The Buried Book (27 page)

CHAPTER 53

Do you know much about law enforcement on tribal lands?

The two sheriff’s department cruisers were gone when Jasper dragged his half-empty wagon up the driveway. Uncle Leo and his father were up on the roof of the barn, pounding boards back into place. Wendell gave the boy a small wave as he approached, but his uncle kept on hammering nails as if he weren’t there.

Aunt Velma was inside pulling together a makeshift kitchen in a cow stall when Jasper came through the door. “Well, there you are. You find anything good out there?”

“Not too much yet,” Jasper mumbled. He’d forgotten all about his searching duties. “I still have a lot of looking to do. I—uh . . . Uncle Leo said you wanted to see me?”

She glanced up at him and stopped scrubbing the pot in her hand. “My goodness, Jasper! You look terrible. Is everything alright?”

His aunt had a way of seeing right through him, and he hated it. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Did you want to see me about something?”

She read his eyes but decided not to probe deeper. “I need you and Wayne to take the cart into town. We’re short on all sorts of supplies. Here’s a list. Tell Calbry’s to put it on our account.”

Jasper took the scrap of paper from her hand and pretended to read, but all he could think about was the detective out in the fields and that terrible night he could only seem to remember in nightmares. His mother had been there. She had been holding the lamp. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He strained to see her face, the way it had looked. She had been smiling.

Wayne burst through the door. “Cart’s all set. We ready to go? That the list?” He snatched it from Jasper’s numb hand and gave it a quick read.

“And why don’t you two swing by some of the neighbors’ and see if anybody needs anything, alright? Just be home by sundown.” Aunt Velma stopped washing dishes to kiss each of them on top of the head and wipe a stray tear. “Look at me gushin’ over you two. Silly woman. I’m just so glad you boys are alright . . . Okay. Go on.”

Wayne manned the driver’s seat, and Jasper rode the rear axle as the tractor pulled down Harris toward Lakeshore. The older boy slowed the engine as they passed by the wreckage of Sheldon’s farm, scanning the fields for the man.

“Shoot,” his cousin said to himself. “I hope you made it out alright, Sheldon.”

Jasper followed Wayne’s gaze over the collapsed barn, but his mind wasn’t on Sheldon. When the tractor slowed to a stop at Lakeshore, he said, “Would it be alright if we went and checked on the reservation. I’m—um . . . I’m worried about Dr. Whitebird.”

Wayne glanced up the road toward Black River and then down toward town. “I’m not sure we’ve got the time.”

“But Aunt Velma said to check on the neighbors, and I still owe the doctor for all his help,” Jasper pleaded. It was the truth. He owed the man his life and the price of his mother’s necklace. His eyes fell, thinking of her favorite piece of jewelry. He’d lost it that awful night. “Please, Wayne. I need to . . . I need to see if they’re alright.”

Wayne held his eyes for a moment and said, “Okay, Jas. We’ll go see. But I don’t think you’re going to find what you’re lookin’ for.”

The older boy turned the tractor north up Route 25 five miles. Jasper held on to the fender with his one good arm; the other rattled uncomfortably in its sling as Wayne cranked the engine into top gear.

The hidden narrow drive that led up the hill to the clinic had been laid bare by the storm. Trees and bushes were mowed down by a giant rake, but the signpost his mother had described in her diary that read “Door of Faith” was nowhere to be seen. Naked pines dotted the ridge as Wayne pulled the tractor up to where the clinic had once stood.

“Will ya look at that,” Wayne whispered as they crested the hill and saw what was left. The roof and windows had been ripped from the cinder blocks. A tree had crushed the back corner of the building. Papers and broken glass littered the ground.

Jasper hopped off the axle. “Dr. Whitebird?” he called, running to the entrance. The door had been blown from its hinges, and he ran through the opening into a wreckage of roof rafters and tree limbs.

“Jasper! Get your butt back here!” Wayne called after him.

Jasper didn’t listen. He pushed his way up and over broken timbers, through the waiting room to the back examination areas, banging his bad arm every few feet as he went. The back room where he’d spent several delirious nights had been flattened by an enormous tree trunk. “Dr. Whitebird?”

There was no answer but Wayne shouting from the doorway, “He’s not here, dummy! Get out before something falls on you!”

Jasper turned back toward the entrance. Sun poured in through the collapsed sections of roof. He gazed up at a piece of sky framed in broken rafters. It was the same view from the attic of his grandmother’s house. The sky had been pink that morning.

The sound of his cousin hollering at him outside snapped Jasper back to the present.

The walls of the clinic hallway had fallen over, giving him odd-angled glimpses into each examination room and a small filing closet full of crushed and upended cabinets. He climbed over the fallen wall to the piles of paper spilled onto the floor. The records mixed together with the different names scrawled across the top. He ripped through the sheets, searching for Althea Williams, Althea Leary, Thea. None of them were there.

Scattered under the papers were photographs of a girl. Her body was laid out on a table, naked and bruised. Dark marks and dried blood dotted her breasts and stomach. Crushed bones and dried blood distorted her face. Jasper picked up a picture with shaking fingers. Her dark-brown eyes stared back at him—dead.

Do you know who killed me?

“Hey!” Wayne’s voice boomed behind him. “What the heck are you doing in here?”

Jasper dropped the photo and struggled to find his voice. “Nothing. I just thought, maybe . . .”

Wayne looked over his shoulder at the pictures. “Jesus Christ! Who the hell is that? We shouldn’t be in here! C’mon!”

Wayne dragged Jasper out of the wreckage of the clinic. He was going to be sick. He doubled over at the knees.

“Shake it off, kid.” Wayne slapped him on the back. “It wasn’t her. It was just some girl . . . I don’t know. We should just get out of here.”

“No!” Jasper bolted up and took off running down the path he’d walked with Pati down to the game house. The trailers and campfires they’d passed months earlier were all gone. Most of the tiny houses had been flattened. Jasper stopped and surveyed the vacant sites.

“We ain’t got time for this, Jas.” Wayne marched up to where his cousin stood bewildered. “We gotta go.”

“I have to keep looking,” Jasper nearly shouted. “I have to—”

“Shh!” Wayne hissed and grabbed him by the bad arm, pulling him down to the ground.

“Ow!” Jasper yelped and pushed his cousin back.

“Quiet! Somebody’s here.”

Jasper followed Wayne’s gaze to the horizon. Several hundred yards ahead of them, two cars were parked next to what had once been the game house. The barn had collapsed into scattered boards.

“I don’t think they saw us,” Wayne whispered.

“You don’t think who saw us?”

“Those men out there.” He pointed to two small figures emerging from the woods surrounding the flattened barn. One was carrying a large sack. He walked over to one of the cars and set it down in the trunk.

“I wonder if them’s the same bags Sherriff Bradley was goin’ on about,” Wayne whispered. “Let’s go see if we can get a closer look.”

“Are you crazy?” Jasper hissed back. He could see even from a distance that they were white men, and he knew from Pati that white men on the reservation were a dangerous thing. “I thought you said we had to get back.”

“Don’t you want to help Sheriff Bradley get to the bottom of all this?” Wayne winked at him. “C’mon, Tonto! If we get caught, we’ll just say we’re looking for the doctor. It’s the truth, ain’t it? You got a busted arm and everything.”

With that, Wayne pulled him into the trees.

CHAPTER 54

What can you tell me about drug trafficking and prostitution at Black River?

The two boys crept up behind a fallen tree twenty yards from where the two men were arguing. Wayne squinted at their license plate numbers like a good deputy while Jasper listened.

“I don’t know what else to tell you, Perry.” The taller man in a tan suit held up his hands at the shorter man. “You have to get out.”

“I appreciate your concerns, Charles.” The shorter man rubbed his face for a moment.

Jasper recognized him from the roller rink. It was the same man who had talked with Not Lucy at the diner and ran the dairy where his mother worked.

“My whole life I’ve been told to get out,” Perry Galatas said in his thick accent. “When I came to this country, I came with nothing. I worked thirty years to build this business for my family. Thirteen grandchildren I have. Every step of the way, someone tells me to get out. First the Irish, then the Italians, and now you. This is my home. I am not going anywhere.”

“They’re going to kill you, Perry. You owe too much.”

“I have owed before.” Galatas chuckled. “You and me. We get it back.”

“How?” The tall man shook his head. He turned, and Jasper could see a gold star pinned to his lapel. “In case you didn’t notice, forty sacks have been scattered across the damn state. The county sheriff has logged the evidence. I can’t contain this!”

“Of course you can, Charles. I have much faith in you.” Galatas patted him on the back. “Build a federal case against these wild peoples. They are trafficking in narcotics on this reservation and across state lines. It is your jurisdiction. Request all the evidence be returned to you. This is how it works. Yes?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, Perry.”

“But it will make a famous case for you. The newspapers will love this story of our brave US marshal bringing these savages to justice.” Galatas straightened the man’s jacket and tie for him, brushing dust from his shoulders. “They’ve ruined our young people with these terrible drugs. And it’s not just the Negroes that get addicted anymore. It is our own daughters. Don’t you see? It is perfect.”

The officer took a step back. “In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any savages left to arrest! They’ve been crossing the border for months. What did you think would happen when you cut off their supplies? I told you you’d go too far, and you did. I can’t help you, Perry. At least now I can explain the desertion.” He motioned to the wreckage left by the storm.

“Ah, you give up too easy.” The short man waved a hand at him. “This chaos can help us both. Who is to say who lives here now in all this confusion? We can find more Indians. I will throw a big feast with booze and girls. They will be happy to come.”

“It won’t work, Perry. The sheriff’s already contacted Detroit. You’re under investigation and you know it.”

“This is my worry, not yours. They have nothing on me. Not one scrap of paper. My lawyers will keep them busy for years . . . We need to stay focused. Our friends in Mexico deserve our best efforts to get their product back.” Galatas gazed out at the farmland beyond the trees.

Jasper and Wayne hit the dirt.

“Think of these poor farmers, Charles. They have been through so much. They do not need sheriffs poking through their fields and their lives. I came from such a place. It is a hard life. Why should they suffer more? They have been forced to live all these years alongside these wild peoples. They deserve better. Bring them justice, Charles.”

“Justice? Even Indians get a trial, Perry. And they’ll be tried in a federal court. There aren’t enough bribes in the world to manufacture the witnesses. How would we even link them to your friends in Mexico?”

Galatas shrugged. “You are the only witness that matters as far as these savages are concerned. Our brave federal marshal comes to break up this wild party of Indians during the investigation. They become violent as these peoples do. There is gunfire . . . You understand?”

The tall man shook his head. “What about her?”

Jasper sat up at this. Wayne grabbed his arm and pulled him back to the dirt.

“What about her? She’s been taken care of.”

“I never saw a body. Did you?”

“I trust my nephew. Poor William, may he rest.” Galatas made the sign of the cross over his chest.

Poor William.
Big Bill’s sedan exploded into a fuel tank in Jasper’s mind.

“Either way, it does not matter. No one would listen to such a woman. And if they did, we have all the leverage we need.”

“I wish I shared your confidence. Russo’s in town, you know.”

“He has no jurisdiction here. This is not Detroit. I will take care of him.”

The tall man sighed. “You need to take care of yourself, Perry. If this goes down wrong, I don’t know you. Do you understand?”

“Ah, but I know you, Charles Andrew Duncan. I know where you live. I know where your kids go to school. I know how much of my money you’ve been hiding . . . You do not want to make an enemy of me. Now go. Find a way to get me back my heroin.” With that, Galatas climbed into his Cadillac and cranked the engine.

Jasper turned to Wayne with alarm.
The tractor,
he mouthed. They had left it out in the open by the clinic. Wayne’s eyes darted back the way they’d come, calculating whether he could make it back in time.

They didn’t see the man crouched behind them until it was too late.

An enormous hand clamped over Jasper’s mouth. Another knocked Wayne to the ground. A voice hissed, “Don’t move.”

CHAPTER 55

What can you tell me about Perry Galatas?

The side of Jasper’s face pressed into the dirt as the weight of the man crushed his chest and wrenched his shoulder. He couldn’t breathe. Wayne wrestled against the ground next to him, not budging the massive bulk pinning them down. They were helpless.

The sound of a car engine rumbled away. Several agonizing seconds passed until the second car drove off and their assailant finally released them.

Wayne sprang up and landed a wild punch right in the man’s neck. Unfazed, their attacker just grabbed the boy’s wrist and held him squirming like a hooked fish. “Easy there, coyote,” the giant warned.

“Motega?” Jasper croaked, focusing his dazed eyes. “Is that you?”

The man glowered at Jasper. “Why are you here?”

“Uh, we just—I wanted to see if . . .”

“Do you know what you have done? This was my chance. And now it is gone.”

“Your chance to do what?” Wayne wrenched his arm free and staggered back. There was a pistol tucked into the waistband of Motega’s jeans.

“Galatas never comes here. He may never come here again. And now he’s gone.” Motega muttered something else in his own language and rose to his feet. “I moved your tractor to the other side of that hill. Go home, zhaagnaash. Go home and don’t come back.”

“Wait!” Jasper called after him. “Where is everyone? Where is Dr. Whitebird?”

“The people are free to go wherever they please. This is not a prison. Not anymore.” Motega kept walking. “Black River was poisoned by that beast Galatas and his filth.”

“What filth? What do you mean?”

Motega stopped at the top of the ridge. He gazed out through the woods over the fields of corn and barley lying to the west. The ordered squares of green and tan were scarred with shattered barns and upended tractors. He turned to Jasper and asked again, “Why did you come?”

Jasper could feel the tears building behind his eyes and blinked them away. “I—I don’t know what she’s done or why . . . I just need to find her.”

Motega studied the foolish boy, standing there a full foot below his shoulder, and nodded as if he understood. “I once said those same words.”

“You did?”

Motega didn’t answer the question. “Dr. Whitebird worries you are too young. White children are not told the stories of your mothers and fathers. The dark stories. These are kept silent. The lies they tell instead become sacred.” He glanced over Jasper’s shoulder toward Wayne and added, “You are a very strange people.”

“But I want to know the truth,” Jasper protested. “No one will tell me.”

“And what if you do not like this truth? What will you do then?” Motega studied him closely.

Jasper didn’t have an answer. Horrifying pictures of a dead girl were still scattered on the floor of the clinic. His mother might’ve suffered a similar fate. The truth might be worse than his nightmares.

“Perhaps you are too young.”

“No, I’m not!” he yelled. “I need to know where she went. I need to know why she left. I need to know if she’s . . . if she’s really dead. Not knowing is worse than anything you could tell me.”

Motega studied both boys closely and pressed his mouth into a grim line. “Come with me.”

They followed the Indian nearly a mile past the wreckage of the game house through the woods in silence. Wayne stole worried glances at Jasper the whole way, but the younger boy kept his eyes on the ground until they reached a clearing between the trees. The ground was dotted with mounds of earth. Sprays of wildflowers covered the uneven ground in purples and pinks.

Motega stopped beside a large tree where a makeshift wood cross stood in the ground. It was the only marker in the clearing. Jasper blinked at it with confusion for a moment until he realized. It was a grave.

His mother’s necklace hung from the wood.

Jasper dropped to his knees and lifted the beaded pendant off the cross. The two boards tied together were weathered and gray. There was no name. Jasper felt himself falling through the sky again.

Mom?

Wayne’s voice sounded far away. “Whose grave is this?”

Motega knelt down next to Jasper and put a hand on his back. “She was your sister.”

The words barely registered as Jasper’s stomach plummeted to the ground.

“She died last year,” Motega continued. “She was only sixteen when they killed her.”

“My—? Wait . . . What?” Jasper didn’t have a sister. The grave marker didn’t even have a name. “No. She couldn’t be . . . She’s not.”

“She is.”

“But if she’s my sister, why is she here?”

Motega lowered his head. “Because she was my daughter.”

Wayne plunked down next to a dumbstruck Jasper. “You and Aunt Althea?”

“Eya.” The memory of a smile pulled at Motega’s lips. “It was young love be . . . No one was pleased by this. My father would not permit us to marry. He said she had too many bad spirits, but it was because of her pale skin. She wasn’t one of us. I should never have listened to him . . .”

“When the hell did this happen?” Wayne demanded on Jasper’s behalf.

“Your mother was fifteen when she came to live with us. Your grandfather was furious with her. Her belly grew with child, but she had no husband. He threw her out. I found her bleeding in these woods. There were cuts here and here.” Motega motioned to his wrist and his stomach.

Jasper stared at Motega’s belly and remembered the scars he’d seen when he opened her bedroom door.

“Who was the father?” Wayne demanded.

“It was not me.” Motega held up his hands in his own defense. “It is baataamo to make a mother so young. She had been taken by a white farmer. May he pay dearly for his crime.”

Hoyt,
Jasper thought.
It was that bastard Hoyt.

“The baby died before it was born.” Motega gazed over the mounds of dirt. “Dr. Whitebird said she was too wounded for its spirit to grow. My father said to turn her away. She was not our tribe. Even her own people did not want her. But I could not . . .”

“So what happened to her?” Wayne asked.

“Dr. Whitebird took her into his house to heal. We became friends. She grew up here, working odd jobs with no parents to watch over her . . . and then.” Motega let out a heavy sigh. “I should have let her be. I thought I could make her happy. By the time our baby came, the bad spirits had taken their keep. She would not get out of bed. She would not eat. Dr. Whitebird did his best for her, but some wounds do not heal.”

Jasper gazed at the cross and remembered the way his mother would look out the window sometimes like she had left the room.

“She would drink the firewater until she couldn’t remember her name. She would run away, a frightened deer.” Motega frowned and opened his hands as though she’d fallen through them. “There was never a place far enough to run to. She’d come back on her own sometimes. Sometimes I would find her. But she could never stay . . . She never forgave me.”

“She never forgave you for what?” Wayne demanded, itching for a fight. “What did you do to her?”

“It is Manitonaaha law that a child belongs at the hearth of her father. Althea, she was twenty-two but still a wounded girl. She would get drunk and she’d . . . we couldn’t let her be alone with the baby. My mother took Ayasha in as her own. My daughter needed a home, but Althea screamed that we had stolen her. She never forgave me or my family. And poor Ayasha . . .”

A faded memory fought its way to the front of Jasper’s mind. He could hear the knock on the door again.
Who’s there?

“She came looking for her once,” he whispered.

This made Motega stop talking.

“One night she knocked on our door. I was all alone . . .” Jasper remembered seeing her pleading brown eyes through the peephole.
Is your mother home?
“I didn’t open the door. I told her that my mom was asleep, because I wasn’t supposed to tell strangers my parents weren’t home. She got so angry she started shouting and pounding the door to wake her up. I didn’t know what to do. I hid under my bed until she went away. Mom found me sleeping there. She said it was just a bad dream.”

“How many years ago was this?” Motega asked softly.

Jasper wiped a tear. “I don’t know. I was really little, and I thought my mom was right. I thought it was just a dream.”

He stared at the ground where his sister was buried. His mother could never seem to hug him for long. Her eyes were haunted by something. He thought of Hoyt’s dark barn and hung his head.

“How’d she die?” Wayne motioned to the unmarked grave.

“It started the day she took her first drink and put that filth in her body. Then more filth. I should’ve seen it coming. I should’ve known. By the time I saw her sickness, she was already a slave to their drugs and to the white men that brought them here. In the end, she was . . .” Motega’s jaw and fists tightened. “Galatas will pay the price of her head if our paths ever meet again.”

The photos in the clinic flashed again. Dried blood. Broken bones. Jasper put his head in his hands.
Do you know who killed me?
The girl with the dark eyes in the picture outside Calbry’s was his sister. His eyes fixed on the grave, and the world tilted beneath him.

“The Manitonaaha attacked the game house the night they dumped Ayasha at the clinic. We vowed to force the white men and their poisons off our lands.” Motega lifted his shirt to show a collection of round scars on his torso that could only be the spray of a shotgun. “We failed. I woke up in the marshal’s jail while Galatas burned the fields.”

Wayne’s eyes widened. “How’d you get out?”

“Althea. She paid my bail. She wanted to get a lawyer and bring Galatas to justice. She went to her police in Detroit. I tried to tell her there’s only one justice, but she never listened to me.”

Jasper remembered the smoke on the horizon the day they had driven down Route 25, the redness of her eyes, her shaking hands. “That’s why she left.”

Motega steadied Jasper’s shoulder. “She did not want to leave you.”

“Yes, she did,” he whispered. “She was always leaving me . . . she never wanted me at all.”

Motega shook his head. “She wanted you. After my mother took Ayasha, she disappeared into the dark alleys of the city. I thought I’d never see her again, that the streets would kill her. I had to turn away. But then, many years later, you came along. She wanted you and a family more than anything. More than firewater. More than money. More than me . . .” The man dropped his voice at those words. He glanced back up at Jasper and forced a smile. “You are her heart. You brought her back.”

“He’s right,” Wayne piped in. “Pop says she didn’t come back home until you were born.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me any of this? How could she let this happen? How could she work for Galatas?”

“Try to understand. Althea had no family of her own. Always she was looking. For a father. For a home. She was a lonely shadow, living in between, which made her very useful to bad men. Galatas was very kind to her. He coiled around her like a snake.”

Jasper bit his lip at this, not sure he wanted to know more.

“He pulled her off the streets and promised her a real life. She could speak our language. She knew the elders. He used her to build his business here, gambling and smuggling. He said he would help us. After the profits from our stills dried up, our people were starving. It was supposed to bring us food.” Motega motioned to the graves. “This is what it brought in the end.”

Jasper hung his head in shame. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do not blame yourself, Jasper. My father made this treaty with Galatas, not you, not your mother. We put his boot on our own necks when we took his money. We invited these bad spirits.” Motega bowed his head and whispered something in his own language.

“But I didn’t invite any of this! I just . . .” But a nagging voice in his head reminded him he had gone looking for her. In the silence that fell on the grave between them, he could hear her crying. He could feel the heat of his grandmother’s house burning to the ground. He could see her in the lamplight smiling at him. And then—

Hot breath laughed in his ear.
Sorry, little champ. You’re not invited to this party.
Jasper flinched.

“Hey, Jas? You alright?” Wayne nudged him.

Jasper whispered, “It was me. I killed her.”

“No,” Motega’s voice boomed. “You did not kill anyone. I promise you.”

“But the lamp . . . ,” Jasper breathed. “I started the fire.”

“It was an accident, Jas,” Wayne protested. “Nobody blames you. You’re just a kid.”

Jasper shook his head. “It was me. I can’t remember, but I know it was me.”

“No. You saved her life . . . I am forever in your debt, ningozis.”

Jasper gazed up at Motega, and the pain written over his face. He could see the man had loved her once and maybe still did. “Then tell me where she is.”