“Naw. Used to be worse back when whiskey was involved.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” Thomas Star said, looking at Dr. Holly. “You got any?”
“Back at camp.”
“Good thing I don’t drink no more.”
Dr. Holly turned, seeing the stricken looks on both Sam’s and Amber’s faces. “Oh, relax! You modern ‘enlightened’ socially liberated crusaders in pursuit of racial justice and colonial reparations haven’t a clue.”
Frank laughed, a sly grin on his lips. The outfitter scuffed the grass with his pack boots, muttering, “Same old shit.”
“Willy,” Star told his grandson, “give Evan your horse. Him and me’s gonna ride back to camp. You sort of scout the trail for these greenhorns so they don’t get scalped or eaten by a bear or anything, okay?”
“Who you calling a greenhorn?” Frank asked as he laid a theatrical hand on his pistol.
Willy pushed his hat back on his head, grinned, and said, “Sure. You old guys ride. Beat’s having to pack your bony asses out of here.”
He untied his horse’s reins, handing them to Dr. Holly, and adding, “His name is Flapjack. I don’t think he’ll try you, but if he does that little crow hop, keep his head up and remind him who’s in charge.”
“This the colt you were training a couple of years back?” Dr. Holly asked as he stepped into the stirrup and swung into the saddle. The big brown horse sidestepped and circled around as Dr. Holly called, “Woah, now. Easy, Flapjack.”
“Yeah, Evan,” Willy answered. “That was like maybe ten years ago, huh.”
It might have taken Thomas Star two attempts to get his old body up and onto the horse, but once he was there, it was readily apparent where he’d come by those bowed legs. The man rode like a centaur as he led the way up the slope toward the trees.
“Don’t pay them two any mind,” Willy said. “Grampa and Evan go way back. Maybe even to the ice age.” He chuckled. “Grampa was the first Indian Evan ever met. That was back when Evan was a hippie in search of enlightenment.”
“A hippie?” Frank asked as they started the hike back to camp.
“Yeah. He was doing one of them ‘drive across the country in a VW bus’ tours college kids did back in the seventies when he broke down in Dubois. Had to make money to fix his car, so he hired on as a logger back before they closed down the L & P sawmill. Grampa was working for them that summer, too. They kind of took a shine to each other. Talked about how the Sheep Eaters survived in the mountains. Got crazy together. Fought like wolverines when they were drunk and stood side-by-side when they were sober.”
Amber walked thoughtfully for a couple of steps before she said, “I don’t think of Evan Holly as a fighter and hellion.”
“I came along kind of at the end of that time. But I remember one time when Mom swore Grampa was trying to either kill himself or land in prison for the rest of his life. That was just before Evan came back from graduate school with his PhD. They went up into the Wind Rivers for the summer to look for archaeology. That’s when Grampa got traditional. Started hanging out with the elders, learning the stories. Did his first Sun Dance.”
They stopped for a breather at the bottom of the black timber patch. Looking out over the canyons, Sam could imagine the lure. Something about those mountains, or maybe it was the lingering power of the cave, of the way the images had touched his soul, but he could understand Thomas Star’s conversion.
As if it were a sign, a huge golden eagle swung into view, sailed across the sky no more than thirty feet over their heads, and drifted out over the canyon.
As they climbed over a deadfall and into the trees, Sam dared to pipe up, saying, “Your grandfather doesn’t sound or act like a logger. Down in Water Ghost Woman’s chamber, he was talking about theoretical physics.”
“Yeah.” Willy paused, studying the timber for the best path through the maze before picking a new trail. “He’s got a B.A. in physics from Georgetown. Lived in D.C. for ten years as a Native American ‘consultant’. Did some lobbying. I don’t know which he’s had more of, jobs or wives.”
“How about you?” Amber asked. “You going to follow in your grandfather’s footsteps?”
“I don’t have the math for physics, and for the moment, the job thing is kind of illusive. I’m still working on finding the first wife.”
“I meant becoming a puhagan.”
“Oh, that? Thank God you didn’t mean the whiskey and the fighting.”
Amber chuckled as she panted for breath. The climb was steeper than it looked, and she and Sam were still working with sea-level lungs. Neither Frank nor Willy seemed to have any trouble at all.
Willy led the way around a tangle of deadfall. The pungent smell of elk hung thick in the air. “For now, I’m open-minded about religion. In Iraq I got to see Sunnis and Shia, Christians, Yazidis, and just about every form of extremism in the name of God you can imagine. Met some Coptics when I was detailed to Egypt. Even had a special tour of the Vatican. After the things I’ve seen? I think religion is more about people than God.”
“You’ve been in the cave, though, right?”
He nodded. “Kind of awesome, huh?”
“Did you feel it?” Sam just had to ask, still bothered by his reaction to the nynymbi and Water Ghost Woman.
“Feel what?” Willy shot a look over his shoulder to judge Sam’s reaction.
“I mean, you’re Shoshoni, right. You didn’t feel the puha?”
“What are you talking about, Sam?” Amber asked with feigned indifference. “I mean, I felt a kind of reverence, like you’d feel in a holy place. And it was fantastic to see. Especially the painted petroglyph. The site is unique and of immense academic value. Not to mention an incredibly important cultural treasure.”
From the precisely structured tone in her voice, Sam could tell she was lying. That, somehow, to admit to having been touched by the place’s power made her vulnerable. Put some sort of crack in that armor of invincibility she liked to paste around herself.
Time to shut up, Sam.
What was he going to do, admit that he’d been sexually aroused by a carving in the rock?
Willy was giving both of them the critical eye. “Uh, tell me you guys aren’t going to be like all the rest.”
“All what rest?” Sam demanded, feeling silly and defensive.
“I mean like all the crazy-sad whites who show up on the reservation looking for truth, spiritual enlightenment, and the Indian way. The wannabes. Like we’ve got some corner on the ultimate truth market. Go to Indian Country. Smoke dope, go through a sweat lodge ceremony, beat on a drum. Find a medicine man so you can sit at his feet, and he’ll tell you how to do a vision quest. And when you do all that, you’ll finally have a mystical, magical, cure for all the reasons your life is so fucked up.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Amber said bitterly. “But no. Not interested in being something I’m not.”
“I’m just here to find a dissertation topic,” Sam admitted. “What happened in that cave, I mean, it was just a trick of the light.” He paused for a beat. “And don’t pay any attention when your grandfather says I’ve got my own nynymbi. The way I figure it, he was just teasing. Like he could get a rise out of the gullible Easterner white guy.”
Willy stopped short and fixed Sam with his hard eyes. “He said you had a nynymbi?”
“Well...yeah.”
Willy’s eyes were pinning him like a bug on a board. “Grampa doesn’t joke about puha or spirits. Especially not Nynymbi. I don’t know the whole story, but don’t fuck with him when he says you’ve got a spirit helper.”
That left Sam even more confused. Adding to his fluster, Frank was watching him from under his lowered hat brim, those odd brown-ringed hazel eyes mindful of a gunfighter’s before the OK Corral.
Amber was panting. “He also said it’s the end of the world.”
Willy picked a trail that led them out of the tangle at the top of the black timber. “The end
of the world, huh?” He shook his head. “After some of the things I saw in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, I can believe it. If I was God, I’d cleanse the entire planet.”
“Can’t say I disagree,” Frank muttered.
They stopped for another breather. Sam could see the whitebark pine grove up ahead and knew they only needed to skirt around the bottom of the grove to find camp.
After the claustrophobic and dark confines of the black timber, Sam looked up to appreciate the sky. And stopped short.
“Guys?”
They followed his gaze up.
“Holy shit,” Frank murmured.
The formations—appearing over the eastern horizon—seemed to roll across the sky. V’s of aircraft, seven or eight per V, and formation after formation. Must have been a couple hundred.
Frank reached inside his shirt pocket to pull out a compact set of binoculars. Tipping his head back he studied the patterns of high-flying planes.
“Air Force,” he said. “A couple of echelons of fighters. F-18s and F-22s if I’m any judge. A lot of big stuff following. A5s maybe? And some of those must be tankers for refueling. I was a Marine. Didn’t get into Air Force stuff.”
“That’s like an entire air wing,” Willy said softly. “Headed where?”
The sound was finally reaching them, a low roar that slowly built until it filled the world. They stood there, shocked, somber. Sam couldn’t speak. A leaden heaviness filled his chest.
Watching that air armada pass overhead was—and would remain—one of the most horrendous sights he had ever seen.
The feeling was so intense, so devastating, Sam was slightly in shock, because he would remember biting off hysterical laughter as tears streaked his face, thinking, You stupid fucking idiots! How could you have brought us to this?
Politics By Any Other Name
Can we really blame the political parties for the animosity that Americans held for each other? Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer, and all the rest?
Ultimately the people in their districts elected them. True, the parties were partly responsible. They had, after all, finagled the districts, redrew the Gerrymandered lines to ensure that like-minded people voted together. Compromise wasn’t necessary. People who didn’t fit the majority moved out, if they could. Self-sorting increased. Liberals and progressives moved to the coasts, conservatives fled California for Nevada and the intermountain West.
Obviously your values and politics were correct. Everyone around you believed the same way.
— Excerpt from Breeze Tappan’s Journal.
Chapter Sixteen
The evening meal was a somber affair. The field crew was seated around the fire, finishing supper as the entire western horizon glowed in an unearthly blaze-orange. The gaudy sunset streaked fire across the high cirrus and painted the Absaroka Range’s irregular jutting peaks and snow patches in pink, purple, and indigo. Something about the colors hinted not of a glorious Bierstadt rendering of the wilderness, but something more mindful of the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind.
Just enough breeze came down from the north to keep that ominous brown cloud to the south of their camp.
The evening was cool, crickets singing, nighthawks making that odd, tearing whoosh in the sky. A dancing column of swifts chased the dusk insects, and the first vesper bats appeared to flutter in jerky patterns across the wounded sky. Coyote calls could be heard, but from a considerable distance.
The fire popped and crackled, spitting sparks up toward the glowing heavens as Sam used his fork to spear the last of the green beans from his plate. Talk about a day of ups and downs. Shyla in the morning, the cave with all its spooky contradictions, and then that huge flight of bombers and transports.
When Sam mentioned the magnificent sunset, Frank pulled him aside and told him quietly, “That’s more than just cities. Those are huge forest fires burning. Maybe California, Oregon, and Washington. Odd for this time of year. We’d expect to see skies like this in late summer and early autumn. Not now. Not after such a wet spring across the West.”
Sam stared up at the Burning-of-Atlanta sky, awed by the irony that conflagration and devastation could contribute to such a spectacular display.
West. That’s where the bombers had been headed. And everyone had seen them—had been filled with dread at the thunder of their passage.
People had spent the evening trying to call home. Didn’t matter that the phones couldn’t detect a signal. They still tapped out the numbers. Listened, and worried about family, friends, and loved ones. Talk was if they should try to go back, or tough it out where they were.
Dylan sat close to Kirstin, hip-to-hip. They were holding hands now. At least on their front, things were progressing. Their postures looked as if they were seeking comfort in the reassurance of touch.
Jon thoughtfully stroked a couple of chords on his guitar, and said, “Maybe the bombers were just relocating. Maybe the California banks figured out the credit card mess, and the Air Force can use their credit cards to gas up their planes in San Francisco.”
No one laughed, so he strummed a discordant note.
Dr. Holly smoked his pipe where he sat on a drawn-up log. Now he removed the stem from between his teeth. “My guess? It’s part of the martial law decree.”
Willy grunted and took his grandfather’s paper plate when Thomas handed it to him. Along with Willy’s, both ended up in the fire. Thomas’ expression could have been carved from granite as firelight flickered in his dark eyes.
Court—who’d been silent for the most part—jabbed at the fire with a stick. “Someone took down the banks. Remember when that bank guy said it was like a Pearl Harbor? That the records had been wiped? If the country is as damaged as we think, the president can’t let this go without a response.”
Shyla—sitting two down from Sam—said, “If anyone was prepared for a cyberattack, the banks were. People try to hack them a million times a day.”
Court softly said, “If whoever did this used a quantum computer, they might have had the program corrupt the backups, too. All it takes in hacking is to be one step ahead of the defenses.”
“How so?” Danielle asked.
Court looked around the fire. “Bear with me. I’ve been thinking of this as game theory. Okay, here’s the scenario: For the last decade the United States has been withdrawing from the world stage, pulling back on our commitments to allies. At the same time, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have been advancing.
“While that’s happening, the United States is dividing internally. The big story in our news is about the country splitting, and if it will happen. Texas has voted to secede, and a lot of the Rocky Mountain states want to follow. California voted to leave, Oregon, and Washington are teetering on secession. The Republican party has torn itself down the middle; two presidents, in rapid succession, have almost been impeached and forced to resign; the Democrats are distrusted by seventy percent of the American people. Everyone hates and fears the federal bureaucracies.”
“Amen, brother,” Pam called from where she banged pans in the cook tent.
“We haven’t been this weak since the Civil War. But if Russia moves on the Baltic States and NATO, if China moves on Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines; if North Korea invades south across the DMZ; and if Iran rolls over the Middle East, the United States could finally be pushed far enough to react, and our response would have to be nuclear.”
Shanteel said, “The people wouldn’t stand for it.”
Amber sat hunched, posture defensive, eyes seeing something deep down in the fire’s core. “What better way to shore up a failing economy than to start a war? Why do you think the U.S. is any different than, say, Assad was in Syria?”
“Because we’re us,” Dylan almost pleaded.
Court got back to his subject. “If you are China or Russia, Why take the chance? And for all we know they might have intel that lays out exactly what our response would be if pushed beyond a ce
rtain point. We sent those two carrier groups into the South China Sea in response to China landing troops in Taiwan, right? What if the president and joint chiefs finally said, ‘Enough is enough?’”
Court looked around, taking them in one by one. “Who wants to take on the American military? There’s a better way for them to win: destroy the money. A cyberattack is always deniable. It’s sneaky, quick, confusing to the enemy, and most people don’t really understand it. No bombs, troops, or bodies. Just corrupt the bank records.”
Thomas Star asked, “How many of you get monthly bank statements in the mail anymore?”
“We do,” Pam called from the cook tent. “Bank’s been after us for years to put it all online. Dad refused, and well, we just followed his lead.”
“Hey,” Kirstin said, “Even my credit card is on my phone. All I have to do is pull up the app and press a button. Purchase made.”
“Okay”—Court agreed with a shrug—“so there’re a handful of people who get paper statements. Means Pam, at least, has a record of her debits and credits. But those statements were printed from the electronic record stored in a computer. And that’s gone. Wiped clean. Anything you had in your bank account, maybe the account number itself, is gone. Just like pushing delete on your keyboard.”
“My God,” Amber whispered, dropping her head into her hands.
Sam tried to think through the ramifications. No one in his neighborhood carried cash. Not only was it dangerous—and a sure way to get mugged—but it was just inconvenient. A lot of places didn’t even take cash anymore.
“A whole market economy,” Dr. Holly uttered softly. “From the most sophisticated credit and debit market ever to a cash and barter economy. Overnight. And hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth gone. Vanished. As if it had never existed.”
“But the check books, the bank statements,” Sam said. “They’re a way that the banks can begin to reconstruct the records, right?”
Amber had a peculiar look in her eyes, a sort of tortured disbelief. “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of accounts here.”
Dissolution: The Wyoming Chronicles: Book One Page 12