by Joe Hart
“I just wanted to update you on the brave we jumped last night. He’s gone,” Jones said.
Elliot looked up at the man and said nothing for a few moments. When Jones just looked back blankly, Elliot replied. “Gone? You mean packed up and gone?”
“Well, he left most everything there and took his bike. We figured he would get going in the morning when he woke up, so we didn’t do anything to the motorcycle.”
Elliot nodded and pursed his lips together.
“Well, that’s fine, I guess. If he goes to the authorities, we’ll tie it up in court until we’re done here, and then we’ll beat it anyway. I have a feeling he’s tucked his tail between his legs and headed for home, after what you and your men did to him. I’m guessing his warrior pride didn’t expect to get its shit kicked in in the middle of the night.”
Jones smiled his rare smile, and it sent a slight shiver down Elliot’s spine. Yes, he decided, there would be a time when he could no longer trust Anthony Jones to be so close to him and his operations. He made a mental note to start looking into other options when this job was wrapped.
“Anything else?” Elliot asked lightheartedly, but with an air of impatience that he hoped would signal the other man to leave him be.
“Yeah, just one last thing, boss. What are you doing with all that water in those tanks back there?”
Elliot stopped shuffling the papers in front of him and listened as the question hung in the air like a grenade with its pin pulled. His eyes flashed up—too quickly, he realized—to Jones’s and held there, waiting for some change in the mask that made up the other man’s face.
“Just keeping it out of the drilling area, that’s all. The ground needs to stay dry and stable for the crew to work. I didn’t want it fouling up the project.”
The lie was like a cloying perfume that both men could smell. Jones’s smile returned, although it now was at half power and only curled up one side of the man’s leathery face. Suddenly, he stood and turned his back to Elliot but spoke quietly over his shoulder.
“Just checkin’, boss. Wouldn’t want there to be something that I should know about. Might endanger the security of the project we have going here.”
Jones reached the tent door and pulled it back, revealing a blazing white triangle of the outside. He smiled one last time and ducked out of the tent, leaving only dust motes and unease dancing in the air within.
Joshua stumbled across the threshold of his grandfather’s small house. He stood swaying in the entry to the kitchen, waiting for sounds of movement or his name to be called. When none came, he continued down the hallway, past his own bedroom, until he reached the closed door at the end.
His vision was slightly blurry in his right eye, and he couldn’t see at all out of his left. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that hung in the entry hall. His face was a mass of blood and bruises, and he could see several scratches on his lower chin where he had rested it in the dirt overnight. The ride down the valley’s ridge had been almost as painful as when he had woken and sat upright. After over an hour’s ride—which normally took fifteen minutes—he had stood his bike outside the house and prayed that his grandfather wasn’t home.
Joshua reached out and felt the doorknob to his grandfather’s room. It was cold to the touch, and he hesitated for a moment. He hadn’t stepped foot in the room in over two years; it was his grandfather’s private place, and he respected it. His grandfather had done the same for him, although from time to time he would grumble loudly about Joshua’s choice of music. After a deep breath, Joshua turned the knob and hobbled into the dark room.
The room hadn’t changed in the past two years. His grandfather’s bed still sat in the middle of the room with the headboard shoved close to the far wall. Several family pictures hung sporadically throughout the room. In one, Joshua saw his mother smiling prettily into the camera while she sat near a stream. In another, his mother and father were gathered around a table that he remembered from his early years. His mother had her hands clasped before her and her head back, and in such a state of laughter he could almost hear it. His father was leaning forward, arms outstretched across the table and dark eyebrows raised, with half a shout and half a smile on his lips. His father was reaching toward a baby boy with dark hair who had leaned forward and pushed his entire face into a small birthday cake before him.
Joshua blinked his still-functioning right eye and shook his head slightly. He wasn’t here to walk down memory lane. Revenge coursed through his blood now. Hot and angry, it raced within him like a poison out of control. He could see the white men’s faces in the glow of his campfire, their smiles exposing their teeth and their boots kicking him over and over.
Joshua scoured the room for what he knew must be there. His good eye searched out the obvious places on his grandfather’s nightstand, beneath the bed, and on the dresser. It wasn’t there. Joshua sighed and shuffled clumsily around the other side of the bed to the ceremonial stand, where his grandfather kept his large headdress and totem staff that he used at the sacred celebrations.
Joshua inspected the stand carefully in the dim light. On the top there was only one other object besides the headdress and totem. A flint arrowhead sat in the very middle of the stand in a small holder of its own. Its pointed tip looked like a broken and jagged tooth in the low light of the room, its edges sharpened to razors. Joshua’s eyes rested on the arrowhead for a moment. His grandfather had never told him where the flint arrowhead had come from or what significance it had, but he knew it held much importance if it rested here on the stand that supported all the other things his grandfather held sacred.
Joshua bent down lower and gazed into the shadows below the stand. There was a small shelf that hung under the stand’s top. It housed several seashells and two leather pouches that Joshua knew held sweet-smelling wood shavings and spices that were burnt in offerings to different animal spirits. He stared past these small objects, and his eyes rested on the leather spine of a large book. It was dark at the back of the shelf and hard to see, but he could just make out its outline. Joshua’s heart leapt in his chest like a frightened mouse. Carefully, he moved the other items out of the way, grasped the edges of the book, and slid it out into the light.
The book’s cover was a dark brown and made from antelope hide. There was no title on the cover, and it smelled of smoke. His mind went back to each time his grandfather prayed over the ceremonies using the book. Not that Silent Fox needed to read from it; he had memorized each prayer and song many years ago. No, the book was a symbol. It was a history. Songs, legends, prayers, they were all held here in this book, and it was one of a kind.
Joshua paged through several stained and faded songs. The entire book was in Nez Perce, and it was a good thing he had paid attention and stayed close with the old ways, unlike others his age. Although he wondered, if he had split from the tribe like so many did, would he be here right now at this moment? Would he be bleeding and bruised by the boots of white men who were raping their land? Would he even know that they were drilling here or care if someone told him? Joshua stood shakily to his feet. It was a good thing life wasn’t made up of what-ifs.
Joshua moved back across the room and quietly shut the door behind him. He turned and limped down the hallway and out of the front door. After a few minutes, the roar of the dirt bike faded away, and the house was silent once again.
“We hit oil about fifteen minutes ago, boss. Little behind schedule, but we’re actually ahead on the overall timeline.”
Jake Allenson stood in the doorway of Elliot’s tent, half in and half out, shuffling excitedly from one foot to the other. Elliot had been looking on his laptop at an island for sale near Bermuda. The asking price was twenty million, not bad for a private beach and all the water you could look at. His head had snapped up when the drill crew’s chief had thrown the flap to his tent back and called out to him.
“Good. It’s about time. How many barrels filled?”
All
enson wiped the back of his dirty neck with a soiled handkerchief before answering. “Fifteen barrels so far, and the flow’s increasing. All the charts say we’re at optimum drilling depth for this well.”
Elliot nodded and looked back at the images of white sand and blazing sunsets on his computer. It was time for him to check on his own investment.
“Good job, Allenson. I’ll put in a word with corporate for you and your team.”
The other man nodded and smiled gratefully before ducking out of the tent.
Fucking oaf, Elliot thought as he stood and stretched. Hang one little carrot in front of their noses, and they’ll plow all day. He smiled and was grateful he had finished college and would never fall into the same category as the men outside with dirt on their faces and hands.
He walked across the tent and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun that lay like a golden blanket across the valley. His eyes searched the immediate area for signs of Jones. He didn’t want the other man following him to the water tanks or overhearing anything he shouldn’t. That’s the last thing he needed: a greedy mercenary who didn’t mind cutting a throat to get what he wanted.
Elliot glanced one last time down the makeshift alley of pipes and machinery that lay next to his tent and started off in the opposite direction. After a few minutes of walking, he reached six enormous steel tanks that glowed dully in the sunlight. A three-inch black hose ran from the drill site, across the rough ground, and up into the first tank in the row. Each tank was daisy-chained to the others by interconnecting hoses across their top lips. When the first tank was full, it would spill over into the next one, and so on and so forth, until all six tanks were brimming full with the lithium-rich water.
Elliot glanced quickly to his right as a man rounded the closest tank, a small clipboard and walkie-talkie in his hands.
“Larry, talk to me, baby. Where’s the level currently at?” Elliot said quietly to the other man.
“First tank’s full, boss, and the second is three-quarters. We should hit max volume at around midnight if the flow stays constant.”
Elliot frowned. He had hoped that the tanks would be full within the next few hours so that he could accompany them to the drop-off point at regular quitting time, so as not to draw attention. Some might wonder why he was still milling around near midnight at the drill site, and he didn’t want any unneeded attention.
“Fuck. Okay, no one’s been around today, have they? Asking questions?”
Larry shook his head. “No sir, no one. Just me and John overseeing the flow.”
Elliot nodded and sent the other man on his way. A low rumbling pervaded the air over the din of the drilling machinery. Elliot turned and gazed at the setting sun, which hung low over the plains that stretched past the end of the valley. Dark storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. They seemed to boil directly out of the ground, as though an erupting volcano was spewing them skyward. Every so often, a bolt of lightning would streak across the face of the storm, and thunder would obediently make its deep voice heard shortly after.
Great, thought Elliot, like I needed a fucking storm right now too. He tried to shake off his dismay at seeing the clouds. There weren’t clouds like those on his computer screen in his tent. He made his way in that direction, carefully stepping over mud and puddles, while the front of the storm expanded and rumbled angrily like a hungry man’s stomach before a meal.
Silent Fox unlocked his front door and stepped into the small house. His left hand loosely held a paper bag containing a bottle of leather sealant. His right hand dangled at his side, clutching the car and house keys. He stood for a moment in the entryway listening, his gray eyes locked on the floor, unmoving. After several seconds he moved into the kitchen and set the bag down on a nearby chair. He opened the fridge and gazed at the food inside. He had learned long ago that the best way to tell if Joshua had been home was to check the fridge to see if the interior was considerably less crowded.
After seeing that everything lay untouched, the old man shuffled out of the kitchen and down the hall to his bedroom door. He reached out to touch the doorknob and stopped. He stared at the handle and listened to the silence of the house. He waited for a noise in one of the rooms, a shifting of weight, an exhaled breath. None came. He stared at the small smudge of blood that lay on the gold surface of the doorknob. Then he grasped the handle and stepped quickly into the room.
His room was empty, but he could smell something. Sweat and blood. Someone had stood here not long before. He began to methodically search the room. The bedside table still held the handgun he kept there. The false bottom to the drawer still hid the envelope containing almost twenty thousand dollars he had stashed away, just in case Joshua ever decided to go off to college. He went to the other side of his bed and looked at his ceremonial stand. Immediately he noticed that the leather pouches had been moved, and his stomach clenched almost painfully, like a snake biting its own tail. He bent lower and confirmed his fears as his eyes scanned the empty space at the rear of the shelf.
“No,” he said to the empty room. It was a declaration, not a plea. He couldn’t let it happen. Not to Joshua. He was the only family he had left. He was presumably next in line to be chief, and he needed to grow older and wiser and have a family. He wasn’t supposed to do what he was doing now.
Silent Fox turned and hurried across the room and down the hallway. His hand had reached the front door when he paused and turned back the way he had come. He rushed into his room, pulled a long, narrow case from beneath his bed, and set it on the mattress. The dark wood was dusty, and his fingers left trails in the gray fuzz that covered it. He flipped two small latches on one side and pulled the top upward.
The recurve bow lay in the box on its side as if it was sleeping. For some reason he almost expected it not to be there. He turned quickly and pulled the flint arrowhead from its small stand and threw it into the case next to several long wooden arrow shafts. The case snapped solidly together, and he latched the sides closed before pulling it off the bed.
As he half jogged, half walked down the hallway, a rumbling filled his ears, and he had the irrational fear that he was already too late, that the ground was shaking beneath his feet and Joshua was already gone. The sound abated and then came again, and he realized it was thunder in the distance.
Silent Fox slammed the door behind him and ran to his car, hoping to beat the coming storm, to turn the winds back the way they had come, and to save his grandson from himself.
Joshua stared at the pile of stones that sat before him. They were stacked in a haphazard way that one would overlook if passing by, not bothering to notice the geometry that linked the stones together, that held them together. They were all sizes and shapes, yet they were piled on top of one another and latched together by the crevices and cracks that had naturally formed with the millennia. Water and pressure had made these rocks into what they were, and somehow they had come together and had been fitted into a jigsaw that rose nearly ten feet above the surrounding landscape.
Joshua held the leather-bound book at his side. His eyes stared at the pile of rocks, and he marveled at the fact that he had never noticed it before. He had ridden through this area a hundred times before on his bike looking for new terrain or a quiet place to drink a beer and watch the light dance across the valley.
It was a cairn. Joshua knew this without being told. The book had led him this far and described the shape of the pile of rocks that sat before him. He had spent nearly a half hour reading the book, looking for the right legend and prayer. Finally he had found it. The legend of the Pale Man. The creature that had borne all the races of his people across the nation, not through nature but through death and dismemberment. His people lay at its heart, closest to the truth.
Secretly he had doubted the directions that had been laid out in the legend. He hadn’t thought the cairn would exist, yet here he was. As he had crested the hill to the south and seen the pile, his stomach had dropped a little, and a feelin
g he didn’t at first understand had taken up residence there: fear. After a moment the fear turned to a molten anger as his wounds stung and his head ached. Seeing the cairn solidified what was going to happen, what he believed with his heart, and he knew now there was no turning back.
Joshua opened the book, and for the first time he heard the thunder that was reverberating across the open sky. He turned and looked back the way he had come—the storm was building. He nodded and flipped to the correct page. He drew a deep breath and then began to sing.
The prayer flowed out of his mouth like a river of misery, and his people’s language, soulful and hearty in celebration, now rang with undertones of anger and poignancy. The notes of his breath hung hauntingly on the chilling air that was running before the storm behind him. His voice wavered and swayed with emotion. Joshua poured his anger and anguish into the prayer with a fervor that he had never felt before. The song took on a life of its own, and Joshua could feel the air around him heating up, but still he sang on.
A light bloomed within the rock pile before him. Joshua noticed it immediately, because the sky had darkened considerably since his arrival. The light was a pale yellow, and as Joshua sang, it continued to brighten. He had almost halted when the light appeared, but he inexplicably wanted to continue singing. It was as if the light had confirmed what he had known all along: his beliefs were true. He hadn’t been misguided in staying with the old ways and shunning the new. He would have revenge and redemption and they would pay for what they had done—the scales would be leveled.
As his prayer hit a crescendo, the light brightened between the stones and was thrown across the nearby plain like bright sunlight through a prism. The fading notes of Joshua’s prayer echoed and were carried away with the quickening wind, but still the light continued to brighten. The beams seemed like golden lasers, and Joshua imagined that if he passed his hand through one it would lop the appendage off neatly, cauterizing the wound as it went.
