Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Taylor stopped inches away from. Louie Two and pressed his face against the glass. Louie Two pawed at Taylor’s face, the dog’s paws scratching the glass.

  Taylor carefully sat down. He folded his ankles beneath his crossed legs. This was a problem. Louie Two was outside. He was inside. Who would open the door? He had tried them before, but he could never open them.

  Movement outside caught his attention. One of the big people! Taylor grinned. Taylor remembered this one. Here was someone to open the door. Taylor pounded the heel of his palm against the glass.

  The door opened, and a hand reached inside to help him to his feet.

  Taylor took the hand and grinned again. The fresh outside air brought him smells and sounds. So many new things to smell. So many new things to hear.

  Taylor stepped onto the patio. This would be fun. He walked with the man toward the depths of the pine trees.

  3:37 p.m.

  When he’d sold the ranch to Kelsie and Clay a few years earlier, James McNeill had moved from the original ranch house and built a smaller one for himself one mile down the road. The arrangement worked well. He was close enough to stave off loneliness, far away enough that each household felt private and separate.

  As Kelsie drove along the winding road up into the hills to her father’s home, she suddenly wished her father didn’t live nearby the ranch, for she dreaded the possibility of seeing Clay’s Jeep rounding a corner or topping a rise. She saw no other traffic, however, and with relief, she reached the house unnoticed. Forty years old, she thought, and I feel like E need to sneak home.

  In the front of the house, she debated with herself. If she parked in sight of the road, Clay might notice and stop and cause a scene. But Clay and her father were good friends, and Clay visited once or twice a day. If she hid the car on the other side of the house, Clay might walk in unaware of her presence. She decided to park in plain view. Clay would be unlikely to cause a scene in front of her father, she thought. It would also be unfair to surprise Clay. Again.

  When she called in through the kitchen door, James replied from the front room. She found him in his customary straight-back chair at the picture window, blanket folded over his legs, gazing across his beloved valley at the far mountain walls. She leaned forward and gave him a peck on his cheek then sat in sunshine on the opposite side of the room and placed her briefcase at her feet.

  There was a long, low, walnut coffee table between them covered with back issues of National Geographic and Life magazines. The sofa at the back wall was black leather of simple design. Above the sofa was a large painting of a black wolf against gray poplar trees. No prints or paintings hung on the other walls, not because James had a spartan sense of decoration, but because he knew it gave added impact to the painting of the lone wolf staring out at the hills.

  “Would you like me to make you some tea?” Kelsie offered.

  “No, thanks,” James said, with just a hint of a dry cough. “No sense pushing my bladder more than necessary these days.”

  The cough and comment were reminders of time’s crusade against her father, like the deep wrinkles in his face, the waver in his voice, and the blanket across his legs in a room already so warm it caused little beads of sweat to appear on her forehead. He used a cane to walk now across the same land he’d once half-jogged with her as a girl riding upon his shoulders. Wasn’t it bad enough she had these sad reminders to destroy the memories of the physical man he once was? Did she also have to risk destroying so much more of what she cherished about her father?

  “A Tuesday morning visit,” James said, without rancor. “This is unusual.”

  “Life hasn’t been that usual lately.” She waited. This was his opening, if he wanted to take it, to let her know Clay had told him about the separation.

  “Oh?” He smiled. “Of course, I’ve always been interested in how you might define your life as usual.”

  Normally, she would have taken that as a compliment. Her father had always encouraged her to live by no man’s rules – emphasis on “man.” Unlike many of the others in the valley community, he never saw anything wrong in her pursuing her own career away from the ranch, if that was what suited her.

  “First thing I’ve got to tell you – and I didn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t know if I would go through with it – is that I’ve moved out on Clay and Taylor. I found a place in town.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said, moving his gaze back toward the dark dots of spruce on the far hills.

  “Interesting?” Despite her earlier reflections on the sadness of watching him grow old, she couldn’t fight a surge of annoyance. “This is not a time for you to affect a nonjudgmental stance.”

  “You want me to tell you it’s wrong?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You want me to tell you it’s right?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to blame Clay?”

  “It’s not his fault.”

  “You want me to pester you with questions?”

  “I couldn’t take it.”

  “I believe, then,” he said, turning back to her so she could see him smile away any offense, “I’ll allow my first statement to stand: That’s interesting.”

  Kelsie sagged with frustration. When he put it in black-and-white terms like that, of course, he was right and she was a fool to snap at him. But why did it feel the way it did inside, against any logic? What did she want? She wanted to cry and someone to listen. It wouldn’t make the problem go away, but it would help her. To have someone listen and not offer advice. Men were good for a lot of things – she loved James and Clay – but they never just listened; they offered advice, solutions.

  Yet she lived and worked in a man’s world. This was part of the price she paid. So she drew a breath, pushed back her frustration, and straightened on the couch to a controlled posture.

  “Anyway, I thought you should know about the separation,” she said. “In case Clay didn’t get around to telling you.”

  “He hasn’t.”

  Did she read judgment in his curt voice? Was he taking Clay’s side? She couldn’t bear it, but she knew she couldn’t explain, either. Instead, she opened her briefcase and spread it on her lap, keeping her hands busy so her father wouldn’t see she was trembling as she tried to put her emotions into neutral.

  “Emerald Canyon, Daddy,” she said, setting aside her cellular phone and taking out some papers. “Know much about it?” She’d been dreading the question for two weeks, rehearsing it for one. It felt wooden.

  “Probably not much more than you do,” he said.

  A two-edged answer. Did he realize that? Or was his voice casual because he truly was casual?

  “I’ve been researching its corporate background,” she said. “1 know more than you might think.”

  “Then this feels like you’re on a fishing expedition. It’s what your momma used to do to me. Ask me what I knew about something and hold back what she knew just to compare notes.”

  Kelsie kept her eyes on the papers. He was right, of course, but was he dodging the issue? “What do you know?” she asked. Anything not to have to accuse him.

  He smiled sadly. “You’ve left Clay and Taylor. You haven’t even slowed down to ask about your old man’s health. All I see is this steel mind clamped shut on what appears to be lawyer business. Maybe I’ll have some tea after all.”

  “No,” she said. The injustice of his accusation – that she was cold and unfeeling – felt like a light bulb breaking in her stomach. “I want to talk about Emerald Canyon.”

  “Certainly,” he said, his voice silkily polite. It was the way he handled anger. Just like Clay.

  “Thank you,” she said, equally polite, equally angry. “What do you know about Emerald Canyon?”

  “World-class casino run by the reservation. World-class golf course. And retirement homes filling with more Californians than I could count in a month of Sundays.”

  “Anything else you know?”


  He frowned at her. “The way that’s come out, sounds close to calling me a liar. Were you a man, and were you anyone but my daughter, I’m not sure I’d tolerate further discussion.”

  “This is what I know,” she said. “Emerald Canyon is in a unique location. It’s within reservation boundaries, giving them the right to run the casino. It’s on the edge of the reservation, though, making the nearby private non-reservation land valuable for expanded development, as has happened.”

  James shrugged. “I retired from cattle, not real estate.”

  He was going to make her say it, she thought; he was going to make her be the one to say it. Couldn’t he at least spare her that?

  “A Mr. George Samson owned the original piece of land within the reservation. He’s a full-blooded Flathead, and by law he was entitled to sell the land to the county, which he did in the summer of 1973. Do you know what I find interesting?”

  “George Samson,” he said, although it wasn’t in answer to her question. “Clay’s friend. That was his land?”

  “Yes.” Her lips were tight. As if there weren’t enough complications and pain, Clay would once again taste betrayal from the McNeill family. “The land title shows George Samson. Although the price – and I checked it against other land sold the same summer – was considerably higher than he would have received at fair-market price, a year later it was worth twenty times as much because of the Big Sky Casino, and worth fifty times as much within another five years.”

  “That’s what you find interesting then.”

  “No.” They were both getting closer and closer to the edge. Couldn’t he ease off instead of pushing her there? “What I find –”

  Her cell phone rang. It nearly startled her into spilling her briefcase off her lap onto the floor. With quick anger, she snapped off the power.

  “What I find interesting,” she said, “is six separate numbered corporations. These corporations purchased the land from the county at considerably less than what the county paid. Records of the minutes show that part of the conditions to purchase involved a promised cleanup of soil pollutants. I also find it interesting that the land was purchased six months before the announcement of the Big Sky Casino development.”

  James McNeill shrugged again. “Someone had a plan and gambled well. I tip my hat to them.”

  Kelsie pulled out a photocopy of a newspaper article. “I was sixteen that summer. You might remember a train derailment, the one that brought an FBI agent into the valley.”

  “I remember everything about that summer, the good and the bad. I’m just glad after all this time, the good’s here and the bad’s gone.”

  A few months ago, I would have agreed with you, she thought, and how I wish I still could.

  “I’ve talked to Mr. George Samson. He said he would have preferred to keep his land,” Kelsie said. “But because of the spilled bulk chemicals and how much time and effort it would take to clean it up, he was pragmatic enough to sell when the county offered what he felt was a high price.”

  “We both know Clay and George are good friends,” James said. “It’s my impression that George is happy with the next property he bought from the proceeds. It’s higher up in the mountains, farther away from town.”

  “Are you listening to me? The land never got cleaned. Reports show work had gone into it. Bulldozers pushed dirt around, but it was never cleaned properly. The developers buried core samples that showed contamination and unstable soil.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked abruptly.

  They were at the edge. And he’d pushed.

  “Because –”

  The ringing of a cordless telephone interrupted her. He fished under his blanket for it. “McNeill,” he answered. A pause. “Clay. How are you?”

  He listened, glancing occasionally at Kelsie.

  “Kelsie’s here,” James said after a while. “That’s why.” Another pause. “All right.”

  James McNeill listened a few more minutes while Kelsie fidgeted. She wouldn’t have believed it if someone had ever tried to explain beforehand, the range of agony and stress that came with the end of a relationship. Clay was a mile up the road, on the other end of a telephone line, and she was as distant from him as if she were dead.

  James finally hung up. “Kelsie –” he began.

  “No,” she said. “I need to finish. Whatever you have, whatever Clay has, it can wait.”

  “I guess it will, won’t it?” he said, again with extreme, silky politeness.

  “It’s taken me months, and it’s taken connections only Clay could get me through the Bureau, but I finally tracked down the names of the people who owned those corporations.”

  She studied his face. He regarded her passively. He was going to make her say it. “I want you to hear it from me first,” she continued. “I'm about to start proceedings on a $55 million lawsuit against those six corporations. There’s also a good chance the corporate directors will face criminal charges. This scandal is going to rip apart the power structure of the entire valley.”

  Still no reaction from her father.

  “Daddy” – she took a deep breath – “are you going to help me on this? Or will I have to see you in court?”

  “You finished with what you have to say?”

  She nodded, numb. This was not the reaction she’d expected.

  “Good."

  He rose from his chair and took slow, steady steps past the coffee table toward the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You’ve got me cranky, and I don’t trust myself to say things I won’t regret. I’m getting my cane and my jacket, and I’m meeting Clay. I suggest you follow in your car.”

  “Follow?”

  “That call that came through on your cell phone. It was Clay. He’s been trying to get you to let you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Taylor,” James said. “He’s lost.”

  3:48 p.m.

  “A fire?”

  “A fire.”

  Across a table on the veranda of a large house on the shores of Whitefish Lake, two men eyed each other with dislike neither tried to hide.

  To Wayne Anderson, retired banker, Sonny Cutknife was hardly different from a phony television preacher. Maybe Sonny didn’t promise cures in exchange for send-in donations, but he was grandly using a belief system that let him milk his followers. The shoulder-length ponytail, the beads, moccasins, and leather vest he couldn’t even button because his belly was so fat. The man had to be nearly fifty. Wasn’t it time to quit posturing that ridiculous counterculture stuff? It grated on Anderson that Cutknife held much of his position by spouting antiwhite and antiestablishment hogwash that was well received on the reservation while at the same time directing on a daily basis a personal mutual-fund portfolio worth well over a half-million and switching his leather-vest-and-beer routine for Armani and Courvosier once a month on trips to Manhattan.

  To Sonny Cutknife, Wayne Anderson symbolized everything hateful about weak, effete, arrogant, white power. The man couldn’t bench-press a bag of hamburgers, but because of an accident of Caucasian-male birth, he believed himself to be one of the masters of the universe. He had to be pushing his midseventies, Sonny thought, but still wore his hair glossy brown, as if he could fool people into believing that nature had decided to allow him, and only him, to bypass the aging process. Of course, his hair matched his wonderful taut skin that screamed of a dozen Brazilian facelifts. What was truly hilarious to Sonny was the man’s total lack of common sense. All that bother and expense of trying to appear twenty years younger when he wore the clothes he’d kept in his closet over those twenty years, clothes which at the moment consisted of a brown polyester leisure suit and glossy snakeskin cowboy boots.

  “A fire,” Wayne Anderson repeated, giving Sonny a scornful smile that emphasized the waxiness of his unnatural skin. “That shouldn’t be difficult for you, should it? If I recall, you tried to do the same to a local
church at one time.”

  “I know what a fire is,” Sonny growled. “And don’t forget, we both have our secrets.”

  “Temper, temper. One would hate to have to put you on a leash.” Out came the smile again.

  Sonny swallowed the insult because he’d long ago vowed not to try to fool himself into believing he was anything other than what he was: a hired man looking for the easiest way to make the most money. There was even honor in that, admitting without shame your vices and living by them.

  “Where do you want the fire?” Sonny asked, thinking when all the others lined up to throw dirt on Anderson’s coffin, Sonny wanted to be there with a handful of rose-bed manure. He’d come back at night with his dogs, too, and all three of them would mark the gravesite with streams of disdain.

  “Your office,” Anderson said. “Burn your office.”

  “The administration office? On the reservation?” Sonny looked at him, disbelieving.

  “None other.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s the computer age. We know you’ve delayed electronic recordkeeping as long as possible. We know you’ve been forced to finally install the system. Now would be a good time to get rid of all previous files before they’re input. So make sure it’s a good fire. We’ve decided it would be prudent to have all of the first twenty years completely destroyed.”

  4:01 p.m.

  There were already two other pickups in the yard. One truck Kelsie recognized as belonging to Lawson, the other to Rooster Evans. She wondered how Lawson had gotten there so quickly, then she remembered. He’d had an appointment with Clay.

  The three men were standing near the corral, two of them – Clay and Rooster – set apart by their cowboy hats. James drove his truck up to the group, trying to cut down on the walking he needed to do. Kelsie, in her BMW, stayed on his bumper and parked right behind him.