28
Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness…
—William Cowper, “The Task”
A thin, bearded man gazed out over the Pacific from his home at Laguna Beach. A freighter moved beneath a cloud-streaked sky. The sea was flat and calm.
There was an air of uncertainty in his bearing, and an observer would have had a difficult time deciding where his attention was directed. He held a glass of Mondavi chardonnay in his right hand.
The town, like the harbor, lay spread out before him. Traffic moved steadily along the coastal highway. He glanced at his watch, as he had been doing every few minutes for the past hour.
The phone rang.
He turned away from the window and sat down at his desk. “Hello?”
“Greg. It’s all set.”
It was almost two in Fargo. “Okay. Do they know we’re coming?”
“Not yet. Listen. How much influence do you have with the feds?”
“Not much.”
“Ditto.”
The man in Laguna Beach was looking at his plane tickets. “Have faith, Walter. See you in a few hours.”
SIX DEAD, HUNDREDS INJURED, IN AEROSPACE LOCKOUT
Seattle, Apr. 4 (AP)—
Labor tensions erupted into full-scale rioting today at three major aerospace firms when management locked out workers seeking to return to their jobs after a wildcat strike. The violence was a continuation of unrest since simultaneous announcements of “corporate reengineering” last week led to widespread fear of massive job eliminations.
DOES FORT MOXIE HAVE A VISITOR?
There have been reports from several sources that something from another world came through the port atop Johnson’s Ridge and is now loose in the Fort Moxie area. There are stories of voices in the wind, of child abductions, of storms that seem to target individuals. And there has been a death under mysterious, and one might even say ominous, circumstances.
Last week Jack McGuigan abandoned his snowmobile in the woods off Route 32, in Cavalier County, and ran out onto the highway, where he was struck by a moving van. The driver of the van said that McGuigan appeared to be fleeing from someone. Or something.
Cavalier County police have been inundated with sightings, and recent visitors to the area report that for the first time in memory, people are locking their doors.
Meantime, still wilder stories are getting started. Old-Time Bill Addison, who has ridden a number of celestial horses during his career, is warning that we have broken into the Garden of Eden and released an avenging angel. Or maybe a devil. The Reverend Addison is unclear on the details.
It seems that, with the unearthing of the Roundhouse, we are doomed to relive another of those popular delusions that revisit us periodically. We don’t yet know the facts in the death of Mr. McGuigan. But a probable scenario is not hard to reconstruct: He was hunting out of season; he thought he might be discovered; he became disoriented; and he stumbled onto a highway. Incidents like that happen every day. The voices around Fort Moxie can undoubtedly be ascribed to the active imaginations of the tourists, encouraged, perhaps, by some of the locals, who know a good thing when they see it. It all makes interesting reading, but we recommend keeping our feet on the ground. In the end, the facts will turn out to be suitably prosaic. (Editorial, Fargo Forum, April 4)
Pete Pappadopolou had worked in the shipping room of ABC Pistons, Inc., for four years, and had recently risen to his first supervisory position. His marriage had collapsed six months earlier, when his wife ran off with the operator of a beer distributorship, leaving him to care for their asthmatic son.
Pete had worked a second job, delivering Chinese food, to pay for the nurse and associated medical care. He hadn’t been sleeping well. He was depressed, and his life seemed to be going nowhere. He missed his wife, and his doctor put him on tranquilizers. But the promotion came, bringing a sizable salary increase and the promise of more as ABC expanded into allied fields. Moreover, the child’s attacks had begun to lessen in both frequency and intensity. They had turned a corner.
Unfortunately, ABC was going through changes as well. Their expansion was to have been financed by a secondary stock offering. But the value of the company’s stock had plummeted in recent weeks, and the banks, after a long period of watchful waiting, backed off.
ABC found itself with an unexpected surplus of people. The executive suite responded by eliminating eighteen hundred middle-management and first-line supervisory jobs. Pete, who had recently separated from the union in order to move up, discovered to his horror that he had no protection whatever.
On the day before the official notification would have been delivered (the rumor mill at ABC was quite efficient), Pete bought a.38 and used it on his plant manager and a colleague who had been making it clear that he should have got the promotion that went to Pete.
The plant manager, despite being hit six times, survived. The colleague took a bullet in the heart. The company responded by hiring additional security personnel.
James Walker loved solitude. He remembered staring out the windows of the schoolhouse years ago, gazing across snow-blown prairies, imagining himself alone in the world beyond the horizon. He had pictured a place of sun-dappled forest and green rivers and gentle winds heavy with the fragrance of flowers. Where the paths were grass rather than blacktop, and the land was free of county lines and posted limits and tumbledown barns.
Walker listened to his wife, Maria, working in the kitchen, her radio playing softly. A book lay open on his lap, but he couldn’t have told anyone what the title was. Events on the ridge had filled his waking hours since Arky had first called him to report the discovery. Now Arky was dead, and people on the reservation and throughout the area were afraid of the night. George Freewater had told him flat out that something had got loose. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he’d said.
A jigsaw puzzle lay half done on a table near the window. It was titled “Mountain Glory,” and it portrayed a gray snow-capped peak rising out of lush woodland. A rock-filled stream rushed through the foreground. He had done a thousand such puzzles during his lifetime.
It saddened him there was no wilderness for the Mini Wakan Oyaté like the landscapes on the boxes. He had dreamed all his life that the Sioux would recover their lost world. How this might occur he’d had no idea. But it seemed right that it should happen, and he therefore fervently believed that in time it would.
But the shadows were advancing now. One day soon, he knew, the long night would begin for him. The Sioux had outlived their way of life, had turned it over to the white technicians, who would map everything. That was what he most disliked about them: that they sought to know all things, and did not realize that a forest without dark places has value only to the woodcutter.
Now a road to the stars had opened. From Sioux land. Arky had understood all along, had cautioned him that the Roundhouse might prove far more valuable than any commodity that could be offered in exchange for it. Possibly, the new wilderness was at hand.
The government car drew up outside. He sighed and watched Jason Fleury get out. There were two others with him, but they did not move. Fleury seemed ill at ease.
Walker met him at the door and escorted him back to his office. “I assume,” he said, “you are not bringing good news.”
“No.” Fleury shook his head. “There’s no good news for anyone these days.”
The tribal chairman produced two cups of coffee. “What do they propose to do?” he asked.
“I must ask you first, Mr. Chairman, whether you are taping this meeting.”
“Would it make a difference?”
“Only in what I would feel free to tell you.”
Walker sat down on the couch beside his visitor. “There is no device,” he said.
“Good. I didn’t think there would be.” Fleury took a deep breath. “I hardly know how to begin.”