The Road to Omaha (79 page)

“Daz nice, Heneral,” said D-Two, “but chu not be damned. I can straighten dat out myself, not my
amigo
. Chu see, I’m
católico
, he ees only a
protestante
—it don’ count.”

The thundering sound of pounding footsteps in the long hallway caused all of them to whip their heads around in shock. It diminished quickly as the running figure of Roman Z, a camcorder in each hand, his shoulder-strapped nylon pouch bouncing off his hips, came rushing toward them, his WFOG T-shirt drenched with sweat. “My dearest, most loving
frenz
!” he cried, stopping breathlessly. “You could not
believe
how magnificent I was! I got pictures of efferyone, including three peoples who were convinced by my blade to say they were sent here by a ‘general-attorney,’ and by a leetle man secretary in somzing they call ‘defance,’ and a beeg soccer player who told me he was only an
ignorant
represantive of somzing he call zee ‘Fanny Hill Society’—some society, we got better in Serbo-Croatia.”

“That’s terrific!” said Sam. “But how did you get
up
here?”

“Iss easy! Down in zee big marble hall, efferybody iss dancing and singing and laughing and crying like zee best of my Gypsy ancestors. Men in crazy clothes and painted faces are passing around bottles of fruity juice and
efferybody is so happy it remind me of our camps in zee Moravian mountains. It iss all
glorioso
!”

“Oh, my
God
!” exclaimed Jennifer. “The yaw-yaw stills!”

“The what, my dear?”

“
Stills
, Mr. Pinkus. The most intoxicating drink ever devised by civilized or uncivilized man. The Mohawks say they invented it, but
we
refined it and made it twenty times more potent. It’s totally banned on the reservation, but if anyone could find those old stills and put them to use it would be that bastard, Johnny Calfnose!”

“I’d say at this moment he’s totally legitimate, both in birth and in timing,” said Devereaux.

“So that’s how you—
we
—people swindled the Western settlers,” said the Hawk.

“That’s irrelevant, General.”

“Yes, but interesting—”

“Let’s go
in
,” said Cyrus, his voice now commanding. “That kind of juice has two effects—oblivion and the sudden recognition of remembered responsibilities which brings on panic, which we don’t need. I’ll open the door.” He did so and added. “You first, General.”

“Quite correct, Colonel.”

MacKenzie Hawkins strode into the large mahogany-paneled room, his feathers flying, his supporting contingent following in dignity, when suddenly the blaring, deafening sounds of a frenzied Indian war chant, drums and voices, filled the sacrosanct enclosure. Up on the semicircular dais, the previously stern-faced judges reacted in panic, as to a man and a woman, they fell below the surface, one by one emerging, wild-eyed and terrified, but relieved that no violence had ensued. Mouths gaped at the feathered monster below them; they did not rise, but remained, their faces in shock.

“What the hell have you
done
?” whispered Sam behind the Hawk.

“Little trick I learned in Hollywood,” answered MacKenzie under his breath. “A soundtrack heightens a climax when the words don’t do it. I’ve got a triple-volume, high-impedance tape recorder in my pocket.”

“Shut the fucking thing off!”

“I will just as soon as those quivering pumpkins recognize that Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis, is in their presence and his tribal position demands respect.”

And once again, one by one, the stunned justices of the Supreme Court rose slowly off their knees—no one, however, above the chest. The music diminished and then stopped. The justices looked questioningly at one another and returned to their chairs.

“
Hear
me, you wise elders of this nation’s justice!” roared Thunder Head, his voice echoing off the walls. “Your people have been caught in an insidious conspiracy to defraud us of our rights of proprietorship, to take from us our fields and our mountains and our rivers that provide us with the necessities of life and survival. You have confined us to the ghettos of barren forests and unwatered ground from which nothing grows but the most unwanted weeds. Was this not
our
nation? Our nation in which a thousand tribes existed both in peace and war as you did with us, and as you did with the Spanish, then the French and the English, and then finally among
yourselves
? Have we no more privileges than those you conquered and then forgave, absorbing them into your culture? The blacks of this country have gone through two hundred years of servitude; we have endured
five
hundred. Will you now in this day and age permit that to continue?”

“Not me,” said one justice quickly.

“Nor me,” said another, even more quickly.

“Certainly not
I
,” protested yet another, violently shaking his head, his jowls jiggling.

“Oh, Lord, I’ve read that brief ten times and each time I cried,” said the lady justice.

“You’re not supposed to
do
that,” said the Chief Justice, glaring at the woman, then instantly turning off the microphones so the Court could confer in quiet.

“I
love
him,” whispered Jennifer in Sam’s ear. “Mac said it
all
in a few sentences!”

“He never swam thirty-seven miles through a hurricane at sea!”

“Our general is very eloquent,” whispered Pinkus. “He knows his subject well.”

“I’m not too happy about his black comparison,” said
Cyrus, also whispering. “Hell, his Indian brothers and sisters weren’t put in chains and sold, but his thrust was right.”

“No, Cyrus, we weren’t,” added Redwing. “We were merely slaughtered or driven to places where we starved to death.”

“Okay, Jenny. Checkmate.”

The microphones were turned on again. “Yes, well,
ahem
!” said a justice from the right end of the Court. “As the distinguished attorney from Boston, Counselor Pinkus, is in attendance with you, we certainly accept your credentials, but are you aware of the magnitude of your suit?”

“We want only what is ours. Everything else is negotiable—anything else is intolerable.”

“That wasn’t necessarily clear in the brief, Chief Thunder Head,” said the black justice, in his eyes a glaring disapproval as he picked up a single page of paper. “Your attorney-of-record is one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, is that correct?”

“It is and I’m he, sir,” replied Sam, stepping forward beside Hawkins.

“A hell of a brief, young man.”

“Thank you, sir, but in all fairness—”

“You’ll probably be shot in the head for it,” continued the judge, as if Devereaux had not spoken. “However, throughout I find an underlying streak of vitriol, as if you were not so much interested in justice but in vengeance.”

“In retrospect, I was offended, sir, at the
in
justice.”

“You’re not paid to be offended, Counselor,” said a justice on the left side. “You’re paid to present the truth of your petition. Without the many long-since-deceased alive to defend themselves, you’ve made startling insinuations.”

“Based on the evidentiary materials uncovered, sir, they were, indeed, insinuations, or, if you like, speculations. None, however, were without corroborative historical foundation.”

“You’re a professional historian, Mr. Devereaux?” asked another.

“No, Mr. Justice, I’m a professional lawyer who can read and follow lines of evidence, as I’m sure you can, sir.”

“Nice of you to grant our colleague that ability,” said yet another.

“I meant no offense, sir.”

“Yet, in your own words, you’re capable of being offended, Counselor,” observed the lady justice. “So I must assume it follows that you can give offense.”

“Where I believe it’s justified, madam.”

“That’s what I was getting at, Mr. Devereaux, when I mentioned that streak of vitriol in your brief. It didn’t strike me that you wanted anything less than abject surrender on the part of the government, a total capitulation that would place an extraordinary burden on every taxpayer in this country. A liability far beyond the nation’s ability to absorb.”

“If the Court will allow me to interrupt,” broke in Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis, “my brilliant young counsel here has a reputation for righteous indignation when he feels a cause is just—”

“
What
?” whispered Sam, his elbow crashing into Hawkins’s ribs. “Don’t you
dare
—”

“He
dares
to tread where angels fear to, but who among us can fault the truly honest man who passionately believes in justice for the disenfranchised? You, sir, stated that he’s not paid to be offended—you’re only half right, sir, for he’s not paid at all, merely offended on his own time, no reward in the future for his passionate beliefs.… And what are those beliefs that drive him so on our behalf? Let me try to explain. Or better yet, rather than any explanation on my part, have each of you visit a dozen reservations on which our people live. See for yourselves what the white man has done to our once proud Indian nations. See our poverty, our squalor, our—yes, our
impotence
. Ask yourselves if you could live that way
without
being offended. This land was
our
land, and when you took it from us, we somehow understood that even a greater,
single
nation could evolve, and that we would be a part of it.… But no, that wasn’t to be. You cast us off, shunted us aside, consigned us to isolated reservations without any share in your progress. That is documented history, and no one can dispute it.… Therefore, if our learned counsel has filled his brief with a certain anger—‘vitriol,’
if you like—he’ll go down in the chronicles of twentieth-century law as the Clarence Darrow of our day. Speaking for the victimized Wopotamis, we
worship
him.”

“Worship, Chief Thunder Head, is no part of this Court,” said the large black justice, scowling. “One can worship his god, or a bull or an icon or the newest guru, but it has no influence in a court of law, nor should it have. We here worship only the law. We adjudicate on the basis of provable fact, not on convincing speculation derived from unsubstantiated records of over a hundred years ago.”

“
Hey
, now just wait a minute!” cried Sam. “I
read
that brief—”

“We thought you
wrote
it, Counselor,” interrupted the lady justice. “
Didn’t
you?”

“Yes—well, that’s another story, but let me tell you, I’m one hell of a lawyer and I’ve scrutinized that brief, and the historical evidentiary materials that support it are damn near
irrefutable
! Furthermore, if this Court disregards that evidence for pragmatic concerns, you’re a bunch of—of …”

“Of
what
, Counselor?” asked a justice on the left side of the bench.

“Goddamnit, I’ll say it—
cowards
!”

“I
love
you, Sam,” whispered Jennifer.

The voluble astonishment of the entire Court was broken by the stentorian tones of Chief Thunder Head, a.k.a. MacKenzie Lochinvar Hawkins. “
Please
, great deliberators of justice in this stolen land of ours, may I
speak
?”

“
What
, you feathered
termite
?” shrieked Chief Justice Reebock.

“You have just witnessed the outrage of an honest man, an outstanding attorney who’s willing to throw away a brilliant career because he found the
truth
within the hidden transcripts that were never meant to see the light of day. Such uncompromising men have made this country great, for they faced the truth and understood its majesty. The
truth
, both good and bad, had to be accepted in all its glory and all the sacrifices it demanded, a shining light that led a new nation into its own majesty, its own
glory
. All he seeks, all
we
seek, all the Indian nations seek, is to
be a
part
of that great land we once called ours. Is that so difficult for you?”

“There are grave national considerations, sir,” said the black justice, his scowl receding. “Extraordinary costs, severe taxes upon the body politic that may not be tolerated. As many have said before us, it is all too frequently an unfair world.”

“Then
negotiate
, sir!” cried Thunder Head. “The eagle does not stoop to destroy the wounded sparrow. Instead, as our young counsel phrased it, that mighty eagle soars through the skies, a marvel of flight but far more important, a constant symbol of the power of freedom.”

“
I
said that—”

“
Shut
up!… Oh, ye judges, let that wounded sparrow find a measure of hope in the shadow of the great eagle. Do not cast us out again for there is no place left for us to wander. Give us the respect that is long overdue—give us the hope we need to survive. Without it we die, our Slaughter complete. Do you wish this on your hands—are they not bloody
enough
?”

Silence. Everywhere. Except:

“Hey, Mac, not bad,” whispered Sam, from the left side of his mouth. And:

“
Magnificent
!” whispered Jennifer from behind.

“Hold it, little filly,” replied the Hawk, in hushed tones, turning his head. “Now comes the crunch, like when my buddy, General McAuliffe, said ‘Nuts’ to the Krauts in the Battle of the Bulge.”

“What do you mean?” asked Aaron Pinkus.

“Listen up,” whispered Cyrus. “I know where the general’s coming from. Now he’s got to sting ’em where it really hurts. Right in their own bladders. That’ll put the bullshit in concrete.”

“It wasn’t bullshit,” protested Redwing. “It’s the
truth
!”

“For them it’s inescapable
truthful
bullshit, Jenny, because they’re between a rock and a very hard ’nother rock.”

The microphones were turned off once again while the justices conferred. At last, the seemingly emaciated judge from New England spoke. “That was a moving peroration, Chief Thunder Head,” he said quietly, “but such accusations
could be made on behalf of numerous minorities everywhere. History isn’t kind to these people, much to my personal regret. As one of our Presidents said, ‘Life isn’t fair,’ but it must go on for the betterment of the majority, not the unfortunate minorities who suffer. We all wish with all our hearts that we could change that scenario, but it’s beyond our providence. The ‘brutality of history’ was the way Schopenhauer described it. I loathe his conclusion but I recognize its reality. You could open floodgates that might drown whole communities across the country far, far in excess of the litigants.”