Marjorie murmured to the young woman, showing her where to sit—in the chair across the desk from the judge. Marjorie herself moved to the second chair, off to the young woman’s right.
Judge Higbee let the silence extend a few more seconds. The young woman met his probing eyes without a flinch, gaze for gaze. He suspected she was very angry about something, but holding it in. She did not have the skulking posture that the stupid always present, betraying their guilt while they declare their innocence. She did not blurt into speech, but waited for him.
What, he wondered, without joy, do we have here?
Very well. He began: “Ms. Farraff, Ms. Dawson tells me—”
“My name,” she said, quiet but forceful, “is Little Feather Redcorn. That’s the name I was born with. Later, when my mama left the reservation and moved in with Frank Farraff, she said I had to have a name like the other people around there or I’d be laughed at, so she changed my name, and that’s the name I’ve lived with ever since. But now I’m going back to my first name.”
Quite a statement. She’d probably been rehearsing that for hours, in the detention cell. Well, he had given her time to get it all out, so now was the time to close down this little drama. Almost gently, he said, “And do you have your birth certificate with you, with that name?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t have any birth certificate, and I don’t know how to get one, because I don’t know exactly where I was born.”
“There wouldn’t be a birth certificate somewhere, would there, that says your father was Frank Farraff?”
“My mama didn’t meet Frank Faraff until I was three or four years old,” she said, “when we moved off the reservation and into town, because there wasn’t any work on the reservation.”
With a frosty smile, he said, “There’s not much work for a three-year-old anywhere, is there?” Making a joke, because of course he knew she’d meant work for her mother.
But the damn woman said, “There was some. They had me weeding. Sat me down in the rows of beans, told me to pull up those but leave those alone. I remember I was pretty good at it.”
Judge Higbee leaned back. That wasn’t stupidity, that was truth. How could this young woman possibly be different from the endless army of morons who marched past his uncaring eye? And yet, the three-year-old child set out to weed among the bean plants was a picture he believed.
Very well. She’d mixed some of her true history into this folderol. But the underlying fact remained the same: She was an inept scam artist, to be summarily dealt with and sent on her way. He said, “You have no birth certificate.”
“All I know is,” she said, “I was born on the reservation.”
“And you are certain, are you, we won’t be stumbling across a birth certificate in the name of Shirley Ann Farraff?”
“If you find anything like that,” she said, completely unfazed, “you can lock me up and throw away the key.”
The judge had a copy of the young woman’s letter on his desk. Now he scanned it, then said, “You say your mother—Doeface, is that it?”
“That’s right, that’s my mama, Doeface Redcorn.”
“You say,” the judge persisted, “that your mother told you your history, that you are of the Pottaknobbee tribe, and these people you name here are your forebears, is that right?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and he noticed the ‘sir,’ and he knew what it meant. So long as he behaved properly toward her, she would behave properly toward him.
Well, fair enough. He could see now that this actually was a more complicated situation than he was used to. God knows, he didn’t want to have to deal with an interesting case, but this just might be one. He said, “Do you have any documentation at all to confirm your story?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why should you be believed?”
“Because it’s true.”
He frowned at the letter some more, then said, “I understand you’ve been living at Whispering Pines, is that right?”
“Yes, sir, in my motor home.”
“And how long have you been there?”
“Four, five days. Five days.”
“And how long had you been away?”
She looked blank. “From where?”
“From here.”
She smiled, which softened her face, though not enough, and said, “I’ve never been around here before in my life. My mama left here when she was a little girl, with her mama, like it says in my letter. I’m coming home for the first time in my life.”
He picked up a pencil to point its eraser at her. “Be very careful, Ms. Farraff.”
“Redcorn.”
“That has not been established. The only documentation I have on you indicates your name is Farraff. Until you demonstrate to my satisfaction that you should be referred to by some other name, I shall continue to call you by the name on your documents, your Social Security card, your driver’s license, and so on. Is that clear?”
She shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “But once you give up trying to get rid of me, I want to hear you call me Ms. Redcorn a lot.”
“If and when the time comes,” he assured her, “I’ll be happy to. Now, where was I?”
Marjorie said, “You asked how long Ms. Farraff had been away from this area.” And the faint smirk with which she said it showed that Marjorie, too, had been subjected to the name game and was taking advantage of the judge’s victory.
Fine. “Thank you, Marjorie,” he said, and returned to Ms. Farraff. “If you have never been in this area before,” he said, “and I suppose we can document that by your work history and so on, establishing your whereabouts over the past, say, two years . . .”
“I’ll give you my tax returns,” she offered.
“That may not be necessary,” he told her, nettled, thinking, by God, she’s sure of herself. Tapping the letter, he said, “So I must ask you this: Where did you get these names that you claim are the names of Pottaknobbee Native Americans?”
“From my mama,” the young woman said. “Only she called them Indians.”
“Did she. If there are no Pottaknobbees left in this world, and the evidence seems to indicate there are none,” the judge told her, “then there are unlikely to be any methods by which you could prove that any of these people ever existed.”
“Well,” Ms. Farraff said, “there’s my grandfather Bearpaw, who went down with his ship in the U.S. Navy in World War Two. Wouldn’t the government have a record of that?”
“Possibly,” the judge said. He found that answer had made him grumpy. “But I notice,” he went on, tapping the eraser end of the pencil against the letter, “that not one of these people even has a grave that could be looked at, to see what name is on the stone. Your mother and grandmother both disappeared, your grandfather was lost at sea.”
“That’s what happens,” Ms. Farraff said.
Marjorie said, “Your Honor, in fact, in my discussion with Ms. Farraff yesterday, she did mention one more supposed forebear. Your great-grandfather, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” she said, with a very cool nod in Marjorie’s direction. Don’t get along, those two, the judge thought.
“Ms. Farraff tells me,” Marjorie said, “that her great-grandfather worked in construction in—”
“Steelworker.”
“Yes, thank you, steelworker in New York City, and worked on the Empire State Building, and was killed in a fall there.”
“My mama,” Ms. Farraff interjected, “said the family always believed the Mohawks pushed him, so I believe it, too.”