The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

  “You’ve humiliated yourself. This fraternity and your so-called brothers are complete phonies. No wonder you fit right in.” He turned and walked out the front door to his car.

  For months after Dad’s visit, my fraternity brothers mimicked his fake country accent, making fun of him for being a jerk to them and to me. But they stuck by me in ways Dad could never imagine.

  THAT SEMESTER, I MET A girl named Molly in our government relations class. We had many things in common until we discussed our families and our futures. It was against my better judgment, but I accepted an invitation to have dinner with her parents, and it went well.

  A few days later, we went to get coffee after class and sat at a table in the cafeteria. “When do I get to meet your dad?” she asked, her brown eyes hopeful.

  “Never.” I sipped my coffee and burned my tongue.

  “I’m not good enough to meet your father after you’ve met my family?”

  “You’re plenty good enough. You’re amazing. But you can’t meet Dad. He’ll act horribly, like he did on Parents’ Day. I can’t let anyone meet him.” I blew on my coffee and took another sip. “Besides, he’s living with an eighteen-year-old girl he met on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. I guess she’s nineteen by now, about three years younger than you. How will that work if they meet your parents?”

  “If I like you, they’ll accept your family.”

  I put down my cup and stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. No one will accept my family. If they did, they’d be just as crazy. Your family is nice and normal.” I slumped back in my chair and sighed. “This won’t work. Forget about me.”

  But she didn’t.

  To push her away, I drank too much at parties, acted silly, and pretended to be a full-blooded Cherokee warrior making loud whooping noises after too many beers. My fraternity brothers had grown used to this new drunken behavior and all the wild stories about my past, whether they believed them or not. But Molly wanted no part of it. The inappropriate stories about my childhood, always out of context and embarrassing, upset her, but she wouldn’t break up with me. At a particularly rowdy party, I threw up in the parking lot and fell asleep in the front yard. She made her way back to her dorm alone that night.

  The next day, Molly called me. “I know what you’re doing,” she said in a scolding but forgiving tone. “You want to drive me away because you’ve been hurt so badly. You think you don’t deserve to be loved. I feel sorry for you. You’re giving up on yourself.”

  Her words stung as much as Mr. Kontz’s had.

  “But I’m not lovable.” My voice caught, and I choked back tears. “At some point, you’ll stop loving me. Everyone else has.”

  “Not me. I’ll always love you. And if you love me, you’ll let me meet your dad. I’ll learn to love your family.”

  Even though I kept getting drunk at parties, Molly was persistent. “This is just a phase,” she’d say. “You’ll outgrow it.”

  Fat chance.

  CHAPTER 48

  I WAS STUDYING IN MY ROOM when a shout came down from the second floor. “Half-Breed, phone call.” It was BA. “Sounds like your next date. She must be really hard up.”

  I knew it couldn’t be Molly. She said she wouldn’t call me until I promised to behave better and agreed to introduce her to Dad. It would have been so much easier if she’d just given up on me.

  I reached the pay phone just as a coed stumbled out of the bathroom in a towel, hoping I wouldn’t notice her.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is David Crow.”

  “Do you know where Thurston is?” It was Caroline, her smoky voice tight with tension.

  I flashed back to the first and last time I had seen her. She and Dad picked me up the previous Christmas on the way to Mona’s house for what was the most miserable dinner ever. Caroline sat at a drugstore lunch counter and waited for us.

  She looked like the kind of cheap hooker you’d find in a Gallup strip bar—I couldn’t help but gape at her. She wore a white blouse stretched tight over numerous rolls and a pink miniskirt hiked up, exposing her underwear. Her thick eyeliner could have been applied with a charcoal briquette, and her full lips looked slathered in pink frosting. The putrid smell of her cheap perfume made my eyes water.

  “He’s been gone six days this time,” Caroline said. “I’m worried.”

  “What do you mean, ‘this time’?”

  “He travels to West Virginia a lot. He and some guys hide stuff in a warehouse and then sell it to some other guys. I heard him on the phone threatening to kill somebody for double-crossing him. He’s never been gone this long before.”

  Mona had told me similar stories the year before, including the part about murder. “I don’t know where he is, but if I hear anything, I’ll call you.”

  “Something else I need to tell you. Someone’s been calling, breathing heavily, and hanging up.”

  Dad had never gone missing for that long, and no one had ever called his house to scare him—at least not that I knew of.

  What do you tell a nineteen-year-old stupid enough to be with a dangerous forty-seven-year-old man who brags about killing people and getting away with it? “Give it until the middle of the week,” I said. “If you don’t hear from him by then, call me. He’ll be fine.”

  Two days later, Caroline called to let me know he’d shown up, and I called Dad. “Caroline’s been worried,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “It’s none of your business. I want a sackful of revenge for all I’ve been through. Life has cheated me. My mother killed my father. I didn’t get to eat right, go to school, or have a normal life. They worked me to death. People hate me because I’m Cherokee. Nothing about my life has been fair. What the hell do you care? And why is this any of your business?”

  There it was. The BIG LIE. “Has it occurred to you that you might go back to prison or even get killed?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me. The next time Caroline calls, tell her you don’t know anything. You never seem very interested in my life anyway. All I hear about is your track team, your fancy fraternity, and your classes.”

  The phone went dead.

  A MONTH LATER, I’D JUST gotten back from caddying when Caroline called again.

  “Your f-father needs your help!” came her hysterical voice through the phone. She sobbed and stuttered. “You h-have to drive to Wheeling, West Virginia. Men are after him. Something . . . something happened to one of them, and it’s bad. You need to leave right now! He said you could get there in five hours.”

  “What am I supposed to do when I get there?”

  “There’s a truck stop on the main highway just outside of town. He says you can’t miss it. It’s the only one for miles. Go to the pay phone and call this number.” She rattled off the number as I scrambled to write it down on a 7-Eleven receipt I found in my pocket.

  “Hurry!” She hung up.

  I grabbed my jacket and sped down the highway in my old Rambler, my thoughts racing just as fast. If ever there was a time to get out of Dad’s grasp, this was it. But I couldn’t seem to let go of him, even though he might very well destroy me—and soon. Maybe I wasn’t any different from Mom or Mona—or Caroline, for that matter. Certainly, I wasn’t any braver.

  Since we first started going on the stealing trips, I had looked out for him. Hell, before that, when I used to listen at the door, I’d fantasize about talking him out of his craziness. I could have been done with him and all of the stress right now, yet I continued to hurry down the road.

  I gassed up on Route 1 leading out of College Park. I was terrible at reading maps while driving, so I bought one and wrote out directions. My hands shook worse than ever, and I had to start over several times. It took me almost twenty minutes, but at least I wouldn’t get lost.

  As the afternoon light faded, I turned onto I-70 West, telling myself that Dad needed me. I was important to him—at least for now. Maybe his life was worth saving. But he was violent and evil. He hadn’
t changed since getting out of the Q. All I was really doing was helping him commit more crimes and perhaps more murders. My insides twisted in agony. I felt like that scared little kid spinning wildly in the snow, hearing that we had to get rid of Mom.

  It took forever before I saw the “Welcome to Wheeling” sign. The truck stop stood out like a beacon in the night. Eighteen-wheelers were moving in and out as cars gassed up on the opposite side. A bank of pay phones stood outside the station—all empty. I pulled out the scrap of paper with the phone number and then worried I might have written it down wrong. When I was nervous and had to work with numbers, my dyslexia got worse.

  But Dad answered immediately and told me he was about a mile away. He had me drive past the gas station and turn onto a two-lane highway, then follow it to a dirt road and turn again. It seemed a lot farther than a mile from the truck stop.

  I had to maneuver around broken-down cars and barrels of trash, finally pulling into the driveway of a shack with a missing window and a sagging porch. Dad flew out of the house and waved his arms in front of my car. Before I could stop, he jumped in and threw a duffel bag in the back seat. It landed with a thump. He got into the passenger seat and told me to back out and follow the guys in the Chevy waiting in the street.

  “Don’t get too close to them. Go very slowly and look around for anything that doesn’t make sense, like a car following us or any noise at all,” Dad said. “You know what to do.”

  I backed out into the road and stopped. “What the hell have you done?” I turned on my interior light and took a good look at Dad. He had blood on his face, his sleeves, and his khaki pants. I glanced in the back seat. “And what’s in the bag?” It was covered in blood too.

  He stared at me for a moment, his eyes bulging and lips chattering, like he was trying to decide what to do. “Shut up and open the damn trunk. We don’t have time for this nonsense.”

  As I watched him grab the bag and toss it into the trunk, my skin went hot and cold at the same time. Sweat poured off my brow. Soon my underwear was soaked.

  “What have you dragged me into?” I said, closing the trunk.

  “You don’t want to know, so don’t ask. You don’t want to know what I’m about to do, so don’t ask about that either. Just do what I tell you and we can be on our way home soon.”

  Dad walked over to the driver of the car in front of us. I saw another man in the passenger seat but couldn’t get a good look at either one of them. I had never been so grateful for darkness in my life.

  When Dad got back in the car, the Chevy took off and bumped up and down in front of us on the rugged dirt road. I kept checking the rearview mirror for headlights, my heart thundering in my ears. We didn’t go far before turning right onto another dirt road lined with trees so close the branches scratched against the doors.

  Dad fidgeted in his seat, talking to himself. I could smell his sweat. Raising his head, he rubbed his forehead like he was trying to remove a stain and then squeezed his hands tight.

  “No one can ever know what’s in the trunk of that car,” he said. “That no-good son of a bitch.”

  If the police pulled us over, all they had to do was look at Dad and we’d be arrested at once. My life would end. How many years in prison for this?

  Half a mile later, the trees thinned, replaced by bushes. The Chevy stopped in front of what appeared to be an abandoned building. All I could see in the dark was a boxy outline.

  “Listen carefully,” Dad said. “If anything seems wrong, like a car coming or someone approaching on foot, or anything unusual, flash your lights three times. You know the drill. It will take us only about fifteen minutes to do what we need to do.”

  The two men got out of the Chevy and opened the trunk. Dad held the flashlight as they removed what had to have been a body wrapped in black plastic. It was about six feet long and lumpy, and they had a hard time holding on to it as they moved into thick brush. Dad pulled out two shovels from the trunk and followed close behind.

  My stomach lurched. I threw open the Rambler door and vomited just like I did when I saw the decapitated man near the Navajo Inn. Shaking uncontrollably, I turned around every few seconds to make certain no one was coming. What would happen if someone did? We were sitting ducks.

  Less than a hundred feet away, one of the three men pointed the flashlight at the ground while the other two started digging. I couldn’t tell which one was Dad. The men traded off, always two of them digging and one holding the light.

  When they came out of the brush, the two men tossed the shovels back into the trunk and climbed into the Chevy while Dad hurriedly got into the passenger side of my car. “Go, but not too fast!” he yelled.

  The road was so narrow I had to do a three-point turn and bounced the car into a gully, nearly getting us stuck. The men followed behind us until we reached the end of the road. Dad told me to turn right and make my way back to the main highway. Luckily the men turned left at the next opportunity. After a few moments, their lights disappeared into the night.

  WE DROVE FOR A LONG time without speaking. I kept shaking and sweating until a steady stream of perspiration flowed down my arms onto my hands. Dad suddenly pointed at a hamburger shop just off the highway. “Hey, drive through that fast food joint over there.”

  The girl at the window didn’t seem to notice either of us as she took our order and handed me our bag of food and drinks. Dad pulled out his burger and fries and ate hungrily, as if burying a body was no big deal. I couldn’t eat.

  Back on the highway, I asked, “Did you kill someone?” The answer was obvious, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  “What the hell difference does it make to you?”

  “Lots, because if you did, I have knowledge of a murder, making me as guilty as you. And I helped you hide the body and get away.”

  “Did you learn that in one of those smart-ass college courses you’re taking? You say it like you know what you’re talking about. You don’t understand anything about real life, boy.”

  “You don’t need to go to college to understand murder—or what it means to be an accessory to one.” My hands ached from gripping the steering wheel, and my head buzzed as if I’d been hit.

  He never answered questions honestly without unleashing a vicious attack to keep me on the defensive. And it had always worked. Until now. “Did you kill someone or not?”

  “I told you long ago, there’s no justice in this world. The real murderers are in the police departments and government.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Murder is murder.”

  “Cut the pretentious crap! The worst murderers are found in the institutions you revere. Every man in the Q was vastly superior to the screws guarding them. The legal killers are far more lethal than the illegal ones. And just so you know, no one does the right thing unless they get something back for it. And no one feels loved either. Welcome to the real world. People fake love for lots of reasons—sex, money, and financial security. Love, like religion, is make-believe for idiots.”

  “Your world isn’t really that grim, is it?”

  “Yes, and so is yours.”

  No, my world wasn’t like that at all. “What about when someone does something nice and expects nothing in return?”

  “You’re stupid if you think they don’t expect something in return. No one gives something for nothing.”

  “Yeah? So what does someone get for covering up a murder?”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, arriving at Dad’s condo after midnight. I opened the trunk, and he retrieved the bloody duffel bag. How would Caroline react when he came through the door?

  Mustering all my courage, and trying not to shake, I stared him in the face under the streetlight. “Dad, I will never do anything illegal or immoral for you again. You would have ruined my life if I’d been caught with you tonight.”

  “I’ll call when I need you and you’ll answer like always.”

  “No, I won’t.”

&nbs
p; “Goddamn right you will.”

  Watching him walk away, I made a solemn promise that my life’s work would be proving him wrong about me. I would become his exact opposite.

  PART 5

  * * *

  CAPITOL HILL

  1975

  My dad on the day he was released from San Quentin State Prison. 1951.

  CHAPTER 49

  THROUGHOUT MY YEARS CADDYING AT Burning Tree Country Club, I rubbed shoulders with presidents, senators, ambassadors, and generals and followed every word they said. As graduation approached, I became convinced I could get a job working for one of them.

  Listening to the politically powerful offered me a window into the world that had nothing to do with my personal circumstances. Without giving it much thought, I’d started reading about Congress. Soon the Gallup poll had replaced Gallup, New Mexico, and I signed up for more political science classes. During my last year in college, I found myself poring over everything on the syllabus and most of the additional reading lists. I devoured the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications that offered insight into politics.

  What I once thought was a useless profession now fascinated me. It occurred to me that the Navajo people were victims of the worst of the political system, and even the people who wanted to help them didn’t have a clue what they were about. These misguided civil servants reminded me of the easterners who came to the reservation to experience the pure Native American spirit, to touch Mother Earth and Father Sky, only to find that Navajos lived in third-world poverty with little hope of better lives. They left as soon as possible, never to return.

  I grew up hating the BIA. Bureaucrats controlled every aspect of Navajo life, taking away most of their freedom under the guise of knowing what was best for them. It hadn’t worked. Surely there had to be a better way.

  No one influenced me more than Mr. Ashcroft. During our many afternoon conversations at the trading post, he’d tell me about the Navajos, how they were butchered like animals during the Long Walk, similar to what Evelyn had told us. When the Navajos were allowed to go back to their sacred lands, Mr. Ashcroft said the government rounded up their sheep, their greatest source of pride and income, and burned them in pits while they stood and wept. The BIA said they got rid of the sheep to prevent erosion, but all they needed to do was return the land to the rightful owners—the Navajos—and they would have solved the problem.