“Well, don’t get too mean with it, Tiny,” Kelp said. “We don’t wanna crack it.”
Dortmunder had been looking around the neighborhood, having to squint as he moved farther from the lights of the Jeep, but now he straightened and said, “Here’s a good one.”
The other two came over to look, and stood solemnly gazing down at the tombstone. It was very like Redcorn’s, thin, a foot wide, maybe two feet tall, weather-stained, with rounded upper corners. It said:
BURWICK MOODY
Loving Son and Husband
October 11, 1904–
December 5, 1933
“That’s the day Prohibition ended,” Dortmunder commented.
Tiny looked at him. “You know stuff like that?”
“I like it when they repeal laws,” Dortmunder explained.
Kelp said, “You notice, the wife didn’t put up the stone, the mother did.”
“The wife was still drunk,” Tiny suggested.
Dortmunder said, “Whadaya think, Tiny? Can this go over there?”
Tiny stepped over to Burwick Moody’s marker and gently pushed it over onto its back. “Piece of cake,” he said. “You guys each take a corner at the bottom there, I’ll take the top.”
The bottom corner, Dortmunder found, was rough, cold, wet, and nasty. “This job has too many graveyards in it,” he muttered, but then he lifted along with the other two.
It was heavy, but not impossible. Tiny walked backward, looking over his shoulder as he detoured them around other tombstones, and Dortmunder and Kelp followed him, hunched side by side over the corners they carried, shoulders touching as they shuffled along, gasping a little, sweat already popping out on their foreheads into the cold night air.
At the former Redcorn place, they put the Moody slab on the ground, picked up the Redcorn slab, and schlepped it the other way. There, while Dortmunder and Kelp held the stone in an upright position, Tiny got to his knees and karate-chopped the loose dirt until it was solidly packed around the base and no longer looked as though anything had been disturbed.
When they’d done the same thing with Moody’s monument at Redcorn’s previous residence, Tiny stood and whapped the dirt off his hands and the knees of his trousers as he said, “And we get to do this again.”
“The night,” Dortmunder said, “before they take the sample. We’ll find out when that’s gonna be from Little Feather, and for sure the tribes, if they’re gonna pull anything, they’ll do it before then.”
“Nothing for us to do now,” Kelp said, “but leave.”
“Well, I’m ready,” Dortmunder said.
As they walked along behind the Jeep back toward the break in the fence, Tiny said, “Be a kick in the head, it turns out that isn’t her grandfather after all.”
Dortmunder said, “What? Little Feather? Why not?”
“Well, you never know,” Tiny said. “Could be nobody told her, but she’s adopted.”
“Thank you, Tiny,” Dortmunder said. “I was almost beginning to relax.”
27
The Tribal Council functioned mostly like a zoning board. Back in the good old days, the Tribal Council had waged war against tribal enemies, had overseen the distribution of meat after a hunt, maintained religious orthodoxy (a combination of ancestor and tree worship at that time), punished adultery and theft and treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors, arranged executions, oversaw the torturing of captured enemies, conducted the young men of the tribe through the rites of manhood, and arranged marriages (most of which worked out pretty well). These days, the Tribal Council gave out building permits.
Tommy Dog was chairman of the Tribal Council for this quarter, he being a Kiota and the chairmanship alternating every quarter between the tribes, to be fair to everybody and to distribute the power and the glory equally, and because nobody wanted the damn job.
But it had to be done, so on the first Saturday of every month, in the Tribal Longhouse (aka Town Hall), more or less at 3:00 P.M., the chairman of the Tribal Council would gavel the meeting into session, only hoping there would be a quorum, meaning seven out of the twelve members would be present, and that there would be no new business. There was sometimes a quorum, and there was always new business, and today, Saturday, December 2, there were both.
Unfortunately, some of the old business was still around as well, including a festering quarrel between two neighbors over in Paradise concerning the placement of neighbor one’s septic vis-à-vis neighbor two’s well, and which came first. The neighbors no longer would speak to each other at all, and would speak to other people only at the top of their voices, and neither of them would budge until hell froze over, so it was the usual first-Saturday fun. Everybody sat around on the wooden folding chairs in the knotty pine–paneled meeting room and listened to those two Oshkawa rant and rave about each other. Everybody knew the Oshkawa were overemotional anyway.
In the middle of it all, Tommy noticed a stranger come in and take a wooden chair in the back row. Well, not a stranger exactly—Tommy knew Benny Whitefish, had known Benny Whitefish the little squirt’s whole life—but he was a stranger here, in that Benny was most unlikely to have any business before the Council, and people who didn’t absolutely totally drag-out have to be at these meetings for whatever business or permit reasons they might have were never here, the lucky stiffs.
Tommy Dog was sixty-three. Over in the United States, he was an electrician, and a good one, but he didn’t work much these days, hadn’t worked much for maybe twenty-five years; just enough to keep his union card, really. The casino distributed enough money to everybody on the reservation so nobody had to work if they didn’t want to, but Tommy was one of those who’d found life without meaningful activity could be amazingly boring after a while, so he kept on being an electrician from time to time, just to keep his hand in, and otherwise he hung around the reservation and watched the young ones come along. Some of those girls, boy, they could get a man in trouble, he didn’t pay attention to himself.
But the point is, Tommy Dog knew Benny Whitefish, knew his entire family, and knew Benny to be a harmless young layabout with no more call to be at a Council meeting than a parakeet. So what was he doing here?
I’m afraid I’m gonna find out, Tommy thought grimly as Benny shyly smiled and waved a greeting at Tommy from his perch at the back of the room.
The septic-vs-well problem was held over to the next meeting, as usual, for the town attorney to consult his law books yet again to see if he could come up with just one more compromise that would be completely unacceptable to both parties. Most of the other old business was also held over, and so was some of the new business, though a couple permits were issued.
Whenever there was a vote, which was about every three minutes, everybody got very solemn as Joan Bakerman, the secretary, read out the motion now to be dealt with, and some member agreed to make the motion, and then another member agreed to second the motion, and then Joan Bakerman polled the present members, calling out each name in turn, and each one responding, “Yeah,” or, “Yes,” or, “Yep.”
Finally, it was done, and they all cleared their throats, scraped their chairs noisily over the floor as they got to their feet, hitched their trousers (men and women both), yawned discreetly, wished one another well, and got the hell out of there. All except for Tommy Dog, who saw Benny rise hesitantly to his feet and knew Benny’s moment had come.
Yes. After everybody else left, Benny came down the aisle between the rows of folding chairs and said, “Hi, Mr. Dog.”
“Afternoon, Benny,” Tommy said. “You wanted to talk to me?”