by Darrel Bird
Indian lands. As he drove he began to see the poverty stricken trailer houses parked by the side of the road. Trash littered almost every yard, and most had an old car or two on blocks. He passed a neat double wide trailer just before he entered the cluttered little town. He spied a gas station/general store, and his tires crunched on new gravel as he pulled up to the pumps. A young man of about seventeen years old walked out of the store.
“Fill it will you?” He smiled at the boy. The boy didn’t return the smile as he walked into the store. He selected a bottle of water and walked to the counter to pay where a young girl stood smacking her gum.
“Water is on the house if you’re filling.” The girl smiled at him.
“I’m filling.”
“You can pay Joe outside if its cash.”
“Thanks.” He opened the bottle, and swallowed twice before screwing the lid back on.
When he got back to the car the man was waiting, “That your dog?”
“Yes, he’s more my partner. He’s kind of independent.”
“Nice dog.”
Gordon seized on that to try to begin making some friends, because he knew that if he didn’t his job would be twice as difficult here.
“Would you know who I could see about some land near the casino?”
Immediately he saw the face become guarded, “You might talk to Mary Abonito. She lives in the double wide you saw on the edge of town. She is the assistant to the chairman. Go ahead and talk to her if you want, but the land around the casino is already taken up.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
Gordon drove the short distance to the house, and pulled the car into the driveway. “Stay here Satch.” He un-wrapped a sandwich and gave it to the dog.
He walked across the well kept yard and knocked on the door. A woman about sixty years old answered the door. She had a shawl pulled over her shoulders. She looked at him with cold eyes as she waited for him to speak.
“Hello ma’am, I am Gordon Masterson with the FBI, I was sent here to investigate the two murders that happened recently out on the county road. Could I bother you with a few questions?”
“Talk.” She said, as if she was talking with the tree in the yard.
“Out here?”
She jerked her head at the living room, and he followed her into the room after very carefully closing the door behind him. He wouldn’t have thought he was afraid of her, more like he would follow his mother for a good talk for stealing cookies. The woman had an air about her that told you she bore no non-sense from anyone, not him, or the president of the United States.
He had the feeling that he had better not lie to her one little bit. After he was seated in a chair with neatly crocheted multi-colored throws covering the back of the chair, she spoke, “Why are they sending an FBI agent to investigate a local murder? I notice you are an apple, maybe Blackfoot.”
“You may be justified in seeing me as apple, red on the outside, white on the inside, but all I remember is the days of hunger, and abject poverty I spent until I left the res for good. I really wish I had been sent anywhere else than here. If you blame me for that, it is your prerogative, and I really don’t care.”
“As for the murders, I may not have been clear enough; the main office in Washington thinks the murders might be tied to the disagreement over the proposed casino. They picked me because their computers uncovered my Indian roots. I guess they thought I would fit in better.”
“What is your Indian name?”
“My Indian name…was…Gordon Longpine. I don’t know how to translate it into Blackfoot, my mother never told me. We’ve made introductions, could we get back to business Ma’am?”
“Don’t be brash young man. If you want my help you will not be brash, and you will speak when spoken to!”
“Yes ma’am.” He returned in a small voice. He felt like he could sink right into the floor, and he felt as if he was in the presence of goodness, and greatness. He wasn’t use to being around people with such great pride, dignity, and confidence in themselves. Most of the time the confidence he encountered came with belligerence attached to it.
“We are the smallest reservation in the United States, and consequently an excuse for the millions the Bureau of Indian Affairs steals from the tribes, or at least one of the excuses. When the BIA steals a million or two they cry to congress about the condition of this res, no roads, no schools, no jobs and no food, and of course, no one investigates tiny Montana Blackfoot reservations, because, who cares? The drug problem here is huge because they get our young people to sell the drugs, and hide them for them on the res. The Mexican drug cartels owns this end of Montana, and if the tribal police interfere, they come up missing real quick. Times have changed in the last twenty years Mr. Masterson, yes, you had to grow up in the poverty, and I’m sorry for it, but now the BIA is stealing more, and the drugs are taking more of our children. I fear we will just disappear from the earth, and our spirits will intertwine with those of our ancestors, way up high in the pines from whence your name comes. Go home Gordon, they will kill you, and you will end up another one of my lost children.”
Her shoulders slumped for the first time, as he stared at her, tears hugging the backs of her eyes.
“Ma’am, may I come back another time? I need time to think.”
“You have the information that you need Gordon, go home, tell your bosses that the murders are not connected, and they are just a local matter.”
“But the murders are more than likely connected! Who else would have an interest in two out of town surveyors?”
“Go home. Lie about it. Go home Gordon.”
He drove all the way back to White Peak without even looking at the dog. The dog looked at him, whined, and finally crawled over to lay his head on his lap. Morgan scratched the dog behind the ears without thinking as he drove.
He lay on the bed with his hands behind his head in the Elkhorn Motel until two in the morning before sleep claimed him.
He arose about seven, and walked down to the coffee shop. Sarah was off, and a middle aged woman made his coffee. Two cups of two shots each Americana, and he was on his way to the sheriffs’ office holding a paper cup in each hand.
When he entered his section of the office, he slipped the cap off one of the coffees, and threw his feet across the desk.
The sheriff stuck his head in the door, “You look comfortable Masterson, you already done here?”
“Sheriff, do you have time to come in and close the door a while?”
“Aside from a couple family altercations yesterday and a drunk down in the tank from last night I’m good for the time being, what can I help you with?”
“Can I ask you some questions, and get a straight up answer without the good old boy crap I’ve been getting?”
The sheriff stood thoughtfully for a full minute, walked in, grabbed one of the coffee’s off the desk, and sat down, “Since we are good buddies here, you won’t mind the coffee, I can’t afford the good stuff on my pay.”
“I’ll gladly trade that coffee for some real help sheriff.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you think those two were murdered because of local objections to a casino?”
“No, even though a casino, besides needed dollars, would bring law enforcement problems to our peaceful little town. Frankly, I’m not used to straight shooters coming in here from outside though, what’s your stake in it? And I expect you to be just as honest as you want me to be.”
“To be truthful I didn’t even want to come out here sheriff. I left the res a long time ago, and had no intention of coming back, but here I am. From what I am finding out though the res Indians are up to their ass in alligators with the BIA furnishing the alligators. I have a picture I don’t like, but sheriff, I’ve never run from a fight, and I’m not going to start now.”
“You’ve been talking to Mary Abonito have you?”
“Yes, what do you think of her?”
“I don’t usually think of a pe
rson as being holy, but if she had been a Catholic she would have made the saint pile. She scares the shit out of people on the res, including me. The council doesn’t dare fire her, because they know the people would come for them all.”
“What about the rest of the council?”
“The rest? They don’t wipe until BIA hands them the toilet paper, but you really can’t blame them, they need to eat same as anyone else. The Indians can’t even sue BIA because it has sovereign immunity.”
“Who do you think might have killed the surveyors?”
“I think it was probably a thug or thugs out of Billings, or maybe even from around here, but the order came from way up the food chain. It was a paid killing, of that I am almost sure. They were probably killed on the res, and dumped by the road. They were shot in the back while they were surveying. One of them had the glass, and one had the pole. They were dropped while they worked. I think they were downed at about the same time, by two people with rifles and scopes, and then hauled down by the highway. I can’t go on the res to search for the place where they were killed. The reason it falls in my bailiwick is because they were actually found in the county since the right of way goes back fifteen feet,