Chapter 25
Aftermath
The next morning the wind was gone. As noisy as it had been, now it was silent. Marc and I and the boys had to work together to push one of the doors open. Snow had piled up against the side of the house, reaching almost to the windows. I assume this was a regular event for the locals, but I can tell you I was surprised. It’s hard to know how much snow actually fell, maybe just six or eight inches, but the wind had piled it up in places four or five feet high. All the streets around Marc’s house were still impassable. We could hear trucks with huge snowplows out pushing the snow around, but they seemed to be doing the main streets first. We probably spent the next two hours just trying to clear the area around his back door and out to his garage. It was a great time to have two teen boys.
Finally a city truck came by and cleared the street. With the street open, we finally had access to the rest of the town. Marc and I went off exploring, and left the boys to finish the shoveling. We walked down the middle of the street. None of the sidewalks were clear yet, and there was no traffic anyway. We took our time. Or, I should say, I took my time. I had never seen anything like this. Wherever the wind had been slowed by buildings, it had dropped its load of snow. Now they were like waves frozen in place, complete with crests that came to a sharp edge. It was amazing.
Eventually we got to the main street of town. It had been plowed, but the plowing had just pushed the snow up against the sidewalks, so the few people who were out walking like us, walked in the street. Cars that had been parked on the street were either completely buried by the combination of blizzard and snow plows, or we could see holes in the snow where some very energetic driver had managed to dig out his vehicle and drive it away.
We climbed over a ridge of snow and dropped down onto Main Street. Once there, we could see two squad cars, red lights flashing, parked in front of the hotel. Like the other pedestrians walking down the street, we headed to the hotel to see what was going on. One of the first things we noticed was that most of the trucks that had been parked in front of the hotel were now gone, leaving holes in the snow banks where they had been hours earlier.
It was a struggle to climb over the snow bank to get into the hotel, but we managed it. Inside, we found a lobby that looked like a tornado had struck. It appeared that every piece of furniture in the lobby had been smashed. Most of the tables in the restaurant were on their sides, or completely over turned. The bar was in place, but the shelves on the back bar were broken, and glass was scattered over the floor.
At the far end of the room stood five of the angry-men, none carrying rifles, and four policemen apparently interviewing them. At the other side of the room, standing near the registration desk, were three hotel employees looking at the men and at the mess. Judging by their facial expressions, if the hotel employees had been armed, there would be a gun fight going on.
We walked over to the hotel employees who were happy to tell their story, so happy they kept interrupting each other and getting louder and louder, ultimately shouting so the men at the opposite end of the room could hear every word. These guys were angry.
Their story goes something like this. When the blizzard initially hit, there were over one hundred men in the hotel, all of them too hung over to think much about the weather. Eventually they roused themselves and ordered food, and the early afternoon had gone by without much trouble. A few of them had gone to the door to look out at the storm, but they had not paid much attention, other than to comment on the noise from the wind and the draft that developed in the lobby. It was an old hotel and not weather-tight.
Later in the afternoon they had lined up at the bar and the trouble began. They were angry when told the beer was all gone, and things got worse when the liquor started running low. There might have been enough for half a glass of brandy each, but the first ones to the bar had several drinks and the guys at the back of the line got none. That led to some pushing and a few fist fights and the first table getting trashed as two bodies fell on it while wrestling. When the last of the brandy was gone, they cleaned out everything else, including some very expensive cognac that had been on the shelf for a dozen years. Then they started searching the hotel for more, coming around behind the bar to ensure the bartender was not hiding anything, and then searching the store room. They were rude, but so far not too dangerous. Eventually they settled down and slept.
It was the next day when things started getting completely out of hand. Around noon a couple guys tried to push their way out of the hotel, only to discover the street was closed, their trucks were buried, they were trapped. Meanwhile the wind kept rising, the draft in the lobby increased, and the whine of the wind through the cracks around windows and doors seemed to make everyone a little crazy.
Later in the afternoon they did another search of the building for liquor. When they found none, they started pressuring the bartender. Surely he knew where more liquor was. Why was he holding out on them? Was he looking to jack up the price? Was he a profiteer? Did he hate non-Sioux? Was he too stupid to know where the boss kept the extra liquor? It just kept getting worse and worse, nastier and nastier, and more and more intense. Finally one of the men had pulled out a gun and said he would use it if there wasn’t a bottle in front of him in five minutes.
At this point there were three employees in the hotel – the bartender, the young man at the registration desk, and the cook who was also doubling as waiter and basically running his backside off. All three said they would make a final search to see if they could find anything in a back room. Once out of sight of the crazy men with guns, they decided it was too dangerous to go back, so they took the stairs down to the tornado shelter in the basement. There was food and water down there to last twenty people three days. Ironically, there was also a case of pretty good wine. They closed and locked the door and left the crazy men to their own devices. Once they had heard pounding on various doors as the men came looking for them, but no one had tried to force the steel tornado door. The hotel employees had passed the time by reading tornado warning pamphlets (there was a complete set in three different languages),making up their own warning pamphlets with a pornographic twist, and enjoying the food and wine.
During the two days and nights they were down there, they could hear crashes up above, and some shouts, and even gun fire on the second night. Then this morning it sounded like all the men had gone running in the direction of the front door. Assuming that either meant the building was on fire or the men were all leaving the hotel, the employees had come out of their shelter and come up to the lobby to find what we were now seeing. As bad as things were in the lobby, they were worse in the kitchen as the men had stolen food, made poor efforts at cooking, and generally wrecked every cooking appliance in the hotel. The hotel employees had called the police and hoped every man in the hotel was arrested.
By the time the employees had finish telling us their story, the police were done with the angry-men. They checked IDs, wrote down names, and let the men go back to their rooms. While the other cops talked together, one came over to the hotel employees.
“It would help if you called the rooms to see who is left here. There are still some trucks on the street, so they didn’t all run off. Let’s see how many there are.”
“You are going to arrest them all, right?” asked the cook. Of the three hotel employees, he looked the most angry. They had messed up his kitchen, and now they were going to pay.
“The men we spoke with said they spent the last three days in their rooms. They know nothing about what happened down here. Whatever happened must have been done by the men who left this morning. That is their story.”
“They need to go to jail for criminal damage to property. You can’t destroy a hotel like this and then just drive away.”
“We have no witnesses unless someone comes down from his room to start pointing fingers. I suggest in the meantime you add damage charges to what cr
edit cards you have on file. Maybe they will pay.” He then went back to his colleagues. They seemed to be taking the event pretty lightly. They were also doing a lot of talking on their cell phones and seemed to be nodding lots. They were taking orders, it appeared, and they were very fine with whatever they were hearing.
Meanwhile the cook kept sputtering about his kitchen. It was Marc who settled him down. “Why not call Buffalo Man. He needs to know about this. But I think he will be glad these men have left. The tribe can restock your kitchen. In the meantime, it might be a good thing if you can’t cook. It might convince more of them to leave. And you,” he turned to the desk clerk. “I think it would be really helpful to know how many of these men are left. And when you talk with them, you might point out that both the bar and the restaurant will be closed for repairs that might take weeks. Let’s see if that clears the building.”
We turned to leave at that point, only to see “Charles” standing just inside the door. He was standing ramrod straight and surveying the damage. He must have heard our conversation, but he made no acknowledgement. He just waited until we were done and then walked over to the police.
Meanwhile, Marc and I went back out to the street. Several more men were digging their cars out. It appeared the exodus was continuing.
“Maybe it’s all over,” I offered. “The cold, the snow, the lack of beer, apparently that’s what was needed all along.”
“We can hope so. At least there will be fewer of them. But I fear the ones who are left will be the most dangerous. And there still is Foster.”
“Yes,” I answered, “There still is Foster.” On that glum note we walked back to Marc’s house. The boys had done a great job on the driveway and walks. But that was enough outdoors for them. We found them back at their videogames, happy to be back in doors. I can’t say I blamed them. The wind was down, but this was still Dakota in January, and the cold bit deep.
The Canadian Civil War: Volume 3 - West to the Wall Page 25
