Watershed, page 12
“Why are you here?” Karen asked, shaking her head, her voice beginning to crack.
“I’m just here talking to Mr. Hawks.”
“Are you going to take a shower this time?”
I grabbed my coat and stepped to the door. From there I looked back at them—one drunk, one crazy—and they were talking to each other. I left the apartment, kicking the rest of the flowers inside before I closed the door.
An old man who was a neighbor said to me as I walked by, “Can’t you keep that girlfriend of yours quiet?”
“I’m really trying. She’s in that apartment talking to the FBI right now. I hope that does the trick.”
“Well, good,” he said and slammed his door.
*
Except as otherwise expressly provided by enactment of Congress, any offense against the United States begun in one district and completed in another may be inquired of and prosecuted in any district in which the offense was begun or completed.
The molecular layer is thick in the hippocampus and contains a large number of Golgi bodies.
10
I understood the story to have been this: Tad Johnson was an outspoken leader of the Black Panther Party in our city. He had been arrested a couple of times and shot once, but since the shooting he had a bodyguard and kept a high profile, although he moved from apartment to apartment frequently. He went to California and met with the BPP leadership out there and was told he would become the new spokesperson for the Party. Another man, a black man—although my grandfather referred to him as a cracker—a man named Reynolds Stoddard, who was a security officer for the Party, met with an FBI agent when he and Johnson returned from California and told the FBI of the upcoming advancement. Despite Johnson’s arrests and his having been wounded, the FBI saw Richmond’s chapter of the BPP gaining momentum. So, in the Red Steak restaurant, Stoddard sat with two FBI agents and drew a detailed floor plan of the apartment in which Johnson was staying, showing the placement of furniture, closets, and windows. He also made a list of the weapons that were kept by Johnson and the bodyguard who would also be sleeping in the apartment. Johnson taught a political awareness course at a local Holy Roller church, then went home with several Party members. Stoddard was with them, but left at 12:30 A.M. Ronald Taylor, who was asleep in the front room with a shotgun across his lap, barely had time to stand when the front door was kicked in and a round from a .30 caliber M-l carbine tore open his chest. He died instantly as his finger squeezed off one round. The cop, one of eight, shot Brendell Lewis, who was then struck by a bullet from the pistol of another officer. Another cop stepped in with his .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and fired through the walls into the bedroom; one bullet struck a sleeping Johnson in the thigh. Into the bedroom the raiders marched and each servant of the people fired one round into Johnson’s head.
I listened to the story as it was told to my grandfather and father several times. I was sitting on the stairs when I was supposed to be asleep. One Panther who had been there survived and was arrested for possession of marijuana. Some months later, I heard that the charges were dropped. I was fourteen and just beginning to catch the attention of white policemen when I walked down the street. It scared me. I found that I was angry because I had to be scared. I was angry because I had to worry about how I was walking or where I was walking, whether it looked as if I were running, or whether I had too much money or too little money in my pocket, or whether something had happened two blocks over involving a “nigger who looked just like me.” The flashing lights of a police car made me and my friends hold our breath.
A partially ordered set A is said to be well ordered if and only if every nonempty subset X of A has a greatest lower bound in X.
*
I found the Sidewinder Tavern easily. I was about half an hour early and I sat in a booth near the back, partly in the shadows, but I wanted Louise to be able to spot me, so I sat on the outer edge of the seat. I ordered a beer and waited while listening to a loud and rather bad blues band that featured a woman lead singer with a lisp. As I raised my mug to my lips I found that my hand was shaking. I had been bothered more than I realized by Davies’s sudden visit and the subsequent reunion of the agent and Karen. I wondered if they were still in my apartment, if Davies had passed out, as was her wont, which would give Karen the opportunity to take the agent’s pistol from her bag, shoot her, and leave the blame with me. A couple of rowdy fellows got into a shoving match not too far from me and one of them stumbled into my table. I pushed him back into the fray and observed that he had left on my table a note. I read it discreetly. “Go to the bathroom,” it said. I looked around the bar and then stood up, took another pull on my beer and walked to the back of the joint and into the men’s room. A blond man passed me on his way out. There were two Indian men standing inside by the sinks. One was tallish with long hair and the other was about my size, darker, with short hair, wearing a plaid shirt, a denim jacket, and a faded Yankees baseball cap.
“Take off your jacket and shirt,” the taller of the two men said. I noticed that the other man had shed his jacket and was unbuttoning his shirt.
I did as I was told. We exchanged clothes and the shorter man left the rest room. The taller man put the cap on my head, pulling the brim down tightly, and nodded.
“What now?” I asked.
“Just follow me.”
I did. He led the way back through the tavern and we passed the man who was now wearing my shirt and field jacket, huddled into the corner of the booth I had been occupying. Outside, we got into a yellow 1972 Monte Carlo and drove circuitously through downtown, only to abandon the car just blocks from the tavern and duck into the back of a Chevy van. The van was driven by a large woman who didn’t look back at me.
“My name is Dexter,” the tall man said finally and shook my hand. “That’s Carlotta driving.” He pointed, then snapped a cigarette free from his pack and offered me one.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s not far,” he said.
I was born a Lakota and I have lived a Lakota and I shall die a Lakota. Taku Skanskan is familiar with my spirit and when I die I will go with him. Then I will be with my forefathers. If this is not the heaven of the white man, I shall be satisfied.
The policeman standing in our living room was a black man. He was stout, although not tall, and wore tortoiseshell glasses that, from my view, seemed cartoonishly thick. He never sat down, just asked my father not where my grandfather had gone, but when he was expected back. My father told the officer that he would be back shortly and that he was welcome to wait, to have a seat if he liked, but he remained standing. I sat near him, on the sofa, leaning forward, my elbows on my knees, and watched the way he swayed back and forth on the balls of his feet. I was fourteen and I was finding every day that I was angrier and angrier, and watching him now was like a wooden splinter digging its way under my fingernail.
“You don’t mind if I carry on with what I was doing?” my father asked politely, then excused himself from the living room and went back to his desk in the study.
To the policeman, I said, “Do you have a gun?”
He just looked at me, no expression on his face.
“Do they give guns to black people in the police department?” I asked, trying to see under his plaid jacket.
He didn’t like what I was saying and so probably took a dislike to me, but he didn’t say anything, just rocked there on the balls of his flat feet. I studied his eyes behind his lenses, which seemed to be fixed on the empty fireplace.
“Would you shoot a black person?” I asked.
The cop sighed and then looked at me. “If I thought he was going to shoot me, yes,” he responded.
I nodded, feeling somehow safe, perhaps because I was in my own home. “Have you ever shot anybody?”
“No. And I hope I don’t have to.”
“What do you want with my grandfather?”
“I’m just here to ask him a few questions.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“Should I?”
It hit me then that this cop wasn’t as stupid as I had assumed. I studied his soft-soled black shoes and white socks, one of which had a small hole at the ankle. I was about to ask him why he’d become a policeman when my grandfather came into the house through the front door. He stopped when he saw the man, then pushed the door gently closed. “May I help you?” my grandfather asked.
“I’m Detective Leroy Hanes,” the man said and he shook my grandfather’s hand. “Are you Dr. Henry Hawks?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then we agree that I have talked to you?”
My grandfather nodded.
“Then I can be on my way. Thank you for your time.” With that, the policeman stepped politely past my grandfather and left through the front door.
Carlotta drove the van carefully, not quite slowly. I could see through the cracked windshield, so I had an idea where we were headed. We passed through an industrial section of town with warehouses and semi-trailers lining the street, into a neighborhood that I, like most people who didn’t live there, attempted to avoid. It was an area of town known for its poverty and, more importantly and impressively, its gang violence. The night had become cold and I realized that the jacket that I had received in trade back at the tavern was not as warm as my own. I buttoned it up and folded my arms and then we were there. At least, Carlotta had stopped the van.
We got out and I saw that we were in front of a shell of a one-story house: a porch with no rail ran the width of its front, and all the windows showed light inside. It wasn’t until I was on the porch and at the solid, white door that I saw that a man with a shotgun across his lap was sitting in a chair in the shadows. I was startled and although I could see his face clearly, he didn’t turn to look at me at all.
The inside was well lighted but not bright. The front door opened into the living room, which was furnished with patio chairs, the metal kind with bent tubing for legs, and a heavy, exceptionally ugly, lopsided green sofa with three men sitting shoulder to shoulder, facing a game show on television. I stood near the door and peered into the next room, which was the kitchen. I could see the sink and a corner of the stove, and I could hear the rattle of the refrigerator motor. A man about my size came out of the kitchen and approached me. His eyes were deeply set, and he wore his hair pulled back and tied behind his head in what I would later see was a braid. He shook my hand and told me his name was Tyrone Bisset. He welcomed me, saying, “We are the American Indian Revolution.”
I recognized his name. He had been tried for the murders of yet two other FBI men on the Cold Deer Reservation in South Dakota. He hadn’t been convicted, I remembered that—much of the evidence of the government turned out to be fabricated or altered—but I believed also that he was still a fugitive. Bisset introduced the other men in the room. On the sofa were John and Leonard Hat, twins, and Matthew Crow Feather, who all nodded to me in turn. Carlotta’s last name was Looking Horse and Dexter’s was Peacock.
“Louise tells me you know the Plata Mountain area very well,” Bisset said, pointing to an empty chair.
I sat and felt the chair give. “I know it fairly well,” I said.
“You’ve studied the mountain?”
“I’m a hydrologist and I’ve studied the Plata watershed pretty extensively.” I looked at Bisset’s eyes, trying to draw a bead on what he wanted from me.
Something happened on the game show that caused Matthew Crow Feather to laugh out loud. I looked over at him and saw the traces of his smile fade again into expressionlessness. No one showed a reaction, not even an acknowledgment of his having laughed. Then, as if he were reliving the moment, Matthew Crow Feather laughed again. When I looked at him this time he continued to laugh. The twins turned to watch him and Bisset did as well. Carlotta and Dexter had gone into the kitchen.
His laughter held in, Crow Feather talked. “I saw this old man on television and he was a medicine man and the white man asked what kind of feathers he used and he said, ‘Eagle feathers and hawk feathers and even Woody Woodpecker feathers.’” Matthew exploded once again and the others laughed with him. “I only just remembered that,” he said. The laughter died down and again the three men on the sofa attended to the television.
“Do you think you could find your way from the lake over the mountain and through the forest to the northern edge of the Plata Reservation?” Bisset asked me.
I answered quickly. “Sure. Dog Creek to Silly Man Canyon would be one way. Why?”
“Is it a difficult hike? I mean, how far is it?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at the ceiling and thought about it. “I’d say it’s about twenty miles. It’s pretty rugged country, depending on the time of year. Why?”
“Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”
Although it hurts me deeply, I am forced to the conclusion that the prosecution in this trial had something other than attaining justice foremost in its mind. The fact that incidents of misconduct formed a pattern throughout the course of the trial leads me to the belief that this case was not prosecuted in good faith or in the spirit of justice. The waters of justice have been polluted, and dismissal, I believe, is the appropriate cure for the pollution in this case.
I owned a royal blue 1955 Studebaker pickup with a wraparound rear window. It ran most of the time, and the colder it got, the more reliable the truck seemed to be. There was another truck just like it in Denver. I would see it parked in various lots downtown quite regularly, although I never saw the owner, I envied the person—that truck had better tires than mine.
I had just broken up with Karen for the second time. It wasn’t clear to me that we had ever actually gotten back together and I was certainly unclear about how the reunion had come about. Getting “back together” had consisted of one dinner and my telling her that I was sure things wouldn’t work out. The day following the dinner I returned to my office from lunch to discover some twenty messages from Karen. I put the stack of yellow sheets with my things and took them with me up to Plata Mountain, where I had work to do. At the junction, I glanced into my case, saw the messages, felt sorry for Karen, and went into the store to use the phone. Karen answered the phone anxiously, as was her wont, and immediately asked me where I was calling from.
“I’m up on the mountain. Are you okay?”
“Up on the mountain? How did you get there?”
“I drove.” I told her.
“Drove what?”
“My truck. Listen, I’m sorry I called . . .”
But the phone was dropped and I could hear loud, uncontrolled sobbing in the background. Karen’s roommate Heidi picked up the phone and she asked me where I was calling from.
“Plata Mountain,” I said, blankly. “I drove my truck up this afternoon. What’s going on?”
“Karen stole your truck,” Heidi said.
I leaned away from the phone and peered out the window at my Studebaker. “I don’t think so, Heidi.”
“Karen and the guy across the street just parked your truck in front of our house,” Heidi said.
“I see.” It was not difficult to figure out what had happened. “It’s not my business.” I hung up.
11
Title 18, United States Code, Section 2383, Section 2384, Section 2385
My father was dropping me off at my mother’s so that he and my grandfather could fly to Atlanta where my grandfather would testify for a man named Bunchy Cooke. I didn’t know it at the time, but I found out later that Bunchy Cooke was the man from whom my grandfather had extracted a bullet while I watched in that little house off Reynolds Road. Bunchy Cooke had been accused of killing a white couple on a tennis court in a park in downtown Atlanta: three people swore that they had seen him and another man commit the crime. But, as it happened, the murders were carried out on the very day and at the same time that my grandfather was treating Bunchy Cooke’s gunshot wound.
“Do you think he should go down there and testify?” my mother asked my father. She put her arm around me and held me close. I was a good head taller than she was by that time.
My father just shook his head, not as a response, but a reaction to her question.
I pulled gently away from my mother, sat on the sofa, and watched my father’s face. I realized that, for my father, having my grandfather was like having another son, a wild son with whom you couldn’t argue, nor, in reasonable fashion, disagree, except to remind him of the danger involved in his movements and actions.
“He wants to do it,” my father said. “I don’t know what else he can do.”
I understood from the talk around my house and the reports of the police visits and questions that my grandfather’s furtive treatment of Bunchy Cooke’s gunshot wound was illegal. I became afraid as I realized that Grandfather, in supplying Bunchy Cooke’s alibi, would be incriminating himself.
“I want to go,” I said, standing.
“No.” My mother responded quickly.
“I want to go.”
“It’s better that you stay here, Rob,” my father said.
“I’m a teenager,” I said. “I understand what’s going on. I want to go.” I felt older at that moment, the anger in me felt directed. “I want to be with Grandfather.”
I think my father wanted to say yes, but when he looked at my mother and saw the way her hands were shaking, he said, “I want you stay here, Rob.”
I sat between the twins at the table in the kitchen and we ate hamburgers that arrived with another man named Charlie Runs Far. John Hat was talkative and he pointed at me with french fries as he made points. “If you’re an Indian, you don’t believe in civil rights. It simply doesn’t make sense. They come and talk about equality again and again, but they always lie. Right, Leonard?”
Leonard Hat nodded.
“Besides,” John Hat continued, “we’re not American citizens. We’re Indians. We’re American Americans. You know, when we get this continent back, all you black people will have to leave.”
