The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

  The Anglo government took away the Navajos’ livelihood and dignity, giving them welfare and unemployment instead.

  “Be careful whenever everything is given to you,” Mr. Ashcroft said. “Because then you’ll be totally beholden to your masters.”

  What he said was true. His stories made me understand the unhappy faces I saw. Nothing about the rules helped the Navajo people.

  An even more blatant example of the government’s hypocrisy was their role in regulating alcohol. The politicians and bureaucrats pretended to care about alcoholism but allowed minors to drink with adults all day and all night. They just opened more jail cells and operated additional paddy wagons, letting the drunks back out in time for Sam and me to fire cherry bombs at them. As Dad said, “Half the PhDs in the country study Indian alcoholism, but nothing changes. No one in the government really gives a shit. They just want the tax revenue.”

  Things always seemed to get worse when the government took on too big a role. I wanted to work to change that.

  IN MAY OF 1975, at the age of twenty-two, I graduated from the University of Maryland. I purposely didn’t invite anyone for fear Dad would make a huge scene, maybe even with Caroline in tow. Lonnie showed up, even though I hadn’t told her when the ceremony would take place. She gave me a big hug and then handed me a brand-new Cross pen set. “I’m proud of you, David,” she said. I turned down her invitation for dinner, telling her I needed to get to my caddy job.

  After Lonnie left, I stood alone for a long while on the lawn outside Cole Field House, near the football field. Watching my classmates clad in caps and gowns and surrounded by family members made my heart heavy. Molly spotted me through the crowd and ran over. She graduated that day too. Rising on her toes, she kissed me, and for a moment, I felt happy.

  Since Dad’s body dump months before, I’d been cutting our conversations short or avoiding her altogether. But she hadn’t given up and now held my hand as her parents joined us on the lawn and I met her brother and sister. Her mother invited me to dinner that night, being careful not to make it seem like I had nowhere else to go.

  “Uh . . . thanks,” I said. “But I can’t.” I abruptly pulled away and walked into the throng of people. Molly followed me until her family was out of earshot.

  “I feel sorry for you, David,” she said, her tender, concerned eyes filled with disappointment. “I love you, but you won’t let anyone get close. If you’d show me who you really are, you might be surprised that I’d still love you.”

  “There’s no way. I don’t deserve your love, even though I love you. You can do much better than me. I’m sure you will.” I walked away from Molly one last time. I had nothing to offer her.

  Walking to the parking lot at the fraternity house, I stared at the large brick building that had been my home for three years. Then I climbed into my Rambler with my clothes and few belongings stowed in the back seat and trunk. I could come back and sleep in the empty house during the summer if I needed to, but all my brothers would be gone.

  Driving straight to the country club in time to caddy that Friday afternoon, I caught an eighteen-hole round for four golfers. My face must have looked as lost as I felt because after the last hole, a silver-haired golfer said, “Young man, what’s going on in your life?”

  “I graduated from the University of Maryland a few hours ago.” I tried to sound confident, but I could barely form the words.

  “Why aren’t you celebrating this wonderful accomplishment with your family?”

  My eyes dropped to my feet. “They couldn’t come.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He handed me a twenty-dollar bill.

  WITHIN A FEW DAYS OF graduation, I had rented a small, cheap apartment and returned to working construction during the week. Every morning I ran up to ten miles to stay in top shape. As soon as I saved enough money to buy a suit and dress shoes, I started applying for entry-level jobs on Capitol Hill. My plan was to work for a member of Congress, but the competition was stiff—most of the applicants had superior backgrounds, Ivy League educations, fancy internships, and family connections that opened doors. No one wanted to hire me.

  Then one morning in late September, Dad called me. “If you drive to the Library of Congress this minute, you can get a GS-3 clerk job in the mail room.”

  In a strange twist, Dad had befriended the son of New Mexico Senator Joe Montoya the year before and spent time at the senator’s house. When Dad discovered that Senator Montoya was disturbed by his son’s ongoing, embarrassing antics, he exploited the situation, as he always did. Dad offered to keep the son’s name out the headlines in exchange for a job staffing the senator’s Environment and Public Works Committee. Only my dad could have gone from a maximum-security prison to a prestigious job in the Senate, proudly telling anyone who’d listen that the senator hired his first full-blooded Cherokee.

  Thanks to Dad’s connections, I dashed off to the Library of Congress and started working the next day. Though I did little more than carry books to congressional offices and had to continue caddying on weekends to pay bills, I was now just across the street from the Capitol with a job that gave me plenty of time to read, plot, and strategize. Better yet, I had access to the Congressional Reading Room and every newspaper in the country. I had my own national paper route, with clerks bringing me papers upon request.

  THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND Senate offices are located on one large Capitol Hill campus, and Dad called regularly to have lunch with me. His demeanor had changed, just as it had in Albuquerque when he started working for Woodmen Accident and Life. Swollen with a new swagger, he bragged about his powerful role in writing legislation for clean water and how he exchanged regular greetings with Senator Joe Biden and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Dad’s wardrobe changed too. He now wore suits with bolo ties and turquoise rings, telling his fellow staffers about his Cherokee heritage.

  One day at lunch in the Dirksen Senate cafeteria, Dad blurted out, “I’ve been running with Cassius Clay.”

  “You mean Muhammad Ali? How are you doing that?” This sounded like another one of his ridiculous exaggerations.

  He took a huge bite of his BLT. “I don’t call him by his Muslim name. Clay and his entourage run through the woods near my condo each morning. His training site is at a nearby hotel. He’s defending his heavyweight boxing title next month in Landover, Maryland, and I’m going to teach the asshole a lesson.”

  “What lesson is that?” I asked, thinking he was kidding. He couldn’t possibly believe he was a threat to Muhammad Ali.

  “Every morning, I wait for the punk and his fat thug bodyguards to jog past me. Then I run by them in the woods and yell for Clay to catch me. He jogs with his head down, ignoring me, and I run past him easily. I swing my fist in the air and yell, ‘I’ll make you fight me. What are you afraid of, chicken shit?’”

  How delusional could Dad be? “Are you’re hoping he’ll really fight you?”

  “If he’s such a great champion, why won’t he run with me and box me?”

  “Because he’s loosening up with an early morning jog before he spars and hits the punching bag. Why would he try to catch a stranger or fight him? He keeps bodyguards around to stop nut jobs from harassing him.”

  I tossed the last french fry into my mouth, expecting Dad to laugh, but he glared at me with bugged eyes and twitching lips.

  Dad kept up his routine for the next month, hiding in different parts of the wooded trail, hoping to ambush Ali. Each time, Ali’s bodyguards expertly intervened. Somehow, the Greatest defeated Jimmy Young and retained his world heavyweight title, blissfully unaware that Thurston Crow had been targeting him.

  CHAPTER 50

  JOE MONTOYA, DAD’S BOSS, HAD been a congressman or senator most of my life. I remembered reading about him on my paper route when he was considered a bright star. But in the early 1970s, questions started circulating about his financial matters, and there were whiffs of corruption and scandal. As his bid for reelection approa
ched in 1976, the leading newspapers in New Mexico called him ripe for defeat.

  Dad was unfazed by the reports and volunteered to work on the senator’s campaign the final two weeks. I took time off to help. I felt sorry for Dad, knowing that his political career would end if the senator lost, which in my mind was a certainty. Sitting alongside Dad in one of the dingy campaign offices in Santa Fe, I worked the phones, asking voters to come out for the senator.

  On Election Day, Montoya was clobbered by his little-known Republican opponent, a former NASA astronaut. The staff cried, drank, and hugged one another until late at night. Dad told them not to worry, that lots of Democratic members of Congress would want to hire them. As we drove back to Washington together, Dad veered from being angry because the goddamn Republican Party was full of lying sons of bitches to wildly optimistic that his future was bright because of his popularity with powerful members of the Senate, not to mention the deep connection he was certain he shared with incoming President Jimmy Carter, whom he’d met briefly at a fundraiser.

  But no one returned his calls. No hotshot Democratic senator or lobbying firm would hire him. Senators, staffers, and lobbyists avoided him. He learned the hardest lesson in politics: No one stays friends with anyone associated with a loser. Dad filed for unemployment and rarely left his condo. When he called me, he was often drunk, slurring his words and cursing the Republican Party. Several times I asked him about his plans, but he’d immediately return to his rant about Montoya’s loss.

  As new members of Congress looked to fill staff positions, I ramped up my job search. I scoured the openings and spent the evening before an interview reading everything I could. I was turned down again and again, and then I got a chance to talk with Congressman Tom Coleman of Missouri.

  “Only my campaign manager and my wife know as much about me as you do,” he said. “You’re hired.”

  His predecessor had died in a plane crash during the summer, so Congressman Coleman was seated immediately after the election, and I began working for him in early December. I’d be answering constituent mail—the lowest position in politics—but it was a start.

  DAD CALLED TO TELL ME he had spoken to Montoya. “I told him I had stayed loyal to him, worked hard for him, and campaigned for him,” he said. “Now he needed to call in a favor and get me a good job.”

  The former senator’s health had rapidly declined, his new irrelevance taking a bitter toll. After getting reelected for forty years, he’d become a lonely, ignored figure, and the butt of jokes all over Capitol Hill.

  “Thurston, I have no favors to call in,” Montoya said. “I can’t help anybody, including myself. Remember, I gave you a big break by putting you on the committee staff. We lost. You need to help yourself.”

  I could hear Dad pounding the table. “Such a weak, sniveling asshole,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to kill the little bastard and you’re going to help me.”

  He hung up.

  I flashed to West Virginia and immediately broke out in a sweat. Leaning back in my chair, I took a couple of deep breaths to calm down. As angry as he was, Dad was liable to do anything. But he probably wouldn’t attempt to pull off such a dangerous murder plot without an accomplice and alibi—meaning me—so I decided not to do anything unless he mentioned it again.

  One late afternoon, a few days later, I came back to work after running an errand, and the phone rang.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Dad barked. “Do you ever work?”

  Ignoring him, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to meet on Saturday morning at seven at the IHOP on Riverdale Road. Do you know the one I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Dad slammed the phone down.

  I groaned. I knew this was about Montoya.

  WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE RESTAURANT, Dad was sitting in a booth in the back, digging into his scrambled eggs. “Why are you late?” A huge gob of egg, toast, and jelly filled his mouth.

  “It’s a quarter to seven. I’m fifteen minutes early.”

  “Listen to me carefully. I’m going to kill that fucking little Mexican prick. And you’re going to help me.” He thrust his fork toward me.

  “Would you please keep your voice down?” I looked around the restaurant. Luckily no one was nearby.

  “The senator is too busy to make a few calls for me, but he wasn’t too busy to come up with a scheme to steal millions of dollars and not pay taxes on it. He got what he richly deserved. You and I are going to finish off the bastard.”

  “Dad, the senator lost. It happens all the time. He can’t help you, so leave him alone.”

  “You have a political job with the party that took my job. So now you know everything, pontificating like a self-righteous son of a bitch.”

  “No, I’m not going to help you. Never. Forget it. I meant what I said when we came back from West Virginia.”

  “Oh, hell, boy, I didn’t pay any attention. My plan will work, but you’ll have to do your part. The way you always have. I’ll call the senator and tell him I’m sorry for yelling at him. I’ll pretend my car is in the shop and ask him to pick me up. No one will know we got together that day. You’ll follow us in your car without him noticing. The senator and I will go to lunch in his car. Afterward, we’ll drive into the country, have a talk, and clear the air. And then, I’ll kill him and stick him in the trunk of his car. I’ll hide his car out of sight in the woods. You’ll pick me up at a rendezvous point. When the police find him dead in his trunk, no one will know who did it. You’ll be my alibi.”

  I pulled a few dollars out of my pocket and tossed them on the table. “I’m not having anything do with this. In fact, I’ll call the senator’s wife and let her know what you’re planning. If anything happens to him, I’ll go to the police.” I stood and walked away.

  Dad yelled, “Come back here, damn you.”

  A WEEK OR TWO WENT by before I heard from him again.

  “I have to see you tonight,” he said over the phone. “I need someone to talk to, and you’re the only one I can trust.” He would disown me as a traitor one minute and take me back as a loyalist the next if he needed something.

  “What’s wrong now?” I asked. Had he gone ahead and killed Montoya?

  “Plenty. Meet me at the same IHOP at eight.”

  The restaurant was nearly empty. Dad was in the same booth, and he’d already finished eating when I sat across from him. He looked at me and gave a tight smile.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I dropped Caroline off at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda yesterday at about five. We were supposed to meet at seven-thirty. After an hour of waiting in the parking lot, I walked through the mall looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found.”

  I relaxed in my seat, relieved it wasn’t about Montoya. Still, this sounded serious. Caroline hardly knew anyone in Bethesda, or even anyone in the entire DC area.

  “I finally gave up and went home. I wasn’t in the door five minutes when the Montgomery County Police Department called to tell me to come get her. They’d been calling for over an hour. Caroline was being held for shoplifting more than five thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.”

  “Oh my God. What happened at the police station?”

  “Nothing really. They made it easy. They agreed to drop all charges if she returned to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.”

  “Why do you think she did it?”

  “She’s been acting funny lately, like she missed home. And I’ve been gone a lot. She got upset when I talked on the phone about the things I needed to do. I guess she was listening in.”

  “Are you glad she’s gone?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “I called Mona and told her I’d be back on Saturday.”

  My breath caught, wondering how that conversation had gone. “What’d she say?”

  “I told her there would be
no discussion about the past three years, that I’d come and go as I goddamn well pleased, and that she needed to be ready at ten in the morning to help me unload. And she said fine.”

  His return to Mona was that simple.

  AS DAD SETTLED BACK IN WITH MONA, I sabotaged yet another relationship. Nothing had changed since I’d been with Molly. If anyone got too close, I would purposely break dates, act distracted, or come up with an excuse to get away as fast as possible. But as soon as I was alone, I regretted my behavior, though not enough to change it. Just beneath the surface, I was afraid that they would find out the truth—my dad was a violent criminal, I had been his accomplice, and, if that weren’t enough, my own mother didn’t love me. How could I ever be honest with them and introduce my family?

  One of my few female friends and several of my frat brothers urged me to make one more attempt to reconcile with Mom, thinking that all my troubles with women stemmed from my lousy relationship with her. If I really listened to her side of the story, they said, and asked for her forgiveness in a gentle, sincere way, maybe she and I could get past our history and start over. “Besides, every mom loves her children, right? And wants what’s best for them. It’s a rule.”

  Though they knew only cursory details about my family history, I felt lifted by their optimism as I took a week off in May just before Mother’s Day and drove to Albuquerque. Surely Mom would see me as a grown man now and treat me differently, no longer holding my childhood against me. Surely she’d want to help me.