CHAPTER FIVE

Starr leaned against the open doorway that separated the marshal’s office from the community center in the same cinder-block longhouse. It was nearly six p.m., and she was ready to call it a day.

Two volunteers were setting up an optimistic number of chairs in the community-center half of the building, leaving a wide central aisle that stretched toward a white plastic table at the front of the room where she presumed tribal council members would sit.

Another volunteer handed her a flyer outlining the distribution of commodities, and Starr studied the pictures of rectangular orange cheese and tins of Spam as the room began to fill. There were bursts of noise from outside—loose mufflers, the slam of car doors—that entered with the people who came in from the parking lot.

It was about two weeks before Thanksgiving, and Starr gathered from snatches of conversation that it had been a dry fall, with people who planted crops or worked cattle looking skyward, worried about the weather and wondering when it would rain. Already Starr had seen the intense black smoke of a pasture fire while volunteer firefighters struggled to get the blaze under control.

Tonight wasn’t Chicago cold, but Starr felt the temperature drop as the sun went down. People kept their coats on inside, waiting for the heat of bodies and opinions to burn the chill from the air. Starr hooked the fingers of one hand on the lip of the doorframe overhead.

She kept turning to check the old jail cell, which long ago had been baked into one corner of her office. A thin, question-mark-shaped man had wandered in about twenty minutes ago and passed out on the cot, muttering about old times, so she’d shrugged and gently slid the cell door closed. He probably wouldn’t stir for hours, but she kept turning to check anyway. Habit, she told herself, but knew it was something else entirely, a reflex born of suspicion, honed on Chicago streets. There was something in the air.

“This meeting of the tribal council is called to order,” said Chief Elmore Byrd, a man with thick shoulders and a big belly, who was seated at the center of the council table. There were two people on each side of him, also seated. The room was still filling with attendees, and Starr marveled at the size of the crowd. Until this moment she’d seen only a handful of people on the rez, and would not have expected such a turnout. Over the noise, council members answered here to their names in the roll call. Byrd flipped his long, loose hair over one shoulder and looked around the room before he spoke.

“Good to see so many of you here. We don’t usually have such attendance. Except Bob’s wife, who is our most regular—and usually our only—audience member.” The crowd laughed and beside Byrd a scarecrow-like man wearing a long-sleeved Western shirt, who Starr figured must be Bob, turned crimson. “I hope you’ll all come back when we discuss something that’s not this exciting, like putting sand on the roads,” Byrd continued.

“Junior volunteers,” someone yelled from the back of the room, and the crowd erupted in laughter. People craned their necks to spot Junior Echo, a big man who wore his hair the old way, in two thin braids down his back.

“Get to the pipeline,” Junior said, but kept his eyes to the floor. He hulked over the sides of a folding chair, which Starr admired for its tenacity. Her eyebrows rose when she noticed a six-pack near his boots. He looked remarkably like a bear as he used one big paw to feel for a bottle. He lifted it to his lap and twisted the top, then tipped it to his lips.

Whatever gets you through, she thought.

“At this time, I will open the first order of new business,” Byrd said. “Item one, pipeline access.”

A hush fell over the room.

“What has been proposed to us, and what we believe is in the tribe’s best interest, is a partnership with Blackstream Oil. They have offered a ten percent share of profit from any oil pulled from our reserve, and an annual fee to us in exchange for the right to construct the necessary infrastructure, including pipelines…and for working in partnership with the city of Dexter Springs to build a road system that will allow full access to the site. This could be a changing moment for us, a way to benefit our tribal members of all ages in ways we’ve been unable to before.”

A swell of small noises was audible throughout the room, a tide Starr couldn’t be sure was favorable. Byrd continued. “As an added way to pay their respect to our land, and to us who inhabit it, Blackstream Oil has agreed to build a health clinic on the reserve and pay a stipend to our tribal government so that we may hire staff for it. Full-time.”

Chaos shot through the community center, everyone talking at once. A few people at the back of the standing-room crowd lifted hand-lettered signs and began to protest. DEATH TO BIG OIL and KEEP IT IN THE GROUND rose and fell in time with stamping feet, while people in favor of the clinic, and thus Blackstream Oil, clapped loudly.

“Order.” A gavel banged against a wood block, but the plastic table ate the sound. “Order!” said Byrd. He stood, raising both arms for silence.

“Bring the good drugs when you build it,” someone yelled. Several people laughed. A few others made loud shushing sounds. The signs still waved.

“We have, tonight,” said Byrd, “representatives of Blackstream Oil and the city of Dexter Springs. Blackstream and the city have already reached an agreement about the pipeline.”

Starr watched as a wiry young man stood and faced the council members, his button-down shirt crisply tucked into black suit pants atop polished black dress shoes.

“Bernard Gilfoil,” he said by way of introduction, and held a stack of note cards.

Byrd put his palms up to quiet the raucous meeting attendees.

The young man cleared his throat, introduced himself again and motioned for the tall Norwegian on his left to take the floor. “And this is Johan Antell, who is here from Blackstream Oil.”

“We respectfully request access to eighteen thousand acres of land,” Antell said, his clipped accent chopping through air that was becoming thick with heat.

A wood-burning stove in a tiled corner ticked as heat expanded its cast iron body, and Starr could see flames lashing through its iron grate as logs shifted inside. It was the loudest sound in the room.

Then the man from Dexter Springs stepped forward.

“From the approximate geographical boundary,” Bernard said, “of Turkey Creek, in Crawl Canyon, to the north, bordered by privately owned real property to the south and east and by open reserve to the west, we propose a surface lease, along with mineral and oil rights for the parcel, for an initial period of ninety-nine years, with an option for extension, should all parties agree. In return, Blackstream Oil’s generous terms are as Chief Byrd described.”

There was a jeer from the back. “Should be more,” said a man, who was quickly hushed by a woman sitting under a row of construction-paper pumpkins tacked to the wall. Twice a week the tribe’s elders met in the community center for a hot lunch and, from what Starr could see, arts and crafts.

“I believe most people are familiar with the area in the proposal, as we’ve heard talk of little else lately,” said Byrd. “Council, questions for our guests?”

The council was silent.

“At this time, I will open the meeting to public comment,” said Byrd. Then, noticing a scruffy man rising from his seat in the audience, Byrd hastily added, “Limited to those who signed up last week, and only related to the item at hand. Scurvy, this doesn’t mean you.”

The man plopped down, defeated. Starr got a whiff of weed when he did.

“Anyone else?” Byrd said.

People lined the central aisle to address the council individually.

“We need this, for our children, for our elders. If Blackstream thinks there’s oil out there, then I say we do it. And we’ll benefit from it,” said a woman at the front of the line. There were nods all around, including from the next attendee to address the council, a man who felt the agreement would pave the way for something else entirely.

“We are the only nation in this region without a casino,” he said, arms outstretched to the left and right to make a point. “The only one. There are thirteen tribal casinos in the tri-county area already. You might not think there’s room for another one, but there is. I hear tell they’re all raking it in. Just not us, ’cause we don’t have a tourist attraction or anything like that.”

“Trading Post,” someone hollered, and laughter lit up the crowd. Even Byrd smiled before he banged the gavel.

“What about the land? What about the damage the fracking will do?” said a young woman who’d set her sign down long enough to go up to the front of the room and speak. “Think about our water, about all the contamination that happened with the mining. Have we all forgotten?” She turned to face the crowd. “A company like this, they could turn it all into poison again.”

There were more people, Starr began to realize, who favored the project than it had appeared. They were the quiet ones. The council members were quiet too, their faces blank as the emotions of each new speaker seemed to seesaw the crowd. Starr watched the man who’d spoken on behalf of the city. She could see his thick blond hair neatly parted on one side and wondered what he was thinking. She wished she could see his face.

Starr scanned the crowd for Odeina Cloud, but Chenoa’s mother appeared to be absent. Several people had taken off their coats, and someone had used a brick to prop open an exit door, allowing cigarette smoke to waft inside. Starr inhaled and tasted the sweet bite of tobacco at the back of her throat. She overheard two young women whispering nearby. The one who’d begged the council to look for other ways to fill their coffers was convinced ruin would come to the reservation’s living creatures, small and large, tribal members included.

Starr wondered how the Saliquaw Nation would balance the benefits and risks of an oil operation, and thought of Chenoa’s notebooks. Did they hold any answers in the descriptions, the charts and graphs? She remembered the newspaper article about reparations paid for disturbing endangered species. Why had the article been worth saving? It had been an article about a road project, hadn’t it? No, Starr thought. She wasn’t asking the right question. Not why Chenoa believed the information was worth saving, but whether it applied to the rez.

“If you go forward with the oil deal, it will show us you don’t care about our people.” It was Junior’s turn to speak to the council. “There is more to life than money. We have what we need—”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” rang out a woman’s voice. “Aren’t you tired of being poor?”

“Not having a pot to piss in?” said a man from the other side of the room.

“We are protecting the future of our nation by working with the oil company,” Byrd interrupted.

“I’m not done talking,” Junior shouted over him.

It took just four words to turn the meeting into a screaming match.

“Out of order,” Byrd said, banging his gavel again and again.

Starr’s casual lean against the doorjamb evaporated. She could see where this was going. Things were about to get weird.

Byrd eyed each council member in turn, and then called the vote. As he tallied the yeas and nays, a shoving match broke out between a middle-aged man and the two young women, both gesticulating wildly with their signs. Junior entered the fray with a haymaker intended for the man, but knocked a different guy flat.

“Outside,” Starr yelled over the din. “Everybody outside.”

She rolled her eyes as she started ushering people toward the door. Sure, this job is easy. Just like they said. Nothing ever happens on the rez.