Authors: Julie Hockley
A NEW CHAPTER
On Christmas Day, Griff had given me a gift. A location. It wasn’t what I had expected.
Not the barn, where Pop’s secret underground drug lair was. Because, as he explained
it, we would have been shot down before we had even come within a mile of the p
lace.
What Griff had given me was Pop’s actual home address on the reserva
tion.
But it had come at a cost. I didn’t know what he had had to give to get the information,
but by the withdrawn look in his eyes, it wasn’t
good.
We left my parents’ house as quickly as I could get out of there, after many concerned
hugs from Maria and Darlene. My brother’s boxes were loaded on the backseat, leaving
Meatball just enough room to sit and glare a
t me.
Griff pulled my hand from my lap and squeezed it. “What’s the
plan?”
“You’ll
see.”
“Won’t your parents be upset that you left on Christmas Day, before they had a chance
to say good
-bye?”
I tried to not burst into laug
hter.
With every mile that we drove, I grew more nervous. Preparing different versions of
my speech in my head. What Pops would say, how I would respond. I realized it was
Christmas Day and that his entire family would probably be there. I would have to
be prepared for that too. Above all, hiding the pregnancy was key—not just for our
safety but for business’s sake. Which drug baron would want to team up with a pregnant
girl?
While I silently rehearsed my lines, Griff interrupted my thou
ghts.
“I want to marry you,” he announced, glancing back a
t me.
It took a second to focus on what he said t
o me.
“Like, right
now?”
“If you
want.”
“Why do you want to marry me? Because I’m pregnant? I’m not going to marry you just
because it’s convenient. That’s what my parents did. I won’t do
that.”
“Fine. Then marry me because you lov
e me.”
I held my breath and shook my head, never breaking eye contact. And I could see the
fissures cracking through
him.
“I understand,” he
said.
I squeezed his hand. “I do love you, Griff. I love you so much,
but—”
“But you don’t love me like that, I ge
t it.”
“I don’t love you like you deserve to be l
oved.”
He took a breath. “Will you ever love me? Like
that?”
“I don’t know,” I confe
ssed.
“Do you
want
to love me? Like
that?”
“I do,” I answered with no hesita
tion.
He forced a smile through the mask of pain. “Then that’s enough fo
r me.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. Griff’s announcement had been enough to
distract me from the leap a
head.
For some stupid reason, I had expected that the landscape would change as soon as
we drove into the reservation. But there were no teepees or men walking around in
moccasins. Mostly, the landscape was as cold and barren as it had been outside the
reservation. The only change I noticed was the poverty. Tiny wooden shacks sitting
on patches of mud, crumbling tin roofs, windows blocked with newspaper to keep winter
out. Each with a satellite dish sticking out the
side.
It took Griff and me a while to find Pops’s house. The roads were not clearly delineated,
and neither were the address numbers on people’s homes. It was as though they all
wanted to be shut in and forgotten. Griff and I actually drove past Pops’s house twice
because we were looking for a drug lord’s mansion. But his house was only slightly
better than his tribesm
en’s.
My old car took a beating as we drove down the potholed driveway. The windows were
curtained, as opposed to newspapered. There was no visible satellite dish and only
two cars in the driveway. I leaned over the seat and took a map out of Bill’s boxes,
reassuring Meatball with a rub of the ears before getting out of the
car.
The old woman who opened the door looked a little shocked to see Griff and me standing
at her doorstep on Christmas Day. A waft of turkey roasting and carrots boiling on
the stove came to the door with
her.
“Hi. My name is Emily,” I announced. “I’m sorry to disrupt your Christmas dinner,
but I need to speak with Pops. Pl
ease.”
The woman’s hair was gray and pulled back in a bun. Under her apron, she was wearing
a blue polyester suit and polka-dot blouse. Her Christmas
best.
She glanced at us, un
sure.
My heart was beating bongo drums. I had to stuff my hand in my jacket pockets so that
she couldn’t see how badly my hands were shaking. Griff put his arm around my shoulder,
which helped to calm me but it wasn’t enough to stop my teeth from chattering. The
cold, the nerves were getting under my
skin.
Probably realizing that a girl who looked more scared than a turkey on Christmas wouldn’t
be much of a threat to her, the old lady grinned and moved aside to let u
s in.
With a wave of her hand, the woman brought us to a living room of sky-blue couches
and navy-blue lampshades that matched the color of her suit. So she really liked the
color
blue.
She left us sitting on the couch. The minutes that passed seemed to turn into hours.
My apprehension was overwhelming, pushing against my skin like the devil trying to
escape. I just couldn’t sit still anymore, so I got up and walked around the room.
There were a few framed pictures on the walls. One of Pops outside in rubber boots.
Next to that one was a yellowed one of a kid who looked like a mini-version of his
son, Hawk. And then there was a more recent one with Pops and Hawk, each with an arm
around the old lady who liked
blue.
I walked to the corner, where a black woodstove was blazing. There was a black and
white framed poster near it. I stood, warming my shaky hands over the stove, my eyes
on the poster. It was a picture of wrinkled old hands open on the bottom corner, with
a white dove flying out of the other co
rner.
“Do you like it?” someone asked from be
hind.
I spun around. Pops was standing by the door in his rubber boots. His son, Hawk, towered
behind him with a load of chopped wood in his
arms.
“What does it
mean?”
He removed his boots and stuck his socked feet into burgundy slippers. “Have you ever
heard of the expression, ‘If you love something, let i
t go’?”
Of course I had heard it before. “If it comes back to you, it’s yours for
ever.”
“And if it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with,” he fini
shed.
I hated that expression. Did anyone ever bother to ask the bird how it felt about
this little experi
ment?
“So, do you like the picture?” Pops asked me a
gain.
“Not any
more.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But until I have pictures of my grandchildren to put up,
it fills the empty s
pace.”
I turned to him. “You’re not surprised to see me?” What I was really wondering was
whether he was upset that I had found him, in his own home. And whether he was in
a killing
mood.
He touched my arm and motioned for me to sit back on the couch next to Griff, who
sat tranquilly but motionless, exami
ning.
“Surprised? No. Happy? Yes. Though I am surprised to see your change in com
pany.”
“This is Griff,” I told
him.
Pops scanned Griff’s face and smiled, extending his hand to shake Griff’s. Then he
backed up to sit in the powder-blue La-Z-Boy on the opposite wall, letting his slippered
feet fli
p up.
“My son, Hawk,” Pops said to Griff, nodding toward his son, who had come to stand
next to his father’s chair after stacking the wood by the s
tove.
“How many grandchildren do you have?” I asked Pops, making small
talk.
“None. That’s the pro
blem.”
Hawk eyed me dangerously. “What is this about? Who sent you
here?”
“No one. I’m here of my own accord.” I cleared my th
roat.
A quizzical look came over both their express
ions.
“Well?” Hawk pre
ssed.
“I’m here because,” I stammered, “I’m here because I have a business proposition for
you.”
Hawk let a laugh without a smile escape him. “You? You have a business proposition?
Fo
r us?”
I was losing my n
erve.
Griff gently knocked his knees against mine to urge me for
ward.
I inhaled and kept my eyes on Pops. He hadn’t laughed but had kept a questioning watch
over Griff and me. Was he wondering where Cameron was? Did he even know about Cameron’s
death? Had he been dealing directly with Spider now? Could I really trust him? Was
I an absolute idiot for thinking that I c
ould?
If Pops had questions, he remained si
lent.
“A few years ago, my brother, Bill, came to you with a proposition. You took a chance
on him, and he didn’t disappoint
you.”
“And now you are coming to offer us the same thing your brother offered us years ago?
Something we already have?” Hawk’s tone was deba
sing.
I held his stare for an extra second before answering. “I’m here to offer you something
be
tter.”
I pulled out a marker and the map I had taken from Bill’s box and spread it on the
coffee t
able.
“The country is about to undergo a major pharmaceuticals shortage. Which means that
there will be a very high black-market demand for all prescription d
rugs.”
“And how do you know this?” Hawk inqu
ired.
I uncapped the red marker. My hands were steady. “Because my family is about to create
the shortage. Chappelle de Marseille is the biggest pharmaceuticals company in the
United States, and it’s about to close its doors.” My parents were in too deep. They
would not be able to save the Sheppards, and the Tremblays were going to go down with
them, unless they got a better deal—fro
m me.
I drew large circles on the map. New York. California. Arizona. Nevada. And then I
moved to Canada. Ontario. Quebec. “These places all have protected lands that are
occupied by Native American tr
ibes.”
Hawk guffawed. “Only a white girl would bunch all Native Americans into one big group.
The territories you’re pointing out belong to different tribes. Siouan, Shawnee, Lumbee,
Chipp
ewa …”
Pops placed a hand over his son’s chest, silencing
him.
“I realize that,” I continued, realizing how ignorant that first remark had sounded.
But I wasn’t done. “Because you all do have something in common: oppression, thievery,
lies, evictions. The kidnapping and reeducating of your children. And now, an epidemic
of drug and alcohol abuse among them. Extreme poverty. You may be of different tribes,
but your pain is mirrored. All of your tribes are dwindling in numbers, and the government
is taking more from you every day until eventually your children will die too young,
be assimilated, or be forced to leave the land for
good.”
Pops managed to sluggishly cross one foot over the other. The soles of his slippers
were only hanging by a few threads. “And yet we are still here. We don’t wallow in
our plight, young Emily. We have fought and won many wars. This fight we will win
too.”
I put the cap back on the marker and leaned back into the sofa. “For years, millions
of dollars have been allocated by North American governments to Native American tribes
as so-called reparation for the wrongs committed in the past. How much of this money
have you and your tribesmen actually
seen?”
“I am reminded of an old Cree proverb,” Pops said stoically. “‘
Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last
fish has been caught will we realize that we can’t eat money.’
I am not a political soul, Emily. Any money from a government is of no use to us.
No wrongs can ever be righted with m
oney.”
He was a proud man. He was a generous man. A man who made millions but wouldn’t keep
enough for himself to buy a decent pair of slip
pers.
“But you realize that, right now, your people need money and purpose to thrive, to
fight, and that the money you’re making from the drug shipments and the marijuana
will never be enough to help all of your tribe
smen.”
I could tell by the look of dismay in his expression that I had hit a deep nerve.
“What is it you’re propo
sing?”
My voice hit a deeper, stronger octave. “I’m proposing that we become partners. I
have the family contacts to make the best pharmaceuticals money can buy, and you have
the ability to get these into the country. We could team up with all tribes across
North America and supply the people with cheap d
rugs.”
Pops folded his arms over his extended belly. “We did hear of Chappelle de Marseille
moving its business out of the country. But you may not be aware that Advantis and
Chemfree have just announced a merger. This will make up for Chappelle de Marseille
closing its d
oors.”
“Yes. I’m aware of that. But Advantis and Chemfree are two small companies that only
have very few factories, all of which are in the United States. It will take them
years to be big enough to supply enough for the whole of North America. In the meantime,
they will have monopoly over the pharmaceuticals market, and they will jack up the
price of the drugs that people need to survive. People will be looking for a cheaper,
better alternative, and this will b
e us.”