’ve added a line of stationery and greeting cards, and it’s doing better.”
“I bet you’ve read every book in the place.”
He grinned a shy acknowledgment.
“I knew it!”
I couldn’t keep it up. I suddenly felt the most vicious contempt for myself. “You think I’m the old Kathy, don’t you? Well, I’m not. I’m nothing like her. If you met me now for the first time you’d see that. You wouldn’t even want to know me. I don’t sing now when I’m happy or when I’m sad. I sing for money, lots of it. And the songs I sing are their songs, not mine. You wouldn’t like me at all, Abram, you wouldn’t.”
In reply he opened his arms wide and set me in them. I turned my face against him, and they closed around me.
“Oh, Abram.”
“Shhh,” he said, “shhh.” He held and rocked me. “Little Bird.” His words were murmured into my hair. “You should never have flown away.” After a moment he took me by the shoulders and set me at arm’s length, looking long and carefully into my face. “Don’t tell me that you’re not Kathy. You are Kathy. I see the old fire, and the soft lights in your eyes. They tell me more than you do who you are.”
Kathy Little Bird Page 18