by Lia Conklin
“I think he’s queer,” Bull confided to Russ. “And I can’t stomach watching his backside any longer and listening to his high-pitched girly prattle and ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs.’ I need a new place in line. Maybe behind her,” he said pointing back toward the buxom redhead who was currently enlisting Raymundo to calm her frazzled nerves.
“Listen,” Amelia said riding up to them after overhearing his request, “if you ride behind Betty, then you got Jordan riding behind you. Would you rather watch his backside or he watch yours?” It wasn’t diplomatic by any means but it did the trick. Bull took up his position again, looking over his shoulder throughout the next half hour or so to get a good take on the graying, college professor who rode behind him. Said professor spent most of his time gawking at the scenery and calling out observations to his wife behind him. No danger there, presumably.
Somehow, they made it to the first camp, only an hour off schedule, which considering the number of derailments was pretty good. Although there was no formation from which Bull could break in this setting, he managed to inflict as much damage as ever. From complaints about the grub that might as well have been grubs—provoking the only laugh from him all day— to complaints about the scenery that was nowhere near as beautiful as his trip to New Mexico had been the year before. Even the sky was not immune to insult, for it had the audacity to be cloudy on a trip for which he had paid hard-earned money.
Chapter 15
Throughout the week-long cattle drive, the essence of Mr. Goldfield, who—he assured them—was anything but Jewish, unfolded like a gangrenous confederate wound, opening as it festered to ooze and squirt its green puss onto the nurses who tended it. For the first few days Mr. Goldfield may have kept his comments restricted to complaints, insults, and the harassment of others, but by the fourth day, with the help of some brandy (that thank God he brought along to dull the boredom) he journeyed into more personal territory. Turned out that he worked for the Terrorist Screening Center in charge of integrating terrorist intelligence from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security Department’s National Security Agency, and local law enforcement agencies. But having been originally employed by the former INS in Texas, where they had in his words, “their hands full of Spic terrorists pouring over borders under-funded by the bleeding liberal bastards in Congress,” he had a unique perspective on the war on terror.
“It’s the A-rabs that get most of the attention when it comes to talking about terrorists,” he confided to all as they sat roasting marshmallows—highly untraditional cowboy fare—Russ had laughingly admitted. “Now don’t get me wrong. They are a scary lot, not to be trusted, green card or no, but we’re overlooking another threat! We’ve got millions of illegals flooding into this country, filling our streets with drug dealers and rapists, and you know I’m not the first to say it! I think it’s time ICE got some balls!”
“They hired you, didn’t they,” quipped Amelia. “Obviously they’ve got more than they can handle.”
“Yeah, missy, you’re right. Problem is they don’t let me at the border! A wall? My ass! Taking away a few lil’ snot-nosed brats from their mommies and daddies? Child’s play! Get it? Child’s play? Hah! No, I’d nip it in the bud. Just give them patrols the permission to fire at will. A little machine gun action at the border would put an end to that threat. Or better yet they could send me to Gitmo! In case you’re ignorant, that’s Guantanama Bay.”
“Yes, that would be a better option,” Amelia agreed.
Bull missed the point and rampaged on. “I’d interrogate those A-rab terrorists better than they’ve been doing it.”
“Haven’t they shut that place down?” Amelia interrupted.
“For the most part the liberals got their way, but there’s still a few dozen terrorists for me to get my hands on. Hell with naked pyramids. I haven’t seen a man yet who is willing to give up an ear or a finger. Or for that matter, who’s willing to eat the shit they feed us on this trail!” Here he stopped to laugh uproariously, slapping a meaty thigh with his colossal hand. The pause gave several people the chance to make a break for it. Loni left first with several guests following her away from the campfire, obviously assuring her that the food had been wonderful and appreciated by everyone else. For some reason, Raymundo stayed. He had heard his countrymen and women fired upon at will, but still sat transfixed, his large dark eyes never leaving the puffy, contorted lips of the man who sat laughing in front of him.
“Phew!” Bull finally said, wiping tears from his face. “I gotta let them know that one down in Guantanama. You could make a killing exporting this grub to them. But seriously,” he said, straightening up and looking them all in the eye, “we’ve got some serious threats to deal with. 9/11 was not an isolated incident. It could happen again at anytime and anyplace. It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’ve got to be vigilant. VIGILANT. So now we’ve got the National Counterterrorism Center coordinating efforts between all agencies vested in national security. With my department’s terrorist watch list, we can inform even local law enforcement of known and suspected terrorists. Not to mention that airport security can now catch terrorists before they board a plane and hijack it with box cutters.”
For the first time during Bull’s rampage, Amelia was more interested than disgusted. “How exactly do they do that?” she asked. “I mean keep suspected terrorists from boarding a plane?”
“They compare the passenger’s name to our ‘no fly’ list,” Bull willingly informed her. “In minutes, airport security’s got a hold of them and the FBI’s not far behind. Talk about brilliant.”
Amelia couldn’t shake the image of her father, his look of resignation beneath his Honduran cowboy hat as airport security led him away. She had gone on without him, sure there was some mistake. Later, when he failed to appear at his sister’s funeral, she believed he had returned to Honduras, perhaps because there were no flights to Minneapolis that would get him there on time. Now she wasn’t so sure. All this talk of terrorists and government watch lists made her suddenly uneasy.
“So, if this suspected terrorist were a citizen, how would he get on that watch or ‘no fly’ list, whatever it’s called?” Amelia queried.
“Follow the money! And their phone calls and travel itineraries. If they lead to a terrorist group, well then, we’ve got a live one.”
Amelia felt more than a little unsettled. Having been out of the country so long and only eight when she left, she hadn’t been aware of all that had taken place in her absence. A new department, new intelligence surveillance systems, and even new laws she hadn’t heard of. Had her father known about any of this? Could he have somehow gotten mixed up in this new era of security? It made sense, his being a journalist and all.
“Take the CIA for instance,” Bull continued, undeterred by her silence. “Officially, there’s a ban on assassinations, but unofficially they’ve taken care of our national security throughout history and continue to do so. Smart bombs and Predator drones are par for the course for ‘targeted kills’ in Afghanistan and for preemptive manhunting’ in Iraq. Now the NSA and the FBI employ their own tactics on the home front, secret surveillance, infiltration, and intimidation giving those bastards what they deserve. Or better yet, ‘preemptive manhunting’ if you can get away with it! Now that’s a gig I could sink my teeth into. ‘Ka-boom!’ Blow that terrorist’s house to bits. Blast him and his whole family to hell! Now that’s my kind of barbeque…charred terrorist ka-bobs! Family brisket!”
Kaboom. The word, the sound, reverberated in Amelia’s head, drowning out Bull’s heaves of laughter. Kaboom. Charred…Ka-bobs. Suddenly, an aching tightness gripped her chest. She tried to breath, but with each attempt to inhale the tightness deepened, burning into her chest like the glowing coals of the campfire before her. She realized the coals were inside her, burning through her, absorbing her. Kaboom. There was no longer reason to breathe. No longer reason to fight. There was nothing left, just embers and ash.
“Amelia? Amel
ia, estas bien?” It was Raymundo squeezing her shoulder. She turned her face toward his. Was that a helmet he was wearing? And were those ash smears across his face? His second squeeze relinquished her from the fire’s smoldering grip, and she gulped in air. After a few quick coughs and a few more intakes of breath, her vision cleared and she was looking at the clean face of the Raymundo she knew.
“You speak Spanish,” she said in a daze.
“Si,” he said smiling. “Ven. Come. Let’s get you away from this pendejo.” He led her from the campfire to her tent. “Amelia,” he said, as he unzipped the flap, “I don’t know what happened to you over there, but are you sure you’re okay?”
“Si, Raymundo. I’m fine,” she lied. Even if she wanted to tell him the truth, what would she say? What the heck was going on?
“Okay, then. Get some sleep. We’re almost free of that arrogant ass. Buenas noches, amigita. Good night, my friend.”
As she climbed into her tent, her confusion enveloped her as tightly as her sleeping bag. What had happened? Was it the image of her father being detained at the airport or something else from her past that made Bull’s talk of blowing up terrorists so upsetting? She couldn’t shake how she had felt succumbing to the fire, letting it burn her alive. Or the image of the smoke-stained firefighter she saw transposed upon Raymundo’s concerned face. Firefighter? What? Her brain had obviously been starved of oxygen, she assured herself. Yet, no matter how sure she was of that, she was equally sure that something was terribly wrong. And even here, in this pristine place, she was not immune to its fallout.
Chapter 16
The final two days of the trail ride were an improvement. Amelia wasn’t sure if it was a massive hangover or something more sinister that kept Bull in quarantine. The day after his fireside rant, he kept to himself, his only interaction his seemingly paranoid attempts to catch others watching him. Amelia felt something of a secondhand hangover. She had given up trying to explain her uncommon reaction to the events of the previous night and turned her attention to something more satisfying, like easing Bull’s discomfort.
“Now don’t get me wrong,” Amelia said as she sat next to him as they settled in for their trailside lunch, “I’m grateful for the information you shared with us last night, but I have to say I’m surprised they allow you to speak so freely about such delicate homeland security issues. I would have thought they’d make you take some kind of oath or something.”
Bull’s only response was a puckered mouth, and although Amelia added a few more comments of the same sort, his eyes remained averted, his focus instead on the sandwich that was far tastier than previous provisions, apparently, as it disappeared behind puffy lips before Amelia even took a bite of hers.
“Nice chattin’ with you, Mr. Goldfield,” Amelia called after him as he walked quickly away.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for Amelia, who had enjoyed her last interaction with Bull more thoroughly than she cared to admit, Bull maintained near perfect self-control over the remaining two days. Only once did he forget and begin to make some remark to Russ about the queers being the real threat to national security, infiltrating even the highest offices and spreading their diseases and immorality.
“You know, Mr. Goldfield,” Amelia offered, sidling up to him in a confidential manner, “from everything you’ve said, it sounds like fascinating work you do. Really fascinating. I might be interested in a national security position myself. Could you pass along your supervisor’s name? I’d love to get even more information from him, if I could.”
That bought them all another Bull-free day, and another day brought them to the end of the trail.
Chapter 17
The weeks that followed the second cattle drive were “ranch weeks,” where guests participated in ranch activities such as branding, castrating, dehorning, and vaccinating. Not as picturesque as the cattle drives, but these activities gave guests, and Amelia too, a real feel for ranch life. Here the calves were baptized into the cult of reality. No more suckling from the teats of innocence; pain was their real brand of existence. Like the calves, Amelia and the Stantons wore their own brands, not upon their skin but within their hearts. Amelia wondered if theirs still seared as hers did. Pamela’s distant eyes often told her it was so.
During one of the lighter ranch weeks, Jack sent Amelia out on the ATV to run the property line and check for broken or weak spots in the fence. She was grateful for the opportunity to get away from people for a while and experience the land on her own terms. The hum of the ATV kept her company as she followed the reaches of the fence that unrolled in the morning sun, settling at odd angles to creep from ridge to ridge. She had been riding for a few hours when she saw three figures on the ridge ahead of her, their bodies opposite the barbed wire that stretched across the fenceposts where they stood.
Three heads looked up as she drove towards them. She could see that they were Indian. Positioned in front of them just outside the fence was a surveyor’s tripod. She cut the engine and hopped off the ATV. No one said a word to her.
“Hello,” she said. “I was just out checking the fence line. Looks in pretty good shape.”
The three Indian men looked at her but said nothing.
“That your land?” she asked nodding to their side of the fence.
“That’s ours too,” said the oldest of the men, breaking his silence and nodding toward her side.
“Wouldn’t doubt it,” Amelia said, conciliatorily. “Is that why you’re surveying, then?”
The old man gave a nearly imperceptible shrug and turned to look back through the tripod. The other two took his cue and turned away as well. She was about to get back on the ATV when she saw another figure climbing towards them. When he came closer, all she could see was his gleaming teeth.
“Amelia,” he said as he reached the ridge and came face to face with her. “Imagine seeing you here! Dad, this is that girl I was telling you about.”
The man looked up from his tripod with new interest.
“Is that so,” he said, eying her curiously. No tripod needed to see into her soul. “You’re just as he said. An Indian in sheep’s clothing.”
All four of them laughed. Amelia looked at Paul.
“It’s nothing, really, just that you struck me as being more Indian than white, and I told my dad about you.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, then,” she said smiling at all of them. “So, what are you doing out here?” she asked. “If you don’t mind me asking,” she added hastily.
“Well,” Paul began, glancing at his father and taking his disinterest as a cue to continue, “after giving you that ride out here, I got to thinking about what my grandfather said about this land. Not only did he say that it was bought illegally but that the property line…how did he put that? ‘Was overly generous,’ he said. I talked to my dad about it, and he said we should check it out just to see. So here we are.”
“Any verdict?” Amelia asked.
“Not yet, though it appears that this ridge was used more for convenience than by actual measurement. We’ll file a report with the county surveyor but it’ll be a battle before this fence ever gets moved.”
“I’ve got the equipment right here,” Amelia rejoined with a nod towards the back of her ATV, “if you just wanna take care of it now and avoid the battle.”
Paul laughed.
“Ha!” His dad harrumphed turning his attention away from the tripod. “That’s probably the only way it would ever happen. But where’s the fun in that without the battle?”
Amelia saw both the humor and the truth in his wry smile. The battle surely would be the prize. She smiled with a small nod of acknowledgment and then shifted her gaze to the land that sloped off behind them.
“Which direction is your home?” she asked.
Paul pointed south, then turned suddenly towards her. “That gives me an idea,” he said. “We have our annual Crow County Fair in August. It’s got a pretty amazing powwow and ro
deo. My sisters are in some of the dance competitions and ride in the parade. Would you like to go? I could pick you up at the trailhead in the morning, and you could spend the day, or the whole weekend if you wanted. I mean, whatever you want…I mean, if you want…” suddenly embarrassed at his effusiveness.
“Yes!” Amelia responded without hesitation. “That sounds like so much fun. I mean, if they’ll let me have the time off. How can I let you know?”
“Smoke signals, of course,” he said deadpan. Then he laughed seeing the red rise in her cheeks. “No. I got one of these,” he said, pulling an iPhone from his pocket. “Dad says I’ve sold out.” Then in a whisper, “But he always finds some reason to use it.”
“I heard that, Paul,” his father said sounding affronted. “Then again, I can’t argue that Satan’s messenger has his advantages. All that building a fire and sending up those S’s and O’s takes some time. And then you can’t even keep it in your pocket.”
Amelia laughed. “I’m sure they’re both equally effective,” she offered, “just one more efficient than the other.”
A few minutes later, with Paul’s cell phone number securely in her own pocket, Amelia followed the “overly generous” fence line back to the ranch. She could already feel the Earth’s drumbeat calling her.
Chapter 18
Pamela had no problem giving her permission to go, but Jack thought it was the last place on the planet a white girl should be. Amelia almost took his adamant refusal as concern. Eventually, Pamela won him over. Amelia wondered how Jack would feel once the county surveyor visited him with the survey results. She was sure there’d be no more staff going to the Crow Indian Reservation.
