Green Grass, Running Water

by Thomas King

  “Is it just that it’s crooked?” said Minnie.

  “It’s not crooked,” said Bursum.

  But it wasn’t exactly square, either. On the lower right-hand side, several twelve-inch televisions hung down like a tail. The entire left side was uneven, moving in and out as it rose to the roof. Even the top row dipped and peaked as it ran the length of the wall.

  “Or is it just that it isn’t square?” said Minnie.

  “It’s not supposed to be square,” said Bursum.

  Minnie shrugged her shoulders. “What does it do?”

  Bursum strode across the store, swinging his arms as if he were marching in a parade. “Watch.” And he picked up a remote control. For a moment there was nothing, and then each set blinked and a soft dot of gray light swelled to fill the screen.

  All two hundred screens glowed silver, creating a sense of space and great emptiness at the end of the store. Bursum smiled back at Minnie.

  “Now watch this.” Bursum pushed a tape into a VCR at the corner of the display and waited while the machine whirled and clunked and buzzed. Suddenly the screens came alive with brilliant colors.

  “Yes!” Bursum shouted, and he looked back to see if Minnie was impressed.

  “That’s very nice, Mr. Bursum,” said Minnie.

  “It really catches your eye.”

  “Do all the sets have to show the same movie?”

  Lionel had helped him build the display, had assisted with the layout and the framing, but it had taken longer for Bursum to make the final connections and get everything running. Now that it was working, Bursum was anxious to see what Lionel thought of the finished product, not because he put a great deal of stock in Lionel’s opinion but because Lionel understood, to some degree, the difficulties of the logistics, the intricacies of the wiring, the spatial arrangements that had to be considered in conceiving the overall plan.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Sure,” said Minnie. “You can’t miss it.”

  “No,” said Bursum. “Do you see it?”

  Bursum smiled and moved in front of the televisions. He spread his legs and extended his arms. “It’s a map!”

  Minnie cocked her head to one side.

  “Of Canada and the United States.”

  Minnie cocked her head to the other side.

  “Here’s Florida,” said Bursum, pointing to the tail. “And here’s Vancouver Island and here’s Hudson’s Bay.”

  “Where’s Blossom?” asked Minnie, her head still bent to one side.

  “Someplace around there,” said Bursum, and he pointed at a thirteen-inch Sony Digital Monitor high on the wall.

  Minnie cocked her head back to the other side.

  Bursum raised his arms over his head and extended his fingers. “I call it . . . The Map!”

  “Is it just for display?” asked Minnie.

  Bursum doubted that even Lionel understood the unifying metaphor or the cultural impact The Map would have on customers, but that was all right. Lionel, at least, would be able to appreciate the superficial aesthetics and the larger visual nuances of The Map.

  The Map. Bursum loved the sound of it. There was a majesty to the name. He stepped back from the screens and looked at his creation. It was stupendous. It was more powerful than he had thought. It was like having the universe there on the wall, being able to see everything, being in control. Yes, Lionel might just appreciate it.

  And then again, he might not.

  “Now that’s advertising,” said Bursum, adjusting his gold blazer. “Do you know what something like that is worth?”

  Minnie nodded and smiled.

  “It has no value,” said Bursum. “It is beyond value. Have you read The Prince by Machiavelli?”

  Minnie nodded and smiled.

  “It’s all about advertising. If you’re going to succeed in this business, you better read it.”

  Lionel, at Bursum’s insistence, had read The Prince, and so had Charlie Looking Bear for that matter, but Bursum was sure that neither of them had understood the central axiom. Power and control—the essences of effective advertising—were, Bursum had decided years before, outside the range of the Indian imagination, though Charlie had made great strides in trying to master this fundamental cultural tenet.

  Minnie leaned on the counter. “I suppose its advertising value compensates for its lack of subtlety.”

  “That’s right,” said Bursum, turning around completely.“It’s like being in church. Or at the movies.”

  “I’ve been elected spokesperson for our table,” said the woman, folding the map and putting it back in her purse. “My name is Jeanette, and this is my friend Nelson. This is Rosemarie De Flor and her husband, Bruce.”

  Latisha nodded, hoping she could keep this short. Tourists loved to talk. Latisha guessed it was part of the lure of travel, the chance to tell someone who didn’t know you the stories everyone who did know you was tired of hearing.

  “Don’t let her fool you,” said Rosemarie, spearing a Deep-Fried Puppy Whatnot. “Nobody elected her anything. She’s just bossy.”

  “Damn straight,” said Nelson, and he and Bruce fell to giggling behind their coffee cups.

  “And as spokesperson,” Jeanette continued, ignoring Rosemarie and the two men, “I get to ask all the questions everyone else is too embarrassed to ask.” Jeanette waited to see if there were any objections. Latisha shifted her weight and sighed. Jeanette looked like a woman just warming to a lengthy task.

  “Now,” said Jeanette, “may we assume that you are Indian?”

  “Jesus, Jeanette,” said Nelson, reaching out and patting Latisha on the arm. “Any fool can see that.”

  “Never hurts to ask.”

  “I’m Blackfoot,” said Latisha.

  “Damn fine tribe,” said Nelson, leaving his hand on Latisha’s arm and trying to reach her hip with his thumb.

  “Ah,” said Jeanette. “And you are the owner?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jeanette glared at Nelson. “And here at this restaurant that you own,” she said, raising her voice a notch, “you serve dog?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Nelson took his hand off Latisha’s arm and looked at his Saint Bernard Swiss Melt. “Jesus! You’re kidding. It’s not really dog?”

  “Of course she’s kidding,” said Bruce. “I used to work for the RCMP—”

  “We all know that, honey,” said Rosemarie.

  “Twenty-five years I was a sergeant with the RCMP, and if we had heard of anyone cooking up dog and selling it in a restaurant, we would have arrested them. It’s beef, right?”

  “Are you married?” asked Jeanette.

  “No.”

  “Very wise,” said Jeanette, leaning her head in Nelson’s direction.

  Then again, Latisha reflected, she wasn’t single, exactly. But she definitely wasn’t married.

  Nelson had lifted the top piece of bread off his sandwich and was examining the meat with his fork. “Looks like beef to me.” And he reached out to try to pat Latisha’s butt. “You were kidding, right?”

  “Black Labrador,” said Latisha, avoiding Nelson’s hand.“You get more meat off black Labs.”

  “Jesus!”

  “But you have been married,” said Jeanette. “Every woman makes that mistake at least once.”

  George Morningstar. Latisha had even liked his name. It sounded slightly Indian, though George was American, from a small town in Michigan. He had come out west to see, as he put it, what all the fuss was about. Tall, with soft light brown hair that just touched his shoulders. Best of all, he did not look like a cowboy or an Indian. Even at eighteen, Latisha had already tired of skinny men with no butts in blue jeans, pearl-button shirts, worn-at-the-heel cowboy boots, straw hats with sweat lines, driving pickups or stacked up against the shady sides of buildings like logs.

  “We got to get this dog-meat thing straight,” said Nelso
n, his arm still hanging out in space.

  “It’s a treaty right,” Latisha explained. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s one of our traditional foods.”

  “I’ve never heard of that, either,” said Bruce, “and I was a sergeant with the RCMP for twenty-five years.”

  “We raise them right on the reserve,” Latisha explained.“Feed them only horse meat and whole grain. No hormones or preservatives.”

  “Jesus,” said Nelson. “I had a black Lab when I was a kid. He was a great dog.”

  George had come out to the reserve for Indian Days. Latisha could still remember what he had been wearing—tan cotton slacks and a billowy white cotton shirt that was loose in the body and tight at the cuffs. He had on oxblood loafers and patterned socks, and he had stood at the back of the gawking crowd and watched. At the end of the day, he was still there, watching, listening, looking for all the world like the most intelligent man in the universe.

  “His name was Tecumseh,” said Nelson. “After the Indian chief. And you know what?” Nelson motioned for Latisha to come closer. “He could sing.”

  “You’re not eating Tecumseh,” said Rosemarie. “Did I tell you I was in opera?”

  “Yes,” said Jeanette, “we all know you were in opera.”

  Nelson laid his head back and pointed his lips at the ceiling.“When I’m calling you, oo–oo–oo, oo-oo-oo!”

  Billy stuck his head out of the kitchen and looked at Nelson. Latisha waved him off and shifted her weight to the other leg.

  “He lived to be fourteen years old,” said Nelson.

  “Once they get past two or three,” Latisha said gravely, “the meat’s too tough to eat.”

  “That dog wasn’t singing, Nelson,” said Rosemarie, “he was just howling. Now, I could sing, isn’t that right, Jeanette?”

  “And,” said Jeanette, trying to regain control of the conversation, “were you born on the reserve?”

  That was one of the things George had asked her that first evening, had been pleased that she was, as he said, a real Indian. And he had been so attentive. It was his one great quality. He made you believe that he was listening, made you believe that what you had to say was important, made you believe that he was interested.

  “You know, Country,” George told her on their third date, “talking to you is better than sex or good food.”

  And Latisha had talked, poured her life out, a great flood of dreams and enthusiasms, and George had sat there and waited and listened, his mouth set in a pleasant smile, his blue eyes never blinking.

  Jeanette put her napkin on the table. “Most interesting pictures,” she said, gesturing to the photograph of two Indians holding up the ends of a pole strung with dachshunds. “The waitress tells us that you sell recipes for dog.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “That is very clever of you. I suppose we’ll have to buy one for Nelson.”

  Latisha was beginning to like the old woman. Nelson was back to nibbling at his sandwich again. Jeanette pushed her chair back and struggled to her feet.

  “Could you help me, dear,” she said. “These days, I have a little trouble getting going.”

  Latisha took her arm. “Where to?”

  “She has to go to the bathroom,” said Nelson. “She’s always going to the bathroom. Has a bladder problem.”

  Jeanette smiled back at Nelson and Rosemarie and Bruce. Latisha felt the old woman’s grip on her arm tighten and realized that the woman was strong, could probably break Nelson’s neck.

  “He’ll die before I do,” Jeanette said under her breath as Latisha helped her down the hall. “There’s some consolation in that.”

  George had kept his hands in his pockets. After fighting off the local cowboys and Indians, it was nice to be with a man who didn’t think that her shoulder or her waist or her butt was part of the public domain. For the first month he didn’t touch her at all. They walked and talked, had cheap, wonderful dinners, went to the movies. One night George took her to the Blossom library. Latisha had never even been inside the building. He led her into the record section, and they spent the evening listening to classical music on headsets.

  He had seemed vulnerable then, almost girlish, always looking off into space. To commemorate their third month together, he gave her his copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

  She had felt the itch early on and thought it was love. Six months later, they married, and before the first year was out, Latisha realized that the reason George wondered so much about the world was because he didn’t have a clue about life. But by the time she figured out that the itch was really trouble and not love at all, it was too late. She was pregnant.

  Jeanette paused at the door. “This is fine, dear. I can make it the rest of the way myself.” She let go of Latisha’s arm and leaned on the door handle. “How long were you married?”

  “Nine years.”

  “Children?”

  “Three.”

  Jeanette shook her head. “Did you kill the bastard?”

  Latisha laughed. “No, he’s still alive. I threw him away.”

  “Splendid,” said Jeanette, opening the door. “I love storie swith happy endings.”

  “Watch the toilet,” Latisha called after her. “Sometimes it overflows.”

  “Don’t they all,” Jeanette called back, sounding very far away. “Don’t they all.”

  From where Eli sat on the porch, he imagined he could see the cracks that were developing near the base of the dam. Stress fractures, they called them, common enough in any dam, but troublesome nonetheless, especially given the relatively young age of the concrete. Of more concern was the slumping that had been discovered.

  “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” said Sifton, swirling the remains of the coffee around in the cup. “You know, if your cabin faced west, you’d have a great view of the dam from your front window.”

  “View is fine as it is.”

  “It’s nice in the morning. Sort of white. Like a shell.”

  “Reminds me of a toilet,” said Eli.

  “But the evening is the best. Soon as the sun gets behind it, the whole face turns purple. Sometimes I’ll walk down the streambed just to be able to see it in evening light.”

  “Hear they found some more cracks in the dam.”

  “You know,” said Sifton, “I could have had the big project in Quebec.”

  “Hear they think the earth is moving under the dam.”

  “But I said no. I want to do the job in Alberta. That’s what I said.”

  The clouds to the northwest were filling up the sky. They had been slowly organizing and gathering all day. Eli turned his face into the wind. Rain.

  Sifton set his coffee cup on the railing. “You know, I always thought Indians were elegant speakers.”

  “Storm’s coming.”

  “But all you ever say is no. I come by every day and read that thing those lawyers thought up about voluntarily extinguishing your right to this house and the land it sits on, and all you ever say is no.”

  “Be here by tonight.”

  “I mean, no isn’t exactly elegant, now is it?”

  “Maybe get some hail, too.”

  “It’s hard work walking down here every day, and it would help if sometime you would tell me why.”

  Every July, when Eli was growing up, his mother would close the cabin and move the family to the Sun Dance. Eli would help the other men set up the tepee, and then he and Norma and Camelot would run with the kids in the camp. They would ride horses and chase each other across the prairies, their freedom interrupted only by the ceremonies.

  Best of all, Eli liked the men’s dancing. The women would dance for four days, and then there would be a day of rest and the men would begin. Each afternoon, toward evening, the men would dance, and just before the sun set, one of the dancers would pick up a rifle and lead the other men to the edge of the camp, where the children waited. Eli and
the rest of the children would stand in a pack and wave pieces of scrap paper at the dancers as the men attacked and fell back, surged forward and retreated, until finally, after several of these mock forays, the lead dancer would breach the fortress of children and fire the rifle, and all the children would fall down in a heap, laughing, full of fear and pleasure, the pieces of paper scattering across the land.

  Then the dancers would gather up the food that was piled around the flagpole—bread, macaroni, canned soup, sardines, coffee—and pass it out to the people. Later, after the camp settled in, Eli and Norma and Camelot would lie on their backs and watch the stars as they appeared among the tepee poles through the opening in the top of the tent.

  And each morning, because the sun returned and the people remembered, it would begin again.

  “Look, it’s not my idea.” Sifton raised his arms in surrender. “It’s all those lawyers and the injunctions and that barrel load of crap about Native rights.”

  “Treaty rights, Cliff.”

  “Almost as bad as French rights. Damn sure wish the government would give me some of that.”

  “Government didn’t give us anything, Cliff. We paid for them. Paid for them two or three times.”

  “And so because the government felt generous back in the last ice age, and made promises it never intended to keep, I have to come by every morning and ask the same stupid question.”

  “And I say no.”

  “You know you’re going to say no, and I know you’re going to say no. Hell, the whole damn world knows you’re going to say no. Might as well put it on television.”

  “So why come?”

  Sifton looked at Eli and both men began to chuckle. “Because you make the best damn coffee. And because I like the walk.”

  “Answer will be the same tomorrow.”

  Every year or so, a tourist would wander into the camp. Sometimes they were invited. Other times they just saw the camp from the road and were curious. Most of the time they were friendly, and no one seemed to mind them. Occasionally there was trouble.

  When Eli was fourteen, a station wagon with Michigan plates pulled off the road and came into the camp just as the men were finishing their second day of dancing. Before anyone realized what was happening, the man climbed on top of the car and began taking pictures.