Yellow Earth

by John Sayles

  “People marry across the tribes?”

  “Oh, sure, plenty of that, we got a long tradition of bringing new blood into the mix, white or Indian. It’s more how you live and who your family is that people care about.”

  Brent nods. “Yeah, me and my wife got a mixed marriage– she’s Baptist and I was raised Lutheran.”

  Harleigh smells the gas fumes from the back. He rolls his window up and punches the button for the fan. “So you’re looking for work?”

  Brent gives him a quick appraising look.

  “You must know about the oil play that’s coming here.”

  “Oh– I heard some talk.” This is the beginning, thinks Harleigh. It’s going to be like the Oklahoma Land Rush in the movies, people racing, crashing into each other. But this time it doesn’t end with us losing our land.

  “I’ve got a friend who’s a friend of a geologist who did a probe up here for some people. He says from the readouts they got it’s the real deal.”

  “So you’re a roughneck?”

  Brent laughs. “Hell no.”

  “You look like you do some kind of physical work.”

  “CrossFit. I toss a truck tire around for an hour every morning, box jumps, power cleans, lots of squats.”

  “So you’re what, a drilling engineer?”

  “You know, with all the technology they’ve got to throw at it these days, oil and gas exploration is still high-risk. Jinxed wells, environmental lawsuits, international price fixing– to me it’s a lot of potential headaches, and you need like mega capital to even get started. No, you look at the people who make sure money on any boom, going back to the California Gold Rush, it’s the ones who provide the goods and services to the crazy prospectors.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I’ve got some trucks down in Texas, hoping to set up an oilfield services company somewhere it’s not all sewn up already.”

  “This would be the spot.”

  He seems not to hear. “So I’m looking for the ideal space to stage it– good access to the highway, surrounded by drill sites.”

  “Seriously– plenty of opportunity here on the reservation.”

  Brent cuts a look to Harleigh.

  “You wouldn’t have to be a member?”

  “I think you’d find we’re offering better terms and lower taxes than Yellow Earth or any of the outside communities.”

  “But there must be special rules and regulations.”

  “Nothing too fancy.”

  Brent seems to consider, nodding his head. “Still,” he says, “I’d need a partner, who was, you know, in the tribe. One of the tribes. Knows the rules, knows the players, can guide me through it all.”

  Harleigh hands him one of his cards, his name above the arrow shaft and his office information printed below it. Brent seems impressed.

  “You?”

  Harleigh nods, keeping his eye on the road.

  “You’re the Chairman.”

  “For at least another two years.”

  “Get outta town! I’m on a reservation bigger than some states and I happen to hitch a ride with the chief– I mean the Chairman– of the whole deal!”

  “Don’t be too impressed.”

  “No, I am. It must be a hell of a job.”

  “I read this story,” says Harleigh, “about a tribe down in Mexico, where every year the elders choose a new head man. And once they got him picked, they sit him in a chair and for a whole day the former chiefs all sit around telling stories about what a wonderful guy he is.”

  “Good gig.”

  “Only the new man is sitting bare-assed in the chair, which has a hole cut in the seat and is situated directly over some hot coals they keep fanning. So all day long his ego gets a massage and his ass and balls get blistered. Just a reminder of what the job really is.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You get serious about this company,” says Harleigh, “you come look me up.”

  “Aren’t there rules against you being head of your council and–”

  “I got elected cause folks seen how well I run my cattle business. And I’ve been thinking about oil services already– the whole slew of things these outfits are going to need when they get up and going and prefer to subcontract.”

  “Can you hold a lease?”

  “The mineral rights on the rez are complicated, got tribal ownership, individual ownership– but the collateral stuff, hell, we try to encourage the entrepreneurial stuff whenever we can. People got to learn to do for themselves and not wait on the government to bail em out all the time.”

  Harleigh slows as he sees the Vette ahead on the side of the road.

  “That a ZR1?”

  “Bingo.”

  “What year?”

  “‘92.”

  “Good Lord.” They stop and get out of the pickup. The Corvette is red with a black top and looks like it’s speeding just sitting there.

  “Not your best pick for fuel efficiency,” says Brent with false modesty.

  “But it can fly, right?”

  “The thing is, the faster you go, the more the aerodynamics push you down to the road, increase the efficiency.”

  Harleigh takes a slow walk around the beautiful machine. Idaho plates, another thing you don’t see much on the reservation. “We got a couple stretches out here,” he says, “no traffic at all, you could let her rip.”

  “I had her up to 175 once, not a tremble. You should drive it some time, I think your legs will just fit.”

  Harleigh holds out his hand to shake. “All right, got to run, Brent, but you think about this service company idea. As many trucks as you can find, I got drivers on the enrollment, good ones, who can handle anything you put on the road.”

  “Been a pleasure, Chairman. You’ll be hearing from me.”

  Brent empties the gas can into the tank, watching the pickup grow smaller in the distance. He caps it off, pulls his cell phone from his boot. It vibrated twice during the ride from the filling station, almost made him jump.

  It’s Bunny.

  “Yeah, darlin, it’s looking good. Made contact, and he’s everything they say.”

  There is a prairie dog standing upright in its hole, maybe twenty yards from the edge of the road, staring at him. He’s spent a couple afternoons out on Cooter Landry’s flatbed setup, with the bass-fishing swivel chairs and the beer on ice and his Remington .22, whackin em and stackin em. You hit them anywhere but dead center they’ll do incredible flips before they flop to the ground.

  “Will do, darlin,” he tells his wife. He’s feeling pumped, the endorphins flooding into all the places they ought to be. This Harleigh seems he might even be some fun to hang with. “See you in twenty.”

  CARPET HOLDS ON TO the nasty stuff. People spill drinks, puke, drop their used safeties, which at least means they’re not clogging the toilets with them. Vic wanders the linoleum floor, probing for bubbled spots, trying to think with the hammering and power-tool whine on every side. You start up from scratch like this and you’ve got to be a bit of everything– politician with the local authorities, recruiter for the girls, accountant, contractor, and worst of all, an interior fucking designer. Button-tufted bonded leather banquettes are running a hundred twenty bucks a lineal foot. Some shit called Makrolon is less likely to scratch than acrylic, as if the slobberers at the tip rail won’t put up with wood flooring under their fantasy babes. How these people get his cell number is a mystery, and they won’t stop. Did he know that armless club chairs in real leather allow for greater customer density without sacrificing the Wow Factor? That a free-standing stage, lit from below, enhanced the atmosphere of interaction? Well the stacking chairs he just hauled over from Walmart don’t have any arms, and the main room that used to be the American Legion bar is dinky enough to force the hardhats and the hos to interact whether they like it or not. So carpet, yeah, there’s a guy lying on the floor stapling strips from what was on the floor of the post-Katrina club he ran in New Orleans, with a
repeating pattern of those mudflap girls who glow magenta when you throw the black lights on, to cover the sides of the little stage that sits flush to the wall. The stage is up three feet, just over table-top height, so when the girls crawl backwards and wiggle their moneymakers the boys don’t need to strain their necks. Had to explain that to the building codes guy before he got down to serious business and asked how often Vic was going to change dancers. And yes, hockey puck lighting alongside the stage ramp is what the girls are used to, continuous tread would only confuse them. They’re not fucking stewardesses.

  Vic watches the guy on the ladder bolting in the top sleeve for the pole and hopes he measured right. Nice high ceilings in these old buildings, so even three feet off the floor the pole can go up a ways. He’s put the stage over the section of floor that was really scabby, probably leakage from the old Legion bar, and had the electrician add two more outlets. Other than that it’s just slap some paint on the wainscoting, yellowed from the years when everybody smoked, and hang his good-luck disco ball, veteran of a dozen clubs, when these clowns stop waving their Makitas around. It’s a strip bar, not a fucking gentleman’s club.

  The ladder guy– kid, really, looks like he’s just out of high school– drops a plumb bob from the ceiling collar and gives it a little jerk, the point of the bob marking the soft wood flooring. Spike heels will do a number on any surface, but black paint is cheap, and that’s what Sundays are for. The sheriff steps in.

  “I was hoping you’d stop by,” says Vic, heading for him with his hand extended. Youngish guy, doesn’t look like too much of a tight-ass. “Vic Barboni.”

  The sheriff shakes his hand without much enthusiasm, looking around. “I thought you were opening this Saturday?”

  “Oh, we’ll be open, all right– just kind of a taste of things to come. Mondays are actually are our second-best night, the regulars all come to see who the new girls are. You need to see my paperwork?”

  “No, the mayor told me you’re all insured and permissioned, you and the fella next door.”

  “Next door?”

  The sheriff deadpans him. “In the old pharmacy. Liquor license just come through this morning. Gonna call it ‘Teasers’ I believe.”

  Which means they’re a week, maybe two behind him. Fuck.

  “I’ll have my own security, of course,” says Vic, “but it’s a comfort knowing you and your boys are out there for backup. How big’s your department?”

  “There’s me and one patrol deputy per shift, plus always somebody on the phone.”

  “For the whole county?”

  “Wasn’t enough before,” says the sheriff, “won’t be near enough for what’s coming.”

  “Damn.”

  The kid is on his knees now, power-drilling holes for the bottom support. The sheriff raises his voice over the noise.

  “I don’t want anybody selling out of here,” he says. “And if your girls are making dates, it better be for off the premises.”

  Vic holds out his hands to indicate the room, filled with workmen and construction stuff. “Not enough space here for hanky-panky, and I ride tight herd on the girls. The drugs, I got you– my boys keep an eye out for who’s visiting the john a little too often. As for fights, well, they are called roughnecks.”

  “You close at twelve-thirty.”

  “Twelve-thirty sharp.”

  Vic sneezes into his handkerchief. The sawdust and the plaster dust on top of what seems to always be blowing outside–

  “How many entrances?”

  “Just one for the customers. Right now I’m thinking it’s that side door, we’ll have a fella on, somebody they take serious, looking out for weapons.” He grins at the sheriff. “If only we could make them check their attitude at the door.”

  “The less I hear about this place, the happier I’ll be.”

  “I hear you.” This is how I must make the girls feel when I lay down the law, thinks Vic. Like the fucking vice principal. “Listen,” he asks, hoping to divert the offensive, “is there an ATM machine in this town?”

  “One at the bank.”

  “They said it’s down.”

  The sheriff shrugs. “There’s Bismarck down the road.”

  Vic ran Boobie’s Palace in Fairbanks for three years, steady money in a full-nude, full-liquor, full-contact state till the weather and the bare-bones nature of the town finally got to him. This will be a challenge, and now with some sleazebag setting up right next door–

  “Three deputies,” muses Vic, watching a pair of the workmen try to carry the bar counter in from the front without denting it.

  “Two right now,” says the sheriff. “Had one quit yesterday, sign on with one of these oil service outfits.”

  “You people don’t get paid enough.”

  “Public servants.”

  The sheriff goes then. The best you can hope is that they’re not some kind of bedrock Christians, or gimme gimme cops like some he could name in New Orleans, and that they’re actually competent when you need them. Vic has asked the police to arrest one of his own employees more that once. The lighting guy from Dallas calls, lost on the highway with a van full of LEDs and stage spots, and the kid is pulling the brand-new pole out of its long box when a biker comes in, something like a smirk between the sides of his Fu Manchu moustache.

  Familiar mug, but there have been so many.

  “Odessa?” says Vic. “Okie City? Reno?”

  “Daytona Beach,” says the guy, turning sideways to show off his name, running down his left arm in flaming letters.

  “Scorch.”

  “How you doing, Vic?” asks the bouncer. One of the good ones. One of the best.

  “Up to my neck, as usual. We open Saturday.”

  “Don’t look like it.”

  “Hell, we’ll sweep anything that’s still loose under the stage. What you doing here?”

  Scorch shrugs. He was a real find, totally up front about his time in the joint, never looking for a fight, a natural born drunk-whisperer.

  “I got this buddy, Brent, he said there’s money to be made.”

  “He ain’t lying to you. My oil patch connections say it’s gonna be a whopper.”

  With Katrina it had been the cleanup crews, a lot of them Mexican but good spenders with some tequila under the belt, then the pipeline in Alaska, and Florida just a magnet for horny guys with laps that needed sitting on.

  “What’s your plan?”

  Scary-looking fuck, Scorch, you think twice about messing with him if you’ve got half your brain cells still functioning, but smart. Knows the racket.

  “I figure I’ll run three, four girls a week to begin with,” Vic says, “pay their way out here, maybe even a base salary, let them keep fifteen out of twenty on the lap dances. Then when the full boom hits and we’re turning riggers away at the door I’ll charge the girls a club fee, maybe two hundred a night, as many as want a crack at the floor, and they keep whatever they can hustle.”

  “Plus you always got the cover charge and the liquor.”

  “This won’t be a mixed-drinks kind of crowd, but my bartenders will keep pouring, yeah.”

  “Security?”

  “I’ve already brought on a couple muscle-heads, look like they won’t trip on their own dicks. I got a little phone-booth private room back there that’ll need a watchdog, got the floor, the door– you interested?”

  “How much you paying?”

  He was good with the staff, this Scorch, if memory serves, kept his hands off the girls, and if he was slinging anything on the side he was so discreet it never got back to Vic. One less headache if you got a guy like that keeping a lid on the place.

  “What say I give you a two-hundred-a-week bump over the other guys, have you run the whole deal? Hire and fire if you have to, set the tone.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The kid is jockeying the extendable pole into the fixed sleeves, twisting the chrome till it’s tight as it goes. They’re only one door down from t
he Amtrak station, right on a main drag, plenty of parking. A beautiful spot. The kid jumps up, hugging his knees around the pole, sways side-to-side, then steps away to look at it. Solid as a rock. Scorch grins his devil grin.

  “Kind of like raising the flag, ain’t it?”

  THE CIVIL WAR DID it for Lincoln. For TR it was surviving his ‘crowded hour’ on San Juan Hill, and the Depression and Second World War made FDR. This is far from a national arena, of course, but you got to ride the bronco you draw. Senator Prescott Earle, Governor Prescott Earle– why the hell not?

  “The mayor is acutely aware of what’s going on.”

  Jonesy from the next room. Father a state trooper, mother a hospital administrator, she was fluent in Official by the eighth grade.

  “The companies are still only in their exploratory phase now, but the mayor is preparing a projected impact report for the next city commission meeting.”

  She can sling it with the best of them, Jonesy. ‘Projected impact.’ As if you can know who’s going to get squashed by the meteor and who’s going to escape. Or better, into whose pockets all this money is going to fall–

  “I will inform the mayor. We appreciate your call.”

  Jonesy has been appreciating over a hundred calls a day since the big outfits took their landmen off the leash. Press raises his voice to call to her–

  “Get the Frack Out, or Drill Baby Drill?”

  They leave the door half-open to spare their tonsils. “Just a concerned citizen. Wondered if there was oil under city hall.”

  “That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Press gets up to stretch his legs, wanders in to Jonesy’s domain. She coaches soccer and works with a half-dozen team photos behind her head. “Which one does my three o’clock rep again?”

  “He’s from Case and Crosby. Mr. Rushmore.”

  “Texas?”

  “Texas, Oklahoma, quite a bit in Pennsylvania lately, oil sands in Canada.”

  “Behave themselves?”

  “When they break something they tend to settle.”

  “Deep pockets.”

  She stops working the computer keys, leans back. “It’s a popular stock with aggressive investors.”