So she said, “What visitor?”
“Your lawyer, ma’am.”
Oh, Marjorie Dawson. About time. Little Feather didn’t want to have to spend another second in this damn place. “Then let’s go,” she said, and they went.
Walking past the men’s cell compound, she just caught a glimpse of herself, doing the perp walk on TV. Goddamn! After six o’clock, then—the local news.
Down another corridor, and the deputy opened a door and said, “In here, ma’am.”
She stepped inside, and he shut the door behind her, and she looked around. This was a women’s cell again, without the bars and the bunk beds, but with the square wooden table and the two wooden chairs, on one of which sat Marjorie Dawson, facing Little Feather but studying papers spread on the table in front of her. Looking over her reading glasses, she said, “Come in, Shirley Ann.”
Little Feather stepped forward, rested a hand on the back of the empty chair, and said, “My name is Little Feather.”
“Sit down, Shirley Ann,” Marjorie Dawson said as though Little Feather hadn’t spoken at all.
“My name is Little Feather,” Little Feather insisted.
Marjorie Dawson gave her a flat look, as though she were a file put away in the wrong place. “We’ll discuss that, if you wish,” she said. “In the meantime, please sit down.”
Little Feather sat, placed her folded hands on the table in front of her, and waited. She was not, she sensed, going to warm to Marjorie Dawson.
Looking down at the papers on the table, Dawson said, “You’re a very foolish young woman, Shirley Ann, but you’re also a very lucky one.”
Little Feather waited.
Dawson looked up at her. “Don’t you want to know how you’re lucky?”
“I already know I’m lucky,” Little Feather said. “I want to know how I’m foolish.”
Dawson gestured at the top document in the folder, and Little Feather saw it was a copy of her letter. “This isn’t even a good attempt at extortion,” she said. “If you escape jail time—”
“It isn’t an attempt at extortion at all,” Little Feather said.
Dawson shook her head and her finger at Little Feather. “I’m afraid you don’t realize the seriousness of the situation.”
Little Feather frowned at her. “Whose lawyer are you supposed to be?”
“I’m your lawyer, as you well know, and I have spoken with Judge Higbee, and—Don’t interrupt me!”
Little Feather folded her arms, like Geronimo. “You talk,” she said, like Geronimo, “and then I’ll talk.”
“Very well.” Dawson seemed a bit ruffled. She patted her hair, none of which was out of place, and looked down at Little Feather’s letter, as though to gain strength from it. “You have attempted here,” she said, “to obtain money through false pretenses. Let me finish! I’ve spoken with Judge Higbee, and I’ve pled your case, and—Let me finish! And I’ve pointed out to Judge Higbee that you have no prior police record of any kind, that this is your first offense, and that I very strongly suspect others put you up to it. The judge has agreed to let you go with only a warning, if.”
Again she glowered over her glasses at Little Feather, who this time didn’t try to say anything at all, but merely watched, and waited her turn.
“If,” Dawson finally went on, “you will sign a statement renouncing the claims in this fraudulent letter, and if you will depart Clinton County at once, never to return, the judge is prepared to release you. I have done the statement,” she finished, and then found another document in the folder and pushed it across the table toward Little Feather, who didn’t bother to look at it.
Reaching down to her briefcase again, Dawson came up with a fat black pen with a screw top. She unscrewed the top, extended the pen toward Little Feather, and, when Little Feather didn’t take it, Dawson at last looked up and met her eye.
Little Feather said, “You done?”
“You really must sign this,” Dawson said.
Little Feather said, “You done? You took your turn, and if you’re done, it’s my turn.”
Dawson did an elaborate sigh, put the pen on the table, and leaned back. “I don’t know,” she said, “what you could possibly have to say.”
“And if you don’t shut up,” Little Feather told her, “you never will.”
That did it. Dawson gave her a look of stony disbelief and crossed her own arms like Geronimo.
Little Feather uncrossed her arms and said, “You don’t act like you’re my lawyer, you act like you’re the other guy’s lawyer.” She pointed to the letter she’d sent. “I am Little Feather Redcorn,” she said. “My mother was Doeface Redcorn, my grandmother was Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, my grandfather was Bearpaw Redcorn, who was lost at sea in the United States Navy in World War Two, and they were all Pottaknobbee, and I’m Pottaknobbee. I’m Pottaknobbee all the way back to my great-grandfather Joseph Redcorn, who fell off the Empire State Building.”
At that, Dawson blinked and said, “Are you trying to make fun—”
“He was working on it, when they were building it, he was up on top with a bunch of Mohawks. My mama told me the family always believed the Mohawks pushed him, so I believe it, too.”
Dawson stared hard at her, thinking. “You believe the claims in this letter.”
“They aren’t claims, they’re facts,” Little Feather told her. She felt indignant at the way these clowns were treating her, not even giving her a civil conversation, and indignation gave her as much self-assurance as innocence would have done. She said, “I never extorted anybody. I never demanded anything. I just said I want to be back with my own people, and since I don’t know any other Pottaknobbees, I wanted to get back with the Kiota and the Oshkawa. And this is the way they treat me, their long-lost cousin. Like I was an Iroquois!”
Dawson looked less and less sure of herself. She said, “The tribes are certain there are no more Pottaknobbees.”
“The tribes are wrong.”
“Well . . .” Dawson was floundering now, looking at her documents for help, finding no help there.
“If you’re my lawyer,” Little Feather said, “you’ll get me out of here.”
“Well . . . tomorrow . . .”
“Tomorrow!”
“There’s nothing further can be done tonight,” Dawson said. “You can’t post bail—”
“I thought about that,” Little Feather said, “and I can put up property. I can put up my motor home, I’ve got the title to it. That’s worth more than five thousand dollars.”
“But that would also have to be tomorrow,” Dawson said. She looked and sounded worried, as she should. “Shirley Ann, if you—”
Little Feather pointed a very stern finger at her. “My name,” she said slowly and distinctly, “is Little Feather, but I think you should call me Ms. Redcorn.”
“Whoever you are,” Dawson said, trying to rally, “of course if you were willing to sign the statement, you could leave immediately—”
“And forever.”
“Well, yes. But, as things stand, and I can see you are adamant about this, I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done now until tomorrow.”
“And what are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Speak with Judge Higbee, ask the judge to speak with you in chambers, see what’s best to be done.”
“But I spend tonight in here.”
“Well, it’s not possible to—”
“Not charged with anything, didn’t do anything, but I spend the night in here.”