The Fence My Father Built (25 page)

I gathered what I could from the floor and draped some of the less damaged books and magazines over the backs of chairs. It would take hours to straighten out the mess, if it could be salvaged at all. Despite the fact that I’d been ordered to leave, I arranged the 1979 World Book Encyclopedias in alphabetical order and returned them to their shelf, all except for the “M” volume, which had several pages ripped from its middle. Later I would mend it with tape, glue its spine back in place, and it might function again. I wasn’t as sure if I would be so lucky.

L
uck wasn’t something I’d come to treasure. At the high school where I’d kept watch over the library, there were always kids who had no place to go, or else what they called home was choked off with abuse of one sort or another. You tried to help the ones you could. Those students, whose names I couldn’t remember, still haunted me with faces I could never forget. So-called luck had dealt me the roles of mother of missing children, protector of a Native burial site, and librarian of unreadable books.

What luck didn’t know about me was that I wouldn’t give up. Lutie said the devil ruled luck, that there was really no such thing, and it was just old Beelzebub dancing on your soul. I didn’t know about that, but I was fed up with everything.

The next day was Labor Day. Since the café was closed, Lutie and I came back to clean up the library and save what was possible. The stink of the spilled beer no longer overwhelmed us, but the comic books that the kids loved were a pulpy mess.
Spiderman, Batman
, and
The Hulk
were totaled, so we tossed them all in the trash. But I refused to part with my C. S. Lewis books; I didn’t care how badly
The Chronicles of Narnia
reeked of hops and yeast.

Lutie pitched another magazine toward the trash. “A person who’d do this is sick, just downright sick.” She stopped for a moment, held her rubber-gloved hands up in fists. “And I’d punch that old coot again, as God is my witness.”

“I’m sure you would,” I said. I went over the floor with the mop again, this time with pine cleaner. “But then he might do something worse.” I scrubbed harder, and my hair snaked loose from where I’d twisted it up.

“Well I know one thing,” she said, “Joseph wouldn’t have stood still for any of this. He didn’t care if Linc needed our water to refill the oceans, which he didn’t. My brother wasn’t letting the likes of that mean old mule sell us all down the river. I wish he were here for you too.”

I stopped mopping and stared at Lutie. My heart thudded against my chest like a load of those ancient encyclopedias hitting the floor, and I could barely speak. Before I knew it, I’d crumpled.

“All my life I dreamed about finding him, but I’m too late. And now I don’t know what to do,” I sobbed.

Instead of handing out a simple answer, Lutie turned over an empty five-gallon bucket and sat down. Her scrawny legs stuck out from her long denim skirt like a schoolgirl's, and she hiked the skirt up to her knees before she pulled me down and folded me into her arms. “Sh, now,” Lutie whispered. “Sweet Jesus, comfort your baby girl.”

I pulled away and stood up, swiping at my tears. “Jesus never helped me when I used to cry for my daddy, and he isn’t going to help me now.”

“I know you’re hurting.” Lutie stood up and closed the door to the room, then sat and arranged herself on the bucket once more. She leaned toward me. “Won’t you let him ease your burden?”

I paced back and forth, leaving my footprints on the damp floor. “Aunt Lutie, I’m sure you mean well. But religion won’t solve these problems with Linc. Prayers can’t bring my father back. How can God help bring my daughter home?”

“Have you given him a chance?”

“I’m out of chances.”

Lutie sighed. “Maybe you’re not ready. But don’t count the good Lord out.”

“I’d make a lousy church person.”

“I don’t give a frosted belly button if you go to church,” she said. “I’m sorry if you think that's all there is to it.” She clasped her hands together, and I was afraid she’d start praying right then and there. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I shouldn’t have bit your head off. Sorry.”

Lutie got up and engulfed me in a hug. “Joseph loved you more than anything, sweet pea. And he wanted you to know God loves you too.” She looked away. “But maybe you have to find that out for yourself.”

“Oh, Aunt Lutie, I’m sorry about all of this. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to Murkee.” I wiped away tears. “I guess I’m stubborn.”

“Just like your daddy.” She smiled.

I rolled the chair into a corner; it belonged to Dove. Then I carefully peeled the Murkee Public Library sign from the door and tucked it beneath my arm.

O
n Tuesday I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, not even Rubin. This time I wore my own rubber boots to the mound down by the creek and brought along an old stadium pillow to keep my jeans and favorite blue sweater from getting muddy. The heart rock and arrowhead were tucked into my pocket. I loved this spot as much as anybody now, and I justi
fied the time I spent there by thinking of myself as shepherdess of the stream, or guardian angel of the stream, depending on how spiritual I felt. Any cow that wandered in here would regret it.

Dr. Denny had photographed and cataloged the artifacts, just as Dad had done. Now it was time to set the bait. I picked my way among the rounded stones and reeds at the water's edge and dug a shallow bed in an eddy, settled the arrowhead firmly in the silt, and pushed my special stone next to it, making sure the arrowhead caught the light. It was the perfect spot for an amateur archaeologist to look.

“There,” I said, “You can’t miss it.” I hoped no cows would uproot my trap, before Linc took the bait.

I thought about what Aunt Lutie had said about prayer and tried not to be irritated at her. Lately, she’d been more forthright with her religion, like I’d have to agree with her brand of it now that I had so many thorny problems.

I hoped Dad hadn’t been quite so melodramatic about his faith, but I suspected he was a “holy roller,” as my mother had claimed. At least he wasn’t ashamed of his beliefs or his heritage. Had it been hard for him to separate his Native spiritual leanings from his Christian ones? How had he managed to embrace his ethnic heritage and still hang onto faith that had come from the very people who had robbed Indians of their lands? Had he been like me, undecided in what—or whom— to believe?

I didn’t really want to give up on God, although I wasn’t sure whether he cared to help humans or let them stew in their own juices.

“Our Father,
my
father,” I said to heaven or the air, “that's all I ever wanted to find.” I sat there and listened for answers among the sounds around me. Were there whispers of my ancient relatives in the creek?

The water fell over the rocks where Rubin had submerged old tires for a fish habitat, but the burbling sounded more like a child's rhyme than profound wisdom from above. Golden leaves from the cottonwood silently parachuted to the water's surface like manna, and here and there a silvery fish broke through with a splat.

Behind me the so-called cattle-proof fence creaked in the breeze. A new metal sign read, NO GRAZING ALLOWED—for literate cows, I supposed. It swayed at the same tempo as the fence. It sounded like, “What if? What if?” That got me wondering if enticing Linc to steal my artifacts would be enough.

“What if,” I asked a small frog perched on a rock near the bank, “what if I located one of Linc's buyers? There must be some sort of paper trail.” That first day I’d seen him in the café, he’d acted like he owned the world. The thought of him standing a pickle upright in the middle of his sandwich still disgusted me. “Linc must know there's no way to keep supplying his sources without taking ownership of the whole area.” The frog didn’t smile. His throat only inflated and deflated, but he blinked as if he understood so I kept talking. “How’d he fake the certificates?”

The frog blinked again. To prove Linc stole the things I’d hidden, I’d either have to pose as a buyer or find the artifacts in his house. It was unlikely he’d invited me to his house for tea anytime soon. The frog didn’t acknowledge my wit or my revelation and kerplunked into the water. I looked at my watch and realized I’d been talking to amphibians for half an hour. I wouldn’t even have time to change before I went to town. I jogged back across the hill to the trailer, aware that these days the exercise didn’t leave me short of breath.

M
y attorney George Kutzmore looked surprised. “You got here fast.”

I smoothed back my hair. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I said. “I’ve been frantic since Nova left.”

“I’m so sorry about your daughter. Any word?”

“Not yet. But that's not why I’m here.”

He offered me a seat, but I declined. “My father, as you probably know, was half Nez Perce.”

He nodded. “Your aunt too.”

“Yes. When I got here, I couldn’t see why he’d spend so much time out at that creek, since it's not a Nez Perce area. It's more likely traditional Warm Springs or Paiute. But after I found some of Dad's old photos, I’m convinced.”

George raised his snowy eyebrows. “Convinced?”

I could hardly explain fast enough. “Linc's told the whole town about his ‘need’ for the water in that creek, right?” I stepped closer to the desk. “Remember how we talked the first time we met that maybe water isn’t all he's interested in after all?” I resisted the urge to pace and plunked down both Dad's photos and the ones Dr. Denny had taken.

George examined the pictures as deliberately as Denny had. Finally, he laid the pictures down like a winning poker hand and leaned back in his chair. He steepled his fingers and smiled at me.

“What?” I was not amused.

“You remind me of Erin Brockovich from that movie about nuclear waste, that's all.”

“This is a serious matter, George. That area around the creek is an Indian burial site. We were right. My father was protecting it.” I grabbed the photos and held them up. “This site is old—ancient, even. Dad knew it. I’ve consulted an archaeologist who dated two artifacts I found in the creek as
possibly pre-Clovis. Do you know what that means?” I told myself to calm down and give George a break. I didn’t understand everything, either.

But George was patient. “I’ve heard about pre-Clovis. There was a debate about it when they found Kennewick Man in Washington State,” he said. “That would make these items more than ten thousand years old. But news travels so fast around here. How could Joe—or you, for that matter—dig up this stuff without somebody finding out?”

“We couldn’t.” I folded my arms and waited.

George's eyes lit up. “Somebody found out. Somebody named Linc Jackson?”

“Just call me Ms. Brockovich.” I sat down and crossed my legs. “People thought Dad was seeing things, but he wasn’t that far gone. One night he heard Linc's truck pulling away from the creek, and the next morning he found fresh excavations and tire tracks.”

“How do you know all that?”

“I read it in his journal.”

“Joe kept a journal?”

I nodded and leaned across the desk. “And some of the things Dad had cataloged and left at the site came up missing later—items that had been photographed, identified, and logged. An arrowhead, a stick for digging roots, and something else he didn’t name.”

“You think Linc's selling it on the black market?” George pulled out a legal pad, flipped to a clean page, and began taking notes.

I nodded. “Money … the root of all evil.”

“Indeed,” George murmured. “Lutie would correct us. The Bible says the root of all evil is the
love
of money.”

“Linc must love money enough to pillage First Nation burial sites,” I said. “He means to sell to the highest bidder.”

George looked me in the eyes. “What did your research turn up?”

I stood up again and paced. “The Tribal Council told me that to legally sell Indian artifacts they must be accompanied by a properly notarized statement. Tribes must approve before a proof-of-ownership document can be issued. I haven’t been to the county records department yet, but if Linc sold Indian artifacts, there must be notarized records. All I have to do is track them down.”

“Linc's got some nerve.”

“You’ve got that right,” I muttered. I hadn’t mentioned the vandalism at the library, nor Uncle Tiny's injury.

“I’m sorry about the tormenting you and Tiny have been taking lately.”

“You know about the library?” Suddenly, I was aware that I was still dressed for mud, not for the library. I smoothed my ratty blue sweater as best I could, resisting the urge to pick at the pills.

He shrugged. “News travels fast around here. Sorry.”

I shrugged. “I can’t afford to worry about that right now. I also researched Native American grave laws.”

“NAGPRA.”

I nodded. “If we could prove he's faked papers in order to sell the artifacts, wouldn’t he be in trouble?”

“Big trouble.” George's enormous mahogany desk was littered with stacks of files and papers, but he apparently had a system. He plucked the Pond case file from the middle of a pile and opened it, mumbling portions aloud to himself. It struck me that my attorney had no secretary or legal assistant to help him wade through the mountain of documents. I glanced over at his framed credentials to reassure myself that George was a member of the Oregon Bar in good standing.

Yet Linc had tons of influence in Murkee. What kind of chance would we have? It sounded as if it came straight from a grade B movie, but Dove claimed Linc even had the sheriff in his back pocket.

“Linc managed to get his water rights using that four-years and eleven-months technicality. He's no dummy,” George said. “His water rights document looks in order right down to the judge's signature.”

“But what if he faked the documentation? Or what if he's hoarding the items Dad photographed and cataloged?”

Sunlight poked through the blinds and glinted on George's gray-blue eyes and silver hair. “Robbery? Hm. That might be best—to prove he stole from you or your dad. Linc must know Native American investigations are slow and hard to prosecute. He's a smart cookie.” For all his small town ways, the attorney appeared capable and distinguished.