The Deed (17 page)

Holy fucking shit,
Jason panicked, heart racing.
I’m trapped in a goddamn PC nightmare.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” he said meekly, looking away. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Yes, exactly,” Mary replied, nodding. “You’re sorry that the situation’s now uncomfortable, but not for your arrogance or your ignorance.” She turned to Amanda. “You hear this? If you can absorb whatever’s left of the people you conquer into your own culture, there’ll be nobody left to take you to task for your crimes. It has always been the same—always. Well, we’re still here, Jason. Out of sight, out of mind, maybe, but still here. We’re not just going to blend in quietly and let the world forget what your people did to us. I’m sorry if you find that untidy.”

“Ma, take it easy,” Amanda urged. “Jason didn’t conquer anybody.”

“No,” Mary agreed. “No, you’re right. Jason’s only the child of conquerors. With the birthright of blissful ignorance.”

Though her anger seemed to be abating, the steely conviction behind it remained. Jason felt he ought to say something, but the risk of reawakening the dragon was too high.

“Let me teach you something they don’t tell you in your schools, Jason,” she adjured him with mock sweetness. “Hundreds of nations thousands of years old, brought to our knees in a couple of generations. Mass genocide. Outright theft of our ancestral lands. The systematic destruction of our artifacts and heroes and history. Your culture
buried
mine, Jason. Skinned it and burned it alive. It’s the most massively significant event in our history—for us it’s World War One, Two, and Three all rolled into one. And you don’t even teach it in your goddamn
classrooms.
You memorize the goddamn kings of England.”

Suddenly feeling intensely claustrophobic, Jason could only sit in agony and try to keep his mouth from swinging open.
It’s been hundreds of years,
he wanted to protest.
Time to wake up and join your century.
“I’m
sorry,
” he reiterated in a humble whisper, way past ready to go.

Mary only glared in naked antagonism, silently, as if summoning her forces for another blitzkrieg. Finally, though, she simply scooted back her chair and carried the cups over to the sink without speaking, her face locked in an expression of grim purpose.

So anyway, I was wondering if I could take your daughter to the prom?
Jason thought wistfully.

“Amanda.” Mary spoke from in front of the sink, her back still turned.

“It’s getting late. I think it’s time your friend went back to the island.”

Jason spared a look at the object of his affection, only to find her head buried in her hands.

“I’m sorry my daughter dragged you all the way out here, Jason,” Mary continued, turning on the faucet, “but you and I obviously have nothing to talk about.”

Suits me fine.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Jason, rising.

“No, you’re not,” she replied, shaking her head, turning and squinting at him from across the kitchen. “What a liar you are, through and through! You don’t even want to be here. I’m not
reaching
you; I’m only making you uncomfortable.”

When he didn’t answer, she began walking slowly toward him, drying her hands on her shirt. “Who are you, Jason?” she asked, with a final searching look. “You’re obviously not who I thought you were, and so I have to wonder: Who the hell
are
you? Do you even know?”

All he could do was return Mary’s stare as best he could. “I know who I am,” he replied.

She laughed bitterly. “You’re
nobody,
that’s who. Go back to your world, boy,” she urged, turning away and walking back toward her dishes. “There’s nothing for you here.” She flicked the faucet on and rolled up her sleeves.

The car retraced its path back through the tangle of dirt roads to the highway, the din of its engine uninterrupted by human conversation. Amanda glared at the road from behind the wheel, while Jason slouched in the corner of his seat and pressed his thumbs to his temples, wishing with all his soul that this hellish trip were over, already.
There’s
no
place like home,
he kept repeating to himself,
there’s
no
place like home.

But the silence was taxing. There’s only so long one can play a conversation out in one’s head before the need to actually verbalize it overwhelms. When Amanda drew a pair of cigarettes from a pack in the dash, lighting one and tossing the other, unlit, out the window, Jason pounced.

“Why do you
do
that?” he demanded, clumsily breaking the silence: a bowling ball dropped into a glassy pond.

“Why do I do what?” replied Amanda, pouting.

“Throw away every other cigarette. Are you trying to quit?”

She remained sullen. “Something like that.”

Five minutes later, it was her turn to break the silence. “Okay, so what the hell was that?”

Jason raised one eyebrow, but kept staring straight ahead. “She’s
your
mother…you tell me,” he replied, trying to will the Manhattan skyline into appearing in the distance.

“Why did you—” Amanda began, too softly.

“What?” Jason interjected testily. “I can’t even hear you over this goddamn motherfucking bitch-ass space-shuttle engine.”

“Why did you try to piss my mother off?” she shouted.

Jason turned to face her. “Oh, that’s rich. Are you kidding me?” he demanded. “Look, Amanda. Don’t just circle the wagons—you were there. We were having an intellectual debate. It was your mom who took it to eleven, not me.”
Circle the wagons,
he thought.
Nice metaphor, Jack. These fuckin’ Indians…

“You could have been a little more sensitive, that’s all,” she replied. “I absolutely did warn you it was a touchy subject.”

Jason watched as an ancient Subaru, plastered with college stickers and packed solid with dorm paraphernalia, angled into their lane without signaling. “Let’s all remember that I wasn’t the one who blew up,” he reminded Amanda firmly. “Suddenly I became this Politically Incorrect Poster Boy for daring to suggest—”

“I know,” she replied. “But—”

“For daring to have a different opinion about a damn
casino.
And anyway, Amanda,” he continued, “you and I aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. Where’d you get the idea you suddenly have the right to edit my conversation?”

“Is this a debate, too?” she wondered. “Because I gotta tell you, it feels like you’re picking a fight.”

Jason glowered for a moment, determined to outstare her, but she turned away almost instantly; the car’s massive inertia required a constant stream of incremental course corrections.

“All right, I’m sorry,” he relented after a few moments. “But I’m not a bigot, for Christ’s sake. I’m not. I
hate
that crap. It’s like, because I’m a white male, I’m not allowed to take part in any argument that involves race, or gender, or anything. Because I’m the Oppressor.”

“Well, don’t forget, you
were
aligning yourself with those other white guys,” Amanda reminded him.

“What other white guys?”

“The ones who want to start the casino,” she replied. “Jason, you’re never going to have a calm, reasoned conversation about tribal affairs with her. It’s
always
politically charged; it’s…tribal unity’s my mom’s whole
thing.
To her, if our people just dissolve into mainstream America, then we’ve been truly conquered, our forefathers forgotten. End of the world. And she doesn’t want it to happen on her watch.”

“Well, I hate being judged,” Jason groused. “I get a little impatient when people let their emotions rule their reason.”

“That’s awfully condescending,” she remarked. “Don’t be Ugly Guy.”

“I’m not,” he replied, shaking his head.

“For you it’s just a parlor argument,” she continued. “But she’s gotta live there if you’re wrong. Look at Atlantic City.”

“Look at Las Vegas,” he countered. “Look at Foxwoods, for crying out loud. All these other Indian tribes are shamelessly raking it in, pulling themselves up and out of poverty. How much hard empirical evidence do you need?”

He paused to gather his thoughts, interrupting her just as she opened her mouth to respond. “I mean, think about this
deed,
Amanda,” he said, tapping a finger on the empty seat between them. “If we were to pull it off, haven’t you thought for a minute about all the
good
we could do with all that cash?”

“She doesn’t want us to find it,” Amanda replied quietly, talking to the windshield. “That’s what that whole scene was about. Mom was digging to find out what kind of person you are, because it’s important for her to know whether or not you’re just after the money.”

He raised one eyebrow in genuine surprise, turned to stare out the windshield for a moment, then looked back at her. “Think so?”

Amanda nodded gravely. “Doesn’t it make sense? She’s the gatekeeper. She’s not going to just hand over the store without checking out your intentions first.”

“See, now I missed that.”

A ghost of a smile returned to her lips. “That’s because your head’s not in the game.” She put an elbow up on the window ledge and rested the side of her head against her palm, interlacing fingers in her long hair.

“I felt like prey,” said Jason. “I felt like she was going to spit some kind of paralyzing poison on me and swallow me whole.”

But Amanda wasn’t paying attention. “She
knows,
” she said quietly. “She knows where that
freaking
deed is.”

As they roared steadily westward, along the Long Island Expressway and into the setting sun, the two fell silent, immersed in private thoughts, and Jason rolled up his window in defense against the chilling breeze. The blocky spires of Manhattan, still distant, began tentatively to emerge out of the burnt orange haze that draped the western horizon, a dream city coalescing gradually at their approach.

At last Amanda spoke. “What do you think would happen,” she asked, out of the blue, “if aliens landed a spaceship in Kansas tomorrow?”