Hole in One (15 page)

“Great. They'll no doubt run their own check on it, but within a couple of days, you'll be famous.”

“Or infamous. Tommy isn't going to be fooled into thinking I wrote the story. He'll know it was yours. After all, he's already read the draft.”

“So what? All he needs is deniability, as they call it down at the White House. He wants the story to come out, you could tell that. He just doesn't want to take any of the flak for it.”

“Flak for what?”

Tommy had reappeared in the doorway.

“Flak for the disaster at the golf course yesterday,” Hanna replied swiftly, while I was still trying to get my brain into gear. “We were just talking about the Martini Classic.”

“Um,” was all Tommy said. Then, “Carlton, first thing tomorrow, I expect to see the start of that series on the history of Bosky Dell.”

“Certainly, Tommy. I take it that is your gracious way of saying I am back on staff again.”

“For now,” Tommy growled. “Whoops!”

This was not aimed at me, but at Joe Herkimer, who had come in, crossed the newsroom floor with nary a twig breaking beneath his moccasined feet, and suddenly appeared at Tommy's elbow.

“Oh, it's you,” said Tommy.

“How,” said Joe, and executed a peace sign with the flat hand, like Tonto in
The Lone Ranger
.

“Very strange man,” he remarked thoughtfully, as Tommy moved off, no doubt voicing those very same words silently to himself.

“Well, here we are,” said Hanna.

“Were,” responded Joe. “We're getting out of here.”

“That's nice. Where are we going?”

“To a meeting of the Circle Lake Band's tribal council,” said Joe.

“Just for the heck of it,” said Hanna, as we emerged from the
Lancer
office onto Main Street, “why are we going to a band council meeting?”

“Well, it isn't really a band meeting, or you wouldn't be allowed in the door,” Joe explained. “It's more of an information meeting, open to all, on the subject of the burial grounds. It's been going on all morning, which is the way of council meetings, while everybody gets up and explores whatever happens to be on his or her mind. Some of us think the whole issue is dead now. Certainly, when a couple of the elders went over the diggings on the fifth fairway last night, after the cops left, they could find no sign of anything suggesting a burial ground.

“But there's another faction, led by Chuck Wilson—his native name, by the way, is Two Deers—that says we ought to keep pushing for the land, because we got stung over the first land grants, back in the eighteenth century, which is certainly true, and if claiming a burial ground is a way to launch a new claim under the land-settlements legislation, well, we ought to do it.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Hanna, “but I still don't know why you want us to go to the meeting.”

“I want your opinion, for one thing. I'm too close to these people to make any objective judgments, so I'm probably imagining things, but I get a feeling that there's an edge of fanaticism creeping into the talks these days, and it makes me uneasy. I want to know if you two react the same way. And, of course, I think there ought to be somebody there representing the press, just in case we are able to come to some sort of conclusion. Here's my car,” he said.

“And here's mine,” said Hanna, who had managed to wring a brand new Ford LTD out of the rental agency.

“Why do I have the feeling that Carlton's going to ride with you?” asked Joe.

“He isn't. He's going to ride with you, so he can tell you everything he put into a very full file at the
Lancer
this morning. I'll meet you there.”

She ran over to her car and took off at her usual rapid rate, while Joe and I followed at something close to the speed limit, until we lost sight of her over the horizon.

During the drive—it is about twenty miles from Silver Falls to the reserve, northeast of the town on about six hundred acres of utterly unfarmable land—I brought Joe up to date, but he was unable to make any more sense of the unrolling of events than I was.

“Maybe the cops will put it together,” he said hopefully.

“That was a joke, right? I've never been able to understand the Indian sense of humour.”

We pulled into the parking lot outside the council house, which was pretty well full, and managed to find one of the last spots, well down towards Lake Omog, on whose swampy shores the Ojibwa had been settled as soon as they had been diddled out of the only decent farmland at this end of the county—around Bosky Dell; that's what set off the argument about burial grounds. Hanna was waiting for us and came running across the rutted, dirt lot towards us.

“Did you see them? Did you see them?”

“Did we see who? Whom?”

She threw her hands up. “Oh, mighty tracker,” she said. “Oh, keen-eyed journalist. About two minutes ago, while you were dawdling along the road, a car pulled in here and Carlton's good friend, the Maryland Morsel, got out with some guy who's about ten feet tall. They both went into the meeting.”

“So what? Robinson told us Amelia was interested in Canadian natives. Turns out she really is.”

“Here's the car I saw them get out of. Anything strike you about it?”

“It's rented, from the same outfit you got yours from. So what?”

“What colour is it?”

“Sort of bluey-grey. What of it?”

“Are you suggesting,” asked Joe, “that this is the car that ran you off the road?”

“Hanna, you're crazy. Why would Amelia want to run us off the road?”

“I don't know. But I'm sure as hell going to ask her if she did.”

“This is nuts. Or, if it was her, it was an accident. She didn't even have any way of . . . I forgot what I was going to say.”

I had just remembered that Amelia did have a way of knowing that Hanna and I were in her car and driving out to Bosky Dell. I had told her so, in my boasting telephone call, which I had very prudently refrained from mentioning to Hanna. Well, then, it was an accident. Wasn't it? Hanna was giving me an intent look.

“Spit it out, Carlton.”

“Nothing to spit.”

“You just thought of something, didn't you?”

“I just thought that it might be a good idea to find out the identity of the gent with Amelia, that's all.”

“That shouldn't be too difficult,” said Joe. “One of the boys will have marked any stranger who came to the meeting.”

“What if it isn't a stranger?”

“They'll know that, too.”

There were, I now noticed, about half a dozen young Indian men slouching around the parking lot and near the door to the council house in attitudes of exaggerated nonchalance.

“Warriors,” Joe explained. He beckoned one of them over, and there was a whispered conference. Then Joe and the young warrior slipped inside, where the meeting was already under way. Joe emerged again in under a minute.

“The big guy's a complete stranger,” Joe explained to us. “Never been seen around here before. He was driving the car when it arrived.” That was something, anyway. “The warriors think he's a cop, maybe, because he's so big and ugly. That's him. You can just see the side of his head through the window, over there to the right.”

We looked, and saw a massive head, which was not familiar to either of us.

“A cop? I doubt it very much,” said Hanna. “But why don't we just go in and find out?”

So we did; we walked right in as if we owned the place, turned to the right, and sat in the same row as the massive stranger and Amelia Jowett. She was wearing a filmy blouse and, once more, a red kerchief. She looked across as we sat down, gave me a smile and a wave, and leaned over to whisper something to the man mountain beside her.

“Stop goggling,” Hanna hissed, driving her elbow into my breadbasket.

“I just thought of something,” I said.

“Later,” said Joe Herkimer. “Get out your notebook. We're getting to the good stuff now.”

Up at the podium, which was decorated with an eagle feather and a ceremonial pipe, an old boy in half-rimmed glasses was rolling through the syllables, apparently summing up the discussion that had been going on while we were otherwise engaged and elsewhere.

“The chief,” Joe explained.

There were those who felt, the old boy said, that the band ought to present a petition to the federal government, asking that the lands on and around the fifth fairway of the golf course at Bosky Dell be turned over to the band council, because of certain documentary evidence that pointed to this as the former site of a band burial ground. It had to be noted, the chief went on, that there were also those who felt that the documents were either mistaken, or had been misinterpreted, because the elders who had visited the site last night had been unable to discover any signs of its use as a burial ground, and neither had the anthropologist, Dr. George Rose, before his death. This group felt that it would be better to set aside the issue of the burial ground, and press ahead, instead, with the band's original claim for a more just financial settlement in connection with the lands surrendered to the white man, based on the Proclamation of 1763, and the statements then made by Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indians, on behalf of King George III.

Then there were those, the old boy finished, who felt that the band ought to press ahead on both counts, demanding the surrender of the burial-ground site, in case it turned out to be such, and demanding the return of all the lands thereabouts, along with a large cash settlement.

The old boy then sat down.

“That's it?” I said. “Isn't he going to tell us where he comes down in the debate?”

“No,” Joe explained. “That's not his role. He is the leader of all the band. His role is to set out the arguments. What happens after that is up to the band as a whole.”

“I see. Now there's a vote?”

“No, no vote.”

“Then how do you arrive at a conclusion?”

“By consensus.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“It means that, sooner or later, we will all be agreed on what course of action to take, and then we'll take it.”

“Oh.” I had a feeling I was never going to understand native politics. “What happens now?”

“Nothing,” said Joe. “We just go home.”

In that, however, he was wrong. People started to move out of their seats, all right, but suddenly there was a buzz and stir at the front of the hall, and about half a dozen men came dashing into the room, led by an older man, who turned out to be none other than Two Deers, a.k.a. Chuck Wilson. Or, if you prefer, Cecil Charles Watson.

He was dressed in street clothes, but he had a couple of black lines painted down his cheeks, and he was carrying a short, sharp-looking spear. He ran up to where the chief was standing, shook his fist in his face, and, turning to the audience, shouted a phrase in what I presume was Algonkian.

“What did he say?” I asked Joe.

He grimaced. “Death to the Desecrators!”

“Interesting choice of words,” said Hanna, and she unlimbered her camera and moved towards the front of the hall.

We followed, and Wilson, as soon as he saw her, shook his fist again, so she could get a good picture. He didn't do any more shouting, though.

“Go interview him, Carlton,” said Hanna, but when I walked up to Wilson, said, “Howdy, Two Deers,” and put out my hand, he spat at it and turned away.

“I wonder if you'd mind spelling that,” I asked him.

“Blew it again,” said Hanna, at my side.

“Hey, look, the man didn't want to be interviewed.”

“I wasn't referring to him, and I wasn't referring to you. I meant Us, and Them.”

“Which us would that be?” put in Joe. “And which them?”

“The three of us, and our seatmates, Beauty and the Beast.”

“Omigosh!” I whirled around, and, sure enough, there was no sign of Amelia and her economy-sized boyfriend. They had vanished, leaving not a wrack behind.

“Let's get after them,” said Hanna, and she turned towards the door.

“To do what? Play another game of ‘Who's Up the Telephone Pole?'”

“I think Carlton's right,” said Joe. “You'll see them again, soon enough.”

“I'm not sure I want to,” I said. “I think it's time we called the cops.”

“Why? What have you got?” Hanna's voice had an accusing ring to it. “This is something you thought of before, isn't it, Carlton, and decided to clam up about?”

“Not exactly. When I saw Amelia in there, I remembered that, just before the crash, I saw, or thought I saw, a flash of something red.”

“The bimbo's red kerchief,” said Hanna triumphantly.

“I don't think I'd put too much stock in that,” said Joe. “You can hardly call the cops because you saw a flash of red just before somebody ran you off the road.”

“There's more to it than that.” So I told them about the telephone call to Amelia, to tell her about Chuck Wilson's real identity.

“You did what?” shrieked Hanna. “Dammit, Carlton, have you no sense at all?”

I bridled. “So far as I knew, this was just a friendly, young . . .”

“Friendly, hah!”

“. . . woman who wanted to know something that I was able to find out. So I called to tell her about it. What is so consarned wrong with that?”

“I give up,” said Hanna. “Well, there's only one thing to do.”

“I know. I'll call the cops.”

“They'll laugh at you. What can you give them to go on? Evidence, I mean. Not theories, but evidence. You're going to make a call, all right, but not to the cops. And not on the telephone. In person. You're going to call on Amelia Jowett, just as fast as it can be arranged.”

“What for?”

“In the journalism trade, we call it conducting an interview for the purposes of obtaining information.”

“But the woman may be dangerous.”

“Not to worry. Joe and I will be sitting in my car, right outside, at all times.”

“I really hate this idea.”

“Have you got a better one?”

“No, but I really hate this one.”