to get it back, you know what I’m saying?
I shouldn’t tell anybody. Duh.
But can you do that? I’ve never known a guy who could keep a secret.
I can.
Even from your dad?
Sure.
Even from Cappy?
She heard me hesitate before I answered.
They’d whale on him too, she said. Maybe kill him. So you zip it and keep it zipped. On your mother’s life.
She knew what she was saying. She knew without looking that tears started in my eyes. I blinked.
Okay, I swear.
We have to bury the passbooks.
We turned down a dirt road and drove until we came to the tree that people call the hanging tree, a huge oak. The sun was in its branches. There were prayer flags, strips of cloth. Red, blue, green, white, the old-time Anishinaabe colors of the directions, according to Randall. Some cloths were faded, some new. This was the tree where those ancestors were hanged. None of the killers ever went on trial. I could see the land of their descendants, already full of row crops. Sonja took the ice scraper out of her glove compartment and we put the passbooks in the cash box. She pushed the key into her front jeans pocket.
Remember the day.
It was June 17.
We traced down the sun to a point on the horizon and then walked in a straight line from where the sun would set, fifty paces back into the woods. It took us what seemed like forever to scrape out a deep hole for the box, using just that ice scraper. But we got the box in and covered it up and fit the divots back on top and scattered them with leaves.
Invisible, I said.
We need to wash our hands, said Sonja.
There was some water in the ditch. We used that.
I get it about not telling anybody, I said as we drove home. But I want shoes like Cappy’s.
Sonja glanced over at me and almost caught me looking at the side of her breast.
Yeah, she said. And how would you explain where you’d got the money to buy them?
I’d say I had a job at the gas station.
She grinned. You want one?
Pleasure flooded into me so that I couldn’t speak. I hadn’t realized until then how much I wanted out of my house and how much I wanted to be working somewhere I could see and talk to other people, just random people coming through, people who weren’t dying right before your eyes. It frightened me to suddenly think that way.
Hell, yes! I said.
You don’t swear on the job, said Sonja. You’re representing something.
Okay. We drove for a few miles. I asked what I was representing.
Reservation-based free market enterprise. People are watching us.
Who’s watching us?
White people. I mean, resentful ones. You know? Like those Larks who owned Vinland. He’s been here, but he’s nice to me. Like, he’s not so bad.
Linden?
Yeah, that one.
You should watch out for him, I said.
She laughed. Whitey hates his guts. When I’m nice to him, he gets so jealous.
How come you wanna make Whitey jealous?
All of a sudden, I was jealous too. She laughed again and said that Whitey needed to get put in his place.
He thinks he owns me.
Oh.
I was awkward, but she suddenly glanced at me, sharp, with a naughty smirk like the one on that doll’s face. Then she looked away, still smiling with manic glee.
Yeah. Thinks he owns me. But he’ll find out he don’t, huh? Am I right?
Soren Bjerke, special agent for the FBI, was an impassive lanky Swede with wheat-colored skin and hair, a raw skinny nose, and big ears. You couldn’t really see his eyes behind his glasses—they were always smudged, I think on purpose. He had a droopy houndlike face and a modest little smile. He made few movements. There was a way he had of keeping perfectly still and watchful that reminded me of the ajijaak. His knobby hands were quiet on the kitchen table when I walked in. I stood in the doorway. My father was carrying two mugs of coffee to the table. I could tell I’d interrupted some cloud of concentration between them. My legs went weak with relief because I understood Bjerke’s visit was not about me.
That Bjerke was here anyway went back to Ex Parte Crow Dog and then the Major Crimes Act of 1885. That was when the federal government first intervened in the decisions Indians made among themselves regarding restitution and punishment. The reasons for Bjerke’s presence continued on through that rotten year for Indians, 1953, when Congress