Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (20 page)

I tuned her out as I bounced the truck out of the lot and followed the
Dixons' Nova back toward the freeway. Slowly, as it began to dawn on me that we
were taking the same route on which I'd followed Robert Warren the other night,
the hair on the back of my neck began to rise. The rain had stopped. The sun
poked intermittently through the clouds. The countryside appeared more benign
in broad daylight, but the journey was the same.

Caroline was still at it. " - the shamanic tradition of the coastal
Indians - "

My suspicions were confirmed when we passed the yellow police barrier tape
strung across the front of Bobby's driveway. I could see the read ends of at
least two vehicles parked down by where the cabin had been as we flashed by.
Caroline took no notice. She was still running off at the mouth.

" -  in cedar bark lodges, which believe it or not were really -
"

The Nova's brake lights flashed, then stayed on, slowing as we rounded a
sharp corner. A driveway angled off, straight uphill from the corner. The Nova
nosed in. I followed.

" - even wore cedar bark clothes. I saw pictures. I couldn't believe
it. The chafing must have been terrible. I imagine - "

As usual, Caroline was in the right desert but the wrong tent. At least she
had the cedar part right. It was a four-bedroom home, two gables off the front,
covered wraparound porch on three sides. Maybe a precut, sitting on a little
knoll, well-tended grounds and a glassed-in solarium off the near side.

The sight of the house put a momentary halt to her lecture. She started to
open her mouth, thought better of it, and, mercifully, was finally quiet as we
pulled to a stop in the driveway.

Daniel emerged from the Nova. I told Caroline to come along. I pulled open
the passenger door on the Nova and beckoned Caroline toward the vacated
passenger seat. For once, she didn't argue. I closed the door behind her.
Daniel arched an eyebrow at me. "Hank going to be all right?"

"In a pinch, I figure he can outrun her," I said.

We walked side by side up the inlaid brick walk. The cracks had mossed in,
and the constant rain had created a roller-coaster effect in the once-flat
surface. I had to watch my own feet as we walked.

Daniel knocked softly on the front door. From the porch, high above the tree
level, Puget Sound rolled in the late-afternoon sunshine. The wind had shifted
from the south. I could smell the water. Daniel knocked again. A voice sounded
from inside the house. We waited. Footsteps approached the door.

She was tall for a woman. Five-ten or better, about Daniel's age, wearing a
well-tailored blue dress with a white yoke. Her hair was artfully arranged into
a French braid. At sixty or so, she was an elegant older woman; twenty years
ago she'd been a walking heartbreak. I could see the sadness I her eyes. The
sight of Daniel seemed to cheer her.

"Why, Daniel," she said, ignoring me. "How nice of you to
come."

Daniel had removed his cowboy hat. The breeze pushed a long lock down in
front of his face. He brushed it back in place.

"Miriam," was all he could muster.

"Come in," she said, stepped aside. I presumed the invitation included
me and tagged along. Miriam Stone led us down the center of the house directly
back into the kitchen, where she pulled two coffee mugs down from one of the
stark white European-style cabinets that lined the room and filled them with
coffee from an automatic coffeemaker on the counter. She handed one to each of
us. She waited for Daniel to speak. He tried.

"Miriam - I - we - uh - this is Leo." He waved the cup at me. I
stepped over and offered my hand. "Leo Waterman," I said. She took my
hand and covered it with both of hers. She reached into my eyes.

"Did you know Bobby?" she asked, still rummaging around somewhere
in the back of my head.

"Only indirectly," I answered. She looked to Daniel for an
explanation.

He started. "Leo has a friend who - " He stopped. "Bobby was
. . . " He stopped again. He handed me the ball. I told her the story.

She listened in silence, her moist eyes bouncing from Daniel to me and back.
Daniel confirmed my narrative with small nods. When I'd finished, she turned
away and silently busied herself at the sink. I started to speak, but Daniel
waved me off. We waited. She dried her hands.

Without turning, she asked, "So what is it you want, Mr. Waterman?
Revenge for your friend? For yourself?" She turned to me, leaning back
against the sink. "It can't be for Bobby. You didn't even know my Bobby.
What do you hope to gain from this?" I didn't have an answer.

"I don't know," I said. Somehow, for her, this served as
confirmation.

"They say it might have been an accident." A statement.

"It was no accident," I said.

"So you say," she replied. There seemed no point in insisting. I
waited. She picked it up on her own. "We can't afford to be losing boys
like Bobby. Boys like Bobby are the hope of the tribe."

She turned back to the sink, her shoulders shaking slightly. Daniel stepped
over and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She covered it with one of her own,
and then turned and put her arms around Daniel. They quietly embraced. I
wandered out into the hall, sipping at the strong coffee.

I studied a painting on the wall. A shaman of some kind, disguised under a
wolf skin, holding four red sticks in his left hand, his right hand held out
flat, parallel with the ground. Maybe . . .

Daniel appeared in the kitchen doorway and waved me back in. Miriam Stone
appeared to have collected herself. "Your friend, he was dear to
you?"

I thought about it. "Yes, he was," I said. Before she could
respond, I went on. "To be honest with you, I don't think too many people
are going to mourn Buddy's passing. To most people he was just another old
drunk. To me he was - " I was stumped. "He meant more to me than
that."

"We have many people who have lost them selves to alcohol," she
said. "That doesn't make them less than people. It merely makes them lost.
Alcohol can rob a person of his soul, but not of being a person." I
agreed.

Her eyes clouded as she remembered her grandson.

"Bobby had not lost his way, Mr. Waterman. He was a good boy. As good
as the Tulalips have to offer." Suddenly, her sadness froze over.

"What do you know of our tribe, Mr. Waterman?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. I come up for fireworks once a year," I
stammered. I'd confirmed her worst notions. She nodded.

"Well, Mr. Waterman, let me fill you in a little. I don't want to make
you the scapegoat for your entire race, but you, like most of your race, are
painfully ignorant." When I didn't object, she continued.

"There are no accurate figures, but it's estimated that there were
upward of twenty thousand members of the tribe before your people brought your
diseases. Before the smallpox, the chicken pox, and all the others were
through, we were down to the two thousand or so that we are now." She
paused to let the numbers have their effect.

"We occupied many thousand square miles, from Whidbey Island all the
way out to Snoqualmie Falls; it was all our homeland. That is what your people
have never been able to understand. We are not like the others who have come to
these shores. We are not immigrants. We are not transients. We are a land-based
people, and this is our land. Not the fifteen thousand paltry acres we are left
with, all of it." She was blazing now.

"This is why we never melted into your great melting pot. This is why
we don't want into your great salad bowl either. We were here. This is ours. We
are a land-based people." She caught herself and stopped. She smiled wanly
at me.

I apologize, Mr. Waterman. I suppose I'm overly passionate on this subject,
but it's quite important to me and my people. My students often ask me why the
native peoples have had such a difficult time assimilating into Western
culture. Do you know what I tell them?"

Daniel piped in. "Miriam teaches at the University of Washington."

"I tell them that, first of all, we have no desire to fit in. We have a
desire to strengthen and solidify our cultural values and heritage. We have a
desire to enhance the continuance of our cultural identity so that it can be
passed down to future generations. What we do not have a desire to do is to
become lost in the cultural mishmash of the society that surrounds us."

"She has a Ph.D." Daniel again.

"My students often view the treaty of 1855 as the tribe's great
opportunity to join the mainstream. They wonder what it was about us that led
us to squander all of our supposed opportunities. What cultural character
defects can be found to explain our present state. What they're missing, Mr.
Waterman, is that there were no opportunities. There was no plan. There never
was. We were supposed to move onto the reservation and die. That's what they
wanted from us, for us to die and sink back into the earth so that they could
get on about their precious business."

"You're still here."

"Yes, and it confounds white society to this very day that we had the
unmitigated gall to survive, to prosper even. Bobby" - there was a catch
in her throat - "was attending the university, but he was also learning
the Snohomish language. Did you know that we were whipped for speaking our
language, for dancing our dances? Do you realize what voids are created in a
people who are stripped of both their land and their culture?"

"No, but I know about voids," I said.

Her anger boiled to the surface, dragging mine with it.

"What do you know of voids?"

"I know that my friend Buddy Knox was every bit as invisible to the
society that surrounded him as your people are. I know that Buddy had some kind
of massive hole inside of him that he tried to drink full. Maybe the void
wasn't forced on him. Maybe in some way it was. I don't know. It was there. The
void is there for a lot of us. It's not an Indian thing or a white thing. It's
a people thing. I know that you can live smack in the middle of white culture
and not be a part of it. All you've got to do is get outside the limits. The
minute you become something they don't want to look at, they stop looking at
you. It's that simple. You join the void. That much I'm sure of." I
decided to shut up before I got myself in trouble.

Miriam Stone heaved a sigh and leaned back against the sink again.

"Perhaps you're right, Mr. Waterman. Perhaps my view is too
narrow." We both considered the idea in silence.

Finally, she said, "What do you want from me, Mr. Waterman?"

"I want to know what Bobby told you about some illegal waste dumping
that he was looking into." Her eyes clouded over, but not with anger this
time.

"I should have listened to him," she said sadly. "I should
have - "

Daniel patted her shoulder. Miriam steeled herself.

"Bobby said that he had proof that there was illegal waste dumping
taking place on the reservation. He wanted me to go to the Tribal Council with
him."

"And you said?"

"I said that he should do his homework on this thing. That he should
document his charges. I told him that the Tribal Council would never listen to
any vague allegations." She looked me in the eye. "The Tribal Council
is both quite political and quite divided, Mr. Waterman. At times," she
mused, "we can be our own worst enemies.

"There is a faction - a large and vocal faction -  that feels that
we should beat the whites at their own game. If the white man values only
money, then we should use our legal leverage to beat him at this game. These
people are responsible for such things as reservation bingo. They are the ones
who opened the reservation liquor store, which, by the way, put the Marysville
liquor store out of business, which in turn further inflamed the already tense
situation in this area. I'm sad to say that this is the group that presently
controls the Tribal Council. They've gone so far as to hire an expert, an
outsider, to advise them in these matters. A tribal resources manager."

"Guy names Howard Short," Daniel said. "Had a lot of success
back in the Southwest making tribes into conglomerates."

"He's no worse than some of the others," Miriam said quickly.
"There are those who wish to return totally to the old ways. No contact
whatsoever. These misguided people think time can be made to move
backward." She edited herself again.

"The point is, Mr. Waterman, that it would take the proverbial smoking
gun to get any action out of the Tribal Council. I told Bobby to document his
charges. I didn't think - I didn't know - " Her eyes misted. "How
could this be worth such a life? How could - "

"You had no way of knowing," I said. She wanted to agree but
couldn't manage it. I tried again. "What was the plan when and if he
documented his suspicions?"

"We were going to take it to the council together."

"Why not just go to the law? These people are - "

"Whose law? It's not our law."

I tried a different angle. "Will that still be the plan if I document
the charges?" I asked.

"Most certainly, but Robert didn't tell me anything specific."

"He may have done a better job than you imagine."

I told her about the annotated maps. I left out the gun. "The maps have
no legends. I'd need someone who knows the land around here."

She turned immediately to Daniel. "Daniel knows the land," she
said. Daniel silently agreed.

"You have these maps?" he asked.

"Not with me. I can get them," I said. Daniel was grim.

"Get them," he said. "I'll know the places."

I turned to Miriam. "Did he tell you anything else that might help
us?"

She misted over again. "Mostly he talked about this white girl he was
fond of. He went on and one. I'd never seen him - "

"She's out in the car," said Daniel.

"I want to meet her," Miriam blurted.