The Dream Stalker (11 page)

H
eadlights streamed across the parking lot in front of Blue Sky Hall as pickups and 4×4s rolled between rows of parked vehicles searching for empty spaces. A crowd gathered at the front door, holding signs overhead—white flags shimmering in the glow of the lights. Vicky stared past the rain on the Bronco’s windshield, her stomach tightening into a knot: Her articles had brought the protesters here. Her own people had to dodge past them to enter the hall.

She punched down on the accelerator and swerved around a couple of cars waiting to turn into the lot. A little farther, and she wheeled to the right, sending the Bronco bumping through a shallow ditch. Water spurted over the windshield, and suddenly she was rolling across the graveled lot toward the west side.

Just as her grandfather used to do, with the whole family packed into the pickup, four adults up front, kids on the hard, ridged floor in back, bundled in scratchy wool blankets. He would pull around the traffic on Ethete Road and plunge downward across the ditch—a shallow ditch, any good quarter horse could bound across—and park on the west side for the powwows, the wakes, the meetings, all the excuses for the People to come together, just as they did in the Old Time. She felt a momentary surge of satisfaction: She wouldn’t have to walk past the outsiders.

She set the Bronco close to the building. The headlights washed over the red paint faded to the color of dried raspberries. Hers was the only vehicle in the side lot, which gave way to the open spaces beyond, the wide expanse of darkness. She flipped off the headlights. Except for the thin splotches of moonlight falling through the clouds, darkness crept around her. She grabbed her purse from the seat and leaned over to retrieve the briefcase that had slipped to the floor.

As she stepped out into the rain, she saw a small group approaching, blurred, bulky shapes moving in and out of the moonlight. She couldn’t tell whether they were men or women. They walked with assurance, as if they intended to overtake her, to place themselves between her and the side entrance.

She drew in her breath, slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder, set the briefcase against the Bronco’s door, and slammed it hard. A sharp whack in the darkness. Then she started toward the hall, her high heels tapping the gravel. She ignored the shadowy figures drawing so close she could sense the moist heat of their bodies. “Vicky, wait.” A woman’s voice.

She swung around, facing five women in parkas and slickers, hoods pulled low over their foreheads against the prickly rain. One of the women stepped forward. She recognized Liz Abel; they’d gone to St. Francis Mission School together until the eighth grade, when Liz had dropped out. She’d had a son that year. Now deep creases ran at the edge of her cheeks; her lips looked chapped. There was tiredness in her eyes, and a blend of fear and confusion. “Maybe you don’t wanna go in there,” Liz said.

Vicky was quiet, waiting. The sounds of tires crunching gravel floated from the front; a headlight bounced into the side lot and caught the faces of the women in a brief glow.

“A lot of folks are real mad about you writin’ those
articles,” Liz continued, moving closer. Vicky could smell the cigarettes on her breath. The other women moved hooded heads, up and down, up and down, like balls bouncing on their shoulders. “They got the place packed. Nobody who ain’t for the facility is gonna get to talk. They ain’t even lettin’ in them protesters. They got people at the front door tellin’ ’em they gotta wait ’til all the Indians get here.”

“I’m on the agenda.”

“No, you ain’t.” This from another woman, stepping around Liz. Vicky didn’t know her. So many changes in the ten years she’d been away, people marrying Arapahos and moving to the reservation. Even if she were to move back on the rez, she wondered if she would ever feel at home again. She forced herself to focus on what the woman had said.

“How do you know?”

Liz dug into one of the pockets of her parka and thrust a white paper at Vicky. “You ain’t listed on the agenda. Only people gonna get to talk are gonna tell us how great it’ll be havin’ that nuclear waste here.”

Vicky glanced at the paper. It was too dark to make out what it said. Then she stepped to the building’s side door and attempted to yank it open. It shuddered and creaked, resisting her effort. Most people used the main entrance. Finally the door gave about an inch. A thin sliver of light escaped from inside, illuminating the faces around her, the moisture on the women’s cheeks, the dropped glances.

“You shouldn’t go in there.” Liz again.

“Did someone send you here to tell me that?” Vicky saw by the blend of embarrassment and shame in their expressions she had hit upon the truth. “Your husbands?”

Liz said, “Larry’s been out of work now a couple years. Just puttin’ up the buildings is gonna mean a lot of work. He does construction, you know.”

“Are you saying it’s okay to have radioactive materials on the reservation?”

The women were quiet, eyes turned toward the front, toward the sound of doors slamming, footsteps scattering the gravel. Toward the sky. Rain fell softly on their parkas.

Vicky decided to plunge on: “You have children. Doesn’t it concern you how radioactive waste will affect the air they breathe? The water they drink? The earth they play on?”

“It’s not about that,” Liz said, raising a hand to wipe the moisture from her face. Vicky saw the slight tremble in the motion.

“What is it about?”

“Our gettin’ back somethin’. Our gettin’ somethin’ of our own, Larry says.”

“What do you say?”

“Maybe it ain’t for us to say.” Liz glanced quickly at the other women, all nodding in agreement. “It’s like this, Vicky. We can’t talk against our men. I mean, they come here tonight ’cause they need work. So what’re we supposed to do? Stand up and say don’t bring no jobs here?”

Vicky drew in a long breath. “I think you’re as worried about the facility as I am. It’s not that we don’t want jobs, but there has to be another way. A lot of people feel the same.”

“Maybe so.” A third woman joined in, another face Vicky didn’t recognize. “But nobody’s gonna say nothin’. They’re scared.”

“Scared,” Vicky repeated. The word hung in the air like a fist of moisture.

“Some people been gettin’ threats,” Liz said.

“Who?” Vicky heard the change in her tone, the insistence she usually reserved for the courtroom. This was more serious even than she had feared. She was not the only one being threatened.

Liz shrugged. The other women’s eyes were on the ground. “Some people was talkin’ against the facility, sayin’ there wasn’t no guarantees it was gonna be safe, like you wrote in them articles. Then they got these notes tellin’ ’em to shut up, and everybody heard somebody tried to kill you this morning. So now folks are scared to say anything.”

The moccasin telegraph,
Vicky thought. Eberhart had called Banner, and the news had flashed past the receptionist and secretaries, past the police officers, and across the reservation.

“The people who’ve been threatened, did they go to the police?”

“Oh, God, Vicky,” Liz said, the words weighted with exasperation. “You was away too long. You forget Indians ain’t gonna talk to the police. It don’t matter the police are Indian. They ain’t gonna do it. Maybe you might call the police ’cause that’s how it’s done where you live, in the white world.”

Vicky was quiet, stung by the woman’s words. After a moment she said, “Somebody wants the facility badly enough to threaten people’s lives. Why is that person, whoever it is, afraid of what we’re saying? Don’t you see? We can’t let someone like that stop us from speaking out.”

“You don’t get it, Vicky.” Liz began stepping backwards, shaking her head. The other women had started to walk away.

Vicky stretched one hand toward them. “You don’t have to say anything. Just come inside. Just be there. We have to stand together.”

Liz continued moving backwards, sneakers snapping at the gravel. The other women had already struck out in a diagonal direction toward the front.

Sensing Liz’s eyes still on her in the darkness, Vicky let the briefcase fall at her feet and gripped the edge of
the door with both hands, pulling with all her strength until the door cracked halfway open.

“You better not go in there,” Liz hollered as Vicky retrieved the briefcase and slipped inside.

11

L
ights shone down like spotlights, creating pockets of shadow around the crowded hall. Arapaho families shifted on the folding chairs arranged in long, tight rows. Groups of men crowded against the walls. People were still pouring through the front entrance, including whites who thrust white signs upright the minute they were inside. BIA police officers stood around the hall, hands on hops, eyes following the crowd. The musty smells of perspiration and wet wool filled the hall, the sounds of coughing and clearing of throats.

On the stage two long tables with metal legs flanked a podium. The six tribal councilmen sat at one table. Wilson Lee, the elderly chairman, occupied the middle chair, with Matthew Bosse on his right, surveying the audience, amusement and confidence mingling in his expression. It was Bosse, Vicky knew, who had proposed building a nuclear waste facility on the reservation. The councilman was in his sixties, the age of reverence, a good man, she knew, even though she found herself working against him now. It struck her she had become one of the upstarts, the younger generation, who challenged the elders, the kind of person her grandfather had always warned her about. The realization made her sad and uncomfortable.

She stole a glance at her watch. The hearing wasn’t
scheduled to begin for another twenty minutes, but she knew it would begin soon—according to Indian time, the time when everyone had arrived and was ready. It had nothing to do with the clock.

Two men, Lionel Redbull and a white man she didn’t know, broke from a knot of people standing along the wall and started up the side stairs to the stage. She followed them, her heels clacking against the wood steps. The white man strolled to the vacant table, pulled out a chair and sat down, but Redbull turned around, as if he’d just realized someone was behind him. A tall man, half a head taller than she was in her heels. He had on blue jeans and a black wool blazer over a white shirt. The silver medallion of a bolo tie held the collar closed. His black hair hung in thick braids down the lapels of his blazer. He had the golden-brown skin of her people, the prominent cheekbones and hooked nose, the jutting jaw. He might have been a warrior staring out of an old photograph.

“There’s been a change in plans, Vicky,” he said, hooking both thumbs into the side pockets of his jeans, elbows swinging free. He assessed her with a flat expression that concealed whatever he may have been thinking.

“I’m on the agenda.” Vicky moved forward, forcing him to step back.

The Indian squared his shoulders. “We don’t wanna stir up the enviromaniacs.” He nodded toward the crowd still coming through the door—the outsiders. “All we’re gonna do tonight is present the facts. Quick and simple.”

“Matthew Bosse gave me his word.” Vicky took another step sideways trying to get past the Indian, her eyes on the councilman at the far table. He was talking with the chairman, his back toward her. Redbull stepped into her view.

“You’ve already made your point in those talks and
articles. Thanks to you we got crazy people runnin’ all over the rez tryin’ to shoot down our plans. The business council decided no sense in givin’ them any ammunition. There might be a meeting comin’ up where folks that don’t like progress can state their views, but this isn’t the time.”

Vicky exhaled a long breath. There would be no other meeting. “I intend to speak tonight. If Matthew Bosse is going to break his word, I want to hear it from him.”

Suddenly the councilman was beside them, as if he’d heard his name over the scrape of metal chairs on the linoleum floor and the crescendo of voices. He looked like an old cowboy in fancy dress—the light blue Western suit, the plaid shirt with the collar smoothed over his jacket collar.

“You said I would be on the agenda, Grandfather,” Vicky said, addressing him with respect.