RavenShadow (2 page)

Get-Back Time

I
passed the coming week in a tizzy. I was so nervous I screwed up the simplest things. Soon I realized that I might as well go ahead. Sybil had lost her job—she was already gone—I was gonna lose mine.

Oh yeah, I have cause a-plenty, but I’m gonna get canned
. Better yet, canned the Friday before Labor Day, the big foofuraw in honor of the hired help of America.

And then where was I going to get a job? Going back to the rez did not feel like an option. There Indians with jobs are an endangered species, and unemployment runs eighty, ninety percent. Indians with forty-grand-a-year jobs like mine are scarce as manure in a shopping mall. We got radio stations, but the pay is zilch.

The problem was even bigger than that. Indian people who make it off the rez, who go to college, who find a niche in the white-world economy, these Indians do not go back, for a lot of reasons. Not if you’re lucky enough to get out.

No radio station would hire me after Long John passed the word about what I did to him, not in the Black Hills region. So what the hell was I gonna do for a job?

All I knew was, I meant to get Long John Silver.

Fortunately, my idea took hold right away and knocked my mind off being scared. I was looking at a news release from the United Way when my plan began to form. The local chapter was honoring our station for a wonderful job helping raise money. These sorts of verbal bouquets came along week in week out, payback for giving the charities free air time. At Long John’s request (read Long John’s order) I slipped such honors into our community news spots.

Now, my program is a little bit of everything: national news, local news, music, commercials, announcements, promos, and interviews. The trick is, some of it is canned and some live—national news on tape, local news read by me, music on CD, announcements live, commercials tape, and so on etcetabravo. Wonderfully, in the studio I have complete control over all this. On one side of me are CD and cassette players, so I can get cuts ready and play them when the time comes. On the other side is a commercial cart. In it go stacks of tapes recorded earlier. They look like eight-tracks, and they’re numbered. I check the paper log, push a button, and lo and behold, the cart hypes the right product.

This next bit will become important. I wear a headset and hear everything that’s on the air. Anyone else in the studio is without headset. If they go on the air, they use a standing mike. In summary: When I’m doing live, anyone else in the studio hears what we’re broadcasting. When a cart is playing, there’s silence, to everyone’s ears but mine.

With the United Way news release in hand, I sat and puzzled it out. It would work. Maybe. Yeah, it was bingo on the button. The method wasn’t so tricky—I was surprised no one, as far I as knew, had done it before. The result would be simple and delectable. And with luck it wouldn’t cost me my severance pay, or my unemployment checks. Which was only right. He’d got out of paying Sybil, but he wasn’t going to get out of paying
me, who had paid unemployment taxes to the state of South Dakota for eleven years. I’d put up with Long John Silver for a very long time, and I wanted something for it.

The next-to-last week before Labor Day (taking my time, enjoying my last paychecks!) I got started seriously on the setup. Found an old release on letterhead stationery from Oglala Lakota College out on the rez, Office of the President, Dr. Frank Brown Bull. Typed out a letter from Prez to Long John and printed it on some plain paper. Cut the logo off the letterhead and taped that onto the new letter. Ran the taped-up letter through the fax-copier machine. Presto, a fax from the President of OLC to Long John, asking to give Long John and the station a plaque recognizing their many services to OLC. (This really meant announcing dates and times of powwows, graduations, and such like.)
AND
… Dr. Brown Bull would be in Rapid City this Friday and wanted to present the plaque in person and
ON THE AIR
. The president was available from nine-thirty to ten, which coincidentally was the last hour of my show, and the way I was planning things, the last hour of my tenure at KKAT.

I read it over about five times looking for errors. Not until the last time did I notice I’d put into the president’s mouth the greeting, “Dear Long John.” I felt an ice-cold drop weave all the way down my spine. The next time I got it right.

After my show the next morning, a Monday, I walked into Long John’s office, gave him the letter, and watched him read it slowly. (Contrary to rumor, his lips didn’t actually move.) I asked casually if 9:50 on Friday, would work for him. I listened to my insides scrape in fear. He gave a smile that kept widening for a full minute. I thought he’d seen through me.

“Kind of neat,” says I.

He handed the letter back to me. “Guess I can make it,” he said, and wrote it down in his daytimer.

Hot damn! Labor Day I’ll be celebrating unemployment!

I continued with the setup. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I promoed the award, emphasizing
LIVE
and repeating the time, so there would be no backing out. I also prepared the next fax on the letterhead of the Prez, a long one. Dr. Brown Bull was obliged at the last minute to make an unexpected trip to Pierre, the state capital, it said, to testify before a legislative committee. Regrets were expressed. Since a Lakota was the disc jockey for the chosen time, however, would Mr. Blue Crow stand in for the president? The president’s speech was enclosed. Would Mr. Blue Crow please read it on the air?

Now just one step left. I had to make sure it got faxed to the station, marked
URGENT
and to my attention, while I was on the air that morning.

I drove the seven miles from the house in Rockerville, once my happy home, to Keystone to see my best friend, Emile Gray Feather. “I’ll fax it,” he said. Collectors from all over the world buy Emile’s work. He has a fancy fax machine and copier right in his studio.

“It’s important,” says I. “See, I’m gonna con Long John …”

“Yes, yes, I’ll send it.” He lifted his brush hand from the shield he was painting, waved me away, and concentrated on the black he was laying on the shield.

“Near nine o’clock,” I said again.

“Yes, yes.” Emile is very slight, kind of feminine in his figure, and very elegant. It was a crow he was creating. I wasn’t sure I had his attention.

“Real close to nine o’clock.”

He flicked his eyes up at me and back down. With a half smile showing his childlike teeth, he said, “Never fear, I will help you spread your chaos.”

Emile talks like that. He’s strange. He likes boys instead of girls. He’s been my best friend for over twenty years.

I took a last look at the emerging crow and left. Crows give
me the shivers, though my own name is Crow. There’s a lot to say about why. For now, let me point out that to us Lakota crow and raven are the same bird. Our word for them,
kangi
, doesn’t mean crow or raven, just big, black bird, which covers both. So my name, Blue Crow, could as well be translated into English as Blue Raven. The stories native people tell about Raven are also stories about Crow, and vice versa. When I speak of one, I am as well speaking of the other. I feel close to ravens and crows, close and queasy both. The story I’m telling you is called ravenShadow.

I didn’t sleep that night. Around eleven o’clock I killed a six pack watching MTV, but I still couldn’t sleep. I laid there until twenty to five, turned out before the alarm went off, shuffled into my clothes, and headed to KKAT for the last time.

TGIF and humming along—hummm, baby, hmmm. Each week I came up with an idea for thanking God it’s Friday. This morning I was playing the
bad
boys, the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison, the Dead, and Kiss, sending out dark energy and an unstated dark message to the folks. The station’s hottest times were 7:50
A.M
. and 8:50
A.M
.—most folks on their way to work, revving up on caffeine and the sound of my show. At 9:05 Amy the Tank marched in with the fax from Emile.
Hot damn, he’s right on the dot
. I read it trying not to smile. “Amy, would you tell Long John to come in here a minute?”

Appearance! Long John Silver, sacrificial lamb, unknowing but not innocent. He walked in while I was doing the local news, never yet having learned to observe the
ON AIR
light when it’s on. I held one finger up to him, asking for silence. This was perfect for my purposes, no discussion. I handed him the fax from the Prez. He read it, and I saw the lines on either side of his mouth deepen. I pointed to the script and shook my fist like it was the ultimate accolade. Sounding out the last of the news, I scribbled him a note. “Great stuff! 9:50 sharp!”

He nodded, gaining confidence.

I did a rat-a-tat-rolling segue into community announcements, rolled my eyes at him, grinned, and started hyping local events. He left with enough courage to give me thumbs up.

The bait was swallowed whole.

Long John actually put on his suit coat and snugged up his tie to look good on the radio.

I stood and shook his hand. “Congratulations,” I said, with just the right air, trying to imply that an honor from OLC—well, to me, Joseph Blue Crow, that was something really special. I motioned to the chair on the far side of the counter from me and moved a mike into position for him. “You may want to say a few words when I’ve read the president’s script.”

I sat back in my chair with my jock, in-charge, up-energy attitude on. I cocked my head like I was listening to the music, and pretended to hit buttons on the CD player to fade the tune. Actually, I was doing absolutely nothing, since I’d set three cuts to play back to back. Having no headset, though, Long John had no idea what was or wasn’t going out over the air. I set my coffee cup in front of the on-air switch, so he wouldn’t be able to see whether it was on or off, not that Long John had ever learned how a studio works. He was gonna think we were on.

I took one very deep breath, gave myself a big inward grin, and launched into …

That was the question, wasn’t it? What was I launching myself into, really?

“Dr. Frank Brown Bull,” I began, “President of Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, planned to be here today to recognize KKAT and its president, John Karnopoulos, for their contributions. The recognition is a handsome plaque—can you see it on the radio? Anyone will be able to see it starting this afternoon because it will be displayed proudly in our reception area.”

I held my hands out and pantomimed displaying the plaque
to a crowd. Long John may have experienced his first doubts right about now, because instead of a plaque I was holding up a poof of empty air.

I barged on.

“However, Dr. Brown Bull had to go to Pierre today, legislative business. In his stead I will read the letter of commendation.”

I set down the imaginary plaque and picked up the phony fax.

“Know one, know all by these contents, it is proclaimed by the board of directors of Oglala Lakota College: We appreciate deeply the contributions of radio KKAT and especially of its president, John Karnopoulos, to the College and to the Lakota people. Among many deeds worthy of remembrance and gratitude, we cite the following:

“One. John promised to be a media sponsor of our White Feather powwow, getting us to put the station logo on all our stationery, T-shirts, and other promotional materials, and then without telling us replaced the announcements of the powwow with paid commercials. No station could have snookered us slicker, and attendance at the powwow went
D-O
-w-w-w-n.”

The look on John’s face was simply blank. I’ve never seen a rock that blank.

“Two. He seduced a veritable treasure trove of KKAT female employees over the years, using promises or implications of promotions or raises as a lure. This was a deed worthy of the tradition of American small business owners. He has enough women’s underwear in his office closet to start catalog sales!”

John’s face was beginning to mobilize, and his mouth. “Liar! Fake! This is bullshit!”

He’d forgotten to speak to the mike, not that it mattered.

“We want also to tell some special people secrets about John’s exemplary deeds they may not know: Patty, Mrs. Karnopoulos, the employee your husband John is screwing now is Amy the receptionist. They party at the Alex Johnson Hotel
every Thursday evening, when he’s supposed to be at his AA meeting. Amy’s predecessor, Sybil, was dropped when she committed the indiscretion of getting pregnant.”

John picked up the mike and started shouting into it. May God forgive what he would have done to our listeners’ eardrums if we’d been live.

“You bastard, you Injun, you red nigger, you’re fired!” And more on that order, spewed out loud but not creative.

“Amy likes John because he’s a bottomless well of the lady cocaine. For anyone who might be interested, he keeps his stash in a ZipLock bag taped to the back of the mini refrigerator in the wet bar. In fact, I now have it right here!”

I held up the ZipLock bag I had snitched. John ought to have known that if every woman in the office knows where your stash is, it won’t stay a secret.

Long John abandoned rhetoric for violence. He swung at me, but the counter was wide, I dodged backward, and he missed.

He crawled onto the counter. Then
THE
look came over him. It meant he had just remembered that he is a skinny fellow, along in years, and I am one very big Indian.

I rose into his face.

He launched himself at me.

I grabbed his forearms, both of them, forced him to his knees on the counter, and held him fast.

“John,” I said to him levelly, “we’re not live!”

He head-butted me.

I hurled him backward. He went
ker-splat
on the floor.

I rubbed my forehead. “John, we’re not live! We’re not on the air! We’re not broadcasting.”

He flew around the counter and threw himself at me again. I grabbed his shoulders, lifted him off the ground, and shoved him toward the wall. He collapsed in a heap.