The Deed (15 page)

“Tell me,” said Jason, watching the sights as their highway improbably sliced through the cityscape. “Or we could play ‘I Spy’…”

“The Indian lands are called sovereign nations,” she began, as he settled back, “but it’s a little misleading. We’re self-governing, but still subject to U.S. federal law. We’re…more like protectorates. Spain is a sovereign nation.”

“I get it.”

“U.S. maps don’t exclude the Indian reservations, for example, like they probably should. You don’t need a visa to go onto a reservation.”

But they don’t take American Express,
Jason thought absurdly.

“So some tribes accept that their reservations reside in America. They’re like theme parks, or retirement villages. Most of the Lenape, though, and the Manahata, too, and many other tribes, take a more traditional view. We see all the reservations as linked into one discontinuous territory, whose boundary is tribal rather than geographic. It’s that tiny part of the original continent that’s left over when you subtract all the European-owned territory.”

“The holes in the Swiss cheese,” suggested Jason, and she nodded thoughtfully.

“If you ask my mother,” replied Amanda, “she’ll tell you that your people are not conquerers, but occupiers. That America, as you’ve been calling it for a couple of hundred years, is really just an extended occupation by an enemy army. My mother firmly believes—like she believes in the sun rising tomorrow—that this will all eventually be restored to native people.” She swept a hand across the windshield’s panorama.

“Wow,” said Jason sincerely. “You’re
kidding.
”

Her eyebrows knit into a frown. “Is that funny?” she wondered, palpably shifting the mood in the front seat.

“Okay, maybe it’s not funny,” he ventured gently. “But come on, Amanda. You gotta admit, we’re pretty entrenched.”

“Yes, I
know,
” she replied. “Don’t be a jerk.” She said nothing for a moment, and he left the gap unfilled. “My mother believes we were entrusted by our gods with the stewardship of this land, and the simple fact that we
weren’t
completely wiped out or assimilated into your culture is proof that the job is still ours.”

“Uh-huh,” said Jason. The goofymeter was edging into the red zone. “And what about you…What do
you
believe?”

Amanda was silent for a long moment, glancing in the rearview as a prelude to passing a gray, graffiti-covered van she’d been patiently trailing for some time. “I’m not sure what I believe,” she asserted quietly. “I’m a product of both cultures.”

“Well, you
are
allowed to have an independent opinion.”

She shook her head. “Not on this issue.”

Part of Jason wanted to pursue this, but he was suddenly struck by another line of thought. “So that’s why it doesn’t seem crazy to you that the island of Manhattan could be transferrable—because you’ve been raised to believe that this is eventually going to happen everywhere.”

“No,”
she said, annoyed, as if he hadn’t been listening. “Maybe I’ve been raised to be more open-minded about it, but the reason I
believe
it is because I can cite all kinds of legal precedent for it.”

“Okay,” he said, relenting.

“If you think I’m so fucking naive, why are you still here?”

With the bluntness of that question, Jason felt a sudden, irresistible compulsion to come clean with her.

“Because I
dig
you, stupid,” he said simply.

“What?” she said, laughing.

“You heard me. That’s the only reason I’m here, period. And don’t pretend you don’t know it.”

“Jason, I—”

“No, don’t,” he replied quickly. “It’s okay. Listen, I don’t know why I’m telling you this; I know I promised to be good. But that’s the truth. I’m tagging along because I’m nurturing this egotistical idea that I can somehow bring you around.”

Oh, you
fucking
sissy,
he reprimanded himself as Amanda focused on driving the car, driving the car, driving the car.
Strategic full disclosure.
That
usually works.
Jason weighed the option of diving for the door handle and madly flinging himself out of the moving auto, bouncing end over end along the roadside like a meat tumbleweed, and decided against it.

“Amanda, I don’t want to lead you on,” he said. “If my family played a role in New York history, sure, I want to know about it. But that’s not why I’m in your car with you right now.”

She was nodding, smiling enigmatically. “Okay,” she assured him. “I get it. But, Jason…”

But she fell silent again, and he had no choice but to return his focus to the highway and free her from the pressure of his gaze. The road was smooth as ice; a few droplets of rain spattered the windshield but couldn’t sustain an attack long enough to interest the wipers.

At last Amanda marshaled her thoughts. “I can live with that if you can,” she stated carefully, ironing out a contract. Unable to resist, he raised his eyebrows quizzically, but she shrugged him off with a sober shake of her head. “I don’t want to lead you on, either, Jason. I need you to help me solve this thing, and I’m still convinced that I can get you to
want
to. But I’m really not looking for any kind of…
complication
right now. I mean I—”

“But you’ll take what you can get,” Jason finished.

Amanda smiled wanly. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

“Devil’s bargain,” he mumbled, returning his gaze to the outside world, marveling at the turn his life was taking.

Somewhere east of Middletown, Long Island, they exited the expressway at last and drove onto a less imposing two-lane street. As the road shrank and the surrounding area crowded with distractions—strip malls, gas stations, diners—conversation dissolved into idle chatter, then dwindled into silence as the road became a dirt road, and the grass on the banks grew increasingly unkempt, and the houses gradually fell away altogether.

At last they came to a lightly wooded area, where a somber-looking sign announced that they were entering the Lenape Reservation. Speed limits strictly enforced; tribal regulations apply, etc., etc. The car lurched unexpectedly over a pothole just inside the entrance, and Jason’s heart jumped, alerting him to his own apprehension.

A half mile or so into the wooded interior, the dirt road forked; along the path they chose, occasional clusters of low, squat houses began to appear. The setting reminded Jason of the summer camps traditionally favored by bloodthirsty movie maniacs, but proof of year-round use was in ample supply: TV antennas and satellite dishes; toy-strewn yards; an old Chevy truck with the hood up and one wheel off, standing in a pool of rusty tools. The taut silence between them held, and Jason wondered whether Amanda was ashamed of the obvious squalor.

Amanda pulled up at last before another fork in the road—the place seemed to have no organizing principle—and a not-quite-sprawling split-level cottage of stone and stucco at the center of the fork, a house clearly in better repair than its fellows.

“This is the place,” she confirmed, turning off the engine at last. Jason’s ears rang in the silence; suddenly there were birds in the air, and the sound of something like a river. Jason looked around weakly as his sense of purpose waned.

“Amanda,” he began tentatively, and she paused, door already ajar. “I know I’ve had three hours to ask this,” he continued, “but what exactly are we trying to accomplish here?”

She shrugged confidently, replying, “Fishing, I suppose.”

“Should I be witty and charming?”

“Just be yourself, stupid,” she advised, swinging out and shutting her door before disappearing around the back of the car.

“Ouch,” Jason winced, alone in the front seat. “I’d always kind of hoped I
was
witty and charming.” Opening the passenger door, he swung a leg out of the car and tried to exit quickly. Suddenly, he felt a tug and a sharp pain as the forgotten loose spring in the seat seized and ripped the ass of his jeans, digging a stiff metallic fingernail across his gluteus.

“Motherf—” Jason began, but the curse died on his lips as, through his open window, he saw the Indian.

The Indian stood, predictably silent and majestic, halfway along the gentle sweep of gravel that trailed from the road to the front door, which now stood open. Jason paused instinctively, halfway out of the car, hand clapped to ass as if holding in a geyser of blood that would otherwise be spurting all over the upholstery. A frame of white-gray hair drifted off and away from the Indian’s deeply tanned, middle-aged face, and the loose tails of an unbuttoned blue denim shirt parted like draperies over his oversize, undershirted belly. But it was the Indian’s penetrating gaze that riveted Jason’s attention, made him forget even the searing pain in his rump.

Amanda, circling around the back of the car, had pulled almost even with Jason’s door before she, too, spotted the third party and stopped in her tracks. The Indian’s gaze shifted ever so slightly to include Amanda, and then a pair of doors slammed from somewhere behind them. Jason and Amanda turned, surprised by the sudden shattering of the impasse.

Across the road, two men in suits had left a black Lincoln Town Car and were slowly approaching the front lawn. Returning his gaze forward, Jason saw the Indian fix Amanda with a final scowl before striding off purposefully past them, toward the men, hailing them by name as he buttoned his cuffs and tucked in the shirt. Amanda kept her eyes focused on the house as the Indian passed mere inches from her side, but Jason continued to watch, spellbound, as the three men met at the far edge of the lawn, conversed in low tones for a moment, and headed off to the Town Car. A moment later they heard the car start, a smooth, throaty rumble.

“Jason,” said Amanda with a sour smile, “meet Dad. Dad, Jason.” She trudged up the gravel to the house without further explanation. Jason watched as the Lincoln slowly pulled away, then he turned and followed her up the walk, ass throbbing with real, acute pain.

Amanda entered the house after a “Hello?” and a perfunctory knock on the open door, and Jason followed her into a little tiled alcove, where she called out to her mother. From a far-off corner of the house came an incoherent reply and they walked farther in, into an expansive living room. Here, a pair of cats, obese and long in the tooth, held court, a black one stretching its claws into the flesh of a couch, a calico coiled in pillowy slumber on the hearth rug.