Indian Killer (14 page)

Olivia and Daniel were silent on the long drive back to Bellevue. As they drove over the 520 bridge, Olivia looked down and saw a man in a kayak, or actually the dark silhouette of a man in a kayak, passing beneath the bridge. A crazy man, thought Olivia, to be all alone, out there, on the dark water. Glenn Gould played his piano. Olivia did not say anything when Daniel switched off the CD player, silencing Gould, and turned on the radio.

“Hello out there, folks, this is Truck Schultz on KWIZ, the Voice of Reason…”

“…AND BOY, DO I HAVE
a problem. You see, folks, I just got this newsletter from the Washington State Indian Tribes for Aboriginal Gambling. The W.S.I.T.A.G. How do you say that anyway? What do you think it means in Indian? Well, I think it means they want to turn our state into a nest of sin and debauchery.

“The W.S.I.T.A.G. wants to increase the number of full-scale gambling casinos in Washington. We’re talking blackjack, poker, slot machines. We’re talking roulette, keno, bingo, with absolutely no bet limits or state supervision. That’s right, folks, the Indian tribes in this state want to subvert our constitution. They want to ignore the wishes of our government officials, of the voting public, and establish Vegas-style gambling casinos, complete with show girls, neon lights, and Wayne Newton.

“The Indian tribes insist that they have the legal right to establish casinos. They contend that the state has no say in these matters because of treaties that the tribes signed a century ago with the federal government. Can you believe this, folks? The Indian tribes believe that they are above the law. I wonder how far these Indians are willing to take this. What’s going to happen next? When you wake up tomorrow morning, will there be an Indian tribe camped out on your front yard, demanding that your land revert back to them?

“Listen, folks, I admit that what was done to the Indians was wrong. But that was hundreds of years ago, and you and I were not the people who did it. We have offered our hands in friendship to the Indians, but they insist on their separation from normal society. They are an angry, bitter people, and treat the rest of us with disdain and arrogance. Maybe this whole Indian gambling thing is about revenge on the white man. They want to take all of our money. They want to corrupt our values. They want to teach our children that greed and avarice are good things.

“Let me give you an example of what Indian gambling has brought to our state. I want to tell you a little story about a young man named David Rogers. David is a student at the University of Washington. An upstanding young man, a good son, an English major who loved Hemingway. He shares a house with his brother, Aaron, who called me up this morning. Aaron told me all about his brother. You see, a couple days ago, David Rogers wanted to go gambling at the Tulalip Indian Casino just north of Seattle.

“Now, David didn’t want to go alone, so he invited his brother to come along. But he refused. In fact, Aaron tried to discourage his little brother, but David was seduced by the easy money he thought he was going to make. Aaron kept telling his brother it was dangerous. He reminded his younger brother about the scalping and murder of Justin Summers. But David would not be denied.

“So, David went to the casino alone, and, lo and behold, he won two thousand dollars at the slot machines. Can you believe that? He must have thought he was the luckiest man alive. And you know what, he was lucky for a few minutes. He was also smart. Most people would have gambled their winnings away, thinking they were on a hot streak. But David, despite the protest of the casino management, collected his money and left the casino, anxious to celebrate with his brother. He left the casino and he has not been seen since.

“That’s right, folks. David is missing. His pickup was found in the casino parking lot, but there is no trace of him. He’s disappeared. Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I can just imagine what happened.”

Truck sipped at his coffee.

“The Indian tribes of Washington State have declared a cultural war on us, and the weapon they’ve chosen is the casino.

“What do you think, folks? Give me a call…”

I
N SEARCH OF DAVID
Rogers, Aaron and Buck drove onto the Tulalip Indian Reservation. The Tulalip Tribal Casino was just a few hundred feet off the freeway, close to a Burger King restaurant and a 7-Eleven convenience store.

“Jeez,” said Aaron, trying to ease the tension. “Long ways from camas root, don’t you think?”

Buck didn’t respond. He hadn’t spoken much since he’d arrived in Seattle. On the short trip from Seattle to the Tulalip Reservation, Buck had driven with a calculated fury. He’d raced up on slower cars, flashing his lights and honking his horn. He’d changed lanes with sudden twists of the wheel. Aaron had been terrified.

Now, as he slowly pulled into the casino parking lot, Buck seemed to have calmed.

“Where was David’s pickup?” asked Buck.

“Over there,” said Aaron and pointed to the approximate place. The police had long since taken the pickup away.

Buck and Aaron stood in the parking lot, in the place where David’s truck had been. In the very same air. Aaron breathed in deep. Unsure of what else to do, Aaron stared down at the ground, searching for evidence, some reason for David’s disappearance. Aaron knew about the two thousand dollars David was carrying, but he also knew that David would have given it to a mugger in a second. He would have never fought back. David didn’t work that way.

“Indians,” whispered Buck as two large Indian men walked out of the casino. They looked like brothers, Aaron thought, although most Indians looked alike. The Indians were laughing loudly. Buck glowered at them. Aaron knew his father was carrying a pistol beneath his jacket. Aaron took a deep breath, ready for anything to happen. The Indians, still talking and laughing, walked past the two white men. Buck and Aaron turned to watch them as they climbed into a battered pickup and drove away.

“It could’ve been them,” said Buck. “It could’ve been any of these Indians.”

Inside the casino, more Indians. But no answers. Inside the Burger King and 7-Eleven, still more Indians. Indians driving by. Indians walking. Indians laughing. A world suddenly filled with Indians. But no answers.

“They took him,” said Buck. “They’ve taken my David.”

On the drive back to Seattle, Aaron stared at the trees beside the road. Tall, dark, and thin, they looked like Indians, ready to reach out and steal everything.

“Why’d you let him go there alone?” Buck asked Aaron.

“I told him not to go,” said Aaron.

“You’re his big brother. You’re supposed to take care of him.”

“I’m sorry.”

Buck backhanded his son and bloodied his nose.

“No excuses,” said Buck. “You let him down. You let me down.”

Aaron, fighting back tears, wiped blood from his face. Buck passed a gasoline truck and two recreational vehicles. Aaron thought about his late mother, how she wasted away and died during one long summer.

“He’s all we have,” said Buck. “He’s all we have left.”

Aaron and Buck drove in silence after that. They didn’t speak when Buck dropped Aaron off at his house. They didn’t speak after Buck drove back to the family farm, sat at the kitchen table, and waited for his younger son to come home. He waited for a long time.

For Aaron, school simply ceased to be important. He felt a tremendous amount of guilt for letting David go alone to the casino. David had asked him to come along, but Aaron had refused. Their other roommates, Barry and Sean, had also passed on the offer, but Aaron felt a special responsibility for David. He was a weak, clumsy boy who had often needed protection from school bullies. Aaron had always provided that protection until the night that David disappeared.

Aaron designed a missing-person sign on his computer, printed hundreds of copies, and stapled them to telephone poles and advertising kiosks all over western Washington. Two or three times, he drove alone to the Tulalip Tribal Casino to look for any signs of David. Somewhere deep inside himself, Aaron realized it was probably hopeless, but it was all he knew to do. He could not cry, though he wanted to. He locked himself in the bathroom, stripped naked, sat on the floor, and prayed for tears. But it would not happen. After that, with only the faintest trace of emotion, he walked from store to store, asking each to place a missing-person flyer in the window. The store managers never turned him down. Everybody knew about the missing college student, the boy from Spokane who loved Hemingway. Aaron spent so much time searching for David that he just stopped attending classes. His other roommates, Barry and Sean, tried to comfort him in their clumsy ways, wanting to ease his pain, but Aaron refused all compassion. He needed some kind of ceremony in which to express his grief, but he was without ceremony. Without the ability to mourn properly, Aaron could only steep in his anger. Tapping a thirty-six-inch baseball bat against the floor, he spent hours alone in his dark bedroom, listening to Truck Schultz’s radio show. Aaron made plans for revenge against the unknown. He stood and smashed the bat against the wall, punching a hole in the plaster. Then he swung the bat again.

O
N A BRIGHT AND
cold Saturday morning, John saw Father Duncan more clearly than he had ever seen him before. Duncan, that grizzly of a man, was kneeling in the sand. John could see his shoulders shaking with tears, or laughter, or passionate prayers. What does a priest pray for? For himself, for his own needs, for the same reasons that everybody else prays? John knew that priests also prayed for their congregations, for the Pope, for the blessing, for communion, for offering. Prayers for every occasion. Father Duncan kneeled in the sand and prayed, or laughed, or cried, or maybe he did all three simultaneously. Duncan, wanting to be heard by every version of God, prayed in English, Latin, and Spokane, a confusing and painful mix of syntax, grammar, and meaning. John could see that Father Duncan’s black hair had grown so much that it reached the small of his back. Duncan’s face was hidden behind those delicate hands, which were blistered, bruised, and trembling. The sun was so low that Father Duncan could have stood and touched it. Sand, scorpions testing the armor of enemy scorpions, tarantulas hiding in their self-made caves. That stand of palm trees still on the horizon. Storm clouds.

Feeling the need to run from that storm, John stuffed a few belongings into a backpack and hitchhiked down the coast. John often visited reservations searching for his mother, answers, some kind of family. Now, as he left, he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He planned on being back to work by Monday morning. He simply locked his apartment door behind him and walked out into the cold morning. In search of Bigfoot, he hitchhiked south to the Hupa Indian Reservation in northern California.

John had become obsessed with Bigfoot after watching an episode of
In Search Of
, the Leonard Nimoy-hosted television series about monsters and myths. John had learned about the cabin in Ape Canyon on Mount Saint Helens where a group of miners battled a small army of angry Bigfoot. John had been fascinated by the account, reenacted for television by bad actors, but had doubted it. Bigfoot were incredibly strong and intelligent. If an army of Bigfoot had angrily attacked a small group of miners in a thin-walled cabin, then John doubted that the miners would have survived. Instead, John believed that the Bigfoot had been having fun with the miners, those pale-skinned men who loudly crashed through the forest, announcing their presence to everybody, never burying their waste, leaving behind foul evidence of their passing. John could hear the Bigfoot laughing among themselves as they hoisted rock after rock against the roof of the cabin. He could hear the terrified screams of the miners as they cowered inside. When morning came, after the Bigfoot had tired of their game and gone, the miners quickly abandoned their camp. Ashamed of their cowardice, the miners had invented the story of their epic battle against the monsters who lived on the mountain. That was how it worked. John knew that white men did not know how to tell the truth. They lied constantly about women, money, monsters. White men made promises and did not keep them.

John had been mesmerized when Leonard Nimoy introduced the footage of the “most convincing evidence of Bigfoot’s existence,” and then screened Roger Patterson’s famous film of his encounter with the monster on the Hupa Indian Reservation. John had kneeled down in front of his television as the Bigfoot stepped over the deadfall in the middle of a clearing, and walked, with enormous, beautiful grace, from left to right across the screen. Patterson’s horse, spooked by the monster, had thrown him, so the film was unsteady and dizzying. Despite the commotion, Patterson had kept filming as he fell, regained his footing, and ran after the Bigfoot. For effect, the frame was frozen just as the Bigfoot turned to look directly into the camera. Huge, brown, pendulous breasts; large chunks of muscle and fat carried at her hips and belly.

With his backpack and a few possessions, John hitchhiked to the Hupa Indian Reservation. It was a quick and uneventful journey. Over the course of fifteen hours, a long-haul trucker picked him up within the Seattle city limits and gave him a lift down Interstate 5 to Portland, Oregon, where John caught another ride, to the Hupa Reservation, with a salesman who leased movie videos to many of the small-town supermarkets, mom-and-pop rental stores, and obscure convenience stores in southern Oregon and northern California.

Once in Hoopa, on the reservation, John was unsure of what to do. He was confused by the spelling of Hupa, the tribe, and Hoopa, the town, and knew that something had been lost. And it appeared strange that this reservation town contained few Indians. It appeared to be a typical small town, with a grocery store, a gas station, a post office, a number of turn-of-the-century houses, a small clinic, and a few anonymous government buildings, though it was set down in the middle of a beautiful valley. The redwood trees filled the horizon. John walked around the town, attracting a lot of attention from the small number of Indians. The girls gossiped behind their hands, while the boys wondered if they could talk John into playing for their basketball teams. A tribal policeman with mirrored sunglasses and braids cruised by John. The Hupa Reservation was the kind of place where fugitives of all kinds came to disappear. John walked until he saw an old Hupa Indian woman sitting on a folding chair outside the local cafe. She was small and ancient, with a walnut face deeply lined with wrinkles. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt that read
BIGFOOT HUNTER
. A handwritten sign at her feet said
BIGFOOT HUNTER FOR HIRE
.