People of the Morning Star (3 page)

The cameraman called, “Sound check.”

The big guy pushed his glasses on and positioned himself. “Testing, one, two, three, four—”

“We’re good.” The cameraman studied the LCD display and said, “Starting from the top, five, four, three, two, one.”

“Hello,” the big guy said heartily. “I’m Dr. Wig MacGuire.
Alien Quest
has traveled here, to Cahokia, Illinois, to the top of Monks Mound where we will attempt to unlock the secret behind the Alien construction of the most complex mound site in North America.”

He stared intently into the camera, his brown eyes thoughtful. “What brought visitors from another planet here, to the Mississippi floodplain? Was it some deep deposit of rare minerals? Or perhaps the planetary coordinates that caused them to build such an intricate spaceport in the American Midwest?”

He smiled intimately into the camera. “Whatever the reason, they chose this place. We can wonder about the meaning of the mounds, and why the Aliens chose to build them, but—”

“I say you’re a lying bastard!” John’s hard voice carried.

“Cut!” The skinny cameraman spun around. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m John Wet Bear, son of Billy Wet Bear and Mary Wet Bear. I’d tell you my clans, but being white guys it wouldn’t mean anything. What I want to know is why?”

“Why what? We’re filming here. I need you to leave.”

John kicked at the gravel path with one of his worn Dan Post boots. He’d propped his thumbs in the back pockets of his Levis … inches from the revolver’s grip. “You really believe that crap about Aliens? I mean, really”—he raised his hands, trembling them—“
ooooh
! Why’d they come
here
?”

The cameraman pulled out his cell phone. “You’re leaving, or I’m calling the police, right now.”

“They can’t get here quick enough to save you.” John squinted behind his sunglasses, looking across the distant oxbow lake toward where the North Group mounds had stood. “White people have already destroyed most of Cahokia. You two assholes aren’t going to destroy the rest.”

The cameraman hesitated, finally reading the threat in John’s posture and expression. “Destroy the … We’re, uh, not
destroying
anything.”

“What were you smoking when you cooked up this ‘Alien’ crap, anyway?” He looked at the big guy who had stood from his chair, irritation in his eyes.

“I’m an archaeologist. We’re just trying—”

“Yeah? Ph.D.?”

“That’s right. Look, we’ve got a schedule to keep. And not a lot of budget. If you’d—”

“Where’d you study?” John asked mildly. “Who’d you study under? Tell me about your dissertation.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. If you’ll tell me the Internet address, maybe I’ll become an MD next week.” He held up a hand. “No! Wait! It’s coming to me: You’re another con job all hot to run a load of fantasy lies for some cable channel to make a fast buck.” He pointed. “Look out there. From St. Louis in the west, all the way past that bluff top on the east, for as far as you can see from the north, to way down past where you can see in the south, this was all city. At its greatest, Cahokia was bigger than contemporary London and Paris put together. My people did that.”

“Then why did
your people
build the mounds?” the cameraman asked warily. “They got them from the Egyptians, right?”

“My people had been building mounds along the Mississippi for fifteen hundred years
before
the Egyptians first set one stone atop another to build their first pyramid.” John shook his head. “God, you guys are pathetic.”

“No offense,” the fat guy said, “but Aliens sell.”

“No offense? Bigoted racists like you always say ‘no offense.’” John lowered his voice to a deadly sibilance. “Sorry, offense taken.”

“Hey!” the cameraman jerked himself up straight. “I’ve never been a racist in my life.”

“Yeah,” John snorted. “Then what are you doing right now?”

Wig MacGuire stomped forward. “We’re doing a show on Aliens building Cahokia. There’s nothing racist about it, asshole.”

John cocked his head, a thin smile on his lips. The fingers of his right hand caressed the Smith & Wesson’s wooden grip where it stuck out past his belt. “Are you
that
stupid? My ancestors, the Dhegiha Sioux built this city. By claiming Aliens built it, you’re defaming me and my ancestors.”

“That’s bullshit!” MacGuire threw his arms wide. “We’re not insulting anyone. We’re
solving
the mystery of Cahokia.”

John’s smile thinned. “The assumption behind your film is that my ancestors were too stupid to build anything like Cahokia. First rule to dispossessing and marginalizing a people? Deny their heritage. You guys have tried the lost tribes of Israel, then the lost Welshmen, then the Vikings, the Phoenicians, the Mayans … and now its Aliens.”

The cameraman growled, “How could a bunch of prehistoric people plan all this out? It’s east-west, north-south. They didn’t have compasses.”

“Wrong again, asshole,” John roared, feeling the anger build. “They had
expert
surveyors when they built new Cahokia during the Big Bang! Leveled the whole thing, sometimes with up to eight feet of fill. Laid it out with a graded slope and drop so it would drain. They had a standard unit of measurement, did the geometry with squares and arcs. And how did they know the directions? You can see the Woodhenge from here. That circle of posts? It’s a big honking celestial observatory, you bigoted white fool!”

“An observatory? It’s a
circle
of
posts.
”

“Cahokians were plotting the movement of planets, the eighteen-point-six year cycle of the moon, and the seasons, when your white kings in England and France were wading through sewage in the streets and picking lice out of their beards.”

“Where are the Indian cathedrals? Huh? Tell me that, smart guy.”

“What the hell do you think you’re standing on, bigot? If it was nine hundred years ago, we’d be inside a five-story-tall building.”

“All I see is a big pile of dirt.” MacGuire half-lidded his eyes. “Now Cochise, you’ve had your fun. Go away and leave us alone. We’ve got nothing against prehistoric Indians. Maybe they built this, and maybe they didn’t. And frankly, outside of a few deluded radicals like you, who cares?”

John studied the man’s head, seeing the spot in the center of his brow where he’d put the bullet. The slow rage that always got him in trouble was rising to full boil. “You’re preaching the most insidious form of racism that there is: that my people weren’t just culturally and intellectually inferior, but that the notion they built Cahokia is so absurd even the most outlandish alternate explanation,
Aliens,
is more believable.”

The skinny camera guy, apparently reading John’s reddening face, said, “Look, pal. No offense. Seventy percent of the American people are scientifically illiterate. Less than three percent have even heard of Cahokia, let alone what it might mean. They don’t believe anything existed in America before the white guys came.”

In a condescending voice, MacGuire said, “Me, I’ve got nothing against the Indians. Okay, your people got a raw deal, and I can’t change that. People
do
believe in Aliens, and because they do, we’re going to sell them Aliens. It’s free speech.”

“They got a term for what you’re doing. They call it cultural genocide. Murdering a people’s past as a way of marginalizing them.”

“You’re a lunatic. What happened? You forgot to take your Prozac this morning?” the camera guy said with a smirk.

“Before I send you on your way, take one last look.” John tightened his right hand around the pistol grip. “The mounds were just the foundations for the buildings. They sent colonies as far as Georgia and the Carolinas, hundreds of thousands of people lived within a thirty-mile radius of this spot. My people built a stunning and remarkable civilization here. Saying it was Aliens is a moral crime. And since you know it’s a lie, you’re just a modern version of Custer.”

“Hey, Mr. Red Man. Reality check. A lie? What’s that? Everything’s marketing, what you can sell. Just like in politics, truth is whatever you can get people to believe. So go on,” MacGuire said with a wave of his hand. “Go away. Shoo!”

John took a breath.
Time.

The cameraman was complaining to MacGuire, “Can you imagine that? That asshole called
us
racists? I voted for Obama.”

John’s vision fixed on MacGuire’s face, at the point where he’d shoot. His heart was a slow and steady thumping beat, coursing blood through his body. He’d felt this way in combat—what he interpreted as the spirit of his warrior ancestors.

As the revolver slid out of his belt, a hard hand clamped on his wrist from behind, a voice near his ear saying, “Ah, yes. Thought you’d come here.”

“Uncle Max?” John cried, stunned.

“So, you gonna kill them here, in the middle of the open?” Max asked as he wrenched the old Smith & Wesson from John’s hand and stepped around.

Wig MacGuire and the cameraman both stared, wide-eyed, first at the gun, then at the older man with a Pendleton blanket hanging from his shoulders. Max’s face was lined by his aging smile. VA benefits had paid for very nice false teeth that gave him a healthy grin.

“Wanted to make a statement, Unc,” John told him. “You know, remind the world that we’re tired of genocide. It’s what you fought for in Kosovo with KFOR, remember? Genocide is pretty much the same if you use a camera or a gun.”

Max nodded, his expression turning pensive. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

“Hang on here!” Wig MacGuire had finally found his voice, his wide eyes bugged behind his glasses as he stared at the worn revolver. His hands were up, his face ashen. “We’re sorry. Okay. Do you want money?” He pawed desperately for his billfold. “You can have anything you want. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Shit!” John cried in disgust. “He thinks
we’re
the thieves? He’s the one stealing other people’s lives and heritage.”

Uncle Max thoughtfully opened the cylinder, inspecting the six cartridges. “Tell you what, MacGuire. My nephew here, he’s got PTSD from Afghanistan, huh? Unstable veteran. Now, if I don’t let him shoot you, you might grab that camera and run down the stairs and call the police.”

Max gave the men a sidelong glance. “Me, I wouldn’t blame you if you did. John here, he’s always been a fighter for a cause. Ain’t that right?”

“Yep. If you’d a let me shoot ’em, the publicity from my trial would stop this Alien shit right in its tracks. People would know it was our ancestors who built Cahokia. We could label these bigots for what they are. And, Unc, killing racists would be a crime of passion, I could plead it down to murder two, maybe even manslaughter or justifiable homicide.”

“Probably could.” Max nodded thoughtfully before clicking the cylinder back into the revolver. “So, here’s the deal, MacGuire: Take your camera. Beat feet out of here. Call the cops if you want. They’ll charge my nephew here with armed assault. My sister’s girl, who’s a tribal attorney, will file a shit-load of defamation, discrimination, civil rights violations, and a slew of other charges. You know, one of them class-action suits against you, the producers, the network, everybody involved. Something with big damages that will draw a lot of attention.”

MacGuire shot a worried glance at the cameraman who was still fixated on the old, worn revolver. “We’ll go. No cops.”

“Too bad. Cops are necessary for a trial.” Max was back to grinning again. “But then maybe you’re not bigoted racists like my nephew thinks. Maybe you just hadn’t thought through the implications behind your film. Maybe you don’t mean to imply that Native peoples were too stupid to build a city like this. It’ll be a win-win. We’ll both go away thinking the other party turned out to be a whole lot smarter than we thought.”

Even as MacGuire and his cameraman fled, a family of four had climbed onto the high flat.

“Think they’ll call the cops anyway?”

“Nope.” Max handed him the revolver. “You might want to stick that out of sight. You are in Illinois.”

“How’d you know I’d come after them?”

“Spirits told me.” Max stuffed his hands in his pockets as he looked eastward toward St. Louis. “You’d have really shot him?”

“At that last instant? I’ll never know. But I’m tired of the lies. The assumption that if your ancestors were inferior, then so are you. Maybe that’s what put me in that alley in the first place. They think it’s harmless, a joke, to attribute places like this to Aliens or lost Vikings, but they’re perpetuating evil.”

“MacGuire probably never looked at it that way. He probably thinks he’s a good man.”

“Yeah, Unc.” John started back for the stairs. “You think it was that way here? Think our ancestors had anyone like me? Ready to sacrifice himself in the battle against evil?”

Uncle Max paused at the head of the stairs, staring down at the grassy expanse of the great plaza as if he were seeing it through the Morning Star’s eyes. “Of course they did.”

“How do you know?”

“The same way I knew you’d be here today. The underwater panther told me.”

“Yeah, sure, Unc.”

But the old man just smiled in that enigmatic way of his.