Listen to the Silence

by Marcia Muller

  DON’T ASK FOR CREDIT. YOU DON’T DESERVE IT.

  ALL OUR ROADKILL GUARANTEED FRESH.

  BURGERS COOKED TO SATISFACTION—JIMMY D’S.

  NO FRIES SERVED HERE. JIMMY D DON’T LIKE THEM.

  YOU GOT A COMPLAINT, TAKE IT OUTSIDE.

  “It ought to be called the Attitude Cafe,” I told Hy as we sat down at the end of the counter.

  A man in a long white apron was flipping eggs on a griddle, his back to us. “Hey, Ed,” he called over his shoulder, “you’re here pretty late. Got a hangover again?”

  “Screw you, Jimmy D,” Ed, a diner in mechanic’s overalls, said.

  Jimmy D. Bearpaw was short and built like a fire-plug, but his movements were as quick as a man half his girth. He dashed from the eggs to another griddle covered with frying bacon and sausage, tended to them, then darted back to the eggs and slid them onto plates. His long hair was tied up in a net and his apron smeared with various unwholesome substances. When he turned to send the filled plates skidding along the counter, I saw he was good-looking in a rough-hewn, broken-nosed way. He grinned and made a high sign at a woman who had just come in, and several gold fillings flashed. As he worked, he engaged in a grating monologue that made me wonder why anybody wanted to eat at his establishment.

  “Jeez, Ed, you oughta leave the Green Death alone. Ask Harley, if you don’ believe old Jimmy D. I caught him pukin’ his guts out behind the Buckhorn last night on account of that swill.”

  “Screw you, Jimmy D,” Ed said.

  “Course, then there’s Sandy over there. She’s gettin’ downright chubby from all that sweet wine she puts away. I was checkin’ her garbage bin the other day and—whoo-ee!”

  Sandy, whoever she was, ignored him.

  Jimmy D took off on Ed’s wife’s equally bad weight and drinking problems as a weary-looking waitress in a T-shirt that read I SURVIVED THE CATTLEMAN’S CAFE came to take our order. Hy stared at me in astonishment as I asked for corned beef hash with fried eggs and toast and a side of biscuits and gravy. After he’d ordered a cheese omelet, he said, “I’ve never seen you eat a breakfast like that, McCone.”

  “No? Must be the mountain air. That particular combo just sounded like my idea of heaven.”

  “Biscuits and gravy? Cholesterol city. And the hash’ll be that awful stuff out of a can.”

  “That’s what it’s supposed to be for hash and eggs. As for cholesterol, I didn’t notice you telling her to hold the home fries. And your cheese’ll be Velveeta.”

  “One person’s poison…” He sipped coffee, and we listened to Jimmy D complain about the new traffic light that didn’t cycle properly.

  “Highway department’s got its head up its butt, giving us somethin’ like that. Where do they think this is, anyway? L. fuckin’ A?” The waitress picked up three plates for one of the window tables and he added, “Christ, Angela, you get any slower, I’m gonna have to buy you one of those motorized wheelchairs! You’re almost as slow as Ed over there, and that’s slower’n a snail. You don’ believe Jimmy D, just ask Ed’s missus.”

  Ed, a man of great originality, said, “Screw you, Jimmy D.”

  As before, Bearpaw ignored him. “Hey, any of you hear about that woman lawyer, Blackhawk, almost got whacked in Boise the other night? The one our Modoc Council got to fight that developer from down south, the one who’s tryin’ to put a resort on Spirit Lake?”

  At last—something interesting.

  “Hit-and-run, and you can bet that developer had his greedy paws in it, on the wheel of the car or not. I tell you, things’re gettin’ ugly, and we all better watch out. Next thing you know, old Jordan Stump or Carleton Westley or yours truly’ll end up whacked. Shit, man, any of us who want to see the land left alone is in trouble. You don’ believe Jimmy D, just—”

  I said, “What’s this about putting a resort on Spirit Lake?”

  Jimmy D paused in the process of sliding my eggs onto my hash. “You a reporter?”

  “Environmentalist. What’s going on up here?”

  He snapped his fingers and Angela handed him Hy’s plate, so he could come along the counter and set them in front of us. “You just passing through?”

  “Well, we’re not sure. I’m Sharon Ripinsky, and this is my husband Hy. You’ve probably heard of him: he helped save Tufa Lake, and he’s chairman of the Spaulding Foundation.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, sure.” Jimmy D’s expression said he hadn’t a clue as to where Tufa Lake was or the function of the foundation. “Your group does good work, man.”

  “Thanks,” Hy said ironically.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “we drove up from the Bay Area so I could try to trace some relatives I think may live around here. I’m Shoshone, and part of the family migrated over from Idaho in the early nineteen-hundreds. If Hy and I like it here, we might stay.”

  “Is that a fact? I guess the cost of living down there gets to you after a while.”

  “Cost of living, traffic, crime, pollution—you name it.”

  “Well, you’ve come to God’s country. Even our crime rate’s down this year—off seven percent for felonies, fourteen for misdemeanors. What’s the name of these relatives?”

  “Tendoy.” I’d already checked the phone book and found none listed.

  “Don’t know them. What you might do is go see the folks at the Modoc Tribal Council office down the street at the corner of Cottonwood. We’re the only Indian organization in town.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try that.”

  Jimmy D motioned at my copy of the newspaper. “You thinking of looking at houses?”

  “At the ads, anyway, to get an idea of prices.”

  “In a word: cheap. And I just happen to have a house for sale. Nice little place outside of town on a couple of acres. Tell you what: You scope out the area today; I guarantee you’ll love it. Then tonight you meet me at the house after I close up here. Around nine, say. I’ll show it to you.”

  I flashed an uncertain glance at Hy. “What d’you think, sweetheart?”

  He nearly choked on his coffee. “Well, baby, no harm in looking, is there?”

  “None at all,” Jimmy D said, and began writing directions on a napkin. “You won’t regret this, I guarantee it.”

  The Modoc Council office was in a storefront that had once housed a soda fountain; even the faded ads for sundaes and banana splits remained on the walls, although the stools had been uprooted and the counter was now covered with books and literature. The rest of the room was crammed with bulky, decrepit sofas and chairs. A white-haired man with a squared-off jaw and downturned lips was talking on the phone when we came inside.

  “Uh-huh… Yeah… Look, Jenny, dammit, you know you gotta get out of there. I’ll help you pack up the kids and I’ll drive you to that shelter in Alturas the welfare lady told you about.… No, Ron won’t be able to bother you there.… I know, because that’s what the lady said, and she—Goddamn it, Jenny, don’t hang up—Shit!”

  He slammed the receiver into its cradle and scowled at it, then looked up at us with defeated eyes. “My granddaughter’s drunken husband beat her up for the third time this month, and she’s still afraid to leave him. Thinks she’s afraid now, wait till he takes it into his head to kill her.”

  I said, “Maybe you should ask the social worker to talk to her again.”

  “She’s talked till she can’t talk no more. Nothing’s gonna change till Jenny decides to change it, and I hope to God that happens soon. I’m Jordan Stump. What can I do for you folks?”

  I told him my cover story about looking for relatives and said Jimmy D. Bearpaw had suggested I come here. Jordan Stump got to his feet slowly and motioned for us to be seated on a lumpy plaid couch. As he followed and lowered himself onto a matching armchair, he limped and winced in pain.

  He adjusted the pillow behind his back. “Not a good day.”

  “Arthritis?”

  “Combination of things. When I was young, I fancied myself a bull rider. Didn’t t
ake long for a big Brahma to prove I wasn’t. Now, you say your people’re called Tendoy?”

  “Yes. I heard they came over from Idaho in the early nineteen-hundreds.”

  “Well, I’ll get my spies working on it, see what they can find out. Most of them’re older than God, so there’s a good chance somebody might remember your family. Afraid I can’t help you myself; I’ve only lived here a few years, like most of our tribal council members.”

  “I thought this was the Modocs’ native territory.”

  “It is, but… I guess you’re not familiar with our history.”

  I shook my head and waited.

  “Well, we were never a tribe in the usual way, just separate little bands hunting and foraging over the same few thousand square miles. Only eight hundred people, all told, when the white men came. They ruined our hunting, scared the game away. So we massacred some of them, and they massacred some of us. The kind of dispute where in the end nobody knows who started it. Finally in 1864, we negotiated a treaty that removed us to a Klamath reserve up in Oregon. You ever hear of the Modoc War?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Hy said.

  Jordan Stump waggled his finger at me. “And he’s not even Indian.”

  “He probably paid more attention in California history class than I did.”

  “Well, the conditions up at the Klamath reserve were miserable. A Modoc leader named Captain Jack—real name Kientepoos—rebelled, and twice he led a band of three hundred and some back to the Lost River over by Tule Lake. The second time, in April in 1870, things worked out okay, and they stayed there for about two years before the government sent troops in to force them back to Klamath. You ever been to the Lava Beds National Monument?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Once,” Hy said.

  “Go again, and take her. She’s badly in need of education. The lava beds were the battlefield for the Modoc War. Our people knew them, could slip in and out through the chasms and fissures, hide in the caves and tubes. There’s a big pit out there at the southern end of Tule Lake called Captain Jack’s Stronghold; it was their base camp. The government soldiers didn’t stand a chance in that kind of territory.”

  Hy said, “A pretty costly war, wasn’t it?”

  Jordan Stump nodded. “Costly for the government in terms of both life and money. Costlier to us, because we lost everything. We could outfight them, but there was dissension in the ranks. When the government proposed peace talks, a group of militant Modocs kept after Captain Jack until he agreed that if the representatives didn’t meet their demands, they should be killed. And that’s just what happened. The assassinations were the beginning of the end for us. Captain Jack and three other leaders were tried and hanged, and the remaining hundred and fifty-three of our people were shipped off to Oklahoma Territory in boxcars like cattle. That’s where I was born and raised—Ottawa County, Oklahoma.”

  I said, “But now you’ve moved here. Why?”

  “If you look to yourself, you ought to be able to answer that question. You’re a relatively young woman, but already you’re searching for your roots. That urge gets even stronger as you age. I was sixty-seven when I heard about this tribal council. It was formed by some young Modocs whose grandparents went back to the Klamath reserve when the government finally allowed it in 1909. Young people are interested in learning about and preserving the old ways, not like in my day when we all wanted to be white. They decided to move back to their ancestral territory, reunite the tribe. And they wanted elders who had a sense of history to join in.”

  “And now I hear there’s a developer who wants to bar your access to your sacred lands at Spirit Lake,” I said.

  “Jimmy D tell you about that?”

  “Yes. He says you’re suing for title to the land. Who’s bankrolling the suit?”

  “Jimmy D’s the only one who knows, and he won’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “He claims it’s a condition of their backing us.” Jordan Stump frowned. “I myself prefer to know who I’m dealing with, but if that’s the way they want it, that’s the way it’ll be. We need whatever help we can get. When I packed up my granddaughter and her family and came up here, Sage Rock was practically a ghost town. In a lot of ways it’s still not so great. There’s nothing for the young people to do, so they drink and get in trouble, and it’s hard on young families like Jenny’s. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but in time we’ll have a community center and a museum, powwows and other cultural events. And then we’ll have proved to the world that the Modocs can be a tribe, that even the U.S. government couldn’t destroy us.”

  Jordan Stump’s words would have been inspiring had there not been a hollowness behind them. I glanced at Hy, saw he sensed it too.

  The Modocs had twice been removed from their lands; they’d returned to find them a place where alcoholism, spousal and child abuse, crime, and poverty flourished. And now they perceived a new threat in the form of Austin DeCarlo’s development plans.

  The dream that Jordan Stump and the others had traveled thousands of miles to fulfill was dying—and he knew it.

  After we left Stump, we went back to the Wilderness Lodge to make some phone calls. The electricity had been restored, the room made up, and a few messages slipped under our door. Hy’s were from a couple of his contacts with environmental organizations, and when he returned the calls, the news wasn’t helpful: no one had heard of a wealthy, secretive consortium that was intent on saving the Spirit Lake area.

  I went to the phone and began making calls of my own: to Mick, who was only now starting on a series of checks I’d asked him to run; to my home machine, where none of the messages were of any consequence; to Robin, who reported a reversal of Saskia’s condition.

  “She’s back to the way she was right after the accident,” she said. “No more activity of any sort.”

  Damn! “How’re you holding up?”

  “I’m okay. Evan’s been great; I can lean on him.” Evan was her boyfriend from Salt Lake.

  “How about Darcy?”

  “Not so good. Evan’s been spending time with him. He says all Darce wants to do is get stoned and obsess about how Mom never loved either of us. He claims we were just replacements for you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Of course it’s not, but Darce has never been a rational thinker. I don’t know what I’ll do with him if Mom doesn’t make it; he’ll really be a mess.”

  “We’ll deal with him. Together.”

  “Thanks, Sharon. I needed to hear you say that.”

  By the time I ended the call, I felt both depressed and helpless. Hy sensed it and stood up. “Come on, McCone. We’re out of here.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “To check out the land that’s caused all this commotion.”

  1:10 P.M.

  The land was posted and fenced, the main access road gated but not locked. I said to Hy, “I’ve got Austin’s permission to look over the property,” and got out of the truck. After opening the gate so he could drive through, I secured it behind us.

  The dirt road dipped and meandered aimlessly, as if it had been graded for no clear purpose. We passed through typical high desert country: red-and-brown rocky hills and sagebrush-carpeted flats with an occasional pine or scrub oak eking out a precarious existence. The sky was pale blue with a streaky cloud layer, and the fall sunlight shone weak and watery. It seemed warmer here than in town. After about ten minutes, we crested a rise and saw Spirit Lake spread on a flat plain below us, shimmering like a mirage that might vanish at any second.

  The lake was shaped like an unevenly proportioned figure eight with a land bridge where the loops met; in the center of the larger one a black island limed with bird droppings rose—the tip of a submerged volcanic crater, Hy said. Waterfowl did touch-and-goes or full-stop landings on it, skimmed close to the mirrorlike gray water.

  Hy put the truck in neutral and we coasted down to the
pebbled shore and got out. The water was eerily still, and all I could hear were the cries of the birds. “No wonder the Modocs considered it sacred,” I said.

  “I hope it’s not too sacred for us to eat our lunch here. I’m starved.”

  “So am I.”

  We spread the picnic we’d bought at the town’s small grocery on a ledge of rock overhanging the water. Deviled eggs, salami, provolone, crackers, and pears, washed down with a cheap but palatable wine. A feast. After I finished I lay on my back, feeling the sun-warmth of the rock through my shirt and the breeze on my face.

  “Ripinsky, I hope Austin loses the suit.”

  “Me too.”

  “If he destroys this place, I don’t think I’ll be able to deal with him. I’ve already lost my adoptive father; I may lose both my birth mother and Ma. I don’t want to lose him too.”

  Hy was silent, waiting for me to talk it out. But I had nothing more to say, so after a moment I sat up, helped him collect the remainders of the meal, and we went back to the truck.

  “Which way now, McCone?”

  “Wherever the road takes us.”

  “Dammit, that thumping’s got to have something to do with the fan belt,” Hy said.

  “Sounds like.”

  “This truck! It’d be just our luck to break down out here in the middle of nowhere.” He steered it to the side of the road, got out, and raised the hood. I got out too.

  “Belt’s frayed, all right,” he said as he peered under the hood. “Doubt it’ll get us back to civilization.”

  “I thought Pete took good care of this machine.”

  “He does.” Hy leaned in farther. “Well, well. Very interesting. Check this out.”

  I looked where he pointed. The belt was frayed, yes, but the process had been started by a series of small, clean cuts. “Somebody didn’t want us to travel too far.”

  “Or maybe to get back any too quick.”

  “Now what?”

  “I’ll take a look through that lockbox in the bed, see if there’s a spare on hand. Chances are there is.”

  I turned away and started walking along the edge of the road toward where it took an abrupt turn to the west. The soil here was rough, clinkery, with a dusting of pale pumice, volcanic in origin. The lava beds that Austin had told me about must be nearby. Sagebrush and bunchgrass crowded between black outcroppings, and the dried golden flowers of rabbitbrush rustled in the wind. I rounded the curve and stopped, drawing in my breath.