The Fence My Father Built (26 page)

I blew out my breath with a huff. “That's what I’m saying … one giant
dishonest
cookie. I set a trap for him to see if he’ll bite.” If there were a shred of proof for what my father claimed, I’d find it.

George agreed that hiring a documents expert to prove forgery would be a lengthy and expensive process. “Sometimes it takes months to get a document analyzed,” he said, “even when it's a priority, and I doubt we’d be at the head of the line. If you try to prove Linc stole artifacts, we need to guard against entrapment.”

“What else can I do?” I said.

“Give it a try,” he said. “But it won’t be easy.”

I smiled. “Things that matter are hardly ever easy.”

George sighed. “If Linc is dealing Native artifacts on the black market, it’ll shake this town to the core. In fact, if the ranchers around here believed it, well, I think they’d say
Linc ought to be hanged.” George chuckled. “The law of the West.”

“The law of the West? Rubin Jonto says if the people really cared about the land they wouldn’t be so quick to let their livestock graze and trample it to death.” I couldn’t believe how political my statements sounded, even to me.

“Linc must know what he's up against,” he said, shuffling the papers into an irregular stack. “We’re too close to the Warm Springs reservation for sympathy with grave robbers. Nobody around here wants anything to do with stolen goods.”

I resisted the urge to straighten the papers myself. “Do people around here truly believe Linc's on their side?”

“His name may be Jackson, but Linc's got Murkee in his veins. He keeps folks working, not to mention what he does for the ranchers. Folks trust him all right.”

“And what about my father? Everybody think he was nothing but an old drunk who was seeing things?”

“Must be hard on you, coming out here after his passing.”

“What you’re saying is nobody took Joseph Pond seriously.”

“Your father was a gentle, honest person who’d rather pray than cast aspersions. But he was in the last stages of alcoholism. I don’t know what he saw.”

A tear slid down my cheek, and I brushed it away. George offered me a tissue. “Maybe that's why I came here,” I said, “—to prove everybody wrong. Tomorrow I’m going to the county seat to look for anything that smells fishy. I’ll be in touch.” I turned toward the door.

George stood up. “Wait. I have an old friend—former FBI man. He might have access to an expert, someone who’ll do a rush job.”

I could have hugged the man.

He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. “I’ll get hold of my old pal today. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, George. I owe you.”

I smiled and breathed deeply on my way out of the office. Outside, a light autumn wind kicked dead leaves and red dust around at my feet. It occurred to me that I’d stared at the ground a lot lately. Maybe Lutie was right … maybe I should be looking up, waiting for an answer to our prayers.

JOSEPH's JOURNAL
DECEMBER 2005

T
hey’re all saying it now: Old Chief Joseph's got a couple of loose screws. A real nutcase. The old sot has gone ’round the bend. The spring of the year is when new life comes aboard, when the earth and God hand out second chances. But this year is so cold, so dry. Maybe the land and the good Lord are trying to tell me something. I know this much … change is in the air.

The creek is sacred. On both sides of the banks, all the way to the fence, the earth holds remains of the people who were here before all others. Some say the old ones are Nez Perce, but they don’t know our story. Before the white man, we hunted a vast land, from the Blue to the Bitterroot Mountains. But this land was not ours.

I could show you, Muri. You must be old enough to carry so heavy a secret. The creek's bed and banks glitter with potsherds and dark lumps of charcoal from fire pits long ago: a kap’n, a stick worn to a dull point, used for digging roots; arrowheads; shreds of a camas basket; and a coprolite. I hid some of the treasure. A man at the university says they might pre-date the Clovis people. Tell no one about this.

Half of Murkee and your Aunt Lutie think your daddy's gotten carried away again. Can’t say I blame them. “What you doing by that creek, anyway?” folks ask me. “Chasing off crows, steers?” I smile and pray they don’t see what I see, don’t learn what I know.

Nobody believes I saw anything, just like most of the folks aren’t sure you ever existed, Muri. I’ve shown them the photo— you standing on a chair, smiling—but even the church ladies are tired of looking at it. They smile with compassion or pity; I’m never sure which. They say they’ll pray I find you. I won’t mind if all they remember is to bring another casserole out to the house.

The evening I moved the artifacts, I smelled diesel and dust and heard a truck engine's chatter and whine, going too fast on that rutted old road. How did Jackson learn this place is sacred? Did he
watch as I hid the sacred things? I’m glad I recorded what I found. It may be what saves us.

These days, I’m also glad that Rubin, the only guy around Murkee who doesn’t call me Chief Joseph, is on our side. Rubin is all about preserving what was and what is, and he has the proper reverence for the First Nations. He's a little gung-ho on eco stuff, but he's a fine vet.

Every day I pray, studying the scars and missing digits of my hands. The half moons on my fingernails grin back at me. Some days I wish I’d never found this place or the creek and its heritage. Whether I’m a scarecrow or an elder, I drink too much out here, and it's killing me. Muri, I’m holding on for you.

Someday soon, I’ll tell you more about our ancestors and what I found and I’ll tell you about love. Love boiling over for a daughter I lost long ago. Love from a father who's running out of time. I hope God forgives me for moving these sacred things to keep them out of the collectors’ hands. The task of protecting them has fallen to me. I must not fail. Livers don’t hand out second chances, no matter if it's summer or spring.

Before I go, you must understand the things we must protect. I want you to meet the God I’ve tried to serve. I hope Jesus will touch you the way he has touched an old sinner like me.

N
ova had been missing two full weeks, and neither she nor Linc's grandson had been in touch. Tru got the shoes he wanted thanks to a last-minute appeal to Chaz, who had returned from New York but who, in my humble opinion, still wasn’t doing enough to find our daughter. I had to wait for Tiny to get his truck running again in order to go to the county offices.

I phoned Denny and Gwen every night, and you would have thought Nova belonged to them. Gwen Moses knew a lot of artists who kept studios in areas where Nova might turn up. The couple had distributed her picture and even made up more flyers at their own expense.

Lutie loved my glass angel, which she promptly named “Nova” and set in a place of honor amidst the family photos. I had trouble looking at it though. It sliced my insides like shards from a broken window, reminding me that she was still gone.

Tru rode the ancient yellow bus to the school that three nearby communities shared. Grades one through eight numbered exactly twenty-seven children, and the high school was
only about half that. Some of the students commuted fifty miles each way. Tru only had to ride about twenty miles, but he had no illusions that it was going to be fun. It was the first time I’d been without both kids since Portland, and my separation anxiety showed.

“Think positive, Muri,” Tiny said when he noticed my glum mood. It was early afternoon, and he stretched out the full length of the bowed sofa with his huge sock-covered feet hanging over one edge. He pulled down the serape draped across the back of the couch to cover his torso. Siesta time.

“And keep praying,” Lutie said from the recliner, where she sat thumbing through her worn New Testament. “Warrior praying, that's what's called for.” She looked up and her stare pierced me. “Ponds don’t give up, you know.”

Jim snuffled from his place on the rug next to Tiny. All my life I’d wished and even prayed at times to find my real family, and here they were, although they were far stranger than any relatives I could have imagined. The only things missing were a cozy fire and a bag of marshmallows. And the two children I held dear.

“B
usy hands ward off worry,” Lutie said.

I’m not the sort who likes to sit around much, so when she asked me to help crochet soda-can hats for the bazaar, I agreed. It had been decades since I’d done any type of handwork, so I got my aunt's crash course in basic crochet stitches, which I kept confusing with knitting.

“You work the hook in and out like this, easy as pie,” she said. “No honey, there's no purling. That's right, wrap around and pull back through. The secret is to keep the tension even all the time.” She showed me a cat's cradle type of configuration on one hand.

I felt enough tension for everybody. It was all I could do to keep from screaming at the pigs and anyone else who crossed
my path. I railed at inanimate objects and kicked a metal table leg that jumped into my way. I imagined the portrait of Jesus on the living room wall had taken on the same sort of disapproving glare I once used to quiet unruly library patrons. With my nerves crackling like live wires, I could barely be civil to my own reflection. Tiny finally got up and went outside to work on his truck so I could drive to the county seat.

Lutie had to demonstrate the crochet techniques more times than I liked to admit. After she thought I’d finally gotten the hang of it, she handed me a blue metal hook and three skeins of acrylic worsted in hot pink, olive green, and rusty orange. The sight of a finished hat was enough to make me think of a busload of senior citizens on their way to Vegas.

I was being pulled in too many directions at once. I sat there with the basket of yarn, wishing I could unravel the events of the last few months. I imagined having a second chance where Linc wouldn’t have turned out to be full of malice and Nova would have stayed home and joined 4-H. I should have left hours ago for the courthouse. I was also aware that I despised crocheting.

Lutie's efforts looked the same every time—tidy little rows of stitches standing at attention. Mine looked like a rat's nest, but she was always patient with me. “The nice thing about crochet is that it's so forgiving.”

It might be hard to forgive anything this ugly. When I heard how much business last year's hats had brought in, I prayed we’d break even this time. We’d need every cent we could get to pay all the legal fees we were racking up.

As friendly as he’d been, Mr. Kutzmore was still a lawyer, one who probably charged a lot more than I had. Yet, besides his FBI friend, he also knew a couple of senior staffers at the National Clearinghouse for Missing Children and said he’d put in a personal word to them about Nova. Lutie wasn’t sur
prised that George would do so much for me. When she said this her eyes sparkled.

I struggled with the stitches. Tru, home for a teacher work day, asked what made Mr. Kutzmore so special. Aunt Lutie said, “Like I told you, honey, we go back a long way. That's all there is to it. Just a long, long way.”

“Like on the Oregon Trail? Are you really that old?” Tru asked. I thought Lutie looked embarrassed.

“Truman Charles Devereaux!” I snapped. “Apologize to your aunt this minute or you’ll copy the definition of
courtesy
a few hundred times, plus be grounded.” I hadn’t meant to overreact; I just wanted everyone to know I wasn’t going to make the same parenting mistakes twice. Later I would realize how ridiculous grounding a kid was when you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere.

I ripped out an entire section of gaudy tri-colored yarn where I’d doubled instead of single-crocheted. My mind continued to wander.

Truman looked wounded, mumbled an apology, and then slunk away to his computer screen. Lutie's mouth opened as if she were about to say something, but then abruptly closed it again. I took her silence as an admonition no less important than the one from the Lord himself. My aunt stared at me, and her eyes softened, reminding me that I could be strong and not punitive, firm yet loving. I closed my eyes and tried to calm down.

After a respectable few moments I went over to my son, still surfing away on the Web. Thankfully, he wasn’t downloading the “How to Get Revenge on Mean Moms Homepage,” if there was such a thing. I peeked over his shoulder. He was looking at pictures of missing children.

“How can we get Nova's picture on this page?” I said.

He turned around and glanced at me, then shrugged. He was still sulking, I could tell.

“Sorry to bark so hard,” I said, adding, “Okay, you’re not grounded.” I hugged him, and he allowed it. Without a word he nodded and hugged me back briefly, the way pre-adolescent kids do. The nice thing about Tru was that he could be so forgiving.

After pulling out my umpteenth stitch, I finally gave up and put away my yarns and hook, which was probably the best thing to happen to those awful hats. Lutie smiled, perhaps from relief more than anything.

“We all have our talents,” my aunt said gently, and gave me Tru's job of punching the sides of the aluminum can strips. Maybe Lutie knew that I needed to punch something. It did make me feel calmer, as if worry was a luxury to be indulged only after all the chores were done.

Still, I couldn’t keep my mind on even this simple task. The holes I punched snaked unevenly down the edges of the flimsy metal rectangles, so I was glad when Tiny came back inside and pronounced his truck drivable.

“Sure you won’t take somebody with you to the county, Muri?” He wiped grease from his stocky fingers with a tea towel and then set to work with a pocketknife, digging grime from beneath his fingernails.

“Don’t worry, Unc, I’ll be fine. Made it all the way out here, didn’t I?”

“Well, I’m glad you got a cell phone,” he said.

“She's got AAA, anyway,” Lutie pointed out. “Great Lord in heaven, will you keep your dirty hands off of my good towels?”