The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  “You need a haircut,” Dad says abruptly, shifting his attention back to his file. “Like I was saying, you’ll be done with graduate school soon. Time to get back on track.”

  “I am on track.” I clear my throat and don’t meet his eyes. “And I’m not sure what I’ll do next.”

  A lie. I know exactly what I’ll do next. A PhD in climate science, but I’m in no mood to fight. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I’d rather talk about the Cowboys’ playoff hopes. The Longhorns. His golf swing. Anything other than my career—than our opposing views on what I should do.

  Dad’s eyes snap up and narrow on my face. “What the hell do you mean you aren’t sure what you’ll do next? Now that Owen’s in the Senate, we need you running our West Coast office, Maxim. You know that.”

  The note of pride in his voice when he mentions my older brother Owen grates a little. Pride hasn’t been in his voice for me in a long time. Disapproval. Disgust. Frustration. That’s all I’ve gotten since I told him I’d be going to Berkeley for my master’s instead of starting at Cade Energy.

  “Dad, I don’t know that I’m . . .” I hesitate. The next words could set off a bomb I’m not sure we should detonate this high in the air. “Maybe I’m not the right fit for the job.”

  “Not the right fit?” He flips the file closed and glares at me. “You’re a Cade. You were literally born for the job.”

  “Let’s talk about this later.”

  “No. Now. I want to know why the company four generations of Cades spent building from the ground isn’t good enough for you.”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just not sure I’m the best person to run a company producing oil and gas. I question the sustainability of fossil fuels as this country’s primary energy source. I believe we should be aggressively transitioning to clean energy—solar, wind, electric.”

  Shocked silence follows my words that are essentially a rebel yell to one of America’s most powerful oil barons.

  “What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about, boy?” he bellows, his voice bouncing off the walls, trapped in the luxurious cabin. “You’ll finish that damn useless master’s degree, and start in our California office as soon as possible. I got no time for this wind and air and whatever tree-hugger horse shit nonsense they’ve been teaching you at Berkeley.”

  “Nonsense is believing this planet will run forever on poison. If you’d just listen to my ideas about transitioning to clean energy—”

  “Oil was clean enough when it was paying for your fancy education, huh? And your trips and cars and clothes. It wasn’t poison then, was it?”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to notice, but I paid my own tuition,” I correct him softly.

  Before he can verbally express the disdain on his face, a uniformed attendant peers through the curtain.

  “We’re here, Mr. Cade,” she says.

  When my father stands, his knee knocks the table. The file falls, spilling a flurry of papers onto the thick pile carpet. I bend to retrieve them, stuffing a few back into the folder. Certain words blare from the top page.

  Pipeline. Army Corps of Engineers. Ancestral burial grounds. Water rights. Environmental impact.

  “Dad.” I force myself to look up from the page long enough to catch and hold his gaze. “Where are we and what are we doing here?”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, but extends his hand until I reluctantly give him the file.

  “We’re in Arizona.” He grabs his suit jacket from a hook on the wall and slips it on. He’s still fit and trim, and that suit costs enough to take ten years off any man. “Laying a new gas pipeline, and let’s just say the, uh, natives are getting restless.” He smirks at his own joke, but sobers when he sees I’m not laughing.

  “That memo referenced the Apache,” I say with a frown.

  “Until you man up and actually run something in Cade Energy, that memo’s none of your damn business, but that’s why I’m here. If they think their little protest will stop my pipeline, they can think again.”

  “We’re laying a pipeline that disturbs sacred burial grounds?” Outrage and anger almost choke me. Shame, too, that my name is attached to something so heinous. “Will this endanger their water supply?”

  “We’re laying a natural gas pipeline that will transport half a million barrels a day and create thousands of jobs.”

  “So no thought for the environmental impact?”

  “What about the economic impact?” he counters harshly. “If you did something other than sit at a computer all day studying, you’d know what it’s like to be responsible for thousands of families. Thousands of livelihoods. To have shareholders demanding a profit. And they care even less about some river on a reservation than I do. It’s my job, Maxim.”

  “Your job should also be ensuring that pipeline doesn’t contaminate other people’s water.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you.” He heads for the exit. “You can stay here while I handle this, or get off for all I care. The worksite’s near a reservation, and according to our foreman, those Indian women got some of the best pu—”

  “Stop.” I swallow my disgust and follow him down the short flight of steps lowered from the plane. “I don’t want to know what your foreman thinks about women.”

  “Like you don’t get your dick wet,” he says, his voice caustic.

  “Oh, I love women. Too much to disrespect them.”

  “I should have known better than to send you to Berkeley,” Dad mutters, climbing into the back seat of the black Escalade that’s waiting for us. “Damn sissy school’s made you soft.”

  “You didn’t send me anywhere.” I look out the window, watching the desert landscape rushing past as we leave the airfield. “And having actual principles isn’t the same as being soft.”

  “You know what your problem is, Maxim?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “You aren’t ruthless enough. You think your brother won that Senate seat worrying about some reservation water supply or burial ground?” Before I can reply, he charges on. “Damn right he didn’t. Politics requires balls of steel, and Owen’s got ’em.”

  “Glad you’re pleased with one of us,” I say through tight lips.

  “If you’re not a ‘fit’ for the family business and your delicate constitution isn’t suited to politics, what do you plan to do?”

  He’s not ready to hear what I plan to do, and I’m not sure I want to tell him. I’ll let my actions speak for themselves. For me.

  “How’s Mom?” I ask, shamelessly shifting conversational gears because this line of discussion is going nowhere.

  His face softens, the hard planes yielding to what is maybe his one redeeming quality. He adores my mother. It may be the only undefiled thing left about him.

  “She’s good.” He clears his throat and studies the passing landscape as I did, retreating to the scene beyond the window. “Misses you.”

  “I’ll make sure to see her soon.”

  “It hurt her when you didn’t come home for the holidays.”

  “As much as seeing you and I at each other’s throats would have hurt her?”

  I regret the words immediately. So much for redirecting our conversation. No matter what I do, it always comes back to this—to me not measuring up, me not pleasing my father, me failing. Him disappointed. Him leveraging money to twist my arm and trying to bend me to his will.

  Well I won’t be bent. If he thinks I’m not ruthless, he hasn’t been paying attention. Head to head, I’d bury my brother. Owen gobbled up every crumb our father dropped, leading him down the prescribed path. Balls of steel? Fuck that. My father practically bought Owen that seat in the Senate. If I want to make my own way, I’ll have to pay my own way.

  And that’s fine with me.

  “God, Maxim,” my father says, his voice low and loaded with frustration. “I thought this trip might . . .” He shakes his head, letting whatever he hoped for trail off with the unspoken words. �
�What happened to you? What happened to us, son? We used to hunt together.” He chuckles and flashes me a reminiscent grin. “Hell, you’re a crack shot. You can shoot the wings off a flea. And fly fishing in Big Horn River.”

  We cooked our haul over an open fire that night. I silently complete the memory, still tasting the fish and the laughter, the camaraderie that came so easily then.

  “And remember that week we broke in Thunder?” he asks.

  “That horse was half Arabian, half demon,” I recall with a short bark of laughter.

  “He was no match for us, though. Between you and me, we broke him in.”

  An image sears my mind. Thunder, with rolling eyes and a bucking back, his neighing a battle cry. We took turns, Dad and I, that week on our Montana ranch, riding the horse, bridling him, training and taming him until my father could lead him around a fenced circle by a rope, the horse’s spirit as subdued as his light trot.

  Docile. Broken.

  And that’s how my father wants me. Trotting obediently, my neck draped with the reins of his power.

  “That horse was no match for the two of us. We can do anything together,” Dad continues. “Come run Cade Energy with me, Max.”

  I almost fell for it. When his money doesn’t work, he employs his only other weapon: my love for him. He dangles his affection, his approval before me like ripe, low-hanging fruit. Just bite. A tempting trade. My will for his. Do what he says. Be who he wants and he’ll love me that way again. But I’ve seen too much—changed too much. Our eyes, hair, bones, and our very natures may be the same, but I’ve spent years venturing beyond the safety of my father’s borders, and it has fleshed me out. It’s made a man of me, and the man I want to be is not my father.

  I don’t respond, but keep my gaze fixed through the tinted glass. I’m still formulating a response that won’t cause a backseat battle when we pull up to the construction site.

  A few hundred people crowd the plot of desert. Bulldozers and trucks loiter, impotent and silent, each with a dark-haired protester anchored to it. Their arms hook around the necks of the bulldozers, a cast plastering both arms in an unbroken loop. Some are chained to the trucks, impeding any forward movement. Protesters raise signs and link arms to form a line of bodies around the site. Media trucks topped with satellite dishes dot the scene, and well-groomed reporters stand nearby armed with their microphones. Police officers ring the area, sober sentinels with expressionless faces. I can’t tell if they’re here to protect or threaten. I guess it depends whose side you’re on.

  “Dammit to hell,” my father mutters. “I need those trucks moving.”

  A vaguely familiar man approaches the Escalade, irritation and anxiety twisting his expression. He stands outside the door, obviously waiting for my father to get out. Dad rolls the window down halfway, not bothering to so much as lean forward. Anger strikes out on the man’s face like a snake’s forked tongue before he gains control of it and steps closer to the window, his features falsely placid. He looks deferential for a man who barely deigns to acknowledge him.

  “Mr. Cade,” he says, leaning close enough to the window to be heard.

  “Beaumont,” Dad responds, his use of the man’s name jogging my memory. He’s a division leader I met at one of the company picnics held at our Dallas compound. “You said you had this situation under control. I’d hate to see what you consider a disaster.”

  Beaumont clears his throat and loosens his collar before speaking. “It was under control, sir,” he says. “We were on schedule. I caught wind of this planned protest yesterday, and contacted the office as soon as I heard. I thought they’d send someone. I didn’t expect you to come personally.”

  “I am someone,” Dad snaps, “keeping you on your toes. I needed to see this shit storm for myself. Who are all these people?”

  “Mostly people from the reservation,” Beaumont says. “But some students from local universities showed up, too. As you can see, some have chained themselves to the construction equipment. Some just arrived from the run.”

  “What run?” I ask from the shadowy corner on the other side of the back seat.

  Beaumont’s eyes flick in my direction, narrowing before returning to my father’s face.

  “Uh, sir,” he starts, his tone cautious, his expression closing off even more. “We can talk later or—”

  “It’s all right,” my father says impatiently. “You can speak freely in front of him. It’s my boy Maxim.”

  “Oh, yes.” Beaumont relaxes and inclines his head to me like I’m some kind of prince and my father his liege. “Good to see you again, Maxim. How’s Berkeley treating you?”

  “The run?” I ignore the pleasantry and press for the information I requested. “What kind of run?”

  “Yes, well, some of them call themselves water protectors,” Beaumont answers. “They raise awareness through these marathons. They finished one today.”

  I nod toward the media trucks. “Seems like they raised some awareness about this pipeline.”

  “It’s a small story in the big scheme of things,” Beaumont insists. “Some old Indians and a bunch of kids from the reservation, worried about something that’s not likely to ever happen.”

  “You mean a spill?” I demand. “They’re worried their main source of water will be polluted? Is that what you mean?”

  Beaumont glances from my scowling face to my father’s. The look he gives my dad says it all without him uttering a word. Whose side is your son on anyway?

  Not yours. That’s for damn sure.

  “We have the contingency, right?” Dad asks, ignoring the byplay between me and his corporate henchman.

  “Yes, sir.” A smirk tweaks Beaumont’s mouth. “Everything’s in place. It will only take one call, and I can—”

  “Can you hear me?” someone yells through a bullhorn, slicing into Beaumont’s assurances. “Can you see me?”

  My father rolls the window down fully, leaning forward to see who’s behind that voice. I lean forward, too, and I freeze.

  It’s a girl. A woman. She’s young, but there’s power in her stance, in her face. The late daylight loves her, kissing the hollows under the rise of her cheekbones. The wind carries her hair as easily as it carries her voice, whipping the dark strands behind her like a pennant on a battlefield. She seems to command the elements as effortlessly as she does the crowd’s attention, standing on a mound of dirt, a hill as her stage. Even if she weren’t slightly elevated, she would tower. She’s a straight line of color sketched into the desert landscape, transformed by a glamor of dust and sunlight.

  “I said, can you hear me?” She repeats loudly, more intensely. “Can you see me? Because I don’t think you can.”

  Her black T-shirt blasts “REZPect Our Water” across the front, and tucks neatly into the waistband of a flowing patterned skirt stopping at knee-high buckskin moccasins. She’s a perfect blend of past and present and future. A smattering of stars decorates the skin around her left eye, while lines of color fan out from her right.

  Stars and stripes.

  I find myself grinning at the sly humor painted onto her skin, a wordless commentary on patriotism and colonialism and probably a dozen subtexts I wouldn’t know where to start naming.

  “I don’t think you can,” she continues, “when corporations lay pipelines on land we were promised would be protected.”

  A shout rises from the crowd.

  “I don’t think you can,” she shouts into the bullhorn, “when my ancestors who bled and died find no peace in the very land they sacrificed for because trucks and plows turn over their graves.”

  The crowd releases a reply mixed with English and a tongue I don’t understand, but obviously affirms her message, encourages her to go on.

  “Four years ago,” she says, “on a day like today, my mother left for a protest in Seattle much like this one. She never came back.”

  She lowers the bullhorn and stares at the ground for a moment. Even from here, I see the
bullhorn shaking in her hand when she raises it again.

  “Our women disappear,” she says, her voice wavering, but fierce, “and no one cares. No one searches. No one says their names, but I say her name. Liana Reynolds. I didn’t have her body, but I had her name, and I came here to sacred ground and whispered it. The wind carried it to my ancestors. I asked them to recover her spirit. To take her home.”

  She shakes her head, impervious of the tears streaking her face. “I came here to mourn. When it was time for the rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood, I came here to dance. We worship here; we wed here. The ground where you sit, our pews. The trees around you, our steeples. You are standing in our church.”

  Her voice rings out, commanding and broken. A lone tear streaks through the vibrant stripes around her eye. There are no shouts in reply. No raised fists. Only lowered eyes. Shaking heads as her sorrow takes us hostage.

  “And the man elected to represent us,” she goes on, her features hardening into an angry mold, “is the one who betrayed us. Senator Middleton, shame on you! You sold our land to Warren Cade. Land we were promised would be protected, you gave away. It wasn’t yours to give!”

  The air trembles beneath the weight of her words, and like she summoned it, a desert wind, a sirocco lifts the dark river of hair hanging down her back and tosses it like a mourning wail through the air.

  “It wasn’t yours to give,” she repeats, even more fervently. “Liar. Trickster. Thief.”

  The crowd echoes back, as if they’ve done it a thousand times.

  “Liar! Trickster! Thief!”

  “Is it because you never saw us that you don’t care?” she barrels on, and even through the bullhorn, it’s a whisper. A barely there question, as if she doesn’t want to ask because she already knows the answer.

  “Well see us now,” she shouts with renewed vigor into the bullhorn. “Ignore us today when we fight for what is ours—for what was promised to us. We will not be moved. You cannot strip us of everything. You cannot steal the prophecies that light our way.”

  There are a few shouts in response before she goes on.

  “The prophecies foretell a generation rising up to defend, to fight, to recover what was lost,” she says, the tears continuing in a single stream from each eye. “I am that generation.”