allowing her an unencumbered central area in which to navigate.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “We’re just going to have to get you a beeper, that’s all there is to it. You can’t keep running from the twentieth century like this, especially since it’s almost over. No, even better than that, let me order you one of these new personal digital wireless assistants–”
“No microchip the size of my fingernail is going to order me around. Anyway, what’s so urgent?”
“Well, I need to ask you where I’m supposed to look for Indian records.”
“Try the Federal Records Center in Fort Worth,” Nick said, “or the Oklahoma Historical Society, if you’re interested in the Five Civilized Tribes. Are you working on the family groups for that guy from Ohio?”
She nodded. He instructed her to check the National Archives for Eastern Cherokee records, and just for the hell of it, the Carlisle Indian School files and the Eastern Cherokees vs. United States court records; and the card indexes for estate files at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Then, she ought to look at the transitional rolls between 1880-1890, and, of course, the Dawes Rolls.
“Oh, remember that non-Indian spouses were usually not listed in Indian census rolls,” he reminded her.
“Is that all? That shouldn’t take more than a year. What if this stuff isn’t available online?”
“I doubt much of it is, even though you’re constantly telling me how indispensable those damn computers are. Get the Plutarch to rush-order the microfilms they don’t already have. In this business, Hawty, dear, there are still times when you have to use your brain instead of your computer.”
She gave Nick a good-humored harrumph of mock indignation, and then said, “Oh, yeah, your lady friend. She’s called something like five times. That’s when I stopped counting.”
Nick rocked back in his wobbly chair and began to peruse a large glossily illustrated coffee-table book on Natchez that had just arrived from a publisher.
Hawty rolled her chariot up to his desk. “Well? You going to call her?”
“Nah. Got a date with her in a few hours. Besides, I want to surprise her. We’re going to Natchez. I want to introduce her to somebody.” He chuckled, but didn’t tell Hawty why. Some body. “Mind the store for a couple of days, will you? And make reservations at Hotel Portager for tomorrow night.”
“Two rooms?…Oh, never mind; of course it’s one. Sorry I even asked. Awwwwwww!…” Speechless in disgust, she held a hand in front of her face, as if warding off some malignant spirit. All she could manage as she yanked her chair around and wheeled toward her room was, “Men! All the same. They never buy the cow as long as they can get the milk for free.”
.
23
Bright and early the following day, Zola’s red turbo Volvo cruised effortlessly along I-10 and then ran like a deer through the twisting roads north of Baton Rouge. They searched for the famous plantations around St. Francisville, Audubon’s stomping grounds; they sought out a self-effacing but legendary filling station/diner in an isolated hamlet.
As they followed back roads hemmed in by fields of ten-foot-tall sugar cane, without warning they would come face to face with the monumental Mississippi River levee, looming over them like an ancient burial mound of a giant race.
“The river!” Nick exclaimed, slightly tipsy, sipping an after-lunch beer and pointing to the levee’s grassy hip. “It should remind us what a farce our petty dreams are. In our city, surrounded by human artifacts, we miss the elemental significance of the river. We’re lured into a false sense of mastery over the world, over ourselves. The river may be plain for all to see in New Orleans, but it’s become merely a prop for the tourism industry. There, there is the essence of history in tangible form! The river and history flow oblivious to our desires and efforts. Mortality, change, time, dimensions we only vaguely understand…the river can teach us. Ah, and the levee…signifying a huge green bank on the cosmic pool table that limits our elaborately planned but ultimately doomed trick shots…what are you laughing at?”
“The metaphysical ramblings of a drunk genealogist who thinks he’s Mark Twain and Thomas Wolfe combined.”
Laughing until tears came, Zola opened the sunroof and turned up the CD.
She drove aggressively, pumping the pedals and jamming the stick with an evident fondness for quick bursts of blazing acceleration. She didn’t dwell on the rear-view mirror any more than necessary for safety. The rest of her life was like that, too; Nick