The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  Another collective shout swells from the crowd.

  “We are that people who say enough!” Her eyes scan the crowd like a general searching for weaknesses to root out, for strengths to employ. “Say it with me. Enough. No more!”

  “Enough! No more!” the crowd responds.

  “Enough! No more!”

  “Enough! No more!”

  “Tu be hi’naah!” she yells, fist in the air.

  “Water is life!” The crowd echoes back.

  “Tu be hi’naah!”

  “Water is life!”

  Under the cover of applause, she climbs down the hill and slips into the line of bodies linked at the elbows and blocking the trucks.

  “Do it,” my father says, his voice hard, angry. “They think they can throw off my schedule? They wanna fuck with me? They don’t even know where to start. Make the call.”

  Beaumont nods and punches a few numbers in his phone before raising it to his ear.

  “Move in,” he says.

  “Dad, what are you doing?” I pin my question to him, but fix my eyes on the scene through the window. He spares me a glance, his mouth a stern, ungiving line.

  “Balls of steel, son,” he says, his eyes slits. “Balls of steel.”

  The sound of dogs barking jerks my attention from my father’s stony expression. A fleet of Dobermans on leashes bounds from trucks circling the site. Officers wearing padded vests face off with the protestors, their expressions blurred by Plexiglass face shields.

  “Dad, no!”

  The words have barely left my lips when the first mist of tear gas invades the air.

  “No one will get hurt,” Dad says, his eyes trained on the scene playing out. “They have strict instructions to keep order and intimidate if necessary, but no one will get hurt.”

  “You can’t be that naïve. Situations like this escalate in the blink of an eye. One wrong move, and there’s a shot fired and a dog bites, and you’ll have a lawsuit on your hands.”

  Not to mention the guilt, but I’m not sure my father is capable of that anymore. I never thought his ruthless streak would run this far—would run roughshod over innocent people.

  “Lawsuit?” my father scoffs. “Look out this window. Whose side does it look like the law is on?”

  I do look out the window, and I’m assaulted by helplessness, guilt, and shame. Several protestors cover their eyes too late against the sting of gas, and they screech, rubbing furiously at the intrusion. Another group advances, positioning themselves directly in the path of the construction truck, in the path of what appears to be rubber bullets. I grit my teeth when I see the girl from the hill in that line. The Dobermans have turned, jaws pulled back from their teeth, and they advance on the protestors.

  Advance on her.

  I don’t stop, don’t think about the line I’m crossing, about my father, the architect of this cruel chaos. I don’t consider my own safety, only theirs.

  Hers.

  Her words throb in my ears and pulse in my veins.

  No more. Enough.

  Can you hear me? Can you see me?

  I can’t unsee the proud line she cut into the horizon on that hill. Can’t unhear the heartbroken history she shouted to the wind.

  I see you.

  I hear you.

  I throw the door open, and before I know it, I launch into a run across the dusty land.

  I’m coming.

  2

  Lennix

  A thousand needles pierce my eyes. I knuckle scrub my eyelids, even knowing from our protest training that flushing with water is the only thing that will help. Preparing for tear gas and doing it are two completely different things. Lesson number one in civil disobedience, but I’m not sure any amount of training could prepare me to face a snarling dog, held back by a flimsy leash. I stumble, my eyes clenched tightly against the discomfort, and slam into something hard.

  “Sorry,” I gasp, reflexively reaching out to put space between me and whomever I plowed into. I ease my eyes open. Backlit by the sun, a man towers over me. Considering I’m in the middle of a riot, growling Dobermans barely kept at bay, tear gas still hanging in the air, and standing shoulder to shoulder with a line of protesters howling in pain and rubbing their eyes, it’s bad timing to notice this guy is gorgeous. And that he smells really good.

  “Uh . . . um, hey,” I stammer. “I mean, hi.”

  Idiot. Nincompoop. I just gave a rousing speech that still has my heart twisted and my cheeks wet from tears, but I’m tongue-tied because a hot guy showed up to protest the pipeline?

  “Are you okay?” His voice rolls over me, deep and husky with the slightest trace of a drawl. Texas, maybe? Did he come all the way from Texas to join us?

  “Uh, yeah.” I rub my eyes again. “I will be.”

  I’m dragged back, figuratively, also literally, kicking and screaming, into this nightmare scene with frothy-mouthed dogs and masked cops wielding tear gas.

  “Shit!” The curse comes from my right, and a grimace of pain skitters across the face of Jason Paul, one of the protesters and my teacher from fourth grade. He struggles to shake his hand free of a dog’s lockjaw bite. My heart leaps to my throat when a growling dog comes right for me. The really tall, great-smelling guy jerks me back and out of harm’s way, but gets bitten on the arm himself before the cop jerks on the leash. I don’t have time to thank him for sparing me or to apologize that he got caught in the cross teeth, as it were. I’m shoved forward, my arms wrenched behind me, plastic handcuffs drawn tight at my wrists.

  “What are you doing?” I shout over my shoulder at the officer cuffing me. “This is a peaceful protest. We have every right to be here.”

  “Private property, lady,” he murmurs close to my ear, spite slickening his voice. “Apparently your permits weren’t in order.”

  “This is a mistake,” Tall and Good-Smelling says when they slip plastic cuffs on him, too.

  “You’ll get a chance to have your say.” The officer shoves him toward a police van. “Call your lawyer.”

  “Trust me. You don’t want my lawyer involved,” the guy says, his voice as cutting as the glance he shoots the cop. “Let me go. Let them go, and don’t give me that shit about permits. I know what this is.”

  “This,” the officer says, pushing the guy’s head down to clear the van, forcing him inside, “is you having the right to remain silent.”

  Six of us fill the benches lining the van interior, three on either side and facing each other. The cops give us bottles of water to flush the tear gas from our eyes as much as possible. We prepared for this moment, but I don’t think any of us actually expected to be arrested. Even if we had, none of us would have done anything differently. Everyone in this van has a vested interest in what happens with that pipeline. It would endanger the reservation’s water supply. It would desecrate sacred burial grounds. We all grew up drinking from that stream. Dipping in it for ceremonies that mark pivotal moments in our lives. Each of us has a reason to be here.

  Except him.

  Now that we’re not surrounded by dogs and choking on tear gas, I study him more closely. In all the confusion, I only had time for a general impression of hotness, but now with us both shackled in the paddy wagon, I have all the time for a closer examination. Or at least as long as it takes to get to the police station.

  He has one of those magazine faces. Not exactly like a model, but a “someone” face. An “I should know you” face. It’s not about how handsome he is, really. Though, I can’t overstate the impact of dark, mahogany-dusted hair licking around his ears and down his neck. Or his green eyes, the color of the peridot stone we mine in our holy hills. Precious metal eyes. And seriously. The Creator must have used a protractor to achieve a jaw so perfectly angular. But there’s something more, like if you get caught up in that face and what is, admittedly, a fantastic physique, all lean muscles and a “from here to there” chest, you’d be missing the whole point of him.

  “So you came al
l the way from Cali for this?” I ask, nodding to the Berkeley T-shirt straining across his pecs.

  “Uh, yeah.” He shifts in his seat.

  “That’s great that people all across the country are hearing about the pipeline,” Mr. Paul says, smiling at magazine-face man. “And coming to stand with us. Thank you.”

  “Yeah,” he says again. “So how long have you guys been fighting, um . . . Cade on this?”

  He spreads the question to all five of us, but I answer first.

  “Last year, Senator Middleton sold the property to Cade Energy,” I offer, gritting my teeth. “Of course, as usual, disregarding that it was supposed to be protected. Not theirs to actually sell.”

  “Their promises,” Mr. Paul says, with a bitter twist to his lips, “are worth no more than the paper every treaty they’ve ever broken was written on. Senator Middleton got this pipeline passed by tacking it on at the last minute to another bill that already had support.”

  “It was done before we even knew about it,” I add. “We started organizing immediately, but at every turn, Cade has politicians, the Army Corps of Engineers, local police, everyone on his side and in his pocket. The worst part is he could re-route this thing.”

  “What makes you say that?” Berkeley T-shirt asks.

  “The original proposal ran the pipeline near a suburb about ten miles north,” I answer, “not near a water supply or anything, but the people there didn’t want it. So guess what? They didn’t get it. They didn’t even have to protest. Just said no.”

  “Guess their voices are louder than ours,” Mr. Paul mutters.

  “Basically, environmental racism.” Berkeley T-shirt sighs and shakes his head.

  “No, exactly environmental racism,” I correct. “But we won’t take it.”

  “We’re not going anywhere. We know how to last,” Mr. Paul says, a proud set to his head. “We were the last tribe to surrender. We have warrior in our blood.”

  “What do you mean?” Berkeley asks.

  “Geronimo was the last Indian warrior to formally surrender to the U.S. Government,” I tell him. “He was Apache.”

  “Wow,” Berkeley says. “I didn’t know that.”

  The van comes to a stop, and through the back window, I see the small police station.

  I’ll be grounded for the foreseeable future. There goes . . . well, life, pretty much.

  My father knew about the run. I founded the sponsoring organization, REZpect Water, an action group for youth water protectors, but I conveniently left out the part where I’d actually be in the protest with the dogs and tear gas . . . and such. When they offer us our one phone call, maybe I’ll just pass and live out the rest of my senior year in a holding cell. I could redirect all my college acceptance letters to the police station. That wouldn’t raise any red flags, would it? What self-respecting place of higher learning isn’t recruiting from the penal system?

  “Out,” the cop standing at the door barks, her voice rough and impatient, her unibrow dipped into a frown.

  The six of us shuffle toward the police station. The officers don’t seem bothered by the fact that I’m a minor and take my mug shot without incident. The police station is a small-town operation with one holding cell we’re all tossed into together. I don’t anticipate these charges sticking. Cade probably just wants to intimidate us.

  Good luck with that, you rich prick.

  I may not actually live on the rez anymore, but staying with my father in town hasn’t made it any less my home. I’d still be living there if Mama . . .

  I shove that thought down to a dark hole where I keep the really painful stuff. Why deal with it now? Save something for the therapist I’ll start seeing in my thirties when I finally decide it’s all too much to handle on my own.

  My mother was murdered? Taken? Stolen?

  Gone.

  One of those “unseen” women, an unheard voice, whose disappearance wasn’t shouted about on the news or fretted over by the world.

  And I’ll never get over it. Not ever.

  There are days when I go a few hours without thinking about it—without wondering what happened to the beautiful woman who gave so much of herself to me and everyone around her. Yeah, there are those days, but not many. Mostly there are a thousand things every day that remind me of her, not the least of which is my own reflection.

  “Good to have those off,” Berkeley T-shirt mumbles, rubbing his wrists and reminding me of our current less-than-ideal circumstances. I don’t know how long they’ll keep us in this holding cell.

  “This thing hurts like crazy,” Mr. Paul says, touching the reddened, punctured skin of his hand.

  “You need medical attention.” I walk over to the bars and glance back over my shoulder to Berkeley T-shirt. “So do you.”

  Berkeley. According to that T-shirt, he’s probably already in college. Yeah, he’s already a man, not a boy. My dad would strangle me and maim him.

  “I don’t think I’ll lose it.” He nods to his injured arm, one corner of his mouth tipping up.

  Focus on first aid, not his lips.

  “Hey!” I yell through the bars. “We need a first-aid kit in here.”

  Unibrow takes her sweet time ambling toward the cell.

  “You rang, m’lady?” she asks. Oh, the sarcasm is thick with this one.

  “Yeah. We have two people here with dog bites, thanks to the Cujos you turned loose on us.” I point a thumb over my shoulder. “Thought I’d do you a favor and spare you a lawsuit. You’re welcome.”

  She eyes Mr. Paul, who cups his hand, and then she glances at Berkeley. She lingers there, taking in the fully spectacular male specimen he is.

  Can’t blame ya, girl.

  “I’ll get a first-aid kit and some antibiotic,” she finally says before turning on her heel to leave.

  “You’re a real Florence Nightingale,” I shout after her and turn back to the crowded cell. Another van has brought in more of the protestors. It makes my heart heavy, seeing my friends and neighbors behind bars like criminals. We don’t steal. We don’t disregard the law and break our word. That is what has been done to us since the first ship docked.

  “Stars and stripes, huh?” Berkeley asks from the bench against the wall.

  He’s the only person here I’ve never seen before. I walk over and take the empty spot beside him.

  “’Scuse me?” I ask, resting my back against the wall and pulling one knee up while I wait for him to clarify.

  “Stars.” He gestures to one side of his eye. “And stripes. On your face. Is that on purpose?”

  Sharp. Observant. He does attend Berkeley. Stands to reason.

  “I never claimed to be subtle,” I say with a tight smile.

  “Yeah, I picked up on the not-subtle part at the protest,” he says with a straight face, but with eyes twinkling the tiniest bit.

  I don’t feel like discussing my complex relationship with this nation’s forefathers and their twisted definition of “we the people.” I settle for the simpler answer to his question. “The stars are for my second name,” I tell him.

  “Second name?”

  “A medicine man came through our reservation when I was a little girl, and gave me my second name: Girl Who Chases Stars.”

  “Wow. That’s some name.”

  “Tell ya a little secret.” I lean closer. “I think it may have been rigged.”

  “Rigged?”

  “When I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. Well, at first I wanted to be a clown.”

  “Obviously. Who didn’t?”

  “You, too?”

  “No, they’re creepy as fuck. What a weird kid you were.”

  “This we can all agree on.” I laugh, surprised that I can laugh in a jail cell having this strange conversation with a guy I met not much more than an hour ago. “So around five or so, I decided I’d be an astronaut instead. Everyone knew it, so maybe the medicine man was simply giving the people what they wanted, so to speak. Chicken, egg. Ear
th, moon.”

  “So if Girl Who Chases Stars is your second name, what’s your first?”

  “Lennix. With an ‘i’ because I know you’re thinking ‘o.’”

  “Lennix.” He rolls the syllables around on his tongue, and something about the way he seems to test the name, taste it, sends a shiver down my spine. I’ve never been around a guy like him before. Correction. A man. The guys at school leave me cold—cold and uninterested and unimpressed. This guy? Warm, interested. Way impressed.

  I’m distracted when the cell door opens and a woman teeters in on skyscraper heels. Her blue wig is longer than her dress, which I’m sure was a cocktail napkin in another life. I think I’ve seen her a few times on the rez and in town, too. She’s Native, and I bet if you sandblasted her makeup off, she’d be quite pretty.

  The cell door bangs closed behind her and she scowls, her gaze roaming the crowded cell and stopping on Berkeley. A smile creeps over her lips and she takes the empty-ish spot on his other side, bumping his neighbor over with one curvy hip to make room for herself.

  She drags her eyes over all the things I noticed right away—his lean muscles, strong chest, and dark hair. When he stares back at her, letting her look her fill, I want to rip that blue wig off her head and stomp on it.

  Real mature.

  “Well, well, well,” she drawls, licking her glossy red lips. “Ain’t you something?”

  To Berkeley’s credit, his eyes never drop to the breasts bulging at the deep slit of the microscopic dress’s neckline. He looks at her unblinkingly, almost as if waiting for her to go on.

  “Didn’t expect to find the likes of you in here,” she says. “Must be my lucky night.”

  She reaches up toward his face, but he catches her wrist before she touches him. Her long talon-like nails hang inches from his jaw. With what looks like some gentleness, he pushes her hand back and drops it.

  “Oh, it’s like that?” she demands, the dark eyes hard and glassy like pebbles. “Your loss. I could do it like you never had it before.”