Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery

by Jimmy Fox

  “Sorry. No great mystery here. She was trying to please the esteemed scholar, Bolton, her professor. A simple case of fraud brought on by a raging need for approval. Maybe she had a thing for the old guy.”

  “I’ll ignore the sexism implicit in your allegation. And look who’s accusing somebody of intellectual dishonesty. Don’t you even want to hear the facts? Reminds me of the case of a certain English professor wrongly accused of plagiarism.”

  Chastened, Nick readjusted himself in his chair and slowly exhaled in an attempt to expel any remaining opinionated cantankerousness. She had a knack for keeping his feet on the ground.

  “Hush up and listen,” Hawty said, doggedly sticking to her point, mixing down-home gruffness with higher-ed decorum. “Maybe you’ll get something useful in that overstuffed head of yours. Besides, there’s more to this journal than simply moving three years further back than your date.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  She’d begun to finger her elaborate arrangement of six-inch-long braids. “Do you like my hair? Took four hours.” It was her third new look of the month.

  Ah, youth! Nick thought. All innocent narcissism, gullible idealism, blissful self-absorption!

  Not waiting for an answer, Hawty quit bothering her braids and plowed on. “You say there in your notes that scholars believe there was a big intertribal war over inland salt sources and rock deposits for projectiles.”

  He nodded. “Among other causes: horse trading with the Wichita, slave trading in Apache captives—”

  “Excuse me, please! I have the microphone. This young female scholar says in her thesis that following the war, the remaining Yaknelousa allies merged with the Katogoula, and that the few surviving defeated Quinahoa were kept as slaves. The Katogoula and the Yaknelousa shared a lot of folkways, even before the war. She also says that Mézières’s clerk spoke with some old men of the tribe, using yama—what’s that, sign language?”

  “Yam-AH, accent on the last syllable. The Indian name for Mobilian Jargon.” Seeing Hawty’s eyebrows rise for more of an explanation, Nick added, “Yama was a Chickasaw-Choctaw pidgin of the central Gulf Coast, with French, Spanish, and English loan words. It became the trade language many tribes used to communicate with each other and the Europeans.”

  “Oh. Well, these old tribe members placed a definite date on the great battle. Nine years before 1768. That would mean the battle was fought about 1759.” She smiled in triumph. “Now that’s a significant advance backward, I’d say.”

  Nick rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Hmmmm,” was his only response. His rapt gaze drifted around the cubicle.

  Hawty wanted his attention. “A-hem! Our young scholar is probably really getting up there now, if she’s alive.”

  “Definitely a long shot,” Nick said, still processing the information Hawty had given him.

  “I’ll track down her family in California, see if she left any notes or other clues.”

  “What about the 1768 journal?” Nick asked. “Any chance of unearthing that jewel? We might find some new family lines that aren’t part of the Cutpine group.”

  “Nobody at the Texas genealogical libraries and the universities I called and e-mailed knows anything about it. So I posted some queries on my favorite genealogy websites. We’ll hear something soon.”

  “Good work, Hawty. But . . . oh, forget it. Maybe it won’t be a problem.”

  “What, extending the timeline back for the tribe? Isn’t that the point of genealogy, to go as far back as you can?”

  “It’s not so much the timeline,” Nick said, “as this new wrinkle about the other tribes. We have a close-knit community of people here with a treasured identity. They’ve taken care of their own for centuries. They’ve maintained a central decision-making body. They honor their ancient traditions.”

  “Even if they don’t practice them in any meaningful way anymore,” Hawty said. “But I won’t tell the BIA.”

  “That’s politics, and we avoid it like the plague. What I’m saying is, all these years, belief has sufficed for written genealogy. These people believe they’re Katogoula. Not Scots-Irish, not French, even though this blood runs in their veins, too. You don’t need a pedigree chart to see that. They’ve chosen their identity. What happens when, on the eve of their greatest victory in modern times—tribal recognition—some of them find out they’re not Katogoula, but of another tribe, maybe even a tribe that was an enemy?”

  “I’d say some applicants are going to be on the warpath, because they won’t be getting the expected invitation to the Katogoula pow-wow.”

  “You got it,” Nick said. “I learned a lesson from the Judge Chaurice incident: if you mess up somebody’s family jigsaw puzzle, you better know another way it fits together.” He waited for her to pick up on his idea. She didn’t disappoint him.

  “The bylaws of the tribe,” she said. “Use phrasing that will include descent from the other two tribes, if that’s all the lineage under examination shows.”

  “Exactly. This is one of the few instances when a genealogist can create instead of merely define.” Nick tilted back in his chair and thumped against a wall of the carrel. There was an answering thump. “What the hell was that? Am I being too loud? I’ve tried to keep my voice down.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s late, not a full house. Just my new neighbor with hypersensitive hearing. I don’t even know who it is, but she’s always thumping somebody’s wall when anyone so much as coughs. Pisses me off. I mean, I have ears too, and she makes plenty of noise. The nerve. I don’t think it’s a guy, unless he’s fond of really expensive, come-hither perfume.”

  “Hey, this is New Orleans,” Nick said in a lowered voice. “You never know, and probably shouldn’t ask. . . . As I was about to mention, at least the six old core families check out as genuine Katogoula. What the BIA sent in response to my query is a slam dunk for them. And we have living representatives of all but one of those surnames, if Tommy Shawe’s information is accurate.” Nick counted the families off on his fingers: “Royce and Luevenia Silsby; Odeal Caspard; Felix and Alberta Wattell and their family; Irton and Grace Dusong; the Shawes; and a direct descendant of the Bellarmines—the late mother of a current tribe member, a man named Nugent Chenerie, was a Bellarmine.

  “Most of the others from Cutpine can trace some useful connection to these core surnames, though usually not as close as those I just mentioned; so I don’t really foresee any qualification problems for the local families who haven’t had genealogical work done on their lines. But we’re sure to have applicants from beyond this area who think they’re Katogoula, and turn out to be Yaknelousa or Quinahoa. Let’s say their ancestors left decades, maybe centuries ago, didn’t hang around to marry a Katogoula. This is where a little creative qualification writing will come in.”

  Nick explained that Tommy Shawe wanted to build a vibrant tribe with five hundred initial members. The Cutpine group was small, slightly more than a fifth of that; many were elderly, without children. By broadening the criteria to include the other two tribes linked with the Katogoula in history, perhaps more people could be admitted. Nick admired Tommy and the other tribe members for their willingness to share the federal bonanza and their heritage. But he wondered how welcoming the Katogoula would ultimately be to those of the two lost tribes; he had learned through his genealogical work that ethnic pride is a first cousin of bigotry.

  “Sounds like a lot of intermarrying to me,” Hawty said. “I get claustrophobic just thinking about it.”

  “It’s not really that bad. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, some of the Oklahoma Katogoula came back to Louisiana. Many of these immigrants weren’t related to the six core families, but claimed roots to other, as yet undocumented, earlier tribe members. So this was new blood, new sets of ancestors. Their paths to the past were different from those of the six Cutpine families. And then we have unions with non-Indians, which have increased in recent years.”

  “How are we going to f
ind out who’s descended from the Yaknelousa and the Quinahoa? What do we use for evidence?”

  “A good genealogist never gives up,” Nick said. “There’s always the next book or microfilm that may reveal the answer.”

  “Sure would be nice if you could get at the Legajos de Luisiana.”

  “Yeah, I’m trying. Maybe nothing about those tribes survives in written form. Maybe the Katogoula swallowed them completely, without a trace.”

  “That would simplify matters, wouldn’t it?” Hawty suggested. “Everybody who thinks she’s Katogoula turns out to be just that. You might not have to change the invitation list to the pow-wow after all.”

  “True, we may never use information on the other two tribes, but we need to keep our eyes open for any references.”

  “Well, I have faith in the Jesuits and the French and the Spanish bureaucrats. I bet you somebody with a quill pen left a breadcrumb trail of unpronounceable names for us to follow, for all three tribes.”

  They heard more thumping from the adjacent cubicle. Nick brought his chair down on all four legs. “Jeez! What’s with that woman? A real pain in the ass. Can’t you get another carrel?”

  Hawty waved off his suggestion. Nick knew that below her brusque manner was a tolerance for the emotional foibles of others. Her physical limitations had taught her that we all have our handicaps, though most are on the inside. This was one of the traits that made her such a good teacher, and such a good friend.

  He’d reluctantly hired her a few years after starting his business, at the insistence of his best friends and former Freret colleagues, Una Kern and Dion Rambus. Working alone was the way he thought he preferred things. Recently, Hawty had earned a B.A. with honors in English and a B.S. in computer science; now she was pursuing her M.A. in English. The Freret English faculty was crazy about her and had given her plum teaching assignments. She’d also caught the genealogy bug and had qualified, mainly through online courses, as a CGR—Certified Genealogical Researcher, just a couple of levels below Certified Genealogist.

  Nick relied on her brilliance, her organizational talents, and her loyalty. One day, he knew, a great job or a wonderful man would steal her from him. He hoped, for his sake, that it would not be soon, but for hers, that it would.

  “There’s another development that’s, well, a bit troubling,” Nick said. “Tommy Shawe’s twin brother, Carl, was found dead on the shore of a local lake. Looks suspicious to the local fuzz.”

  “‘A bit troubling’! I should say so! A man’s dead? Oh, Lordy! I hope you’re going to stay out of this one. Can’t you just leave some skeletons in their closets?” Then, her irrepressible curiosity aroused, she asked, “So what happened?”

  “I’ve always liked what another Shaw—George Bernard—said about family skeletons: if you can’t get rid of them, make them dance. Carl Shawe’s death undoubtedly wasn’t a hunting accident; could have been a fight, but probably was murder.”

  “And,” Hawty prodded, impatient with Nick’s pace.

  “An ancient Indian weapon was used, an atlatl. The weird thing is that it—or at least the spear used—belongs to Tommy, who says it was stolen from a garage closet.”

  “That’s spooky. The spear thrower,” Hawty said. “Ancestor of the bow and arrow. I remember it from my background reading. Paleo-Indians used it to kill all kinds of game. Arrow-like darts for smaller animals, long spears for big ones, mammoths even. Now modern Indians are bringing it back, sort of as a living cultural reminder.”

  “Kwanzaa for the Red Man,” Nick said.

  “Oh, that’s real cute. You think his brother’s death has anything to do with the tribal recognition?”

  “I don’t know. But I get the feeling there are some powerful forces trying to discourage the Katogoula from opening their own casino.” He couldn’t help thinking of Val and the powerful force of her body touching his. He mentally shoved aside the image and the sensations. “Tommy wouldn’t talk about the death when I saw him last week, but it seems he’s being questioned as a suspect. I just read the coverage in the Daily Bagpipe.”

  “The who?”

  “The newspaper of Armageddon? On the Sangfleuve River? Parish seat?” Nick snapped his fingers, playing the badgering grade school teacher. “Come on, Louisiana girl.”

  “All right, all right, now! I’m with you. I just didn’t remember the newspaper right off the top of my head, that’s all.”

  Then Nick told her what else he’d gathered. “The morning of the murder the police found Tommy’s abandoned truck on the highway. Tommy turned up wandering near the body, in a confused condition. Claims to have been hit by a drugged blowgun dart.”

  “And this is the guy who hired us?” Hawty asked. “You really know how to pick ’em.”

  “Tommy doesn’t remember what happened to him the previous night and that morning, when the murder probably occurred. Chief Claude—”

  “Of the Chitiko-Tiloasha? See, I’m getting the hang of these crazy tribal names.”

  “Good. Chief Claude told me that Tommy and his brother argued quite a bit. Carl didn’t get along with anybody. Personally, I don’t think our guy did it.”

  “You mentioned the sheriff,” Hawty said. “Is he black?”

  “Never met him.”

  “Sangfleuve Parish . . . uh-huh, he’s a brother. John Higbee. First black sheriff there. His daddy and my granddaddy used to sharecrop on the same plantation back in the twenties, up in the north of the state, my stomping grounds. Tell him who I am if you see him. You’re going up there this week, right?”

  Nick gave an affirmative nod.

  “I probably met him when I was a young thing, but I don’t really remember,” Hawty continued. “Our families looked out for each other when times got rough. . . . I see that look on your face. What do you want me to do?”

  Sheepishly, Nick pointed to his scrawled notes. “Think you can distill something meaningful in the way of a tribal history from this?”

  “Are you joking?! I don’t know why you don’t let me get you one of those little notebook computers. See how much more efficient we are in the office since you bought our new desktop to replace that old dinosaur we’ve been using. You need to join the modern age, boss. . . .”

  He stood up to leave and backed toward the door. He’d expected another attack on his aversion to modern technology.

  “We can’t afford it,” he said, his hand on the cold door handle.

  “Don’t I know it. You can’t even afford to pay me my overtime. When’s the last time I got a paycheck instead of a handout? Not to mention a raise? Never mind. Just rhetorical questions.”

  “Hey, that’s a new chariot, isn’t it?” he said, hoping to distract her, appeal to her vanity. “Pretty wild. I like it.”

  “Oh . . . you noticed. I’m shocked. We women bust our butts trying to look nice for you men, and most of the time you’re belching in front of the TV, scratching yourself, and watching the Saints get whipped from one end zone to the other. Yeah, it’s a little reward I gave myself, since my boss doesn’t seem to appreciate me.” She paused significantly. “I sold a couple of articles to a computer magazine. And no, there’s none left for the firm’s penny jar.”

  “Hey, just trying to be nice. Want to go out for poboys later? I think I can swing that.”

  The Folio, only a few blocks away, served some of the best poboys in town, at almost any hour of the day or night, as befitted a college hangout.

  “Got a basketball game at seven. That’s why I’m in this.” She grasped the wheels of her chair, as if ready to propel it forward. “A high-performance model, ultra-light tubular aluminum. Some women buy new earrings, some new shoes. This is what I do for myself.”

  Nick noticed her sweat suit for the first time.

  “Hawty.”

  “What.”

  “I do appreciate you.”

  Looking away, she straightened a book on the desk.

  “Yeah, I know. And I know we’re going to get
some money from this project. But sometimes, sometimes . . . boy, I’m telling you, it’s just too much.” She gave a long-suffering sigh. “You can come watch the game, if you feel like it.”

  “And then poboys and beer?”

  Her smile broke through the pout. “You got it! Oyster for me.”

  Nick closed the door gently. He didn’t want to rouse the ire again of Ms./Mr. Radar-Ears in the next carrel.

  Standing between two monoliths of shelved books that seemed to stretch to tiny infinity, Nick felt the old longing for the academic life waft through him like heartache on seeing a former girlfriend. He ran a hand across the spines nearest him: 18th-century English comedy.

  Sex, money, and status, and the base things we’ll do to get them.

  He took down a pocketsize leather-bound edition of Sheridan’s School for Scandal and began leafing through it. As he chuckled over the scathing social satire, his mind drifted to Hawty.

  He knew her well enough to understand what she’d hesitated to say; they’d danced around the topic before, more frequently, of late. She loved genealogy, but decision time was approaching. Either Nick offered her more of the paltry, erratic profits, or she would go into teaching or some computer-related field or even professional genealogy full time. It wasn’t a matter of money, wholly, but of her estimation of self-worth. He’d shared his gambling winnings with her, but he still owed her.

  Nick didn’t want to repeat the bad management he’d witnessed at Freret. Certain unenlightened school administrators, foolishly hoping to keep talented minds forever on substandard pay, never did understand why the turnover in their departments was so high. Yet, in spite of his good intentions, and after performing accounting misdeeds that would be the envy of any corporate or college CFO, he never seemed to have quite enough left for Hawty.

  The door of the adjacent carrel opened. Professor Frederick Tawpie emerged. His coat and tie had undergone some recent crushing, and his wiry pumpkin-colored hair, usually sprayed into tentative submission, was in disarray. His attention directed downward, he hiked up his trousers below his roll of self-indulgent flab. He had yet to realize Nick was there, observing him.