I knew Ben and Charley were friends, but it was unsettling to learn Ben was pumping the lawyer for information. But again, I didn’t see how I could freeze Ben out, given what he’d done for us.
“Nathan’s assisting in the investigation. I’m staying out of it, letting the feds bring the heat. Rick’s a scumbag, and he can rot in prison.”
“Assisting in the investigation? Does that mean he’ll wear the wire?”
Did he really not know about this, or was he testing my honesty? My gut told me to tell as few people as possible about Nathan’s status as a CI. But I couldn’t see how confirming this to Ben could hurt.
“Yeah, he’s going undercover. That’s all I know.”
“Glad to hear it. Long past time to get rid of the bottom feeders around here. Can I get one of those?” he asked, pointing to my cigs. I was surprised. I didn’t think Ben smoked, but I gave him one and he lit up.
“You know,” he said, taking a puff, “I was the one who exposed that dimwit who was pocketing the housing money. You remember that, about ten years ago?”
He didn’t wait for me to respond.
“Moron was taking housing vouchers from the government, depositing them in his own account. Idiots on the tribal council didn’t know, or maybe they were in on it. I was the only one with the smarts to notice something was wrong, so I went straight to the BIA, stopped the scam. Now we got hundreds of people in low-cost housing. Some of them are bums, sure, but not all. Point is, I did some good. That’s when I decided to run for tribal council.”
He took another drag.
“People around here think tribal politicians just want a paycheck and a per diem. But believe it or not, some of us are trying to do the right thing. Not always easy—we got to balance the BIA, OST, and the state blockheads. The paperwork, Jesus. But there’s a chance to make some changes if I get elected tribal president. I need your help—don’t let me down, all right?”
He crushed the cigarette with his shoe.
We returned to the dinner, where the conflict between Marie and her mother had apparently ended and the party had devolved into separate conversations. Marie and Brandi were talking while Ann conversed intensely with Lack.
I was ready to leave the party, but noticed that Shawna and Nathan were over in the corner, engaged in rapid-fire teen-speak. I saw him make some big gesture with his hands, and both of them erupted in laughter. He looked happy. He’d had so much of his childhood taken away, and there were so many problems to face in the next few weeks. Without anyone noticing, I slipped out to the backyard again and lit up a smoke.
He could have his time.
21
The following days passed quickly, and I felt a charge in the air, almost a vibration, as things began to happen. As he’d been instructed, Nathan began to spend more time with the group of kids that took drugs. He said they mainly smoked weed, but they’d sometimes dabble in harder stuff. His arrest had apparently gained him some cred, because he was immediately accepted back into the circle of chemical abusers. Once we had talking circles; now Native kids had circles of a different kind. He told me he’d been able to avoid using any substances and escape suspicion by drinking beers with the group instead of taking drugs.
I asked Nathan about the heroin dealers and whether he’d seen them again. He said they were still around but keeping their heads down. Apparently they’d wised up and stopped selling most of their dope on school grounds. I wondered if this would affect the sting, given that the cops had emphasized arresting them on school property. Once the dealers trusted you, Nathan said, they’d deliver to you if you called them. He’d heard that they’d usually meet buyers in the parking lot of the supermarket, where there were always plenty of cars.
Nathan said the banger called Loco was still around, and word was that you didn’t want to fuck with him. Stories were circulating that he’d use a baseball bat on your legs or carve a double X on your face with a knife if you crossed him. It was tough to know how much of this was truth and how much was teenage gossip. One thing that’d been confirmed: Loco had a scar on his face like a crooked lightning bolt, so he’d be easy to identify.
ONE AFTERNOON I came back to the house and found Marie sitting at our small table. I could tell something was wrong. She was twisting the beaded cuff on her wrist around and around.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Oh, nothing really. I got a letter from the University of South Dakota med school. They rejected me.”
“Damn. That really sucks. They say why?”
She sighed. “No, just a standard form letter. ‘We received many strong application packages,’ blah, blah, blah. I’d heard they might be biased against people who graduated from tribal colleges like Sinte. You know, the teachers supposedly aren’t as good, the standards are lower, whatever. My classmates told me the rumors, but I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe I should have gone to Dartmouth like my parents wanted.” She got up and threw the letter in the trash. “I don’t know, maybe they didn’t reject me because I went to Sinte. Maybe they rejected me because I’m not smart enough.”
I went over and put my hand on her shoulder. “Bullshit on that. You are the smartest person around here. You got accepted to that med school in New Mexico, with a scholarship, too. I don’t know why they didn’t take you, but it wasn’t because of that. The hell with them.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “Not sure why I feel so bad. It’s not like being a doctor is my lifelong dream. It’s just that there’s so much misery sometimes. I want to help, that’s all.” She sniffed. “Well, like my grandma used to tell me, ceye sni yo, stop your crying.”
“So what does this mean?” I asked. “Are you going to accept at the med school in Albuquerque?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Don’t know yet. I’ve been trying not to think about it, because going to USD would have solved so many problems. Now I’ve got to sit down and figure it out.” She poured herself a glass of wine. “How about if we put this stuff on hold?”
“Sounds good.”
“Oh yeah, Velma called. She offered to take me out to the Depot later to cheer me up. Drink a few beers, bitch about stuff.” She scratched my back with her nail. Her touch was like the tail of a comet. “When’s Nathan getting home?”
“Not for a few hours.”
“Excellent,” she said, taking my arm and leading me away.
LATER THAT EVENING, Velma came by to pick up Marie. I hadn’t seen her for a few years, and if anything, her look had gotten even more extreme. Electric-blue hair, various piercings, knuckle tattoos. She was wearing a cutoff jean jacket with numerous patches sewn on: WARPONY, DEFEND THE SACRED, ARM THE HOMELESS. Marie had told me that she played bass in a local band, the Rez Dawgs, when she wasn’t working at the dollar store.
“Hey V, long time no see!” She enveloped me in a bear hug. “You look good, dude! Why don’t you join us tonight? Raise some hell, yeah?”
“Thanks,” I said, “you two go out and have fun. Nathan and I’ll watch a movie.”
“All right, bro. Your loss.”
Marie gave me a hug, and they took off for the bar. I settled in with an old TV show, something about parallel universes and rogue scientists. The story didn’t make sense to me, so I laid back and listened to the characters speak while I stared at the ceiling, the voices on the television mixing with the sound of Nathan’s music coming from his room.
I JUMPED UP at the sound of my phone buzzing. The screen showed it was 12:30 a.m.
“Hey, what are you doing? You’re not asleep, are you? Sorry! You there?”
It was Marie. I could hear music in the background, so they were likely still at the Depot. “What’s going on? You guys okay?”
“We’re fine! You won’t believe it, but we won at pool. Velma and me. We beat these guys, they thought they were so good. But they scratched on the eight ball. Too bad, right?”
Not good, for sure. I knew what it was like when the bar closed
. That’s when all the shit went down. And she sounded pretty loaded.
“Where’s Velma? You coming home?”
“She’s in the bathroom. Just want to tell you I miss you, that all right?”
“Hey, I miss—”
“And also, can you come pick us up? I’ve had a few drinks, not feeling so good; don’t want to drive when I’m—”
“Stay right there. I’m leaving now.”
I GOT TO THE DEPOT as quickly as I could. Marie and Velma were sitting outside, smoking cigarettes. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Marie light up.
“Can I get one of those?” I said.
“Virgil!” Marie jumped up, stumbling a little, and gave me a hug, holding her smoke out in the air. Then she gave me a deep kiss. I tasted beer and tobacco, which made me want some of both.
“Thanks for coming. You’re a great guy—”
“Don’t I get a hug? What the fuck!” Velma put her hands up like a boxer.
“Hey Velma,” I said, and she came over and squeezed my shoulders.
“You guys,” Velma said, “look what I snagged when no one was watching.” She opened her purse with a little flourish and revealed a bottle of Jägermeister.
Just looking at it gave me a headache. “I think you all had enough. Hop in before we get in trouble.”
They piled in the back seat, and I drove off before anyone noticed Velma’s larceny. They were laughing and talking, and I saw Velma furtively open the Jägermeister, take a drink, and hand it to Marie.
“You know I can see you, right? Just keep it down if there’s a cop.”
“Cop!” Velma yelled. “Shit, I fucked half of them limp-dick assholes! Bring ’em on!”
This provoked a round of riotous laughter, and I resigned myself to a rowdy drive. I dropped Velma off at her little shack, along with the remains of the Jägermeister. Marie gave her a kiss on the cheek and then joined me in the front. She fumbled with her seat belt, and I could see she was really smashed now.
“I wanna tell you something,” she said, her voice jagged and potholed.
“Yeah?”
“You changed, you know? In a good way, I mean. I was tellin’ Velma that tonight. I don’t know if it’s Nathan’s stuff or what, but you’re different. Now.”
Changed? I didn’t think I had, but maybe you can’t see your own transformations, and that might be a good thing. I wanted to ask her more, but I stopped, afraid to hear it. It was too late in the night for any drunken revelations. Best just to get her home.
“You see anyone at the bar?” I asked.
“Yeah! Your friend Tommy. He was there. I bought him a few, then he played pool with Velma. They were, uh, kind of hitting it off.”
Tommy and Velma? Well, stranger things had happened at the Depot.
“Then Lack showed up, with that woman. Brandi. Talked with her for a little bit, asked her about her kid. What was that girl’s name? Can’t remember.”
“I think it was—”
“What do you think about a kid? Child, I mean. You know, having a baby? Maybe it’s time. How the fuck are all these women having kids? I mean, what’s wrong with me?”
This was unexpected. We’d never talked about kids before, and I wasn’t sure it was the right time to discuss the subject, with Marie being four sheets to the wind. But she deserved something from me, some response.
“Is this something you thought about?” I asked. “Something you want?”
No answer.
“Marie?”
I looked over and saw that she was sound asleep. I kept driving, the road unfurling before me like a dark tunnel, leading somewhere I couldn’t imagine.
22
What I’d been waiting for—dreading—finally happened. Nathan came home from school and told me he’d talked to the heroin dealers. They’d agreed to sell him some black tar.
“What’d they say?” I asked.
“Well, I recognized one of the guys from before. He was like, come hang out with us at the house. I guess they got some place outside of town. So I was like, you got any eagle? He said, sure do.”
“Eagle?”
“Kids are calling it black eagle or just eagle.”
“Okay. You set up a time?”
“Sort of. He said I could go out there Friday, after school.”
Friday. Just a few days away.
I CALLED THE LAWYER and told him the situation. Charley said he’d contact the feds immediately and that I should sit tight until I heard from them. Sitting was out of the question, so I went to the casino restaurant. It was early, before the dinner rush, so there weren’t any customers yet. I spotted Tommy by the dish machine and signaled to him. He took off his apron and came over to my table.
“Homeboy! What you up to?”
“Nothing. You on dishes tonight?”
“Little prep work, little dishwashing. You want some pejuta sapa?”
Black medicine, wakalyapi. He came back with two steaming cups of coffee.
“So listen to this,” he said, “I was chillin’ with some dudes the other night, Waylon and Chepa; you know Chepa White Plume? He’s a smart dude, reads all the books, told me about some new history textbook, first one ever written by an Indian—I know, right?—and he’s tellin’ me about something they had in the old days. Check this out, you hearing me?”
I nodded.
“The US had this deal for white settlers, called, ah, depredation claims. Turns out, if you were one of them settlers moving to Indian Country and you got attacked—got your horse stolen, cabin burned down, whatever—you could file some paper with the government and get paid back. In full.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, I been thinkin’. What about an Indian depredation claim? Why don’t we submit some claim sheet asking for what’s been taken from us? Our land, our kids; shit, what about the buffalo? Waylon told me the wasicus killed fifty million buffalo! Buffalo we needed to survive! Tatanka, you know what I’m saying?” He made little buffalo horns with his fingers and put them on his head, simulating a bison.
“Tommy, the government isn’t gonna give any money to Indians, not ever. Best we can do is hold on to what we got.”
But as I thought about it, I liked the idea more and more. Depredation claims. If something was stolen from you, all you had to do was file a claim and your losses would be restored. How about a depredation claim of the heart? Maybe I could file some form to get back the years I’d grieved for my mother, father, and sister. Or maybe I could submit a claim to have our dignity returned to us, sealed in an official envelope, the sins of the past magically wiped out, gone like the buffalo.
THE NEXT DAY I heard from Dennis, who was handling the details for the trust buy. He told me Nathan wouldn’t wear a wire for this transaction; this was a small purchase so Nathan could gain some cred with the dealers. Nathan would buy the black tar—just one hit—and bring it back to the cops, who’d verify it was heroin. Dennis said this small amount wasn’t enough to build a full-scale case against them; they needed either a larger purchase of dope or a sale on school grounds. That would come soon after the first buy. I’d asked if I’d be able to watch the purchase from a distance, but he said no. There’d be no cops at the scene, to preserve Nathan’s credibility, but he’d have the burner phone with Dennis’s number on it. If he felt anything was going wrong, he was to call the number and say the emergency code. If the cops heard that message, they’d immediately go after Nathan. Safe words.
The plan was that Nathan would buy the drugs right after school, then bring the stuff back and make a statement on the record. Dennis would come to my house so that Nathan didn’t have to drive to the police department after the buy. That made sense, because there was no point in risking a sighting of Nathan with the police. Word traveled fast around here. The moccasin internet.
On Friday afternoon, there was a knock at the door, and Dennis walked in, dressed in street clothes. Jeans and a T-shirt embossed with an image of Mount Rushmore o
n the front. If he was trying to blend in on the rez, he was doing a pretty piss-poor job.
It was strange to have him in my little shack. Marie brewed some coffee and set out some sunflower and dried berry cookies she’d made. The weeks she’d spent at the restaurant with Chef Lack learning how to cook indigenous foods had paid off. She was constantly experimenting with new dishes, and the pantry was stocked with varieties of wild rice, flours, and nuts. It had taken me a while to appreciate some of the stranger dishes she cooked, but I liked most everything.
“Any idea how long he’ll be there?” I asked Dennis.
“No. I told him to act natural. Maybe he’ll stick around a while, listen to music, play a video game. But don’t worry, he knows to call if things get weird.”
“How many people are there at the place?”
“From what we can tell, about six or seven. We’ve been surveilling them and doing trash analysis for the last month. Your guy Rick Crow comes and goes, two locals from the reservation, and four gangbangers from Denver. We’ve positively identified one of them, the one called Loco.”
“Yeah, Nathan mentioned him. Thinks he met him before. Said he’s got a pretty bad rep.”
“I’ll say,” said Dennis. “We’re not sure what he’s doing here. He’s the tax collector for the Aztec Kingz back in Denver.”
“Tax collector?”
“The guy who collects money people owe to the gang. The enforcer. Customers, people in the gang’s territory, affiliated gangs, gang members themselves. They have to pay what’s called a ‘gang tax.’ That’s the cash they owe for the right to call themselves an Aztec King.”
“What happens if they don’t pay?” asked Marie.
“If you’re lucky, he just roughs you up. If you’re not, you get shot or tortured. There’re a lot of stories about necklacing and all that, but that’s not really done here.”
“What’s ‘necklacing’?” asked Marie. “It sounds bad.”
Winter Counts Page 18