by E. C. Frey
Stab lunged but I backed away and he dropped to the floor. The Viet Cong would be there soon. I checked his pulse. It slowed. The jungle rot would get him anyway. If not, the Viet Cong would. Even as I searched for his lingering life, noise of struggle and entry came from the front door. I had to save her.
A Molotov cocktail sailed through the window. You can’t turn your back on the enemy. The enemy never sleeps. The flames already licked at the curtains by the time I made it to the front of the house. But I made it in time to see the enemy, blond hair and blue eyes. A wink. The enemy is very crafty.
Fire. Mortar blasts. I ran for the bedroom. I had to save the bird. I had killed a brother for her. I couldn’t let her die in her cage. Releasing the bindings was as easy and as sweet as those moments of childhood innocence; floating down the river in inner tubes, swinging out and jumping into clear, cool summer waters, barbecues into late, lightning bug–lit evenings. I remembered all these things. It had been a long time since they’d brought me any joy, any relief from the images that bombarded my head—the noises, the flashes, and the screams that barraged my waking hours, my sleeping hours. There was salvation in cutting those bindings. Does she know I saved her? Does she know she saved me?
I have to let her know. There is only this one last thing. Perhaps all my sins, all my sorrows, have been leading me to this one act. I have to beg her forgiveness. Her father was a coward. Her husband is a coward. I will not be the third.
It took me all day, but my quest has rewarded me. That is a good sign—a sign that I am doing the right thing. I cut the rose and say a prayer for forgiveness.
It is not my rose. The hallway in her hotel is long, but it is quiet. I place the lonely bloom at her doorstep. Will she remember? The girls never knew. They never knew I watched them and watched over them. The Rose Garden was always filled with birds—innocence always blossoms where there is space for the wildness of the world.
24 Mariah
My dreams peel away at reality.
Living in the linear world of fast-paced journalism that requires objective accounting of measurable experience, the idea that I can feel someone watching and tracking my movements should be illogical. But who decides what is logical—or even objective, for that matter? Living requires a certain amount of human judgment. Doesn’t it? Are those who determine objectivity merely those who wield the power of social convention? Eve tells me I am sounding more and more like Heather. Heather is losing it. Therefore, she must believe I am as well. Maybe she’s right. And maybe she’s wrong. Truthfully, there’s no room for paranoia in my life. And yet it has taken up residence and torments my waking and sleeping hours. The prevailing culture has no room for it but I can’t shake it. My intuition screams at me to pay attention.
Grandmother warns me of attachment to the illusion of order required in the white man’s world. There’s a part of it that I under-stand—that makes sense. The observable universe is the part that allows one to hold on to reality, but the rest allows one to infer a world of infinite possibility. Comfortable with at least the concepts of string theory and multiverses, ideas of altered reality don’t terrify me. Grandfather, when he was alive, taught me how ghosts infuse the landscape. The memory of events imbues the place, the memory of people transmutes from reality to spirit. Death is just a passage, not an end to that which has no end—it’s no more than a jagged bump in the wheel. Grandfather knew energy was everywhere. The observer is the final judge.
The sense of being stalked by something is not foreign or strange. But my dreams play tricks with me—I have no sense of whether I’m asleep or awake.
I did not speak of these things with Grandmother when I called yesterday. I have never kept things from her. Why now? Grandmother would know what to do, she would understand the forces at work, and I don’t dare utter these matters and loose their power without some mediation.
The airport bustles. I wait to board, shutting out the jostle and din of other travelers. Finding my assigned seat, I settle in for the short flight. I double-check my purse’s side pocket for the flash drive I picked up this morning. It’s safe. I need to find a quiet moment to open it, somewhere where there are no prying eyes, but all the possible contents spook me. It is as if the drive taunts me. Daniel would’ve known I’d reveal the truth to the world no matter the consequence. But that’s my problem: I don’t care about consequences, because if the world has betrayed me then I can betray it back. It’s math. Zero plus zero equals zero. But lately, the numbers aren’t adding up. It’s an issue of values.
The last moments of my conversation with Daniel remain clear and powerful, to the exclusion of everything said since. Were they his last words on Earth? Does he lie dead or unconscious in some hotel room on the far side of the world? It has to be the flash drive. Someone wants it. Right? Or maybe it was something else; maybe he pissed off some psycho motorist who followed him. Anything is possible. Why do I have to jump to conclusions?
I need to open the flash drive.
“Excuse me.”
“Oh, sure. I’m sorry.” I retrieve my book from the seat next to me. I smile at my neighbor, then instantly look away like a shy Indian girl. Why? I’m not like my mother or my aunties. And he doesn’t look Lakota or Ho-Chunk. Indian Country is large, but even so, it surprises me. What tribe? And what are the odds of sharing a row on the way to Charleston from Washington, D.C.? Meaningful coincidences are rarely anything more than happenstance in the world of news. But my world has lost its edges and chance seems to carry more meaning these days.
My neighbor pulls a large book from his backpack, shoves the pack under the seat in front of him, and opens the tome on water resources engineering to a well-marked page. He’s no doubt attending the water conference. Still, the coincidence unsettles me. Perhaps the bad winds in my life are spent. Or maybe they’re an impending full gale force storm. My arm tingles where it rests next to his.
I study the world below. We are taking the route that traces the coast of the Eastern United States. It’s a beautiful day, even more so at airplane height. The clouds are thin, wispy little things. The brilliance of the sky etches every contour of the shore. The water sparkles and casts diamonds across the window portal.
The events of the past few days catch up with me now that I’m settled and quiet. I finished the last article on virtual water, but I couldn’t put together the summary for the series. Unsettling dream images mingled with the sequencing of words. The flash drive had not yet arrived, but its existence unsettled me as it unsettles me now. How does one summarize the importance of one of the most valuable resources now being privatized everywhere? The potential consequences chill me. I trace the deep lines of the seaboard, note where they’re broken by the haphazard inlets of marshland.
There is so much to say in the summary. I could begin with highlighting water rights in the U.S., because it’s often the benchmark for the U.N. and the world. The department that deals with all resources also deals with American Indians. It’s always been about the land and its resources.
I cast a sideways glance at my neighbor, and I catch him doing the same.
I clear my throat. “Um. I noticed your book on water resources. I’m Mariah Westerman. I’m a journalist, and I’m doing a series of articles on water issues and rights.”
A geophysicist with a PhD from California Institute of Technology, Dennis is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes. He, too, is mixed blood.
The glint of the sun on water brightens our descent into Charleston. Water is one of the last and ongoing matters that shimmies along the surface of human life. One only has to turn on the faucet and the tap water flows. In a world of supply and demand, the exploding world population constitutes an increasing demand without an equal increase in supply. Agriculture alone, the largest consumer of water, will require more in order to feed the world. Once man hits the tipping point of supply, there will be no regeneration of the valuable resource. Desalination is the alternative. Man will be wi
lling to drink the seas dry to survive. But survival has a price.
Dennis describes the issue in cold scientific terms. Mesmerized by his breadth of knowledge, I scratch a few notes.
The first and last issues deal with water rights in the western region of the United States. The Bureau of Reclamation, the doctrine of federally reserved water rights, the states’ system of prior appropriation, and the Supreme Court’s weigh-ins cast a blueprint for the future allocation of water for the world. Rivers running through tribal lands are technically theirs, provided they use it. But if they don’t have the means to harness the rivers, the right passes to those who can. The implied power floats along the surface of water rights. The privatization of water is the first clue that man’s relationship to it is changing. Someone is going to die of thirst. And someone else will get rich.
“Our best croplands and tribal capital were inundated when the Garrison Dam flooded the reservation and we were forced to sign away the land,” Dennis says. “We were dispersed to the high buttes and the cities. It nearly broke my father. He made sure my brothers and I could speak the language of appropriation. It’s the only way to protect our people’s rights. And there’s oil under what’s left in the Bakken formation. The government and its friends in business just don’t know how to get it yet.”
I hesitate. “But the language of appropriation requires some . . . accommodation.” But he has clearly accommodated far less than I have. His hair is long and braided in two tight lines down his chest. He’s not afraid to be Indian, whereas I’ve been blending—poorly— my entire life.
“Yeah,” he says. “But it’s a necessary risk.”
The plane’s landing wheels emerge from their tomb. I stare out over the lowlands that ensconce the treasure of South Carolina’s coast, Charleston.
“It’s beautiful out there. It’s hard to imagine so much suffering started here.” In some ways, it’s where ours started. Grandmother grew up with the memories. I didn’t learn that history in school. In college, I did a paper on Lincoln’s concept of “hard war.” He suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Not that the writ was available to us. He and his generals targeted civilians, the weak, killed livestock and family pets, all before they turned their attention to us. By then, they had perfected the means of extermination. My professor failed me. I even included primary sources.
My words are bitter. “It’s impossible to see this place without thinking of the end for us. Lincoln hung thirty-eight Santees to save his precious war. He knew what would happen. He knew. My grand-mother’s grandfather was saved from the scaffold and marched off to Fort McClellan, where he died of starvation and exposure. His wife and most of his children died at Pike Island of starvation. My great-grandmother was all that was left. If consolidating and saving the union justified total war, then the unified principle of progress and manifest destiny justified genocide. And Plymouth became the rock, the story, upon which the country was founded. They certainly wanted no part of our story, now or then.”
Dennis chuckles. “I don’t know. It sounds like you’re telling it anyway.”
“Yes, but no one wants to hear it. The lie serves power.”
Charleston gleams in the distance. Its irrelevance is not neat. In fact, it looks more pertinent than ever. Political relevance is a fickle mistress. Plymouth has been inching south for years. And tribes have been flexing their muscles with each casino that promises survival and an ability to tap their fundamental water rights. Accommodation and the language of appropriation. I have to smile.
Dennis smiles too.
Neither of us needs more words; the meanings are firmly rooted in the language of our tribes.
Once the seat belt signs turn off, I stand, a sense of excitement and dread comingling. I still have the same teenage butterflies in my stomach. They’re caused by more than just the anticipation of seeing my friends.
I swap business cards with Dennis. His smile is easy and I feel flushed. He’s disappointed I won’t be at the Water Convention. I am too. I watch him travel swiftly ahead of me through the concourse. He makes me feel truly alive—like my quest for truth has meaning. His card is crisp and strong in my hand. It was only a chance meeting. Or was it?
Now I’m alone.
I have to look at the contents of the flash drive tonight. I could upload its contents and send it to my boss. Be rid of it. Finish my summary and head over to the Water Convention tomorrow—just for a few hours, before everyone else arrives. Heather and Eve would understand. It’s my job. I clutch Dennis’s card to my chest. I could call him tonight. My head swims as I step onto the down escalator and trip over the suitcase trailing behind a passenger two steps lower. He glances back and scowls.
“I’m so sorry.”
The man turns away disdainfully.
I watch at his back as I step from the escalator. The light is blinding. I rarely check my luggage, but life is more complicated when I’m with my friends. It requires eveningwear and bathing suits and makeup and more than one pair of shoes and all the other trappings of being a tourist. I detest the role, but I love my friends.
Retrieving my bag, I turn and walk into a man who’s been standing behind me.
“Oh, excuse me.”
The man doesn’t respond. His jaw is hard. His eyes are cold—not that I can see them, glowering from behind dark sunglasses, but I can feel them. Turning, he bumps me hard and moves quickly toward the exit doors.
I fall backwards onto the conveyor belt full of luggage, and my head hits the cold metal as the belt continues to move. Hard luggage pens me in.
I can’t breathe.
My head is cotton candy between my ears.
I’m spinning.
A fellow passenger offers me his hand and pulls me up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. Thank you.”
Several young onlookers giggle.
The man’s concerned face makes me feel weak. “I can’t believe that man pushed you like that.” He smells of stale cigarettes but he reminds me of someone.
My shaky fingers reach for but can’t find my head. “I know. Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.”
He moves away.
I know that face. I’m sure of it.
But it can’t be. I move through a fog. How could he have known to come to Charleston? Did he follow Heather from Connecticut, or me from Washington, DC? What could he want from me?
But I know the other face too. Or do I? The man who bumped me onto the carousel is familiar. Even hiding behind those sunglasses, I know him. Mexico. I know one of those faces from Mexico. Which one is which?
Call Eve.
My hands shake and I misdial several times before I get the number right.
“Hello?”
“Eve! Where are you?”
“I’m at LaGuardia.”
“I think I saw him. I’m pretty sure it was him lurking behind me as I waited for my luggage. Then he pushed me onto the carousel. Or maybe it’s the guy from Mexico. I’m not sure. But one of them was him. You know? Him who pushed me.”
“What are you talking about? What guy from Mexico? And do you mean Heather’s guy? You must be mistaken. Why would he be in Charleston? And how did he push you out in public?”
“I’m telling you. One of the guys pushed me. He was weird. Psycho. Both guys.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Don’t do anything stupid. Go to the hotel and I’ll see you there shortly. Find Heather.” Eve paused. “Did he hurt you?”
“Yes, but I think I’m fine. My head hurts. But what if he follows me? He’ll know where we’re staying. He’ll know how to find Heather.”
“Calm down! It wasn’t him and no one will follow you. And who is this guy you’re talking about from Mexico?”
“I don’t know. I just know one guy pushed me and one guy helped me and I’m no longer sure who is who. But I’m sure both are following me. They’re after my flash drive.”
“Don’t be ridiculo
us. Go to the hotel.”
Eve’s composure annoys me. “I’m telling you, it was him. There’s no doubt. The man was next to me. He practically ran. He’s in Charleston. There’s no mistake.”
“Then why weren’t you sure a moment ago?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure now. What else could my dreams mean?”
“All right. I can’t do anything here. Wait until I get there. Meet me in the hotel bar. He won’t be a problem there. I should be there around 10:30. Just wait. Okay?”
“I don’t want him to follow me. He’s seen me now.”
“If it’s really him, he knew you were there anyway. Just go to the hotel.”
“Hurry.”
“You’ll be fine. Just wait in your room or find Heather until you’re ready to come down. Then go to the bar. You’ll be fine there.”
“All right. And Eve, keep your eyes open.”
“I will. And you need to chill out. If it’s him, he’s enjoying watching you come unglued. That’s precisely what he wants. Since when do you give people what they want?”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“He scares the shit out of me. Actually, I think they both do.”
Eve doesn’t respond.
“Eve?”
“Yeah, I was thinking. He wants to scare you and you’re playing right into his plans. Call Clay. He’ll remind you how unbelievably ornery you are.”
I look around. Several men wearing sunglasses linger. “I can’t pull him into this. He doesn’t know anything about our problem.”
“Maybe he should.”
“No. Besides, he’ll tell Grandmother.” My head throbs.
“You better figure out why you’re not telling your grandmother anything.”
“Yeah, later, when things make more sense.”
“Now is when you need help making sense.”
“Just hurry. I don’t want to talk about my family while this lunatic is around.”
“All right. Hurry to the hotel and wait till I get there.”
