Red Earth White Earth

by Will Weaver

  “What’ll it be, ma’am?” a short-jacketed, shivering waiter asked. “Ma’am?” he repeated.

  “Ah . . . scotch,” she murmured, still staring behind at the Indians. “A double. Up.”

  Guy, too, sipped Black Label from a plastic glass as the polka band thumped. The band was not half bad.

  “Dance?” he said to Cassandra.

  “In many ways you’re a strange man,” she said, still staring up the hill.

  Beside Guy was a middle-aged woman in a gold blazer and pink-tinted glasses. He leaned over to her. “Dance?”

  The woman’s eyes widened as she stared up at Guy. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned away.

  Guy shrugged.

  “Which one is Whittaker?” Cassandra whispered.

  Guy tilted his head. “The one in the gray porkpie.” Beside Whittaker was Lyle Price in a black overcoat and wool scarf around his throat. Guy still owed Price a thousand dollars, plus twelve years worth of interest. But Guy had on sunglasses and Price was too busy watching the Indians to recognize him. Guy followed Cassandra toward Whittaker.

  “. . . all the way from Washington,” Whittaker was saying to Cassandra, while watching the Indians, “no idea my advertising carried that far, and I assure you, you’ll never be sorry for investing in beautiful Hiawatha Acres.”

  At that moment Lyle Price, whose face was frozen in a continuous half smile, poked Whittaker in the ribs and spoke rapidly into his ear. Then Whittaker excused himself from Cassandra and spoke into the bartender’s ear. He was a sallow-faced man who blinked continuously in the sunlight. Whittaker pointed to the Indians on the hill.

  “Me?” the bartender said loudly, leaning away from Whittaker. Whittaker glared at him.

  The bartender shrugged, took an order pad and pen, and walked up the hill toward the Indians. He looked back several times. Whittaker waved him on. Among the Indians, the bartender went tree to tree, bush to bush with his pen and pad as he wrote down their orders from the bar.

  He returned and began to fill up a tray with cans of 7-Up and Pepsi.

  Lyle Price’s eyes bulged. He grabbed away the bar list, stared at it for a moment, crumpled it, then began to set bottles of scotch and vodka on the tray along with the soft drinks.

  The bartender shrugged again. Then he struggled, slipping often on the wet, softening earth, back up the hill with his tray. He held up the fifths of liquor to the tree Indians, but they shook their furry heads and beaks in declination. The bartender looked back to Whittaker and Price for directions. Receiving none, he tossed up to the Indians their Pepsis and 7-Ups, then left a bottle of liquor at the base of each tree and bush that contained an Indian.

  The Indians drank their pop. The whites drank scotch and champagne. And the polka band played on. During the fourth polka a tree Indian dressed in a coppery hawk’s-head cape climbed halfway down his tree toward a red and gold fifth of Johnny Walker. The other Indians began to yip and chirp and hoot at him until he returned, empty-handed, to his perch.

  Finally the polka band stopped playing. Walter Whittaker took the microphone. “What a great day, want to thank you all for coming. We’re now about to sell at auction the beautiful development of Hiawatha Acres on sparkling No Medicine Lake.”

  An auctioneer in a black cowboy hat and green sunglasses trotted onto the stage. “Ladies and gents—what a great crowd out here today. You remind me of the type of people . . .” And he told a joke about a man with two wives. When he finished no one laughed.

  “Well, let’s get right down to it then,” the auctioneer said. “I can see that’s what you want, yessir. You’re not here for jokes. You’re here for the deal of your lives. I call your attention to your plat maps and lot number one. Five hundred feet of sugar-sand beach with virgin white pine on the shore.”

  Suddenly, from somewhere in the trees, came the hollow thudding of a drum. Guy’s head jerked around. An Indian drum. Buckskin stretched on wood. He knew that drum, that was Zhingwaak’s drum. But he must be long dead. Still . . .

  The auctioneer fell silent. The crowd looked around uncertainly. The auctioneer looked down to Lyle Price for directions. Price jabbed his finger at the microphone.

  “Okay, folks, never mind the music, let’s begin with lot number one. Somebody give me twenty thousand to start. Twenty thousand for lot number one.”

  There was silence but for the slow drumming.

  “Fifteen thousand then. Fifteen,” the auctioneer said.

  The drum thudded.

  The auctioneer’s sunglasses tilted down to Whittaker, who beamed a frozen smile back and forth across the buyers.

  “Well, we got to start somewhere, folks,” the auctioneer said. “They say the first time’s the hardest, if you know what I mean.” The auctioneer chuckled. No one else laughed.

  The drum thudded.

  “Ten thousand then.”

  Somewhere deeper in the trees a woodpecker tripled the drum’s beat, then was silent.

  “Six thousand,” the auctioneer pleaded. “Folks and friends, how can you pass up six thousand dollars for lakeshore like this? Buy a parcel, broker it off, you’re talking about easy money here, my friends. If you don’t get in now, you’ll kick yourself all the way back to the city.”

  At the mention of the city, several people buttoned their coats and looked back up the path to their cars.

  “Three thousand. Two thousand.”

  The drum thudded.

  “Offers, friends—let’s get going with an offer. Who’ll make an offer on lot number one?”

  No one said anything. The crowd began to drain their drinks and button their coats and look sideways at each other.

  “Goddammit then, this auction is over,” the auctioneer called. He jammed the microphone into its holder and stalked off the stage. Walter Whittaker stumbled onto the green plastic grass and grabbed the microphone. “No,” he called. “Nothing’s over. Folks, don’t get frightened off by the Indians. Don’t worry about that brochure, that title-opinion baloney. Buy now, straighten out the title later, there’s no problem here, I assure you!”

  But the crowd began to move in a tight herd up the path to their cars. Lyle Price joined Whittaker on the stage. He was not looking at the disappearing crowd. Rather, he began to jab a finger into Whittaker’s chest. Price hissed into the still-open microphone, “If you can’t sell something, then it’s not worth anything, is it now, Walter?”

  “Come back—come back!” Whittaker called to the crowd.

  Guy took a bottle of Black Label from the bar before it closed.

  21

  “Let’s go to the Tribal Council office,” Cassandra said. She tried to speak with Whittaker and Price after the sale, but they stood red face to red face, jabbing their fingers and hissing at each other. “I have to meet their lawyers, plus this tribal chief”—she pulled the flier from her pocket—“this Ma’iingaans.”

  Cassandra drove. The big cars all disappeared west toward Detroit Lakes and the freeway south. The Indians disappeared into the woods; soon after, Guy had heard several loud-mufflered cars departing at high speed. As Cassandra drove she looked again at the Indian flier. “I must say, this preliminary title is quite classily written.”

  “Your competition,” Guy said.

  Cassandra turned for a moment to stare. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m not on anyone’s side here. Whatever the laws read, whatever the judge says, that’s my side.”

  Guy watched the road curve through the pines. “So what happens when you run into a law that’s wrong? You still defend it?” He took a swig of the Whittaker-Price scotch.

  “Put away the damn bottle,” she said. “You want to get me arrested?”

  They drove through thinning pines down into No Medicine Town, population two hundred. The whole town could be contained in the sn
apshot of the smallest camera. The photo would show two Labradors barking at each other from opposite sides of the highway, skinny black lions guarding the gates. One of the dogs belonged to the junkyard on the right. Cars lay overturned and askew, butchered for parts as if the yard had been a parking lot mistakenly bombed by one of the B-52s stationed in North Dakota. “Red Power!” was scrawled in purple across the doors of a wheelless, rusted Coupe de Ville; another dog, a German shepherd, was chained to the Cadillac’s bumper.

  On the left side of the highway sat an abandoned Shell station. Its yellow scallop sign was shattered by shotgun blasts, its grease room burned away to reveal, still upright, the rusted column of the hydraulic hoist.

  In the center of town was a post office flying a large American flag. A hardware store. A combination grocery store and cafe. Two taverns. Some of the building fronts were newly painted white. The white paint covered pink scrawls underneath.

  “BIA STEALS.”

  “BETTER RED THAN DEAD.”

  “PAINT UP AND TAKE IT BACK!”

  Cassandra drove slowly down Main Street. A gray-haired Indian woman stared at them from behind a store window. Guy wondered where Madeline stayed.

  Ahead was the Catholic church. A square building once white, its paint had been as unfaithful as its parishioners. Around its foundation was a thick dandruff of white paint chips on brown dirt. The Sunday schedule of masses on the nearby sign had been reduced from five masses, one each hour, to one mass at 10:00 am.

  Beside the church was a new building, a low brick and glass structure Guy had never seen before. The building was five-sided, with five pointed eaves flaring away from a glass dome at the center. A pentagon, Indian style. By the front doors stood a tall totem pole of carved bear heads and bird beaks. Beside it was the name of the building: “Hubert H. Humphrey White Earth Anishinabe Community Center.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Guy murmured.

  Cassandra parked. Two cars down, Guy saw a muddy black Ford pickup with a tall wooden rack in back. The rustler’s truck.

  They went inside. In the foyer they stopped to read the guide to the building. A clinic. A five-bed nursing home. A day-care center. A library. A legal service and tribal government office.

  To the left in the foyer was a plaque, a bronzed cameo of Hubert Humphrey. Guy vaguely remembered Humphrey’s visit to White Earth many years ago. Beside the iron cameo was a photograph of Humphrey at the building’s dedication; his plump cheeks were sunken by then, but he was still grinning from beneath a fox-skull headdress. A double grin, with the fox’s teeth.

  Beyond the foyer their path was blocked by a receptionist’s desk. An Indian woman behind the desk stopped typing and looked up. Beside her was a large stack of fat white envelopes she was addressing. Her dark eyebrows rose in a skeptical stare. “Yes?”

  “The Tribal Council office? I’d like to speak with Mr. Ma’iingaans.”

  “Mah-ing-gonz,” the receptionist said. “Do you have an appointment?”

  Cassandra handed her a business card.

  “One moment.” The receptionist spoke softly into her phone. Guy heard her say, “Senator Howard Stanbrook.” After a moment she looked up. “Go ahead. Bear Wing, last office.”

  Guy and Cassandra passed into the center of the building. In the sunlit atrium was a circular mural of Indians before the coming of the white man, Indians working and playing through four seasons. Spring green. Summer yellow. Fall orange. Winter white. The Indians played games with balls and sticks, flayed wild rice over the sides of canoes, skinned deer. They smiled both in play and work. In one scene a long-haired Indian youth chased a laughing girl. “Bold lover . . . do not grieve. Forever wilt thou love and she be fair,” Guy murmured.

  “What?” Cassandra asked.

  “Nothing,” Guy said.

  Below the bright mural, in a curving row of chairs, sat a line of young Indian women and their children. The women stopped talking to stare. To the right of the women was a half door behind which sat a white-capped nurse. A sign said, “Today’s Anishinabe Children Are Tomorrow’s Anishinabe.” Beside the sign was a schedule of prenatal classes, postpartum infant care, day-care activities, and story hours in the library.

  “I’ll be damned,” Guy murmured again.

  “Why?” Cassandra asked.

  “This place. It’s . . . remarkable.”

  “What’s so remarkable about a community center?” Cassandra said.

  They followed Bear Wing to the last office. Through an open door came Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the clattering of electric typewriters and computer printers, the smell of cigarette smoke, sage, and, even stronger, the sharp scent of liquor.

  They stepped inside. The small office was crowded with Indians, desks, file cabinets, typewriters, desktop computers. Centered in the office was a long table stacked with books like those Cassandra had studied at the Red Caboose Cafe. Several Indians, their wolf- and fox-skull headdresses and hawk capes draped over chairs, were pouring bottles of liquor down the drain of a sink. The Whittaker-Price liquor.

  “All of it?” one of the Indians said, pausing with an unopened fifth of Cutty Sark. “Jesus, man, there must two hundred bucks worth here. We could sell it, you know?”

  “Every drop,” someone commanded from across the room. That voice. Guy turned. Standing with his back to Guy and Cassandra, beside an IBM computer, was a stocky Indian in a gray wool sport coat with leather elbow patches. The back of his head was parted in a vertical white line by the shiny black flow of his braids.

  “Excuse me,” Cassandra said from the doorway, “I’m looking for Mr. Ma’iingaans.”

  The stocky Indian turned. His eyes moved from Cassandra to Guy. His brown face opened in a wide, gap-toothed grin.

  “Hello, Tex,” he said to Guy.

  “Hello, Turd,” Guy answered.

  This was no Indian. This was Tom LittleWolf.

  22

  Their handshake ended in a bear hug. Tom’s arms were as strong as ever, but he smelled like Zhingwaak. The nut-meat smell of scalp and hair oil. The musky scent of sage and leather and wool. Behind them the Indians in the office stared, but Tom and Guy held on for a long time. When they released each other Tom’s shiny black eyes returned to Cassandra Silver, swept down her body, then returned to her face.

  “Cassandra Silver,” Guy said.

  “Ah so,” Tom said gravely, “emissary from Big Chief Stanbrook in Washington.” He let his voice slip into a Chippewa lilt, a cantering rise and fall of words.

  “Senator Howard Stanbrook, yes,” Cassandra said, not smiling.

  Tom turned to Guy. “White woman has no sense of humor.”

  Guy grinned.

  “Too much college, mebbe,” Tom said in singsong.

  Cassandra’s eyes passed over Tom’s shoulder to the wall behind, then back. “Looks like you’ve had some college yourself.”

  Guy turned to look. On the wall hung a black-framed diploma. “Thomas Steven LittleWolf (a.k.a. Ma’iingaans).” It was a law degree from the University of Minnesota.

  “Jesus, Turd!” Guy said.

  Tom grinned. “Find the right store, they print you anything—hey?”

  But Guy knew at a glance the diploma was real. “I heard every rumor but that one,” Guy said, staring at it. “The closest rumor was the craziest—you were studying medicine.”

  “Medicine was right,” Tom said. He swung his arm toward the law-books, the deed and abstract tomes, the IBM computers. “This is medicine. Indian medicine.”

  Cassandra raised her eyebrows in puzzlement.

  “The law,” Tom said, his Chippewa voice disappearing. “Your law. It works for Indians like their old medicine—only stronger.” He spoke in flat, white textbook sentences. “Before we never had enough medicine for our people. Now we
have plenty. You finally gave us what we need.”

  “You’re a medicine man, Cassandra is a medicine woman,” Guy said.

  “That so?” Tom said. “Big Chief Stanbrook get angry letters from white folks with Indian medicine spell cast on them?” Tom asked, falling back into his Chippewa lilt.

  “A few, yes,” Cassandra said through tightly clenched lips.

  “Then Indian medicine working,” Tom said, grinning.

  “Look, Mr. Ma’iingaans—I didn’t come here to—”

  “Of course,” Tom said. He shook out a cigarette and lit it in one motion, then looked about the office. The other Indians returned to work on the deed books, to the computers, to draining the Price-Whittaker liquor. Tom glanced at his wristwatch. In his shirt pocket, beneath strings of bone and turquoise beads, were reading glasses. “Let me show you around. We can talk at the same time.”

  They toured the rest of the building. Tom walked quickly, spoke rapidly without the Chippewa intonation. His gait was faster than Guy remembered it. He still walked like a leopard, but the contented amble was gone. Guy thought of the Marlin Perkins cycle-of-life nature shows on TV; Tom walked like a hunting cat angling toward prey, walked like at any moment he would burst into a run.

  They toured the clinic. He pointed out the five-bed rest-home wing, but did not take them inside.

  “Five beds,” Cassandra said. “That seems small.”

  Without slowing, Tom said, “Only thirty-five percent of the Indian population lives past age sixty-five. That’s half the rate of white longevity. You don’t have any old people, you don’t need a big rest home, right?”

  Cassandra was silent.

  They toured the library, the day-care center. Whenever Tom came around a corner or into a room, other Indians straightened. A janitor leaning on his broom began again to sweep. Young Indian women with their babies grinned, looked down, then whispered to each other after he passed.

  As they walked Cassandra spoke of Howard Stanbrook. Committee assignments of international scope made it impossible for him to leave Washington—that’s why she was here. Senator Stanbrook had asked her to bring to the Tribal Council the senator’s ideas for a solution to the White Earth land-claims problem in the form of a federal land bill.