not only decided to try Termination out on us but passed Public Law 280, which gave certain states criminal and civil jurisdiction over Indian lands within their borders. If there was one law that could be repealed or amended for Indians to this day, that would be Public Law 280. But on our particular reservation Bjerke’s presence was a statement of our toothless sovereignty. You have read this far and you know that I’m writing this story at a removal of time, from that summer in 1988, when my mother refused to come down the stairs and refused to talk to Soren Bjerke. She had lashed out at me and terrified my father. She had floated off, so that we didn’t know how to retrieve her. I’ve read that certain memories put down in agitation at a vulnerable age do not extinguish with time, but engrave ever deeper as they return and return. And yet, quite honestly, at that moment in 1988, as I looked at my father and Bjerke at our kitchen table, my brain was still stuffed with money like the head of that trashed doll with manufactured mischief in her eyes.
I walked past Bjerke into the living room but then I didn’t want to walk upstairs. I didn’t want to walk past my mother’s shut door. I didn’t want to know that she was lying in there, breathing in there, and with her constant suffering sucking all the juice out of the excitement of the money. But because I did not want to walk past my mother’s door, I turned and went back to the kitchen. I was hungry. I stood in the doorway fidgeting until the men again stopped talking.
Maybe you want a glass of milk, said my father. Get yourself a glass of milk and sit down. Your aunt made a cake for us. A small round chocolate cake, neatly iced, was set on the counter. My father waved me to it. I carefully cut four pieces and put them on saucers with a fork beside. I brought three of the pieces to the table. I poured myself a glass of milk.
I’ll take that up to your mother later on, said my father, nodding at the last piece of cake.
So I sat down with the men. And I realized I had made a mistake. Now that I was sitting in their proximity, the truth would pull at me. Not the gas can truth. But when they seemed to wait for me to speak, I threw that out, nervously, asking if it could be evidence.
Yes, said Bjerke. His no-flinch gaze pierced the scum on his eyeglasses. We’ll do an affidavit. All in time. If we have a case.
Yes, sir. Well, I gathered my courage, maybe we should do it now. Before I forget.
Is he the forgetful type? asked Bjerke.
No, said my father.
Still, I ended up talking into a little tape recorder and signing a paper. After that, there were some politely well-meant questions about what I was up to that summer and how tall I was growing and which sports I’d go out for in junior high school. Wrestling, I said. They struggled to not look skeptical. Or maybe cross-country? That seemed more believable. I could tell that both men were glad to have me there but also fending off some large morose silence of confusion between them that probably stemmed, now that I think back to that day and that hour, to their impasse. They were out of ideas and had no suspects and no sure leads and no help at all from my mother, who now insisted that the event itself had passed from her mind. The money was still pushing at me to talk, to reveal.
There’s something, I said.
I put down my fork and looked at my empty plate. I wanted another piece, this time with ice cream. At the same time, I had a sick sense of what I was about to do and thought that I might never eat again.
Something? said my father. Bjerke wiped his lips.
There was a file, I said.
Bjerke put down his napkin. My father peered at me over the rims of his eyeglasses.
Joe and I went through the files, he said to Bjerke, by way of explaining my unexpected remark. We pulled the possible court cases where someone might have—
Not that kind of file, I said.
The two of them nodded at me patiently. Then I saw my father realize there was something he did not know in