Red Earth White Earth

by Will Weaver

  Tom said that if the Big Chief were not reelected next time, he would have plenty of time to spend in his own district. And any land bill that did not include full restitution of White Earth lands as established by Congress, March 19, 1867, would not be discussed.

  Cassandra’s cheeks reddened. She asked more questions. Tom gave her few answers. She asked to meet with him again. He told her maybe. He brought them full circle to the front door.

  “So,” Tom said to Guy, “come by later this evening. I’ll be here. We can talk, alone.” He glanced from Guy to Cassandra, then back to Guy. “Nice to see old friend Guy and his white woman.”

  “I’m not his woman,” Cassandra said immediately. Her cheeks flushed car-beating scarlet. Guy guessed she had always felt betrayed by her face’s easy capacity to color.

  “But he would like you to be,” Tom said with a grin.

  “Oh? And how do you know that?” Cassandra said.

  “Indian medicine man has X-ray eyes.”

  Cassandra stuck out her jaw. “All right, Mr. Ma’iingaans. If you have X-ray eyes, what do you see ahead for whites and Indians on the reservation?”

  Tom squinted like a fortune-teller and turned his gaze through the windows of the Anishinabe Community Center. “Hmmm,” he murmured, looking far away. Then he blinked and turned to Cassandra. His grin faded. “Me see only Indians where white folks used to be.”

  “Somebody ought to check that man’s degree,” Cassandra muttered. They had left No Medicine Town, Guy at the wheel. Cassandra stared straight ahead. Her hair was mussed over her forehead, but she had not thought to smooth it. Her cheeks still glowed pink. “I mean, who is that guy anyway, the Shecky Greene of the Chippewa?”

  “Chief Shecky,” Guy corrected.

  “And the two of you,” Cassandra said, “what’s your story?”

  “We go back a ways.”

  Cassandra stared at him. She glanced in the mirror, ran her hand through her hair, then stared at him again.

  Guy drove toward Helmer’s farm, turned into the driveway. Cassandra would continue to Flatwater.

  “Nice,” Cassandra said, looking around. Guy followed her eyes. The new tractor sat upright on its repaired tires. The blue silo shone. The Holsteins stood silent in the sunlight by the rear barn door. “Needs a little paint here and there, but nice,” she said.

  “Right,” Guy said. He glanced over to Helmer’s house. Boxed by the low kitchen window, like a frame around an old photo, Helmer sat in his wheelchair, watching. It was six o’clock; he was checking to see if Martin was on time for chores.

  Cassandra glanced at her watch, then back up. “You could show me around. The closest I’ve ever been to cows is four seats from the screen and Paul Newman in Hud.”

  “Some other time,” Guy said. Martin was coming from the house to the barn.

  “Hey, wait,” Cassandra said as Guy got out. She held up the Whittaker-Price bottle of Black Label. “Take your scotch, anyway.”

  Martin, passing, saw the scotch. He slowed his walk.

  “Keep it,” Guy said.

  Martin spit, walked on.

  Cassandra stared. “Who was that, the hired man?”

  Guy was silent for a moment. He looked after his father. “Sort of,” he said.

  Cassandra looked again at the scotch. “Black Label. I prefer Glenlivet, but Black Label is drinkable, though not alone.”

  Guy waited.

  Her cheeks reddened slightly.

  “We could share it, that is,” she said.

  “You mean like, I’ll take one half and you the other?”

  “Jesus Christ!” she exploded.

  “Okay, okay,” Guy said, not pressing his luck.

  “Goddammit, I’m inviting you for a drink. I mean, Jesus, I deserve one after today. Indians in trees. Polka bands on ice. Tribal comedians. Tonight I’m going to hole up in the Lumberjack and drink. Come visit if you like. It’s either you and me or me and Johnny Carson.”

  Guy paused. “Thanks, but I’m going to see Tom tonight.”

  “Come by early. See him later,” Cassandra said, starting the Chevy’s engine. “But it’s up to you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Guy said. He watched her drive away.

  Cassandra’s room on the top, second floor of the Lumberjack Hotel was square and tall. Its walls were papered with faded pink and purple paisley petunias that swirled into each other. The ceiling was old rococo tin painted white, complete with a large, brown-bordered oval water stain. The furniture consisted of a wooden dresser painted pink. An armchair with a pink slipcover. A sturdy armoire, probably oak, painted pink. A small white writing desk top-heavy with an old black and white TV. A large, bow-backed double bed with an iron rail, scallop-shaped headboard. And a pink bedspread.

  “Cozy,” Guy said, looking about the room.

  “Pink,” Cassandra answered, with her long teeth tearing open the plastic on a bag of ice cubes. She was wearing a red flannel shirt, new blue jeans—Guy wondered if she had any old clothes—and sandals. Her toe-nails shone with a clear lacquer. The tips of her hair were wet. She smelled clean.

  Guy had worn Helmer’s long overcoat, whose elbows were gone.

  “Nice coat,” Cassandra said.

  “Thanks. It has a special feature.” From inside its folds he produced Kennedy.

  “Oh!” Cassandra’s eyes lit with surprise.

  “I needed the coat to get him past Mrs. Smythe at the main desk. She was the high school librarian,” Guy said.

  Cassandra took Kennedy and held him, but Kennedy wanted to get down and sniff. “I never had a pet,” she said, staring at Kennedy for a long moment. Then she poured two glasses of scotch.

  They drank and talked. The TV played. Cassandra sat curled up on the bed with Kennedy in her lap. Guy sat in the pink armchair with his feet across the end of the bed. She asked a lot of questions about Tom LittleWolf. He gave her general answers. Told her some of their stories. Told her a little about Tom’s family. About Zhingwaak. Tom’s father. Mary LittleWolf. Powwows on the Fourth of July. No Medicine Lake. Flatwater High. Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis.

  She asked more questions and poured more scotch. In the middle of Guy’s third scotch and a scratchy Bonanza rerun—Dan Blocker was hoisting a knife-wielding Indian high over a cattle-watering tank—Cassandra leaned against the iron-rail headboard. She looked like Venus on the half shell. Guy checked his watch. He had better get going if he wanted to see Tom.

  “Is that strange, do you think?” she said suddenly. “A kid never having a pet?” She stroked Kennedy’s back with her fingertips.

  “Yes,” Guy said. He leaned forward to stand up.

  “Thanks,” she said. She ran a slim fingertip down Kennedy’s nose, around his eyes, over the little washboard bumps of his spine. Guy watched her fingertip move. He did not stand.

  “My mother said pets were unhealthy,” she continued. “Pets woke you up at night, my father said. So I read. Books were good pets. No messy food dishes, no smelly litter boxes.” She paused. “My friend Clark doesn’t like pets, either.”

  “Why?”

  “Mostly the same reasons. Also because a psychologist once told him pets were substitutes for things missing in people’s lives. Missing friends. Jobs. Children. Lovers.”

  “You believe the shrinks?” Guy asked.

  “Sure, why not?” she answered. She ran her hand in slower strokes along Kennedy’s back; he was asleep by now.

  “So I have a pet and you don’t. That means I’m lonely and you’re not?” Guy said.

  Cassandra looked up and met his gaze. “Kennedy’s in my lap, not yours.”

  Guy drained his scotch. He got up, lifted Kennedy from Cassandra’s lap, and set him in the armchair. Then he reached for Cassandra. He pulle
d her up from the bed and kissed her. She was very tall in his arms. He kissed her for a long time. At first her folded forearms held him apart from her. Gradually they loosened and her hands slid to his shoulders. He slowly unbuttoned her shirt. Her breasts were round and upturned and firm. They hardened more as he stroked them. Slowly he leaned her backward until they fell onto the bed.

  Which broke in the middle with a great crash. Kennedy leaped to the floor and began to bark. In moments Mrs. Smythe pounded on the door.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Cassandra called, struggling to stand up. But Guy would not let her go.

  “I heard a dog barking in there!” Mrs. Smythe said.

  “The TV,” Guy whispered.

  “The TV,” Cassandra called.

  “Lassie,” Guy whispered.

  “Lassie—on TV—that’s what you heard.”

  Mrs. Smythe was silent for a moment. “Lassie isn’t on any channel that I’m getting.”

  Cassandra’s eyes widened.

  “A commercial,” Guy whispered, continuing to kiss her neck. She continued to try to get away, but Guy had her trapped in the pink V of the broken bed.

  “Ah . . . a dog-food commercial on TV—the dog looked like Lassie, that’s what I meant. Everything’s fine here. I . . . dropped my suitcase.”

  Mrs. Smythe muttered something, then her footsteps receded down the stairs.

  “Damn you,” Cassandra began. But Guy closed her mouth with his own.

  Afterward it was the three of them, Guy, Cassandra, and Kennedy, in the crashed pink bed. Kennedy sniffed the air and tried to burrow up between Cassandra’s legs. Guy gave him a good whack. Then he curled up, pouting, between their legs.

  Guy and Cassandra’s lovemaking had been quick and complete. From the long naked smoothness of her body, from some perfume whose aroma he did not smell until his tongue licked her skin, Guy came quickly. He stayed hard, however, as she kept moving against him. She had more than a few instructions for his hands and fingers and tongue. She moved faster and faster until she buried her face in his neck and moaned once.

  Fifteen minutes later, Guy and Kennedy were on the cold, empty streets of Flatwater.

  Cassandra had quickly become businesslike, efficient. Work tomorrow. Get up early. Or maybe it was miles to go before I sleep, Guy didn’t remember which.

  Outside the hotel the cold air cleared his head, and Guy suddenly remembered he was supposed to see Tom. Down Main Street the clock over Lyle Price’s State Bank blinked, “Corn—2.29/Oats—1.63/Time—11:08.”

  Guy glanced back up at Cassandra’s hotel window just as her light went out. “Come on, goddammit,” he said to Kennedy. “We’re late.”

  The Hubert Humphrey Anishinabe Center was dark but for a faint glow at the rear. Guy tried the front door. Locked. He intermittently pounded and waited, but no one came forward. Then he circled the building toward the light. As he neared the one yellow window that threw its bent square of light onto the ground outside, Guy could hear a faint thudding. Drums. He looked inside. It was Bear Wing, the Tribal Council office. Its only occupant was Tom LittleWolf. He sat with his back to the window, his head cradled on his arms, asleep. On either side of him stood a stack of leather-bound books; an ashtray full of butts hung half over the table edge beside his elbow. Just beyond Tom’s folded arms a cursor blinked blue at the bottom of a computer screen. The screen was full of text. On a shelf beyond, a stereo played. Tiny red lights fanned out and back, out and back as the record played. A Lynyrd Skynyrd album jacket leaned against the stereo receiver. The thudding bass sounded like “Free Bird.”

  Guy pounded on the window. Tom did not stir. Guy knew “Free Bird” was the last cut on the album, so he waited until the red lights blinked off and the record arm lifted. He pounded again. Tom stirred, changed positions, but left his head on his arms. The record arm hesitated above its fork, then swung back and dropped onto the album. Automatic replay. Guy pounded harder on the glass, but Tom did not awaken.

  23

  The next morning at eight-thirty, as Guy walked from Martin’s toward his car, the postman’s pickup pulled into the driveway and honked. Guy was on his way to see Tom, but walked over to the truck.

  “You a Pehrsson? You look like one.”

  Guy nodded.

  “Need a John Henry then,” the postman said, who wore a green visor though the skies were overcast. He held out a fat white envelope. It was addressed to Helmer. Its return address was the White Earth Tribal Office, Humphrey Center. On the seat beside the postman was a large box of identical white letters.

  As Guy signed, the postman fanned his rubber-tipped thumb across the tops of the other letters, then looked down the road north. “Take me all goddamn day, five o’clock for sure,” he muttered to himself. Then he tore off the pink signature form; he briefly hefted the letter before he handed it back to Guy. “Funny,” he said. “You haul mail long enough you get so you can feel things through the paper. Give me ten letters, nine good news and one bad, I’ll pick out the bad one for you.”

  “Have a nice day,” Guy said.

  The postman muttered something and threw his truck into reverse.

  Guy started toward Helmer’s house with the letter. He hefted it again. Then he switched directions, took it to Martin’s house, and dropped it on the kitchen table.

  Outside, Guy got in the Mercedes. He, too, had mail: on the seat lay a large packet of thin white envelopes. They were crisscrossed, tightly bound with thin brown strips of leather. The letters all carried his name. His twelve years of California addresses. They were letters from Madeline, letters she had written but never mailed.

  October 18, 1972

  Dear Guy,

  Your car was gone from the yard this morning. Martin thought maybe you had gone to town for something. I knew better.

  It kept raining until about two o’clock in the afternoon. The sky cleared some, then. I walked outside, down by the barn. I just stood in the wet yard and looked around. It was so empty.

  Then I did something I’ve never done before. I climbed the silo on the outside ladder. I shouldn’t have done it because the metal rungs were wet and slippery and my feet slipped twice. Martin saw me when I was halfway up. He started to shout for me to come down but I kept climbing. He thought I was going to jump or something. But I just wanted to get to the top. To that little iron crow’s nest where you and Tom used to sit and fly your balsa airplanes from.

  Well, I made it up there, too. Once I was inside the cage my heart was pounding and it took me a minute before I dared open my eyes and turn around to look. I always had the idea you could see nearly forever from up there. But when I did look I was kind of disappointed. I could see only across to the hills of White Earth and the white top of the water tower in Flatwater.

  The wind up there was very cold. Martin kept calling for me to come down, but I stood up there for a while. When I closed my eyes it felt a little bit like I was flying. Like I was moving and the land was still.

  I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.

  Love, your mother

  October 20, 1972

  Dear Guy,

  No word from you yet. Martin says he always figured you’d run off unexpectedly and leave him with all the chores.

  Helmer is doing all right in the hospital. Don’t think about what happened. It happened and that was all.

  Love, your mother

  October 24, 1972

  Dear Guy,

  First snow today. Twenty-eight degrees and wind from the northwest. It snowed just enough to make everything white. Now the fields are the same color as the sky.

  I’ve got to get the bird-feeder up. The grosbeaks will be here soon. Strange how they come down from Canada to winter here. This country to them is like Arizona t
o us. I wonder if people in Arizona have an Arizona that they think of going to.

  You’re far away now. I know it.

  Went up the silo again to the crow’s nest. When I was there it was snowing lightly. The snow was slanting into the wind. Everything seemed tilted. Everything but me. It was like I was the one standing straight and the farm and land were tilted.

  I’m thinking about my first letter. I didn’t mean to sound crazy. I only set out to tell you how sad I was you had left. But that didn’t come out in the letter. Maybe that’s because I’m not sure I am sad. I won’t write any more about that until I’m sure of what I feel.

  That might be the way to write these letters—not write anything I’m not sure of. That will make the letters short.

  Love, your mother

  November 2, 1972

  Dear Guy,

  The snow has melted, but the weather turned cold again. Twenty-one degrees today. The leaves on the box elders have fallen. I’m glad the big red oak in the yard keeps its leaves all winter. Which is not far away. The November grays are here. Field gray, sky gray, aspen gray, nuthatch gray, chickadee gray.

  But I had a dream last night, and in it there were lots of colors—reds and pinks and yellows and greens. I think it was a different country and you were there.

  Yesterday I went to town alone for groceries. I stayed all afternoon and through suppertime. I looked in all the stores. I hardly remember time passing, but when I looked up once, the streetlights were coming on. I stayed in town and had supper by myself at the diner. It felt funny eating alone. When I got home Martin was very angry, as you would expect. He kept asking me why I did it, why I ate supper by myself in town. I told him I didn’t know.

  But I do know. It was because you were gone. I’m sure of it.

  Love, your mother

  November 10, 1972

  Dear Guy,

  I always write these letters between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning. Martin is gone then for chores and I’m free. I take a bath and then when I’m warm I either write or read a little. The house is completely quiet. The birds start to come to the feeder with the first daylight. Saw the first rose-breasted grosbeak yesterday, which means winter is here. Still no snow but only nineteen degrees at 6:00 this morning.