Welcome to Paradise

by Rosalind James

  “Many of you probably appreciate the irony of what you’ve experienced tonight,” Cliff said as the last plate was shoved away with a sigh of satisfaction, the last swallow of coffee drunk. “You know already, of course, that the Homestead Act was enacted to settle the open lands of the West. But of course, the land was only open because the original inhabitants had been removed. Jeff Bradford here,” he indicated the man who now rose to take a spot at the head of the table, “is a professor in the American Indian Studies program at the University of Idaho, and he’s going to give you some of that history tonight.”

  “Nice,” Kevin murmured happily to Gabe’s left as he eyed the muscular build, high cheekbones, and strong nose of the man who stood now to face them, the glossy black hair cut short. “More eye candy, just for meeee.”

  Gabe fought back a chuckle, but quickly sobered as the man began to speak.

  “The spot where you’re sitting tonight, the homesteads you’re been working, everything you see around you,” he said, gesturing around in a wide circle, “was all Nez Perce land less than ten years before your group is supposed to have settled on it. Not just by tradition, but by treaty. The 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla assured us over seven million acres, and gave us hunting and fishing rights on the rest of our ancestral lands, the lands we ceded then to the government.”

  “But less than twenty-five years later,” he went on, “the U.S. government decided that wasn’t enough. That they wanted everything. So they broke their treaty, and told us to get out. Told us they were taking our land, and we were moving to the reservation.”

  “Right,” Gabe heard from several seats down. “Now it starts. Of course.” Scott. Who else?

  He saw Deborah stiffen, felt the uncomfortable shift in Mira’s posture to his right, even as Kevin murmured in his ear, “He’s not sure he’s nailed that Most Unpopular Contestant title. He’s going for the gold.”

  “Excuse me?” Jeff asked, looking down the table at Scott, an expression of polite interest on his handsome face.

  “I know all this is the politically correct viewpoint,” Scott said. “And that we’re supposed to buy into it now, no questions asked. I’m not denying that abuses took place, but I’ve never seen how a tribe could have claimed to own some huge swath of property, just because they’d camped on it occasionally. The whole basis for the Homestead Act was that you had to improve the land, be doing something with it, be settled on it, for it to become yours. That concept, in fact, is firmly established in English common law, the basis of our legal system. What would you expect any government to do, especially back then? Isn’t it a social good, and simple economics, to put the land to its highest use?”

  “You got a car?” Jeff asked him.

  “What?” Scott stared at him. “What does that have to do with it?”

  “You got a car?” Jeff asked again.

  “Yes. A BMW,” Scott finally answered.

  Jeff’s mouth twisted a little at that. “Well, I’ve got a higher use for your BMW. April here’s a visiting nurse,” he said, nodding at the woman a few seats down. “Her car just broke down, and she needs a new one. Public health nurse versus what, lawyer?” He caught the nods and grins of the others. “I’d call that a no-brainer social good, right there.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” Scott said stiffly.

  “Nope, it’s not. But if I were holding a shotgun to your head while I asked for the keys, we could get a little closer,” Jeff decided.

  “But back to my story,” he went on calmly, leaving Gabe sure that he’d encountered this argument before. “Suddenly the Treaty was gone, and we were supposed to march ourselves off to the res. Because the U.S. government had a higher use for our land. But not everyone was willing to go. Eight hundred men, women, and children took off, led by Chief Joseph, to join Sitting Bull and some of the other Lakota Sioux in Canada. They traveled over a thousand miles, across four states and multiple mountain ranges, pursued the whole way by two thousand U.S. soldiers. Two hundred Nez Perce warriors held off or defeated those soldiers, ten times their number, in eighteen battles.”

  “But they didn’t make it, all the same,” he finished. “Chief Joseph was finally forced to surrender, along with the rest of the survivors. They were only forty miles short of the Canadian border. His surrender speech is remembered today by every Nez Perce. You might want to think about this, while you’re settling your land.”

  He quoted from memory, his voice strong but not loud.

  “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He who led the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

  “So when I hear people say this land was uninhabited, free for the claiming . . .” Jeff went on into the silence around him, “I can’t help but think, this land wasn’t free. It was paid for with the blood and the tears and the lives of my people.”

  The group broke up soon after that, the homesteads preparing for the walk back in the evening twilight.

  “Just a moment,” Gabe told Mira. He found Alec by his side as he walked over to talk to Jeff.

  “Thanks for that,” he told the other man after introducing himself and Alec. “Don’t judge us all by that one . . . bad apple. The rest of us appreciated it. The story, not the food,” he clarified. “Although the food was fantastic too,” he added with a grin.

  “You got a little Indian in you, the two of you?” Jeff asked, looking from one to the other. “I see it in you, mostly,” he told Gabe. “Not so much him.”

  “We had a Cherokee great-grandmother,” Gabe confirmed. “Oklahoma, I guess, back in the day. So we’re, what, an eighth.”

  “Enough to be enrolled in the tribe,” Jeff said with a wry smile. “If you want all the fabulous benefits.”

  “Enough to know the story, anyway,” Alec said. “The Trail of Tears. Not so different from what you talked about tonight.”

  “Except that a lot more died,” Jeff agreed soberly. “No shortage of sad stories, is there? All along the way.”

  “If you guys want to vote Scott off tomorrow,” Mira told the others, the day’s emotional and physical toll weighing on her like a suffocating blanket as the quiet group walked back to Paradise, “I’ll go.”

  “You’re not responsible for the ignorant things he says,” Zara said firmly. “You weren’t before, and you sure as hell aren’t now.”

  “How could I have gone out with him, though?” Mira asked in anguished bewilderment. “How could I not have seen what he was really like?”

  “Well, why do you think?” Zara asked.

  Mira thought a moment. “Because he didn’t show it, I guess, early on. He just seemed confident, and strong, and self-assured. And I admired that, at the time. I didn’t see the . . . the mean side. Or I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Yep,” Zara said. “That would be it. Bet he was a dreamboat when you were first dating. They’re different when they’re trying to impress you.”

  “Yeah,” Mira agreed with a sigh. “It still took me way too long to wake up. But at least,” she went on more strongly, “I did wake up. And at least now I’m making more informed decisions.”

  “Because Gabe hasn’t been trying to impress you,” Kevin said dryly. “Yeah, right.”

  “Hey,” Gabe protested. “Way to cut a man down.”

  “Nothing wrong with trying to be a better man for a woman’s sake,” Stanley put in. “If it wasn’t for that, we’d all still be living in caves.”

  A Lot of Romance

  It was
a more rested but not a happier group that seated themselves on the benches in the Clearing again the following afternoon. Martin, Mira was glad to see, was back in action and sitting on the jury, if still on crutches. She gave him a little wave that he returned with a nod from his spot next to Arlene. And there were Chelsea and Melody, looking even more groomed and glossy than the previous week. They must have brought an awful lot of beauty products with them, Mira guessed. Either that, or somebody was shopping for them, wherever they were stashed for the duration.

  “So, Kevin,” Cliff began, bringing her thoughts back to the present. “What’s been going on over there? Got a little romance happening?”

  “Nope,” he answered promptly. “A lot of romance. But sadly,” he sighed, “none of it’s been mine. Well, Bessie the Cow was getting kind of a thing for me, but I had to tell her it wouldn’t work out.”

  “Nice attempt at a diversion,” Cliff said with a smile. “I guess I’ll go straight to the source. It’s been an eventful week for you, Mira, and I’m not just talking about your hair. You’ve made some pretty big changes. Done everything but quit your job.”

  “I’m waiting on that till I get back,” she found herself saying recklessly.

  “Really.” He actually looked surprised.

  “Yeah.” She laughed, a little giddy at the thought. “Consider this my two weeks’ notice. Oh, wait. By the time my employer sees this, I’ll be long gone, won’t I? But, yeah. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Wow. What’s happened to you out here?”

  She kept her eyes on Cliff, avoided looking across at Scott. One quick glance as they’d arrived had been plenty. Instead, she took a tighter hold of Gabe’s hand where it was hidden by her skirt, and decided to answer the question honestly.

  “The very first day, Kevin said that you can’t hide who you really are on a show like this,” she began. “At the time, I didn’t appreciate what he meant, but now I see it. Because it’s so draining, physically and emotionally. You don’t have any energy left to . . . present a front, I guess. At home, I’d come in from a trip, and I’d think, I’ve got nothing in the fridge. And that would seem really hard, to have to go to the store when I was worn out. But here, if you want milk, you have to get it from the cow. Even if you don’t want it,” she added with a little laugh. “You have to milk that cow anyway. And everything’s like that. Just so much harder.”

  “So, yes, you can get close to people really fast,” she went on, caught up in her thoughts. “Because you’re seeing them every day, in such close quarters, and under the very toughest circumstances. Seeing who they really are, under the surface. And the same thing’s true of the person you came in with. You’re going to be seeing them more clearly too.”

  Her hand trembled a little in Gabe’s as she replayed everything she’d just revealed. She didn’t have to look at him, though, to feel his support. It was there in the solid press of his shoulder and thigh against hers, the sure grip of his hand.

  “I think it’s more than that, though,” Zara interjected. “In Mira’s case, and for all of us. You also find out, out here, what you’re made of. How much you can handle. I suspect all of us at Paradise have seen that we’re stronger than we realized. You work until you can’t do any more, but then there’s more to do, so you just do it. And that can’t help but have an impact, give you the courage to make the big changes.”

  “Well, as you all know, this isn’t just a journey of self-discovery,” Cliff said. “It’s also a game, and two people are going to be leaving that game tonight. Gabe, any concerns that you’ve put an even bigger target on your back, or put one on hers, by having such an obvious alliance with Mira?”

  “Is that what we have?” he asked. “Not what I would’ve called it, but OK. Not too concerned, no. You want to vote so you weaken the other homestead, and lose as little strength as possible on your own. I hope my team thinks I’m a strong contributor, and as for Mira . . . Well, voting her out tonight would do just the opposite of those two things, wouldn’t it? It would hurt us, and help Arcadia,” he said baldly. “So, no. Not too worried.”

  “Kevin,” Cliff went on. “Same question. Are you concerned tonight?”

  “I think you always have to be concerned,” he answered. “But even though I’m not as strong physically as Gabe, I’m the best with the animals. And I’m guessing there could be an animal challenge coming up. That’s my ace in the hole.”

  “I do hate this part of it,” Stanley said on the walk home. “And that was much harder than the last one.”

  “I just hope that Lupe doesn’t think it was anything Maria-Elena did wrong,” Mira agreed unhappily. “Because she did great. It was just . . .”

  “That she’s eighteen,” Kevin finished. “And that I am good with animals.”

  Giving Mira Another Lesson

  They were surprised two mornings later by a visit from John.

  “Going to get you started on the plowing,” he announced when the five of them were gathered in the yard. “You’ve got some pretty good hay in, got a reasonable woodpile too,” he judged. “Not near enough to make it through to spring, of course, but a good start. But all that’s just maintenance. Survival. If you’d been doing this for real, you’d have had to get started on your crop. Because you had to have a good amount of land under cultivation, at least forty acres, to prove up your homestead. You had to make some cash money too, buy your supplies. And all that means planting.”

  “What can we plant now, though?” Kevin asked. “I’d think planting started in the spring.”

  “You’d be doing that too,” John acknowledged. “Spring, you’d be putting in some alfalfa, better feed for your animals than that hay you’ve been cutting. Dried peas and lentils, too. Bet you didn’t know that the Palouse is the lentil capital of the United States.”

  “No, I did not know that,” Kevin admitted. “My lentil knowledge is sadly lacking. I barely know what one is. Little brown things? Taste like sawdust?”

  “That’d be your lentil,” John agreed. “But you’re right, that’s spring planting. Right now, what you’ve got is your winter wheat.”

  “It grows in the winter?” Kevin asked, puzzled. “I thought it snowed here.”

  “Sprouts before it freezes, lies dormant under the snow,” John explained. “You can harvest early, that’s the idea. That’s your cash crop, next summer. Get you through another year out here. Unless you’re unlucky with your weather, of course.”

  “Of course,” Kevin said gloomily.

  “And the first step,” John said, “is the breaking plow. That’s what I’ve got here.” He indicated the heavy implement sitting in the yard now, the truck that had delivered it having moved conveniently out of camera range. “You already know how to hitch your horses to the wagon, how to use ’em to snake trees out of the woods. Now I’m going to teach you how to hitch ’em to a plow, and what to do with it once you do.”

  “I knew there was a reason I chose bartending instead of farming,” Kevin groaned at lunch, his hair still wet from the scrubbing of head and hands that he and the other men had done in the creek before coming into the cabin to eat. “Thanks,” he added to Mira as she handed him a plate filled with red flannel hash, beans, and the inevitable cornbread.

  Stanley accepted a glass of cold buttermilk from Mira with a weary smile, took a long drink. “You did the best of all of us, though, keeping the furrows straight,” he pointed out. “But you’re right, that’s a heck of a job.”

  “What makes it so hard?” Mira wondered, dishing up her own plate last and joining the rest of them.

  “The ground, for one thing,” Gabe explained. “We had that cloudburst yesterday, softened the dirt up a little bit. That’s why John’s here today. But we still had to put a log on top of the plow, give it a little more bite to get through the soil.”

  “Well, we don’t have to actually do forty acres, that’s the good thing,” Stanley said. “Do it for about a week, John said. Then run over the
same ground with the cultivator. And only one of us can be plowing at once, somebody else up there leading the horses. Lets us trade off, and leaves someone to help you in the garden, Mira. And keep the woodbox full, draw some water for you all.”

  “We’re not actually planting anything, though,” Zara said. “Are we? Not like somebody’s going to be harvesting that wheat in the spring. So why do you have to keep doing it? Just so we can have more sessions with Cliff, talking about how hard it is?”

  “Nope,” Kevin said promptly. “But we have to hope Arcadia looks at it that way, decides that they’ll do it while John’s watching, then take it easy. Because don’t you figure that’s going to be our next challenge?” he asked the others.

  “Yep,” Gabe agreed, taking a last bite of lunch, a last swig of coffee, and swinging his legs back around the bench again with a sigh. “And practice makes perfect. Let’s go.”

  Mira walked with Zara up the path from the swimming hole that afternoon, stopped suddenly as they approached the corral.

  “What is it?” Zara asked. “Leave something behind?”

  “I’ll just go in and . . . tell Gabe they can take their bath,” Mira said. “If that’s OK with you. Since we’ve got the rabbit stewing already, and all.”

  Zara smiled at her tolerantly. “You do that. Take your time.”

  Mira opened the corral gate, closed it carefully. Picked her way among the piles of manure to where Gabe sat, his back to her, milking Bessie.

  “Fish not biting?” he asked without looking up from his task.

  “It’s me,” she said, suddenly feeling shy.

  He looked around quickly, his hands stilling on Bessie’s teats. The smile started, then. “Yeah, I see it’s you. Hi, you.”

  “Hi.” She smiled back at him foolishly. They hadn’t had any time alone together since a short walk on Sunday evening after the challenge, when they’d been followed relentlessly by Stu, and had confined themselves to talking in low voices and holding hands, ducking into the cover of the trees for a few rushed kisses before admitting defeat and returning to the cabin.