15

Greg had to consider the possibility of killing Donny. Of course he did. It had to belong to his calculations, to his various scenarios. He had to make sure that Donny never told anyone about what they had done, and, with the way Donny was? Donny was volatile. Greg could sense it. He would have to tiptoe. He was on a slackening tightrope. He had rejected Torres, and he came out here on his own with his thin cover story of writing a book. Of course it was really to find Donny, to make sure. But he hadn’t expected to find Donny—or Donny to find him—so quickly. If at all. A more cutthroat person in his position would have to kill Donny. Call it good. Greg worked out the morality of it in his head. The tradeoffs. One big problem was, Torres could come around eventually and figure things out.

Greg had Tam’s all to himself again after his visit to Pineburg Dam and beyond. He was hungry. He’d had another delicious sandwich at the bar. Now he sat there fighting boredom like the child of a food server waiting for his parent to get off work. Tam was restocking the bar. Whenever she passed, her pleasant aroma canceled out the sour smells of empty booze bottles and bleach. The woman smelled like some kind of aromatic wood, Greg decided. She kept glancing and smiling at him. He wanted to tell her about how someone had messed with his bike and car but decided to let it go. He didn’t want too much connected to him, just in case. The less people remembered, the better. Still, he had to know things.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure, Portland. I could use a break.” Tam set her elbows on the bar.

“How long has Charles Adler been here?”

“What, giving up on your other guy?”

Greg told himself it was a good thing she hadn’t repeated the name Donny Wilkie. Maybe she had forgotten it. “Well, he is dead.”

“Good point. Oh, about seven years. Eight maybe. No one knows for sure.” Tam’s eyes had drifted off as if looking for cobwebs in the corners of the tavern.

“He seems like a nice guy.”

Tam’s eyes locked back on Greg. “You met him?”

“Sure. And, what’s Karen Callum’s deal?”

“Her deal?” Tam pulled her elbows from the bar.

“I just mean, there’s a slight chill there. A little distance.”

Tam smiled. “You met her too? You are good. All I know about Karen Callum is, she is one tireless land agent.”

“Land agent?”

“Like a realtor but for ranch and farmlands. Large tracts, the big properties.”

“I saw a lot of For Sale signs today.”

“That you would.”

“A lot of those lands weren’t looking so good.”

“No. Part of the problem is—among all the others, they get their irrigation from wells. There are water rights to wells. And the wells aren’t doing so well around here. Ranchers, farmers relied on them for too long.”

“Who would want land like that?—don’t tell me. Callums.”

“Half of it, she ends up buying for herself. I used to not believe it. But then I used to not believe a lot of things were possible.” Tam took his plate and made it disappear in a tub below. She popped up smiling and said, “So, something sweet? I got cookies or I got pound bread.”

Greg chose an oatmeal cookie, best one he ever had, chewing away and wondering how people could ever let the Callums’ benefit so much from the dam. Then he realized: The Callums owned it after all. Donny had said so. So what could they do about it?

Back out on Callum Street, Greg pulled his bike from his rental car and put on his bike helmet covered with stickers, Free Cascadia and Zero Miles Per Gallon among them.

He’d already decided: Someone wanted to screw with his bike, wanted to send him a message. So he’d send one back. He would roam as freely as he wanted, find out whatever he needed to know. Making sure regular people remembered little about him was a decent strategy. Giving the guy who screwed with his bike something to worry about was another.

He pedaled on over to the poor side of town, near the strip mall and drying riverbed and abandoned diner where he’d first met the man named Charlie Adler. The modest new Silver Feathers Casino was near there, set back from the main road and inside a newer line of trees, giving the impression that it was squared away in the woods—one with nature. It was built on the site of Pineburg’s onetime timber mill, once owned by one of the town’s other great families and linked by a rail line that hadn’t been used in decades, rusting, sinking into the earth. Tam had told him: Logging had once been so pervasive that even here, where no true forest could be seen from the highest hilltop, the people had felt its downfall like a punch to the heart. Now, a vast and mostly empty parking lot led to a hanger-like building dressed up with the obvious Native American and Americana designs—eagles and dream catchers, wild horses, and a smiling Native American baby in its own suede leather pouch, all of it kind of spooky to Greg like a Quonset hut on steroids sporting giant roach clips. Greg locked up and went inside. With its jingling and jangling of slots and carpet of neon geometrics, the place could have been any smalltime casino. Despite the lack of cars in the parking lot, it had more people inside than any one place he’d seen in Pineburg, most of them elderly. On his way out, he was almost hit by an older woman riding a motorized wheelchair mounted with a breathing device. Depressing. And yet it gave Greg a strange feeling of inspiration, a rush to his head that left him breathing more clearly. There weren’t many Native-Americans left in Pineburg proper, but they had found a way to do something with what little they had left. If their one-time invaders suffered a little along the way, so be it.

He got back on his saddle and rode on, down past the other side of the strip mall, along Redpine River Road. Just in from the road stood an old block of a building with fading, chipping paint. It was the high school. A banner outside read: Food Parcels Today: Apply Within.

Around the side Greg found a long line of locals, about the same amount as in the casino, but many middle-aged or younger. He saw the two from the drug deal incident, Casey and Damon, standing with their heads hanging but looking cleaned up. The whole line of them watched him on his urban bicycle, showing a mix of glares and snickers and even a few smiles of wonder. He might as well have arrived in a hot air balloon. He wondered if someone in this very line could have messed with his car and bike.

It took him a few minutes to find the rickety bike rack behind the school and lock up. He returned to the line and found a young couple to interview and then noticed that a few of those in line glared at him harder as he did so. He ignored it. The interviewee couple were named Sam and Carmel. Their clothes hung loose and smelled a little stale, needing a washing. They faced Greg and kept their faces taut, Carmel with her arms folded as if holding an imaginary baby. Greg had seen couples like this in Portland at intersections or on the street. Sometimes he gave them a dollar or two.

“Things would be even worse without Charlie Adler,” Sam was saying.

“You mean Mr. Adler gets you these food parcels?” Greg said.

“No, that there’s from the state,” Carmel said. “Sam’s mostly talking about the casino. The tribe couldn’t a done it without Mr. Adler. He’d teamed up with Mrs. Callum like he always does to help them get it done.” She nodded to make it true.

“That’s what we heard anyways—that they went and kicked in a bunch,” Sam said.

“They give me a few hours a week,” Carmel added.

Someone laughed behind them—a man wearing a sweatshirt with US flags on each shoulder, like oversized epaulettes. He shouted: “What does state government do for us? They’re all incompetents. All of em. Screw them.”

Greg ignored that too and started to ask Sam and Carmel another question, but a second shout rang out:

“And the Feds? They might as well take over. Nothing left anyway. I had to sell my farm—my family’s farmstead!”

It was almost as if they had been told that he was a reporter from a city and, worse yet, Portland and Multnomah County where millions of city people would always have more votes than the country. He wondered if Wayne Carver had told them to heckle him. A blaze of frustration smothered his paranoia as he tried to ask more questions and they kept at it.

He turned to the angry ones in line.

The man with American flag shoulders swiped at air with his hand. “Ah, what do you care?” he barked at Greg. “You just want to see the Callums go down, want to see Charlie Adler go down with them.”

The Callums? Charlie Adler? Who said anything about them? It was all Greg could do not to lecture them. He wanted to shout: You’re acting against your best interests! It was as if they thought they would somehow, someday become like one of those three grand families of Pineburg and would have to protect their well-won gain to the death so they might as well start now—despite their sorry situation. It wasn’t ever going to happen. They do not care about you except as a tool! It’s a sham. You’re all getting bamboozled! Come together, people. We’re all Cascadians, he wanted to scream. But he told himself to take the middle ground if only because a guy like Wayne would want him to lash out.

“Listen. I’m an Oregonian. I pay taxes,” was all he could come up with.

A fourth person stepped forward, a woman wearing a leather cowboy hat and a sweat suit. “Screw you and your taxes. You want our dam. You want to take our water. We’re better off without you!”

Some cheered her on but most lowered their faces. There were mostly good, friendly, well-meaning people in Pineburg. Greg knew that. He had met so many of them walking around. Why was it always the shrill few who got to speak for a community?

He shrugged, shaking his head. His interview was over. He thanked Sam and Carmel and turned away. Then he saw:

Wayne Carver watched him from the far end of the parking lot, standing at his pickup.

Greg turned back to Carmel and Sam, getting closer so he could speak softly. “Hey, you two know Wayne Carver?”

“Who don’t? He used to be City PD,” Carmel said. Sam added: “His dad and him had some kind of falling out, I heard.”

Wayne kept watching. Why don’t you just use binoculars? Greg thought. The angry ones in line had calmed down, but some were nodding in Wayne’s direction now.

“I hate to say this,” Carmel said, “but it kinda looks like he’s waiting for you.”

Greg’s heart pumped faster. He felt like the junior high kid forced into a confrontation. But he had asked for it, hadn’t he? What he really came here for.

He marched across the parking lot. Wayne’s face showed nothing. Greg eyed Wayne for signs of an open carry, but he saw no weapon. Wayne backed up to the farthest end of his pickup, putting the truck between them and the crowd across the lot. Greg kept coming. He threw a glance in the truck bed in case Wayne had a gun stashed there. It was spotless.

This did not have to be a confrontation, Greg told himself—he would use this opportunity to ask harmless questions, to try to find a way to like Wayne and Wayne him. He showed Wayne a half smile.

“I’m guessing you want to talk to me?” Greg said.

“Talk?” Wayne said.

Wayne patted Greg down low, on the gut.

“What are you doing?” Greg blurted.

Wayne grabbed him by the fat of his hip and squeezed and twisted.

“Ow, fuck.” It felt like a power drill plunged into Greg’s side.

Wayne let go. He slammed Greg against the pickup bed.

Greg, panting from the pain, stood tall to fight, letting his hip burn. He shouted:

“I know it was you! You fucked with my car—with my bike.”

Wayne grinned. And that was it. He stepped up into his pickup and drove away, leaving Greg to face the line across the lot. The line had moved along, and Sam and Carmel were already inside. Somehow, that much lessened the burn a little.

Greg made it back to his bicycle behind the school. Both tires were flat. “Fuck. Fucking freak,” he muttered. Quick shots of air at the nearby gas station told him the tires hadn’t been punctured—the air had only been let out. He pedaled off, back to his car. He heaved his bike on the rack and drove up to the Callum house.

Donny’s pickup was gone. No one home. Out back, Greg wandered the yard, his thoughts racing, seeking answers and signs. He neared the barn-like outbuilding. He thought he heard a pounding sound coming from inside, muffled but clear.

Two large sliding doors were cracked open. He slid one door open and slipped inside. The building was dark, stocked with farm equipment, and had a faint but not repulsive whiff of manure or mulch. He saw light at the far end, coming, he saw as his eyes adjusted, from a finished room built inside. Maybe it was an office. He tiptoed on through toward it and heard the muffled rhythm again. It was metal music.

“Freeze!” someone shouted.