Eagle, Kathleen (21 page)

Reese
waved, then dropped his hand to the back of Helen's neck and steered her toward
the dusky green and light tan tents. "More family," he said. The old
man stood as straight as a tent pole and nearly as tall as the man who
introduced him. "Uncle Silo, my mother's brother, the one they say I
favor."

"Sylvester,"
Reese's uncle said as he extended his hand to Helen. "Silo is the name
they hung on me long time ago." To Reese he said, "The old women are
waiting to see you. You know how they are. You got to go to them."

He
took them to a grassy pocket behind the tent where he'd been laying a fire in a
pit. There a barrel-shaped woman was planted deep in a folding lawn chair, her
foot in a cast and propped on a canvas camp stool, her diamond willow cane
close at hand. "Here's Auntie Lil," Silo said. "Still my little
round grain bin, but now she's kinda tipsy on her feet."

"Eee,
that one." Auntie Lil waved a weathered hand at her husband and squinted
at her nephew. "Come down here, my boy. This far away, I could mistake you
for your old uncle."

Reese
glanced at Helen, delight jigging in his dark eyes. "I'd better be
careful, then. I might get my ears boxed."

He
kissed her cheek first, then hunkered down beside the old woman's chair to let
her peer into his face by the light of the kerosene lamp hanging on a pole
behind her.

"Oh,
now I see. You're much prettier than that old thing." She mopped her neck
and chest with a blue bandanna. "Eee, it's been hot and dusty out here
today," she complained as she patted Reese's arm. "Summer's been hard
on us old people. I couldn't get up to the funeral, my boy. They had me in the
hospital with this bad foot I've got."

Reese
introduced Helen, who asked how Auntie Lil had hurt her foot.

The
old woman leaned forward, turned the walking cast to one side as if to show off
the damage. "I broke it last winter, and they can't get it to heal right.
Three times they've cut into it now. Old bones don't wanna mend, I guess."

"You
remember Gramma Mary from the funeral," Reese told Helen as a gray-haired
woman ducked through the opening in one of the tents. She seemed taller than
she actually was, regal in the way she carried herself in her buckskin dance
costume. "My father's sister."

"I
thought
I might see you again. I saw that look in your eye." The fringe on Gramma
Mary's sleeve swished with her proffered handshake. Reese chuckled behind her
back, but she turned her gentle charge on him. "You, too, Sonny, I saw you
looking at her. You think with these glasses I don't pick up on these things,
but I don't miss much. Glasses like this, they're sensitive to heat." She
shoved her thick lenses to the bridge of her nose with one hand while she
fluttered the other. "Those heat waves, they make the air kinda
shimmery-like. These glasses pick that up right away." She glanced at him
and laughed. "Ehhh, that's the look, all right."

Reese
laughed, too, but his face felt hot. He couldn't believe he was blushing.
"I'm not bringing any more women around you guys."

"This
is the first one you've brought home." Auntie Lil caught the surprise in
Helen's eyes and wagged a finger. "Saaay, look at the smile on her."

"They
have no mercy." Reese hooked one arm around Helen's neck and playfully
drew her to his side, a confessional claim. "Helen used to teach history
at the high school in Bad River."

"She
told me that when we were working in the kitchen. Said she knew you then,
before you went to the city," Gramma Mary said. "You're getting to
know each other again, looks like. What do you think of our boy being on the
council?"

Helen
nodded her approval. "I'm sure he'll do a fine job."

"If
they don't do a fine job on him first," Auntie Lil said. "Look what
they did to his dad."

Reese
stiffened. Beneath his arm he could feel Helen's parallel reaction. "What
do you mean?" he asked. "Have you heard something?"

"He
was speaking his mind about that casino business." Uncle Silo was
unfolding web-strap chairs for his guests. "Puts me in mind of that BIA
cattle program. You remember that program, my boy? That time I had cattle for a
while?"

"No,
Uncle, I don't think I was around then."

"I
almost got my head blown off that time."

"Seriously?"
With a gesture Reese invited Helen to take the chair while he squatted next to
his uncle at the edge of the fire pit. "What happened?"

"Well,
see, they were buying these cows with program money, got a few Indian operators
going, and then they were supposed to start up a tribal herd. We ranchers paid
on our loans with our heifers, see. We could sell our steers, but our heifers
were supposed to go into that new tribal herd. I delivered my heifers out to
the tribe's herd that one time, then fixed a flat tire on my pickup and went
off down the road. But in a little while I came back. I forgot my tire iron.
Really caught them cowboys by surprise. I seen what they was doing, too, kinda
rearranging the brands a little bit. So I tried to tell the superintendent. He
told me that my eyes were deceiving me." Reese scowled in disbelief.

Silo
laughed as he withdrew a book of matches from his shirt pocket. "That's
exactly what he said. 'Your eyes must be deceiving you, Silo. That's not what
those boys were doing.' " He waved the outrage away. "Shee-it, I know
my own brand. I know the Bad River Sioux Tribe brand. What they were putting on
those heifers was a whole lotta somethin' else. So the superintendent—it was
that Mosely then, remember that one?"

Reese
shook his head as he rolled some newspaper in anticipation of his uncle's need
for tinder. The reservation superintendent was an employee of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, and Bad River, like all reservations, had had its share of the
good, the bad, and the ugly, going all the way back to the days when they had
been called Indian agents.

"Well,
he was a slick one," Silo said. "He told me to just forget about it.
Like that picture we saw about the gangsters, remember that?" He looked up
at his wife for affirmation as he imitated some actor's delivery. "Fer-get
about it."

"But
you didn't," Reese said with a smile.

"Hell,
no. I tried to tell a couple of guys, and they said, 'Silo, you damn sure
better forget about it. Hell, you can't do nothin', and you might just get
hurt.' And then somebody went and shot a hole in the door of my pickup— damn
near killed me, except it went into the seat." Again he looked at Auntie
Lil. She pressed her lips together tightly, remembering. "This one says
I'd better shut up, so I shut up."

"Didn't
forget about it, though."

"Well,
I for sure shut up. But I guess I didn't forget about it." Slipping into
his gangster voice, Silo grinned as he struck a match. "Fer-get about
it."

Chuckling,
Reese touched the newspaper to Silo's flame and watched it flare. "What do
you think happened to Dad?"

"He
wouldn't shut up. That's all I know."

Reese
shoved his torch into the kindling in the fire pit. Sounded like Roy Blue Sky,
all right, he thought. Never could shut up.

So
now what?

"You
guys said you wanted me to do this," Reese said as he watched the flame
climb the carefully arranged ladder of firewood.

"Well,
yeah, you're his son. It's a good thing, you finishing out his term. That's the
way it's supposed to be. But you don't have to be sticking your neck out the
way your father did. You don't even have to say much. You just go to the
meetings, and you sit right in front of their faces, and you make them
remember."

Reese
looked his uncle in the eye. "I thought you said I was supposed to finish
the job he started."

"Finish
his
term.
Just go to the meetings and silently remind them. That's our
way, you know, us big Indians. They like to see them silent tears." Silo
sat back on his haunches. "Hell, you don't know nothin' about politics."

"Just
shut up and go to the meetings," Reese said.

"That's
the best way. You just watch the council at work. You got the talkers and the
ones that sit there and nod."

"Nod
off, you mean," Auntie Lil put in.

"Well,
you got those, too," Silo said. "But you play it smart and be one of
the nodders."

"Nod
and approve, or nod and vote my conscience? Or Dad's conscience? Tell you one
thing, this is one big Indian won't be showing any tears." Reese draped
his forearm over his upraised knee and eyed his uncle. "What do you want
from these casinos, Uncle?"

Silo
shrugged. "I want to win that Jeep they got sittin' in the lobby
there."

Reese
chuckled. "Which do you play, cards or slots?"

"I
don't play either one," Silo claimed, stealing a quick look at his wife.
She laughed and shook her head. "No, hey, I hardly go in there. Maybe the
nickel machines sometimes, but I don't get much out of it. It's kinda boring,
you want the truth." He tossed a handful of gray-green sage on the fire,
sending up a flurry of sparks. "But I wouldn't mind having that Jeep. I could
have some fun with that."

"What
do you expect the casinos to do for us? If we ever make a profit, what're we
going to do with it?"

"It's
jobs," Silo said. "That's one good thing. Those
Dah-
kotas out
there where you're staying now, do those guys really get half a million dollars
apiece every year off Mystic Lake?"

"You
mean our rich cousins?" Reese smiled at the emphasis his uncle gave to the
name for the eastern Sioux. "They get big money, Uncle. They only have maybe
a couple hundred tribal members, and they're situated near a big city, just
like that little tribe in Connecticut. Most Indian casinos will never pay out
like that."

"I
wasn't expecting it to. I guess what I expect is the usual. Program lasts a
couple of years, some outsiders get rich off it, then they go away and we've
got another building to argue over."

"This
isn't a program. It's a business."

"If
we start making money off it, I think we ought to create more business."

"Like
what?"

"I
don't know. They start up these plants on the rez, we always make something for
the army. You know, like camouflage net or something. We oughta make something
people need. Something they'll always need and they can only get from us."

Reese
laughed. "Talk to Bill Gates about hanging onto that kind of a deal."

"I
want the
jobs,"
Silo repeated, tossing another sprig of sage into
the flames. Reese filled his lungs with the pungent scent as he took in the old
man's answers. "I want our children to have a future, you know? Here,
where we live, where we've always lived."

"You
wouldn't put the money into schools or roads or health care?" Helen asked.
"Those things could stand some improvement, too. And housing."

"I
want us to be in charge of all those things for ourselves," Silo said.
"To build them for ourselves the way we want. Not the way the government
says we want."

"And
you think I should just sit there and nod," Reese said, glancing from his
uncle to his invalid aunt, who sat behind him in the deepening shadows. They'd
said it was the smart way, not the good way. And they hadn't used the word
"should."

"What
can you do in three months, my boy?" Silo asked. "Tell you what, you
keep your head down and you ride out your dad's term, shoulders square."

"Head
down, shoulders square," Reese echoed. "And my horse, does he hang
his head in this picture, too? Even with my head down, I'm still a pretty big
target."

Silo
laughed. It was a familiar image of the defeated Indian, and no one much liked
it anymore. "Me, too. I sure found that out."

"I've
already been to 'the end of the trail,' Uncle. I looked over that cliff.
Nothing down there. You either stand there forever hangin' your head over the
abyss, or you jump that sucker."

"Well,
you always had a hell of a stretch, Blue. I remember that time you took State
in the broad jump."

"There
you go, that's an example. Once you take off, you gotta go with it, lean
forward and fly as far as the wind will take you. No time to nod off."

Like
his Auntie Lil was doing now. He smiled when he noticed her chin resting on her
chest, his gaze shifting easily to Helen, sitting between the two old women who
had taken their turns mothering him whenever he'd allowed any mothering. It was
his turn to do for them and to care for Helen if she would let him. And he
would make her let him. Seeing her sandwiched between those dear old women,
between the bookends of their experience, he made up his mind to help her see
the perfect fit that he was looking at now. He wasn't going to lose her again.
He felt as though he'd finally awakened, and he wasn't going to nod off.

He
turned to his uncle again and to the crackling fire they'd started together.
"You think somebody murdered him?" he asked quietly.