“They don’t have different ones for women,” the deputy said, not quite apologizing, which was about as human as anyone got around here.
And now she was on her way to a cell of her own. They walked down a long corridor, past the cells for male inmates, and Little Feather looked in and saw a concrete-floored communal area with a long wooden table and some folding chairs and a TV set tuned to the Weather Channel. Three losers in denim shirts and blue jeans like hers sprawled around on the chairs, gawking at the set. Down both sides of the communal room were cells with only bars for their inner walls, so you could never be out of sight.
Well, at least, Little Feather thought, they’re not putting me in there. And then she thought, what do those clowns care about the weather?
Past the Weather Channel fans at the end of the hall was an iron door. One of the two male deputies escorting her pushed a button beside the door, a nasty electronic buzz sounded, and the door popped open. “You go in there,” the deputy said.
She wished she could think of an argument, but at the moment, there didn’t seem to be one, so she went in there, and they shut the iron door behind her, and here she was. The women’s quarters, looking very much like an afterthought. A fairly large long room had been fitted with vertical bars all around, just inside the real walls and over the large window at the end. When she went over there to look out the window, she could see some old brick walls and, in the distance, a white spire against a gray sky. That was it.
The furniture in the room consisted of two sets of bunk beds on opposite side walls, each with a thin mattress on it, folded in half—you can’t fold a thick mattress in half—plus one sheet, one scratchy-looking wool blanket, one pillow, and one pillowcase, all neatly stacked on top of the mattress. There were also a square wooden table and two folding chairs like the men’s, but no TV set. For the weather, she’d have to rely on the window.
And also for the time, since they’d taken her watch. So now and then, when the spirit moved her, she could go over to the window to see how much the shadows had lengthened out there, if she wanted to confirm that a whole lot of dead time was passing by.
When the nasty buzzer sounded at the door again, she happened to be over by the window, shoulder leaning on a bar as she looked out at the world, where now the shadows were so very long, they’d definitely combined into nighttime; she’d been in here for hours. At that sound, she moved away toward the center of the room and stood by the table as the door opened and a different deputy stood there, saying, “Visitor.”
Visitor? For one fleeting instant, she thought the visitor was Fitzroy, come to say forget it, let’s call the whole thing off, let’s just go home, we were nuts to think we could try this stunt. But no. A) Fitzroy wouldn’t do that. B) Fitzroy wouldn’t show his face anywhere near Little Feather. C) They weren’t nuts to try this stunt, they were going to go ahead with this stunt and it was going to work, and she would have the biggest, whitest, grandest, softest, cushiest house on the reservation, and screw everybody.
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.”