Buried Dreams

by Brendan DuBois

  I stopped writing, looking at the anger in his eyes, hearing the anger in Gagnon's voice. At first I thought it was a damn silly thing, for I was of Irish ancestry, as he had so correctly noted. And I didn't lay awake nights or brood through the days, thinking about how the British had essentially starved my ancestors back in the 1800s, how their own land was stolen, and how millions of them were forced to Bee their country to settle elsewhere. But by the time I had gone through this, I knew it was a false analogy. If I wanted to, I could move back to my nation of origin and, save for a few counties in the north, could live in reasonable peace and prosperity. It wasn't like the land of my ancestors was still dominated, ruled, and lorded over by the British, and I couldn't imagine what it must be like to travel across this land, see the buildings, hear the foreign languages being spoken, and say to oneself, over and over again: This was once ours, this was once ours, this was once ours.

  "I take it the meeting ended around then," I said.

  "You got it. He got all huffed up, and now, I can't blame him, and he left, and he said that he was going to prove his Viking theory, with or without my help, or anybody else's help. And he left, and I sat here, and then I went out to lunch. End of story."

  I looked at my notebook, looked back up at him. "Anything else I should know?"

  "About Jon? Nope. First and last time I ever met him. Never knew him until that day he stopped by."

  "All right," I said. "I appreciate your time, talking to me."

  He smiled. "Not a problem. Now, it's time for a couple of questions from me."

  "Sure."

  "This guy a friend of yours?"

  "You could say that."

  He tapped his fingers on his desk. "Yeah, I could tell. You see, I've been interviewed by reporters a few times before, and usually they come in with their questions, and it's pretty rote, and once they've got what they need, they're looking for an excuse to get the hell out. But not you. You stuck with it."

  "Thanks, I guess."

  "A dead friend. I can see why you took the time. The cops getting close to nailing whoever killed him?"

  "If they are, they haven't told me."

  He got up and so did I, and we shook hands, and he said, "Okay. Next question."

  "A couple of weeks."

  "Excuse me?" he asked.

  I picked up my coat. "Give me time to finish this column, and then I'll be ready to come back for another interview." And I really meant it. The research and questions I was doing about Jon were all about one thing only: finding his killer and taking care of business. But I would need a real column to send south to Shoreline in a little while, and the story of a Native American activist from Porter would do just fine.

  That brought another smile from him. "Fair enough, then. A couple of weeks it is. Walk you to the door?"

  "No, I'm good," I said, which was not really a lie. I headed out into the storefront, where one could sense the eagerness from the teenage boys and girls working there, and I envied their youth and their energy, and their utmost confidence in themselves that they were making a difference. Outside, a cold and smelly breeze was coming in off the harbor, and as I went through my coat pockets, I couldn't find the keys to my rental car. I always carry a spare key to my Ford in my wallet, but since the Ford was in the process of being fixed up over in Durham, that wasn't going to be any help.

  I went back to the storefront, to see if I had dropped them on the Boor, when I found them, nestled in my pants pocket. Idiot, I thought. Next thing you'll be needing is a notebook to tell you how to get through the day.

  At the entrance, I looked in through the glass windows, saw William Bear Gagnon standing among the worshipful group of high school students, volunteering their time and energies to helping him out. And from where I was standing, it looked like Gagnon was repaying them by having a temper tantrum. I could barely make out the raised voice, but I could see his eyes bulging out, veins standing out on the side of his neck. In one clenched fist he had a bunch of envelopes' and it just seemed like somebody had misfiled something or misprinted something, for there were a lot of downcast faces in there, as Gagnon yelled and looked at each and everyone of them, and then ripped the envelopes in half.

  I turned and headed to my rental, no longer envious of those students.

  Chapter Eleven

  A half hour later I was back home, the trip being uneventful, save for the cheery wave I gave one of the cousins, guarding the driveway to my home, and a clumsy incident as I was trying to get into my house. I had my keys out and for some reason missed the doorknob and dropped them to the ground. I was just thankful it wasn't January or February; having to root around for keys in the snow was never any fun. Once inside the house I called Paula Quinn and lucked out when I found her in the office, and I said, "Can I dive into the favor jar and pull out a couple?"

  She laughed and said, "What do I get in return?"

  "A late lunch, place and price of your choosing," I said.

  "My, that's the best offer I've had all morning. Okay, go ahead." So I asked her and she said "mmm" a few times, and said,

  "Well, second favor will be more of a problem than the first, but I think it won't be a problem."

  "You're the best," I said.

  "Lewis, do me a favor and spread that around, will you?" And she laughed again.

  "Sure. So. Name the price and place."

  Which she did. Which caused me to laugh this time, and when I hung up the phone, I saw that I had a couple of hours to kill.

  The house was warm, the house was comfortable, and the house was full of distractions, from books to magazines to the television. I didn't want any distractions. I wanted something else. So I went back into the cool cellar, sat on the bottom step, and tried to think for a while, wondering if I was doing the right thing by asking Paula to check up on something. I had met with the three people that Jon had said he was going to talk to, right before his murder. None of them said they offered him something to go on, a lead that would end up with him having his hands on the artifacts, just a few days later. The professor knew William Bear Gagnon. Brian Mulligan knew Jon's brother Ray. And Gagnon had the most confrontational meeting with Jon.

  What, then?

  Who gains, was the question that kept me coming around, poking and prodding. Who would gain from Jon's death and the disappearance of the artifacts? His brother Ray, a suspect and on the run? A man with a criminal past?

  Maybe.

  But one of the three I had just talked to, well, if somebody was hiding something ...

  Who gains?

  I got up from the steps and decided it was time to get to work. But where next?

  And then I thought about my keys, and went upstairs. There, I picked up my spoon and bucket and colander, and got dressed again, and went outside. For a moment I thought about my faithful watchers, and what they might think about what I was going to do, and I decided I didn't care. Let the two cousins gossip. It didn't matter. I sat down on the stone steps and looked at the old doorframe to my house. I had just dropped my keys here, something I had done at least a half-dozen times over the years. Now imagine decades upon decades, stretching out to the mid-l800s, when this house was first built for the lifesaving service. Imagine all the men --- and perhaps a few women as well ----coming into the house. Dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands, walking in and out over the years, as the lifeboat crews changed, as the house was taken over for officers' quarters when the Samson Point coast artillery station was set up, and when the house was finally boarded up, a few decades ago.

  Imagine all those people, all those people, coming in and out of the doorway.

  And what they might have dropped in the meantime.

  I got up and knelt on the cold, hard ground, and started digging. And kept on thinking.

  Paula looked over at my hands and said, "All right, tell me again why you were playing in dirt this morning?"

  Even in the warm interior of her new Camry, my fingers would shake now an
d again from the cold. I had just barely made it here in time for lunch with Paula, and I hadn't done a very good job in cleaning up when I saw how late it had gotten. Between dropping off the rental and getting a ride back from the pleasant woman from the agency, the rest of the day had melted away. But the digging had gotten away from me, as the amount of dirt piled up to equal the frustration I had been feeling. Nothing. Not a thing, and I wondered how archaeologists could even stand their profession with so much daily disappointment.

  "I was looking for something," I said. "Okay. What?"

  "Artifacts," I said. "From when my house was first built, and thereafter."

  "Lewis, that sounds pretty ---"

  "Paula, isn't your lunch getting cold?"

  She laughed. "Fine. A nice way of changing the subject. Yeah, let's eat. I'm starving."

  We were parked in front of her dream house, which still looked lonely and unoccupied. Unraked leaves littered the front yard, and I kept the engine running and the heater going, while the car was filled with the smells of food. For some reason Paula had insisted on me driving, which was fine. We both had big bowls of lobster stew and packaged salads, and as I was opening up my salad, I saw that Paula had gone straight to the stew.

  "I thought the salad was supposed to be eaten first," I said.

  "Who says that?" she murmured, bringing up another spoonful of cream and lobster meat.

  "Well, the etiquette for ---"

  "Screw the etiquette," she said. "If I eat the salad first, I might not have enough appetite to eat the lobster stew. So there."

  I put my salad aside, decided she made sense, and started eating the stew as well. And as we ate, Paula brought me up to date with her housing quest. "Believe it or not," she said, "the Tyler Cooperative didn't actually toss me out of their office when I stopped by. They promised a fair and thorough review of my finances."

  "Any leads on land?"

  "A couple, out on the other side of the county. What I'm trying to do now is to work with a moving crew to get the house up and out of there, and my friend, there aren't that many in the area to work with. With the cost of the land and the moving... well, it's a pricey proposition."

  I gently nudged her with my elbow. "At least the house is paid for."

  "Mmm," she said, swallowing. "Yeah, thanks for taking that worry away. Now, if I can keep the town happy... "

  I looked over at her. "I thought having the town counsel on your side would be helpful."

  She grimaced. "Lewis, be real. This is Tyler. A wonderful place to live and work, but a sometimes a small place with small minds. The gossips here are already having the time of their lives with me dating the lawyer for the town. If there's any hint that Mark's doing any favors for me, especially when it comes to something like a house, they'll have him fired and out of here within a week. I don't want that and neither does Mark."

  "So what's the deal with the town?"

  She sighed. "I've got a week to come to the town with a plan. Or the tax lien gets paid and the wrecking crew comes in here."

  "Is a week doable?"

  She looked at me and wiggled her nose. "My dear boy, if I'm very lucky, I'll have this project wrapped up in three days. So yes. It's quite doable."

  I reached over and squeezed her hand. "Good for you."

  We finished our lunch and had room for the salads, and even room enough for dessert --- a slice of chocolate layer cake for her and a piece of key lime pie for me --- and we settled back in the seats of her Camry and she said, "Luck must be with you this morning, because I got lucky."

  "Define lucky."

  "Well, for you luck is that I have a buddy on the staff of the Porter Herald, Connie Slater. Luck is also the fact that she was in this morning, and more luck is that she knows a lot about your friend William Bear Gagnon."

  "He's not my friend," I said.

  "Hah," she said. "Well, if you do anything with this information, then he's really not going to be your friend."

  “What's the deal?"

  "The deal is," she said, wiping her delicate fingers with a fistful of paper napkins, "is that he has a couple of things going on. One is trying to nail a piece of land that belongs to the city of Porter, an island in the harbor. Peavey Island."

  "What's there now?"

  "A one-lane bridge connecting to the mainland, scrub grass, park benches, some playground equipment, and the usual weekend arrests for drunkenness, public lewdness and other assorted acts that come from tiny minds and big thirsts. It's belonged to the city for years, but your activist friend --- all right, acquaintance --- wants it."

  "Does he now?" I said. "Something to do with an old treaty Signed by the state and an Indian tribe, many years ago?"

  "Good guess," she said. "That's exactly what's going on, and the hilarious thing is, this character might actually have a case. There really was a treaty signed, way back when, that gave this tribe --- an offshoot of the Abenakis --- certain rights to this island, and this treaty was not signed when New Hampshire was a crown colony. It was signed when New Hampshire was a state."

  I wiped down my own fingers with napkins and adjusted the heat some. I was finally warming up. "Which makes a big difference?" I asked.

  "Of course it does. Somebody could make an argument that a treaty between an Indian tribe and the British government has no standing, hundreds of years later. Harder to make that argument when it took place when New Hampshire was a state, even a young one."

  "And William Bear Gagnon is arguing that it's time to enforce the treaty, and that he's a descendant of that original tribe."

  "Bingo. Trouble is, the federal government has certain rules over what constitutes a tribe, but Gagnon might be able to do it, if he can prove that a number of tribe members still live in the area, and that they could arguably be called a tribe. And if that happens, well, Connie tells me that there's a provision in the treaty that allows the tribe to buy the island back, any time in the future. Of course, Connie and about half the city government in Porter know exactly what's going on with Mister Gagnon's sudden interest in his ancestors and tribe."

  "Casino," I said.

  "Correct again," Paula said. "My, you are sharp today, especially for somebody who's been playing in the dirt. And the humor quotient keeps on getting better, because while some in the city are horrified at the thought of a casino going up in their neighborhood, with no real oversight since it's owned and operated by Native Americans, a whole other contingent are drooling at all the money that can be made over the increased tourists, increased bus traffic, so forth and so on."

  I looked over at the house, tried to think of the work that would go into excavating and lifting that structure up, and decided it was too much to think about. Instead I said, "What happens next?"

  Paula giggled as she started putting some of the trash away in the plastic bags that earlier had held our lunch. "I haven't told the real funny part yet."

  "I can hardly wait."

  "Oh, it's worth waiting for. You see, and this hasn't come out and God knows if it ever will, but it's doubtful that William Bear Gagnon is who he says he is."

  "A member of that Abenaki tribe?"

  "No, silly, an Indian. Native American, or whatever term is being used this year."

  The car was beginning to feel a bit stuffy. "You're kidding."

  "Tsk, tsk, not when it comes to hilarious stories like this do I kid. Look, my bud Connie is a bulldog when it comes to checking things out. You know the old journalism classroom joke?"

  "No, I can't say that I do."

  "If your mom tells you she loves you, check it out. Connie got suspicious when this character rolled in, claiming to be a Native American, of a little-known tribe. She's done some background research on him, finding out where he's from and such. Truth is, his name is Billy Gagnon, and he got his middle name, Bear, after spending some time up in Warren, Maine. Do you know what's in Warren, or do I have to spell it out, Lewis?"

  I knew very well what was up there
. "The Maine State Prison."

  "Yep. Did some time for aggravated assault, attempted rape. Charming fellow. And his ethnicity is French-Canadian. Oh, there may be a great-great-grand aunt or two that had Indian blood, but I believe Connie when she says that he's nothing more than a fraud."

  Now the car interior seemed too warm. "What's Connie going to do with this great information?"

  "Well, that's when the hilarious factor gets taken over by the pathetic factor, because the paper probably won't do a damn thing."

  "Why? Seems like a hell of a story."

  "Sure it does. But Connie tells me --- and this is all on deep background --- that the conglomerate that owns the Porter Herald would not look on too unkindly if Billy Gagnon gets his wish and a casino is built in Peavey Island. And she's also getting some pushback from her editors. You see, the Herald has always prided itself on sticking up for the underdog, for pushing unpopular causes, for going after the people in power. How do you think their readership would respond if they decided to take down a charismatic and increasingly influential Indian leader in the seacoast? Hmmm?"

  "Probably be brought up on charges of hate crimes, I'd imagine."

  "Or something like that. So the story of William Bear Gagnon, who discovered his true roots after spending time in prison, will remain deep in Connie's notes or computer files for the foreseeable future. Hey, you ready to leave?"

  "You still okay for the first favor?"

  "Sure," she said, shoving the bags of trash into the rear of the car. "Have I ever said no to you before?"