The 5th Law of Light

There are countless sources of light. A human body at a certain temperature emits black-body radiation and is the most common. The sun emits radiation that is in the electromagnetic spectrum visible to humans. Incandescent light bulbs are poor conductors; only 10% of their energy is visible light. As temperature increases, radiation shifts towards shorter wavelengths; producing a red, then white, and finally a blue color as the peak moves out of the visible spectrum and into the ultraviolet. A blue flame is most commonly seen in a gas flame, or a welders torch. Wikipedia, article discussing sources of light

Everything that rises must converge. Flannery OConnor

These dusty blues are the dustiest ones I know, These dusty blues are the dustiest ones I know, Buried head over heels in the black old dust I had to pack up and go. An I just blowed in, an Ill soon blow out again. Woody Guthrie, Dust Bowl Blues

"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as

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ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Suburban Arrows

July 27, 2003 1:13 pm 109 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees off all time high) Winds: Stagnant. 0-2 Kn on Beaufort Scale

Whipped

about by violent, unpredictable crosswinds, the Bell LongRanger helicopter descended to an uneven hover a few feet above the cotton field, just across the dirt road that separated countless miles of dried out, marginal farmland from the old, granite-walled prison. Caught in the helos rotor-wash, a rough mixture of desiccated prairie dust swept up inexorably into the arid air only to fall moments later like a divine curtain, settling over the gravel road connecting the highway to the penitentiary, settling on the chassis of least two dozen vehicles parked indiscriminately near the prisons main gate, and finally settling on the front windshield of Justice Reywals Suburban. The laboring helicopter, dangerously close to maximum weight, ferrying at least ten passengers, rocked back and forth, rising and falling, tempting fate, testing the air currents, the violent updrafts and

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wind sheer common to the area, testing the periphery of Newtons Third Law. Through his front windshield, grimy from the hundred plus mile trip, Justice Reywal deliberately watched the sideshow unfurl before him. He pulled back a lever in the steering column and watched as two small streams of wiper fluid sprayed over the windshield. He flicked on the wipers, trying to clear the sheet of dust away, to get a better view of the powerful helicopter, trying to gauge if it was safe to exit the vehicle. No sense in getting out until the helicopter had landed and powered down its main rotors. Swaying from side to side, swinging wildly in the breeze, the helicopter resembled an old gas lantern hanging off a barnyard crossbeam, caught in a tornados fierce leading edge. And then everything in front of Justice Reywals eyes went black as the helicopter pitched forward suddenly, its whirling blades coming perilously close to hitting Tierra firma. The violent downdraft sent a roiling, black cloud of Oklahoma dust swirling towards him, temporarily obscuring the blazing sun above, the mammoth prison gates in front of him, the guards lined up with their riot guns, and reporters from at least a dozen news and wire services. When the helicopter finally touched down, a few seconds later, and the sound of the powerful engines ebbed, that was when the fun began. Newsprint journalists from USA Today, The Oklahoman, and a halfdozen other minor, statewide newspapers were there, standing alongside their brothers in the mass media. Justice Reywal thought they looked like ill-informed vultures, not understanding the brutal dynamics of the dust bowl. They stood there in disparate groups, shielding their eyes from the dust and the sun, sweating out the long hot hours underneath the intense sunlight for a meal that might not come. The alphabets of Ambush TV were all there: CNN, CNBC, FOX News; the traditional big threeABC, NBC, CBS; and of course, PBS. A few fledgling minors filled out the roster. All looking for a story. A story that was as old as the earth itself. A story told so often it had long ago bridged the gap from clich and passed to the moribund. Yet these reporters were hungry and never seemed to tire in their quest for a fresh angle; something of substance that could procure for them the coveted Pulitzer and an appearance on Nightline; a clever, ten-second sound bite to fill a portion of the nightly news. For once the men and women wielding pens and microphones would not have far to go for a story. Their workload had been cut in half. This time the story had come to them. Justice Reywal had seen to that. It had taken but one phone call a week earlier to set the wheels in motion.

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The call originated from a small office on the outskirts of Broken Arrow, Oklahomaa call placed by Reywal himself. The recipient? John Ravageone of the American Indian Movements most prominent activists for the last quarter century, headquartered at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Once John Ravage became involved, the pieces quickly fell into place. Ravage made a few phone calls to the appropriate agencies and a few favors were cashed in. Soon they swept into tiny Granite, Oklahoma with stunning speed, these television and newspaper reporters with pale bodies and honed instincts, their penchant for starting trouble, carrying the sharpened accoutrements of the trade and even sharper minds, leaving behind words like morality and objectivity and honor. At least seventy of them came, bottom feeders and mid-level, soldiers of the industry, driving or flying into Granites town limits like arrows shot from the staunchest bow. Wielding unimaginable carte blanche and no-limit plastic, they quickly rented out all the available cars from the local Hertz stand and pillaged the shelves of the country store of all designer water bottles, turkey and ham sandwiches shrink wrapped in plastic, protein and granola bars and instant ricethe preferred food of the modern-day, linguistic commando. They stuffed sweaty, unshaven, badly dressed, pulsating bodies three to a room at the two local, single-story motels and filled the Naugahyde booths of the few, quaint, sleepy diners that lined the shoulders of Highway 9. For a little over thirty-six hours, the towns eighteen hundred inhabitants felt as if theyd been invaded by some strange, secular army. Granite, Oklahoma, a largely Pentecostal Evangelist, Bible belt, holy-roller town born of temperance, obstinacy, kept alive by sheer willpower and at one time Roosevelts WPA, had no choice but to sweat the throng out. The town was buried in the desolate, southwestern part of the state, Great Plains Country, Tom Joad country, smack in the middle of Greer Countya county forged from the bowels of turmoil itself, having been forcibly annexed in 1896 from the state of Texas and handed over to Oklahoma Territory in a monumental Supreme Court decision. It was the dead of summer, and as the mercury climbed, as the creeks and rivers and waterholes and reservoirs dried up, as the cotton and wheat crops gave way to invasive salt cedar shrubs and buffalo grass, as the emaciated cattle herds drifted from field to field looking for pastureland, as the threat of dust storms materialized and lingered like the threat of bank foreclosure, the municipality of Granite, like many other towns of the same nature, would come to a standstill. Nothing moved in the Oklahoma heat. Not the locals. Not the cotton or pecan farmers or the Sorghum Mill workers. Not the men and

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women who built agricultural machinery or the men who harnessed raw methane at the natural gas processing plants. And certainly not progress. Nothing moved forward but the dust devils and the 60 mph winds and the clotted, clumps of dead grass that blew across the dead flats and over the rural roads, and the herds of steer flicking tails at flies and the white tailed deer scurrying to find safety under shade. Nothing made a man look more into the past like the power of heatshimmer, highway mirages, refracted pools of light and heat rising from the blacktops and abandoned fields, giving us harrowing images: The frightening black blizzards that rolled over homes and farms and the hobos that rode the rails and made them their home. Depression era cars, the 1930 Nash 450 Single Six Sedans and the 1932 Ford station wagons and the Chrysler flatbeds, riding low to the ground, packed to the rafters with Okie artifacts and human overload, heading for the states western border along Route 66. They traveled largely during the day, pulling over to the roads shoulders many times because no headlight could penetrate the swirling muck of those storms. By the time these Okie sharecroppers reached the border of California, they were broken down and beaten, carrying with them reflections of the vicious dustbowl storms of the 1930s and their faded dreams of glory. Justice Reywal stepped out of the pale-white Suburban and planted his feet as firmly as one could on the loose Oklahoma soil. He shielded his eyes with his hand, waiting for the cloud of floating dust to settle to the ground. His boot heels sank half an inch into the gradient of fine dust. It always amazed him how easily the topsoil in this region of the state disintegrated and blew away with the slightest breeze. Seventy plus years after the dust bowl and the land had yet to settle and heal. Hed lived deep inside the belly of this nomadic state for years now eight to be exact; yet he still hadnt gotten use to the fluidity of the ground, which seemed to change continually underneath ones boot heels with each passing step. To Justice Reywal, it was like walking constantly over a pit full of angry rattlers. Sure is a hot one today. The repatriated man of Sioux descent said to no one in particular, as he bathed in the warm rays of a blanketing, bright, blue sky. He looked across the road, no more than twenty yards away. The helicopter, painted in bureaucrat dark-blue with white trim and emblazoned with the official state seal on the tail rotor mast had touched down on an empty field thatin better days would have been full with rows and rows of budding cotton shrubstoo many for the eye to count. Now the field was empty and useless. A string of one hundred degree plus temperature days, coupled with a drought approaching the sixty-day mark had exacerbated desert conditions in the region. And one look up at the clear, foam-blue sky told Justice that neither rain nor help would be arriving anytime soon.

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How he missed the rainthose intermittent occasions years ago on the reservation when hed woken in the morning to the sudden trembling sound and light bursts of unexpected thunder and rain. The distinct lines of tumbling cumulus clouds with their ragged edges, piled as high as the plains were deep; the rippling effect of thunder on the air; the sweet smell of wet dew permeating the sterile vacuum that had enveloped the morning air. It all seemed so long ago. Those flashes of thought, which he had repressed for so long, yet had learned to love in this latter stage of manhood, now flashed yellow through his cardboard memory. As the helos turbo-shaft engine powered down, the elongated, fourbladed main rotor system began to wind to a stop. Moments later, and only when the blades came to a full standstill, a handful of men, wearing serious, freshly-shaven faces, harsh military haircuts, and an abrupt, thuggish manner that reeked of high-level bureaucracy threw open the sliding cabin door and leapt out of the seven-seat LongRanger. In their hands they carried cameras, microphones, tripods, writing pads, laptops or briefcases. Concealed in shoulder holsters underneath dark-colored, serious, two-piece business suits were their guns; Glock and Beretta semi-automatics for the younger agents, chrome plated Smith and Wesson revolvers for the older. Most wore mirror-shaded sunglasses; the kind preferred by fighter pilots and most security forces employed by the federal government. The group acted as a single entity. Their quick, collective, precise movements, combined with the mens glowering, authoritarian stares commanded a certain degree of attention and respect from the assembled men and women of the Fourth Estate, causing instantaneous paralysis among the crowd. The group disembarking from the helicopter quickly spotted the waiting mongrel pack of newsmen and reporters. The group acted first. It was their job to act first. It was their way of being, the way they had been trained to act for years, since leaving various academies or agencies. Fully prepared, each step a choreograph of exactitude, they moved towards the microphones and cameras. One very important man among them collected his thoughts as he walked, galvanizing his answers to the controversial questions that would be posed. There would be few surprises. Many of those questions had been prearranged; fed by the governors support groups and lobbyists to all the reporters who wanted to keep up a status quo with the current administration. Political access was everything, and if a renegade reporter dared to stray from the pack and ask impertinent, damaging questionswell, he/she would soon find themselves standing on the outside in broad daylight with every door, every avenue and every conference room closed to him and his employer. Soon they would be out of a job, another MIA who dared to strike the chord of dissent.

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Oklahoma was the Siberia of American politics, the Black Hole of Calcutta. The reporters who had made the trip did not wish to rock the boat and anger the governor; thereby risk being sent to even more unattractive alternativescovering state fairs from Idaho to Manitoba, sentenced to a life covering fattest hog contests; or sent down south to the border, so unrestricted and disorganized, writing about the plight of illegal aliens who dared to cross the barren, isolated Arizona-Mexican border. The man, tall and lean, his handsome Anglo, angel-face sunburned from three solid weeks of campaigning out in the sun, stood out from the rest of the pack, despite the fact that he was completely surrounded. Eschewing the formal wear of his compatriots for blue jeans, loafers, and a black and gray flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows to strike a workingmans image, the man intuitively collapsed to the center of the group, flashing his bright blue eyes for the benefit of the cameras. Justice laughed silently. He had witnessed that analogous, synchronized assembly so many times before. There was nothing spontaneous about it. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and powerless the intent of the brute display of force and cohesivenesshe felt completely at ease, composed. This tactic was a common sight in strong republican footholds such as Texas and Oklahoma. Weak, liberal-minded, progressive democratic candidates on the campaign trail had often sought, in the past, protection from the rough crowds that showed up like a school of hungry pike trolling for baitfish. The denizens of Oklahoma hated left wing politicians more than drought or government intrusion of all forms. These candidates carried with them the stigma of being too soft, being communists, being too soft on communists, abortionists, or believers in evolution. Or all of the above. This time it was different, though. The man in question was neither weak, nor foolish, nor a democrat. He was there to take care of business; not to make empty speeches. He was there in a fight to the death, not to take pitiful jabs or hurl insults at his opponent. And unlike his staunch, Pentecostal predecessors, he believed in Darwinism. He believed that evolution, like God, had played a large role in assembling blue oceans with blue skies, the green rivers that spilled their wintry froth over greener meadows, meadows shedding themselves of shade and opening up to wide valleys that in turn opened up to vast golden fields full of cattails and spikelets of hulled wheat that caught the golden light from above, and thus required time to pause, rest, to reserve that seventh day for praise and prayer. And this manner of thought, freed and unrestrained of the Holy Roller mentality that permeated the region, made the man all that more dangerous. After a few more seconds, the man came into focus. Justice recognized his face instantly. His jaw dropped open. He blinked eyes 7

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his repeatedly. He stared into the mans face for what appeared to be a long time. His muscles froze in a locked position. He could not believe what he was seeing. The man was Governor Fritz Holloway, the popular, fifty-two year old incumbent Republican deep in the midst of a re-election campaign. A very busy man, to say the least: The past few weeks had found the governor throwing buckets of cold water over the fiery scandals that had recently rocked his otherwise stalwart administration. The bright sunlight spilling over his simple, stoic frame as he walked leached out from his face all mystery. He carried with him a confident, carefree demeanor, yet he lacked that egotistical attitude so common to men that lived and breathed in the public eye. Any voter or casual bystander standing nearby his radiance would have been hard pressed to believe that this man, who had served the public office so faithfully for so long, was in fact, up to his elbows in dirt and grime. Although Justice wasnt aware, the governor had come to Granite with a singular purpose in mindto destroy Justice Reywal right where he stood, right in front of the rolling cameras and the microphones and the warden walking the corridors of the prison like an ant in a tunnel. In front of the entire country. Justice frowned. Son of a bitch! What the hell was Holloway doing here? Justice hadnt read about this stop in any of the local papers. Two days before The Oklahoman had published the governors itinerary for the week and Granite had not been mentionednot once. Justice was perplexed. He felt like a nave child. The cylinder that was his mind heated up with thoughts, seeking out quick answers, spitting out nothing. He was unsure how this man, his archrival, had come to choose this exact day and time. But he was becoming increasingly aware, as the seconds floated by in front of his face, that his own presence had everything to do with it. One thing was for certain, Justice realized, as his stomachs contents dive-bombed into the hole that was his intestines. The wheels of fate had just turned, and they had just dealt Justice Reywal a severe kick to the groin. The mere fact the governor had chosen the Oklahoma State Reformatory as a rallying point, when neither Justice nor the press had invited or briefed him on the situation, was largely disconcerting. It was a bomb in the vast political wasteland waiting to be detonated Hungry and gaining momentum for the upcoming election, looking for press coverage by whichever means he could manufacture it, contrived or connived, Justice realized one thingthe governor now stood in his way, a formidable opponent lodged against him on a neutral sight, trying to steal away important air time, trying to throw the wolves off the scent, trying to lobby the people and gather votes. Justice stood there alone, licking his lips nervously. His mouth went dry. He tasted copper. His mind remembered the dry cloud of chalk 8

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dust that floated over him as he batted erasers together during many long school sessions. He toed the soft dirt with the tip of his boot. Justice Reywal checked his watch. Almost time for the show. The limelight would make Holloway, like most politicians, a tough adversary. If they stood toe-to-toe, debating the inevitable moment that was just over twenty minutes away from unfolding, Justice would need to keep his wits and equanimity to have a chance. It was necessary, for this was an important event and the state of Oklahoma, along with most of the Indian Nation, was watching. Justice had cut his teeth for many years in the lower courts, and that would make arguing with the governor all that much easier. Intuitive. Words would arrive on his lips, truncated and unfiltered, like bullets from a full mag entering the most hallowed chamber. And, of course, there was the concept of freedom of speech. The beautiful thing about freedom of speech was that it preserved ones ignorance, and gave them the right to vocalize it, and consequently enabled others the chance to refute that ignorance in an open forum. With a little luck the governor would commit a snafu of some sort. And Justice would be there waiting, ready to pounce like a thirsty jackal. Justice crouched down on the ground, trying hard to assemble a plan, reflecting on all possible outcomes. Reaching down between his legs, he grabbed a fistful of Oklahoma dirt and brought it close to his face for inspection. Keeping a watchful eye on the governor, he let the parched earth cascade thru his fingers, partially obscuring his sight in the process. The desiccated sand ran through his fingers with ease, falling quickly back to earth in a neat, tidy, reddish-black pile. The governors face became lost in the transition, lost in the periphery of dirt and light as the sand continued to run through Justices hand. Justice found it ironic that he had bathed Oklahomas golden boy in an appropriate welcome, for Justicewho still held a place in the Bar Association and had yet to shake the obligatory, condemnatory manner innate to lawyersregarded Holloway as a dirty politician who survived by projecting a squeaky clean image, burying the many lies underneath the many mounds of earth that topped the many graves. A young Indian man, in his early twenties, wearing sunglasses and a mild, detached demeanor, exited from the Suburban. It was hot and the old Chevy had no air-conditioning. He closed the passenger side door behind him. Immediately he winced as the heat enveloped him. He spotted Justice, hunkered down in a deep squat a few yards away. He walked towards him, pushing his long, raven hair away from his cheeks and forehead. Without saying a word, he crouched down and took his place next to Justice. Justice turned to the young man. He saw his own reflection beaming back at him in the mirrored lenses. Deep lines and furrows framed a face that had aged somewhat over the last few weeks, a reminder that his work had finally caught up to him. He was battered. Tired. Yet he 9

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spoke softly, assuredly, as a teacher would speak to a most treasured student. Justice nodded towards the assembling press corps. Theyll inject themselves into the story before the days over. He paused to wipe the sweat off his brow. He gazed at the young man. Its the only thing they know for certain. The young man remained silent. He turned and stared at the many men and women that had turned out for the spectacle. He tilted his head to one side, trying to come to grips with the incongruousness of it all. And though his face behind the sunglasses puckered up with disgust, and the ends of his mouth fell downward in a sneer, he still said nothing. Nothin out here but ghosts of the dust bowl unturned. Justice paused. He scooped up more of the sand and repeated the process for the young mans benefit. The ground at his boot heels glittered like a diamond field, but there were no diamonds, of course, because diamonds carried thousands of points of light, reflecting regality and self-worth. Their scarcity was the very thing that made them valuable, and that particular gravel was everywhere, all pervasive, and one could rummage around the sight for days, poking and turning the earth and still find nothing of value in it. Would you believe this dirt, appearing so simple and harmless, almost frail, was the main reason half a million people lost their homes and farms during the dust bowl? The young man, possessing wide, angular, chiseled cheekbones and the burnt-red skin common to the nation, leaned in closer and watched the sandy grains slip through Justices clenched fist. The pile would remain there until the next windstorm rolled across the tundra, swooping the sand up in its feathery grasp and flinging it far down the plateau miles away. By early sunrise tomorrow or as late as the following weekthat tiny pile of sand forming between Justice Reywals legs will have ceased to exist altogether, having been blown away clear across the county line, possibly to another state. Nebraska. Texas. New Mexico. It didnt matter. It was dirt. And no one cared about dirt unless you were a crooked cop or politician and you had it all over you; in every trouser pocket and closet in your home, in every orifice and organ of your battered soul, imbedded in the gray matter of the brain and instilling the bearer with either the burden of guilt or refutation. No one cared about dirt until it was time to hide it. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Justice lamented. In Oklahoma, you learn to breath in intervals. The stench of bodies under a blistering summer sun or in close quarters is unbearable. Add to that the constant blanket of burnt-orange prairie dust that hangs in the air. So still, unable to move. He wiped his hands clean. Its almost as if the dust, once lifted and freed from the land doesnt want to come down. Fights gravity every step of the way. But nothing out here 10

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escapes. The dust eventually falls back to earth and the politicians continue to lie and the justice system spews out false hope. Everything eventually goes back to normal. Why Justice Reywal, if you asked me, Id say it looks like Black Sunday all over again Justice grinned at the sound of the familiar, disembodied voice coming from behind him. He dusted off his hands and abandoned his crouch. He stood, turning slowly. Not wanting to give away his obvious joy, he reigned in the expression on his face. Standing there casually, one hand resting on his hip and the other holding onto a writing pad, was Faro Brandi-Shaw; a forty year old, African American reporter from The Oklahoman who, barely over a year ago had written a favorable, three-part expose on Justice Reywal. The articles had been printed a few weeks before Justices book, Suburban Arrows had been published and brought the spotlight to poor, destitute places like Broken Arrow and Pine Ridge and Shannon County, some of the poorest tracts of land in the nation. In turn, Justice, recognizing the sheer respect Brandi-Shaw carried in the literary community, had credited Brandi-Shaws articles for having an immediate impact on the book; the favorable reviews and the resultant brisk sales. Brandi-Shaw looked down and spotted the small pile of dirt, multihued in color, a vessel of this Martian landscape. His grin evaporated instantly, lost to the dry heat. It seemed the rule of the day: No one was allowed to express even a vestige of a smile on that dry-boned land. Born and bred in the east coast, in a small town in Long Island, Brandi-Shaw had not yet grown accustomed to this corrugated land, the incessant heat and the still air and the days rolling by the calendar free of rain. The Southwest tip of Oklahoma was a land where natural lakes and rivers and creeks and fresh breezes were uncommon and anomalous. His Black Sunday statement was a reference to the infamous dust bowl storm of April 14, 1935, a ferocious black-blizzard froth that had devoured like a hungry beast the states populace and turned the clear Oklahoma day into instant night. Justice looked at the tall, dashing black man, green-eyed, dressed in a knit oxford and rust-colored canvas pants. He shrugged. It didnt surprise him that Brandi-Shaw was familiar with the storm, even having committed to memory the exact date. Every self-respecting citizen living in the Frontier Strip had engraved to memory, thru folklore or photographs, the ferocity of the storm, which eventually reached all the way to Chicago, depositing over four pounds of debris per person on that citys streets. I read about that storm once back at the school. The young man in sunglasses said, not bothering to look up. The way he bitterly spat out those last two words sent a shiver racing through Justices gut. Justice knew all too well the source of all that rage and conflict. An 11

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empty space inside the young mans soul that had grown throughout his formative years, a cavity continually pulsing, swallowing everything good and emanating nothing but clear hate. It was a dark, lonely, forbidden place, devoid of mirth and integrity and empathy. Justice had been there many times. Hed been a castoff himself, an American Indian struggling with his identity, working his way through law school. Hed reveled and embraced that same depravity, the way it swept over him like a duster entering a dry gulch, thoroughly entrenching itself, running the gamut of his soul. He had reached out and befriended the stark fury on too many occasions to list; each moment leaving its indelible mark on him. It shattered his past into a thousand fragments and turned him into a fragile man bleeding from the inside out, fighting the face in the morning mirror. And then the nightmares started. There was but one thing to do, Justice thought, if he wanted to quiet them. Knowing the destructive future that lied ahead if one chose not to reconcile the past, Justice began to look into this young mans whereaboutsjust after his fateful trip to Esperanza Ridge a little over five years ago. Justices moment of recompense. In his dreams he wondered if that young Indian boy, whom hed left standing on the steps of the Wahsheton Indian School so long ago, alone and frightened, still chose to wear sunglasses. He wondered if behind those mirrored shades the shadows, the wrath of God and all the evil that man brought with him, still loomed. Seventeen years had come and gone. He was all of six when Justice left him. Yet Justice made it his mission to find him. It would be hard, difficult, but with his connections, not impossible. It took a little less than two years. He searched for him during those rare moments when he wasnt writing or following the Lake brothers progress in jail. He flew on his own dime. Ate in musty, all-night barbecue stands and slept in decaying, twenty dollar-a-night motels. But in the end, using aged school records to guide him, Justice Reywal succeeded. Two months ago, he found the young manno, rescued him was a better termas he worked the rusted oil-derricks in a flamed-out section of Western Kansas. Heard it was a sight to behold. The young man continued, unable to disguise his irritation, partly against the mounting heat, partly against the ghosts the withered landscape brought back to him. Dust clouds blacked out the sky and all you saw was night from floor to ceiling. Okies didnt know any better and thought it was the coming of the apocalypse as the bible promised. Poor dumb bastards never knew what hit them. Just look at it Justice pointed at the tiny pile of black grit lying on the ground in front of them. Brandi-Shaw followed his finger. That tiny mound of topsoil helped trigger a mass migration that stretched all the way from Oklahoma to California. A large segment of the 12

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population just packed up and left. What Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. Sometimes the clouds generated by the storms grew so thick and high they resembled mountain ranges. If you didnt know where youd gone to bed at the time, you would have woken up one morning swearing you lived in the Appalachians or Rockies. Thats how high those clouds reached. By the time you figured out where you really were it was too late. Your farmhouse was buried to the hilt in sand and your livestock suffocated. Brandi-Shaw nodded. He placed a reassuring hand on Reywals shoulder. My granddaddy told me once, when he was a young boy, a storm came through and wiped out the family farm near Sand Creek in a single day. Swallowed horses and cattle whole. Filled the drinking hole with sand in just over a few hours. Buried the tractor under a wall fifteen feet high. Sent the family running for cover. Sent them packing the other way, to New York City. Only the sand wasnt black like this. He dropped to the turf and poked his finger into the land, inspecting the darkened earth, the old wounds that hadnt healed with time. Granddaddy said it was the color red and that something so inimical had to have come up from hell itself. Nothing comes from hell but misery and molasses. Justice spat out, wryly. And they both stick the same. This dust, however, comes from all over these parts. Black means Kansas; red, eastern Colorado; and yellow, New Mexico and south-central Colorado. The black looks more menacing, but the yellow is the most troublesome of all. Its extremely fine, almost like talc, and worms its way into every crack and crevice. Destroys machinery and electrical items and suffocates small animals. Brings out the whooping cough in people. Justice paused, staring hard at Brandi-Shaw. What the hell you doing out here anyway, Brandi-Shaw? This is no place for an eastern-bred college boy from Harvard Yard. Nothing out here but convicts, cotton and drought. And neither are going away anytime soon. I guess I have one hell of a travel agent. Brandi-Shaw said, playfully. I dont really knowI guess maybe Im drawn to train wrecks. He stood and wiped away the tiny beads of sweat accumulating on his forehead. Whoever thought a doctorate in Constitutional Theory from Harvard would bring me out to a place stuck in a time warp, suffering the effects of drought? Brandi-Shaw asked. Exceptional drought. Reywal corrected him. Whats that? When you can feel the glaciers melting. Rain follows the plowmy daddy used to say. Another man chipped in. A farmer. Tall and round and soileddefinitely an Okie. He had crept up behind the threesome unnoticedno mean feat considering the mans thick, fiery jowls and swollen girth. Justice took him in, open mouthed and astounded. He marveled at the way the 13

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flesh hung fallow off the mans chin; layers and years of obesity dangling, ending at the top of the mans huge barrel chest. It was as if sometime before, years or possibly even decades, the man had one day opened his expansive jaw and begun to eat the land itself, shoveling in parcel by parcel, acre after acre, and then, after having accrued a ravenous liking for it, the dry vastness of it all grinding between molars and front teeth, feeling hollow inside no matter how much he took down, he had stooped down to quench a bloated thirst, drinking the creek beds and rivers dry, only to find he was unable and unwilling to yield to the greedthe need to consume and pillage. To Justice Reywal, he was the living embodiment of the ravaging dry spell that marked them all. A huge potbelly completed the farmers unsightly aesthetic, spilling out from underneath a crimson t-shirt, the pits of both arms circled with sweat, SCHOONERS emblazoned across the front in a semi circle. Below it was the universitys mascot, a cream colored Conestoga powered by two white ponies. Crimson and cream matching suspenders, attached to unsightly, dirty, denim coveralls that were tattered and faded and whitewashed and stretched to their breaking point like the surrounding countryside itself, propped up the entire mass. From his gargantuan hand hung a black, metal lunch pail, which looked absurdly small in the mans enormous claw. Out here, theres nothin. Nothin but confusion in the ground. Dead cotton plants all around as far as the eye can see. So arid the sunflowers and thistle dry up before they make seed. Corn dies before it tassels out. It rains during harvesting when it should be dry, and its dry during growing season when the plants need rain. He plucked a straw hat off his huge pumpkin head and wiped the sweat off his sun burnt brow with the back of his palm. No sir. Cotton picker dont know how to do its job any more than the cotton stripper does. In the meantime, the boll weevil waits, getting stronger by the hour I tell you, aint nothin out here but total confusionconfusion made worse by this insufferable heat. Maybe thats what we need? Confusion. Brandi-Shaw challenged the man. Maybe thats the only way to affect change. God only knows, the government is up to its neck in tyrants and religious zealots. While the state legislature is busy praying and stealing, the republican congress continually sticks its nose in Bureau of Indian affairs. President Bush is talking about drilling for coalbed methane out in the Powder River Basin. Already the Tongue River is showing signs of damage. It took six months for the Bureau of Reclamation to fix the pipeline feeding clean water into Slaughterville. The feds couldnt agree how to divert funds to have water trucked in. The whole town almost died of thirst, waiting for the wheels of government to turn. All those Cheyenne people and no watermakes me sick to my stomach. Brandi-Shaws voice grew with understandable annoyance. During the 14

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day they remove their hats, bow their heads and read the bible with fingers crossed. During the night theyre out breaking commandments. Doesnt make any sense to me at all. Fundins all gone. Dried up and gone elsewhere, I guess. The farmer said, matter-of-factly. His blue eyes stared out to the horizon, unwavering, growing darker as the moment stretched on, as if a mantle of cloud cover had passed overhead and blocked the light from reaching them. He stood tall and massive and erect, a man waiting for the presumed moment of edification, his massive legs like twin, solid, naked steel beams waiting to be covered over with glass and cement and wire. Why Brandi-Shaw, Justice mocked. If I didnt know any better, Id say youd lost your journalistic objectivity. I wonder what your editor and the folks back at the Harvard Crimson would have to say about that? Dont kid yourself Reywal. You of all people should know its always personal. If it doesnt strike a nerve, youre not doing your job. And dont forgetI read your book. Hell, I helped push it up the ladder of acceptance, beyond reproach. And weve worked togetherThe DOJs refusal to recognize Indian voting claimsPressuring the EPA to grant tribes the right to develop their own water quality programs under the Clean Water ActWe helped the tribes focus on those key issues. Ive seen you on the attack. I know the things you are capable of. I know the depths to which your personal involvement goes. And I sure as hell know you more than you think I do. His eyes grew focused, narrow, the way they always did when he was busy formulating and projecting an argument. He jabbed Reywal in the chest with an enthusiastic finger. Hell, Id even venture to say you left journalistic objectivity behind a long time ago yourself. I doubt I ever had any in the first place, Brandi-Shaw. If I did, it was probably by accident or a sudden, misguided attack of ethics. Maybe something I ate for breakfast. Or maybe I disregarded objectivity altogether because I never wanted to disconnect from the human side the suffering behind the scenes, the misery thats written about, but rarely experienced by members of the Fourth Estate. Justice shook his head, trying to oust the melancholy that had crept in, prying its way into his mind through eyes half-shut from the suns harsh glare. Either way, Im sure of one thing and one thing only. Brandi-Shaw waited patiently for him to explain. I think of myself as an honest person, but not much more beyond that. He stared hard at Brandi-Shaw. He cleared his throat and continued. People that confuse honesty with objectivity will soon find themselves smack in the middle of the sandstorm, sucking dry wind and begging for wet handkerchiefs, watching kitchen equipment swirl around them like hand grenades. Geez. Brandi-Shaw joked. And I thought you were the paragon of virtuosity of our little fraternity. When did you morph into the 15

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unheralded cynic of the spoken word? Hasnt been that long since I last saw you. I guess I called the hand of skepticism and upped the ante. Its far easier that waylooking at life through dark sunglasses. No rose tinted lenses here. Maybe the kids got it right. Reywal pointed at the young man in sunglasses, who stood by silently, watching the pair, adjusting the plastic-shelled frames that covered his eyes. You sound defeated, Reywal. I sound tired. Defeats waiting around the corner, though. I hope youre not going to give up. If you asked me, that would be a huge mistake. The Indians would lose a valuable asset to the cause. Set them back a few years. Ravage cant do it alone. Well, Im really sorry Brandi-Shaw, but life isnt very convenient out here in this secular wilderness. Your homework is never over, schools never out, and the facts rarely stack up in your favor. Justice pointed at Brandi-Shaws notebook, with its pages full of scribbles and observations. You dont just assemble facts and statistics, throw them into a neat little pile in the corner of the room and call it a day. Pessimism pervades the very core of this business. And the facts? Well, the facts always have consequences. For your subject. For yourself. Ask your publisher. Hell tell you the same thing. Youre wrong Reywal. You and I have done a lot of good publishing the facts, the statisticsseparating a lot of truth from government propaganda. Weve helped a lot of people that would have otherwise been trampled by the system. American Indians. Farmers. Migrant workers. They would all probably disagree with you. Im sure they all believe you can still help them. He reflected on his words. His eyes fell down to his pad, where he furiously scribbled something. He glanced up at Justice, peeking through a furrowed brow. Well? Dont you think you can still make a difference? A difference? Justices eyebrows arched up in response like duel molehills full of wonderment. Who was this guy kidding? Its too early to stop rattling your saber. Thats what I think, anyway. Brandi-Shaw shook his head in a taciturn manner. He bent over and picked out a chunk of native selenite from the hard turf. Immediately, the stinging heat emanating from the sun-baked crystals seared his palm. Carefully, Brandi-Shaw wiped some crud off the stones outer edges, gaining access to minerals long dormant, edging into a faint kind of physical intimacy with the rock. And then, without a word, he flung it far into the cotton fields, grunting, wincing noticeably as his hand let go. Justice watched as the rock soared high into the bright column of day. Landing, the glittering selenite bounced a few times over the baked ground and came to a standstill. They all heard the echoes, immediate and sharp, clack-clack reverberations that seemed to move faster and more distinct in the dry heat. The echoes

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rose above and beyond the medias voices and sounds of prison industry. As the seconds ticked off some worldly clock, Justice began to notice something far more extraordinary materializing inside each wrinkle, each cell and blood vessel that lived on the face of Faro Brandi-Shaw. As the rock came to a rest, the echoes ignited in BrandiShaw a selfless insight, a fleeting, and yet visceral reflection of his home back east. He thought of the city, the shuffling sounds of human feet slogging to and from work each day and the rush hour traffic caught at a standstill and the searing nightlife, the saxophones and horns emanating from the Jazz clubs midtown and the deep, thumping bass of the younger set all interwoven together inside a blanket replete with brimming energy, neon fizzling loudly in the rain and telephone wires humming with voices and printing presses churning out front page headlinese in bold type and office windows lit up at 5 and sidewalk hawkers displaying their cheap wares. These disparate moments of grace so inclined to mesh together, so full of intricacy were they, car horns blasting away and pedestrians walking hurriedly over streets and sidewalks, their arms packed with brown bags full of groceries, men standing on opposite street-corners handing out leaflets that paid homage to a causeany cause they could think of, while in their hearts and minds the people criss-crossing the avenues and alleyways of his neighborhood like ants scrambling down the tunnels of anthills carried the burden that was blind hope. He thought of simple men and women that lived in a complex world, garbage men dragging heavy metal trashcans against cement walkways in the cold of winter and taxi drivers hurling epithets at the street urchins and the postal clerks delivering the bills the day after Christmas and the hissing sound of steam rising from sewer grates at three in the morning, and the men who materialized from the cold shadows as they passed through the night, awaiting with dread the moment the sun illuminated the rooftops, for these kinds of men thrived in the chilly blanket of nightlife, of 24 hour pizza stands and bowling alleys and skid row bars and winos and drug pushers and peddlers of pornography and liquor sold by the fifthit was everyday moments like these, so full of passion and exigency, yet missing entirely in meaning or truth, that did not exist out here in the dustbowl. There is an energy of echoes unlike any other manifestation in the physical world, Brandi-Shaw thought. An unleashed, inimitable, acoustic phenomena that reflected the sharpest sounds, the strongest voices, and had the ability to take one back through time, for in the mirror of recall we all find time to reflect, to seek out the things we like and dislike about ourselves, the agreeable things and the things that make us sick to the stomach; the things we care about or the things we abrogate, a toddlers toy forgotten in a closet as the baby ages or a love letter burned over the open flame of scorn. 17

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I think the American Indian cause will suffer greatly if you disappear. Brandi-Shaw said, snapping out of his stupor. I suppose thats a possibility. But thats an arrogant belief on your part. You and I arent the only pieces to the puzzle, Brandi-Shaw. Its thinking like that that truly hinders AIM and holds back the Nation. The Nation has been doing just fine holding itself back for years, Reywal. They dont need me to help. They revel in self-deprecation and annihilation. I mean, how many corrupt BIA officials have we run into throughout the years? Ten? Twenty? How much money do you suppose has been siphoned away? Maybe you have a point. Maybe you dont. Nothing seems clear anymore, Brandi-Shaw. Lately Ive been having a lot of trouble discerning the difference between right and wrong. How so? Im sensing a general shift in our profession. And that scares me. Modern day journalism lets us present our beliefs under the guise of advocacy journalism. Makes it easier to control the facts. You follow...? Brandi-Shaw nodded. Control the facts and you control the truth. The facts and the truth have become mutually exclusive. We are both too smart to ignore that fact. And too smart to draw any conclusions from our findings. So, whats the point? We just have to work a little bit harder. Make sure the canvas fits the frame before we paint our masterpiece. Justice thought hard for a moment. The heat made it difficult, though. He suddenly found himself longing for a SnoCone, or something else exotic or frozen to kill the chalky thirst residing inside his mouth. My point exactly Brandi-Shaw. We have, through necessity, perfected the art of framing. We frame the facts we uncover and make them fit the story. A noun here, a transitive verb there suddenly an otherwise useless opinion gains merit. Carries the weight of an anchor and hooks the mainstream population. Doesnt matter if its right or wrong, because theres truth in either side you choose. Molding the truth has become just as easy as telling the lie. And both sides know it. Thats the problem. Reywal paused, frustrated at the progression of his logic. The governments been practicing this guerilla journalistic approach for years. Quite successfully, I might add. Justice pointed over to the governor and his group of men. Back then they called people like us muckrakers. Now we are just lost and disaffected, byproducts of a lost generation. Easily discredited by men like the governor. The political machine is just too strong to unplug. You know the truth has been here long before you and I, Reywal. Brandi-Shaw said. It always will be. So have the lies, Brandi-Shaw Justice said, frustrated. So have the lies. Brandi-Shaw shook his head in disagreement. I think its time you get back to the basics, Reywal. Try to remember the person you were 18

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before he hesitated, unsure whether to continue, the trial. Before all this madness began. He swept his arms in a grand gesture. You are a changed man. The system is driving you crazy. You have to disengage or its going to make you extinct, Reywal. No. What youre seeingwhat youre witnessingis a man that has finally slid into the arena of cold indifference. Justice said, a trace of poignancy in his voice. Justice looked up at the ravaging sun. It was growing hotter by the second. Everything was white. The sun had bleached the blue out of the sky, the green from the earth, all traces of scents from the air except the peculiar, noxious, acidic stink of sweat-stained bodies mixing with cheap cologne. Everything slowed to a crawl or stopped altogether in the vapid heat of Oklahoma. It was the way the sun above wanted things. Measured and orderly. Nudge up the temperature in the furnace that was the earth; affording the enormous orange giant above the luxury of spying down on millions of inhabitants, reigning down upon them suffering and panic and thirst as they scrambled away into the day, leaping from crag and crook on a search for shadows and pools of cooled waters the fiery rays had already taken from them. Reporters worked their stories at a languid pace. They moved sweaty hands across dampened pages whose sodden fibers tore with each pass of the pen. Guards were less inclined to hold their automatic rifles out in rectitude, choosing instead to strap the eleven and a half pounds of fully loaded gunmetal and composites over the backs of their shoulders, letting their backs take the brunt of the weight. A pair of convicts carving out an irrigation trench near the prison garden swung tired pickaxes into the air in a laborious, sluggish manner, as if the effects of gravity had multiplied by a thousand on the tools upward trajectory. And all of themReywal, the warden, the governor, even Brandi-Shawfound that the refutation of lies, born and nursed beneath the torrid sun, left their lips all that much slower. Brandi-Shaw broke the silence. He smiled broadly, flashing Reywal a set of perfectly manicured white teeth. You dont remember this Reywal, but my family didnt always live in a big metropolis. I have deep roots out here. He nodded. All the way back. Even before prohibition. White lightning helped my great grandfather carve a niche for his family. Eked out a living while many others failed. My granddaddy himself used to work this same stretch of cotton fields back in the thirties. Just before the dust bowl years. So poor he didnt even own his own sack. Had to rent it from the working boss. Cost him twenty-five cents a day. That was a lot of money back then. Dragged that eight-foot long monster that looked like a giant worm behind him all day long, sun-up to sundown. Fields were bigger thenhalf a mile by a mile. But the work was the same. Hard. Back-breaking. First day, after a ten-hour shift, granddaddy turned in ninety pounds to the boss19

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man while a white man next to him turned in over twice that amount. At first granddaddy thought hed been duped because of his skin color. Its the way a man gets to thinking after a while, I guess. After the system has had his way with him. Racial divisions always on a mans mind out here, Reywal. Always has, always will. Turns out the more experienced pickers knew if they included the boll along with the clean white cotton it added to the weight. Doubling it. My granddaddy learned fast. Dragging the bag over shallow puddles let the cotton absorb water and almost quadrupled the weight. And its been a scam ever since. Plowing under surplus crops and rationing. Slaughtering millions of pigs and chickens to keep commodity prices stabilized. Where theres a buck to be made, theres a swindle not far behind. And the government is always just around the corner, trying to get to the head of the line. What we need is a governor well versed in the good book. The farmer interrupted, once again. He had inched closer to them. He studied Reywal passively; yet the look on his face was one of overwhelming contrast, flush with might and undertones of menace. Justice had felt the weight of that same stare many times. The farmer resembled a typical judge looking down at a typical defendant, in this case Reywal. A taciturn man in flowing black robes chewing over a verdict, adding and subtracting years in his mind before pronouncing judgment. His eyes were different, Justice noticed. They were the color of bruises. Mean and tapered, they had morphed into inarticulate wooden slits framing a dilapidated barnyard door of a face, allowing all but the thinnest shaft of light to enter. Justice watched, appalled, as the mans eyes steadily devolved to plumbing depths full with the unknown. After a few seconds they disappeared altogether, retreating into his sallow, piggish eye sockets, slinking away from the miserable heat. The pink-faced farmer pointed over towards the governor and his group of men who had already crossed the road and now headed instinctively towards the television crews, who were busy interviewing the prison warden and a few bystanders for local color. A man like Governor Holloway. A man who believes in the laws that keep this country pure. Man like that who fears the lord and believes in his divinity has no qualms about sending a man to the chair. An eye for an eye, the bible says Hes come here today to finish you off, Reywal. Brandi-Shaw said, ignoring the farmer. Grandstanding and gathering steam for his reelection campaign. Governor Holloway had earned a reputation as an incendiary manipulator of the mass media. Bringing his tin-can reasoning to the ears of The Fourth Estate. The radar came up empty today so you fell in his sights. Be careful. The man is a devil and he is hungry for a soul to take back with him.

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When the caravan passes the town square the dogs all bark. Justice eyed Brandi Shaw warily. But when the caravans gonewhen its all quiet and stillthats when the dogs bite. And thats when you have to keep your eyes peeled. Logic aside, Reywal. Just be careful. Holloways a dog thats been given a long leash for so long, hes forgotten the corpses hes dragging behind him. Justice turned and watched the parade of humanity sweeping towards the front of the prison gates with a growing amount of reverence. It was no doubt the governor was the centerpiece. The sun in the middle of the universe upon which all things revolved. Timing was everything in this strange game of politicking. And Governor Fritz Holloway had timed things perfectly. Too perfect. No man was that lucky, Justice reasoned. Not even a man on the cusp of locking in another four years in public office. It just didnt make sense. Justice knew the governor more by reputation than on a personal level; though the two had met and squared off briefly several times before, hurling insults and casting aspersions on each other like atavistic pugilists fighting over a leftover drumstick. The issues were minor then, but due to the nature of their respective personalities, two resolute, proud men with corresponding systemic values, the polemic had nonetheless been harsh and contested. Both men lived and worked the territory inside Oklahomas borders; fighting on the same turf presided over by courts, legislature, and television. While the governor shined under the harsh glare of the spotlight Justice eschewed it altogether, and chalked up any public appearance as an uncomfortable formality, a means to an end. Each man (until recently in the governors case) had projected a clean public image. Sterling conduct above and beyond the call. That was where the similarities ended, however. Being complex men, they each harbored ideals and values that existed on opposite sides of the political and social pendulum. Years ago, with the American Indian Movement protecting his interests, channeling media attention his way, Justice had made a fateful choice. As more and more social programs and grants were systematically ripped away from the tribes, as the American Indians power in congress grew weaker by the day, as the blood quantum for claiming Indian heritage rose ever so higher with each passing administration, Justice came to regard Hollowayand men of his ilk as enemies that had to be dealt with on primitive levels. It was to be a last stand, of sorts; the only way to protect AIMs interests in the region. And like a good, functioning soldier, a practitioner of the psychological arts, Justice Reywal went about learning all that he could about the governor, gaining knowledge and insight into this popular, Svengali-like politicians life. 21

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He put his own network, his own people into play. Justice went through the governors newspaper clippings, the magazine articles, studied the governors televised appearances. He listened passionately to a host of his speeches, transcribing them in his rare off hours. He cultivated sources in over a dozen Indian tribes, spread out wide over the state. Then, in the same manner, he began to infiltrate the states legislature, some democrats, some of the more moderate republicans who eschewed fanatical conservatism. He spent hours and hours gathering as much information on Holloway until he knew the mans strengths and weaknesses better than his own wife and kids did. It was a matter of survival, for Justice knew one day the two would square off in a final siege, a tte--tte to end all others. The suns glare bounced off the same chunk of selenite thrown by Brandi-Shaw, blinding Justice. In that refraction, that unfiltered, introspective brightness cutting through like a laser and flooding his eyes, Justices mind yielded a sudden flashback. It was advice given to him long ago, back when he was a boy living on the reservation. He was six or seven, and becoming more self aware of his skin color and Indian heritage and poverty with each passing year. Each had grown in layers, gaining momentum in his heart and mind like the passing seasons. The heat of summer brought an unmitigated anger, as the men and women of the reservation strayed outdoors, drinking and playing cards to idle away the time, figuring out ways to bilk the few tourists of cash, ignorant to the fact that the land around them was dying slowly or that the government was planning to steal it away; while the cool of winter brought an influx of antipathy, a feeling deep inside that he could not have cared less, for the hardscrabble land around him, though hidden deep under snowdrifts was denuded and ugly and not worth fighting for. Justice, the boy, was trapped. Doomed to a stillborn life having little significance or value. His emotions grew dark, and like a heavy burden, a shadow enveloping him, he swallowed his dreams with each passing day. The advice: Know your enemy like you know your own shadow. It came to him via his grandfather one morning, as they both trudged through twenty inches of fresh, powdery snow, on the hunt for whitetailed deer: It was a chilly day, late in the winter. A few weeks before the snowmelts and budding wildflowers of March, before the arctic blasts retreated back to the north and the days became bearable once more. Justice and his grandfather had hidden behind a rocky outcrop, crouched deep in the snow. They watched as a wolf, half in, half out of a dense thicket, tipped his nose into the air. The wolf, his body lean and streamlined from the long winter, had caught the fresh scent of rabbit. Hesitation. The wind picked up the scent. Silence. A visual. The wolf charged out into the open. He never wavered as he gave chase, 22

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locking on his target like a heat seeking missile. The rabbit, pawing away at the snow as he foraged for roots, immediately sensed the danger. He turned high tail and ran for his life. What ensued was more comedy than high drama. The rabbit weaved his way through the open snow, easily outmaneuvering the wolf, using the wolfs own momentum against him to get away. The rabbit, from experience, knew the wolf would underestimate his prowess on the frozen turf while overestimating his own. In the end, after a futile chase, the rabbit easily leapt away to safety and disappeared into the very same thicket from which the wolf had emerged. The wolf remained behind in the snow, ears upright and pointing forward, fur glazed over with snow from a nasty spill, a puzzled look on his facelistening for a soundany sound. But silence was in abundance that morning. As was hunger. It was Justices first lesson on survivability and one he would never forget: In this world, a man, like that wolf, was all alone. He had to seize things before they were taken from him. And he could never feel remorse. Or pity. After all, the careless gazelle had no right to hate the cheetah that ate him after the gazelle walked up to him. The gazelle was merely asking for trouble. And the cheetah was just being a cheetah, doing what cheetahs do. The governor was just being the governor, doing what arrogant, callous men of high office did. Justice had witnessed firsthand the governors old-boy network. A system more common to the Deep South, but just as prevalent in many parts of Oklahoma. The ease in which Holloway gleamed and bought information from sources and state agencies and bureaucrats in all corners had become legendary. It was an awesome system, one geared towards functional pragmatism. Information central, calling collect. Justice thought, with chagrin. A lawyer first and always, Justice was a strong believer in odds, in instinct, and these both told him, with a certain degree of accuracy and clarity, that the governor had been given prior knowledge regarding Justices appearance outside the reformatory that day. No way the man had shown up for a lucky spot inspection or fact-finding mission of the penal system. He wouldnt waste his time on such a hackneyed endeavornot unless he was certain the media would be there, not unless he had the opportunity to grandstand for the cameras. Otherwise, there would be no drama in the fold. There was little intrinsic value to an argument if the world was not there to witness his mastery of linguistics and the complete evisceration of a fool and his errand. The fact that the press had assembled together was an expected windfall to the governor, another incident marking the spoils of war that had befallen him with startling frequency throughout his run. Unwittingly, Justice had made his job all that much easier by calling the 23

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summit himself, reaching out to journalists from all over the country. He had faithfully performed the duties of the governors press secretary but would receive none of the benefits. Lost in all this, and more important, was the fact that not a living soulnot the networks or the free press or Brandi-Shaw or even Justice Reywal himselfcould now accuse the governor of contriving the moment for the cameras. Plausible deniability, they called it back in the corridors of power. Bad luck for me, Justice thought. Governor Holloways helicopter had touched down at the exact same moment Justice Reywals suburban had pulled up to the gates of the Oklahoma State Reformatory, the ten-acre facility where Thom and Avarice Lake, two Cheyenne brothers from the nearby reservation, were completing their five-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. A sentence Justice Reywal had made possible through his unethical and illegal machinations of the legal system. The governor, a staunch proponent of capital punishment, a man with strong beliefs against early parole and who regarded the notion of rehabilitation as a humanitarian fallacy, had gone on record some time before calling the sentence laughable. All hyperbole aside, this was the greatest misrepresentation of jurisprudence I have witnessed in the past two decadestwo cold blooded killers will soon be free to reign unbridled mayhem on the communityliberated by the very man entrusted by the state to condemn themon this fateful day, the American Indian Movement has taken a giant leap backwards in the eyes of the legislaturethere will be repercussions. It was late last fall, the first week of December, just after the last leaves of autumn had finally sloughed to the ground, after the universitys Schooners had completed yet another miserable football season. The reporter who captured the governors angry diatribe happened to be in town working on the story for Sports Illustrated, of all things. It was a coincidental meeting, one that shouldve never taken place. The interview (a few off-hand questions, really) occurred in Oklahoma City, on the steps of the venerable justice building moments after Holloway had attempted to influence the parole boards decision regarding the scheduled future release of Thom and Avarice Lake. That was only the beginning. The governor didnt like the losing side of the scoreboard all that much, all those zeros and frayed pompoms and unhappy constituents spilling out onto the field of play. Unable and unwilling to let the legal system perform its duty, Governor Holloway soon commenced an all out offensive on Justice Reywal, attacking him publicly and privately. He lobbed angry mortar round after mortar round, vowing to investigate Justice Reywals activities stretching back five years. Alls fair in love, war, and politics, the saying went. Somewhere in the darkest recesses of Justices mind, in the deepest parts of a soul he 24

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rarely bared was the undeniable knowledge that, for better or for worse, he was about to reap his just rewards. The Hindus had a phrase for what he was going to experience: Karmic retribution. Justice Reywal stood on the tips of his toes, extending his lean torso out towards the blue sky. His six-foot frame loosened as he stretched sinew and muscle, shrugging off the two-hour drive. His taut physique soon regained its fluidity. He was that lean jungle cat again, preparing to stalk nighttime creatures from a tree branch above. He craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the man that had been a thorn in his side for a good part of the last year. Justice remained silent, stoic. He ignored the vexing heat that clung to him like hot gossip. He couldnt really blame the governor for holding such a powerful grudge. After all, it was Justice whod fired the first shot across the bow, a thundering broadside a year back that had caught the governor completely unaware and sent him reeling. The story he helped break, working alongside Faro Brandi-Shaw, had ignited a critical mass, a controversy that to this day the governors camp had been unable to quell. Holloway, one of the most commanding figures in the history of Oklahoma politics, had the power and inclination to do whatever he pleased. Justice sensed that the thirst for revenge was strongly entrenched in the mans heart, a poisonous vector waiting to be expelled in a violent upheaval. The fallout would be something terrible, an exploding bomb that would take Justice Reywal out of the picture for good. Holloway stood outside the gates of the reformatory, surrounded by the press and his bodyguards, by heat and stillness and the high frequency chatter of insects, dead set on issuing payback. He would drive a flaming chariot to the ends of the earth to get it. He had flown over half a dozen counties, straight into an area that was witnessing the worse heat wave and drought since the 1980s, when the region experienced fifty days of triple digit heat one summer. It was safe to say, then, the governor had come to Granite with one thing only in mind: revenge; and the resultant destruction of one Justice Reywal. Revenge was a currency to be traded. Revenge was the light that fed off itself. Revenge had a name. And that name lay imbedded deep within Justice Reywals memory. It would remain there forever, or until the day Justice chose to let it seep out of his gray matter like all the other bits and shreds of the past a man wanted to forget. That name was Mack Abramov. Mack Abramov was a powerful Anglo-American businessman; a staunch republican, a political activist and a corrupt lobbyistall rolled in to one. An appalling man in American politics. Abramov was the 25

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alleged central figure in many scandals involving bribery and corruption all over the countrycrimes that included, among others, The Washington Beltway Gang as accomplices. Currently, he was under federal investigation and rumor had it he had wilted under intense scrutiny and was ready to cooperate with the feds. He was a survivalist, first. A Protestant, second. Businessman third. He was a rubber ball; wound tightly, one that would surely bounce high over all oncoming legal dilemmas. He had many influential, well-known allies in the political communityallies that would, in the future, prove invaluable by writing the sentencing judge on his behalf, asking for leniency. These were the facts pertaining to Abramov. Fact #1: American Indian tribal support in congress had, by the late nineties, dwindled to the point of nonexistence. This was a reflection of the governments negative view against what they considered to be an archaic tribal system. This burgeoning view was also gaining acceptance in the national media. Fact #2: Many in the corridors of power viewed the tribes as having unlimited caches of cash holdings, accrued from their casinoscasinos the Indians operated by exploiting their special status regular American citizens did not have. As a result of this conservative think tank setting, many in Congress felt that all natives were involved in gaming and did not need government support and subsidies. Hence, the cutbacks proposed by the Bush administration. Fact#3: Abramov, working for the firm of Greenbaum Taurin, was hired by at least six Indian tribes to spread a good amount of money eighty-five million dollars to be exactto members of congress. This donation was aimed at securing otherwise unattainable influence with the boys on the hill, as well as from the staunchly conservative Bush administration. Fact#4: There are those who postulate that Mack Abramov served as a double agent; i.e. working both ends of the system at once. In fact, part of the eighty-five mill his firm took from the tribes was earmarked to convince congress to stop the spread of casinos; thereby insuring for six major tribes a sort of monopoly where no newcomers could emerge to open casinos that would cut into existing tribal profits. Furthermore, tribal leaders, when questioned by BrandiShaw and Reywal, were hard pressed to explain what good taking that much money from their coffers would do to their own communities. Certainly the lack of money would have a domino effect on other social and welfare programs. Fact#5: Lead by Abramov, a small group of businessmen hatched a diabolical scheme to steal from the Indian tribes. They employed lies, deception, and even bribed members of Congress. Centuries may have passed, but the game is still the same. The cast of characters may have changed. They do not wear the stately uniform of the cavalry 26

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anymore; instead they wear expensive, tailor made suits and expensive leather shoes and the flowing robes of judges. But to this day, their methods are as disingenuous as they are wicked. End Result: This was an obvious lobbying scandalnot one perpetrated by Indians. Yet many in Washington shifted the blame onto the tribes, instead of pressuring Congress to enact more rigid laws on campaign reform. Once again, the perception that the Redman was inherently dangerous and a threat to the white establishment surfaced. It was as great a red herring as there ever was. Redskin, red-man, red herring. It all had a nice, tidy ring to it. By that time Justice Reywal, viewing the developing scandal from the sidelines, had seen enough. He decided to step into the fray. He had already spent a great amount of time lobbying for the American Indians, politicking, writing newspaper columns and making impromptu appearances on their behalf. At the insistence of John Ravage and AIM, he took up the fight against Abramov and congress. He enlisted the help of Brandi-Shaw and together they helped shed light on the plight of the tribes, writing a series of excoriating editorials that appeared in major newspapers throughout the country. They worked hard. They worked fast. Together they helped enlighten the common man, the white man, and helped separate fact from myth. What Justice Reywal found out through his investigation was this: Clearly the tribes had initiated the donations. That fact was irrefutable; etched in stone. But any scandalous intentions or transgressions had yet to be proven. In fact, most of the Tribes donations were spent to pass Propositions 5 and 1A, not to elect shady politicians looking out for tribal interests. To Reywal, the perception that Indian tribes were greedy and acting out of avarice was malicious and undeserved. A little known, yet immutable statistic lay right underneath everyones noses: Less than forty percent of the nations Indian tribes pursued gaming as a source of income. Of those that did acquire gaming rights and eventually opened casinos, because of their remote locations or size of the operations, all but a select few labored in worthless shadows. And where did all this money go, this newly wrangled mother lode? New cars? Beachfront homes? Swiss bank accounts? No. The money stayed home. Tribal laws dictated that gaming revenues must be used to fund tribal government programs and provide for their brethrens welfare. And that was where the money went, records clearly indicated. So evidently, the issue of greed was not an issue at all. Governor Holloway saw things differently. Holloway had the big guns, the influence, real power inside the Washington beltway the Indian tribes could only ever dream of having. Holloways name had come up several times during the Abramov scandal. Strong rumors that he had initiated contact between Abramov and a few of the tribal leaders permeated throughout many circles. One could postulate from this that Holloway had received a robustas 27

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well as illegalfinders fee for his work; or at the very least a hefty and once again, illegalcampaign contribution Justice had discovered this little nugget of info one day last summer, from one of his sources up on the hill that had infiltrated The Beltway Gang. He immediately set to work. He wrote a scathing attack against the governor and his administration. Quoting his source, Reywal posed the scandalous question. Did Holloway pocket a hefty commission for his work as an ambassador between the tribes and the Beltway Gang? And if so, where did that money go? The New York Times ran it on the front page. As did the Wall Street Journal. As did many others. Though the governor made it through an unofficial inquiryafter all there were no receipts on hand, no taped conversations or grainy photographs to serve as a smoking gunthe allegations had stuck to the governor, much like sweat sticks to the body in the tropics. He was subsequently attacked on all flanks and his reputation was desecrated. Many reporters soon picked up where Justice left off. Drawn to his story like remoras to a shark, they wrote derisive articles of their own. The results were stunning. Holloways reelection campaign was severely damaged. In the end Justice Reywal got what he wanted. A moral imperative was reached. Though the governor had escaped formal charges, the perception of a criminal misdeed had been unfurled in front of the American people. And sometimes that perception was just as rousing and effective as the real crime. A dichotomy, one the governor neither liked nor wanted, had been set into motionSince the principal dialogue of Western culture was filled with a warlike atmosphere, since the biggest and the meanest made the rules and took home the trophy, the middle ground of democracy, with its morally flexible alternatives, and the people behind them, went largely ignored. Unfortunately for Gov. Holloway, this middle class army of people made up a vast percentage of the voting public. Politics could be fickle, as Reywal had come to understand. Inside the hearts of these voters there lay clear, distinct beliefs that could not be broken and would never waver. Selflessness. Devotion. Virtuosity. Degrees of civilization kept alive inside the common man and woman. These were good, hardworking folk who despised corruption, derision, and liars even more than the all-intrusive FDA. They could not be bought. In Oklahoma, the saying went, they hated the sin, but hated the sinner even more; sheer irony as the bible said otherwise. So, in the minds of the blue-collar masses, the farmers, the laborers, the teachers, cottonpickers, and policemen, Gov. Holloway became a bully, a morally ambiguous man that could not be trusted with the keys to the kingdom. Recent polls did not lie. His popularity had plummeted like a stone thrown off a cliff. Holloway was losing ground and votes fast, to a thirty-five year old newcomer in politics hailing from the panhandle. He was desperate. He had to act fast. Granite, Oklahoma was his Alamo; 28

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his last stand. If he failed to strike those alleged charges down, if he failed to convince the nation that Justice Reywal was nothing more than a journalist hack, hed more than likely find himself out in the cold come November. All thanks to the efforts of one Justice Reywal. And a man named Mack Abramov.

They stood on the perimeter of a wide-open, dusty county, barely a year later. Governor Holloway and Justice Reywal, standing a few feet apart from one another, as adversaries that would soon square off. This time the stage was the barren wastelands of Oklahoma, far away from the steel and asphalt and concrete of the capital. Both men perspired in the sweltering heat, their shirts soaked through to the skin. They watched as the mercury climbed steadily, wondering if a record high would be set that day. They braced themselves for the cavalcade of reporters; prepared to square off against each other like theyd done so many times before. Governor Holloways sudden appearance was a move of stunning precision, one that had effectively stolen all the momentum away from Justice. Life was all about momentum, Justice knew. Momentum dictated the rules, the laws of physics. Pressing back against the weight of inertia, momentum could change and ravage an open system. Momentum was the friend to self-serving politicians and Indian activists and writers and sports heroes and gossip columnists alike. Governor Holloway was fully aware of this. It was how he had taken office in the first place. Halloways election four years earlier was the stuff of legends, nothing short of miraculous. He had run an underdog campaign of "barnstorming," in which he eschewed the urbane, politically charged hotbed of the inner cities, choosing instead to focus on rural areas and farming commmunities. He toned down the rhetoric. He knew the men and women inhabiting these fringed hamlets were simple people, gentle people, hard-working people who easily identified with others of the same ilk. Many politicians before him had miscategorized these blue collar masses as insipid, uninspired people. Holloway did not make that mistake. One Vote at a Timethe slogan he chose himself attached to his campaign buttons and posters and running down the length of thousands and thousands of yellow No. 2 pencils he personally dispensed. He stopped at Wal-Mart and Big Lot department stores, dressed in flannel and denim, a stained truckers hat perched at an angle on his head. He sampled bite-sized meats and cheeses in hundreds of grocery stores. He visited uncouth, rough-and-tumble men in fishing and hunting lodges, oftentimes staying overnight, sleeping in the very same tents with them. He travelled to trailer parks, 29

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oil refineries, stockyards, cotton fields, machinery plants, and high schools in a twenty-eight foot long RV festooned with bright, jingoistic, crepe paper ribbons and streamers, laden with his staunchest supporters. The media took an instant liking to this simple man with a direct approach, a former evangelical preacher and current member of the district school board who attended mass at least twice a week and seemed to walk on air as he floated past the huge, milling crowds that eventually showed up en mass to greet him. He shook every hand that reached out to him and he listened, for he discovered early on that listening was the keythe secret arrow piercing the heart of the common man. It was rare, he had concluded, to find a politician inside the states boundaries that ever bothered to lend an empathetic ear. With a broad, ubiquitous smile and a head full of blonde hair that showed but a few touches of gray, Holloway appeared, as well as appealed, to the common man; the laborer and the dreamer, the wideeyed school kid, the bored housewife looking for a cause to fill her time. Through time, Holloway had honed his survival instincts razor sharp. He believed in the magnetic power of pragmaticism. He knew that to garner support, to win the war in the trenches, he had to go out and meet the voting man on his own termsterms the states social elite could not possibly relate to. This facillitated countless one-on-ones in hundreds of living rooms and porches and supermarkets and rodeos and stockyards across the state. It was a systematical, yet efficient handshake approach, as effective as the promise of lowered taxes and reducing unemployment. Holloway had rolled across the Oklahoma flatlands like thunder, spoken through the forked tongue of lightning and in a shade under four years ago, behind a stunning burst of momentum, stole the election from the incumbent in the final weeks. Governor Holloway looked repeatedly to his left and right, coyly at first, posturing, as if he was searching for someone, yet not wanting to give his intentions away. Perhaps someone he expected to meet? A few moments went by. With the full sun in his eyes, he continued to scan the crowds faces, the torpid, speckled bodies that flanked him. Suddenly, he spied who he was looking for. Justice Reywal stood a mere fifty feet away, sandwiched between two other men. Holloway instantly recognized one of these men as Faro Brandi-Shaw. The other man, far younger than Reywal and Brandi-Shaw, dark skinned and wearing sunglasses, he didnt know. Holloway instantly snapped to attention. The affable look on his face vanished, replaced by a stern look of distaste. He looked like a man en route to the hospital for bowel surgery. He leaned in close and whispered a few words of wisdom into the ear of one of his aids. That man, in turn, passed the word. A few seconds later a dozen collective heads turned simultaneously to look at Justice. The security detail 30

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began a systematic, detailed, visual analysis, honed to perfection through years of practical fieldwork and classroom dialect. The eyes, hidden behind those mirrored lenses, went up and down, slowly, taking Justice in an inch at a time. They examined the ghost shirt he wore; the one Justices grandfather had bequeathed him when he died. Hanging loose outside of his jeans, the enlarged shirts excess, fine, soft leather flapped freely with each movement of Justices arms. Knowing the governors plan well in advance, one that would eventually bring him closer to Reywal, the men searched for any bulky or sharp objects Justice may have secreted inside his clothing. They watched Justices hands to see how he reacted to their presence. A nervous man with something to hide gave off many signals. A nervous man fidgeted. Looked at his watch. A nervous man licked his lips continuously. A nervous man peered at his surroundings through quick, darting eyes and a head that swiveled perpetually like a chicken on the roost. They gauged Justice for the potential of trouble, not because they expected him to cause any, but because that was their job, to assess, and if necessary to neutralize, and soon they would assign a prearranged color-code to the level of danger: blue called for a passive situation, and the men would fall back and relax, loosen the cordon, give their boss more room to maneuver; red being the highest, the bodyguards would remain on full alert, sweaty bodies compressed together like carbon sandwiched between bedrock, turning slowly to diamond through the eons. Justice felt the tiny hairs on the nape of his neck stand on end. He felt the usual discomfort at being the focal point of attention. The full brunt of their stares weighed on his soul, penetrating gazes that refused to waver, pinning him down, boxing him in despite the fact he was surrounded by nothing but open country for miles around. The Gmens eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, refusing to come out to the light like stubborn tumors dodging radiation treatment. Their eyebrows bunched together in deep rooted concentration, forming a single, continuous worm across a multitude of foreheads. Twelve men acted as jury, condemning Justice for an unknown and unproven crime. Their manner was consternating and frightening. Justices shoulders slumped immediately. His body shriveled up into a pedestrian-like speck on the horizon as he attempted to make himself invisible, less conspicuous. He angled and arranged his body carefully. Like an aged boxer slipping a combination he moved in behind Brandi-Shaw. He was careful not to fidget as he drew his eyes away from the men, careful not to make any sudden, unnatural movements that might cause alarm. It was an instinct honed to perfection by years of working courtrooms, working the judges and juries while he hacked down the civil rights of defendant after defendant, pressed the weight and power of the state behind superfluous charges that bordered on the obscene. 31

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He had a cunning way of camouflaging himself when the need arose. Blending into the scenery and stepping out of eyesight was an effective way to let the jury concentrate on the facts, the damaging evidence, the colored crime photos, the sobbing widow, a suspect on the witness stand, without the specter of a ghoulish lawyer standing by in reproach. Justice Reywal managed a modest, if not confident smile. No need to rush things. No need to fight the body or the mind. The spirit. His veins and arteries would soon rise to the occasion, and as the heat around him climbed, these intravenous, intersecting branches of life within him would begin to pump out enormous volumes of blood, pushing the somnambulant stupor out of his system and leaving behind a great vessel that housed the primordial fighting man. This would be the moment to act, to come out of his shell and strike quickly like a damning editorial submitted at deadline. He had no reason to doubt that his time would be coming soon. The governor was heading in his direction. Fast approaching. His sleek, confidant body strutted towards him like a peacock with a full array of brightly colored feathers, smiling broadly as if he didnt have a care in the world. Apparently, the code word he had wished for had come back to him: blue.

Tucked away in an austere six-by-eight holding cell inside B-Wing, behind the reformatorys formidable, black, thirty-foot high granite walls, and not more than twenty paces from the two-inch thick, coldrolled steel, electronically controlled doorway that would soon expel him, Avarice Lake, raven haired and angry, sat with his legs crossed on a metal cot bolted to the wall. He stared hypnotically through the metal bars, across the narrow corridor, where a wall clock encased in heavy, protective wire mesh ticked off the minutes. He wore white boxer-briefs with matching tank top and bare feet. He had a splint across a fractured nose, his mouth set in a recalcitrant scowl, and carried with him a dangerous attitude. The broken nose was from a recent fight. The scowl and attitude hed had his entire life. Avarice Lake thought about the thick door and the imposing concrete walls that reached up to the sky like the shell of some gutted, forgotten skyscraper, a force that had separated him from the rest of the free world for a shade under five years. Four-foot thick at the base, tapering off to three feet near the peak and topped by rows of razor wire, the square shaped barrier encompassing over ten acres had stolen the sunlight away from him, as well as pried the freedom away from so many men over the course of time. It made Avarice angry, the price men paid for their weaknesses. Human frailty. It was alive in 32

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every one. It was alive inside him. A rotten gene handed down through the generations. The awareness that Avarice carried this hideous anathema, so hazardous to his own survival, made him very angry. That anger would double each time he thought about his current plight the perception he harbored that hed been coerced into accepting a lengthy sentence for a crime thatin his own tarnished eyes, at least hed been justified in committing. Avarice shivered slightly. Cold air circulated throughout the narrow cellblock. It crept up the corridor and slid through the metal bars into each cell, crawled over his bunk and enveloped Avarice in a wet, feathery hug. The warden, having more common sense than experience in such matters, liked to keep the reformatory nice and cold, in sharp contrast to the suffocating heat outside. The exact temperature was a closely guarded secret, known to only a select few the warden, the senior guards, a few of the more venerable trustees, but Avarice had stumbled upon the figure less by accident and more through sheer genius. Fifty-five degrees. Steady. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The perfect temperature for a penal system wanting to keep convicts preoccupied with thoughts on staying warm and away from the more sinister, primitive thoughts that afflicted their minds. When that mind-numbing cold made its way deep into a mans body and leeched itself to his bones, circulated to his extremities, that man had no other thought in the world but to rid himself of that chilliness. It was common to see the convicts lined up at morning roll call, sounding off as the guards called out their names. The prisoners curt responses rising in intervals, floating towards the high ceiling above as plumes of condensed breath. It was the wardens abstract way of keeping the peacethe theory being a man fighting the thermometer had lost his resolve for fighting others. Avarice knew this ultra secret, exact temperature reading was a source of pride to the warden; and if a con were to decipher it, discover it by any means, that con would have dealt the warden a vicious, sound defeat and would be placed on a pedestal by his fellow cons. Resourceful as well as intelligent, Avarice decided one day, for no other apparent reason than wanting to steal a bit of knowledge away from the powerful men who ran the prison, men who sat behind grand walnut desks and shuffled paper and lives, men who had ripped out every thermometer and thermostat in the prison, to set out and find out for himself that mysterious thermal equilibrium. And when he was finished, hed make sure to pass the knowledge on, to let all the other cons in all the other cellblocks in on the secret. He would let the first man know, quietly at first, by leaning in and whispering the number softly into his ear. Knowing that as the figure was passed on, one con to another, cell by cell, mouth to ear, lunch hour to exercise hour, laundry room to infirmary, the convicts voices would grow stronger, rising slowly at first, cutting above the din, wispy, rasping, guttural 33

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voices gnarled and damaged by drink and cigarettes transcending the sound barrier like a supersonic bullet, exalting in its perfect essence. A small victory for the prison population. By the time the answer made its way down to C-block, a bullet on a path to enlightenment, the sacred number would have arrived as a rising crescendo, the answer of all answers shouted down corridors, the cacophony of echoes filling the cellblocks, the guards slamming their batons against the metal bars to quiet the men down but that would only drive them, throwing them into a latched fervor, and by the time the day was done, by the time the sun had slunk beneath the flat horizon, by the time the last man on the last outpost had caught the prophets word, reinforcing the immutable law of thermodynamics, that number would be etched deeply into the plaster of every cell, carved into the arms and torsos of every man as rough, jailhouse tattoos, spoken of and held forever in reverence like the fiery words coming from a dust bowl preacher. And only then would Avarice have his victory, no matter how small and insignificant. He would make sure word got back to the warden that Avarice Lake was a sophisticated man, a man not to be trifled with, as clever as the warden and as quick as the electricity that ran through the body of a death row inmate. He found a book on Galileo in the prison library. He did his research, as much as one could while behind bars. Following the books instructions, he spent a month constructing his own rather crude version of a Galileo thermometer. He worked in his cell during the deep night, when everyone else was asleep. Gluing and pressing and tying together the various materials he had absconded from the prison kitchen, infirmary, and workshop. In the end, five lubricated condoms tied off at the end in the shape of bulbs and filled with colorful viscous liquid floated inside an airtight, spherical tank he constructed from two polystyrene water pitchers softened to a gooey consistency in a kiln, then inserted into a plastic injection mold at the prisons small furniture factory and molded to a rough cylinder shape. He filled the tube-like container with 72 ounces of inert hydrocarbon fluid, taken from the infirmary. He filed down five pennies, giving each coin a disparate mass, then tied them to the condoms, where they hung like bright, shiny tags. He etched onto each copper coin a distinct temperature reading. He placed the condoms (the petroleum based lubrication helped stabilize the fluids density) and their tags into the tank and sealed the top lid with epoxy. And then he watched the tiny bulbs rise and sink for over a week, flirting with the numbers until he was satisfied his prison-made thermometer was accurate. He waited another week, recording his findings like a true scientist, taking comfort as the bulb etched with the number 55 floated constantly near the middle gap, idling between the other four bulbs, rarely moving, like a nuclear submarine waiting patiently under arctic ice.

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When he had his information, when he was confident he wouldnt make a fool of himself, Avarice Lake took his contraption down to the kiln and heaved it inside. He chalked up a moral victory and taught himself to smile, even as his great invention melted away to noxious ashes in front of his eyes. And then he passed the word. And Avarice Lake became a pocket prophet, of sorts. Every convict knew his name. Present and future, they would all know his name. His word, his mark, lived and breathed in the rough outlines of tattoos, by the markings on the walls of each cell, in the words and songs of the various storytellers and folk musicians that would come and go in the years. His word, his image, would live forever. Avarice silently marked off the time, counting down the minutes to his release. The instructions to his parole were clear: 1:45 pm and not a minute sooner. It was now 1:21 pm; Central Time zone. Twenty-one minutes to go. And then the sweet smell of freedom, the bright rays of sunlight he so sorely missed would engulf his body like the early morning fog of his childhood that drifted over the Red Rivers banks and licked the cuffs of his pants while he fished the lively, ankle deep, frigid water at dawn. He had cleaned up and showered. He had rid himself of the attrition that had taken so many others before him. He had freed himself, or so he thought, from the specter of prison. He had been held hostage, his mind and body pinned back against his will, the cells and rooms that housed him becoming smaller and more suffocating throughout the years. Long ago, in his mind he saw the future and the freedom it held. He soaked in the mental picture of a land without boundaries and his mind transcended itself over those walls, beaming back a picture of something that lay just beyond the human grasp, enlightenment as the ancient pharaohs knew it. The body and mind needed room to grow, to maneuver. Avarice Lake gave that power to himself five years ago and no one had taken it from him. The familiar set of clothes hed been handed, washed in the prison laundry and steam pressed into a tight, square package, carried that department store newness. Avarice managed a weak smile. His fingers performed a graceful walk over the two-toned flannel shirt. The engineered scent of wild flowers wafted up to his nose. He folded the shirt back, taking great care to not wrinkle the sleeves and collar. He inspected his trousers. A thin smile grew from the nothingness that framed his face. Seconds passed and that smile grew a bit wider. Hed worn those clothes long ago, five years to be exact, on the day the wardens men had processed him into the reformatory. The clothing smelled different back then, he recalled. He had come in smelling of the reservation, the wild blossoms and the herbs and the falling leaves and the fresh smell of dawn and the dusky smell of night, the smell of erosion and sweat and hard work permeating every cotton 35

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fiber. He remembered the prickly pear spines that had latched on to the shirts cotton fabric pricking one of the guards. He remembered the man crying out in pain and swearing vengeance. He remembered his laughter. Also on his clothing that day: the scent and stain of dried blood. Blood that belonged to a dead white man, a man named Jericho Black, a man that had been killed in cold blood on Avarice Lakes front porch. Avarice leaned forward and drew a long breath, trying to recapture the scent of his past. Nothing. It was long gone. Yet he welcomed the new-fangled, laundered fragrance with open mind and arms, for it had been a long time since hed smelled anything other than fear, stale piss, shithouse scents and disinfectant. He suddenly found himself longing for the familiar places those brittle, poignant aromas took him back to. The reservation, the simple life, the hard life, his framed past. Greedy aromas that would fill his nose and help him traverse the time barrier in his mind. He wished he could shut his eyes and go back to the reservation five years before, back to the morning when Black was killed. He wished he could stop the angry young man, stop the sad events that occurred that would ultimately result in his and his brothers incarceration. Avarice Lake carried with him a deep loathing for the white man, very close to exceeding the unquenchable hatred of his forefathers. He came inside with memories of the Sand Creek massacre and Wounded Knee fresh in his head. He carried in his heart three hundred years of oppression at the hands of the white Europeans and the great fathers in DC. He brought with him campfire stories passed down, of brave warriors riding wild mustangs into battle, brightly painted and feathered, warriors riding across the thundered prairie from the very gates of hell. He brought inside the extreme isolation of the prairie that sent many a man before him down the ink well of madness. But most of all, lost on the parole board that had granted him freedom, was the fact that Avarice Lake carried with him the inability to forgive and forget, a prideful, fierce Indian resistance to systemic rehabilitation. There was just enough time left to trade a few more barbs and insults with his guard attachment, the repulsive, authoritative men he so thoroughly despised. They carried with them the illusion of power. They carried heavy, metal batons. They had an excess of attitude, and spared no one of it. They carried the keys that could give a con freedom and the keys that could take away his life. Though he was just minutes away from being processed, Avarice had yet to shake the sentiment that he was little more than a caged animal. In the eyes of the guards and the state, he was nothing. This feeling of obsolescence had dug in under his skin like a tick and there it remained. The anger and humiliation he had suffered at the hands of those guards had stuck to his mind; the blood pounding through his

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veins like the 308 from Santa Fe would not let him forget; thus he had spent the early morning hours pacing the tiny cell like a hungry tiger. Avarice stood and walked over to the steel bars that had so effectively enslaved his bodybut not his rage, that would linger on till the end of time. He wrapped his fingers around the cold steel with all the strength his ravaged hands could muster. He looked down at the hideous ring of dead, white, mangled scar tissue that pockmarked the skin on his outer handsscars he had accumulated by rote over the last two years working forty-five hour weeks at the prisons laundry facility. Up to his knees nine hours a day, five days a week in bleach and blistering steam and the foul-smelling articles of clothing for nine hundred plus adult male inmates. How many times in the past two years had he caught his hands inside the laundrys infernal steam press and screamed and hollered until his lungs gave out in the heat? How long had he waited for a convict to come and save him because the guards didnt give a shit if an Cheyennes lungs roasted open in that scalding, acid steambath hot enough to melt the rubber soles on an inmates shoes? The laundry facility had become Avarice Lakes personal hell. It reeked of unimaginable filthiness. The narrow, winding corridors of cinder blocks and rusted water pipes and floors filled with piss and rat shit; the canvass hoppers filled to the brim with brown-stained underwear; the monstrous furnace so close to giving out, the aged copper pipes swelling and sweating alongside convicts whod look up and pray the boiler wouldnt blow out on their shift. There was the noxious smell of soiled linen circulating through the air. The way it mixed with that three hundred degree steam emanating from the steam presses gave Avarice constant headaches. Blinding headaches. A steady, mounting tension behind the eyes. It filled his days and nights, a constant, driving specter scrawled atop the visitors list. It was almost too much to bear, and a man of Avarices lesser stature would have dissolved into the ground in that Machiavellian heat, his flesh bubbling away, mixing with the rat turds and the piss and the cleaning agents until all that was left was a neat, tidy, little pile where a man used to be. The unceremonious end of a convict, never to be seen or heard from again. But not Avarice. He never gave in. He was scared. Every day behind bars. Frightened, but never showed it. He never caved in to discrimination or lapsed into uncontrollable sobbing at night or relinquished the nightmares or let the guards or the warden or the other inmates watch him fall to his knees. In Oklahoma, an Indian man had to be tougher than the white inmates. Far tougher. A marine in Beirut. A servant to Lucifer. A general telling Hitler about madness. An Indian had to be prepared to eat shit and shovel it right back in the same course of action. He had to keep silent about things other men complained or bragged about. He had to tread lightly. Stay away from 37

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dark corners. He had to control his emotions, his facial expressions. An Indian man had to fight the other convicts, his own red skin, the warden, his guards, as well as a system created by white supremacists. Inside the reformatory, there was always a white pine box on reserve, waiting for a red man. My childhood was happy. Avarice shouted down the empty corridor, towards the surveillance room where three of the guards were stationed. His voice echoed for a few seconds, propagating, bouncing off the solid walls in reckless angles. After a moment the sounds died down and there was silence. Make no bones about that, mister. I didnt know what was out there beyond the reservation. Didnt care to either. Shut yer pie-hole, convict. A guard yelled out. Yes sir. Everyone around us was poor and out of sorts. So we didnt know what we were missing. Didnt need to either. Down the hall a swivel chair squealed loudly on its hinges as a guard stood up. By the furious way in which the reclining chair flapped back and forth, freed of dead weight, Avarice knew it had to be the big guard coming; a masochistic Neanderthal with a fallow mind, a man Avarice had had the misfortune of trading words with on previous occasions. Avarice heard the crisp, unmistakable sound of patent leather footsteps approaching. The guard moved in a slow, deliberate manner, as if he were a soldier moving through the bush, stalking VC. Avarices face broke into a broad smile. His inner core flushed with unabashed recalcitrance and confidence. The guard, a menacing specter of a man, suddenly filled the hallway in front of him. The man was a lifer. You could tell by his uniform, his nihilistic approach to reform. A perfectly tailored uniform enveloped his mammoth frame, smugly, from crisp blue collar down to black pant cuff. A one-inch wide, light blue stripe ran down the outside of each trouser leg for contrast. A two-way radio clipped to his belt loop crackled with static. Disembodied voices spoke words not meant for Avarices ear. Sure look creased today, boss. Avarice taunted, taking in the man from head to toe. Underneath the glistening fluorescent lights the guard looked like a polished doll. His face was freshly shaven, with a generous lavishing of aftershave. A looping, metal key ring attachment hung off his belt, replete with bright, shiny keys that looked like sharpened teeth. On his feet he wore glossy, highly buffed, size 13 shoes with regulation black laces. The seam of his button-down, polyester, collared shirt met his pants squarely in the middle. The silver badge emblazoned with an image of the state of Oklahoma and the words DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS encircling it reflected the hollow fluorescent light back into Avarices eyes, nearly blinding him.

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Avarice fought hard not to blink. He wouldnt give the guard the satisfaction. The guard was a proud man, happy to wear the uniform, and did little to disguise the fact. He had given years to the state, had earned, not been handed, the decorations and sergeants stripes affixed to his long sleeves and breast. He remained prideful of other things; the savage acts and images that made up the dark underbelly of his craft. Notches had been carved into his leather holster (one per every beating he had doled out that had resulted in a convict visiting the infirmary) and the blood of many a convict stained his baton. Why boss, I think I pressed that very same shirt down at the laundry yesterday. Took me all day, I was so cautious not to screw things up. Collar came out so stiff it cuts into the neck like a jagged knife. You bes be careful. Avarice mocked the pedestrian speech of a cotton farmer. He pressed his face into the six-inch gap between the bars to get a better look. His eyes grew wider, bolder. He resisted the urge to reach out and pet the fabric on the guards shirt. That would just earn him a beating. Yep. That seems to be my handiwork. Glad I was good at something else sides killin. The guard smiled malevolently, shifting his massive weight from one leg to the other. You dumb fool. You think the poor, sorry state your in is random? The way you and your type revel in poverty and idiocy, begging for handouts and government subsidies all the time? Blamin everyone under the sun for your hardships. Complaining that no one understands you. The guards bigotry had come out. Years ago they stole your teepees and your land from underneath you, killed your buffalo and fucked your women and you still havent gotten over it. Youve refused to move on. Id say youve earned your sorry state, son. And earned it well. Its not random, boss. Poverty. It is premeditated and debilitating to the Indian man and white folk alike. And its been around long before you and me. Remember Jamestown? The south during the Civil War? You think the Indian man was behind all that misery? The guard turned and looked up at the clock ticking off the minutes like a greedy sloth. He waved his baton towards it in a menacing manner. In his enormous hands, the intimidating black stick looked like a childs wiffle ball bat. Know why that clock is covered in wire mesh, boy? Avarice didnt answer. Not cause you convict boys ill break it. No-no-no. Clocks cheap and can be replaced in a heartbeat. Just like you convicts. That clocks covered to hide time away from you boys. Minutes out of sight, hours out of mind. A man that cant keep track of the time he owes the state is a peaceful man. He leaned in close. His lips were set in a scowl. His breath smelled minty. His teeth were white and perfect. He stuck the baton through the bars and poked Avarice lightly on the chest with the rounded, steel tip. Remember that the next time you 39

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come around here visiting us for a spell. Remember that Ill be here to give you a lesson. Ill have all the time in the world. Ill own that clock. Ill own you. He paused. Now, you got any other stupid questions? I have a pretty wife to get home to. Yeah, Boss. I do. Avarice stared down at the floor to mask his contempt. He bit his lower lip to regain the self-control that was dangerously close to slipping away. This was no time for a foolish act; one that could jeopardize his parole. You proud of them stripes you wear on your sleeve? You take em home with you? Take em home to the missus. Show her whos boss and all? You tell her about the beatings you dish out while youre laying on top of her, giving her a good screw? You like taking your anger out on her? Avarice paused, ready to deliver the final blow. Or have you gotten so used to watching convicts being raped that you have to give her the business from behind? What do you say, man? Can you look your wife in the eye when you screw her or do you look in the mirror and see other men? The six-foot-three behemoth guard looked flush at Avarice Lake. A black pool of anger where his baby-blue eyes used to be overcame everything and blazed away at the light. A cancer inside the guard was born, a black power that sought out every crevice and filled the dimly lit corridor. Avarice felt he was peering down into the black waters at the bottom of a wishing well, trying to fish out a wish that would never come to light. He had pushed the man too far, he realized. There would be consequences, no doubt. There would be heartbreak and injury and a visit to the infirmary. The guards massive, ape-like hand dropped down to his side. Avarice looked down and grimaced. He instinctively backed away from the steel bars, sensing he had sent the guard over the edge. The guards fingers had come to rest on the sinister set of keys. He searched calmly, deliberately, eyes locked on Avarice, picking through the shiny metal, one key at a time, using only the sensation of touch. Looking for the key that would unlock Avarices cell. For a few terrifying seconds, Avarice thought the guard was going to unlock the door, step inside and reign his baton all over him, sticking to the points on his body that did not bruise easily. Avarice slowed his breathing, knowing this would help to calm him if there was trouble. He stood erect, bones and muscles tense, ready to defend himself. His mind crossed to the other side to a place full of conflict and retribution. He drew an imaginary bulls eye on the side of the guards head, near his temple, the spot most likely to bring the giant down if they tangled. He steadied his resolve. He prepared himself mentally for the extra two years this fight would tack on to his sentence, after the almost certain revocation of his parole. The guard began to speak, started to move, but caught himself quickly. The ideas and words in his head dissipated into nothingness. He lifted his hand from the key ring. Holding his ground, he never took 40

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his black, steely eyes off Avarice. Instead, he just waited a moment then took a step back in a move Avarice did not confuse for retreat, and shook his head. The game of silence had begun. The guard pressed his lips together; sternly, as a schoolmaster whod finally given up on a troubled student would. More seconds went by. Then finally, he flashed Avarice a wicked grin, as if he knew the answer to some great mystery that would forever be lost to Avarice. You should thank that clock behind us. Its done saved your ass but twice today, convict. Yeah. Hows that, boss? Avarice replied, heading back towards the steel door when he realized the guard had gone into a holding pattern. First off. Clock says youre to leave this here reformatory shortly. So I wont get to see you tomorrowor the day after that for that matter. Saved you from a certain beatin. Second. Clock says my shift is just about to end. So Ill be long gone by the time you get processed. I wont be around to meet you on the other side of that wall. Its a shame cause my baton sings a lovely tune when it meets skin and bone. The guard turned his massive body around slowly, and without a word walked back down the hallway to the security room. He struck every steel bar along the way with his baton, flooding the cellblock with sharp, clanging sounds so powerful they drowned out the dull retreat of his footsteps. Avarice covered his ears. He felt the brutal headache returning. Once again, Avarice Lake clutched the steel bars in his hands. He cocked his head at an odd angle and watched the guard walk down the passageway, his wide body taking up a fair amount of the corridors width. He silently cursed him. Avarice looked down at his hands. They had wrapped themselves around the bars in a vice-like grip that would take a dozen men or so to undo. The grip he maintained on the cold steel was absurd, a contorted, white-knuckle vice, pulsing and alive. The ghastly pallor of his scars glowed eerily in the fluorescent light. So ashen, in fact, were his hands that the natural red tone of his skin seemed to have vanished altogether. At times in the past, after hed taken in the stark ugliness of those wounds, hed lie down in his bunk, shut his eyes and imagine what it felt like to be a white man in a white mans world. In prison, it was easy to forget who you were. You had all the time in the world to dream. To play make believe. Becoming someone else was the dream that haunted Avarice. Locked away inside his concrete bunker, with lockdown every night at eight and lights out at nine, the images filling his mind were not something he could easily run from. He dreamed of the day he got out. He envisioned himself owning a car, a red Chrysler convertible powered by a 426 Hemi, barreling down I-40 on a westbound track a free man with a pretty damsel sitting shotgun, the white clouds floating by, sipping warm beer in the soft summer sun 41

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and fighting her hands off as she tried to fill his mouth with tufts of cotton-candy hed bought for her at the county fair. He dreamed of white-walled tires and white picket fences. He dreamed of white-collar work that paid white mans wages. He dreamed of a heaven above, so distant, so out of reach, yet so white and pure that it flooded his imagination with torrents of blinding light that frightened him because he had never wanted anything so badly in his life and the thought of never getting close to his dream was the very thing that brought out madness. The insanity of the situation suddenly hit Avarice. He released the tension on the bars and pulled his hands away. He scrambled back to his bunk and laid down. His feet dangled over the edge in a halfcocked, ninety-degree angle. Restless, he gazed across the corridor at the wall clock. Of course, the black mesh was still there, obscuring the numbers and clock hands. The second hand vanished every few seconds or so on its eternal clockwise rotation, but Avarice could tell, by leaning up in his bunk and tilting his head slightly, by assigning an aggregate meaning to each passing shadow, that it was 1:26 pm. Nineteen minutes to go. Its so cold in here. He said to no one in particular. He folded his arms in front of his chest and rubbed his biceps vigorously, trying to keep at bay the icy chill that had been his constant companion over the last five years. So cold He closed his eyes, hoping to visualize his dream, but it was no use. The dream wouldnt come. For a few moments he pressed his hands over his eyes, trying to blot out the eerie florescent lights above. Maybe it was the lights that kept the dreams at bay. Or maybe it was the constant ticking of the clock that now filled the vacuum of silence. Either way, after a few moments, with his nerves now edging towards frayed weariness, Avarice finally gave up. In complete silence he rose from the bunk and began to dress. * * * *

Governor Holloway walked towards Justice Reywal, choosing the most direct route possible. He was confidant; his strut supreme. He took giant, firm steps that ate up ground in a hurry. He bobbed and weaved, ducking around a host of reporters. To his chagrin, Justice noticed the man-of-the-people had no problem walking over the same sinuous ground that had earlier given him trouble. The reporters, sensing a controversial moment or sensational sound bite looming, trailed in Holloways wake like hungry remoras sifting for scraps. The scavenger journalists carried with them smiles and freelance attitudes that belied an innate guileso eager were they to

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attach themselves to something meaningful, full of substance, or if the need arose, to something ersatz and contrived. The governor closed the gap in a hurry. He established eye contact immediately and maintained it, staring dogmatically at Justice the entire way. Maybe hed been a boxer or avant-garde artist in a previous life, Justice thought. When the governor was a mere ten feet away he abruptly hit the brakes. His men instinctively followed suit, stopping on a dime. Their bodies lapsed into a state of awareness, tense and inert, trying to predict the governors next moves ahead of time. Then, with incredible deftness, six of the bodyguards quickly branched out, forming a loose, protective ring around Holloway. They moved eight feet out, encircling the pride of Oklahoma. Facing outward, they scanned faces and bags and satchels and loose clothing, looking for weapons or unauthorized cameras and tape recorders. A reporter holding up a shade umbrella was dealt with on the strictest of terms. Despite the mans protests of innocence, the umbrella was confiscated. When the reporter continued his tirade, two of the bodyguards whisked him away, presumably to an isolated stretch of land, probably Siberia, Justice thought. They were not fooling around, these professional mercenaries with shrewd minds and ill-tempered humor. Ten feet away. 120 inches. It was a calculated move; one that further proved Holloways genius at grandstanding: Leave just enough room between the two combatants, thereby letting as many bystanders and journalists as possible commingle. Everyone from reporters to cameramen to the little old lady that sang on the church choir on Sundays would get an unobstructed view of the event as it unfurled, real-time. The governor continued to smile. The confidence and hubris gushed out of him. Justice felt a feint whiff of nervousness. Right on cue, the reporters amassed. They formed an impromptu bullring around the governor and Reywal, who was unceremoniously pushed in to the circle from behind by the unfamiliar hands and bodies of strangers. In this instance, however, the combatants were not gaily dressed matadors carrying muletas, they were not knights dressed in shiny armor, but common men about to speak words that could be just as sharp and deadly as a lance or a sword. In the recesses of Justices mind, a virulent dream unleashed itself. The timing was awful, to say the least. But he had no control over such matters. The nightmare hed thought hed vanquished long ago suddenly resurfaced: He was a soldier, fighting in the Indian Wars. He rode atop his strapping horse, caught out in the open, a frozen, white field underneath him; the heavy wind whipping ice flakes and snow all over him as the cavalrymen he rode in with encircled an Indian village on horseback. The company dug out rifle pits in the snowdrifts and methodically began to kill everyone in sight. And in his hand he carried 43

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a single shot Springfield carbine, and in the palm of the hand that carried that rifle was the stain of blood, and onto the five fingers connecting to that palm bled the scarlet hue of white mans treachery the lifeblood of the Indian men, women, and children Justice had helped slaughter, and as he watched, an active raconteur bearing little conscience, the blood dripped from his fingertips and fell, staining the snow at his horses feet in brilliant, bright-red flower patterns that made Justice think of the bucolic, crimson poppy fields of Flanders, which saw so much bombing and trampling and hate during the trench battles of WWI that the poppy blooms ceased to bloom for more than four years. It was a bloody dream, one that had taken its toll on Justices psyche and body for many years. The dream had robbed him of sleep. The urge to eat and work. The urge to live. It had slowly hacked down his will. Yet it had been four years or so since hed last clashed with it. So what was it about that moment that brought it on? What was it about this shiny, cloudless day rotating underneath a bright, orbiting sun carefully balanced within duel vertical light spires that had brought the dream screeching back to the forefront of his brain? Justice suddenly became aware that a deathly quiet had fallen over the crowd. He suddenly felt tired, hating the sun and the mercury and the governor and the arid land for having sucked the life force out of his body. It was hot, just like every day that week had been hot. The anonymous-faced reporters stood on the red-orange skillet that was the prairie, sweating profusely under the tepid sun. UPI, Reuters, AP. They burned time in the sweltering heat, harboring false ideology, ready to break bread with the governor. Rupert Murdochs men, News Limited, FNN, C-Span. They took the bland, chalky smell of the dust bowl into their lungs. They flicked cigarettes to the ground and stuffed gleaming Zippo lighters back into hidden vest pockets. No point in making the devils job any easier, they reasoned. Theyd all get the chance to visit hell soon enough. Their collective weight pushed back against the radiator heat. But the heat proved to be a formidable foe. The heat fought back and won this mounting skirmish of nerves. Something happens when sun and man come together. The sun has a way of wringing out the truth from the lie. Suppositions from concrete fact. Pretenders from professionals. The sun spreads out its cruel shafts of sunlight like long, spindly fingers and feels its way across the earth, inch by inch, crawling over rocky crevices and mountain ranges and peering into ravines, sucking watering holes dry, searing countries with boundaries overlapping the equator, cooking the concrete jungle, sending cities to their boiling points, shining down on every patch of bare, naked skin and blinding the eyes of every man, woman and child, leaving no rock unturned, no face passed over.

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The sun owned the afternoon. The sun easily matched the journalists resolve. While they stood, lost in turpitude and thought, the sun grew stronger, working slowly on their complexion. Setting ablaze naked arms and legs and faces. The sun robbed from them the true color of their skin. The sun had a way of concealing a mans skin tones; the natural essences and pigments given to him at crib-side. No partition had yet been built that could separate light from flesh, reality from shadow. Thus, underneath the spectrum of concentrated energy, fair-skinned became pink. Copper skin oxidized to a deep bronze. Chocolate turned to black. Albino went up in a stark conflagration. Yellow skin remained yellow, but it lost that stale, piss-like, neon glow. The heat drew from them energy, and as that energy faded, sapped away as sweat condensing on fleshy skin and irrational thoughts rummaging through their minds, the journalists quickly grew impatient. And bored. Angry. They nervously tapped pens and pencils against their writing pads and played different versions of taps on the sunbaked ground with anxious feet. They mentally swore off the producers and editors that had sent them reeling to this off-the-radar, restrictive, amoral philistine. They produced cell phones and made calls, then put them away quickly when the security detail flashed them dirty, dangerous looks. The sound of buzzing insects became ostensibly louder in this growing void of silence, of waiting. The cacophony of insect noise was a mild irritant to all those around. But no one dared move, except to swat at the short-horned locust or the cloud of aphids or the occasional honeybee that buzzed nearby, showing off its unsightly aerodynamics. Something was about to give, some unknown tangent was set to slice through the afternoon, and it would happen in the next few moments, inside this Chinese box of heat and pretense. They all knew thisin the same way a pack of hungry hyenas knew a rotting carcass lay in the distance, miles away, unseen. They would wait for as long as it took, these sober-faced, unabashed reporters with a calling. It was asked of them. It was demanded. The media moguls back home sat in air-conditioned studios in Atlanta or D.C. or New York, flipping idly through 200 channels as they called the shots. They didnt want to hear words like heat, sunburn, sunstroke, and drought. They wanted results. They had a limited vernacular. All they cared about was the loop, the continuous 24-hour flash of words and imagery and source material and gossip to feed its greedy, indefatigable mouth. Images of war. Pestilence. Death. Words lacking conviction, wisdom; but strong with blunt force trauma. Words capable of lighting fires and triggering mass altercations. Lies. Unverified, damnable lies; miscalculations of truth. Which celebrity was sleeping with which prominent athlete? Which politician stayed out past 4am while his wife and kids waited at home? These were the main courses the well-dressed, wealthy, finely tuned men wanted served at their dinner table. Pictures of naked babies in Vietnam lying dead 45

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under succulent palm trees. Pictures of farmers standing on withered cornfields, looking to the heavens and contemplating God. The faces of the beaten U.S. armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The astonished look on a candidates face caught at the very moment of defeat. The continuous loop demanded it. The people watching at home, in all facets of America and beyond, paying on-demand fees and padded subscription rates, demanded it. In pamphlets and commercials and colorful advertisements the executives had promised it to them all for a low, introductory rate, if they just signed at the bottom line, sent a personal check and asked no questions. The television reporters stood by their cameramen, holding their devils devices, giving out directives and picking favorable angles from which to shoot. Everyone, including Justice, who couldnt fathom why he hadnt taken the reigns and begun to speakafter all, he had assembled this ad hoc press conferenceremained silent, in deference to the governor, waiting for the man to begin the ceremony. It was as insane a moment as it would ever get. The moment stretched onward, for what seemed minutes, and if there had been shadows they wouldve surely inched across the landscape like greedy, little fingers, but the sun pinned to its zenith was incapable of producing the slightest shade, so time stood still, naked and devoid, grinding to a slow crawl. The sand beneath Justices heels continued to bake in the hot oven sun. The powder keg of emotions roiled to a slow burn. Someone nearby dragged a heavy cooler over the hard ground; and plastic water bottles and canned soft drinks and ice packs and salt tablets were passed out to the thirsty and the weak. Then, finallythe voice they had all come to hear. We play to the cameras, and then we head homeWe sleep peacefullyand we forget. Governor Holloway began. Smart. Real smart. He had just fired the first salvo across the bow, branding Justice in fact the entire press conferenceas irrelevant and ludicrous. The governor had just postulated that nothing of consequence would be debated on that day. But there are no pillows out here to rest ones head upon. There is no blanket to obscure what we see. There is no satisfaction in my being here today. For light has been shifted from other, important matters. His hands turned upwards towards the heavens, out in front of him, becoming imaginary scales weighing metaphors and allegories unseen to the naked eye. Today is not a day for the white-collar worker. Nor for the farmer. Nor the student. Nor for the single mother trying to feed a family while waiting tables. There is no happiness outside the walls of this facility. He spoke with practiced eloquence, sweeping his hands in a grand gesture while softening his facial expressions. Today brings us nothing but misery. The howling wind of symmetry has sprung upon us like a cloaked beast riding thunderously through the night. Today we bear false witness as two 46

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murderers are paroled from this time-honored institution that has served the community so well. Two men who have maligned the image of the honorable Cheyenne people; two men who committed such a heinous act, I find it difficult to stand here and speak of it Justice gazed off into the distance, tuning out the governors words for the moment. His eyes fell upon a lengthy section of reformatory wall. It loomed just in front of him, less than twenty yards away. The imposing, blackish-gray, stone behemoth ran diagonally across the compass on a southwesterly tract. The words stalwart and oppressive and impermeable immediately came to mind. Yet despite the feeling of despondency projected by the sheer, vertical mass, in just a few minutes time two Cheyenne men were to be expelled from behind that very structure, jettisoned into the glossy sunlight as ex-cons forced to deal with an unknown future. It would be in this withered land, mired in a backdrop of religious and moral rigidity, that they would try to eke out their survival as American Indians. The day they carved those walls out of the mountainside, Justice reasoned, the architects and engineers forgot one thing: The best intentions get fouled up when man is involved. You could carve the rock out from the hillside like you could carve out a mans heart. You could imprison the rock in sturdy foundations, mixing granite and concrete and rebar together, and you can imprison the convict behind the resulting wall that reached up to the sky. But one way or the other, under the crushing weight of life, under the never-ending quest for power, under a wrathful, scrutinizing sun so strong it could crack open the land itself, something or someone has to give. Usually it is the man, so permeable and flexible are his thoughts and rationalizations and soul. One way or the other, we all get whats comin. Justice studied the massive barrier. He began high above; his eyes tired and languid, stinging from the sweat that rolled off his brow. He followed the granite stones all the way down, admiring the expert masonry, the way each cut met the other in a gentle, perfect embrace, the wall smooth and level and seamless, one stone no different than the other in texture, the only palpable difference being the slightest differences in degrees of color, and by the time his eyes leveled off at the base, Justice would have sworn to Jesus himself that what he was staring at was not a structure built to tame frontier-men soaked in violence, but a work of art for the benefit of many generations to come. Justice peeked around the corner of the prison. He spied a six-foot high, two-foot thick wall that formed a rough perimeter just beyond the prisons northeast corner. The wall, made from granite stones leftover from the main complex, had served as a sturdy windbreak for decades. It stretched some forty-feet down the length of the main building in an L pattern, guarding the two sides most exposed to the elements. 47

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Fronting the wall was a dense thicket of wild plums and box elder that surrounded a small copse of cottonwood trees, another added layer of protection against the harsh prairie winds. From where he stood Justice could see an entire swath of wall at ground level denuded, exposed to the bare elements. Cement support columns showed where years of Oklahoma windstorms had blown away the topsoil. This unsightly eyesore had been erected during the early forties; a few years after the first dustbowl storms had hit the area. One summer night in 38, a massive, rolling, black storm rolled over the flatlands, a hundred feet high, many miles thick and wide. It lasted for more than four hours, coming in unseen, matching the night in blackness, an antichrist hastened from the east, seeking vengeance, the second coming Yeats warned about. With impunity and brutality the storm had overcome the prisons utilities. Coarse black sand suffocated generators, the howling wind overturning telephone poles out on Hwy 9, throwing the reformatory into a rolling, silent blackout. Many prisoners rioted in the ensuing chaos, which they mistook as the end of the world, for in those afflicted days the thought of a tangible beast born from the sands permeated the minds of this brainless, illiterate, blank generation as a very real entity. Guards and guns were taken away from the warden in one fell swoop of blackness and madness and depravity. As night stretched to dawn, as the pale morning light crept in through the barred windows above, a response team found an entire cellblock completely abandoned, its hallways and corridors reveling in a strange, unnerving, glowing silence. The prisoners had taken six guards as hostages, taken them from A-block to AD-SEG. In the ensuing vacuum, the cells, wide-open, disarrayed, and full of clutter, the empty corridors stretching into the darkness like fingers, prisoners uniforms and toilet paper set a fire, lighting the way like eerie Halloween lanterns, became a haunted strip of state owned property where no convict or guard dared to tread. Fear became the replacement. It filled the void. It came to life in seconds, overflowing the prison network, like a canister spilling over with milk. When word of the riot got out, fear came out to the forefront. It filled the hearts and minds of Greer Countys residents instantly, like electricity completing a circuit, after one switchboard operator after another made frantic calls to the governors office, the state police, families and neighbors, and to anyone else that would bother to listen. It is common knowledge that fear is a great motivator. Ask any policeman or convict or infantryman and he will tell you that is the unmitigated truth. Fear is an entity that cannot be wiped off with a handkerchief or washed away under the showerhead. It can be dulled or put away into the abstract with alcohol and drugs and sleep, but that is not the same as erasing it altogether from this world. It is not the subduing but the vanquishing of wicked ideas that enables weary men to rest. Fear was already plentiful in this backwater region, so 48

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festooned and rife with superstitions that bordered on the ridiculous or the inane. The constituents living on the fringes of the states southwestern border feared drought. They feared government intrusion. Democrats. They feared the locust. They feared Satan. They feared Atheists. But most of all, the men and women of Greer feared the prisons burgeoning populace, a hundred times more so than they feared blights such as pestilence, hunger and poverty. Suddenly, in one dark night, the thought of hundreds of armed inmates breaching the outer wall and flooding the countryside with hostages had become an instant reality for the terrified men and women of Greer County. The fear subsided by noon, however, when the storm moved on down the road and sunlight splashed all over the cellblock, pushing violent men serving life sentences to the verge of tears. Twenty-seven rioters soon regained their reason and sanity and surrendered to authorities. It was this permeable fear harbored by townsfolk, not intolerance for mans atrocities or self-righteousness, which had made the completion of this dark, incalculable landmark known as the Oklahoma State Reformatory possible in the first place. To the casual onlooker, The Oklahoma State Reformatory was a primeval palace. Established by the legislature in 1909, construction of the main housing complex was finished by 1910 using cheap prison labor. The reformatory stood adjacent to Granite Mountain. In fact, the formidable walls, so unyielding, so sinister, able to cast irretrievable shadows over the inner courtyard (a man could conceal himself in the many odd corners if the hour was right) were made of granite cut from the mountain itself. Four main guard towers were laid out in a square pattern, spread two hundred yards out from each other. The towers rose fifty feet into the sky, peering down at three, double-tiered cell houses, interconnected, laid out in the courtyard in an equilateral triangle. The exercise yard, undersized by most prison standards, was wedged into the open space inside that triangle. The oldest standing building was the broom factory, constructed in 1921. All other original construction had been torn down; all buildings currently in use had been built since 1957. But still, with a myriad of antiquated ways that includedincredibly enough in this day and agechain gangs, prisoners practicing agriculture, a stringent quarantine on computers and in-house schooling, an assortment of religious programs forced upon the convicts, and one of the states more stringent parole measuresthe reformatory could not shake the dilapidated countenance, the hopeless pall or image common to so many prisons built in the rural south during the Industrial Revolution. Justice closed his eyes and tried to imagine the unimaginable despair an inbound convict felt as he watched through glassy, terrified eyes the reformatory rising up from the prairie floor, a black-blighted 49

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nightmare contrasted against wide-open sky. Chained to the metal framework inside the prisons obsolete bus. Slinking lower and lower into the dilapidated seat padding as his freedom slipped away from his grasp. His body jerking up and down like a movie reel spliced incorrectly because the bus lacked proper shocks. Stomach sinking fast. The convict studying the mega-complex from the highway, his spirit evaporating as he drew closer to the gravel entryway. Flashes of barbwire. Hunting dogs straining against metal leashes, held back by the almighty hands of wide-bodied corrections officers whose faces projected obdurate blankness. Prisoners watching behind a chain-link fence barrier, rocking the fence back and forth with their hands in a bold, pronounced caveat. Counting off the years in his head. Home sweet home for the next five, ten, fifteen yearsmaybe even life. Blood going ice-cold; sweat pouring off the forehead. Courage and brashness giving way to terror. Legs bound in irons. Begin that slow, awkward walk through that front gate, so imposing and shadowy and lofty. One had to look straight up to see where it all began. Traverse the four concrete steps that lead up to a giant, toothless mouth ready to open wide and receive him in its belly. Convicts yelling through the barred windows above. Cherry. Fish. Pogey-baitthe argot of the ten-to-life set. All those sights and sounds hitting the inbound instantaneously, the worlds in front of his eyes spinning and spinning, the light growing dim, leading him to believe hed been sent to the worst possible hell on earth. The blueprint for modern day prisons is, without a doubt, security. Or rather, the illusion of it. OSR was a perfect practitioner of this concept. The reformatory operated with four fully functional guard towers. A daunting minaret punctuated each corner of the square structure, jutting up towards the cloudless sky, manned by officers armed with automatic rifles and the latest binoculars and dispatch radios; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Justice looked up, trying to play the sun at an angle that afforded him a decent view. He saw outlines of sharply dressed hacks with their well-oiled rifle barrels glistening under the sun; performing the vagaries of guard duty. One guard stood high on his Southern perch, the tower closest to Justice. One eye watched with keen interest the proceedings going on down below. The other eye, more casual and disaffected, fell down on the reformatorys unimpressive garden, an almost barren, hundred square foot scrapyard eked into the patchy earth just outside the reformatorys southwesterly wall, smack in the middle of the boiling suns trajectory. Several convicts, sweaty and encrusted with dirt, tended the rough plot. They were dressed in bright orange jump suits peeled open to the waist. Their countenances were marked by grimaces or blankness. Faces were lined with the deep crevices of age and corruption. Brightly colored bandannas shielded 50

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them from the sun, while a low grade, four-foot high fence encircling the garden shielded them from thoughts of running. Incredibly enough, the fence was all that separated the convicts from the open countryside. But the truth be told, the men that inhabited the reformatory rarely gave escape a thought. A man would have to be crazy to throw himself out into those expansive flatlands, so empty, so wide and devoid of natural cover, with nary a shadow to hide under. And if by chance he made it across the dirt road that separated the prison from the cotton fields, made it down the steep banks of the dried out creek bed and crossed into the deep shadows of Granite Mountain three miles out, the dogs, powerful Bull Mastiffs with keen senses of smell and taut muscles would have little trouble tracking his scent and tearing that man to bits. Justice watched with pity as the convicts toiled away underneath the massive weight of the hot sun. They tilled the unforgivable, rabble soil into manageable straight rows, eight-inch high mounds fifty feet in length that would, in the near future, if the weather turned and the rains came, give life to lettuce and tomato plants, stalks of celery and squash and corn and strawberries and alfalfa to be used as hay to feed the guards horses. At the far end of the garden, nailed to a fence post off to one side, a battered scarecrow with bright, black button eyes and a wide smile stitched to his cotton-sack face watched the proceedings with mute interest. His straw arms were splayed out, tied to a ragged, wooden crossbeam. The skinny, ragamuffin, straw-torso had been stuffed into a cotton-gray prison uniform sometime before. The clothing had decayed over time. The sun and elements had wreaked constant havoc. This vagabond watchman had obviously withstood the test of time, serving a sentence of his own right alongside scores of convicts. Justice imagined what the scarecrow would say if it could talk? A veteran of many lean seasons, it would probably start by shaking his straw head in disgust, then begin to lecture the convicts on the subtleties of strip-cropping and crop rotation. Justice was jolted back to reality when a reporter standing nearby opened up a can of soft drink. Coke. As the escaping CO2 violently hissed, freed from the cans internal pressure, the governors voice came to full compression in Justices own ears. Standing there, listening to the governor speak, Justice thought of treasonous men, smartly-dressed men who neatly secreted their lies and guilt in leather briefcases, like Wall Street arbitragers carrying stock portfolios they intended to manipulate and plunder. When the governor spoke, his voice had that far off quality, smooth and silky and luminescent, as if he were blandly cataloguing the names of ghosts or vanquished opponents. The governor, Justice concluded, was not unlike a budding news story: both required a fresh set of eyes, a fresh field of thought with interchangeable morals gliding off the conscience like ice 51

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cream melting away on hot asphalt, ready to edit away all quantified errors at a moments notice. I will not ascribe credence to this moment. I will notpull the attentionfrom what is vastly more significantto our community. The governors voice shifted gears. Effortlessly, he projected his words above the crowd. His syrupy voice grew in a mounting cadence drawing on each syllable for maximum effect. Just like Dr. King, Justice thought glumly. Long accustomed in projecting his voice over extraneous noise, Holloway had galvanized his reputation as an effective public spokesman. It was the one trait Justice Reywal sorely lacked. It was his Achilles heel. We all recognize that parole is a controversial topic; and elections are oftentimes won or lost on this influential barometer. The statistics are inand they are grim. The truth is this: Fifteen percent of parolees are eventually remanded back to state custody. Many of them during the first year of probation. He paused, looking around, letting the figure seep in. Fifteen percent, ladies and gentlemen. An unsatisfactory figure. I have strived over the last four years to implement tougher legislation for violent offenders. I have worked hard to make the streets of this great state safer for our children to walk on; our parks safe for them to play on. I pledge to you that I will not let these same offenders that I have labored so hard to incarcerate off the hook. And the fifteen percent that slip up will see a swift and merciless fall from grace, so help me God. Nearby, the reporter accidentally dropped his can of soda to the ground. It was full and fell with a sickening thud. The thick, caramel liquid spilled out over the ground, emitting a loud, coiled hiss as cold fluid met scorched earth. A small puff of steam rose from the baked clay as the soft drink evaporated on contact, like all bodies of water did out here in this stagnant wasteland. The sound proved to be an instant distraction. As the cans contents spilled out, the hissing grew louder, matching the governors voice in volume. All around, people began to turn their heads back at the sound. The governors henchmen eyed the reporter reproachfully. Their eyes were set and angry, brimming with contempt. Sensing the inevitable reproach, the reporter immediately stepped on the can, squashing it under a size-11 Timberland boot. A metallic crunch signaled the cans end. The liquid sprayed out all at once; and like a crimped hose cut off from the water supply, the hissing stopped immediately. Then along comes a self-professed magician, a master at prestidigitation, a man He wagged an accusing finger over at Justice Reywal. The governor did not sweat as he spoke. The governor was the only one not sweating. who executed a treacherous parlor trick one whose intentions were diaphanousevil, and cut the legs out from

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under every statute and rule and human emotion I have encountered in my twenty years of public office. Many of you ladies and gentlemen of the assembled press know me by reputation. During my tenure I have strived to mold Oklahomas laws as rigid vessels to be held in the highest regard, far above scrutinization. To do that, to accomplish this task, unyielding deterrents were formalized, then met. No longer will citizens be forced to stand by and watch as criminals bob-and-weave court mandated capital punishment through endless appeals. A chorus of ooohs and ahhhs and light clapping escaped from of the crowd. Governor Holloway had obviously won them over. So much for journalistic objectivity, Justice thought. And then along comes this attorney with an agenda andworking alongside a mutinous Indian organization, brokers a sweetheart of a dealan unethical one at that. Governor Holloway? A female reporter commenced the inquisition. Are you implying that Mr. Reywals actions in regards to Thom and Avarice Lakes plea bargain were, in effect, riddled with illegalities? And if so, what do you intend to do about his actions? Will you be contacting the bar association? Are criminal charges imminent? The tiny woman reached up and stuck her microphone under the governors face. The governor instinctively leaned in. He pausedstretching the moment, harnessing all the coverage he could get. It got real quiet, real fast. Justice threw his head back, rolling his eyes at the governors cheap, below-the-belt theatrics. Camera motors clicked and whirred, tape recorders beeped, their red lights turned on, breaking the silence. The men and womenJustice among them waited anxiously for Holloways reply, breaths held in check. One can only surmise what secrets and betrayals lie inside Mr. Reywals heart? Were his motives directed by altruism? He would like you to think so. But I suspect they werent. I think Mr. Reywal has forged a self-serving truth inside the furnace of self-deception. Mr. Reywal procured for In his right hand he produced two sets of legal files an aid had magically handed him. He held them up high for the crowd to see. these two murderers, Avarice and Thom Lake, an obscenely light sentenceseven years, to be exact. Out in five with parolefor what I consider to be a very heinous crime. Murder! Mr. Reywal, as the title of his book extols, has fired what he thinks is the mighty, first salvo of an honorable war. the governor passed off the files behind him and now held aloft a hardbound copy of Suburban Arrows, Justices recent, popular, controversial non-fiction work detailing the plight and uphill struggle faced by the twenty-first century American Indian. He shook the book in a violent manner, letting everyone know he was serious. Justice watched his own likeness, the airbrushed picture of his face taken so long ago, and which he had fought tooth and nail to exclude off the back page of the books dust 53

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jacket, shake obscenely with each pump of the governors fist. He could almost feel the reeling blows, the sadistic quaking as the governors voice grew louder and more indignant as he hurled insults Justices way. Unmolested and unchallenged, the governor continued his tirade. Mr. Reywal is shooting blind arrows into the suburban skies, hoping they will fall down and strike somewhere into the common mansthe working mansconsciousness. He is looking to rip open a gaping wound whose sole intent is to bring back memories of the unfortunateincidentsthat occurred in American history regarding the Native Americans. The governor chose those last words carefully. The governor always chose his words carefully. His face grew ominous, a shade darker, resembling raw beef, as if some giant cloud had passed overhead, blotted out the sun and spread its dark shadow over him. His voice grew hoarse and strained to be heard. He now sounded like a man that had just gargled with quicksand. But there is no place for fiction out here, boysno place for it at all. He shook his head in a chastising manner. Fiction can hurt people. Fiction obfuscates the facts. Fiction ignores the ragged timeline that is life. It is the stick in the mud of a rather concrete breach of law and order. Fiction does not ameliorate or crystallize the matter. Fiction is dangerous; capable, as we have seen, of cloaking the truth and the law. Fiction kills, ladies and gentlemen. And that is what Mr. Reywals book is all aboutthe highest, purest form of imaginary storytelling available. I can assure you this: the governors office has launched a preliminary investigation into Mr. Reywals actions during his tenure in the DAs office. My office will not stop until we uncover the truth. Like the crowd at a tennis match, the reporters reacted quickly. Faces turning, their eyes fell on Justice, ready to gauge and capture for posterity his reaction. They moved fast. They rushed towards him, ready to freeze his embattled face on live TV. Etiquette abandoned, they rudely shoved microphones under his nose, called out questions in staccato fashion and demanded a rebuttal. The people had to have answers. The continuous loop demanded it. The Net ratings were all that mattered; and those ratings relied more on spectacular answers and images than they did on solid, sincere journalism. Cameras continued to record as a host of questions fell upon him. The journalists dreamed of newfound fame and rich contract extensions. Mr. Reywal. Care to comment on Governor Holloways allegations last December that you leaked his name in the Abramov case? Mr. Reywal, if there in fact is no truth to the governors accusation concerning yourself and the Lake brothers, what is your purpose here today? Are you trying to parlay this appearance into book sales? Stupid question, Justice thought. He wouldnt acknowledge that one. He moved on, passing over faces, looking for a friendly comrade-inarms.

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What about the medals? Have you been searching for the Congressional Medals of Honor handed out at Wounded Knee? In your book you stated you have begun a systematic search to correct a fat, bespectacled male reporter from the Des Moines Register stared down at his notes. a dishonorable affirmation of a perceived heroic battle. Yes. I have. Justice said. The man perked up immediately. He peered up at Justice from behind thick, square-framed lenses that had slid down his damp face and hung on the tip of his nose. The reporter pushed the glasses back towards his face and nodded for Justice to continue. Justice answered emphatically. It has been a long, arduous process, but the American Indian Movement has made progress. If you recall, The National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions in 2001, calling for the U.S. government to rescind all the medals handed out to the Calvary for that battle. But do you think it is fair to repudiate those medals awarded to the soldiers who risked their lives? Risked their lives? Justice asked, incredulously. He stared angrily at the bloated, nave man. That was a massacrenot war. The government has already changed their designation of Wounded Knee from a battle to a massacre and issued a formal statement of regret. Federal law dictates that medals can only be awarded for heroism shown on the battlefield. How you can honestly stand there and justify the soldiers actions on that day in late December 1890 as heroic is beyond me? Was it a gallant stand against heathens? Or was it free reign cowardice? Justice Reywal was now angry. He had spent a greater part of the last three years searching for the surviving family members of the twenty soldiers awarded medals at Wounded Knee. So far he had tracked down and visited six of the families. And six families had turned him down cold when he implored them to rescind the medals. It was a time consuming burden. It was tough going. The road to recovery often forked into not two, but many disparate paths. And in each of those paths, which he walked with a determined, fatalistic breed of solitude, like a gunfighter heading into a duel he couldnt win, he had found the occasion to reflect back on his own life. Though his tragedies outnumbered his victories by a wide margin, he pressed on, trying to leave those misfortunes behind in the shade. Everywhere he went, he was greeted by shadows, plentiful in number, spreading their gloomy tentacles across his nights. He ran into dark, blind alleys that reached out and befriended those burning defeats. Yet he never wavered, never gave into the enormity of his task, for in those Medals of Honor he had found his calling; his purpose in life, and to admit defeat and abrogate his obligation to the Indian nation would, in his mind, prove to be the worst kind of sin, a mortal sin he could never absolve himself from. In the mirrors reflection of that defeat, his own 55

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weaknesses would emerge. They would lift and swing the hammer and drive the final nail into his coffin. During his quest, Reywal had spanned the countrys entire length. He had driven out to isolated farming communities hitched to the sunbelt, finding loneliness and anguish, foreclosure after foreclosure, dry crop beds, names forgotten and faces aged by the sun, but no medals. One rainy night, he caught the elevated train to a dilapidated section of Bronzeville in the Southside of Chicago, losing his footing in the process and almost plunging down to the third rail. One expedition took him as far south as Laredo, Texas, where, in his wish to keep his quest anonymous and his face unseen, Justice illegally punched through the border into Mexico late one night, choosing a dark and desolate spot. A rugged coyote, a tall Mexican with a sinister laugh emitted through a gaping hole in his mouth where three front teeth were missing, accompanied him. The Mexican laughed out loud at the border patrol they had narrowly eluded. The Mexican believed he was invisible. Probably believed the border patrol was deaf too, Justice thought. The two of them hid among the puckered folds of land and many arroyos that dotted the region. The Mexican left Justice soon after they had crossed, tipping his sombrero and making the sign of the cross with his right hand. Justice hunkered down behind the sand dunes for hours, alone, low to the ground, masked by tall, ragged clumps of sagebrush. All night long he watched the border patrol perform their unrelenting sweeps across the rugged borderland. Left to right, right to left, they rock-crawled their modified, powerful, greenon-white Ford Broncos. They hugged the border, careful not to stray too far into Mexico. Equipped with black-diamond headlights and 500watt floodlights, the border patrol lit up the night like the headiest days of the blitzkrieg. He had gazed at the North Star high above, at Texas fifty yards off to his left, and felt the burning pinprick of deep shame crawling up his neck as he recalled with crystal clarity that feeling of existing as a second-rate citizen. Mexican or Indian, they were both the same to the North Country Anglos. If the Indians were nothing more than a cocktail party joke, then the Mexicans served as the eternal punch line. These were the thoughts running through his head, even as he spied, at one point, a group of Mestizos going the other way, Northbound, a silent cavalcade eleven strong defecting en mass, abandoning their homeland and heritage for a fanciful promise of new life across the border. They passed him in the dark in complete silence, single file, barely acknowledging his presence. But Justice knew. Something passed between them unseen in the dark. By the haunted look that filled their eyes, the tired feet that barely left the earth as they trudged onward at a snail's pace, he could tell they held misgivings about the entire ordeal. A mounting indignity within him grew stronger as the Mestizos passed him. By the time theyd disappeared over the crest of 56

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a nearby sand dune, it had all dawned on him. The people back in DC had been right all along. In a way, Justice had a lot in common with these folk. He was a defector. A traitor to his own people. Out there in that wilderness, all alone, having time to think and expound on his predicament, right became wrong, and wrong became right. In this dry, Northern region, marked by hills and gullies, ravines so deep and treacherous they could not be navigated, a land inhabited by poisonous scorpions, Gila monsters, vipers, coralillos and bandits, everything was marked by a stunning lack of alacrity. An encompassing dullness ruled the night; where the russet-brown, desert scrubland, pockmarked with woody shrubs, small trees, cactus and succulents met the dry, denuded rock beds of the Rio Grande lowlands in a boring, blending of colors. The colors of Mexico, like the thoughts permeating Justices mind, dissolved and ran together; like an infants very first color-by-numbers drawing, the colors of magic markers seeping through the black outline of dusk. Just before dawn, Justice rose from the safety of the dunes, those barren folds of land that had protected him throughout the night like a mothers womb. He hitched a ride with a poor sharecropper driving a battered pick-up, reaching the town of Guadalupe by noon. He carried with him the terrible weight of his burden; knowledge gleamed overnight that he was no different than the thorny shrubs or the armadillos or the men and women they drove past, carrying heavy, earthen jugs laden with water over vast distances. Across the border was no different than home. He was a nonentity. He existed as a number, the summation to an equation statisticians used to derive which Indian deserved food rations, which deserved a useless, dried-up parcel of land on some god forbidden reservation, and which Indian deserved nothing. He had knocked on doors and rapped on windows, shaken the hands of proud fathers and frail-vesseled mothers, introducing himself as an ambassador to AIM. He sat on living room couches and front porch swings, drinking strong, bitter coffee, trading idle talk, trying to ease the bewildered expressions off the faces of suspicious family members. He tried to enlighten them with facts and anecdotes on the history of the massacre at Wounded Knee. He smiled a lot on those visits. He wanted to show these simple, kindhearted, jingoistic people of Middle America or wherever he was at that moment that the Lakota Sioux were not scalpers, heathens, or atheists at all, while all along copies of the New Testament lay within eyesight, atop coffee tables, mantelpieces and kitchen shelves. Trying not to ruffle too many feathers as he laid the groundwork for the retrieval of those medals, Justice informed parents, brothers and sisters, that all men, women, and children, be those U.S. Cavalrymen or Sioux, had shown dignified grace and bravery on that frigid day. They stared back in silence, a shroud of incomprehension blanketing 57

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their faces, an awkward, fragile half-smile forming at the corners of their mouths. They nodded their heads in a condescending manner, unsure of the validity of his statements, unsure of where he was going. When the moment seemed proper, when Justice felt he had corralled their emotions, he pleaded for the return of the medals, telling those six families that although the soldiers were merely faithfully following the orders given by Colonel Forsyth, performing what they surely believed to be their integral duty for the liberation of the plains, the medals were tarnished, because the government leadership back in Washington itself was tarnished, and the order to attack the village was tarnished. But in the end, it all came down to pride and prejudice and material worth. Everyone wanted the honey. And to get to the honey, one oftentimes had to kill the bees. Not one of the six families wished to part with an heirloom they perceived as justly deserved and invaluable; a legacy worthy of passing on to future generations. It will take time. The Bush administration is against us Justice spoke at length about legislation that had been recently introduced to formally apologize to Native Americans. This legislation had been tacitly delayed by the Bush Administration and never reached the Senate floor. In a relating matter, Senator John McCain went on record saying the medals were valid and forthright and should never be rescinded. but if those medals are not returned willingly by the families of the recipients, or not rescinded by the U.S. government, we will fight to get them annulled. Mr. Reywal, Governor Holloway stated that his presence here today is purely benign. He is merely following the itinerary set for him by his aids weeks ago. Do you believe the governor has come here for reasons other than following the campaign trail? Do you feel he is trying to create a strong presence in order to deflect allegations that he was involved as a middleman in the bribery case against Mack Abramov? And lastly, do you feel he has come here today to destroy your credibility? I cant comment on the governors thoughts. Or feelings for that matter. I do know his type, though. Hes a clever man. Holloways cut corners you and I never knew existed cause we always thought the room was round. Mr. Reywalhow do you respond to allegations that AIM has a vested interest in seeing the Lake brothers free? That question cut straight and true above the rest. The arrow piercing the heart. His answer was crucial, to say the least. Justice mulled it over for what seemed minutes, turning it over in his head like a lottery basket cycling tickets, until the answer soon found itself lodged in the roof of his mouth. The answer he gave, for the record, for the tape recorders and the cameras, would lay the foundation for AIMs future. His words would 58

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either help or hinder the future as it pertained to Thom and Avarice Lake. It was his job to construct a safe harbor, even if no such harbor existed. And if all else failed, he would have to settle for the illusion of safety. Justice had covered his tracks well. He was not a stupid or callous man. No blind alleys existed in his world. He was standing there today, the eyes of domestic correspondents focused on him, and he found himself ready to field any question, ready to argue every point to the death. No lie or fabrication or gerrymandering would seep into his words, no vituperative rebuttal would escape his thoughts. It was broad daylight, the country was watching, and Justice Reywal found he had nothing to hide. Although he had spent a fair amount of face time with the Lake brothers, interviewing and investigating them after their arrest, he had neither contacted nor fraternized with them outside the wheels of the justice system. Never visited them as they served their sentence behind the reformatorys formidable walls. John Ravage had taken care of that end, working the lines of communication like a carrier pigeon. It wasnt until the day he resigned his position as an assistant DA, a few months after that fateful trip to Esperanza Ridge, that he thought it prudent to contact the brothers, using Ravage as his go-between. But all along, Justice kept track. On a magnetic calendar pressed to his kitchen refrigerator he marked off the daysthe monthsthe years with a red marker, counting down the time to their first parole hearing a hearing he had eventually attended, and testified successfully, on the brothers behalf. His relationship with the Lake brothers was complicated, to say the least. It had first been adversarial. When they first laid eyes on each other, Justice Reywal was an assistant DA and the Lake brothers were alleged killers. It then shiftedafter Justice had ironed out the stunning plea-bargain with the Lake brothers public defenders, a deal that saw the brothers remanded to the states custody for just seven yearsto one of begrudged, reluctant acceptance he hoped would one day bridge to mutual respect. From that respect the seeds of friendship, a tenuous one at best, for they would forever exist on opposite sides of the moral spectrum, could be sewn. The time had come to see those crops to fruition. First of all Justice chose an unusual tacticparlay the governors grandstanding to his own favor. Dance his way through the questions, but give the reporters the illusion theyd created the tune. He pointed at his book, which Holloway still held aloft. If the governor wanted a signed copy of my book, all he had to do was pick up the phone and call. No need to go through all this trouble. Abrupt laughter filled the gallery. The tension in the air dissolved instantly. Justice looked around, his white teeth displayed through a wide grin.

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Even a few members of the governors inner circle managed semblances of a smirk. Good. Real good. Now switch gears. I do approach this matter with great seriousnessLet the governor have his say. Let him hurl his imprecations and accusations, however unjust or deceitful they are. I am not interested in his polemic discourse or his ludicrous diatribes. They are just wordsvibrations traveling through the air. He wagged an admonishing finger at the group. I am a journalist myself. As journalists, it is our duty to listen to these vibrations. To decipher their meaning. Decide how to interpret them, what to feel, and what angle your reporting will take. All this he swept his arm in a wide circle, is prelude to the reality that follows. Its what you write after we leave hear today that matters. Not the governor. Not the Lake brothers. And certainly not myself. Mr. Reywal, would you characterize your relationship with the governor as adversarial? In your book, you accused the governor of siphoning Native American funding away with the help of the D.C. beltway gang. Justice thought hard about his answer. More deflection. No need to rail against the man. No need to show his hole card right then and there. This wasnt the time. The governor would get his just due someday. Today is not about the governor. It is not about politics or reelection promises or calls to reform the criminal system. It is, however, if I may quote the governors unfortunate comment, concerned with the historical incidents that have plagued the Indian nation to this very day. Justice spat out the word incident as if it were poison on his lips. Four hundred years of wretched nomenclature inflicted upon Indian suffering at the white mans hand can no longer be ignored. Today is a momentous day. It is a day of celebration. Two of my brothers, Thom and Avarice Lake, will be released from this stone mausoleum in a very short while. Two brothers who, I might add, have forgiven me, the man solely responsible for imprisoning them behind bars for the last five years. Subterfuge. A new dawn awaits the American Indian nation. The curtain has lifted to reveal forgiveness. I am here at the insistence of AIM, not to spread false propaganda or to cast aspersions on the governor and his administration, but to focus the spotlight on the injustices that haunt the tribes to this very day. The land may have scarred and healed over, ladies and gentlemen. But the dustbowl never went away for the American Indians of the region. The people still fear. They exist in squalor. The landscape may be bleak and misbegotten but it is in this terrible, waterless place where the Indians have chosen to make their final stand. What has dried up, in addition to these lands, are the laws and hearts of the men who still practice and preach racism to the American Indian in the twenty-first century. Justice paused for effect. The men and women were 60

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listening, writing his words down furiously; though Justice suspected more out of a self-serving interest than the burning desire to know. His eyes grew narrow, impenetrable. Oklahoma has the nations second largest Indian population. Yet we are treated like third-rate citizens. Most of you are not from here. Justice pointed to the crowd, sternly. And most of you are not aware of this. Surely, the governor is. And he is scared that fact may mobilize and come to light. He is scared because of AIMs intent to marshal together all the Indian nations beginning with the tribes in this stateand exercise our right to vote. Our right to freedom. Our right to live. Our right to earn money from casinos and use those resources to further high-quality education and promote self-reliance. AIMs vision is comprehensive yet well within reach. For the Indian nation to survive, the tribes must all band together. Formulate a plan to develop a portion of the natural resources on all reservations in a responsible manner with the proper conservation practices in place. Lastly. The reservation system is antiquated as well as ineffective. Reservations are not large enough to support our growing populations and that at least on a temporary basis, some of our people have to seek jobs and educational opportunities off premises. This is necessary in order to take some of the pressure off the limited resources natural to the terrain. Once that happens, the dominoes will fall. And the tribes will all unite as one entity. The governorand men of his ilk that hide behind a governments wall of repressionthey will be the ones in trouble. In the end, they are the ones who will reap the rotted fruits of the dustbowl. I find it very hard to believe, Mr. Reywal The governor replied, tersely. It was the first time he had spoken directly to Reywal. that you have come all this waytraveled across dirt roads and ditches and dropped your latest television appearances for the sake of delivering a lecture on the merits of class structure. Why dont you enlighten us all to whats really on your mind? Maybe Im looking for eighty-five million dollars. Have you seen any of it, governor? Reywal stared right through the governor, but to the mans credit, he didnt flinch. In the silence that followed you could hear a pin drop. Maybe youd like to find a subpoena underneath your pillow one morning. How would you like that? Youll get to tell your crazy stories in front of a select Congressional Committee. Holloway, not to be outdone, replied. Will that fit into your itinerary, Mr. Reywal? Governor Reywal began, but was interrupted as the reformatorys attack dogs suddenly sprang to life. Justice looked away quickly, to his left, the words frozen on his lips. A cacophony of loud barking and growling filled the kennel area, a series of chain link cubicles bridged together underneath a green, tented awning attached to the reformatorys eastern wing. 61

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Justice saw what had riled up the dogs. Six massively built Bullmastiffs, (Justice took notice that one of the prized watchdogs was missing a hind leg), had assembled near the perimeter fence in a jumbled mass of flesh and muscle and frothy spit. The Bullmastiffs leapt about viciously, hurling their solid bodies against the metallic fence, lunging towards a solitary prisoner who had chosen the wrong moment of the day to walk by. Draped over the convicts naked, feeble shoulders were two empty water buckets, lashed onto each end of a thin, wooden shaft, swinging wildly. The convict, his skin black and shiny like superheated tar, his torso thin and bony, wore a sad expression on his heavily bearded face. The emasculated corpse seemed withered, beaten down by the ages and the system, close to breaking in two. His eyes never lifted from the ground as he made his way to a nearby hand-drawn waterwell, shuffling and dragging his feet behind him like a tired sloth, and so he barely noticed the angry dogs, panting heavily, their tongues hanging low in the heat, as he staggered past the kennel area. It was an ancient well; fifty years old and counting. It had served a far longer stretch than most of the cons that ran in and out of the reformatory. Its purpose: disperse water to the convicts who worked the nearby cotton fields or to the occasional coterie drafted by the highway dept. to help spread hot asphalt over the stretch of Highway 9 outside the prison. It was a pathetic, misbegotten little structure. Decrepit. And like everything else out there in the sticks, the well had fallen prey to the elements and time and sheer neglect. Many of the wells in-laid support stones had been thrown to the dusty ground at the wells base in a rough circular pattern, intermixing with bits and pieces of rotted, old shingles that had sloughed off the five-foot high peaked roof. Misbegotten or not, Justice realized, like its human counterparts that permeated the dust bowl region, the water-well served a function; and had served it well for many years. The Negro convict stooped over and attached one of the wooden buckets to a rusted j-hook that hung from a cranked windlass mounted between two support beams. Using a manual winch, he lowered the wooden-slatted container downward, into the depths of the bottomless well, for if you wanted to find water in this dried out portion of the state, you had to look deep. You had to get through the bullshit, the excuses, and the corruption that clung to the layers of earth below like a cave dwellers prehistoric leftovers, detritus marking off the slowrooted passage of time, which found every successive generation of con accepted into the reformatorys ranks fighting off the forces of evolution. Justice watched with growing fascination, thinking thered be no way possible the Negro would find water in this dry, Patagonian arena. Things looked that grim. All one had to do was to gaze at the torpid sun high above and witness the might she brought down, like a 62

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gigantic hammer swinging wildly inside a smelting furnace, ready to knock slag off ore. To stare at the concentrated rays of sunlight that, unimpeded by cloud-cover, bore continuous holes through the atmosphere was to feel the full frontal fury of nature, and one would have to come to the realization that water would sink to the most impenetrable depths to conceal itself from this withering force. If I may interrupt, Mr. Reywal. Governor Holloway responded wryly, barely able to conceal his contempt at Justices daydreaming. How can you honestly stand there, basking in the glow of hypocrisy and declare that justice will be served on this day? Do you honestly expect us to believe that you have come here on a mission for the good of the Indian nation? His words, like the climbing temperature that exceeded all expectations, grew agitated. They were nearing the record high, and the crowd of reporters surrounding them felt it. Tempers soared, hitting their breaking points. The heat pushed deadlines up. From that point on, their questions would probe deeper, becoming reactionary pinpricks to the skin and heart. What do you expect to tell Jericho Blacks surviving family members? Jericho Black was the unfortunate bill collector that on one fateful evening five years ago had stumbled onto the Lake brothers property. After a heated exchange of words, presumably instigated by Black, as the brothers would later testify, Avarice Lake had gunned the man down on the front porch. The courts claimed it was in cold blood; a charge Justice Reywal had initially supported. But after Esperanza, everything changed. With a little help from Justice, who secretly met with and persuaded the Lake brothers public defenders to get the brothers to adjust their stories to their favor, the violent act they committed had been sanitized, made more humane, if that was possible. In the end, Reywal was able to push through the plea bargain with a smattering of resistance. Justice stared at the ground, reflecting quietly on the last five years of his life. A maze of events swirled around his aching head like atoms orbiting a nucleus. The murder. The night up on the ridge. Driving through a lonely, morning prairie awash in the glow of dry lightning. The rustling weeds incessantly scratching at his windowpane at night, triggering those terrible nightmares. The DA that gladly accepted his resignation after that suspicious plea-bargaineverything he ever remembered in detail, all those days and weeks and years strung together and leading up to this very moment came crawling forward on smooth, sinuous bellies and revealed themselves in all their stark ugliness. With the blinding sun at his face Justice fought the urge to vomit. He gathered his breath. Justice brought a clenched fist up to the air. Ladies. Gentlemen. We live in a world that rewards sheer brutality. The very notion that justice exists is an absurdity. An abstract at best. As the governor said before, fiction is a dangerous enterprise. A man 63

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that believes in fairy tales is going to find himself at the back of the bread line, always coming up empty cause the food ran out seconds before his turn came up. The America I learned about in history books has been uprooted and defaced. Everything I have come to understand and believe in has vanished. The American Indians are faced with extermination, yet the governor would have you believe that he will never let that happen on his watch. Justice looked back at the embattled convict, who continued on with his noonday battle against the water well, oblivious to the presence of Gov. Holloway, arguably the most popular man in Oklahoma. The Negro con stood in silent modesty, staring deeply into the face of a cheap wristwatch, bought at the prisons sundries counter. He silently counted down the seconds. After an allotted time known only to himself had passed, he leaned forward and proceeded once again to work the winch. This time, his hands rotated the mechanism in the opposite direction. His body stiffened as his inelegant, gaunt muscles flexed stubbornly and strained against this intolerable weight down below. A minute passed. Fighting gravity all the way, the cons undernourished, almost non-existent biceps finally succeeded, pulling the bucket out from the clutches of the wells dark, granite-walled reach. Justice watched, his heart leaping up in his chest, hoping the man had struck pay dirt. He silently cheered the convict on; a small lump of anticipation forming in his throat. The bucket soon arrived at the cusp of the well. The convict reached out and reeled it in, satisfied. He placed the bucket, now full and dribbling water through tiny gaps in the wooden slats, down on the ground next to him. He grabbed the other bucket and repeated the process all over again. Knowing each minute lost equated to a fair amount of seepage from the first bucket, he went to work at double speed. When he was done, barely two minutes later, he quickly attached one bucket to each end of the pole, lifted the heavy contraption onto his shoulders and began that long walk past the sentinels, the dogs that had kept up their vicious howling all along. He walked towards the garden where the other convict gardeners waited patiently; exuding the inert tolerance only men inclined to doing hard time were capable of exuding. Tired convicts leaned against the metallic fence. Chins rested on the tops of dirty hands, who in turn rested over the handles of lengthy rakes and hoes, their business ends pressed squarely into the pancaked earth. They pulled soiled baseball caps off their heads and wiped the caked dirt off their furrowed brows and waited for the water that would quench their thirst. All the while the skinny convict carrying the water surreptitiously scanned the terrain around him. First the horizon, so flat and mesmerizing and beautiful at the vortex where blue sky met black soil, a vast stretch of freedom full of dried up creek beds and dry leaf woods 64

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and beautiful copper canyons that lay just within reach of his fingertips then back to the guards up on the tower, their shiny brass badges and menacing automatics warning the con not to even think about runningthen eyes blossoming wide like morning glories as he took in the open fields to his right once more, then back up to the guards, slogging and spilling precious water in the process. The entire episode began to take on an almost comical appearance. That convict bugger better not git any south-of-the-border ideas. The farmer with the SOONER sweatshirt offered to anyone that cared to listen. He had noticed the con skirting that imaginary line in the dirt that separated freedom from oppression. The farmer had a nose for danger. The farmer was a careful, superstitious man. That old bullmastiff over there may have all but three legs, but hes still fast enough to outrun a jackrabbit on his worse day. What makes you think hes got ideas of running? A voice asked meekly, a few feet behind Justice. They turned. It was the young man in dark sunglasses. It was the second time the boy had spoken since theyd arrived at the prison. Justice went to cut in, to tell the farmer to shut the hell up, to leave the young man alone, but stopped abruptly. It was time for the young man to come out from behind his sunglasses and handle one on his own. Human nature, boy. Human nature. Its that simple. The young man stared at the farmer, the suns harsh glare caroming off those dark shades. He tapped his foot on the ground in a slow, rhythmic beat, prodding the man for further explanation. You see, mans got to check himself every once in a while. Has to ask himself if hes still a man by definition. The farmer placed a giant, reassuring paw on the young mans shoulder. The young man flinched, but held his ground. That goes double for convicts. You see, most common folk go through life with little conflict. They grow soft. Complacent. Well, that logic has no place out here, where a cons heart is measured by the day. Each morning roll call brings nothing but uncertainty. Every day he lifts himself up from that bunk and leaves his cell he has to ask himself if he still has that fire in his gut. That will to survive. The day he shakes his head and answers no, is the day the state will have broken him in. And then the other cons will fall on him like jackals to bones. But those men fragged themselves. They exist in a state-ofawarenesslive in predicaments they themselves created. They broke laws and the state is punishing them accordingly. Dont they understand that? Dont you think the state has a right for remuneration? The young man said. That dont matter none at all. The farmer said, matter-of-factly. He pulled out a shiny, foiled pack of chewing tobacco from a deep pocket sewn onto the lining of his jeans. Staring at the young man, the farmer picked out a healthy pinch of brackish substance. He pressed 65

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down firmly, using his thumb, fore and index fingers, compacting the dark, sticky mass into a tight ball before shoving the entire mess into his mouth. Out here in the dust bowl, the simplest acts of life breathingtakin down a mealtakin a walksometimes these things are impossible to do. A man can feel the cage closing in on him licketysplit. No time to lay out a plan. He watches his spirit evaporate from every lil pore in his body. During the hot season it all gets ratcheted up a notch. Heatshimmers in the yard play tricks on a man. During the rainy season his sights grow muddy. Well, that all gets to a con after a spell. After a while the urge to run creeps up his throat. He pointed towards the nearest tower with a fat index finger, stained black from the tobacco. The guard had come to attention. He now watched the Negro convict through sharper, less diluted eyes, as if through some mental nexus hed sensed the convicts innate desire to cut and run for daylight. But then theres the issue of firepower. Convict dont have none. States got all of it. Convicts not stupid, despite what chu all hear. He aint goin to go up gainst no guns. So in the end, he has to spit out that urge or swallow it whole. Either way he loses. So he sits in his cell and the hate and desperation grows inside of him. All day, all night long, stewing. Cons got plenty of time to work on the things that go round in his head. He rolled the chewing tobacco around in his mouth, trying to find a suitable home for it. After a few seconds, he tucked it to the side, wedged somewhere between his tongue and cheek. Justice watched with disgust as a tiny drib of brown spit oozed from the corner of the farmers mouth. When the dust settles, all thats left inside is the desire to hate. The hatins what keeps you sane. Justice said sadly, looking out at the nothingness that surrounded them. Hate is what your left with after life has taken your spirit from you. Well no need to worry about having nothing, Reywal. I think the governor hates you something real awful. Brandi-Shaw added. Thats cause hating comes natural to him. But there are plenty of other people that hate me, Im sure. Governors at the top of the list, Justice fought to suppress a grin. But he has to fight hard to stay there. That joke drew muted chuckles from them all; the lone dissenter being the fat farmer. After a few huddled moments spent conferring with his aids, talking strategy, preparing for any eventuality, Holloways voice once again cut through the air like a mighty axe. Mr. Reywal. I might add that if you are not careful, if you do not choose your next words or actions carefully, the law will seek you out and rebuke you for this mess you have createdor rather have presided over like a master puppeteer. I know what you have done. I know what you are capable of. Your credibility has already been destroyed in D.C. It does not exist outside Oklahoma City. You! he wagged a chastising finger, do not exist outside Oklahoma City. 66

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When I am re-elected for office, the good lord willing, I will see to it that the entire country learns about your misdeeds. I will uncover the truth behind the conspiracy you masterminded. I will let the people know about your betrayal to the oath you took. I will make you aware of your sins. I will make you kneel down at the altar a repentant man and swear forgiveness. I will leave no stone unturned. The lawand the people it representsdoes not hide in the fictional pages of hard covered books. The governors face turned beet-red, reveling in a furnaced heat. Justice felt a slow, churning anger rise deep from his viscera to the surface of his skin, where it mixed with the prairie dust and sweat. His body took it all in, and he reveled in this newfound wretchedness. His mind grew shaped for battle, drawing strength from the hot sun above, as a crash-car in a demolition derby drew strength from angles and shadows. His body grew rigid. Muscles and joints and synapses were awakened, ready for the skirmish. He stretched his lean frame, corded with tight, powerful muscle, up towards the blanket sky. He folded his hands before him in a posture of erudition. When I think of the battles behind us, governorand those ahead I might addwords like indignation and contempt and suppression come to mind. Those are actual words found in booksmy book, at least. Strung together those words form the binding rope of truth. My book neither weaves fiction nor fairytales or whatever clever euphemisms you throw around for the sake of everyones amusement. The binding on my book forms a sturdy archers bow. It is not a blind mans draw shooting blunted arrows into the sky. The arrows are sharp. Razor sharp to penetrate the tough, predatory skin of men who hide behind iniquitous and unjust laws; men who hide behind the arrogant seat of government and amuse themselves by playing chess with other peoples lives. He paused, gaining momentum. His voice rose an octave. Men like you governormen like you have cheated us out of our lands and our natural resources for hundreds of years; cheated us out of our very existence. You hunted us into obsolescence. You put your stamp of approval on an agenda known to the rest of the world today as genocide. Its time to put a stop to it all. It all ends here today. He clenched his fist in mid-air. Justice stared deeply into Holloways eyes. The governor returned the gaze with a disagreeable stare of his own. The men were several yards apart, separated by a mere few seconds in time, by distinct philosophies and a decade and a half in age, yet through the bright sunlight and the sharp words Justice thought he detected a flicker in the eyes of this graceful, stoic man, a sudden change in the barometer known as human interaction. For a brief moment Justice witnessed something he could not describesomething illusory, something beautiful, stir in its fluidity and crawl to the surface of the governors stark, blue eyes; an inner light reaching out from behind half-closed 67

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lids, prevailing over the darkness and corruption that had festered inside the mans soul for so long as a gaping wound of second nature. The moment was lost in a flash, however; broken when Holloways chief aid put his hand firmly on the governors shoulder and whispered something into his ear. Sensing something ostensibly awry, the long curving claws of danger approaching perhaps, the security force tightened their perimeter around the governor. The man who had risen through the ranks of political office and had lived in the public eye for as long as Justice could recall simply vanished, lost in a tall sea of polyester, charbroiled flesh and gunmetal. Dont forget, governor Justice called out softly. No longer was anyone paying attention to him. Not the governors security force, now busy formulating an exit strategy if the need arose to use one; not the TV journalists or writers, who struggled to find out what was happening; not the guards standing in the tower above, who just didnt care. Justice craned his neck but could not see a thing. The mass of flesh surrounding and pressing Holloway was just too thick. The sea of microphones and cameras and toxic sweat and stagnant breath and satellite feeds and desperation and fairness and ethics closed in on the governor like a multitude of holy fighters storming the Green Line in Israel. I used to be you a long time ago.

B-wing, otherwise known as segregation block for vulnerable or dangerous prisoners. A short while before, the younger of the two brothers set to be paroled that afternoon had finished his last meal behind bars. Thom Lake, like his brother also raven-haired, but less recalcitrant and more afraid, brought a gentle hand up and patted puffy lips red as beets, dry and chapped and sporting streaks of dried blood from a beating he had taken a few days before in the yard. No matter. It would all be over soon. In a few minutes he would be a free man. Free from this monstrous entity that was the prison. Free from horrible food and brutal oppression and the self-righteous warden with his puritan era ethics. The physical scars he would take with him, out through that great, heavy door, the iron barrier dividing the promise of freedom from the actuality of captivity. The rest; the nightmares, the racial slurs, the menacing guards and their faces full of depravity, the beatings and the consequential bed-wetting that ensued, he would try his best to leave behind. It was a gloomy, austere room, painted drab olive-green; as if some quixotic army had charged inside one day and embellished the cellblocks interior with a palette they deemed appropriate. Like the rest of the prison, the cellblock was kept cold, the thermometer idling continuously in the mid 50s. Thom Lake was naked, standing with his 68

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organs exposed, hands pressed up against the cold plaster and his legs spread out wide. Behind him a guard stood, wearing surgical gloves, patting Thom down, going about the business of searching Thom for contraband. This was routine. It was mandatory for a parolee to go thru one last strip search before exiting the prison block. One last affront to his manhood. Thom Lake tried to harness one last vestige of dignity but his mind refused to cooperate. His toes began to tingle as the cold cement floor penetrated his bare feet and shot through to his nervous system. He performed a light dance, tiptoeing from one foot to the next, trying to escape the cold. He kept this up for a few seconds until the guards sharp blow to the back of his kidney made him stop. He gritted his teeth, but said nothing. He looked at the bare wall with full wonderment in his eyes. Strangely enough, unlike most other cells in the reformatory, this one was clean and lacked the stigma of graffiti; the lone, safety valve that allowed cons to lash back at the warden without fear of retribution. No one ever said freedom came easily, Thom thought. There was no reassurance in the world hed ever forget the things hed gone through on the inside; no way for him to step out of his red-skinned suit and pretend the last five years had all just been some terrible nightmare. Nightmares never relaxed their grip on your senses, Thom knew; the head forced to sleep forever on pliable, shape-shifting pillows that curled inward during sleep and formed a vice around the slumbering mind. On his cot lay a pile of clothes, stacked neatly. It was the same clothing hed relinquished five years prior on the day hed been processed. Get dressed. The guard ordered. He took a step back and leaned against the barred door he had shut only moments before. It would take but a minute. Denim jeans, leather moccasins and a fringed buckskin Cheyenne shirt adorned with images of birds flying over a lightning storm were an easy assembly. Around his neck Thom slipped a Cheyenne cross necklace, emblazoned with sunset colored agate and tiger-eye stones. It was a most treasured gift, given to him by his grandmother many years beforethe stones, set carefully, signifiedironicallythat he had led a notably pure and holy life. Through all the anxiety and fear that filled his soul and reached out to drown him, through the quick, darting manner in which his eyes surveyed his surroundings, a natural evolutionary response to the spiritless, contemptible sights he witnessed on a nightly basis, a thing Thom had labeled the inclination of sight, Thom afforded himself the tiniest semblance of a smile. Youll need your travel warrant and discharge grant, Lake. Youll get those over at ADMIT.

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Thank you. Thom Lake said kindly, in gratitude. His large, brown, expressive eyes glowed softly in the florescent light as he made eye contact with the guard. Not accustomed to pleasantries, the guard stared back blankly, unsure. A gross, mistrustful look then materialized on his face. Huffing, he unlocked the door and pulled it open on its tracks. Lets go, Lake. I dont have all day. Thom exited the cell and with great deliberateness entered the hallway. The guard, behind him now, heaved with all his strength and guided the cumbersome, metal door over the rusted floor railing. Sounding like a runaway train barreling down a mountain pass, the door slammed shut with a deafening smack. The sound reverberated down the hallway, a tumbling, echoing dissonance that hurt Thoms ears. He pressed both hands to the sides of his head to stem the tide. A loud metallic clack and the door behind him locked shut, effectively laying his past to rest. The noise soon abated. Thom breathed in a huge sigh of relief. He commenced that slow walk down the hallway, the weight of guilt and institutionalization and a future full with uncertainty pressing down on his shoulders. He thought of Avarice. Was he out yet? Would his brother be standing outside to greet him? Or would Thom suffer through his first minutes as a free man alone, languishing in his own thoughts? Thoms legs began to quiver. He stared down at his feet, not sure if they were brave enough, pure enough, to complete that short walk to freedom. He followed the six-inch wide, bright-yellow line that cut the corridor in two halves like a sharpened arrow, a painted marker guiding all out-bound cons towards ADMIT, all in-bound cons towards hell. Only Thom, dichromatic from birth and unable to distinguish colors beyond the black-white spectrum, saw the line as a dull flannelgray. The guard followed at a safe distance, four feet behind, a free hand resting on a can of mace lodged in a belt loop, the other hand on his state issued baton. He watched Thoms movements closely. He had seen many cons buckle at this crucial moment and react with uncertainty; sometimes violently. Faced with the prospect of the unknown once that metal door in ADMIT opened and coughed them out, some cons had gone through great lengths to break parole, to get thrown right back inside before the state had even processed them. The easiest way to accomplish this was an attack against a guard; usually the nearest, the most accessible man. The attacks in the past had been brutal by nature, constructed more for affecting an outcome than out of any lingering rage or hate. It was the ultimate prisoners dilemma, one the guard had seen over and over throughout his tenure. The simple fact was, that, once outside, a convict, nine times out of ten greeted by no one, faced a dismal future. Fifty yards in front of him lay lonely Hwy-9, stretching out as far as the eye could see in 70

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two directions. The prospect of a lonely life ahead stretched out in front of him in equal measure, as did the sour scent of his deathbed, a torturous and lonely certainty that would one day reek of decay and mildew and stale memories. It was no surprise to the guard, then, why a convict would suddenly suffer a mythic collapse and come up with a case of cold feathers. Suddenly, Thom Lake stopped dead in his tracks. The guard, halfexpecting this, did the same, right on cue. In the dimness of the cavern they both inhabited, he waited for Thom Lake to act first. No back-door parole this time, right boss? Thom said, meekly. Turning around, he tried to prod a reply out of the guard. He sought empathy from the old hack. He sought consolation, kindness, or any other human emotion that would give him the strength to continue. No back-door parole. You made it Lake. Halfway to happy hour. The guard replied, dourly. Back-door parole. Prison slang for dying in prison. Halfway to happy hour. Yep. Thom had made it. Hed beaten them all: the warden, the state, the system. His own fear. His smile expanded rapidly, edging ever closer to cockiness. Thom turned, resuming those tentative steps toward freedom. He caught himself whistling a soft tune hed heard as a boy, a gentle, feathery chorus sung by the elder Cheyenne tribesman around nighttime campfires. Meanwhile, the hands on the clock inched forward slowly, stealing time from them all.

The sweltering furnace outside the prison gates continued, unrelenting in its course. The air hung trapped; unmoving. The sky was devoid of birds, and shrugged the clouds off its enormous shoulders like a cranky socialite throwing off a faux-mink coat. The cotton fields were barren; abandoned by the rains, ignored by animals and insects alike, as every living creature (man excluded) had run off to find shelter in whatever shade was available. A ribbon of super-heated air floated off the nearby, scorched blacktop of Highway 9, creating imaginary ripples and refracted waves of light that distorted the land as far as the eye could see. Everything took on a vague, suffused look. In the prisons great courtyard, the debate between Governor Holloway and Justice Reywal continued. The two combatants were unwilling to budge, would not relinquish an inch of sacred ground. And that stubbornness was wearing down state officials and news correspondents and Justice Reywal alike. Perhaps Mr. Reywal has forgotten about the Cheyenne tribes illreputed efforts to reclaim a huge tract of land in Pennsylvania to use as leverage for gaming rights. This was a case that had seen little or

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no publicity at all; and if you lived anywhere outside of the western section of Oklahoma or Pennsylvania, youd probably never heard of it. In what had become a controversial practice, American Indians had begun using land as leverage in obtaining gaming rights in certain states. In this case, the Cheyenne had argued that one of its ancestors was the current legal owner of four hundred and nine acres in Pennsylvania and that the sons of William Penn, founder of that territory, had taken more land from the Indians than they were supposed to in The Walking Purchase of 1737. The Cheyenne tribe didnt really want the land back. The state legislature was in the process of legalizing slot machines and the Cheyenne tribe merely wanted a piece of the pie. They wanted the rights to put slot machines and casinos in the disputed territory. That was all they asked for. Yet, in a stunning move the Supreme Court had dismissed the case without comment. In one fell swoop the Cheyenne tribe lost its land and the state went on to legalize slot machines. Several months ago I spoke to the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee, said Holloway. His security force had again broken ranks, and he now stood out in the open, an irresistible target for the cameras. It seems tribes are hiding behind sovereignty to keep them from opening their books to the public. We will have to monitor that situation more closely. An implied threat, if there ever was one. Whether we continue to allow that or not, we're going to have agreements between two nations that do not allow for auditing and verification. From this point on, we have to consider the dynamics of our relationship as a treaty between two nationsone each side should be able to verify. Thats absurd. Governor, may I remind you that the chief justices declined the petition filed by the Cheyenne Nation without so much as a commenteven though a federal judge had ordered the state of Pennsylvania to pay $248 million in reparations for stealing the land from the tribe without the tacit approval of the United States. And then the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reared its ugly head. In a split decision that unfortunately now stands, this court barred the tribes from seeking money damages for the stolen land. That is tantamount to rape, Governor Holloway. And you know it. What would you like me to say, Mr. Reywal? That justice has been overlooked? That the Cheyenne tribe was taken advantage of? Is that what you want me to say in front of all of these people? We all have our crosses to bear. Weve all felt humility and loss at some point. You speak of rape as if you yourself were a victim. But you have no ideano cluewhatsoever, what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a defective justice system. So, no, I dont expect you to express sorrow or remorse. Its not in your nature. The government is not your enemy, Mr. Reywal. Your own kind is. We are not some common lynch-mob strolling through the 72

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countryside on a reckless witch hunt. Bingo! Justice smirked at the governors gaff. He had unwittingly broken out with a racial slur, albeit an unintentional one. Thoroughly embarrassed, the governors aid dropped his face to the ground. He clicked his tongue with disgust, then proceeded to bury his face in his hand. Damage control would no doubt prove difficult. In his head he made silent notes, calculating the cost such a blunder would have on the campaign, so close and so near to election time. He shot visual daggers at the governor; silently wishing he could slap the man for his insolence once they got back to OKC. Everything grew quiet. Reporters ceased to write. They looked up. Writing instruments stopped dead in mid-sentence. No one could believe what had just happened. Incredulity and surprise had a way of blanching the rosiest of faces and this is precisely what happened at that moment. Even as the thermometer continued to rise, even as the sun peaked above them, pulsating with radiance, the color previously absorbed by the journalists faces vanished. Mouths hung like cargo bays wide open with surprise. The flies took advantage, landing on sweaty, bearded faces, and the hands that now suffered from paralysis could not bat them away. Yet being the consummate professionals they were, the men and women quickly recovered and in seconds began to quote Holloways words. Precisely. Meanwhile, the governor stood there, beaming and confident, oblivious to it all. Thats comforting, governor. Because we both know that mob mentality breeds vindictiveness and self-aggrandizing methods. We wouldnt want that mentality to infect my own kindwould we? Facts and statistics are not always immutable, Mr. Reywal. Sometimes they obscure the bigger picture. The truth is, we all live in a world of gray. Im sure you of all people would find no cause to argue that point. The argument itself is black and white, Governor. Its men like you that make it gray. I have no objection to that. The governors eyes now gleamed with palpable hatred. After all, most of the world we inhabit exists in the periphery of shadows. The intent forged into laws thought up by our forefathers does not always blend in and merge so perfectly with the present. We all want a clear-cut delineation between right and wrong, but that doesnt exist. In a perfect world it does, but we all know this world is far from perfect. So we get the next best thing. In conflict there is artificiality. Intimidation has many faces. What better color than gray to facilitate that process. Then you should know that a lie agreed upon does not make a truth. And Mr. Reywal should know that a starving man does not turn down rotten food. The legislature of the United States of America has consistently provided the American Indians tribes with widespread, 73

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generous funding. What else does he want? the governor asked petulantly, the return of Manhattan? The Governor flashed a signal to his head of security. End the conference on a victorious noteand end it then and there. That man turned, raising his hand into the air, twirling his index finger in a circular motion, a signal to the chopper pilot to start the powerful turbine engine. Justice gazed over at the helicopter, at the sleek, polished skin and turbo engine brimming with pent up energy. The rotors were restless, shiny, flexing up and down with each passing wind gust, reflecting the suns turgid rays back at them all. The titanium and nickel-plated leading edges, complete with anti-erosion strips to protect the blades from the abrasive dust bowl air, were ready for action, ready to lash back at the violent wind gusts and up-drafts and dust devils that permeated the plains, to chop and dice the air above the prairie into golden-caked pieces. Oblivious to events transpiring fifty feet in front of him, the pilot kept working. He moved quickly and efficiently through his preflight ritual. He had already finished wiping away the thick layer of prairie dust that had accumulated over the bubbled windshield. Beside him, the choppers exhaust manifold lay open, crimped up like a miniature tent. The air filter rested on a portable workbench beside the pilot; cleaned, scrubbed and ready to reinstall into the filters housing unit. The pilot looked up and caught the aids signal. He thought for a second; then spread his palm out wide, flashing five fingers into the air. Five minutes. He had just finished checking along the exhaust manifold to make sure no dust particles had breached into the housing unit. And now he had to check the carburetor in the same manner. Then, lastly, he had to power up; the engines first, then the rotors. A loss of power caused by a clogged intake valve would be catastrophic. Five minutes. All the time in the world for some; but not for Justice Reywal. This matter is closed for now, Mr. Reywal. I will pursue it down the road, I can assure you. Holloway said. Shocking his security detail, the governor walked over to Justice and callously pressed the now damp, shoddy copy of Suburban Arrows into Justices hand. Without thinking, Justice accepted the book. Its pages were moist and tattered where the governors sweat had rubbed off on them. The corners of many pages were folded back into tiny triangles; a signal to Justice that the governor had read through his work thoroughly. Perhaps to get to know his enemy better, Justice thought. Reywal looked down at the cover and felt instant mortification. Standing there on the outskirts of the crowd, his hand began to tremble. He stared at his own likeness that graced the books back cover. The face was unrecognizable. The smile framing his handsome, chiseled face had long ago vanished. The press photo had 74

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been taken many years ago, long before the lines of age and cynicism had crept into his face. The harsh studio lighting accented dark shadows that trailed underneath his eyes like ugly slugs and spoke more than a thousand tired words. In his hands the book now felt like a foreign object, heavy and dispossessed. He had filled the books pages with dramatic events and moments that had fueled a young Sioux boys life. Days spent on the rez, lying in fields underneath a breadbasket South Dakota sky, eating traditional plum cakes cooked up by his grandfather while the dragon flies all around him darted for cover in the tall weeds. Racing his horse into the Nebraska badlands, skirting the border, wide open prairie to each side, storm clouds behind him egging his nervous Appaloosa on. Watching the young men at the local taverns drink themselves to a frenzied, drunken state, then try to pick up Lakota women of all ages, adorned in jewelry and bright dresses and dancing gaily in Saturday evening drum circles. The broken cars, the broken people, the broken spirits that filled the boundaries of his homeland. Hed written about the day he left his grandfather behind. With great clarity, his words described the manner in which he abandoned the ancient man in the middle of a fierce lightning storm, throwing a single piece of luggage into the trunk of the sedan that would take him to his new home at the Wahsheton School. He wrote about his ensuing schooling; how the schools educators soon carved out his soul by attrition, using lies and propaganda against the American Indian, tossing into the air words like heathens and savages and civilization. Forcing catholic doctrine down their throat, morning, noon, and night, until the young Indian boys and girls from various tribes began to soak in the edicts of Catholicism like a sponge to water. Sundays were preached about as days that abhorred massacres. Sundays were the most sacred days, liberated from all mans sins, as if the calendar had the ability to flick away racism and hate and wars whenever it so desired. They forced him to read things he did not want to read; forced him to recant beliefs he did not want to recant. When he did not do as they wished, they punished him. They withheld food. They made him clean toilets. They placed him in solitary. They made him write the Christian name hed chosen, Justice, on the blackboard hundreds and hundreds of times; over and over and over again until hed learned to live and breathe the name. When he was older, the administration put him in charge of other, younger Indians, forcing him to dole out punishment in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Ten long years came and went, a curtain of days and nights floating by in front of his eyes like a constant, dull, drizzling rain. From the time he was six until the day he left, sixteen years old and carrying the heart of a wartime general, these white devils continuously tweaked and hacked and manipulated and rearranged his genetic makeup, like so many boxes on moving day, like verbs and consonants shifted around 75

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to form different words, until he eventually learned to speak and think and eat and act and hate like the white man. And in the end, that hate became perfect. Like a shiny diamond. A thunderhead out on the morning prairie. A guided missile shot from a silo, homing in on ones past. In the latter chapters, Reywal had helped shed light on a nations betrayal. Scandals that barely entered into the publics consciousness. Land rich in uranium, stolen outright by the Feds. Casino rights denied outright to tribesmen, then granted to a consortium of white entrepreneurs. An increase in Meth labs built on Indian lands by white supremacist drug runners, who paid corrupt Indian police officials protection money to keep them safe from local prosecution. Hed filled each chapter with elegant words and driving metaphors and rich allegories that ran the gamut from sorrowful to ambivalence to pure joy. In spite of all of this, in spite of the books critical acclaim and commercial success, Justice felt like an abject failure. He had spent his life scratching away at the surface of his own skin, peeling away layer from layer only to find that in the bare depths there lacked a formidable essence. No victory. No end to the suffrage. No public outcry rising up to demand change. Only a deep morass whose thirst could never be satiated. And in that morass, that great blue mirror in the sky illuminating those dog-eared, tattered pages written by his own hand, Justice accepted, with great acquiescence, that the governor had won this battle. The governor stared deeply into Justice Reywals eyes. Justice saw nothing but darkness. Only the unflinching, triumphant, black cumulus clouds of his irises that welled up like some giant dust bowl storm looming, its belly full now that the promise of revenge had been fulfilled. Justice rubbed the back of his neck with his palm, trying to wipe away the stinging sweat. His hand came back damp, clammy, offering him no respite from the heat. No respite from the flashing credentials and unfriendly faces of the media. He felt light headed and dizzy. In his mind the ground beneath him shifted. A giant hole opened up in the earth, ready to swallow them all. In his mind he was able to sprout angel wings and lift himself from that damn hell-on-earth. He would fly far above the microphones and the prison walls and the governors jingoistic speeches, watching as the multitudes fell down the bottomless chasm and straight to hell. Anything else you would like to say to me Mr. Reywal? I have a long day of campaigning ahead of me. Many miles to go before I sleep, if I can quote a great poet. No governor. Reywal jerked his eyebrows up. I guess the next time we meet, itll be in the courtroom. An interesting thought, Mr. Reywal. Tell mewill it be your own trial we will be attending? 76

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Ive been on trial my entire life, governor. But I have yet to be formally accused of any form of malfeasance. And though you would no doubt disagree, I do not believe that I ever will. I have solemnly upheld the oath of my office. Do you remember what it is to have taken an oath? Justice felt the wheels unraveling. The governor, proving to be a master strategist, was far better at rhetoric and debate than Justice had given him credit for. The man was like a jackhammer, a bully orator, and he kept coming and coming and coming until he wore his opposition out thru attrition. I gave my word. Many times. And many times I broke it. But thats all going to change now, governor. No more lies for me. Not in this lifetime. Thom and Avarice Lakes plea bargain. In Justices mind, the biggest lie of all. Thats a different story altogether. Perhaps you will be so inclined as to tell it to me some day. I leave you with this sober warning, Mr. Reywal. You have committed an egregious error against the citizens of the great state of Oklahoma. You have unleashed upon all her people not just the white population, but the blacks, and the Latinos and the American Indians aliketwo murderers who deserve not our sympathy, not enlightenment, not a second chance, but judgment and wrath. These men will pay for their sins. They deserve the electric chair. There is no redemption on judgment day. There is no reason for what you did. Summer thinks with a mind of its own, governor. Reason dont fit into things. The governor nodded curtly. There would be an argument, what we call parity, that if the Lake brothers did in fact commit murder and did not receive the death penalty, then others that follow in their footsteps should also not receive it. And I cannot let that happen. I will not abide by your clever machinations, Mr. Reywal. Suddenly, right before Justice Reywals eyes, right before the cameras, the man known for his indefatigable energy and winning smile inexplicably vanished. I will not succumbnot in my lifetime. The governor heaved a huge sigh of resignation. His face dropped. Under the intense pressure and heat his eyes sagged, his aristocratic jaw and cheeks wilted like lettuce left out in the sun. The media. The heat. The continuous loop. Holloway, like many others before him, had grown tired of the act. The day had proven too hot for words and had simply bested him. Abruptly, he signaled to his bodyguards. It was time to move. Holloway reached deep inside and produced one last winning smile, to benefit the cameras. He waved a terse goodbye to the crowd. Cameramen snapped their final photos. Brief handshakes were exchanged. The bodyguards closed ranks. They moved like pythons, constricting the governor inside a tight knit circle. Working as a single entity, much like a dust storm itself works itself into a quiet frenzy, the 77

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mass of men, moving in unison, made a beeline towards the helicopter, whose rotors, throttled fully and cycling on maximum rotation cut through the air noisily. After a moments hesitation, Justice raced after the men, across the prison compound, heading towards the LongRanger. He bowed his head, trying to shield his face from the whirling dust. The helos powerful downdrafts whipped at him from every angle. Grains of sand traveling in excess of 50mph slammed into him, searing his skin, making their way into his eyes and nose. Tell me something, governor Justice shouted at the retreating figure, catching a mouthful of Oklahomas finest in the process. He hoped the governor could hear him over the ferocious whining of the rotors. Miraculously, he did. The governor turned to face him one last time. His hair flapped about in the violent downdraft, parting into untidy sections like Moses parting a hundred Red Seas. The grave men in sunglasses studied him; nervously fingering holsters hidden deep inside their suits. Whats the last thing you see before the lights go off at night? I see you in jail, doing hard time right next to the Lake brothers. The governor shot him a sturdy, frightening glare, one that rattled Reywal. One of the bodyguards reached out to push Justice away, but Justice had already taken an involuntary step back. The governor turned, gave Justice his back, and with the aid of a bodyguard hopped into the helicopters waiting belly, leaving Justice to mull over the insult. The pilot, whose head was cocked back at an awkward angle, watched the governor closely. Once satisfied that Holloway was safe inside, he wagged his index finger in a circular motion, signaling to the bodyguards standing outside that they were ready for takeoff. The last of the governors security detail shifted their bodies, then threw their collective weights inside the torpedo shaped vessel. The door closed quickly on its sliding track, the latch fastened from the inside. Governor Holloway was gone. And then the helicopter took flight, dipping its nose as it made forward progress, its abdomen full of precious human cargo. The cloud of dust returned, working in waves, swirling upwards from the prairie floor and swallowing Justice right where he stood. He was alone and filthy and confused, and had no idea what to do next. Justice Reywal had no idea that things were about to get worse.

For a few minutes Justice Reywal remained silent, introspective. He came to life slowly, by degrees. Like a wildflower blossoming open in the summertime, he angled his face to catch the suns rays, seeking to regain his composure, his strength. He ran his hands over his face and hair, shaking off the dust the helicopters rotors had thrown over him. 78

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He gazed out over the wide expanses of cropland that stretched out as far as the eye could see, a seared, brown flatness devoid of sanctity that crawled up to the horizon in every direction. Scorched, forlorn and bone dry, the surrounding flatlands formed a vast, open prison boxing Justice in on all sides against the reformatorys imposing walls. It was as if the land itself had morphed into judge and jury and imposed upon him a harsh sentence of its own, and the man who held the key to freedom had just departed on that helicopter. Improbably enough, the temperature continued to climb steadily nearly 110 degrees and counting on the giant, five-foot high thermometer someone (probably a humorist with a detachment to pain and anguish) had latched onto a signpost on Hwy-9s shoulder, just off the prisons perimeter. It was as perfect a display of irony as you would ever see. Summer had thrown its bare, ugly blanket over them all; the earth, the men and women, the stories they would write and tell. Hot, fiery words would later describe men with cold, contemptible hearts. And, as the temperature rose, the arc of anger against humanity rose in proportion; manifested by the upbraided egos and worn-out bodies of so many anxious and tired reporters and prison officials. Ugly emanations of hate and irritation dolled off bodies shimmering with the sweat-stained glaze of selfishness. Shit, Justice thought. If this frying pan got any hotter, theyd all be doing the hellfire dance soon enough. Anything could happen in the combustible heat; where tempers often flared to life instantly, like flash-in-the-pan brush fires lapping at dried out sagebrush during the dog days of summer. Any last remaining vestiges of good faith and honor evaporated as the journalists, male and female, old and young, the pack of hungry, leering jackals sensed the story had run its course. No point in sticking around for the denouement. Cool, darkly-tinted satellite trucks awaited them. There was just enough time left to run back to their motels, shower quickly before checkout and hit the local watering hole for one last beer before they caught those long plane rides home, back to civilization and central air-conditioning and 248 channels of cable TV. They would fly out of tiny Scott Field, a single asphalt airstrip located in the town of Mangum, about 13 miles southwest of Granite. The smaller newspapers with less money to burn would charter single engine aircraft for their reporters, such as the ultra-reliable Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Multiengine stalwarts and shiny turbo props such as Beech Barons, Aerostars, and Piper Twin Comanches were snapped up by mid-level publishing houses like the Tucson Citizen and the El Paso Times. For the more wealthy papers back east, whose rosters were filled with journalists whose courage teetered towards the faint-ofheart, rich Gulfstream jets were the order of the day. In fact, these great media conglomerations and holding companies would latch onto any mechanical beast capable of taking their underlings far away from 79

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this inferno, for this was as much hell as any other place on earth was hell, and when they sat down to write their stories they would do so with the knowledge that you didnt have to die after all to meet that final deadline, you didnt have to slink far into the hot, sticky depths to find the devils lair, for they had already been there, for it existed in all its transient and tangible forms right there in tiny Granite, Oklahoma, and its visage had swallowed more than just cropland and good, oldfashioned, God-fearing families, replacing them with interest-only mortgages and swarms of locusts. It had swallowed up souls. And the reporters from parts all over had made it out, just barely, with their own intact. With damp clothing clinging to their moist limbs like seranwrap and matted hair plastered down to their scalps, the journalists, with tight deadlines or live reports to consider, hastily put away their wares. They stuffed notepads and cameras and tape recorders into half-moon bags, making sure that time would not deliver to them the wrath of editors and producers and missed connector flights. The governor was on the move. The story was moving on down the tracks. Down to the next Aggie town, the next railway station filled with flag waving citizens with bright, genteel eyes and colorful balloons and shiny brass bands and unctuous hot dog vendors and lies waiting to be delivered, masked in polished speeches. An investigative reporter working for some outlandish TV magazine had positioned himself in front of the prisons bleak exterior for maximum effect, putting the final touches on his telecast. The broadcast journalist spoke rapidly, succinctly, summing up the day like a sideline reporter at the Super Bowl. Only behind him loomed that dreaded wall, not some sophomoric, socially challenged football club. As soon as his last words were spoken, as soon as the cameraman dropped the recording equipment off his shoulder and flashed the OK sign, they packed up everything they could get their hands on, making sure to account for the expensive equipment, and especially, receipts. They left behind the detritus of their work, empty water bottles and discarded battery packs and handkerchiefs that were soiled beyond salvation. And then, like the rest of them, they got the hell out of Dodge. Holloways calculated move had worked to perfection, Justice realized. Once he had vanished, the reporters all but ignored him. He was a non-entity. Justice watched the reporters scurry about, scrambling towards the parking area, trying to pick out their respective news trucks, which except for the stations call letters were largely undistinguishable from one another. Vagabond truck operators were busy lowering the antennas to their mobile satellite trucks or stowing away expensive, efficient flyaway transmission systems. When they were finished, when the reporters had jumped into the passenger

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seats, they gunned the powerful V-8 engines to life and they too got the hell out of Dodge. Justice felt a trace of sadness. The governor was correct in his assumption. The world could care less about two Indian convicts. Or the Cheyenne tribe, starving and poor and wretched. Or the American Indian population in general. The public only cared about celebrity. About controversy. They would chase these ideas and images to the ends of the earth. In fact, if these linchpin phenomenons that fueled the mass media provided a clever enough sound bite, the hungry, stupid masses would follow them straight to their graves. All the rest, the fight for civil rights and emergency relief funds and free schooling was cannon fodder for a lost generation. How nave could I be? Justice thought. Any final comments on the governors accusations? a lone female reporter with a derivative, mousy voice suddenly interrupted Justices thoughts. He looked down to see a small-framed, diminutive figure on display. Justice stared at her, his eyes projecting nothing short of mild contempt. A neophyte, Justice surmisedquite possibly her first assignment. Probably hoped to establish a quick bond, gain Justices trust in rapid fashion, as if Justices conscious and fiercely guarded skepticism were a brand of instant coffee. He rubbed his tired eyes and slowly shook his head. I think your story just left. He pointed up at the departing helicopter, now high above them and fading fast. Left mighty quick. Holloway probably thought this was Saigon and the VC were right around the corner. Yesyes, I realize hes gone. She fumbled awkwardly for words. She reached up with a tiny paw and pushed a lock of matted, auburn hair off her forehead. Any comments in general? For the record? Her face grew wistful. Anything? Youre not wearing your press credentials. Justice asked. Who are you? Ohthose. Iumm, she immediately began to rummage through her purse, looking for her bona fides. Her head bent down low, lost in her search. Justice noticed a large, purple-white flower pinned to her hair just above her right ear. It was a passionflower. Freshly picked. Already showing signs of wilting. I work for thewell, I just started writing for The Kansas City Star. Though Ive contributed several pieces over the last year or so. She caught Justice staring at the side of her head. Her hand went up self-consciously. It fell to rest on the beautiful, fragrant flower. She smiled coyly, the points of light hitting the corners of her upturned mouth and Justice immediately knew many men had been lost forever inside that pinkness; uprooted by tormenting thoughts of possession.

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Oh this, she caressed the waxy petals with small, delicate fingers. I picked it off a vine by the roadside. Its so hot. Everything is sallow and bland, I thought it might add color to the day. Well, it suits you fine. But I dont think it has much time left out in this heat. You should get it to water soon. YesIll do that. She plucked out her pass and held it out in front of Justice. He looked it over, thoughtfully. Cadence Lilywhite. Justice read the name off the laminated pass. Satisfied? She asked. Her eyebrows arched upward in an ephemeral column. Her fingernails glittered brightly in the sun, the nail polish scarlet red, probably no more than a few hours old. Reywal nodded. Somewhere in his head his thoughts began to turn with expectation. Do you think Governor Holloway crossed certain boundaries today? Maybe. Maybe not. Justice said. What boundaries are you inferring to? I am referring a trace of acid escaped her tongue, to the accusations the governor raised against you. She said, putting her credentials away in her cavernous bag. She grabbed her pad and pen, lifted them before her and waited for a response. Reywal thought for a second. He smiled wryly. You dont ask the fox if its legal to hunt chickens. She stared at him, a look of pure bedevilment filling the baby-fleshed parts of her youthful face, as devoid of age lines as it was full with ambition, regality. Probably only months removed from her college degree, Justice surmiseddefinitely her first assignment. You ever had to pull out a stump? Come again? She replied, somewhat suspiciously. A tree stump. Ever had the occasion to pull one out? Well, of course not. Justice laughed at her insolence. Well I have. Good for youI think. She said, looking around impatiently, wondering if she should have followed her instincts and gone after Holloways chopper instead. Its a dirty job. Simple. But not as easy a job as one would think. I never thought of it one way or the other. Of course you didnt. Justice said, with a trace of hubris. Well, when you want to clear out a stump, you have to go in and pull the whole thing out. The roots around the soil, the soil itself, the slash, the exposed boleyou have to loosen that soil up with a spade, you have to slog thru the mud and put time on hold. You got to hook that hardwood trunk to a four-wheel drive vehicle and pull and pull like the almighty until eventually it all comes out like a surgeon amputating an arm ravaged by gangrene. But you have to remember beforehand, and this is the most important part, not to grind the stump too close to the 82

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ground. You have to leave enough room to create leverage. The closer the stump gets to the ground the harder it is to create a fulcrum. Makes the job almost impossible. Makes it easy to give up. Drop your tool belt on the ground and walk away. Do you understand what Im saying? The blank look on the young womans face told Justice she didnt. Corruption exists everywhere. You cant escape it. But you can unearth it. You can extract it. But just be careful. You dont want to get your feet stuck too deep in it. Itll suck you in. Just like that old tree stump. A faraway look fell flush on Justices face. If youre lucky enough, a hole that goes straight to hell is all youre left with. One of Holloways aidsI cant say which, of course she said, her words patronizing and sharp, confided in me earlier that the governor has it in for you in a big way. Says you are the biggest liar this side of President Clinton. She said, matter-of-factly. She wrapped her tiny hand around an expensive Mont Blanc pen (a graduation gift from her parents? Maybe a wealthy fianc?) with the power of a vice and impatiently tapped away at her notebook, waiting for Justices response. Justice laughed. I think my lies are far better than Holloways truths. Besides Justice stared down at her, amazed by her brashness. Neophyte my ass, he thought. Everybody lies in politics. The White House is no exception. But Governor Holloway does it with such ease, its troubling. What he is practicing is tantamount to a brand of slash and burn politics. As old as good government itself. What about you? Why dont you defend yourself? I tend to shy away from the politics of personal destruction. Easier on the psyche. Justice tapped the side of his head near his temple. I heard you back there. You jockeyed with himyou matched him blow for blowBut you backed off considerably when he challenged you on the integrity of the Lake brothers case. Why? Does he know something the public should be made aware of? Justice remained silent, impassive. Are you hiding something? The Irish in her persisted. She would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, this dainty, fair-skinned woman. She had arrived at Granite from a zip code in the upper stratosphere to fuel the Scandal Machine. And she would not leave empty handed. Sooner or later, Holloway, like any other person, is confronted with the question of ethics. Im not the guiding hand of that force. When the time comes, I imagine therell be plenty of blood in the water and fighting on both sides of the fence. Plus, Ive already come to terms with my own demons. I can see, if anything else, that you have acquired a great talent for tap-dancing. She paused, giving Justice time to consider his options. The rapping on her pad grew more pronounced, faster, as she began to lose patience. The pen in her hand looked like a miniature 83

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jackhammer, blasting its way atop layers of empty pages, the kind disdained by editors and correspondents alike. Tell me, Reywal. What do you have on Holloway? What do you mean? Youre working a far bigger angle than you let on to. Did Holloway take the payoff from Abramov? Her eyes, liquid green and glittery, festive and strong, like the eyes of a jaguar crouched beside the last drinking hole in some far off African plain, grew hungry and wide with anticipation. They blazed away like a smelting furnace at the hottest point in the day. The ferocity behind those eyes, the sparks that flew, the relentlessness that led to the trapdoor of a cleverly concealed mind, brimming with intelligence, belied her delicate, translucent appearance. In stark contrast, the naked, cream-white skin of her arms and calves and flushed cheeks radiated soothing undertones of tranquility. In her mind, this young, sophisticated socialite of the newsroom envisioned her televised likeness playing on the continuous loop, a guest of the networks making the rounds on Larry King or Hardball or Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Do you have proof? She quickly jotted down abbreviated words, trying to keep up with her thoughts. Does anyone ever have proof? Justice shrugged, noncommittally. I think you do. Or youve uncovered a trail. Or the trail has uncovered you. She turned her notebook over to a fresh page. Her pen wavered above it like a sword, ready to cut through the bullshit and do great, internal damage. Which one is it? You dont understand. What dont I understand? That politics is a struggle between ethnic groups for the spoils of government? That people tend to vote along ethnic lines? That they choose the candidate on the sole basis of his ability to deliver those spoils? And that Holloway is an enemy of the American Indian, a shill for the Bush administration who will peck away at their resources until nothing is left? She crowded Justice, the top of her head barely reaching up to his chin. Justice could smell the sweet fragrance of the flower wafting up to his nose, drawing him in like a bee to nectar. An odd pang of exhilaration grew inside him. He looked down at the waiflike figure standing in front of him with a newfound respect. She poked a bony finger into his chest. I know more than you think, mister. I didnt just fall off the turnip truck. Look. Justice replied, trying to mollify her. The people we elect are a reflection of ourselves as a whole. That much Ill give you. But then you have to consider thiswe are an iniquitous society. So what we are left with are iniquitous candidates that back unjust and selfserving laws and then place themselves outside the very laws theyve sworn to uphold. Theres no break in the cycle. None that I have found at least.

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Funny She said. For the first time that day her mouth showed a hint of unpleasantness, curving downwards. You didnt sound this cynical in your book. I thought you were different. I thought I had detectedhope, in your words. Maybe I was wrong. Ms. Lilywhite laid the bait out perfectly. Hope? You want to know about hope? His question hung in the air, unanswered. Theres no such thing. Its an illusionan illusion that persists forever inside us and causes us to ignore our instincts. My god, what happened to you out there in that school? What happened to me, Justice thought? Where do I start? Let me start by filling in the blanks I didnt have the courage to write about. Let me ask you a simple question? Do you think that in this day and age people are inherently good or evil? Thats difficult to answer. Lots of variables to consider. She answered blithely. Wrong. Its an easy question to answer; if you believe in ethics. And yet you, being a journalist, responded with a clich. Your answer refuses to take sides. Well, I always take sides. All my life, I have. If you had asked me that question ten years ago I would have answered that yes, people are innately good inside. Misled and misinformed, but good nonetheless. But everythings changed. People have changed. The dollar signs are too strong not to chase. Today, Id have to say the opposite was true. People have chosen sidesalbeit the wrong one. This country plays host to a league of horrible individuals that spread out like cancer, and these people commit atrocious acts. And I think the governor is one of them. He hides it very well, though. Unlike the common folk, he has the resources. Probably enough to last him forever. How do you know this? I he mimicked her, didnt just fall off the turnip truck either. And if you think Im going to spill the beans right here and now, youre sadly mistaken. Maybe we can find it? If we work together. The answer to the parlor game? Justice laughed. Good luck. Brandi-Shaw and me, we know the whys and the wheres? We know about the governors allegiance to certain white-collar criminals. We figured that out long ago. But it took a hell of a lot of groundwork. You trust your fellow reporters Justice pointed at the dispersing crowd, men and women lacking a focal point and a fresh angle to the age-old puzzle. to figure it out all by themselves? I think youre being too hard on them. They have a job to do, just like everyone else. Then why are they leaving? And why are you the only one left standing? Not every story can be broken sitting in a reclining chair in some air-conditioned office.

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She said nothing. She stared at him deeply, trying to pry her way into his soul using her captivating, aqueous irises as focal points. She had discovered already that leverage was an important part of the game. Her mood was reflective of her desire; not obtrusive, not territorial, not effete, but simply inscrutable. She was a debutante content in her on the job training. She would be dangerous later in life, Justice surmised, when the artful complications of necessity and her career and the merits of functional journalism took shape, sinking into her beautiful, sharp-witted mind. If she put all of those together, solved the conundrum, placed her words in the proper columns, she would become a commanding presence. If he failed to make an ally of her first, she could very well become the perpetual thorn in his side. This little lady, frail on the outside, swimming in her intuition, would soon find her heart and mind coming together, piece by piece, until one day it would dawn on her that she was the basis of all that was good in life, as well as all that was incalculably evil. The heartland of vengeance, the jaguar at last, drinking from the last watering hole. Maybe I dont know the difference between defeat and ignorance. Or maybe youre smart enough to know there is no difference. Whats Holloway doing here? If this issue is not that important to his re-election, I mean? Holloways just another convict trying to throw the dogs off his scent. Thats why he came. And that, Justice said, savagely, you can print. His eyes wandered away from hers, eschewing the intimate bond that had been forming through eye contact. Sudden movement up in the north guard tower caught his attention. He looked up. An ugly scene was unfolding in front of them both. A guard was trying to shoo something away. His huge hands pushed away at something black and feathery, something that moved atop the railing with inconsistent, tortured hops. It appeared to be an ugly mortuary bird; a big, black raven dragging what appeared to be a broken wing. The bird had crash-landed on the lofty perch, fifty feet above, ostensibly as a last resort. Justice, with Ms. Lilywhite beside him taking in the scene, watched as the guards shouts fell ineffective on the frightened bird. The birds wing lay splayed out to the side, all but useless. Flight was impossible. There was no escape. The birds desperate, shrieking caws, its response to perceived danger, were loud and alarming, a fierce pitch that resonated with stunning clarity in the dry heat. Shrill cries flooded the surrounding area with the alacrity of a battle cry in motion. The few journalists left in the vicinity dropped their relevant tasks and turned to see the spectacle high above. What ensued amazed even the most battle-hardened of them. The guard followed close behind; a brute thug in full dress blues chasing the raven around the open, boxlike structure. The raven, in 86

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turn, dragged his damaged wing behind his plump body, hopping madly across the wooden railing, trying to keep his balance and elude the guard at the same time. All the while, the thermometer stared up at them from the relative safety of the signpost below, grinning maniacally as the mercury made a red-tinged run up the narrow bore of the glass tube. The mercury was very close to reaching the uppermost markings on the thermometer, and as all signs pointed, as the climate raged upward to unfathomed heights of searing heat, as the day swelled to a near record high, as the rattlesnakes out in the plains crawled away in search of shady outcrops to weather out the desolate heat, as the reporters batted away at the hot air with hand held fans and notebooks, as all those on the ground watched the guard give chase to the flailing bird, the indelible impression was made upon them all that suffocating madness was now well within reach. Maybe it was that suffocating heat or maybe it was the reflection of a poor upbringing that caused the burly guard to act out as he did. That much was immaterial. That much was semantics. And Justice knew there was no room for semantics in that hellish wasteland that stretched out underneath his feet as far as the eye could see, partitioned off from the civilized world by the most skeletal of state highways, doomed to teeter forever on the edge of madness. The guard finally lost his patience and temperin that order exactly. Instead of pushing the bird over the ledge, where it might have free fallen to safety, he brought all thirty-six inches of his steel automatic up to shoulder level, paused, the shiny black metal stock looming above the bird like a truncheon, the business end pointing up at the heavens. He took a careful bead; not wanting to have to work overtime, and viciously launched the butt of his carbine down on the helpless birds neck, crushing the vertebrae of the neck instantly. Cadence Lilywhite cried out sharply, placing a tiny hand over her mouth in revulsion. Loud gasps escaped form the crowd, equally as horrified. Justice watched, impassively, his mouth hanging open, as the raven fell off the ledge like a Japanese Zero shot down over the South Pacific, plummeting down in a tight spiral, neck shattered, lifeless and wasted. The black form fluttered to the base of the tower and landed with a dull thud. Ironically, he thought, the ravens final resting place came at the side of stone barrier that represented freedom. In the end the raven, viewed by many of the farmers around these parts as a black specter of death itself, had escaped the guard, escaped the dust bowl and the aspersions it brought with it, but it had paid with his life. Ravage was right Justice said, his teeth now clenched in rage. He thought about John Ravage, the contentious member of AIM, who five years ago had picked up Justice in a battered Chevy Nova outside of Billings, Montana and driven him through dilapidated Indian Territory on his way to Esperanza Ridge. They had passed ramshackle 87

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housing, poor, starving, filthy Indians, the broken backbone of the next generation waiting for non-existent government funding that had been mailed to some distant, far off place in plain brown wrapping. Ravages words had rung true then, as they rang true at that moment: There are no for sale signs in heaven. The exact caveat parroted aloud by Justice at that very moment. Ravage? Cadence asked in her far-off, disaffected manner, seemingly unhinged by it all. Her eyebrows wriggled up her forehead in curiosity. Her voice was soft, yet the pen in her hand remained deadly. She had recovered quickly, Justice noticed. The mark of a true champion. After a brief interlude her eyes sparked to life when she realized whom Justice meant. You mean that John Ravage? From AIM? Wounded Knee? Justice ignored her. He turned his back to her, and crossed the uneven, patchy ground. He headed towards the unsightly raven to make sure it had died properly and was not suffering. Justice zeroed in on the guard the entire way, his hands balled into fists of rage intensified. Hate leaked into every cavity in his heart. In his mind he wished he could summon an invisible wind to rise up and nudge the grotesque guard over the edge of the railing and down to the ground so he could mete out just punishment himself. But no such luck. The bird lay in a crippled mass, dead, resting like a black turd on the hardened red clay, ready to bake through and through in the suns rays. It suddenly struck Justice the ease in which creatures lost their lives out there in that barren outback. Another soul needlessly stolen away by the dust bowl. It loomed there before him; well within reach. Another cloudless day, devoid of rain and energy to flush away the hot stench of death. The sun filled the sky with vigor and radiation, but there was no luminosity. There was form, albeit suffused and intolerable, lacking all function. The sunlight that had washed over him in his youth like the dry paintbrush of God was meant to be benevolent, immaculate. It was supposed to nurture, to light the path as it guided his children through life. Yet right before him, lying exposed amid the dazzling shafts of sunlight was the raven, head twisted to the side in a grotesque angle, eyes wide-open and already glazed over. As he drew closer Justice could see the bird, lifeless and black and twisted, staring directly at him, seemingly begging him to fix what was broken inside. To pump life back into crushed, collapsed veins. A second chance. Everyone wanted a second chance. The country was predicated on the idea. Instead, Justice, sensing futility and flirting with the loose madness that affects good people who cannot fathom the depraved actions of the damned, unceremoniously kicked at the ground repeatedly, angrily, loosening up a fair amount of topsoil in the process. When he was done, he shoveled a crumbled layer of clay over 88

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the dead raven, using the side of his boot. He quickly covered up the wretched corpse, trying to give the bird a half-decent burial, putting it out of sight at the same time. He worked hurriedly under the sun, which heated the back of his scalp and neck like a blowtorch, trying to cover up those eyes, wide open even in death, so full of desperation and terror, big, gaping, yellow eyes that bore right through him, unnerving him, refusing to look away. Justice recognized those eyes. They were the angry eyes of the dead, of dispossessed souls, demanding that he exact retribution on their behalf. And in the lenses of those wretched eyes he saw the form of his dead grandfather, Black Crow of Midnight. And he remembered something that happened long ago at Pine Ridge. Many years before, when Justice was still a boy he had stumbled upon a dead raven on the side of the road one day, its body smashed almost beyond recognition by an oncoming vehicle. Justice, feeling overwhelmed and sad like most young boys that had witnessed death felt, brought the crow home to bury. His grandfather caught him as he began to shovel away the dirt, trying to dig a shallow grave in the hard ground, and angrily told him that he should have left the bird exactly where hed found it. Snatching the shovel away, Black Crow of Midnight told Justice that it was not wise to disturb the dead. When a black crow died, he went on to explain, it meant that something bad was going to happen. A strange synergy between life and death was bound to take place. An omen. One not to be taken lightly. The bird, lying lifeless on the ground, hardening quickly like stale hardtack, did not do well in the spotlight of the sun; the purest rays of summer, scorched and bright and concentrating on black feathers and blood seemed to nudge the thermometer ever so higher, and quickly everything went to waste and the bittersweet stench of death drifted up to Justices nose. The sun brought colors and scents out to the open that a young Justice did not want to see or smell, and after a few minutes spent staring at the mangled corpse, he began to cry and then ran away, leaving the bird where it lay, uncovered and dead and promising terrible things. The raven did not fare well under the sun then, Justice thought, as it did not fare well at that very moment. Justice turned his back to the tower, to the guard above. He walked through the shadow thrown by the great prison wall, a thin, sliver of shade a meter or so wide, the only respite from the broiling sun for miles. For a brief moment, as he entered this pocket of coolness, he felt a thousand miles removed from the dust bowl. His imagination produced a picture of his living room, a place of solitude, Justices sanctuary, temperature controlled and comfortable and able to block out the suns rays with thick curtains he could shut at the flick of the wrist. That feeling vanished seconds later as he strolled back into the stinging sunlight, leaving the shade, leaving the dark, inky well of his nightmares behind for good. He was now better able to understand the 89

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nature of things. How everything in life was tied together. How anger and compassion and revenge formed the loose threads of a threestrand, nylon rope that could bind a man in captivity for eternity. He walked away from the shelved land and the cropping mountain, away from the low, leafless trees and the bloody carnage that was the birds pointless, agonizing death. He walked forward in a loping circle, trying to conceal himself from everyone, from Cadence Lilywhite who had probably never seen anything die in her entire lifetime and yet had watched the whole ordeal with a milky face that had filled in with an eerie, strange blankness. Her pen did not tap anymore, but instead wavered above a blank page, words silenced and still. Her green, liquid eyes expanded, becoming as wide and frothy and viscous as a Spanish sea. Devoid of disgust and sympathy at the same time. Filled with the odd detachment one would find in the eyes of a nave, callous child. She had responded to the birds death in the same manner she approached all stories: with a sense of learned, calibrated pragmatism; a passenger on an elevator that stopped on all 38 floors of a high-rise, doors opening up on each landing to reveal glimpses of worlds she would never be a part of, and as a result, would never inject themselves emotionally into her heart, entombed in the cold kaleidoscope of death. Justice Reywal tried to conceal himself from the reporters that remained, those steely-eyed men and women with their ability to manipulate minds and words; tried to conceal himself from the guard standing up in the tower who now grinned down at him in absolute malevolence, proud of his act of destruction. He walked away from the sinking feeling that filled the pit of his stomach, not knowing where he was going, unsure of how this entire scene would play out. He came to the conclusion that, despite the friends and contacts the popularity of his book had given him, despite the enemies his searing words and accusations had produced out of thin air, men like Governor Holloway, D.C lobbyists, the justice system itself; entities and organisms that already had thousands of natural enemies that should have quickly risen to his defense, Justice was destined to walk alone in this world, fighting forces he could never comprehend, trying to make sense of the chaos, when chaos was the preferred fuel of a new world order that made the globe rotate on its tilted axis, the continents and oceans ready to spill out into space and resume their quest for dominance. For Justice Reywal, maybe, just maybe, like the bird he had left behind, buried ignominiously under a miniscule pile of sand, there would be no second chance.

Inside ADMIT Unit, the Captain of the Guards, corpulent, balding, redfaced from a lifetimes worth of unchecked anger, weary and 90

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approaching retirement age, took up where the big, burly guard had left off and continued the verbal harassment of Avarice Lake. Besides him there were three other hacks present. Two sat by idly in swivel chairs, counting down the last minutes to their shift. One guard was eating what looked to be a lizard sandwich; his jaws and teeth furiously working over something green and squishy. The other stood with his back to the wall, half-watching, uninterested and bored, picking dirt from his fingernails and watching a movie on a small B&W television set propped up against a shelf. You be back shortly. The Captain of the Guards said, reproachfully. Three things I got to look forward to in the coming year. One is the heat. It aint goin nowhere. In Oklahoma, heats the mistress to death and taxes. The guards sitting down nodded and chuckled softly. The chairs hinges squealed with glee. The one standing against the wall stared at Avarice vacantly, his body still, refusing to blink. Avarice, in turn, focused his eyes on a bare spot on the wall, concentrating, reminding himself that it was his duty to reign in his anger. Then theres the day you break parole. Remanded back to the refomatory. Shackles round the ankles, handcuffs nice and tight, wearing that same miserable frown you come in with five years ago. I remember that day sif it was yesterday. The captain paused, giving Avarice the time to reassemble his memory. Didnt have my rank then. But I had my instincts. I knew you were trouble from the startin line. You almost shit your jump suit you were so scared. That fright gave way quickly to anger, though, when they tied you down to the barbers chair. Trustee cut your long, proud Indian hair off. Shaved you down real good that day. You were so angry you rushed that boy like a cornered hog when they unstrapped you, ready to pound him senseless. He pointed at the splint over Avarices nose. Broke your nose that day, too, as I recollect. And we all learned what was inside of you. Your true nature come to call. And so it remained. Five years to the day and countin. Aint that right boy? What would you know about human nature? Avarice asked, peeling his eyes away from the wall and placing them on the captain. The arrogant captain, his shiny badge polished to a demonic gleam, the stripes of his rank adorning his shirtsleeves in grand splendor ignored Avarices question. The captain looked around, and after a few seconds spied what he was looking for on the far side of the small room. He crossed the area in two strides, neatly sidestepping a drab, woolen throw rug. His long arm reached out over the heavy industrial desk and snatched a long, blue-steel, high-powered flashlight off the metal desktop. He reached out towards the wall, flicked the light switch off and the room went dim. Only the ambient light creeping in through a small, barred window above them kept them from total darkness. 91

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The captain turned the flashlight on, aiming the beam at a solitary 8X10 photo hanging on the wall in front of Avarice. You follow that light closely now, boy. See what it shows you. The photograph was an old black and white; depicting a group of men, ten or eleven in total, all smiling, all wearing snappy suits and derbies, standing outside in the sunshine, the backdrop of familiar flatlands behind them. They held shovels pressed to the ground in front of their feet, presumably at someplace where ground had been broken. One man held a larger than life pair of scissors; ready to cut through a large ribbon. There was not a cloud in the sky. Whats so important about that old photograph? Doesnt show me anything I havent seen before. Whats important about that photograph is not what it shows, but what it dont show, Lake. What you are seeing is this very earth bneath you, a picture of the reformatory the day they broke ground, summer of 1909, I believe. This photo hit the front page of every newspaper from here to Tulsa. The men in the picture are the great minds that conceived the idea of the prison. Men who ruled the legislature with an iron fist. Men who knew how to turn a dollar. What it dont showwhat the reporters wanted to hide from the publicwas a picture of the actual men who built the prison. Convicts? Avarice guessed, after a moment of silence. Thats right, Lake. Convicts. Five trailers full of convicts, imported from three other prisons to help the engineers build this place. Did it in less than a year, if I recall. First inmate was tucked away safely behind tons of stacked granite by 1910. My question to you is this, Lake. How do you think those convicts felt while they were working the steam drills and shovels and pickaxes and laying down blasting caps for a pittance? What was going through their minds? You think they felt strange, like slaves taken to some foreign land and forced to build a kings palace? You think they were scared by the rockslides caused by dynamite blasting away at the side of Granite Mountain? Or do you think these men felt completely at home, comfortable, cause they were carving this place out of the mountainside, extracting tons of dark granite, stone as cold and black as their own hearts? He paused. Buildin their own prison with their own hands. Thats the answer you need to find out for yourself. And you better do it quick. Cause youll be on the other side of that wall in no time. A free man. And I wont be around no more to stop you from running into trouble. What does this all have to do with me? Avarice asked. Man feels most comfortable around the things he knows, Lake. Not the things hes learned. The COG said. Its that simple. Avarice heard him, but failed to acknowledge with a response. Instead, he trained his eyes on the beam of light, still shining on that old photo, framing it inside a halo of flawless white. He observed an unbroken cloud of dust particles, miniscule remnants of the dust bowl 92

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outside floating like a weightless blanket through the stillness of the room and passing softly thru the light. The guards stood or sat to either side of the dust plume, not moving, not caring, like sentinels inured to things that resided in the dark. See that dust? The COG had noticed Avarices fascination with the floating column. He fanned his hand out in front of the light and the dust particles scattered. Its everywhere in Oklahoma, boy. Hell, it is Oklahoma. Its merciless. Like that bright sun outside. It shows no favoritism or mercy. Gets into all things equally: Your hairyour eyesappliances, refrigeratorsgets into anything with a live current. You can seal your windows and doors with wet towels, barricade yourself inside your home, but theres no shelter, no escaping that dust, convict. No more than a man can escape his true nature. But man is arrogant, thinks he can overpower his environment. Thinks he can change himself and his ways on sheer willpower alone. The politics of struggle in the mind. But it takes a strong manan introspective mana virtuous man, to figure out his temperament all by himself. Sometimes the best way to do that is to find a quiet place in the dark to sit and think. Just like were doin now. But some men are afraid of the dark. So in the end, it always works out the same. The brave man lives with his minds own creation for just a little while. The smart man figures out its easier to accept himself for what he is rather than to try and move heaven and earth. Well, captain. You think youve done gone and figured my nature out? Avarice paused. The CoGs face lay obscured inside that soft partition where dust cloud met light. What is it then? Go on. Tell me. Why, you dont know? His eyebrows scrunched together like two hairy worms locked in a kiss. You a stone cold killa, boy. I thought you were bright. I thought you would have guessed that by now. The captain hit the lights and the room grew bright. He flicked off the flashlight and chucked it on the desktop, where it landed with a sharp thud and rolled to a stop against the wall. I guess you aint so smart, after all. You dont know what youre talking about. The captain smirked at him. Maybe I do. Maybe I dont. But just to be safe, Ill make sure to stick aroun til the day that prison bus comes back up the drive and I find your name on my clipboard. Wouldnt miss your return fo the world. Stick aroun so I can give you one last beatin. After that I do believe Ill retire. Wont be too long. I promise you that. The captain, who had an ugly, curious eggshell head that came to a point inches above a pair of small, elflike, pointy ears, studied Avarice Lakes battered face. As he inched closer, Avarice got a better look at a distorted face and drew the conclusion that somewhere down the road in his lineage the captain was a byproduct of crossbreeding. And this was the most frightening part, for inside the

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captains mind was the promise of traveling in one direction, a pure fork in the road branched by anger and vengeance. In the meantime, the human oddity said, try and rememberno one leaves this place without a reminder. Hope you got a lot of time left in you old-timer. Avarice said. I wont miss you. And I surely wont miss that last breakfast. Im sick and tired of having grit in my scrambled eggs. Breakfast heres like eating a part of the land day in and day out. Feel like I have a county or two pressed inside my stomach this very moment. Im just glad I dont have to stick around for lunch. Avarice rubbed his belly in a slow, circular manner, mocking the COG. An entire country is too much for any one man to swallow. Maybe you wont talk so funny when youre chewin at the end of my nightstick stead of scrambled eggs. The captain growled, his nastiness growing with each word. One of the guards, the one eating the sandwich and lacking social grace, laughed impertinently. He had been watching with mounting interest, secretly hoping Avarice would slip up and make a fatal error. Avarice, dressed in frayed, faded blue jeans and a checkered, white-and-gray flannel shirt, pointed at his bright orange jumpsuit, now lying folded on a concrete bench just outside the hallway. It was mandatory that an inmate return the garish prison garb, with the ubiquitous P (for prisoner) stamped in bold black print on the backside, the day he exited the reformatory. It was one of the last formalities. Not because the prison needed the clothing back, mind you. No, the reformatory had a special room stocked up to the rafters with those unsightly uniforms. It was a matter of odds. Human nature. The guards were required to pick through the parolees clothing, checking for forgotten contraband stashed in secret pockets or linings. Drugs, weapons, incriminating crimp-notes, even jailhouse pornographythe guards searched for anything that could result in that convict being thrown right back inside, parole revoked before the man ever left the building. Sometimes the odds managed to shift the states way and a small shiv or blunt or a strange, white, powdery substance was found. The guards would smile, then drag the now exparolee back to his cell, the man screaming set-upset-up all the way, dumbfounded that he had forgotten to sanitize his clothes properly. And you can burn that jump suit in the funeral pyre. Orange was never my color. Dont mix with Indian blood. A solitary ray of light came in through the window and caught Avarice flush in the face. Avarice turned and stared longingly at the bright sunlight that fell like a tractor beam on his cheeks, flushing out the cold, giving him instant warmth. As the coldness retreated from each blood vessel on his face, he managed a nave, childlike smile. No sir. It dont mix good at all.

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Remember boy, the recidivism rate in this state is sixty-eight percent. Thats as close to sure money as it gits. Youll be back. The captain poked Avarices sternum with that hideous, steel, auto-lock expandable baton. Statistics say so. The captain, smelling moldy and unwashed like most old men do, once again leaned into Avarice. That was when Avarice really took notice of the mans eyes. Pale gray eyes that had probably once been vibrant blue in their youth and had gone hard and sour from countless years watching and transcribing the misery that existed behind bars. And that was the sad part, for Avarice knew that the man from long ago, the one with crystal blue eyes and a calm demeanor could have very well been a friend to him. Me and my brother, we come into this place together Avarice said brazenly, his confidence fully on display. He jabbed his own chest with his thumb. and me and my brother were going to leave together. Cause we werent meant for your world. Nothing you can say or do to stop that, Captain. Parole boards decided. Its done bet the house on me. Well see about that, convict. The captain walked away and plopped down on a heavy, leather reclining chair. The springs creaked and groaned under his grotesque weight, but the chair held. He dipped two fingers into a bag of chewing tobacco, produced an obscene wad and shoved the entire mess into his greedy mouth. He flicked the channels on the television set back and forth in rapid fashion until he found what he was looking for. He leaned back, threw his legs over the desk and smiled as Paul Newman and Dragline sat on prison cots of their own, arguing and playing cards, losing cigarettes and losing time. Cool Hand Luke was the captains favorite movie. Hell, I didnt even mind stripping down for you this last time. Clothes dont make the man in prison. Thats for sure. Avarice looked back through the long corridor, down the dingy cellblock, flush with shadows. Human stalls of tempered steel lined each side of the six-foot wide walkway. Like the holding pens one would find at a meat processing plant. Lying on the floor in front of each cell in dual, opposing rows were orderly piles of grimy bed sheets and plastic food trays, stacked up high with the refuse of convicts, waiting for their sojourn back to the laundry room or kitchen. The unsightly mess stretched some twenty cells back to the rear of the cellblock, a reminder to Avarice of the rigid, martial structure that had tapped into his essence, a code of conduct he would shortly be leaving behind for good. No longer would he be a ward of the state. Told when to eat, when to sleep, when to go to the head or when to lay out his clothes to be washed. No longer would the state flick the itinerant light switch on and off in his mind; a powerful, bewildering embrace between two rabid enemies that had lasted some 1825 days and had nearly broken him.

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As Avarice listened, light, hollow, rapping sounds began to fill the cellblock as convicts tapped out last second guerilla codes on the steel bars with their tin drinking cups. The tinny harmonies resonated down the human chamber, reaching Avarices ears in the form of sweet music, rising in decibels and cresting over the unbearable silence. They were saying goodbye, these convicts, his brothers for the last five years the only way they knew how, the only way the state allowed them to. A few of the convicts had produced small, handheld mirrors, which they held between the steel bars in right angles, trying to get a final glimpse of the departing Indian. The bulb light reflected back into Avarices eyes, but he didnt care. He didnt flinch. Instead he stood there, not moving, allowing the cons to get one final look at him, to drink in his quintessence, for Avarice knew that memory, that final sight of him standing there, an unrepentant soldier going home, would carry them for days or weeks on end. The great hall smelled of stale coffee and fried eggs and bacon and soiled linen. The men reeked of quiet desperation and mortality and years burnt away like candlewicks, and this overtook all. The lifers that inhabited B-Wing pressed their faces into the gaps between the cold metal bars. They hoped for the thinnest fragment of a miracle to rise up in the dark. They wished to squeeze their rigid bodies through that tempered steel, to escape the cold bleak interior, to join Avarice in one last victory dance outside the prison gates. Anything to escape the bare, naked light bulbs that burned with stark brightness sixteen hours a day, filling the cavities that were their cells with the suffused, embryonic light of self-awareness. Odd then, Avarice thought, that in a cruel twist of fate, the heat emitted by these very bulbs was never quite strong enough to overcome the frigid AC that flowed through countless air vents strategically located throughout the prison. Waves of cold air poured over the convicts like the frigid waters of the class III rapids that brought tourists in to the northernmost counties of the state. Avarice had conquered these rapids long ago, when he was a boy, conquered them much like he had conquered the fear of prisonby carving out a truce with his internal mechanism; reducing fear to the tiniest pinprick, freezing it in a state of slumber and tucking it away in a far off corner of his mind. The door to the memory motel opened, and Avarice was suddenly transported back in time. That beautiful, dark day; purple-skied and electric and unstill. Underneath a mounting ocean of storm clouds that had quietly rolled in from the west, bellies full of fog and cold, ready to walk lines of heavy rain up and down the ridges and valleys. Odorless and weightless for the time being. Losing his sense of timing, his equilibrium buckling under the lightning storm and attendant thunder, until he could not tell if it was early morning or dusk. Hed followed the 96

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beautiful Washita River, alone, starting high up in the gorgeous peaks of the Arbuckle Mountains. He had stripped down to his shorts and entered the water through a flat patch of riverbank, a spot that seemed safe and inviting to those unaware of the many dangers that lurked inside the swollen river. The frigid current immediately gripped his ankles and tried to pull him away, down the rapids and waterfalls, past the burning campfires of sportsmans camps where incredible lore was traded and the occasional deer stooped over the deep pools aligned with the meandering rivers banks, thirsty and ready to drink. The cold enveloped him as he took in a deep breath and submerged his body, slowly, becoming one with the whitewater froth and the bluegreen speed and the frigid menace that loomed just underneath the surface, fast underwater currents that grew insurmountable in bottlenecks, constricted, careening fluidly between rock ledges and submerged mountain ranges of jagged rock and smooth, mossy boulders and trapped timbers. The sleekness of the river, its laminar flow disturbed, the way the current mounted speed and rushed by him on the outside turn, rushed on by the land, rubbing and shaking hands with all of gods inanimate objects, the pine trees and the driftwood and the hydraulic holes filled with backwater that could spin a kayak around like a top and easily tear it in twoall this made his act of insanity all that more difficult to comprehend. He closed his eyes, putting the mechanism to sleep, lulling his fear into the abstract. He knew it was impossible to extract that fear from within without extracting something deeper altogether. He pressed on into the center of the river, feet inching downward at a gentle angle until the water reached just over his chin. He lowered himself and drank from the watery trough that was the grave for so many. And then Avarice Lake closed his eyes and swam right into those rapids, that uniform, linear, yet dreadful eight-mile Dougherty stretch that crossed from Murray to Carter County. Swam it with all his heart and energy; swam it with his smooth swimmers strokes and feet kicking in complete synchronization. Swam it for mile after mile, gulping air and river water, exhausting his body, one hour to the next, paddling, breathing, treading water but never stopping, ignoring the debris that rushed by, sometimes thrown right into him, until sometime later he came out on the other end, tired and spent, every muscle alive and burning as if it had been raked over hot coals, the beautiful, dark day still above him, purple-skied and unstill. Odorless and weightless for the time being. Gaining his sense of timing, his equilibrium coming together under the lightning storm and attendant thunder, until he could now tell that it was early dusk and not morning. The memory of that frigid, turgid water had stayed with him. It served as a reminder that fear was a trick of the mind and could not harm you unless you allowed it to. Everybody stumbled at one time or another. But not everyone got up to finish the race. It was this 97

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remembrance, returned to him at this moment, at the eleventh hour, this abhorrence and disdain for failure and effeteness that had helped him survive the last five years behind bars. And so it went, the convicts in B-Wing lived a life of stark contrast; a harsh existence where the furrowed light of 100 watt bulbs met the gravity of cold, where deals were struck in closed quarters, ratified by curt nods and monosyllabic words rather than handshakes, for flesh on flesh in clammy, frigid temperatures served as a constant reminder to the men of where they lived, the amphibious company they kept. A man could grow crazy living underneath the harsh, constant glow of state powered electricity. One of the first things Avarice had learned upon arrival was how to dim the power of those incandescent bulbs. Working at night, he tore the front and back covers off a paperback book and taped them together at revolving angles, leaving a large hole on one side, a smaller hole on the other, forming a rough, spherical cone. Next, he wrapped layers of toilet paper around the cone and applied a generous amount of duct tape, an item listed on the contraband sheet, to hold it all together. The end result: an effective, if not primitive type shade, easy to use and easy to conceal. He repeated the process over again three years later, after the first shade had burned through, this time scavenging Thoms copy of Suburban Arrows for materials, as irony would have it. The men in B-Wing had long ago abandoned the trappings of normalcy behind. Their manhood extricated by degrees, they had morphed into rough, slouched beasts, bearded and muscled and unctuous and foul mouthed. Armies of the night. Incongruous and unbalanced, full of hatred and full of hope, for these emotions moved throughout the corridors and the cellblocks in great abundance. They wished for sunlight to caress their cheeks once and for all but blessed the night and the way it curled around their bodies as they slept and all the damp sounds it brought with it and its capacity for violence. They became caged lions on the hunt for their next meal. Diamond miners lost in a cave-in, furrowing frantically through rock and dirt on their way up to the sun. They were dustbowl farmers looking towards the heavens for the rains to irrigate their cotton before the boles dried up and the aphids and fleahoppers and the locusts came. They hoped and they prayed; yet they didnt know exactly what it was they hoped and prayed for. They existed as single-celled entities; unimaginative, robotic, unaware that any other way of being was possible. Theyd forgotten how it felt like to run their tongues over an ice cream cone on a hot, blustery day. Or pulling a Mantle from a fresh pack of baseball cards. It had eclipsed in their minds the intrepid joy brought out by fingertips caressing the skin, tracing the sinuous lines on the small of a womans back or inching up her creamy, rose-scented thigh, trying to reach that exalted, magical spot before the morning sun peeked through parted curtains and blazed everything away to dust. 98

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The dark made everything seem hollow and unattached. The convicts scrutinized Avarice Lake in their mirrors. They showed deference and solidarity. A select few held the bullet of hatred in their eyes because Avarice was leaving that inhumane, damp place, leaving them behind to wallow in incessant boredom and trepidation and misery. A silent few even managed to arrange their faces into thin, disguised, smiles, flush with hope. Others looked at him with envy, for despite the fact they were members of the Brotherhood or the Black Guerillas or the Mexican Mafia, three sects that carried an intense suspicion for the Indian, they had forged a fraternal bond made possible through mutual repression and cruelty. They all wished they could find happiness, but that emotion just wasnt there and they could not force it. Nothing good lingered behind those granite walls, those steel cages. Nothing but sheer, uncontested revulsion. And so it was, that burning hatred for the system was the force that had driven them to unison. Avarice was their Xenophon; the heavy, steel door offering freedom at the end of ADMIT was their Black Sea, a two-inch thick band of amalgamated metal ready to be breached on command. But the freedom these convicts lacked and so desired was a pipe dream, and nothing more. Many would never get within one hundred feet of that door; never step within one hundred feet of freedom. They would never find the occasion to cry out in unison, The sea, the sea, as ten thousand Greek mercenaries had done after having found themselves abandoned in the hostile Anatolian plateau and forced to march northward through unimaginable horrors in search of those hospitable, inland waters. Avarice would be their surrogate general. Avarice would taste and breathe in the fresh air, bathe himself under the light of a bright sun. He would do that for them. He would listen to the sounds of life as if hearing them again for the first time: birds chirping, lawns being mowed, wood on laced leather at the neighborhood ball field. They held no ill willeven though in their hearts the convicts recognized that once Avarice hit pavement hed be taking with him their collective hope, leaving them behind to feel empty, isolated. Left behind in the tapestry of darkness and bitter cold would be desperate men trapped inside their own dreams, trapped inside vacant stares and tattooed torsos and unshaven faces sprouting haunted eyes that imagined enemies lurking around every corner. He took in one last, fatalistic glance down the cellblock. For the last five years, the OSR had been Avarice Lakes home. Uncomfortable. Repressive. Menacing. Hed taken quite a few beatings, and hed administered a few. Hed taken flak from the guards, and hed learned to give it back. Every ounce of common sense and logic and intelligence he had cultivated convinced him he was a better man to be leaving it behind. Yet if you asked him outright Avarice would have told you the reformatory was not all that different from life out on the 99

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reservation. Bleak was bleak, poverty was poverty, and red was red, no matter what postal code it bore. Regarding such matters, cultural economics operated under non-existent boundaries. Avarice sighed. He breathed in with his mouth and felt the cold under his cheeks. He watched, in slow motion, taking in the men, trapping the air inside his lungs for what seemed eternity. When it became unbearable, when it burned his insides, like the time a huge, barrel-chested con dragged him by the hair and scraped his face across the asphalt, exposing raw nerve, he expelled the breath from his lungs, and it dissipated into the upper never-reaches of the cellblock like wisps of fog creeping up the base of a mountain. Deep inside, it suddenly hit him. He was relievednohe was gladto be leaving altogether. Two new guards entered the room, ready for shift change. One was a corpulent fellow with a bulbous, ruddy nose (probably due to acute alcohol poisoning. Alcoholism ran high among the guards. After all; it was a depressing, low paying, and hopeless job) and coke bottle glasses that magnified his eyes, making them seem like empty, black, soulless planets. He carried a half empty box of Kleenex and a clipboard. Without a word, he sat down quickly inside the iron cage, the central control room, ready to man the levers, switches and buttons that controlled the many doors and gates of B-wing. He wore a dark, tight-fitting turtleneck sweater underneath his blue uniform shirt, accenting the sheer puffiness of his reddish-pink face, adding further unpleasantness to his manner. A huge bank of panels, levers, and closed circuit TV monitors, the heart of the Intrepid Micro-Point Intrusion Detection system, the ultimate system in detecting vibrations caused by cutting and/or climbing, now surrounded this new guard, who had stuffed his portly body into a tiny swivel chair hidden behind a stark, metal desk. Avarice peered inside and caught the faint whiff of bleach. The entire room reeked of utilitarianism. The guard that had previously snickered out loud when the COG insulted Avarice immediately stood up and walked out of ADMIT without saying goodbye to any one. He snatched his timecard off a wall-mounted organizer, punched out, and walked hurriedly back through the corridor, disappearing into the heart of darkness. Off to Avarices left, the second guard, an old, grizzled veteran of thirty-odd years watched Avarice through bored, tired orbs. He had experienced this grandiose moment as a facilitator to freedom many times in his life and could now have cared less. In his right hand he absentmindedly twirled a smaller version of the baton that had plagued Avarice on many an occasion. Avarice looked down and noticed the man was missing two fingers on his left hand.

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The old guard followed Avarices stare down to his mutilated appendage. A wide grin suddenly filled his face and Avarice noticed a rotting presence in his teeth, stained brown and yellow from years of coffee and nicotine and neglect. The old man shrugged and held his mangled hand up to the light. Lost them in the prison riot of 74. I was young and foolish back then. Stupid brave, they call it. Chased a man and tackled him when he tried to jump the razor wire. We got tangled up in that bladed steel real good. All twisted up, like a sunflower patch following the sun across the horizon. He fought somethin fierce, I tell ya. Fought like his freedom depended on it. Then the dogs began to bark. Heard em coming but I couldnt move. I was pinned down, you see. He paused. The lantern that was his memory came to life. It was beautiful to see, not awkward, the way the old man reassembled himself right there on the cold, stone floor in front of Avarice. The way he shrugged off the burden of being alive. I tell you, you dont want to have your hands tied up when them ol dogs have you in their sights. You see Bullmastiffs see everything in a straight line. The guard held his hand up in front of his face, fingers upwards, palm down, bringing his thumb back and forth to his eyes to show line of sight. No twisting in or out at the joints. Increasing speed. Feet converging under the body. No wasted motion. Harnessing power. A Bullmastiff cuts right to the heart of things. Seeing man and razor wire strung up together triggers a primitive impulse in his brain. Nothing more ferocious in life than a Bullmastiff with a strong scent and a purpose, I tell ya. Well Im sorry to hear that, boss. I truly am. Seems like tragedy gits around a lot quicker when innocent people are involved. Felt it mself on occasion. The guard shrugged. What you gonna do, huh? Dog just did what was natural to him. Hed been around a long long time and had never seen action. Probly carried that ferociousness inside him all the while. That ol bastard clamped his jaws on my hand and pulled me right off that convict. Dragged me off the wire, growling and foamin at the mouth, and never stopped till I did leave two fingers behind. He brought his fingers up for inspection. He spread his hand out. It looked like an obscene gesture in the making. A peace sign gone terribly awry. It was astounding to Avarice that the man held no ill will, his words inclined towards forgiveness. Section of that fence is still named after me. If you look closely, you can see the metal plaque woven into the links. That and a small pension is all I got to look forward to when I retire. State dont always take care of its own. No sir, no it dont. What happened to the convict? The one stuck on the wire with you? Dont really recall what happened to him. The guard ran his mutilated hand through his gray, thinning hair, scratching. He 101

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resembled a fiddler crab going about his daily routine of cleaning himself. Though I suspect he made it thru alive. Everyone does. He put his hand in front of his face, peeking at Avarice from behind three splayed out fingers. Some men say the Doberman is the best dog for security. But I have to disagree. Ill take the mastiff anytime. Doberman lacks the pure instincts of the mastiff. Im living proof to that. Anyhow, I really didnt need these extra digits up here in Granite Mountain. Went out to the pistol range, learned to shoot with my right hand and everything worked itself out. You aint scared of a meeting with the razor wire again? Couldnt happen. They got me locked up inside this damn place. Bones and joints hurt all the time from the cold. Arthritis flares up each day. But I aint ready to wring out the sponge just yet. No matter what they say He folded his arms across his body and rubbed both hands over his ancient biceps, trying to keep the cold at bay. He cleared his throat. No matter what they want. That wardenalways got something to prove. Always looking to write the next chapter of his book. Gets to be, I sometimes cant help but feel like a prisoner myself. Sometimes all I here up in those cold rafters is the sound of my rattlin old bones, and it scares the hell out of me. His eyes swept over the room; seeking out something unseen, something unknown; something he had caught a glimpse of and passed over continuously for the last twenty years but had never latched onto for lack of desire or need. After 1990, everythings been quiet. Reformatorys became more convict friendly. Library expanded and with the new computer room, fewer cons find use for the yard. Those that do keep with their own kind. Makes for better peace. Convicts now make it a point to avoid the gun. The guard grew teary eyed and melancholy and quickly averted Avarices stare as he tried to crawl out from the tunnel that was his memory. Like I said, everyone makes it thru the day alive. Seems to me, the wardens got a fractious hold on things. Avarice said, nursing the guard back to reality. Keep one hand on the steering wheel, the other on a SmithWesson and youll make it through all right. The younger, dark-haired guard spokefinally. The one that had watched Avarice through vacant eyes, studying him as if he were a lab specimen, refusing to speak, unwilling to impinge on the COGs turf. He stood five feet away, affected with the stillness of a marble statue. Still leaning against the wall. His head immobile and resolute. At twenty, he was the youngest man ever employed by the reformatory. Intense, unheralded, pimplyfaced. Nervous sweat stained the pits of his arms despite the cold, yet he watched the proceedings with a growing curiosity, taking in every nuance and action, unmolested and impervious to the iniquity surrounding him on all sides. Thoughtfully rubbing his naked chin, wishing for the coarse stubble reserved for rough-and-tumble men. Shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, he folded his supple, lithe arms 102

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out in front of his torso, tough and lean and as strong and impenetrable as a railway tie. A Semper Fi tattoo (Avarice knew it was recent work because of the sharp, dark-blue outline) marked the inside of his right forearm. The young guards face was blessed with a peaceful expression as he listened to the elder guard ruminate. His eyes traced the contours of the room, inch-by-inch, frame by frame. He never looked at the old guard as he spoke. His gaze floated aimless; towards the rafters high above and to the miniature, barred window that split the sunlight entering the room into tiny, golden shaftsyet by no measure did his countenance display disorientation. The young guard believed he could better gleam the meaning of a mans words if his eyes dithered on some ethereal passage dreamed up by his mind, not remain affixed on the people or concrete surroundings that made up his present state. Satisfied the old guard had finished his story, the young man nodded his head and coughed, garnering Avarices attention. He motioned towards a stainless steel ledge protruding out from the wall, where two bulging, yellow, 81/2 by 11 envelops lay together, side by side. Avarice walked over. Magnified by the small branch of sunlight that fell on the ledge was an envelope bearing Avarices name in big, black lettering. The other bore his brothers name. Avarices heart suddenly lurched in his chest. He felt the faint bristling of excitement. In a matter of minutes, he realized, Thom and he would be riding out of this godforsaken place forever, free men answerable to no one but themselves. Your personal effects. One on the rights yours. Avarice looked at the young man and nodded. Wish I was going out there with you Lake. Outside these cold, miserable walls. The young guard spoke sadly, taking in his bleak surroundings. He walked over to the small window and placed his open palm over it, extracting warmth from the pane of glass. He spread his hand out wide and the shafts of sunlight splintered further, becoming diffused and incoherent points of light. The bright energy danced over his fingers, trying to find a center, trying to contract to a whole before hitting the floor. He carried with him a certain level of poise, uncommon in one so young. He gazed at the courtyard outside with an almost delicate look on his face, waiting for the winged angel to ride in on a beam of sunlight and take him away. Avarice nodded sympathetically, knowing exactly how the kid felt. The CoG and the fat, alcoholic guard, not as understanding, shot brutal glances at the young upstart. Their faces carried the angry red of contempt. Eyes rolled back in their sockets until all Avarice could see were pockets of white, flecked with tiny, blood-gorged veins that formed red roadmaps out from the soul. Unlike the young guard, their demeanor had shifted from ambivalence to anger in a nanosecond. They shook their heads in dismay at the young guards ill-timed 103

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naivet. Later on, after Avarice was gone, they would lecture him on the dangers of showing weakness in front of a con. They would make sure the young ex-marine understood the maxim that to place oneself in danger was to place all of the men in blue in danger. A few weeks after that, they would force him to lead a blanket party on one particular, troublesome convict. A few months after, not having the stomach for such atrocities, the ex-marine, his name Cobi Cantrell, would resign and disappear from Granite altogether. Three months before, in late April, Cantrell had completed his tour of duty over in Iraq. The war was scarcely a month old when he left the Middle East. Attached to Operation Southern Focus, hed been sent overseas before the invasion to gather Intel and protect the oil fields in the Anbar province at whatever cost. He had seen blood and guts and violence and booby traps and fear that traveled in waves like a smart bombs percussion blast. He had prided himself on his ability to lift himself from the degradation, to transcend all that ugliness. He kept his honor; he kept his dignity in the days leading up to the invasion; and after. And in all that time, he had never found himself as scared as he was each day when he punched his timecard at the OSR and manned a post deep inside the buildings entrails. Just sign at the bottom when youre done. Make sure everything you came in with is accounted for. Cantrell handed Avarice a release form attached to a legal sized clipboard. Wheres my brother? Wheres Thom? Avarice asked, ignoring the clipboard. From his leather chair, the Captain of the Guards, still propped in front of the B&W, still angry, was unable to resist one last affront to Avarice. This native Oklahoman, born and raised in Granite, rarely making a pilgrimage outside county lines, just couldnt keep his vitriolic opinion down. His words were like a bad meal, unashamed and brazen, vomited from the body in a wreaking, hate-filled spasm of oratory. You know the rules, Lake. We take in as many convicts as the bus can bring us. But only one man leaves at a time. Always been that way. Always will. The captain spit out a disgusting wad of chewing tobacco over the bare floor, missing the wastebasket altogether. Dont worry, Lake. Hes leaving the shower room right about now. Well bring him into processing shortly. Cantrell, his cheeks blushing like cherries, his voice growing with edginess, tried to quell Avarices concerns. The Captain of the Guards shot him a hard, mean look. The young guard retreated into the corner, quiet and subdued. Avarice remained still, waiting to see how far the CoG was going to take the matter. You go on now, Lake. Leave the rest to us. The older guard with the mutilated hand interjected, trying to placate Avarice and the CoG at the same time. Well take care of everything. Your brother will be safe. I promise you. Safe as mothers milk. He looked back at his boss, 104

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the captain, hoping he hadnt incurred his wrath. But the CoG had already plopped down in front of the TV again, uninterested, trying to take in as much of the movie before afternoon roll call. On the TV set, Paul Newman strummed sadly on a banjo, singing about the Plastic Jesus and his dead mother as tears streamed down his face. A malevolent grin encompassed the CoGs face. The old guard shrugged. As a sign of good faith, he reached out and offered Avarice his hand. Avarice involuntary leapt backward. Unsure of the proper protocol, he began to rock from one heel to the other in a nervous jig. After a few seconds, feeling vulnerable, Avarice reached out and shook the mans handthe left hand mangled by the Mastiff firmly and free of prejudice. The captain, catching the final moment of this exchange from inside his steel cage shot Avarice a dirty look. Scoffing, he reached over the console and pressed a large red button. A loud buzz detonated near Avarices ear. Behind him, a latch gave way with a sharp click. A second later, showing a fair amount of resistance, the heavy door leading to the courtyard nudged open, slowly, fighting inertia, grating over the concrete floor on an outward trajectory. Probably not used to being opened very often from this end, Avarice thought glumly. Instantly, a wall of bright sunlight splashed into the small room, suffusing the area with a bland, harsh intensity that blinded Avarice. First a few rays trickled in, as the weighty door took its time, curling out slowly, then, once it opened completely, a torrent of luminosity bathed Avarice Lake in a world he had long ago forgotten; a world full of promises and dreams that had been buried under massive amounts of steel and concrete the day these wicked men spirited him inside these walls of perfidy. Avarice had made amends with his own soul years agonot out of any great sorrow or creeping remorse for his role in the killing of Jericho Black. That much was a given. Sympathetic men had compassionate thoughts, and Avarice Lake was no different. Fact was, he had no illusions of surviving to the end of his sentence. Halfway through his first tortuous year behind bars hed become a marked man by the Aryan Brotherhood that ruled the reformatory like a South American Para-military junta, roaming the corridors in great numbers on a mission to spread its gospel of fear. Seemed that Negroes and Latinos were not the only ethnic groups on their hit parade. The American Indian was right there alongside them, stubborn cockroaches to be eradicated, decimated, driven back into their holes. To Avarice, the path to freedom became an abstract wish the day the AB took an avid interest in him. When they sized up Avarice in the cafeteria as he waited in the food line with the other cons, freedom became far removed from concrete possibility. So faraway, in fact, it might as well have been a distant, uncharted planet teetering on the edge of the black void of space. 105

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And so it went, six months in, Avarice Lake had zero conviction hed ever make it out alive. He knew he had the mental and physical toughness to survive, but he didnt consider himself a sociopath. And the OSR was chock full of them. Junkies and blue-collar crazies and mass murderers and roving gangs and amphetamine-driven preachers and jailhouse lawyers who spoke 23 hours out of the day and rolled their eyes and shook their fists if you dared tune them out and for Avarice Lake, seven years was a just too long of a time to keep up appearances. Avarice began his sentence with the sun behind him. His life had sunken to the point where it could get no worse. The mere thought of freedom was an absurdity, like a two pack a day smoker trying to run a marathon without training. Many nights in his sleep Avarice imagined the seraph of freedom coming for him. The sound of the pickaxe grating against granite. Excavating a hole through the thick stone, picking at the wall until it broke down to dust. Clearing a path for him to make his break. Many nights Avarice felt those same arms of freedom lift him gently from his cot and carry him swiftly through that breach in the wall. But those were mere dreams, imaginings in the mind that disintegrated to genuine nightmares once hed awakened to find the great wall still intact, himself still asleep in that same cold cell, his pillow and bed sheets stained with deep pools of perspiration. The thought had not yet dawned on him as he stood there, glassyeyed and tired, toeing the grimy, yellow line painted underneath the door frame that marked the threshold between freedom and incarceration, that he was now a free man. Five years after having entered the fortified, stone edifice that was the Oklahoma State Reformatory, a guest of the state, five years after having checked his soul in at the door, along with his personal effects and all hope, Avarice Lake now had his future before him. Pressed to his chest was the envelope containing his few worldly possessions: A key ring bearing house keys to a place he could never call home again; a leather billfold, empty except for a few aged photographs of Avarices mother and father, taken when he was a boy; and some spare pocket change. He retrieved his old wristwatch from the envelope. The battery had died long ago. The watchs hands were stuck at the 7:27 position. AM or PM? That was the great mystery, Avarice mused. He would have liked to have known the exact day, the precise morning or night the watch had lost the ability to tell time. Was it his second day in when he caved in to the fear and vomited his breakfast into the toilet, flushing the last remnants of hope down the jailhouse pipes in a bile rich, congealed spiral? Or maybe it was the day the warden called him into his office and assigned Avarice the odious gig at the laundry room? Or the morning he broke an ABers nose during a pick-up game of basketball in retaliation for a racial slur, a hotheaded response that effectively cemented his fate? Either way it 106

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didnt matter. The watch would probably never work again. It was dead, like the last five years of his life. Avarice would never get to retrieve those days either, to live them out again as a happy man; and that unmitigated fact made him bitter. Passively, he took his first step. Then, trying to shrug off his stage fright, his cautious deportment, he took another step, this one more solid and purposeful than the first. As he passed underneath the steelframed doorway, a blast of hot air from outside hit him squarely in the shoulders and head, enveloping him, passing over him like some hungry serpent awakened from a thousand years sleep. The superheated air met the cold air circulating throughout ADMIT in an invisible wrestling match, the resultant vortex tousling Avarices hair and clothing. Lapsing into deep concentration, the insight came to him that life was all about contrasts. Life was all about balance. If one could keep the scales poised in a delicate drift, if one could tear the blindfold that covered Lady Justices eyes off and stare directly into her eyes and ask the great questions of life, and if she were magnanimous enough to answer, then one could soundly whip life at its own endgame. But that was a task easier said then done. Again, to have a chance, one had to learn to put things to sleep in the abstract. And Avarice knew that Lady Justice was capable of a betrayal of huge magnitude. Still, if he could manage in the coming months to take charge of that scale, to remove the bad stones of fortune from one measure and place them on the other, the side holding the good, before momentum overtook the beam and the chains and the bracing and the mechanism all collapsed, then maybe, just maybe, Avarice would succeed where other convicts before him failed. Avarice found himself walking thru the open doorway, taking unsteady, timid steps that belied his outward, cocky demeanor. He cupped his left hand over his brow to shield his eyes from the bright light. His heart was pounding wildly, like a basketball inflated past its rupturing point, dribbled over a hot, asphalt court by some ghetto child on a mission. The queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach returned. The heat overtook him instantly, suffocating him, and Avarice found that those first acidic breaths he drew as a free man were among the hardest hed ever taken. His head swiveled left to right, apprehensively, rough mechanics repeated over and over, as if he expected someone, a long lost lover or a dear friend to materialize from scratch in the brilliant light, running to him and jumping into his waiting arms. Hed seen this happen many times before in the old B&W movies the warden occasionally screened for the hapless cons, and he believed this was the way it was supposed to be. Coming out of prison alone was not proper. A man set to reenter life deserved better. Otherwise, he had a raisins chance under the sun.

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Avarice was safe now. Safe from the unknown. Safe from the appalling events a night behind bars brought. Safe from the Captain of the Guards and his ambitious underlings and the hissing steam press and the horrible food and the white supremacists that hunted the corridors of night. Safe from the ticking hands of time. Safe from himself. It was all behind him now. One last task: twenty paces ahead loomed a dreadful granite archway, a black, stone monolith rising some twenty-five feet into the cerulean day, ten feet thick at the base and tapering ever so slightly as it rose. It spanned the extent of the great courtyard, fifty feet or so in length, a gateway ready to expel prisoners and officials alike from the compound. The shadow the monstrous arch threw underneath its semicircled curvature was dark and daunting, the way it slinked down to the ground like a self-appointed guardian of some medieval castle daring invaders to cross from the panorama of day into an unknown void of obscurity. That ability one harbors inside the body to cut the cord and instantly disconnect from things, when anything and everything becomes possible; when benevolence gives way to blankness, and in turn blankness gives way to steely eyed ragethat capacity to dehumanize oneself had parted ways with Avarice. That element of his soul, so black and full of wickedness, which had struggled so fiercely to overtake him in the past was all behind him now. Or so he liked to believe. The anger and blind rage that had filled his veins and arteries like an urn overflowing with ashes of the dead now lay dying in a state of atrophy. And not a second too soon, for when a person reached that point where they embraced those violent sentiments, when a man turned his back to the shadows instead of standing up to face them, that was the moment pure evil prevailed. A cavernous, unbreakable coda of hatred would be all that remained, spilling out from the shell of the broken man. All that stood between this violent past and a wide-open future was the archway in front of him, waiting to be breeched in the severity of day, for on the other side lay the widest expanse of ground permeated in the most inviting sunlight, and beyond that the sleek ribbon of highway that cut through the heart of Greer County, and beyond that the southwestern borders of the state, piggy-backed by the Red river flowing east, and beyond that the rich farmlands and steppes of Northcentral Texas and towns like Plano and Wichita Falls and Pleasant Valley scarred over by hulking, depleted oil wells of yesteryear and the glittering lakes and well-to-do college campuses and the driving thunderstorms all leading down to the Sierra Madres and the passive margins of the Gulf of Mexico and a world still divided along racial lines and the faint promise of happiness and love and wealth in a third world land. 108

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An elder, erudite inmate, a white-bearded, longhair born-again serving life for multiple homicides once told Avarice that evil was destined to conquer both the physical and spiritual world; that the union of ghastly intentions and malevolent acts would denigrate to a disharmonic blend, moving intrepidly through all battered souls like a deceased relative occupying an empty room in the house that was a mans heart. He explained that the bright light of integrity and forgiveness was all too easy to extinguish, like crushing a burnt out light bulb underneath ones heel. It was no ones fault really. Not humanitys, not the politicians. Not Gods. It was just the way things were in this dirty, tired world. It was the law of causality. It was perfection in all its adulterated forms. It was also a brutal lesson in human naturea lesson Avarice swore hed never forget. Over the previous five years Avarice had learned much about human nature. The hacks and screws that patrolled the cellblocks knew about human nature alsohell, working day in and day out with dangerous cons made them experts by defaultbut they chose to disregard this sometimes mysterious, psychological characteristic altogether, for being practitioners in the art of violence, they took on all comers with great enthusiasm. The hacks, strong believers in causality themselves, noxious, wide-bodied men with thin hearts who had long ago slid down the rabbit hole of moral decay, lived for the opportunity to break down a convict, meting out their twisted brand of justice to effete and strong, to neo-Fascist and nigger and Injun Joe alike. Avarice had watched the guards; watched them operate. Day in and day out. They were simple men, really. Not much to them. What he gleamed from their human behavior, if you could call their activities human, was this: you didnt ever want to push a man into that darkcornered place where handshakes and handouts gave way to shanks and razors and midnight thrusts, especially if that man had been caged in an eight by eleven envelope of a cell for five long years, for in that state a man could easily confuse his boundaries and become capable of anything. Avarice Lake knew, without a doubt, that he was that kind of man, and the fury ticking within him was always seconds away from exploding. Where most mens rage came about as a slow roiling boil, funneled through arteries away from the brain and passed into muscles slowly and steadily, a bottleneck, released under clinically tight conditions, Avarices wrath lacked that fuse, that hair-timed trigger, and as a result he went to that dangerous place faster and farther and with a greater degree of rage and silence than others could possibly fathom. Avarice turned around to stare at the great prison for one last time, to commit to memory those imposing walls, the braced steel and vicious beatings and his bright orange jumpsuit that now lay on the floor in ADMIT discarded, waiting for the next convict requiring a larger 109

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fit to slide in, zip up, and take up residence inside, like a hermit crab in its shell. Avarice felt an upwelling of blind rage, a violent upheaval that overtook his reason and sanity. In vein, he tried to harness that wrath, to mouth out a desperate prayer, but he found himself incapable. The misery in his soul had reared its ugly head at the most inopportune time. Spiritual transcendence would not be so easily obtained, after all. The state of calm that had been steadily building up inside him all morning vanished instantly; displaced towards his extremities, chopped and diced to distant parts of his soul. Avarice turned around and called out to the captain with the rotten countenance. From this moment on, I own every second of my time. You hear that, Captain? Every second! He shouted through the doorway, halfopen, still in the process of closing. And you cant do a thing about it. Tell that thug that works the graveyard shift that the clock never stops. Not for mannot for himnot for anything. Tell him one day soon it will be his time to go. Tell him a man cant hide behind what he does for a living. I will be there when the clock strikes midnight to make sure he dont forget. Anxious to leave those granite walls behind, the recalcitrant Cheyenne marched into the ubiquitous sunlight, walking at a rapid pace over the beams of sunshine that formed a reassuring bridge across the dusty ground. He never felt his feet move beneath him as he crossed under the granite archway with its massive iron grated fence, now open, angling outward towards the locust land, ready to expel yet another prisoner from the reformatorys bowels. Avarice fought the urge to hide inside the shadows for a few moments, to wallow in darkness and forge a bond with the concentric stones, admiring the expert masonry, gathering strength and resolve for the long road to come. He realized that many cons before him had crossed at this very same point. This was the hardest part to overcome, the crux, the unknown future aheadfor convicts, cynical by nature, so accustomed to incarceration with its stark regiment of rules and regulations and rigid scheduling, believed that freedom itself was just another 9-to-5 gig; a life sentence of its own to be served concurrently. All Avarice felt as he crossed this nexus to freedom that was the archway was the unbroken column of light on the other side. Taking that half step from shade to sunlight, it glazed over his body in a natural glow and illuminated the ground underneath his boot heels. The light particles danced around in the afternoon, like ballerinas pirouetting under the spotlight, calling on him to join them, begging him to be brave. To be virtuous. He took measured, firm steps, moving gracefully from one golden shaft of light to the next. His confidence resurfaced. The anger quickly dissolved. Soon he was out in the open, his face tilted up to the sun, bathed in pure sunlight. 110

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No time to reflect. Nor repent. Avarice didnt even smile. Not even when he saw the man he had waited five years for coming his way, gesticulating wildly as he waved his hand. Five years spent counting down the minutes, the hours, the days. Five years staring into those clocks the warden had tried so hard to conceal. Trying to guess the time. The temperature. The steel door behind him closed at last with a resounding thud. A loud, obstinate clack signaled the locking mechanism had caught hold, effectively putting an end to a part of his life Avarice would have gladly forgotten altogether. ADMIT, the guards, good and bad, all disappeared behind the dark, granite-walled reach of the state. Avarice could still see the sunlight on Cantrells hand, dancing, hopping, performing circus-like maneuvers over the ex-marines open palm. Avarice thought for a second. Yes. He liked the kid. Respected him, actually for his ideals, for having respected Avarice in kind. For treating Avarice humanely in a place ravaged by injustice, where sentimentality was at a premium. He hoped the kid would make it outemerge from that cold, vapid darkness with a large portion of his soul intact. Walk right out from the gloomy corridors into the waiting sun as Avarice had just done, not stopping until he hit the highway and took the first bus he saw right out of Greer, never to be seen or heard from again. He adjusted his face into a solemn mask and steadied his resolve. Causality. Cause and effect, in laymans terms. The informal understanding that under the human experience, contiguity was dependent on a chain of events from things in immediate contact. If there was drought, crops failed. If you were black and from the ghetto, you were subject to constant police harassment. If you beat a man relentlessly, he would grow as strong as the rod that beat him. If you stole five years from a mans life, hed spend five years trying to get it back. Cause and effect. Avarice Lake would put this property to the test. And so with ice water in his veins, fighting gravity and torpor with every step, fighting the leaking sensation in his chest where everything threatened to spill out, Avarice Lake, the proud Cheyenne convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to seven but out in five, feeling terrified and exalted at the same time, ready to pass the torch of capitulation to the hand of reprisal, wearing the scars of battles on his face and soul like the Dog Soldiers before him who swore to avenge Sand Creek, who fought with desperation in the smoky hills of southern Nebraska, began that slow, heavy walk to his destiny, riding atop a dreamy wave of adrenaline. Walking towards him was a man who carried similar genes, a man whose heart pumped the same lifeblood as Avarices, a fellow Indian who himself held many battles inside his sharp, razor eyes, whose 111

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ferocious silence and calm manner cut through the hours without fuss or pageantry. In Avarices eyes, lean and distorted as his thoughts, this man had ruthlessly betrayed him. Betrayed his brother. Betrayed the race. And in a matter of seconds, in front of the eyes of the entire country, with what seemed like a million print reporters and TV journalists scurrying about the wasteland like scorpions looking for cover, they would meet, the moment captured for posterity by that continuous loop.

The reporters had heard the loud buzz that precipitated Avarice Lakes release. The local boys, reporters from The Oklahoman, The Oklahoma Daily and The Tulsa Free Press immediately sprinted towards the archway. Veterans of prison reform wars, they knew exactly what that sound meant. It was the sound of inevitability. They knew the precise spot to run to. Call it an unfair advantage or a fortuitous head start, in either case, they tore the lethargy away from the afternoon and ignited a frenzied dash towards the rough patch of ground underneath the massive arch. The assembly followed suit, men and women like lemmings rushing towards a cliff, pressed on by the sheer weight of their brethren behind them. It was there underneath the archway that they milled in great numbers, forming a tidal pool of charred flesh, too many arms and legs for Avarice to count. Avarice met them head on, alone, his face washed over by a pool of stale light, inside a narrow section of turf surrounded by shoulder height, barbed wire fencing. Avarice kept walking, his eyes down, until all he saw were fragments of grimy socks and shoes, crusted over by the rust colored dust of the land. In front of him was a short, electrified aluminum gate, the final obstacle before freedom. For the men and women of the free world press, it was as anticlimactic a moment as it ever got. Many cameras filmed the moment. Microphones craved a sound bite. Many of the men and women hoped or prayed for gunshots or electrocution anything to serve as icing on the cake to this vapid afternoon. Avarice took a deep breath. The fresh air that was so foreign to him now felt good as it raced through his lungs. He walked very close to the deadly razor wire fence, mesmerized by the swarm of people approaching him. Itd been a long time since hed witnessed so many people rushing about with so much exuberance. Inside the frigid, icebox reformatory, the convicts had learned to harness their energy, to control their bodily movements, slowing down their limbs and brainpower to a robotic pace. There was no point to moving quickly. It wouldnt make the time go by faster, after all. And speeding up that clock was the one thing every con in the reformatory yearned for. 112

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Avarice reached out to open the gate, then stopped, pulling his hand back instinctively. Still carrying that cons instinct for danger. No way of telling if the electric current capable of administering a deadly shock had been neutralized by the hack manning the small guardhouse to his right. No way to tell if the man had been bought off by the reporters or was just downright mean and wanted to see Avarice sear and blister, like a hog roasting over a spit. The guard, noting Avarices hesitancy, called out suddenly. He put his hand out abruptly, and in a shrill voice warned Avarice to halt. Avarice nodded. The guard pulled back on a lever, pushed a button, and the aluminum-framed gate buzzed open instantaneously. The guard motioned for him to continue. Avarice immediately walked over to a spot on the floor, a solid circle outlined in yellow. Everything in prison was painted yellow, he thought. The piss-colored lines of demarcation. The guard, a diminutive borderline incompetent with a small, reedy mind and long, thin, ferret face, looked Avarice over suspiciously. Studied him chapter and verse, partly out of sheer reflex, partly out of curiosity for it was rare to have the press turn out for a simple release in such numbers. He had a snaky appearance, with beady, little eyes that darted rapidly from side-to-side, never blinking. He hated the sunlight, hated this fiery outpost where he spent his days. The cons had a nickname for him: Boxcar Billy. He was a sycophant; always trying to get in the good graces of the top echelon guards, always kissing stripes and ass in the hopes of being assigned somewhere else; preferably on the inside, where it was dark and cold and comfortable. He had a penchant for following closely behind those big burly men who had absconded the stripes of success, following them throughout the prisons corridors like the box cars snaking behind a roaring locomotive; hence the undesirable moniker. His real name was McCreedy. William McCreedy. A closet psycho. Religious fanatic. A card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe. Gatekeeper to the lost tribe of children forced to endure their own version of hell behind those permanent walls. McCreedy emerged from the guard hut, snatched the release form out of Avarices hand and scurried quickly back into his shaded sanctuary. He read through it quickly; eyes shifting left to right, scanning the form madly. His face was always crimson, an emblazonment of the sun itself. He hated the sun, hated the way the omnipresent weight of sunlight shrink-wrapped his skin until he could feel it shrivel up and die, wilting back on itself, pressing down on his muscles and effluences, dead skin to be skimmed away, clinging to his very bones. Satisfied that everything was in order, McCreedy motioned for Avarice to continue on. Avarice took three tense steps out into the open ground. 113

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He was almost a free man. Just a few steps and breathes away. But still, there was enough time for one last lecture from the red-faced gatekeeper of the ravaged plains. It had become apparent to Avarice that this was the rule of the day. Its your lucky day, Lake. Out there beyond that razor wire youll find the devil McCreedy called out. With his well-oiled, jet-black hair riding high off his forehead, slicked way back to the crown of his head, he sniffed the air around him like a hungry mongoose, skinny neck and all. And he smells the bible cookin. That would make it my first hot meal in years. Avarice replied. Bsides, the God I know is already gone. Served his sentence here a long time before I did. Hmm. Dead. Thats right. But he want always dead. McCreedy looked skyward, eyes unwavering, trying to filter out the savage sunlight, his burnt devil of a face catching the blanket of vast blue. His undersized retinas disappeared altogether, lost in folds of eyelash and skin. But they remained true and still. Disaffected. He had trained his eyelids to never flicker, and as a result, because of his intrinsic value as a human watchdog, a dedicated vigilance served by his immense powers of visual concentration, he drew constant duty out in this desolate station. Same way the sun dont always shine so bright. He cupped his fingers into a perfect O, brought his hand up to his face, mimicking a telescope, and zeroed in on the sun high above, amplifying its intensity. The tonic lathered copiously over his hair shimmered with the brilliance of a thousand stars. He remained still, mesmerized by the orange fireball, speaking to it in a silent language only he could understand. McCreedy was a sight to behold, gaining strength and vision and wisdom where others would be blinded. That right? Avarice asked. He looked up, also. The sun had not changed at all. It was the same as hed left it. Burning hydrogenhelium at degrees Avarice could not fathom, the bright star continued to reign down bolts of fiery sunlight. All Avarice could do was stand by, helplessly, the white hot mass orbiting at its apex, and hope that night would arrive sooner than later, helping the land shed its bleached exterior and gain some color and depth and shadow. Everything dies out here, Lake. Youre only free cause God willed it. You think God can will us some rain or shade in the near future? God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. McCreedy said, cryptically. Which one does that make me? Thats for the almighty to know and for you to ponder. Thats the way Gods rain works. Gods rain? Yep. Gods rain. McCreedy repeated. He gave Avarice his back as the two-way radio crackled to life. A fight had broken out in the 114

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cafeteria. The ABers again. Those gang-bangers did work in wondrous ways, Avarice thought. They had just saved him from his first sermon as a free man. I guess Ill be leaving you, then. He said to McCreedy. How you gonna get by all these people? You gonna walk through them like Moses parting the Red Sea? Avarice thought for a moment. Moses got lucky. It was a low tide. Eight hours later and you fanatics would all be singing a different tune. Pharaohs army aint comin down from Granite Mountain to save you, Lake. Pharaohs army drowned in sin long ago. Maybe theres a new army. One that exchanged horses and chariots for fishing trawlers. Avarice said. You just keep thinkin like that, Lake. Youll find youself back hee in no time. And Ill git the chance to see you in again. Never. Avarice shook his head. State wont get lucky twice. You see that road up there, the way it forks. McCreedy pointed at a spot on the distant horizon where the highway branched off in three. Like the devils pitchfork. Well, its only when a man comes up on a crossroad that a personal transformation can take place in his soul. Its Gods way of testing the weak and strong alike. Testing? Man comes up on his choices, Lake. Choices dont come up to the man. McCreedy said. He stared straight into Avarices eyes with the ferocious hunger of a preacher yearning for a sinner; looking deeply, picking apart the seams of Avarices ravaged soul. I found my road years ago. Maybe so. But you havent found your way. Not until you give up your prideful behavior, fall down to your knees and repent. Avarice Lake stared at McCreedy, wondering if the sun or the loneliness had gotten to him. On his knees? Who was McCreedy kidding? Avarice Lake, ex-prisoner #072766, had been on his knees for the last five years of his life. I guess Ive always been more sinner than saint. Silence. Switches and ash, Lake. Switches and ash. Man goes through his entire life wondering how to avoid these afflictions. Wondering how he can stop the world from dissolving in front of his eyes, even though the church has delivered the power of salvation right to his doorstep. Silence again. Avarice Lakes mouth hung wide open in disbelief. Angel of destructions got all the headlines these days, I tell you. He leaned forward, and the shimmering light that came off his head and his dried up face, so red and menacing and lathered in passion, made Avarice draw back. I guess it makes for a better newspaper. Switches and ash, Lake. Switches and ash. Hope you dont find these curses

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waiting for you on your front porch one day. I hope the scorched earth turns green for you. I truly do. Avarice Lake had to look away. He feared the efferent madness, driven to unfathomable heights by the rotting sun above, that might leap off McCreedy and anchor itself into his own mind. He spotted the warden, a small, dour man with a rust-colored receding hairline, dressed in an atrocious paisley suit with padding that did a poor job of concealing his effete, womanly shoulders. A reporter stood beside him, holding a small tape recorder under the wardens chin and trying to act interested but it was just too hot for politesse. Like everyone else, he wanted to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge before it all burned down. In staccato fashion, the wardens jaw pumped up and down, spitting out words nearly faster than the recorder could capture them. He swung his arms back and forth, signaling wildly with his hands, shuffling forward and backwards, a peacock on display conducting a chaotic interview. The reporter stared at him with an almost bemused expression on his face. Awash in the glow of harsh sunlight, the warden seemed like a different man altogether. Frail. Unimportant. Melting away like a tin soldier in a furnace, the warden seemed to have shrunken in stature. Less imposing than all those times Avarice had watched him prowl the reformatorys corridors, a husky guard to each side, brazenly strutting about like a man without a care in the world. Inside the prison the warden could afford to be so cavalier. It was his kingdom, after all. But out there in the dust bowl, amid the dust devils and cameras and ghosts that haunted the landscapewell, that was a different story altogether. Out there the lines were not so clearly drawn and the odds looked down on pompous, greedy men. Out there the odds were stacked in Avarices favor. Out there Avarice alone wore the thorny crown. Avarice chewed on his thoughts. Then it suddenly hit him like a bolt of dry lightning driving through the brain. The warden was no different. It was Avarices perception of him that had been altered. Nothing had changed except the boundaries that defined their mutual relationship. Those had shifted dramatically. Flipflopped. From this moment on, Avarice was a free man, able to come and go as he pleased. The warden, however, would have to remain in Granite, serving a sentence behind bars much like the flock of prisoners he tended over. He would continue to live his life behind steel and fear, forging his ideas and the conduct of his very existence behind them. He would incarcerate other men, incorrigible men, desperate men not all unlike himself, men who wandered the corridors and exercise yard like so many lost sheep, and he would continue to sleep the sleep of angels each night, for he was a company man, a man of the cloth, a man without conscience who gave little regard to the effects of his haughty, self-serving edicts. 116

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From Avarices perspective, the warden was no longer the force that wielded the hammer, the ubiquitous figure behind all that power able to crush a convicts might like dry, leftover bread pulverized to breadcrumbs. It was this singular realization that gave him undiluted strength. Avarice Lake, his feet acting by their own accord, suddenly found himself walking over towards the warden. You dont throw the whole notion of justice out with the bath water cause the system has a few kinks. I agree wholeheartedly with Governor Holloway on the need for steadfast punishment and come election time I will support him clearly. All of my men will. The warden stuck his scrawny chest out, proudly showing the reporter Holloways red, white, and blue campaign button pinned to his wide lapel. What has happened here today is a miscarriage of justice. A miscarriage perpetrated by a modern day Houdini The wardens voice cut off mid-sentence, for he had just spotted Avarice Lake coming towards him, fire in his eyes and thoughts unchained. The warden, Emerson Post Esq., abruptly cut the interview. He abandoned his moment under the sun and walked over towards Avarice in a hurried, straight line, avoiding reporters, eschewing all protection; like a salmon swimming upstream towards its nesting sight. He aimed to meet Avarice half way, to try and tilt the odds his favor. He quickly forgot about the pool of reporters who watched over the proceedings like black buzzards circling. The warden, all worked up and livid, hell-bent on wrath, wearing an angry face that matched his hair in color, cut the space between Avarice and himself quickly. When they met, Warden Post stopped on a dime and wagged a consternating finger under Avarices chin, unleashing a torrent of abject humiliation. This prison will be here long after were all gone. Dont you forget that, Lake. Jesus makes fools of sinners. Dont work the other way aroun as I recall. Ill keep your cell waitin for ya. So you better light outta hee in a hurry fo state changes its mind on you. The vile man with the masters degree in penology looked Avarice over, head to toe, studying him as if he was live Louisiana crawfish on the brunch menu. His wide-bodied mouth had set to a leer, accenting the hungry, vapid expression that filled his face. It was a common look out there in the sticks, where people ran to Jesus or God or whomever at the first sign of trouble, asking for help or forgiveness, knowing deep down inside there was a fireballs chance in hell of gettin any, and so, feeling abandoned by Jesus or God or whomever they had gone down to their knees for, they beat the devil round the stump, bathing themselves in wretched physical manifestations, filling their spirits and faces and eyes with the haunted masks of torture, for in the darkest most intimate part of their souls was knowledge gleamed that they were not thirsty for the blood of life after all, but rather, a ceaseless hunger for

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the scythe of death, the hangmans noose, and in the end they were left to wonder where had all the sweetness run off to? I dont feel the need to run from anything, warden. Cause I dont take stock in the things you believe in. Pause. And I certainly dont have to run from a two bit gospel sharp like yourself. Why you think you special boy? A big bug or somethin? Come round here with that Flannel mouth? Startin beefs. A chiseler like you better watch himself. You just a boy, caught between grass and hay. You dont know what you up gainst. Silence. Resolution. Greer may be a small county, but when youre passin through on foot, two miles feels like a hundred. You may just as well be walkin through hell itself. Why dont you tell me, warden? Avarice leaned in. In the background, the gas fires of the local refinery burned brightly; flare stacks laced against the backdrop of the tyrant sun. Waves of unwanted gas and liquids, released under intense pressure and flecked with byproducts of hydrocarbons and sulfur crested up into the afternoon, jettisoned by the massive cooling towers, taking with them what little vestige remained of Avarices good will. What am I up against? You up against moe than man here, sonny-boy. You up against the land and everythin that comes with it. You think you left hell behind you when you walked out of there, he pointed back at the reformatory. But out heres a different kind of hell altogether. This kind of hell plays for keeps Avarice shifted his gaze 360 degrees, turning full circle, taking a long, mystical look at his surroundings. What he saw neither shocked nor surprised him, for he had seen pictures of hell before, in coloring books and in William Blakes illustrations of the fallen angels bleak domain in Miltons Paradise Lost. This denuded land, with its elevated, steep-faced mesas and pale brown, scrubby hills of low luminance and bare, acid washed plains was bone-dry and prehistoric and vacant. The rain had poured out long ago, through cracks that ran down to the earths seething mantle. The trees and animals followed, for if there was life in that roiling center, if there was a drop of water to be found, they would travel far down to the nether regions to reach it. To Avarice Lake, the vast panorama served as a reminder of how things could get when everything went completely awry; a voyage into the frightening subconscious of America. As he completed his turn, the warden again fell in his sights. The flare stacks and gas fires aligned perfectly with the back of the fiery mans head and shoulders, giving Avarice the impression that his pale, mottled face and red hair had been set ablaze, like dry kindling burning at high temperatures in the desert. The warden, who exhibited 118

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that unique ability to make others feel far beneath contempt, who despite his relative small stature carried a nasty disposition and cold, calculating eyes that could freeze a man in his tracks, who refused to wipe the sweat off his brow because he took great comfort in its warmth, stared defiantly at Avarice. The ice water ran thick through Avarices veins. He had just come to the unsettling realization that he was standing in the presence of Lucifer himself. Avarice Lake thought he had escaped hell, when in fact he had been merely purged from one devils domain to another. And there was nothing he could do about it. Justice Reywal, watching the entire scene unfold as he stood behind a mass of fleshy, sweaty bodies, knew he had to intervene. He pressed his way in quickly, working his way through the crowd, and took up a spot right next to Avarice Lake. Is there a problem here, Warden Post? Justice asked. At the sound of his voice, both men turned to face him. This may be the stitch of your handiwork, Mr. Reywal. But it aint no business of yours no moe. The warden replied, inflexibly. See, thats where youre wrong, warden. Reywal checked his watch. As of 1:48 pm today, I have been appointed by Avarice Lake to serve as his attorney, forthwith. Hearing this, Avarice Lake swung his head around in complete surprise. The shocked expression on his face said it all. He had no idea what Reywal was talking about. And you dont talk to him unless you talk to me first. You no lawyer. You dont even remember what a coutroom looks like. You just a catfish looking for a muddy hole to hide in. A bottom feeder, swimmin in dirty water and feedin on stink bait. Maybe so, warden. But the bar association guarantees that bottom feeders and faith heelers alike have a say in matters pertaining to their clients. He produced a wicked smile. Now Im fairly certain I know which one you are. But I havent decided where I fall under. Ill leave the guessing up to you. But no matter the nature of my bath water, no matter what you call me, or think of me, I am here to stay. Ooohh, is thaaat riiight? The wardens words stretched out in an exaggerated country drawl. He stomped his foot down angrily. A resulting haze of dust and pollen overwhelmed his lower extremities. Well, tell me, sir? How long you think you got fore the governor has you up on charges? How long to go fore you find youself kneelin in front of the bar association, beggin for forgiveness? I know one thing, warden, Justice said with great deliberateness. It wont be today. And todays all that counts. In my book, at least. The doors to this abattoir will remain forever open to you Mr. Reywal. When the governor gets through with you, youll have plenty of time to write your filthy lies behind these very walls. The warden took out a handkerchief and finally wiped his face, methodically,

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pushing the cloth up his shiny forehead, back towards his receding hairline. Ill even see to it you get a cell with a desk. Ive spent time in worse places than prison, Warden Post. I am a Lakota Indian. You Remember. You have my file. I was born in Pine Ridge, but the government school took me when I was a little boy. Justice said, not bothering to disguise his contempt for the man any longer. There are all sorts of hell imaginable on earth and I cant envision you coming up with one any worse than the one Ive been through. And as I recall, youre no different. Your kins done the same hard time as every last one of us. Emerson Post was first generation Oklahoman; with roots stretching down to the rural south. Texas. He came from a rich, variegated land, the heart of oil field country and Republican Party deception. It was this same type of land his father had passed onto him in his last will and testament. At the age of thirty-five, with his parents gone, Emerson Post found himself alone and confused, not knowing where to go or what to do. And as luck would have it, the family attorney called one day soon after the funeral, informing Emerson of his ownership albeit a minor onein a few, scattered oil wells out near Odessa, Texas; in the heart of the Permian Basin. Things were about to change. It took time and actual, hard fieldwork for Emerson to learn the subtleties of the oil business. With great enthusiasm, he rolled up his shirtsleeves and set himself to learn the trade, delving deep into the muck right alongside his workers. He learned how to fit an oil bit onto the oilrig itself. How to drill and case the well, perforating the earth with small holes to provide a path for oil to flow from the surrounding rock and into the production tubes. He learned about planning, drilling, completion, production, and abandonmentthe five stages in the life of a well. Things went slowly, at first; but he remained committed, and eventually he caught a break, then another, for this was Texas in the mid-eighties and the oil flowed freely, lubricating oilmen with vast amounts of money and power and hubris. As the earth leaked out enormous amounts of the putrid, black substance, a viscous bridge came to by association, connecting the gap between abstract dreams and genuine prosperity. Emerson Post parlayed those scattered oil strikes into rapid expansion. He put every dollar he made back into the business. He subleased a neglected portion of the SACROC oil field, one of the richest oil deposits in the Permian Basin. The strikes kept coming with regularity. The wealth grew exponentially. But once again, a year or so later, Emersons life struck misfortune. When the Central Texas oil fields ran dry in the late eighties a few years into his run, when the well bores began to hit nothing but solid rock and he was caught holding millions of dollars in loans and equipment, he lost his stake in the

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company. He was thirty-nine then, and he was washed up. Texas was done with him. Not having any outstanding ties to the local community, not having had the time for courtship or marriage or children, he packed his belongings and cut out north to Oklahoma, settling in the less-than idyllic town of Granite for the sole reason that when he hit the town limits he was down to his last hundred odd dollars and last gallon of fuel. And it was there, a few days later, while driving idly through the countryside, he spied the immense, granite, grayish-black walls of the reformatory unfurling from the flattened valley and upward to the clouds, alone and resolute, like the ancient city of Troy. He slammed on the brakes; the car skidded to a halt. He stepped out, leaving the car idling in park right there on the blazing asphalt of Highway 9. Fueled by the intense heat wave that plagued the region, he had a vision of his future, a heatshimmer mirage materializing far ahead in the tail end of the sleek, ribbon highway. In that refracted light Emerson Post saw opportunity. He envisioned those great prison walls as a vessel that would enable him to spread his god-fearing gospel over weaker men; murderers and rapists caged like rats and saddled with the constant reminder that their years were burning away like so many matchsticks scratched over the back-strike, lit up one by one, then put out with a flick of a wrist and thrown to the ground. That was the exact moment he discoveredor rather became selfawareof his true lifes calling. The penal system beckoned. Its voice crossed over the mirage and imbedded itself inside his head. And so, it took almost seven years of night classes at the local college over in Jackson County, but he earned his degree. He took an entry-level job at the reformatory, in administration; summarily earning the post of warden in 1997 and never looking back. I heard back then a woman warden ran this prison, warden. Ran it with an iron fist. Justice continued to bait Post. It was uncommon knowledge that the reformatory had once been presided over by a female wardenMrs. Clara Waters replaced her deceased husband, Warden George Waters in 1927, becoming the first woman to head an all-male prison in the United States. She was known for dolling out cruel and unusual punishment. One of her most creative torments was making prisoners wear dresses when they misbehaved, parading them out in public where they were taunted mercilessly. Tell me, Warden Post? Is that typical behavior for someone interested in rehabilitation? You make your men wear womens clothing, too? You that type of man? The wardens face went blank. The red hues of anger evaporated, replaced by the stark white color of incomprehension. After a long, difficult moment his composure returned. The umber to his cheeks came back flush, triumphant. And then his eyes disappeared 121

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altogether; the fleshed out orbs collapsing inward into deep sockets in a grotesque display, growing small and mean and vengeful. The eyes of a killer in the making, Reywal thought. He had pressed all the right buttons. Meanwhile, Avarice Lake, unsure of what was transpiring, shot curious, alternating glances at both men, trying by degrees to decipher the situation. A few seconds. His brain went into overdrive. Once the light went on in the roof of his mind, a full minute later later, Avarices face broke out into a sardonic smile. He could not resist an insult of his own. I guess its true what they saybeing a warden is a mans job, but it seems apparent the bloodlines been thinnin out all along. Animal. Thats all you are. I hope you go so far into the mouth of hell you never do come back. Hell? Avarice asked, looking around. Yes. Hell. Stillness. Not even a passing breeze. Ever been to the badlands, warden? Avarice asked. The warden remained silent, simmering in his own blood. Badlands. What the Lakota call mako sika. The Badlands, South Dakota; a shade less than a thousand miles to the north of Granite. But it may as well have been a lifetime away. Rising from the prairie, a limitless pocket of eerie sandstone rock formations that had valiantly withstood the test of time. Carved from the incessant force of high velocity winds common to the area, the badlands existed, so stark and alone and defiant. Crumbling underneath the weight of the sun. A parallel holy land revered by the American Indians. Abandoned. Forsaken. It was no surprise then that the Northern Lakota tribes considered this isolated territory as their last primitive altar to the earth and made frequent pilgrimages out to the desolate escarpments. White folks claim the Badlands came about when the devil himself realized there was nothing to gain by owning them. Opened up the earth and expelled the entire basin from the very depths of hell. Well, Indians dont see it that way. In those voodoos and valleys they see a sacred place, and they flock to the sight from all over. They drive the dusty roads that wind through the canyons and ravines, in cars you wouldnt rent for a greasy nickel. They walk. They carry satchels of water. They cradle babies underneath their arms. They do anything possible to get there, so that they may cleanse their sins on those sheaths of rock. The sandstone crumbles easily beneath their feet, and the trails that lead in and out are treacherous, but still the Indians come. And after they our healed, after they have seen the land as our forefathers saw it, they drift towards the roadway and drive off to the great unknown. Avarices mind was flooded with mental pictures of the last time hed made the pilgrimage to those sandstone cliffs, a full 122

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decade before. They leave the cliffs as they found them; knowing there is nothing out there for them beyond those spires. Nothing at all but sin and misery, just waitin to swallow a man whole. Avarice bent down, grabbed a flattened stone and chucked it across the open field. It hit the hard, compact soil and took a few unsynchronized hops before coming to rest. Been to the Badlands a few times myself, warden. Walked them thru and thru, and did so many a time without water. Did it during the summer months; underneath a sun so hot I had to build shelter in the middle of the day. Hot winds sandblasting my face. Did it once in the winter too; when the wind coming off Canada whipped through the ravines so cold it went straight through my bones. So I guess you can say for certain Ive already been to the mouth of hell and back. And I got nothin to show for it. Nothin at all, cept five long years I lost to you. Five long years I can never get back. Theres nothin you can say or do to ever change that. The warden ignored him. He gazed towards the empty prairie with a face full of rigidity, as empty and stolid as the fields surrounding them all. There is a hell, Lake. Warden Post finally explained. Just as sure as there is salvation out there. Whether you believe it or not, thats up to you. I am saved by faith and gracenot by acts or deeds, so if my skin is sinful, then my soul is pure. Avarice replied. What would you know about the power to cleanse, anyway? Justice asked, trying to deflect the wardens attention off Lake. Huh, warden? You ever been to the Badlands? Badlands aint got nothin on this place, Reywal. Warden Post reacted, answering in that same mousy voice. Take a good look around. Everything is dead. The cotton fields. Dead. The earth. Dead. The earth around you has been scorchedonly thing that survives is the sun and the only thing that climbs is the temperture. What the devils done to this place is an act of treason. Youre wrong about that, warden. Justice answered. It became treason when your Okie brethren lit out for greener pastures to California. Abrogation. That was their crime. Justice took a step closer to Warden post. The tall Indian stared down at the diminutive man with serene, yet confident eyes. You dont abandon what God gives you. What do you know about abrogation? The only thing you know how to abandon is the blood oath you swore to. We all have righteous reasons for doing terrible things. Dont make no difference to me, anyhow. Its too hot for lessons today. The warden shook his head, unperturbed by Justice. He clicked his tongue. He looked tired, like a raisin shriveling under the might of the sun. He continued his cautionary tale. Reasons aside, youll be in here soon enough. Plenty of time to teach you about right and wrong. You know the truth about dogs, warden? 123

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What? He stood with his head unbowed, hands folded in front of him, thumb and fingers loose around the wrist. Like a man attending a funeral to someone he didnt very much like. You can always tell where a dogs been, where hes been lying and rolling just by checking his fur. Ive pulled all sorts of things out of their coats. Leaves, twigs, insects, flower buds, thorns, fishing line wrapped around their forepaws. You name it. Ive seen it. Whats your point? Post checked his watch. In his mind the argument had been settled. Mans the same way, is my point. Man rolls around in the mud on occasion. Gets all dirty. Carries things with him in his eyesin his soul; things he can never shake no matter how hard he tries. You want to know the truth about mud? If you roll around in it and let it stick to your body, muds gonna call himself yor friend. Muck gets deep underneath your fingernails and hair. You can never rid youself of it, no matter how hard you wash. Remember that Reywal. The warden said. He peeled his pitiless eyes away from Reywal and placed them on Lake. Then back to Justice. You have nothing but dirty friends in dirty places who like to play hide-and-seek in the muck. Worst kind of man, warden dont learn from his mistakes. Justice replied, growing impatient. Now go on. Get out of my face before I get real angry. Governors sins are laid out for all to see. His times coming. Hell go down. And then Ill have no one but you to occupy my time. The warden snarled. He lifted a heavy hand, index finger extended towards the heavens, ready to chastise Justice in that same condescending manner. He caught himself. Instead, he merely wagged his finger at the two men, his jaw set in a fierce grimace. Choosing an overt withdrawal, he spun on his heels and walked hurriedly towards the archway, a malevolent figure retreating, eating up ground in a hurry with short, choppy strides. I look forward to your redemption. Justice shouted to the retreating figure. The warden kept walking, acting as if he hadnt heard the remark. He hesitated, taking one last look at the courtyard behind him, taking in the last of the suns warmth before vanishing inside the great hall of shadows. He headed towards the doorway at ADMIT that would open with a magnetic swipe of the hand; a thoughtless, perfunctory march that would lead him into the austere, ice palace.

Justice turned slowly. He took a good, long look at Avarice, studying the angry Cheyenne intently. He could tell right away the five years behind bars had affected Avarice greatly. His body had changed. Prison had sloughed off thirty odd years of hard drink, inactivity and doughy subsistence from life at the rez. He stood about six-foot-two; lofty for 124

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your average Indian, but Avarice Lake was a Cheyenne, and these men were known for their exceptional height and physical prowess. Dense, solid muscle stretched taut over a lean, trim frame. He looked as if hed been chiseled from the same mountainside that had produced the reformatorys formidable walls. And those scars. My God! A broken nose, splintered, covered over by an ineffectual strip of white flex-tape the ungainly handiwork from a convict masquerading as a nurse at the prison infirmary. The Indians hands were scarred-white and puckered, his knuckles a gnarled mass of twisted flesh. In his head, Justice pictured mechanics and prizefighters, two types of men he had had the displeasure of putting behind bars in the past; and whose hamburger limbs corded with raw, twisted sinew bore the same type of physical scars as Avarice. After five long years, Justice Reywal finally had the opportunity to speak to Avarice; free from the prying ears of the state. To his surprise, he felt awkward and nervous, and had no idea where to begin. Stillness. You dont look surprised to see me. He said, finally. Ravage told me you might be showin up. Avarice spoke. He looked away. But I had no idea youd come as a lawyer. Uncomfortable silence. In the distance Reywal spotted an aluminum paneled grain silo rising up into the melanoma heat. The cylindrical structure flickered ephemerally, caught in shimmering waves of refracted light. The inferior mirage rising from the hot turf distorted the silos image, while at the same time the refracted light rays reeked havoc with Justices perception. The silos black, conical roof flattened out and widened, becoming a grand top hat, tipped forward and back by the invisible hand of God, the forgotten order of gallantry to a woebegone era, an offering from gentleman to lady. This optical illusion was as close to an act of beneficence as the misbegotten land allowed. The outlaw land surrounding the silo was waterless, flat, and barren; pockmarked by lines of scattered wood-post fences, mangled and warped, entire sections missing cattle wire. These manmade barriers were meant to corral cattle long ago when the land actually rewarded the fruits of mans labor. But there was nothing out there now. Nothing but nothingness, as all encompassing and overwhelming as the sun above them. It was a land where ghosts alone were welcomed. Where remoteness grew in startling increments the deeper into the heart of the county one journeyed. The herds of wild horses had galloped away long ago, off to Utah or Montana. Cattle herds had been driven off towards the eastern sections of Greer in search of greener grazing lands. The last of the cowboys no longer braided their long ropes into lassos. And cribbed wood grain elevators no longer had the need to work and waited patiently, tinderbox kindling to be ignited by the overhead sun. 125

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The wind picked up briefly. The howling wind of symmetry. Silent screams yawing back over the saltpans, careening wildly off the red Rosetta mountainside and the odd farmhouse. Funneled through the deep, V-shaped canyons for maximum effect. Justice listened quietly, putting his ear towards the prairie. Great moaning. The low hum of wind over wire. Percolating sounds of twisted metal as highway signs flapped side-to-side, caught in swift, powerful wind gusts. Faint clacking and tics. Particles of sand and grain and seeds and loose gravel and tiny rocks blown across the great divide. It was the voices of thousands of dispossessed Okies, lashing back from yesteryear. You know there are over two thousand ghost towns in Oklahoma alone Justice managed to break the ice. You imagine that? Two thousand towns, each with a story of its own to tell. Some of them stretching back to the 1930s. You have any idea how many ghosts it would take to fill up all those empty streets? Justice looked up at the bright blue sky. He sniffed at the air for telltale signs of rain, the sweet, spring scents capable of pressing a smile to a mans lips. The golden promise of valleys and raw rock mountains filled with rainbow wildflowers and buffalo grass. Rainfall overtaking creek beds and riverbanks, sending flash floods careening down the arroyos and steep ravines. Taking a deep breath, he filled his nasal passages with the same hot, arid air that had hung over the afternoon like a wool blanket. He held the air inside his lungs. He checked himself. Twenty long seconds passed. He let go. A frown. The air was bland and odorless. There would be no rain on that day. Or the next. Or the next after, for that matter. But still he prayed. And still he thought to ask, just to stir up conversation. Think itll rain today, Avarice? It dont seem likely. The stoic Cheyenne didnt even bother to look up. Prairie winds got to blow first. Cold air has to make its way down from the mountains up North. Dont look like shes aimin to put in an appearance. Maybe the stakes are too high. Thats too bad. Only thing thatll clear this dust from the air is a good old blast of moisture-laden air from the Rockies. Avarice said, looking around him. Justice nodded in agreement. Last time that happened, I recall, raindrops came down thick as mud. Big and black, like large caliber bullets fired into the air on the Fourth of July. Lost to gravity hundreds of feet up in the air and come tumbling down like hailstones. Justice said. Sometimes there are just too many dust particles in the air for the rains to overcome. The Cheyenne said. No answer. At the sound of silence, Avarice turned his head. He stared at Justice Reywal. They stood like bookends; side-by-side, two tall Indians with matching chips on their respective shoulders. He remained silent, 126

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measuring the man he held largely responsible for doling out five years worth of pain and suffering his way. Hate him. Accept him. Those were his choices. In the back of his mind was the thought: dont let go of the past so easily. Remember. After all, while hed been caged up, told when to piss and when to eat, Justice Reywal had circled the countryside, making speeches and television appearances, gaining fame and notoriety. Soaking up the sun. Avarice Lake had lost the coin toss. Instead of sunshine and bathing suits, hed been stowed a way in a deep freezer, courtesy of the legal system and the State of Oklahoma. But in his mind he now carried the silver coin of fate; an immutable reflection of his past five years in the making. It was a nifty 50-50 proposition, heads-or-tails, the best odds he could ask for, and it would have to do for the time being. Justice suddenly felt defeated. Reticent and retreating inward, he now recalled on his memory in an effort to internalize what was happening around him. Traveling throughout the state, researching his book, he had talked to farmers and farmhands alike. Ancient, grandfatherly men who had lost everything during the dust bowl years. Mechanics and ranchers and cowboys and barmaids, too. A new generation of wounded. He had listened to their sad stories and to their folklore, parables of skies full with fire and brimstone and vast stretches of days on end with no rain. Some violent, some vainglorious, but all having a loose thread in common. The suffering. The tossing and turning at night; wondering how bills would be paid, wondering how children would be fed. It all got to a man after a spell. Smothered him. Choked him like a goose down pillow knifed open and placed over the head in sleep. Those brokendown, defeated men, some with shoulders hunched over in defeat and some managing to stand tall, some looking for a reason to live, some looking for a place to lay down and die, these battle hardened, weary men had sat with Justice Reywal on porches and diners and American Legion outposts and told him over Coca-Colas and cold beer and cornbread what was happening to the land. The crock-pot, simmering sun and rising temperatures that ate up young saplings and refused to let the seeds play out. The constant presence of desertification. Death of livestock. Reduced crop yields. Dust storms. Harmonicas played out sad tunes in parched fields. Men whose eyes, like the land itself had withered, and could not produce tears. Dirty men accustomed to squalor, yet proud theyd survived when many others had failed, enlightened him to the fact that everything in dustbowl country was measured in inches. The rains, the native grasses, the drought, the crop failures. The few dollars difference between holding onto ones home or losing it to foreclosure. The thin space in a mans heart separating emotions such as anger and mirth; the obfuscated, even thinner line between life and death. The space between winning and

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losing and the skeletal-thin line separating the combatants. It all seemed so clear now. Justice studied Avarice, taking in the ex-convicts immediate grace, so beautiful in its simplicity, inherent and undeniable: Powerful arms, deep bronze colored-skin, with disparate flecks of brown; a dour, dark manner that absconded all pretense of light. His hair, as yet unstreaked by the sun, was dark and lustrous as it was long, crawling down the length of his spine where it ended at mid-back, tied off with two colorful red bands into double braids. Eyes that had grown into pitiless black orbsas if some hell-bent prison artist had etched the color off the prisons formidable dark walls and rubbed the blackness into Avarices soul. It seemed that five years locked away behind bars had morphed Avarice into the very prison itself. So sinister, so dark, so dangerous. Yet, in those intimate vibrations that bubbled just underneath Avarices skin, Justice detected something vibrant, something that was anxious to live again, a pulsating power waiting to reach out through layers of skin and tissue and exalt its presence to the world. Yes, it was there. The power to forgive. To forget. It was this power that Justice would focus on. He would harness it, if he could. Make Avarice aware of it. Make him understand it. Make Avarice think of Justice as a brother, bury the past, for siblings made for powerful allies. How are you feeling, Avarice? Justice finally reached out, offering the Indian his hand. Five years stowed away in Shanksvillefreezing my lungs off in my cell at night, then sent to an infernal laundry room during the day and you ask me so cavalier how Im doing. Do you really expect me to answer that with a smile as I shake your hand? Avarice Lake asked with seasoned contempt. Did you really expect me to be happy to see you? Did you come here for gratitude? Is that why youre here, Reywal? Im sorry youre mad Avarice. Justice was stunned by the angered response. But I did all I could for you and your brother. You know that. I helped your attorney along the way. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I gave him sound advice. Did you? Avarice spat out. I urged him to file for temporary release. They denied that petition. Several times. And since your sentence was greater than four years, getting you tagged was impossible. Tagging was the act of having a prisoner released on home detention curfew before the end of his sentence. You dont know what anger and humiliation are until youve been strip-searched by a near-sighted, sociopath guard enjoying his last year prospecting before retirement. Bent over, ass-cheeks spread, seeing the world upside-down between your legs as he goes looking up

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your inner works tends to change your perspective on things. After that, you dont see humans anymoreyou just seeopportunity. Justice closed his eyes and imagined that sceneno matter how distasteful and awfulin his mind. He began to speak, but drew a complete blank. His lips remained pursed, framed in an eternal question. What did you tell a man whos lost everything; his home, his past, his manhood; lost the very things that defined him? Friend of mine once told me long agoThe road you ignored is the road that brought you here. Avarice batted away Justices statement as if it were a common housefly. Those sound like John Ravages words. Am I right? Justices eyes fell to the ground in shame. Thought so. A breath. Funny thing about your book, Mr. Reywal. Suburban Arrows. Catchy title. Thom read it over and over in prison and swore on it like it was the bible itself. Went around the cellblock reading parts of it out loud. Me he jabbed his thumb into his chest. I had no use for it. Wrong color scheme. Black words written on white pages have never suited the Indian man. Avarice stared at the sinuous highway beyond the parking areas gravel apron, the anger evident on his face. Never have, never will. I tried, Avarice. Justice tried to placate the embattled Indian. They assured me youd be assigned to minimum security wing. I was there when the judge signed the order. Justice was awestruck. He couldnt believe what was happening. Avarice Lake was unable or unwilling to comprehend (Justice suspected it was the latter) the strings hed pulled for him. Justice had saved his life, after all. Saved Thoms life. By offering the Lake brothers public defenders a collective plea bargain for manslaughter, Justice had helped the brothers avert a trial and an almost certain murder conviction. He had saved Avarice and Thom from the electric chairor at besta sentence of life in prison without parole. Despite the preponderance of evidence against the brothers. They got seven, and here Avarice was, out in five; with his brother soon to join him. Yet, still he stood there, proud, indignant, and angry. To pull it off, Justice had called upon his one true talent. Nimble minded at assessing risk. Justice had a great, unparalleled talent for leading that visceral dog of jeopardy behind on a leash. After all, the difference between obtaining 10 years for a client or 20-to-life was sometimes very slight; legal arguments heightened to compounded mathematics, then broken down in form; a complex fraction or a misplaced decimal setting the tone. Then there was information. One had to learn to gleam this precious commodity and manage it; like a dam releasing water in controlled portions. Like Antwerp buying up precious stones from Africa, then locking them away in a deep vault in London until a market correction occurred. One had to frame it to his 129

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favor and if he couldnt, he had to turn tail and find other outlets. Justice had done that very thing. He had seen danger where Avarice Lake saw denial. He saw victory where Avarice saw defeat. He saw liberty where the Cheyenne now saw revenge. And instead of gratitude, Justice was now getting the third degree. It wasnt personal, Avarice. You just ended up on the wrong side of the ledger. Avarice shot him a poisonous look. The adrenaline was building. Take a look at that. Avarice turned his head in a slow arc, taking in the vast terrain surrounding them. Five years in the state pen and look what the days brought. Avarice motioned with his eyes. Justice followed obediently. This is what I have to look forward to. Day I arrived, there were cotton crops round for miles. Far as the eye could see. Looked like a giant white blanket thrown over the earths shoulder. Felt like plowing into those fields and throwing myself over them. Now, theres nothing. The crops are dead. The earth is dead. He stared long and hard at Justice with illicit eyes five years in the making. Iam dead. The wardens right. He managed through gritted teeth. He raised his tattooed arm and pointed an accusatory finger at justice. Men like you made that possible. Justice felt like someone had kicked him in the groin. Theres a bigger picture to all of this. Justice said, feebly. A distraction. Down on the close end of the highway, a roadrunner, with its distinctive black head crest, pecked away at something unseen, perhaps a collard lizard. The slender bird chewed for a few seconds, then spit the entire mess out in distaste, as if the lizard had assimilated the blandness of the land and the tarmac and then passed it on up to the hungry bird. The roadrunner stopped, peered up, looked around at the madness occurring in front of the reformatory, then took off through the arid lowland, his long legs churning like pistons underneath his body. Response. Know how I see you, Mr. Reywal? I think youre a dark idea of a man. A hallucination. A fraction rather than a whole, but strong enough to swallow light in its entirety when light does appear before you. A changeling. Man like you has no trouble shifting inside the shadows, concealing his truest intentions. Man like you does his handiwork yet never leaves his calling card. Man like you can look others in the eye while hes destroying them. Man like you does his best work in the gloom. At least I know where I stand. I know who I am. Take a good look around you, Avarice. Aint no shadows out here. Theres only light. Youmethat wretched sun above usand in a few minutes, your brotherthats all. Pause. What the hell did you expect? Ive spent the last thirty-two years of my life giving in to men like you, Mr. Reywal. Well, Im out now. An ex-con. Poor, no home to go 130

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back to, no future, but free nevertheless. He shook his head angrily. His eyes drilled bore holes into Justice. And Im going to spend the next thirty-two years taking back whats mine. You just dont get it? Do you Avarice? There is nothing left to take back. No. I get it. Im just a normal man with everything to lose. I know it dont take no talent to stir up controversy. Evil slips between cracks and lands on rich and poor alike. And the sun comes up each mornin and the sun goes down each night, but man continues to be what he is. Selfish and immoral. And life goes on. Avarice, an evil man cant remember the terrible things hes done cause then he has to face up to them. Has to look in the mirror. And thats too much for any one man to handle, I dont care if youre the pope or the president. Justice pleaded. Dont be that man. Own up to what you did. Bury these last five years in the past. And then well move on. We have a lot of work to do. Avarice flipped Reywal a line of questions: Didnt you once abandon your own grandfather? Left him to die all alone? How about the reservation? Left that to when you were little and never looked back. Wasnt it you that chose to study at a government boarding school? Have you owned up to any of these acts yet? Savage silence. Your book says so, but your eyes tell me different. Your eyes harbor things inside impossible for you to see. More quiet. You know what they tell me? What Avarice? Justice was becoming increasingly frustrated. What do they tell you? They tell me youre good at turning your back on the things that define you. Your heart is coming apart. The frayed ends are showing. But sometimes all those loose threads that make up a man need to tie themselves back together. Like stitching together a bed sheet, I guess. You have to be able to look into the mirror and see a welcome face. Not a coward that runs away at the first sign of trouble. Im here, arent I? You here for me and Thom? He tilted his head towards the crowd of reporters, all milling about the courtyard conversing or taking notes. Brandi-Shaw held court with the best of them, laughing and telling anecdotes, and the fat farmer stood off by himself, watching them all, still clutching onto that ridiculous, black metal lunch pail for dear life. Or them? Im here for you, Avarice. Justice replied. He bent down and scooped up a fistful of gravel. The handful was a mixture of gray-black. This is where Ive been, and this is where Ill be a thousand years from 131

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now. He turned his clenched fist upright, allowing the sand to pour to the ground in slight increments. Well, I wont be here with you. This is evil ground. Many bad spirits. Funny you should choose it as your future resting place. Justice shook his head like a rattle. Avarice, you have to put away that naivet once and for all and realize somethingthe line between good and evil is thinner than you think. Sometimes it gets erased altogether. But it always comes back. Well, that ought to make choosin sides all that much easier, then. What it does, and this is strictly personal analysis, Avarice, is blur the distinction between the two. A diaphanous light shining from one end of the spectrum to the other, unimpeded. No filter. Good turns to bad, and bad gets to worse real quick out here. Its terrible and its not fair. But last time I checked, I didnt make up the rules. Noyou just chose sides. The wrong sides. Well thats for me to live with, then. And you shouldnt concern yourself with it anymore. Then I guess from this point on, everything between us has changed. Everything changes, Avarice. Justice wiped his hands clean. Clean of the land, clean of the warden and his guards, clean of the justice system that allowed him to forge this moment, and clean of Avarice Lake. Everything changes but that goddamn line. Well Im here to make sure it dont anymore. At least not where Im concerned. * * * *

For the final time that day, a man was expelled from the bowels of the reformatory. He went through the same exiting procedures that Avarice had gone through only minutes before. He was nervous, he was anxious, he felt scared and happy all at the same time. He picked up his belongings, signed the call sheet, and followed the yellow line. He saw the same shafts of light play out over Cantrells hand and he wished he could do the same, run his hands along the seams of those beams of light, for it had been a long time since hed seen or touched anything so beautiful and pure, and the pleasure articulated in the face of the young guard made him remember the things he missed most about home. He left through the door at ADMIT, looking back, wishing the guard could leave with him, tucking away inside his uniform those elegant golden shafts.

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Avarice Lake was missing the bigger picture, Justice thought. An enormous volume of work lay in front of them both. The town halls and universities and TV stations and magazines that waited to hear their story. The contacts Justice had cultivated. The underground. All the common folk of the plains, the oppressed, the struggling, the poor, who would all lend sympathetic ears and give credence to their words. The money that would pour in and help them build a foundation for change. Justice shrugged in defeat. He may as well have been communicating with a blind man through smoke signals. Dont you see that we could do great things together, Avarice? The lies we can uproot? There is immorality that exists in our government, and we have the ability to do something about it. Ignite the spark. Start a critical mass. Change those rules you hate so much. Arent you tired of being pushed around? Tired of being locked up in a white mans world? Avarice shook his head. Funny thing. Outside of prison, inside, dont make no differencean Indian is nothing. Dont matter that he has as much a right to this land as the white man. Fact is, the system works against us. If an Indian man complains how the settlers took his land, he is a racist. If he claims the thief was a female that would also make him sexist. Under the current system, the land is not the issue at all, but what you are if you protest. Avarice paused. His anger was now in check. Its all red herring disseminated down to the masses. Sometimes I think Id be better off in there. He pointed towards the reformatory. A wistful look filled his face. Least there I know I have a future. I can stand tall. Warden dont bother with smokescreens. In there you dont stand, Avarice. You kneel. Only instead of kneeling to God youre kneeling to the man. The words were barely out of Justices mouth when he saw a figure approaching rapidly through his peripheral vision, running towards him with singular mind and purpose. Justice didnt have time to react. The sun, just now commencing to inch its way down the blue sky, was at his face. He turned, bracing, expecting the worse. The shadow thrown ahead by the rushing object enveloped him first. Then came the lanky, uncoordinated body a second or two after. It was Thom Lake. A free Thom lake. He had come racing in from beneath the shadows of the arch, unseen, out of the blue, smacking into Justice full bore. The younger of the two brothers, grinning maniacally, as tall as Avarice, threw his long, skinny arms around Justice and lifted him in a giant bear hug. Thoms eyes were red and teary and his voice was cracking in a childs high-pitched falsetto.

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Mr. Reywal. The guards told me you were out here, but I didnt believe them. His smile grew wider. His white teeth caught the sun, throwing a reflection into Justices eyes. Avarice, standing nearby, more reserved, snorted in contempt at his younger brothers public display of glee. Thank God you came. I talked to Avarice about you many times. Told him we would need your help if we were going to make it on the outside. I gather youre doing fine, Thom? Justice chided the young man. Thom was nineteen years old when he went inside. Now, five years had come and gone like the rainy season. Yet he looked the same as he did on that last day in court, when Justice, to everyones great surprise, turned to the presiding judge and officially unveiled the plea bargain he had illegally manipulated through the system. And now you can put me down. Thom held onto his friendly smile, and then let go of Justice. He aint our friend, Thom. Hes just a white man with a sporty tan. He put us in here. Remember that. Avarice spat out, spitefully. Thom looked at Avarice with a blank, open look on his face. It was the same look a schoolboy might give a teacher after having been caught writing an expletive on the chalkboard. Thom Lake let go of his brothers gaze. I saw hate in the graveyard, Mr. Reywal. Saw it all the time. Worked the shovel from pale morning to late afternoon. Lowered those dead men in their pine caskets and covered them with black earth. Thom suddenly seemed weary. His energy quickly dissipated. Only way they knew how to get away from the warden was death. Never be seen or heard from again, those men. Thom Lake had worked as a gravedigger for the last two years of his sentence. In the process, he had become an unwitting cog of the Prison Industrial Complex, the macabre, capitalistic apparatus that fed off the misery and death of convicts while making some interest groups, such as landowners and textile merchants, very rich. In the central south, the tombstones along the so-called convict trail marked hundreds of graves dug by the hands of big business. The epitaphs read not the names of the fallen, but words like CORRUPTION, SCANDAL, and PROFIT. In fact, the Governor himself, a fierce proponent of capital punishment, had once declared in a press conference that the death penalty was Good for business. In the two years he spent with the shovel, writhing in pain, grimacing each time sweat trickled down into his badly blistered hands, Thom Lake helped bury almost two-dozen convicts for the state. Just a shade under one per month. Some died of old age and natural causes, a few due to prison violence or a mishap in the various shops of industry; but the majority were sent to him via the chair. Those were the ones that got to him. All charred up and black, that smell of burnt out flesh and death latching on to the walls of the tiny 134

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prison morgue, in actuality an old meat locker no bigger than a standard bedroom, and never cold enough to prevent the bodies from summarily rotting. When a man died of electrocution, parts of his flesh, brittle and crusty and ready to go, would flake off and fall onto the gurney or float away in the stream of cold, circulating air. Part of Thom Lakes job was to clean out that gurney; prep the dead convict for the state pathologist by washing away those blackened parchments of skin with a small surgical hose, peeling the layers off a mans life one year at a time til nothing was left but raw muscle and tissue spread out over the face of agony. Thom Lakes ultimate reward: two dollars per body. Paid in full by the state. I saw death all over. Thoms round, expressive eyes were now wide with repulsion as he recalled those deaths. An unsettling glaze fell over them, and Justice got the impression this grown man was about to cry right there in front of everyone. His face, previously sharp in texture and brilliant red in color, suddenly grew pale and sad, like a clowns face, sagging noticeably around the jowls. Thick lips shriveled underneath the oppressive weight of a frown. Shoulders slumped downward; his chest cavity caved inward and disappeared. The younger of the two, this once proud Cheyenne, nice, polite, carrying around the frayed edges of eyes that had seen terrible things, seemed to be collapsing like a house of cards in front of Justices astonished eyes. It was sad to watch. Dont ever want to see that six-foot hole again, Mr. Reywal. Not in my lifetime. Thom said, shaking his head in an exaggerated manner. He brought his hands close to his face and examined his fingers under the bright light. There was dirt underneath his fingernails; thick rings of black grime that had penetrated deep into his cuticles, a savage reminder of his past work. For Thom Lake, there would be no escaping this inexorable past. It would lie next to him in sleep; it would engage his dreams and funnel them into vicious nightmares; much like the terrible dreams that had haunted Justice for so long, a seductive mistress that would not leave his bed. Never again Thom. You have my word on that. Justice said. You paid your dues. The state will leave you alone now. Thoms eyes glittered like fools gold. I hope youre right about that, Mr. Reywal. State always has bigger fish to fry. Justice concluded. Your book carried me Mr. Reywal. Carried me through on nights when the earth from those graves clawed its way beneath my nails, and I couldnt wash the dirt off no matter how hard I tried. No matter how hard I scrubbed. I guess soaps werent meant for such awful tasks. On those nights I opened this book up Thom pulled a beaten, soiled paperback copy of Suburban Arrows from his hip pocket and offered it to Justice to inspect. and it carried me over these walls. He looked 135

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at Justice, soaking in the pure radiance one felt among natural comrades. Carried me back to a time when everything in my life was pure. Itll be alright now, Thom. It all over. Justice put his hand on the young mans shoulder and gently squeezed. Warden cant get to you any more. Ill see to that. I know what you did for us, Mr. Reywal. My brother, he dont believe in you. Thinks youre no different than the warden. But I know what you did. I know you were protecting us from the chairprotecting us from that he looked far away to his left, where a hundred yards to the south lay the prison burial ground, a ravaged patch of earth propping up a few decades worth of cheap headstones. hole in the ground. Justice stared at the young man with a sense of pride. Thom had lived through a not so imaginary hell and had come out clean, and wiser. He had shrugged off the hate that naturally imbedded itself in the heart of most every con. Cast off those things that arrive at the midnight hour. Things that could not be explained, yet caused a man to tremble underneath his bed sheets til morning. Thoms heart was pumping the purest lifeblood through every vein. Pulsating. He had sloughed off the pain and hurt and fear far easier than Justice could have ever imagined, and in their place was a man open not to the concept of rehabilitation, for who could honestly explain what that enigmatic word meant, but a living, breathing being ready to receive a far greater power into his life. Redemption. Pure redemption. Everything about him radiated purity. A bridge of immaculate light linking the past to the Promised Land had propped up in his mind. And purity, Justice reasoned, was the stepping-stone to greater things. And then. Words Justice never thought hed ever hear. Words that made the ground tremble beneath his feet. Words that destroyed in one fell swoop everything he had worked for in the last five years. Words that sprung out and leapt over the formidable prison walls and threatened to shatter every clock the warden had tried so desperately to conceal. Avarice didnt mean to do it Mr. Reywal. It wasnt his fault. She kept coming back. I warned her to stop but she just kept coming and coming and coming. Said Thomas. Everyday she come to the house, even when I asked her not to. Had about as much sense as a dog chasin a movin car tryin to bite its tires. Thom, what are you talking about? Justice felt an odd twinge of concern creep into his body. She kept coming back, Mr. Reywal. I begged and I pleaded her until after a time I had to get harsh with my words. I told her to never come around the house less she wanted a half beatin. Told her all she 136

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would bring to Avarice and me was trouble. Thom told the story with measured passion. His eyes wavered for a split second. For a fraction of time, he tried to screen himself from Justices stare. Justice, his sharp, trial lawyers instincts coming back now, had detected some unknown force growing in Thoms voice, a tendril shrill insistent on forgiveness, yet not overly concerned with the outcome. But she never stopped coming back to the house. Thom, stop for a second. Justice took a deep breath. The heat seared his lungs. I need to know what the hell youre talking about. A sinking feeling of despair had now replaced concern and filled the pit of his stomach. Thom Lake, Avarice barked out loud. He had been standing there, silent, listening to the conversation. He proceeded to wedge his muscular body between his brother and Justice, blocking further contact. With his back to Justice, Avarice began to chastise Thom, whose eyes immediately fell to the ground, sad, and puppy-eyed and lost. You just shut yer mouth now, Thom. You dont go talking about things that have been buried for five years. You just let it go. Thoms face rose slightly. Avarice cupped his brothers chin with a firm hand and brought it up, level to his own. They stood eye-to-eye, Cheyenneto-Cheyenne. You got the sense of a three legged mule runnin up a hill to fetch water. Let it go, I tell you. ShilohShiloh Black, Mr. Reywal Thom said after a full minute. He broke free from his brothers grip, sidestepping Avarice with deft precision. She came over to the house regularly. Twice a week sometimes. For a long, long time. A year or more, as I recall. That woman just couldnt let go of Avarice. Talked about love and makin a life with him. Even though she was already married. Shut up Thom. Enough already. I warned Avarice. Told him to stop seeing her before it brought trouble to the house. Told him Cheyennes were just a half step above niggers to the white man. Told him a Cheyenne couldnt see a white woman in Oklahoma without bringing the heat or the law down. Especially a woman married to the brother of a town councilman. Shiloh was trouble, Mr. Reywal. From crib to casket, from wheat kernel to bread, that woman was trouble for both of us. Shiloh...? Pause. The seed of insanity split apart inside Reywals head. Shiloh Black? The name seemed vaguely familiar to Justice. He had heard it somewhere, sometime before; though he couldnt place the exact moment or time. His mind churned and churned, spitting out snapshots of the past, rejecting this, rejecting that. Too many faces that went with too many names. Underneath the blanket sun that made it harder to think. Made it harder to fill the gaps of incomprehension in his mind. In front of the brothers. In front of the

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prison. In front of the free press; jackals, the beat writers and investigators. In front of the continuous loop which grew distended and ominous in the radioactive sun. And then suddenly, the light bulb clinging to the roof of his mind clicked on. He gained intimate knowledge. The past came out and caressed the present. Like a maestro drawing his bow over a Stradivarius, hitting the perfect fifth, the tune came into focus. Suddenly, Justice knew. Five years ago. Five years ago, almost to the day. And then, though he was standing underneath the brightest, rainless, cloudless day of the year, Justice Reywals world began to unravel into darkness. Standing in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sinners of all kind, some wearing prison jumpsuits, some wearing suits of commerce, sweating profusely in the intense heat, the minds aperture widened and everything fell into focus. And when it all came together, when the entire picture was drawn out like a roadmap in his head, Justice suddenly wished the legendary prescience he so proudly carried with him had abandoned him before he had had the opportunity to piece together this startling realization. Shiloh Black. Jericho Blacks wife? The bill collector Avarice had shot down. Brother to Amos Black, Chairman of the state Agricultural and Rural Development Committee. Oh my God. Justice said, softly. His mind was spinning. The hard baked clay underneath him seemed to fracture and break apart; the land relaxed its grip, threatening to swallow him whole. Oh my God! This time it came out like a shout. Go on now, Thom. You wait for me by the side of the road. Busll be by shortly. We got a long way to go bfore dark. Thom remained still. Avarices eyes grew meaner. His voice took on a dangerous edge. Go on, Thom. He commanded. Youve caused enough trouble already. What happened out there in the reservation? Justice asked, glaring at the brothers, aggravated by their reticence. His voice grew louder, more abrasive as he prodded the brothers for answers. Well? Come out with it. Thom Lake looked down, ashamed, withdrawing further, sketching circles in the dirt with the tip of his boot. The shadow he cast fell over his primitive, disjointed drawings. We dont have time for games. No one spoke. No one moved. For what seemed an eternity, everything stood still. And in his heart, Justice Reywal knewknew that terrible things were about to surface; the same way a lover knew hed been abandoned long before entering his home, warned by the hollow echo of a key unlocking the front door to a house that was empty; devoid of furniture, photographs, and love. 138

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Shit. Reywal snarled. He grabbed Thoms arm roughly and pulled him away from Avarice. He looked over at the group of reporters. They had been watching; partly out of curiosity, partly out of hope. At the sound of Justices harsh expletive they had turned their heads, wondering if there was anything of substance worth reporting. Sensing something was askew they began to inch ever so closer. Reywal put his finger to his lips, signaling Thom to keep his mouth shut. It was imperative that the reporters not get wind of what was brewing. Justice turned, looking for a suitable place to conduct business. Without thinking, his feet led him to it. With one hand gripping the fabric of Thoms shirt, he dragged the lanky Indian behind him and headed towards the great archway. They marched briskly and silently and conspicuously. Thom seemed almost meek, obedient. Justice didnt stop pulling until hed put sufficient distance between themselves and the inquisitive reporters. When they reached the shadow of the archway, Justice spun Thom around and pushed him up against the thick, stone masonry. They both fell into an oasis of comforting blackness. The archway now towered far above their heads; its expertly cut black, granite blocks like teeth leering at Justice. The reporters trailed like leeches looking for blood meal. Justice stopped them in their tracks. Attorney-client privilege. You all leave us alone. Reluctantly they backtracked, wary and angry. But still they tried to keep within earshot, moving just a few yards out, with primped up collars and vigilant ears. Justice leaned in and put his lips to Thom Lakes ear and spoke. Thom. Look at me. Tell me what happened. The day Black was killed. Tell me what went on outside that house. Thoms gaze rose slowly from the ground. Dont leave anything out. Im your best friend right now. Avarice? Avarice cant help you any more. A pause. The mechanism in Lakes mind tossed out permutations. Calculating odds. Drawing the line in the sand. Knowing, that if he crossed, there was no going back for Thom Lake. Finally. I threw Mrs. Black out of the house one night. Id warned her again and again, Mr. Reywal. But she never listened to me. Called me an imbecile. Said I was too stupid to comprehend what was going on. A pause. Grabbed her by her long hair and pulled her right out of Avarices bed. Told her to run home to Mr. Black before the law came knockin on our door. Indians dont like badges appearing in the middle of the night, Mr. Reywal. Justice nodded in agreement. So she come back the next morning, all angry and bent out of shape. I told her to get the hell off our front porch. She got angrier. Her face turned beet red and her eyes turned to somethin youd only see in hell or the last 139

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chapter of the bible. She screamed at me. Said I would be sorry for treating her so poorly. Said that, no son-of-a-bitch heathen was going to get the best of her. Said she was comin back with her husband in tow. Asked me how Id feel about facin a lynch mob. Thom told the story very calmly, detached even, as if he were reading an article on brain pathology in some obscure medical journal. Justice nodded for him to continue. Things have a way of unfolding, thats for certain, Mr. Reywal. Right there on that stoop I saw our future. And it was bad. Everythin about that woman was bad. Everythin shed bring to Avarice and me from that point on would be terrible. I saw the law comin down on us from the wrong side. So I got this idea in my head. He paused, taking a deep breath. I went to Jerichos house and waited outside for the good part of the afternoon. Sat in my car under a great old cottonwood, thinkin, waitin the sun out until I knew the coast was clear. I didnt go there to harm her, Mr. Reywal. In truth, I didnt know why Id gone. But I did know, for our peace of mind, I had to do somethin to push her towards the path of righteousness. The path of righteousness? Justice asked, incredulously. Youre telling me the path of righteousness is what drove you out there? And you didnt intend to harm her? What did you have in mind? A powwow? Justice had a faint idea why. But asking questions of the disturbing nature was part of his job. Some people just cant see the light, Mr. Reywal. Warden cant. Thinks he does, but thats a different kind of light altogether. Thats the light that unfurls from desperation. People like him follow that light cause without it theyd have nothin. Nothin but darkness. They dont realize that sometimes havin nothin at all is better than ridin down that tunnel into blindness. People like the warden mistake selfrighteousness for sincerity. Well, Shiloh Black was the same way, if you want my thought on the subject. Thom, we dont have much time. From a short distance away, a cameraman, prodded on by a reporter, had aimed his lens and microphone at them and begun to roll tape. Tell me now! What happened out there on that land? I crawled through Jericho Blacks bedroom window when I was sure no one was home. When I went in I had no idea what I was looking for. You have to believe me on that, Mr. Reywal. I wasnt going to hurt nobody. I was just going to ruffle up the house. Destroy some furniture as a warning to her to keep away. But then, in the blink of an eye, I got another idea. An idea that would solve our problems once and for all. At the time it seemed sound in my mind. Looking back though, I know I was wrong. Stupid. How so? I remember reading somethin long ago. Some newspaper article about a corrupt Indian police chiefI cant remember which tribe. The 140

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reporter was asked why hed gone after the man with such vehemence; since they both belonged to the same nation. And you know what he said? Justice shrugged. No. He said when you investigate a dishonest man, when you find a pocket of corruption, no matter how slight, you press on, because when you investigate the misdemeanor, the felony unwinds. Pause. Well, I figured it out the same way. So I sat down in the kitchen table, grabbed a pen and wrote a note to Jericho Black. I knew it would lead to bigger things. I knew it would bring Shilohs corrupt ways to light. What was in it, Thom? Justice answered, matter-of-factly. He wasnt all that surprised by the revelation. What was in the note? I wrote down that his wife was cheatin on him. I came to him, pretendin to be a secret friend. Pretended I was looking out after him. Told him his wife was makin a fool of him. But I never wrote down Avarices name. Kept that a secret. I figured Jericho would go and confront her and in turn she would deny the affair. And in the process shed stop comin around cause she knew Jericho would have both eyes on her from that moment on. I set the note under his pillow; tucked out in a way so only he could see it. I left through the back door. No one saw me. Took his rifle with me for good measure. Just in case he may have hadother thoughts. But it didnt work out the way you wanted it todid it Thom? Justice asked, wearily. It worked out in my mind, Mr. Reywal. Somehow, my plan got all twisted up in the wind. I didnt spect for that old hillbilly to beat her black and blue until she spit out the truth, along with some front teeth. That night she told him everything. Told him about Avarice and sneakin off to see him every time Jericho was away on business. Told him she was in love with Avarice. Told him she was leavin him for an Indian man. Thom paused. His voice came out sharp, like tempered steel. Told Jericho she was carryin Avarices child inside her belly. Well, you can probly guess how he reacted to that one. What the hell did you expect from him, Thom? Grace? Forgiveness? Thom Lake nodded sheepishly. I guess in the end the wrong felony came to light. Aint that right, Thom? The lump in Justices throat expanded. For a moment he felt as if he were drowning as muscles in his neck contracted over his windpipe. His jaw dropped open; so wide a crow could have flown in and taken up residence inside. Thom continued his assault on memory. Well, the next thing I know, just after sunset, Jericho Black is hammerin away at our porch door, telling Avarice and me to come out and face him. He had come alone. Holding a welding torch, open full 141

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throttle til the flame glowed bright and blue. He threatened to burn us out of our cabin. He said if we didnt come out and face the flame he was going to call the county sheriff and have Avarice arrested for rapin his wife. Said she would testify to the fact. Seems Shiloh Black mistook lust for love, and in the end she had a story of her own to sell. What did you expect, Thom? Jesus Christ! Justice exclaimed. And then, just for good measure, he repeated it over. Jesus Christ! I didnt expect her to fess up. Not so soon, anyway. Shit, Thom. If you erect a statue in the park, eventually pigeons are going to shit all over it. Justice felt like he was speaking to a nave child. Avarice went to that place where he goes to when he gets mad. You know the place, Mr. Reywal. Ive seen it in your eyes a dozen times. Saw it the first time I met you when you swore youd get me and Avarice a date with the chair. Its a place that dont go away when you shut your eyes. Only liquor or that six-foot hole in the ground can take it from you. And thenwell, you can probly guess the rest, he repeated, scratching his head. Avarice was pretty banged up by the time Black arrived. Hed been drinkin up a dust bowl storm all day. As he spoke, Thoms eyes went through a rapid transformation, losing all traces of weakness. His body began to unfurl before Justices eyes, an unhurried expansion rising ever so slightly as dormant, feral instincts in Thoms muscles and ligaments and tendons overrode the brain. The animal in Thom Lake was coming out, making an impromptu appearance before Justices eyes, vanquishing the weakling that had been caged up for the last five years. Justice watched, mesmerized. Thom Lake, the rough beast slouching, grew from the desert floor, muscles flexing, gorged with blood, confident and robust, as he shrugged off all previous characteristics of effeteness, Justice felt as if he himself was shrinking, sinking down into the loose sand. He braced himself for the inevitable. Thom Lakes conversion had taken him by sheer surprise. The prairie sands held Justice by the ankles. Thoms voice held him by the throat. The vast and breathless amphitheatre, fueled on by the might of torch and sun, waited for Thom Lake the raconteur to finish his transformation and finish the story. Thom Lake had become a season near its endpoint; the last days on the calendar ready to hand the reigns over to another phase. He was a man awakened after a deep slumber, ready to spring forth and announce to the world that he was alive and unbreakable, an indomitable spirit riding the crest of triumph. He was the inimical winter giving way to robust spring, the last gasp of symmetrical coldness revitalized. He was frozen death passing the baton of life to a dying stranger.

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You wanted him to know. Jericho Black. You wanted him to know about Avarice and Shiloh so hed come to the house, looking for revenge. Justice paused. A theory was formulating in his mind, grabbing purchase. Thats why you took his rifle, Thom. Not because you were scared of him. You took it because you knew hed come to you. Didnt you, Thom? You wanted him to confront you and Avarice. I knew I had to act first. Before Avarices mind made him see everything in red. Before Jericho Black could put that torch up to the thatch roof. I had but a moment to think things through. Thom said, his eyes steadfast, full with resolve. But in the end thats all it takes, Mr. Reywala fraction of a moment where time stops and action takes over. One second in the vacuum where the irrational takes over the conscious mind and blocks out what makes us human. You confronted Black on that porch, Thom. Justice Reywal pressed on, bracing himself. It was all about to come out to the open. You baited the trap, lured him in and waited. And then Avarice snuck up from behind him and killed him in cold blood. A pause. A terrible moment of reflection that made Justice cringe in horror when he realized what hed done. And then I came along and helped you beat a murder rap. I confronted himthat much is true Mr. Reywal. And in the end, when he didnt see things my way, when he refused to leave, I pushed him off the porch. He dropped the torch in the process, blue flame and all. An eerie afterglow filled the dusk. Jerichos face lit up, red like some devil bent on vengeance. And I just knew he was going to set the whole world on fire. When he turned around to pick up that torch, he paused, his dark eyes drilling bore holes into Justice, well, thats when it happened. What happened? Thats when I killed him. Shock. Then denial. Justice felt himself spinning, his world growing black. The blood stopped flowing to his brain. NoYou couldnt have? More question than statement. It was Avarice. You just said he didnt mean to do it. I killed Jericho Black, Mr. Reywal. Killed him right where he stood. Put a double-barreled Winchester to his lower back and pulled the trigger. Pumped him full of double ought buckshot. Didnt set out to do it, didnt take great measure in the act, but nevertheless that is what happened. Wish I could take it back, but wishing is for lotteries and confession time. But Avarice? You told me he did the shooting. Said he was sorry for what hed done. Thom Lake shot Justice a contemptuous glance. You are one simple son-of-a-bitch, arent you Mr. Reywal? Pause. Avarice is sorry alright. Sorry about draggin me into this mess. Sorry about not listening to me. Sorry for not ending things with that woman 143

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after I warned him so. He didnt mean for things to get so far out there. But I told you bfore Mr. Reywalthat woman was trouble. Trouble for all concerned. Whydidnt youtellmeany of this? Justice stammered. The truth? Are you crazy? Aint no room for the truth out here, Mr. Reywal. Truth rarely breaks light. So Avarice told me to shut up and follow his lead. Avarice said an Indian would never get a fair shake if the law found out he was makin time with a white woman. Specially one related to the town councilman. He also took into account where Black had been shot. You mean where you shot him. Thom nodded, blithely. Suit yerself. They hate cowards more than criminals around these parts, Mr. Reywal. Can you imagine claimin self-defense to a jury with Black carryin all that buckshot in his back? That wouldnt pass muster. So Avarice grabbed the Remington I took from Jerichos bedroom and placed it in Jerichos own hand. Wrapped Jerichos fingers around the trigger and pulled off a shot or two into the front door, I cant really recall how many. Then he let the rifle fall to the ground, right next to his hand. We made the story up that Black came on our property without permission and threatened us for not paying our bill at the county feed store he owned. We told the sheriff that Avarice fired back only after Jericho had unloaded his rifle on us. Not so far off the road map if you ask me. His intent seemed as clear and focused as a twister on a mean and hungry course. He aimed to evict usevict us from this ol earth for good. As sure as Im standing here now, I know if hed had his rifle with him he would have used it on us. I seen it in his eyes Mr. Reywal. Seen it in his face. I saw enough hate in those eyes for over a dozen men. But why did Avarice take the blame? Why not you? Thats a good question, Mr. Reywal. Been thinking about that myself for the last five years. Never did ask Avarice and Avarice never offered up a reason. Dont matter. Far as I can figure, Avarice must have felt real guilty for what hed done. His recklessness. I guess in the end he thought it was a brotherly thing to do. Oh my God, Reywal put his hands to his head and covered his ears. He didnt want to hear anymore. Somewhere in the distance, the chug-a-chug sound of an oncoming locomotive filled the valley floor, shattering the silence. The engineer leaned heavily on the diesel-horn. The shrill blast that followed flooded the entire basin, reverberating off Granite Mountain and the reformatory, and working alongside Thom Lakes confession, threatened to cave in Justices head. Justice took a few steps forward into the sunlight and looked down into the valley. Everything became clear. Running south, the land dipped ever so slightly in a steady, gentle decline, dropping away from the red ridges and caliches down to the valley floor where it met the tracks of the Union Pacific, which ran as far as the eye could see to the 144

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east and west, parallel to the 9. Aided by the flat topography of the land below and the sun now behind him, Justice had a magnificent, unobstructed view of the entire basin. The train was no more than a mile away. Ready to come to a stop at a small sect of buildings that served as Granites terminal was this anachronistic, shiny steam engine the governor had chartered, an old iron horse some twenty boxcars in length decorated in festive red, white and blue streamers. In a few minutes time, the governor would board that train and embark on his three-day, statewide, whistle-stop tour of the small communities that pockmarked the dry region. The cattle, the canning, refinery, and farming townsthey would all get their chance to greet him; to examine his face and measure the man out, to shake the master spinsters hand and decide for themselves whether they should run to the nearest restroom to rinse with soap and water or savor the experience as if theyd touched the hand of Jesus Christ himself. The shrill blast, the captains up in the tower shouting orders to the guards down below to be on the alert, the sound of running feet as photographers snapped photos with elephant-sized lenses. These were the sounds of serious men in motion, and it took an enormous gut check for Justice to hold his breakfast down. Justice Reywal pressed his hands tighter over his eardrums, trying to drown out the extraneous noise; trying to kill the great secret Thom Lake had just revealed. An onset of panic and tremors shook him to the very core. He was becoming unhinged. Ready to come apart and slink down into the ground, becoming just another tiny sand dune to be blown away by the first gust of wind. Oh my God. The realization of what hed had done was dawning on him quickly. He looked up across the empty cotton fields. A halfmile now separated the train from the group of buildings. The locomotive was closing in fast. The steam trailed behind in its wake like a debutantes feathery boa, which broke up into odd, splotchy patches that took the shape of twisted faces, menacing and white against the blue sky. A large part of Justice wanted to take wind and run, to race against time, to beat the locomotive to some imaginary point on the track, to stand in front of the onrush of black steel and steam and throw his arms out in quiet surrender, having two thousand tons of kinetic energy end his misery in one single-bladed moment in time. Justice felt a strong hand on his shoulder. He turned slowly; ready to face down the devil at high noon. It was Thom. Or rather, a different version of him altogether; one Justice was now seeing with regularity, one he was reluctant to accept. He had crossed into the light. Mr. Reywal, please dont be angry. The younger brother stared at him through a face devoid of passion, the mottled canvass of lost 145

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innocence. I did what I did cause I had to. It came easily to me, true enough, but I didnt act from malice. I acted accordingly. Jericho Black would have killed Avariceprobably killed me also. Maybe right then and there, maybe come later on in the weekonly he knew the time and place. I know in my heart he would have eventually come around to it. When a man sets his sights on somethin he dont let go so easily. When he has to come to terms with the fact that his wife fell into the arms of another cause of his own inadequacies, well then, that last chapters already been etched in stone, far as Im concerned. That dont make things square, I know. And I know there will be a day of reckoning. Maybe with God, maybe with someone else with a quicker draw. I dont know. But I aint askin you to forgive us. Im just asking you to let it go. Thom knew in his heart it was impossible, but still he tried to convince Justice. He knew the nightmares hed suffered through would be passed onto him, a torch relinquished in the dark, and he felt genuine concern. For your own good you need to forget. Lest it eats you up inside. Let it go? Forget? Justice paused. You know what I did for both of you? You know what I gave up? What I sold off? Justice searched for words. His soulthat was what he wanted to tell Thom hed sold. His soul. He wanted to grab Thom by the shoulders, shake him and rattle him and bellow to him as loud as he could that hed traded away his spirit, wagered it all on one roll of the dice. And for what? To back up a lie? To save the brothers from the chair when the chair was exactly what they deserved? The mercury was now holding steady; unflinching, not climbing; yet yielding nothing to the afternoon. Here and there a breeze stirred, but nothing of great consequence. Nothing that would cool the anger and frustration that was building up inside of Justice Reywal. So overmatched and focused was he that he bit down in anger, grinding his teeth, the traces of grit and dustbowl sand in his mouth acting as an abrasive. A trickle of blood ran inside his mouth, hot and sticky and bittersweet. A tide of blood coursed through his veins, as thick and hot as the sun above. He felt betrayed. Lonely. Abandoned. But in the end, he kept all of that to himself. He had learned long ago, for survivals sake, to extract strength from weariness. To look at the past as a book with pages filled with so many words of fiction. To be read and deliberated upon, caressed by the mind, then placed back on the highest ledges of a bookshelf and forgotten. To learn, as Thom had opined, to forget. How ironic, Justice thought? How ironic, indeed, that at this very second this fatalistic belief system he had so carefully cultivated was falling apart right in front of Justices eyes. What you didI cant ever forgive. Much less forget. Like I told you before, Mr. ReywalI know hate. Saw hate in the graveyard for over two years here. Saw the word carved in the walls of many cells. Saw it in the eyes of the convicts. Guards. Lifers. The kin 146

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that come to visit. I once saw a man on death row forced to dig his own hole. Only they didnt tell him who it was for. They just put a shovel in that old boys hand and made him dig into the rabble earth. After he was done, the guards put a mock headstone, made of soap wood, at the foot of that grave; and it had his name on it. Imagine what that must have felt like for that convict, Mr. Reywal? Thinking about the inevitability of death when he lied down in his bunk that night, alone in the dark? Alone with his thoughts? Alone with the knowledge that death was comin for him sometime soon and there was nothin he could do to stop it. Justice remained still, unresponsive. He had given up so much for Avarice and Thom. He had put his career on the line. He had turned his back and broken the solemn oath hed sworn to uphold. Sometimes all a man had was his word. Sometimes it was better to have nothing at all than to have broken it. Thom continued. Well, Ill never forget the blackness that sets into a mans eyes after hes fixed his mind on hate. Ive seen the whites bleached out of eyeballs. Washed away, the color all but stolen from a mans soul. Replaced by something I cant name, something I dont ever want to know the name for. And that was what I saw in Jericho Black that day, Mr. Reywal. He looked Justice dead in the eyes, words coming from a heart incapable of lying or deceit. Thats how you rationalize what you did? Hmm? You cant pass on your self-serving version of the truth as fact, Thom. Its not that simple. Justice said. Lifes not that simple. Hate exists in all degrees, Mr. Reywal. Black was a good ol boy. Didnt carry the same clout of the Boss Network, but Jericho Black was mean as a twister just the same. Capable of murder, maybe even fond of it. Maybe hed done it before, maybe hed just never gotten round to it. But murder was his business that day, I tell you. Murder was his business. Justice sighed, and stepped away from Thom Lake. Thom seemed trapped in a cocoon of naivet; and that was a dangerous place to be in so late in ones life, Justice concluded. It was time to take stock. Time to disconnect from everything and let the professional in him take over. Encircled by the dwindling pool of bodies, men and women talking good-naturedly, trading stories of the industry, waiting for the day to end. Justice scanned the many faces, trying to gauge expressions and thoughts, trying to see if anyone had overheard the conversation. Trying to see if anyone had cornered the market of information. No one seemed the least bit curious or concerned. No one stared back at him. No one rushed towards him. For the moment, at least, he felt that Thoms secret was safe. Good. Next he scanned the crowd, looking for Faro Brandi-Shaw. He did this for a minute or so, examining the sweaty, tired, inconsiderate 147

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faces, hideous manifestations of their prescribed occupations coming out to the forefront. And then Justice found him. Brandi-Shaw stood out in the open, about fifty paces away, accompanied by Avarice Lake and a reporter; a chunky, youthful figure dressed in regulation journalist garb: khaki shorts that fell to his knees and a ruffled, olive-green canvas shirt, tucked completely out, fitted with several distinct pockets, ranging from small to large, all of them bulging and full. Brandi-Shaw had pressed his mouth right up to the mans microphone and spoke in bright, animated tones. The young man in sunglasses waited next to them, a few steps off to the side, silent as usual. Not wanting to be noticed, he tried to make himself as small as possible, sliding into the ethos of shadows cast by Brandi-Shaw and Avarice, the two men who now owned the spotlight. A twinge of panic crawled up the spine. Would Avarice open his mouth? Would he say something to damn them all? Stay here, Thom. He commanded. Ill be right back. Justices legs pushed forward as some primal impulse blasted messages to his brain. It might be too late, he thought. Was the game over? It was possible that the reporter had overheard something and had gone on a simple fishing expedition, much as hed done himself in the past. Improbable, Justice tried to reassure himselfbut plausible, nonetheless. Deep inside, he knew anything was possible. Thom Lake had just proved that. And as he knew, the punishing heat had a way of bringing the coldest things, things like betrayal and murder, to the surface. Under the hard sun that channeled heat towards the mouth of hell that was the valley floor, it didnt take much to flick the switch. Justice quickly shortened the distance. He approached with the belief that Avarice Lake and treachery were joined hand in hand. There was the distinct possibility of betrayal, to be played out in that barren landscape of a stage, with the searing floodlights from above illuminating all. If there was a heaven and hell, Justice reasoned, in a humble sense, it meant that life had been reduced to a mere incentive to do right by his fellow man. Thom Lake had just proven that sometimes a man had no need for such incentives. To Thom Lake, following such guidelines and principles would have made this world that he lived in cruel and boring. And unpredictable. And for Justice Reywal, a seasoned trial lawyer with an edge for flair and acute sense of anticipation, unforeseen possibilities and abstractions were something he didnt like dealing in. Would Avarice Lake follow in his younger brothers footsteps? The answer lay just ahead; and Justice would soon find out. He noticed, as he walked, an element of rage hanging in the air, a cloud that loomed over Avarice Lake and stole away from him the ability to reason; like an industrial vacuum clearing a smokehouse of poisonous air. If Avarice remained angry enough with Justice, if the 148

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rage inside this American Indian who had been incarcerated for the last five years bubbled over wantonlythere was the strong likelihood that he would talk. With that in mind, Justice rapidly closed the gap between himself and the assembly. He walked low to the ground, taking long, stealthy, overlapping strides that made no sound. He chose a direct route, diving right into the reporters line of sight. He existed in the bright open space, trying to remain concealed. Avarice and Brandi-Shaw were both a few yards out in front of him, turned completely around, their backs to him. As the yards of distance shrank down to feet, and as the feet crumbled to mere inches, as Brandi-Shaws voice rose up from the prairie and filled his ears with ingenious music, he forced the leather mask that was his face to smile.

Brandi-Shaw had picked up where Justice Reywal left off. He was in the midst of a fiery interview, engaged in polemics with an antagonistic, right-winged, young, conservative, male reporter who held staunch, opposing views. He never saw Justice coming. You have to pick sides, man. Brandi-Shaw was explaining. Survival or extermination. Theres nothing else. Theres no room out here for second-guessing and fair weather journalism. Some people dont like it when the sand shifts underneath their feet. They pack up and move to the other side of the street; moving into a different zip code altogether full of contrasting opinions. Well, what they dont realize is that in Oklahoma the sand is shifting constantly. Political philosophies and ideologies shift constantly. Only thing a man can do is find a rock in the desert, climb on top and make a stand. Justice came up from behind and placed a firm hand on Avarice Lakes shoulder. Avarice, who was listening to Brandi-Shaw with great passion, turned to face him. The indignant Indian stared back with contempt, his eyes red and wide, not saying a word. His silence conveyed danger. His eyes revealed little. Twin pinpoints to hell. They quickly constricted, becoming uninhabited fields promising to bring nothing to this world but plagues of locusts and waves of vapid heat. Justice, alarmed, feeling as if hed just stared into the eyes of the devil himself, involuntarily shrank back. Meanwhile, Brandi-Shaw continued his rant. There is an unhinged anarchy in the way these political animals operate. But it succeeds because there is a sense of anticipation to the chaos they create. So as American Indians lose more and more of their land, as social programs aimed at helping the tribes fail, as the government imposes higher, ridiculous blood quantum laws that target the very existence of the Indian Nation, I get the sense that all is well for the white Europeans that continue to torch this prairie the Indians 149

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have called home for centuries. Brandi-Shaws voice had risen an octave. His fervor was palpable, pouring off his forehead in the form of heavy perspiration that yielded no relief from the suffocating inferno. I need to talk to you, Avarice. Right now. Justice said, sternly; after hed recovered. He nodded his head to the side, motioning for Avarice to walk away from the reporter. Avarice stood in silence for a few moments. He studied Justice through calculating eyes, trying to decipher his thoughts. It was an ability hed honed to perfection behind those prison walls. He shrugged. Why not, he asked? Justice led him away, taking great pains to make sure the curious reporter would not detect their absence. They walked until they were out of earshot range. Justice felt dazed. He had no idea what he was going to say to the angry Cheyenne, or how the conversation would play out. He had developed no plan or scheme. He wasnt aware there was such a plan or scheme on earth capable of engaging or battling evil. Yet, it was Avarice who spoke first, setting the tone. We are not the same, you and I. We are not brothers. Friends. There is nothing of substance left to talk about. Oh, we have lots to talk about. I think you know that. Oh... Avarice rolled his eyes like a child caught with his hands in the cookie jar, smudges of chocolate gleefully staining his lips. That. I guess Thom dont know when to shut up. He shot a poisonous look over at his younger brother, who had ignored Justices command to stay put and had followed, and now stood a few feet safely behind Justice. Dont pay him no mind. Thom sees things through the eyes of a child most times. Children are foolish and cannot be trusted. I fought for you Avarice. I moved the law for you. Well, thats a theory. If you live long enough, you come to realize everyones in the theory business. You swore to me that Jericho Black instigated the entire affair. How could you betray me, Avarice? How could you do that? Avarice bit his lower lip in contemplation. He chose his next words carefully. Survival, Mr. Reywal. Plain and simple. Survival. Survival? Justice asked, incredulously. Yes, survival. My survival. Thoms survival. Its never personal, Mr. Reywal. So dont take it that way. Survivals not some mechanism that can be turned on and off like a light switch. It is a part of the soul, it flows through your veins, and for it to go means the soul has died and your bodys buried six feet under. He paused, relishing his words, perceiving them as some outlandish, unaltered form of erudition. Besides, you of all people shouldnt be surprised. You preach incessantly that a mans survival is the only thing that matters in life. Is that not so?

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I was the only friend you had in the courtroom, Avarice. Did you forget that? You think your shitty little public defender making thirty grand a year carrying a full caseload would have gotten you off? How could you betray me? Justice repeated the question, not sure if he really wanted to hear the answer. Everyone has a purpose in life, Mr. Reywal. Convicts, politicians and prison guards alike. Mothers and fathers. Even lawyers Avarice spoke with deliberate calmness. Even you. I saw the guilt you carried inside of you long before you did. Seen it a thousand times up here in these barren flats. Seen it in the rec halls and the liquor stores and the gambling houses. Seen it in the eyes of the agents sent by the BIA. The white schoolteachers, pretending to take an inerest in our childrens schooling. Seen it in men a lot stronger than you. Some men, like the warden tucked away in there he pointed towards the reformatory, towards the ADMIT unit whose door had spasmed open and coughed him out. are really exceptional at hiding it. But youyoure different. You wear guilt on your face like a decorative mask of dishonor. Anyone can see it if they just take the time to look. And that is your weakness. Thats what drew me to you. In you I saw a man waiting to be taken advantage of. He paused, his face glowing like fiery embers in the sunlight. So once again, Mr. Reywal, I will tell you you are not like me. We are a different breed you and I. You are a man that struggles to see past his limitations. I have put my limitations to sleep. When a man does that absolute freedoms all thats left. There is only the hunter and the hunted. The top of the food chain and the bottom. A coin flip or a card game will disguise the natural order for a while, but it will never change the final outcome. It still dont change what youve done. All those things you told me. All those lies. You know what I could do. I can bury you. I can go to the press. Your parole board Justice caught himself, realizing suddenly how ridiculous he sounded. And do what? Implicate yourself? You wont do that, no more than youd take a mangy dog home with you and feed it. Cause the truth is like that mangy dog. Itll stick with you long after youre done feeding it. And I dont think you like the truth all that much. Avarice paused. His resolve grew stronger with each passing moment. Not as much as you like the guilt. Maybe you could use a little guilt yourself, Avarice. It might even help you find a little truth. Avarice shrugged, noncommittally. This is all thats left once time and circumstance have their way with you, Mr. Reywal. So dont feel bad. You dont know what I feel? What I think? Fair enough. You want to know what I think? Avarice asked. Justice eyebrows arched upward, waiting for the answer.

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I think you want people to see it. The guilt. I think all you lawyers enjoy wallowing in it. You all believe youre a member of some exclusive fraternitya club trading lives and stories and time over drinks and saunas, hashing out sentences and meting out a cynical brand of justice. Who gets life or who gets probation? Who deserves the get out of jail free card and whose roll comes up snake eyes? You let some names go and trump up charges on others. You agree to certain plea-bargains just so you can beat the rush hour traffic home. I think lawyers believe in total control. Yet they have no control over their own lives. Their destiny. I think they believe they are Gods themselves. I think they believe they are above the law. But theyre not. Youre not. Are you, Mr. Reywal? This is one case where you didnt have any control. A pause. You were the pawn, when you thought you were the grandmaster. You were outplayed. You were checkmated. And you never saw it coming. Silence. Because the guilt clouded your judgment. Thats what I think, anyway. What could you possibly know about me and what I carry around inside? You dont know the first thing about me. I know karma. And sometimes thats enough. Karma? Yes. Karma. You see, Mr. Reywal, Indian man knows karma is not some mystical, magical force that floats around the universe landing indiscriminately on perpetrators and victims alike. Karma chooses sides. Karma is the cattle prod fresh out of the fire. He pointed up at the naked, blue sky. Karma is that concentrated light beam that travels forever. Then he stared directly into Justices eyes. Karma is a form of mathematics. You are insane. Justice said. Maybe so. But it doesnt change certain facts. What went on here, inside this prison, transcends the ordinary and the mundane. I learned things you can only ever dream of knowing, Mr. Reywal. Things? What sort of things? Fact is, Mr. Reywal, you beat a man down, well hes gonna be your sworn enemy for life. Well, that persons gonna have friends. Sooner or later youre bound to come across one of them. And what if one of those friends happens to be a natural enemy of yours? What then? The web spins wider or the noose pulls taught. Either way, mathematics will guarantee you a losing outcome. He paused, gathering steam for the crux. One of my own natural enemies might have even served as an assistant DA for the state of Oklahoma. And maybe I made that enemy think I was his sworn friend. Maybe I took him in. Maybe I shrank myself down, made myself seem vulnerable. Pitiful. Maybe I made up a sad story; a story he swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Maybe I used him to save me from the old lectric chair. Sound familiar? It goes on and on and on. It wasnt chance that opened the door to exploitation. It was sheer mathematics. And I exploited you, 152

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cause you wanted to be exploited. Because of your guilt. The guilt written all over your face. But thats just life talking. He folded his arms across his chest in stark defiance. Time is what matters. You cant see them ticking off in your head, but seconds and minutes are very real. And they hold all the markers to be paid. Years spent in jail amount to bona fide mathematics. All the days and months added together can be summed up in only one outcome. And that outcome is not a good one. He paused. I told you before, Mr. Rey-wal he bitterly stretched Justices surname, making it sound like two words. You chose the wrong side. Taking sides got nothing to do with cold blooded murder. I did what I did because you are not a friend of mine, Mr. Reywal. Avarice further explained. His edgy voice held exact truth, like a washbasin held water. You are the enemy. You toiled for the white man and his system for years. You did his dirty work and you never raised a question about ethics. The white man used you and you used them to get ahead. Thats understandable in this day and age. He paused to let the words sink in. Justice felt invisible underneath the harsh sunlight, the weight of Avarices language. He looked around, wishing there was someplace to go. So I used you both. And Id do it again in a heartbeat. I stood up for myself. For Thom. Brothers have to protect brothers. Or did you forget that immutable law of nature as you sat in your tidy, corner office assigning blame and ordering take-out? Be careful, Avarice. Its going to rain again some day. This drought cant last forever. And when it does, all the lies will come bubbling to the surface and grab you by the ankles, suck you down into the muck and drown you. A pause. Remember, in Oklahoma, the color of your skin is permanent. But a judges ruling is not. Avarice gazed up at the sun; feet spread apart, his face tilted in a brazen display of dominance. The harsh rays came through clean and strong, radiating through a bare sky that begged for cloud cover. A face painted over with blankness, he stared right into the massive, gaseous, orange ball, surrounded by distorted, white, fiery coronas that took up much of the sky. His eyes neither wavered nor flickered. He ran his tongue over his dried out lips in a purposeful manner, like a jungle cat behind a tree sharpening its claws, getting ready to roam the midnight jungle for a meal. I guess thats the nature of the justice system, Mr. Reywal. Youre probably right. But its the only system youve got to rely on. Then I guess theres nothin left to do but wait. Wait for what? A miracle? Thats my business from this moment on. You cant go at this alone. Someone, somewheres going to poke and prod. Theyre bound to ask questions.

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Ill take my chances, Mr. Reywal. Lifes all about having an exit strategy. These men you cant run from Avarice. The Calvary dont ride horseback no more. Avarice smiled broadly. Remember this, Mr. Reywal: When pointing the finger at someone, the thumb always points back at you. What do you mean by that? Like it or not, were in this together. You are like the hard ground beneath our boot heels saturated with the suns heat. He stomped the hard caliche repeatedly with his boot heel, softening the hardpan crust to a gravel consistency. He bent down and grabbed a handful of crumbly, reddish-brown, Oklahoma devil-dust. You are in this with me thick and thin. If I go down, you go down. Silence. I hope you have an exit strategy. You sure about that? Yep. He held his palm open, allowing the handful of dust to catch the light. Calcium carbonate and nitrate deposits imbedded in the parched hardpan caught the sun and threw off sharp glints of light. Avarice threw the handful of dust to the ground. Slapped his hands on his jeans. Wiped off the land, wiped off Justice Reywal. Everything out here wears the same colors. You and I are the same color inside. We think different. We speak different. But theres no escaping who or what we are. There is no other way. Never. I will not betray what I believe in. Betray? You want to talk about betrayal, counselor? You are the master artist of betrayal. You orchestrated the outcome of a trial. You rigged the outcome. You want to know what the Cheyenne say about betrayal? They say a warrior is of the soil and can easily melt into the landscape. He blends in with his surroundings. But he does so in harmony. The warrior grows mighty like the bison, as high as the buffalo grass, as wild as starthistle, and has a clean purpose. To turn his back on these gifts the earth offers is to betray his own purpose in life. You are none of these. You are ragweed growing in the savage field of disharmony. You swore to me, Avarice. You looked me straight in the face and swore to me you had no choice but to shoot Jericho Black. You told me he was on your landthreatening you It was pointless to continue arguing, Justice realized. Its too late for all that counselor. You do remember you took a blood oath. Right? Has it been so long youve forgotten about it? You helped me forge a lie. You made me a part of a criminal conspiracy. Justice argued. His words were bouncing harmlessly off the chest of this Superman of the prairie; this industrious ex-con who had obviously spent too much time in the prison library. The vacant expression on Avarices face told Justice he was getting nowhere. He had seen that collective face before many times, on judge and jury, 154

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minutes before a pejorative ruling or verdict was handed down. You made a fool of me. Avarice threw his head back and laughed. How nave can you possibly be? Are you sure you are the same Justice Reywal Ive seen on all those talk shows? Ramblin on about the state of this and the state of that? Avarice reached out to his brother, who had crept in silent and still, and seized the copy of Suburban Arrows, stuffed into the rear pocket of his pants. The righteous born-again who defends the Indian nation with an almighty voice and pious demeanor? The one who carved his signature on the pages of this here best seller? He raised the well-worn, dog-eared copy in front of him. He callously flipped through the pages, on a pretentious search for something of substance. Justices legs felt weak. What little liquid and food was inside him was about to be expelled all over the prairie floor in an unsightly spasm. It was Thom Lake that reacted first. He stepped up and now stood shoulder to shoulder with Justice. The younger brother seemed angry, perturbed by Avarices mockery. Thom. I told you to wait for me back there. Justice turned and said, softly but firmly. Thom Lake remained still, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. Thom glared at his brother with spiteful eyes. Choosing sides against me aint the way to go, Thom. Avarice warned. Not here. Not now. What happened to you out there in the dark? Justice asked. There are things in the dark Reywal, you dont want to know aboutever. Avarice replied, a concerned look in his eyes. A stare down. A pause. An interruption. Uh-ummMr. Reywal? It was the puerile, conservative-minded reporter. The Young Turk had just finished his interview with BrandiShaw. He had, unbeknownst to Justice, been listening to them all along; wondering if there was a story to be gained, wondering if there was war to be waged. He cleared his throat, trying to gain the courage to speak. Recovering slightly, still unsure, he placed his tape recorder next to Justices chin and asked nervously: How he began, how does it feel to be one of the leading voices in the fight to reclaim civil rights for the American Indian? Not now. Can you disclose what agencies are working with you in your fight to uncover corruption in the governors administration? Will Mack Abramov turn states evidence? To what levels of the government will this scandal reach? Justice, wearing a look of total frustration, answered the young mans questions rudely, mechanical. From the abstract to the 155

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perfunctory. He was tired and hot and sticky and knew no other way to answer the inquiries thrown his way. I cant help you find those answers anymore than I can stop a stampede of wild horses or a glacier from moving down a valley. Say again? the young reporter asked, oblivious to his own ignorance. All I can say is that if Im not successful, if the governor is reelected, then well all have four more years to figure out those answers. Then you do believe the citizens of Oklahoma will reap greater rewards if the status quo governorship is dismantled? Wonder boy asked, grasping the hand of confidence. What I do believe is that we are very close to a tipping point. Tipping point? Justice pointed at the ground for effect. Today. Right here. Right now. This is the tipping point. I dont follow. Justice Reywals face turned red. He had finally lost his patience. The pressure locomotive hit the wall behind his eyes with startling fury. Take a look out there. Those barren fields. The flat, languid topography. The sameness. Theres a dustbowl all around you. But you dont see it cause you have your face pressed down in your notebook. He batted the tape recorder out of the reporters hands. It fell to the ground at his feet with a thud, half-buried in the sand. The reporter stared at Justice, open mouthed and petrified, unable to react. Immediately, Justice regretted having lost his cool. He ran his hand over his face, thinking, trying to keep his anger in check. You cleanse your sins out here or you drown. You Understand? Theres no water out here but sand ill do the trick just fine. Either way you choose your battles. But you have to know the terrain first. Otherwise the sameness will drive you mad. Justice, feeling utterly embarrassed, reached down and picked up the recorder. The Record button was still on and the machine made strange, gurgling noises. He shook off the sand and placed it back in the reporters timid hands. You right-wingers are all alike, passed as his apology. It was the best he could muster, considering the circumstances. The governor has sworn to investigate the Lake brothers case himself. The greenhorn motioned over towards Avarice and Thom. Where does that leave you Mr. Reywal? Indefatigable. He had recovered quickly from Justices outburst and was quickly proving his mettle. In one hand he now held the common mans instrument of revolution, his writing pad, in the other a cheap, black-ink pen. He had shoved the tape recorder, ostensibly broken, into his back pocket. He stood like a lone soldier, gaining strength and momentum as the tide turned, waiting for Reywal to answer. The kid was proving to be more 156

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of a professional than Justice could have ever imagined. He neither complained nor reacted to Justices outburst; thus he scored allimportant points with him. The governors aim is to politicize the justice system. Once he establishes that, he can control his own fate. Its the perfect agenda. How so? Turks eyebrows crinkled upward like vernal tents. Were all prisoners of the last headline. Justice said. He motioned to Turk to write down his words, while manufacturing a weak smile. There are pinpricks and there are power-plays. You have to know the difference between the two if youre going to take on a politician. He flashed the boy reporter a lingering, compassionate look, his fraternal instincts now coming out fully. It was Reywals way of telling himwarning himthere would be repercussions if he was going to take on the powerful governor. Write what you want. But write the truth. And be careful. The governor keeps score. Whats next for you, Mr. Reywal? The reporter asked, sounding genuinely concerned. Silence. This went on for seconds. The reporter waited for Justices reply. A bead of sweat formed on the bridge of his nose, trickled down slowly to the sunburned tip, then fell to the ground with a small thump. He remained still, muscles flaccid, not bothering to wipe the trail of sweat away. Whats next? Justice asked rhetorically, staring at the miles of nothingness that stretched all around them. Despite the vast openness and the promise of restoration he felt the window of his future closing in on him fast. He hesitated, then shrugged. Back to Broken Arrow, I suppose. Shitstorms already gone through there. I think they need me most. An invitation. You should come see me sometime if you want a real story. Abramov and his alleged association with Governor Holloway doesnt quantify as a real story? The reporter asked, perplexed. Thats a fairy tale of the worse kind, kid. Its a true story thats nearly impossible to prove. Broken Arrow is different. Broken Arrow has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. Misery theres about ankle high and you can actually wade through it. Thats reality. Crime is rampantso rampant the criminals make the governor seem like a juvenile delinquent. The reporter, his face down in his pad, furiously scrawled Justices words. Finished, he peered at Justice, eyebrows arched and waiting. No. You cant quote me on that one. Justice chuckled. He nodded, a signal he was done giving interviews for the day. He was exhausted. Justice walked away, creating a bridge of distance, separating himself from the group. He desperately needed a moment of solitude to regain his perspective. He stared down the eastern end of Highway 9, where its long curve of desolate asphalt disappeared into the chocolate-brown folds of land, soaked in mystery and extreme isolation. He stared at the swirling dust 157

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devils that crisscrossed the prairie basin and the sagebrush tumbleweeds pushed on by the wind and the miles and miles of telephone poles rising up from the roads hardpan shoulders. They stood like lost sentinels against the sapphire sky, these thirty-foot tall, wooden giants with pleading, outstretched arms, forming an endless line of crosses that stretched on as far as the eye could see. Only there was no Jesus out there to die for their sins, and so the crosses would remain forever empty, devoid of flesh and soul, beseeching a reprieve from the elements. The windstorms out there on those flats were vicious by nature. Without any natural windbreaks the airstreams had plenty of time and open space to maneuver, to gain momentum, to reach those high velocity speeds so hazardous to progress. The results of those speedy currents were evident in those telephone poles. Many of them lay tilted at incongruent angles, half-felled, wires alive with electricity and drooping haphazardly, at some points coming to rest a mere foot or two above the sloping ground, so close an inviting to grasp. It didnt matter. No one feared electrocution. Not in these parts. Not outside those prison walls, anyway. No one could remember the last time it rained. And the forecasts were bleak. There were no rains scheduled for anyones future. No wall of thunderheads piling up, high and gray, waiting on the horizon. Only stark, red Xs marking off each waterless day on the calendar of drought. Another interruption. The young reporter was proving to be obstinate beyond words. One last thing? For the record? The reporter asked. Can you tell me who is the young man in sunglasses? I saw him get out of the car with you earlier. He doesnt say much. Brandi-Shaw told me he is a small piece to a very large puzzle. What did he mean by that? Thats more than one question, sonny. Justice answered, trying to mask the sting of that particular question. A giant, invisible hand had just slapped him hard across the face. The young man in sunglasses was another story altogether. The man in sunglasses was a reminder to Justice Reywal that in this world, sometimes there just wasnt enough time set aside for redemption. Many years ago they had intersected paths, Justice and this silent Indian. It was at the Wahsheton Indian School, the harsh, EuroAmerican boarding school Justice had set off to when he was a young boy. He had gone there with a single thought in mind: to escape the drudgery of life on the reservation; to dodge the bleak future it held for him. Yet misery and racial intolerance was all he garnered from the experience, leaking into his innocent soul like a dark prophecy fulfilled. One day late in the fall of Justices seventh year they met. Justice was working after school inside the small canteen, the prescribed store where students would come by to pick up assigned textbooks and 158

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uniforms and assorted sundries. He heard loud, terrifying screams coming from the communal bathroom down the hallway. Justice bolted down the corridor immediately, passing door after door, nervous and frightened himself, for he knew from past experiences what to expect. He rushed into the shower room and found a longhaired Indian boy, no older than seven huddled in a mass, his body wedged into a corner. His hand clutched a leather pouch, empty, for the bright marbles it held had spilled out all over the tile floor and bounced away towards the center drain, disappearing down the whirling vortex. The boys eyes shut tightly, a direct result of delousing agent thrown in his face by one of the missionaries on duty. The flesh around the boys eyes had already turned to puffy, red masses from the flesh singing poison. Justice hugged the boy tightly, trying to calm him. Singing soft Christian hymns, because he had forgotten the ancient Sioux songs his grandfather had sung to him. Cleansing the boys eyes out with water and a neutralizing agent when the moment presented itself. After that, taking the boy under his wing. Urging him not to fight the system. Telling him to obey the rules. Eschew Indian language for English. Adhere to the doctrine of Christianization. Forget Indian culture and tradition. Destroy your soul. Assimilate, thereby annihilating the person you were before you entered that loathsome place. Forget about your mother and your father and your siblings. Forget about the vast open playgrounds full of bison and deer and wildflowers that made up the prairie of your childhood and forget about everything that made you human. Throw them all in the hearth, your memories and your beliefs and your values, roil them in the fire with a steel, hot poker until all that was left were blazing embers that would flutter up to the air like paper streamers caught in the updraft, each flaming face of ash flickering with glimpses of the past, floating and floating until the peat flickered out in the black light of cold and the embers fell back to earth from the weight they carried. Wake up to a new dawn to start life anew. The boy came through in the end, demoralized, a bit frazzled, sensitive, yet whole. He rarely spoke. Not in class; not in the hallways; not in church. Sometimes, not even to Justice, himself. Although his psyche eventually recovered, for he was young and strong and largely innocent, his eyes remained permanently sensitive to bright surroundings, a problem rarely faced in the hallways of such a bleak campus. From that moment on, because of that callous act performed by a missionary enforcing the policy of Americanization, the boy wore those sunglasses. And he would hide behind them. But there was something else. Something that ran deeper, more ominous. Some unearthly power inside the boy that hinted of surreal intellect and insight. Hinted of a vanity he had incurred, but neither wanted nor liked. Words and wisdom strung together in the throat and mind, forming some dark form of enlightenment. Justice watched the 159

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power grow inside the boy, day after day, month after month; a majestic instrument filling the silent void that was the boys soul. Justice grew to suspect that behind those dark sunglasses there lingered in the boys eyes a deep, palpable hatred for him, for Justice had advised him, impressed upon him to turn his back on his native ways, to show disdain for his own tribe. Just as he had done. Just as his own grandfather had feared. Or to the contrary: maybe Justice had simply misread the boy. Maybe Justices primitive, off-the-rack psychoanalysis was as wide of the mark as it was condescending to that brave, little Indian boy. Perhaps the boys cool detachment came from harboring a great shame for having embraced the tactics of survival? Unlike his antecedents, he had taken the easy way out, giving in to the whites without a fight. Perhaps in that slant of light from a sin unveiled the boy saw defeat without tribulation. A defeat that would live inside him, feeding off itself, filling him with a rage and hate and intensity that would implode on itself and bring nothing to his lips but silence. Whatever the case, a sympathetic Justice sometimes felt, as he walked beside the boy, both of them soundless, that he had pushed all the wrong buttons; albeit unintentionally. Under the guise of survival he had aided in the boys utter and complete corruption. And in his own youthfulness he had failed to see it. And this would haunt him forever. Well? Hes a big mistake on my part. A collaboration Ill probably never live down. Care to elaborate? Sayyou look like youre old enough to understand. Justice segued to a different subject. Anyone ever tell you about The Trail of Tears? Now thats a story you should look into. The young reporter stared at him blankly. His eyes blinked every few seconds or so, filtering out the salty sweat, masquerading his thoughts. Brandi-Shaw stood on the perimeter, watching with mute curiosity. He had a peaceful expression on his face, as if satisfied by events the day had unfurled. The fat farmer stood there too, strangely enough, his feet spread out wide and flat to the terrain, gaining traction and support. Holding his ground. Waiting for something. In the suns diminishing angle, he looked more massive than ever, as dark shadows filled in the crevices where his flesh hung loose and quivering and folded in upon itself. Holding onto that damn black lunch pail as if it were one of Moses commandments. Not sweating. The only one not sweating, Justice realized. Yet something within the farmer pulsated. The air surrounding his skin and hair undulated, giving off minute vibrations, and detected by a sensitive array of insects, they avoided him in droves. Justice held the perception in his mind that if the farmer 160

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were to take a giant step forward the whole world tremble and shake and buildings would come tumbling down. Justice felt an odd twinge of uncertainty creeping in. He couldnt quite place it, give it a face, or even name it; but it was there all the same and there could be no denying its existence. Brandi-Shaw headed over to Justice. He fumbled through his own shirt pockets, looking for his updated press credentials. Hate to cut this short, Reywalbut I have to run. Where? Reywal asked, surprised. Uncomfortable silence. Where you going off to, Brandi-Shaw? Brandi-Shaw averted Justices gaze. And for good measure too. I have a rendezvous with the governor. He invited me along on this leg of his press tour. Have to hurry up and meet his train. He checked his watch. I have less than fifteen minutes to get to the depot. Actually promised me some serious face time. Can you believe it? Said hed give me an hour or two over in Lawton. This could be the big interview. Justice looked at Brandi-Shaw, confused and hurt. A lot of good can come from it, Reywal. Two hundred miles and a dozen stops. Thats a long way. Lot of time for dried up jokes and even drier martinis. Lot of time to soften him up and make him slip. When he does, Ill be there to capture it. Ill bag him for you, Reywal. Before the governor finds himself at room temperature, remember Brandi-Shaw, theres always another body bag lyin around somewhere waitin to be filled. Pause. Lotta room out here in the desert. A lot of open country between railway stations. Lots of quarries that can be filled up with a mans body parts. Ill take that under consideration, Reywal. But I think you worry too much. Thats what my grandfather used to say. Justice thought for a moment, and paused. His face captured the golden light from above as he broke out with an angelic smile. Remember. Follow the money. And you find the motives. Brandi-Shaw completed the sentence. It was their mutually held mantra, one they both believed to be an irrevocable axiom of life. Holloways in bed with Abramov. Justice reflected. That much I know. You just have to figure out where and when. At what point did they have the opportunity to intersect paths? They are both publicity whores. The limelight is an integral part of their occupation. Visibility is an essential part of their game. Which means Which means they would have chosen a public forum. One where reporters and networks were sure to be present. Because visibility and handshakes equate to campaign contributions. Because visibility means they have nothing to hide. Which means there are photographs out there.

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I can think of a few places. The Republican Convention two years ago in Tulsa, for starters. Lot of heavyweights in the cattle and oil business skipped the rodeos that weekend to attend. And where there are oil and cattlemen, youll find the tertiary elements of big business. Casinos. Banking. Lobbyists from the beltway. Brandi-Shaw searched the banks of his memory, trying to retrieve an image. Suddenly, he tapped the side of his head with his forefinger and smiled. I remember now. Justice nodded, satisfied. Thats where youll start. Find the photograph or the story and work your way backwards from there. Find out the 527 organizations that were in attendance, rubbing elbows with the candidates over cowboy steaks. Because they dont make expenditures to directly advocate the election or defeat of any candidate, these organizations avoid regulation by the Federal Elections Commission. They are the silent co-conspirators of fraud. These 527 groups are run by special interest groups that raise millions and operate on the fringes of the political system. But whos kidding who? When they raise millions for a campaign, they are going to want to ensure a favorable outcome. They want their candidate to win. They need him to win. And in order to ensure that favorable outcome, they must broadcast a strong, imposing presence. America Coming Together was there. Brandi-Shaw said. So were Texans for Equality and Truth. Justice replied. Bingo. Brandi-Shaw said, his eyes lighting up like a pinball machine. From behind his ear he produced a small pencil and began to scrawl furiously on a pad. Could it be that simple? Remember, Brandi-Shawthere is precedence for this. Recent precedence. Aided by the 527s, Republicans stole the 2000 elections in Texas. Result: The GOP held a majority in the Texas House for the first time since reconstruction. Justice paused, giving Brandi-Shaw time to write everything down. If Holloway and Abramov met in Tulsa, one of these 527s set it up. Find out where Abramov stayed. Whom he fraternized with? Who stepped out of the limousine with him? Hell, who picked up the tab? If youre lucky, there will be a corporate sponsor attached. This is illegal. Corporations cant make these conduit contributions in the names of others. I recall seeing a lot of pictures of Abramov in the papers at that time. Find out what Indian tribal leaders met with him. Did he gamble? If so, where? Was he given a marker or actual gaming chips? Who did he play golf with? Track down the fund raising figures for that event. After that, the money trail will get hot. Someone down the line will talk. No one wants to get caught eating the last steak at the barbecue. You sure about all this? I just crack open the door, Brandi-Shaw. Cockroaches go where they want to. Justice replied.

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Fair enough. Brandi-Shaw grinned. Ill contact you when I make some headway. Should be in a few weeks or so. Ok? Remember. Voters pick the winnersbut the media baits the trap. We have history in our midst, Brandi-Shaw. I wont screw it up. This Chinese box has few layers to peel. He poked himself in the chest with a black, bony finger. Deal. Until then you stay safe, cowboy. Reywal offered BrandiShaw a not-so-subtle caveat. Bullets travel far and fast out there in Lawton. Nothing to stop them but human bodies. Blacks and Indians make the best targets, I hear. Brandi-Shaw nodded curtly. What about you, Reywal? What are you going to do? Justice looked up at the sun and basked in its warmth. The mammoth fireball was already crawling down the blue sky, inching its way towards the Wichita Mountains, whose glorious ramparts filled the western horizon, and as it did its unassailable ferocity diminished. The languorous blanket of heat that had suffocated them all afternoon tapered off and began to dissipate. Latent waves of vapid heat floated up from the land into the jet stream above to be absorbed. In the back of his mind, Justice wondered if the mercury on the giant thermometer at the roadside had climbed long enough, steadily enough, to set the record high. Possible. Another roadrunner darting quickly through the parking area like a stock car on its final lap reminded him that the bubbling cauldron of rough-patch ground was still boiling over with fury, too hot for even the fleetest of animals to traverse. I guess Ill just stand here and wait for the weather to turn. Youre crazy. Maybe so. But I do love the smell of fall. Brandi-Shaw looked back at the reformatory, and shrugged Always poking the angry bear, huh, Reywal? Somewhere in the distance a single bird cawed. Brandi-Shaws question was in reference to something Justice had asked him three years ago, on the day they first met. They were both covering the Iowa Democratic Partys Jefferson Jackson Dinner for their respective papers, and amid all the fuss and the hubbub about who was going where and what candidate would rise up to the presidency, Brandi-Shaw had suddenly unleashed a vitriolic line of questioning to a stylish, female, junior senator from New York. This precipitated his being kicked out of the pressroom, carried out by two rather large enforcers wearing dark suits and sinister haircuts. Justice, admiring Brandi-Shaws fearless determination and verve to get to the facts, followed close behind. In the courtyard of the Marriott he pulled BrandiShaw aside and introduced himself in an unexceptional manner, asking, You done poking the angry bear? To which Brandi-Shaw replied, without missing a beat, that dependsyou ready to start buying? They spent the rest of the night drinking up a storm at the 163

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hotel bar; making bets and casting lots on what candidate would make it and which one would likely get caught by the continuous loop with his pants down. They lit matchsticks and threw them at passing lobbyists; laughing like indolent school-kids on a field trip. They became instant friends and had stayed in touch ever since; promising to work together in one capacity or another if the need ever arose. The angry bear has gone off to hibernation. The fights either over, or its just beginningI cant tell which. Youre not thinking of quitting, are you, Reywal? Im thinking Im tired of fighting the human impulse to stick my head in the sand. He paused. The desiccated sand and salt-encrusted rocks surrounding him sparkled, a thousand points of light glittering like a false Las Vegas. Justice prayed for the twilight to come in swiftly and quench the lands thirst, the lights that blinded him. Sometimes you have to stop and wonder what it is youre fighting for. Whats the point? Ill be done with the governor in less than a week. Brandi-Shaw said, sensing Justices moroseness. Ill rush the deadline and come see you as quickly as I can. Well work together. Like the old times. Ill be in Broken Arrow. Sitting there with my finger in the dike and my pants hiked up to the knees. Look me up when youre done. Ill have my hands full and I know I can use the company. If the bullets or the governor dont get me, Ill do just that. BrandiShaw joked. He turned, took a few steps, and then stopped dead in his tracks. He arched his head and took one long, last look at the massive reformatory. He took a deep breath and sighed. He was glad to be leaving the great waste factory behind. He turned and called out. Youll be okay with all of this? Justice tapped his chest, to a spot right over his heart. I keep that ember burning bright deep inside of me. So I dont forget what Ive doneso I dont forget what I have to do. The Lake brothers? Will they be all right? He asked, nodding slightly in the Lake brothers direction. The brothers stood quietly off to the side, talking amongst themselves, hugging, observing, absorbing their new surroundings with restrained delight. Will they get through this? If they dont there will be hell to pay. Ill try my best to see them through. Justice shrugged. Maybe there just arent any more rabbits left to pull from the hat. I think youve grown just a tad bit cynical, Reywal. Pause and reflect. You need to lighten up before the system kills you. Nope. Im just a guy thats getting older, trying to keep together rather than fall apart. And time is working against me. Time is working against us all. So cheer up. Tell the system to stop sending bodies and the warden will stop the killings. Then Ill be happy again. Reywal said. 164

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Reywal, you are the whore of circumstance. Brandi-Shaw chided. And you are as unassuming as you are uncontrollable. Reywal rebuked. He grew serious. Be careful with your queries out there. Reywal nodded towards the open countryside. Analytical thinking divides and dissects. But it doesnt satisfy the needs of the spirit. Youll be in grave danger. Justice reached out and clasped Brandi-Shaws hand with both of his and shook firmly. Something told him it would be a long while before the two friends would see each other again. He held on to Brandi-Shaw for what seemed an eternity. Go on and get to your train. And take this baby-faced kid reporter with you. His questions are irritating. The young reporter frowned. Irritating, but interesting. Justice said. The reporter beamed at the iconic activists flattery. Hey, I almost forgot. I saw you talking to Lilywhite earlier. BrandiShaw said, scratching his wooly head with a dull pencil tip. What was that all about? Finished preening, he quickly tucked the yellow No. 2 back over his ear lobe. Justices face puckered up in bewilderment. Cadence Lilywhite. From The Kansas City Star. I saw you with her a while ago. Ohher. Justice recalled. A tweaking of his heart caused by the saccharine recollection of her face. How could he forget? Cadence Lilywhite, with her fine, splendid name right out of the Mayflower. With her milky, white skin out of the pages of Mademoiselle magazine and her imperious attitude straight from the Hamptons. The auburn hair that matched the sun in intensity. Cadence Lilywhite, whom hed left standing there in revulsion with a tiny hand placed over her mouth at the sight of the dead raven. Brandi-Shaw quickly recounted their past. Talked to her out in Abilene a year ago. It was her first story, as I recall. Sheriff down there had been forced to resign by the townsfolk cause hed had the audacity to deputize two Iowa Indians. Walked right up and asked me for advice on how to handle the situation. What questions to ask? Who to talk to? Smart kid, even back then. Funny thing was, I got the feeling all along that she knew her job inside and out. I figured she knew who I was and just wanted to find out how Id play out things. Even back then she knew how to get on the right side of people. Stayed back and watched, didnt ask a lot of questions. But she knew every little thing that went on. I guess girls can see the angles far better than us heathens. Maybe the extra X chromosome has something to do with it. Pause. He smiled. Smart kid, he repeated. Too smart to forget. Yeah. Thats what Im scared of Brandi-Shaw. Intelligence with a purpose gives way to a razors edge of improbabilities. Improbabilities I

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never want to contemplate. Add to that a beautiful face and a disarming smile and youve got a mountain of trouble. Shed make a great ally, I think. Yes, she would. You should look her up. Work with her. Teach her. Brandi-Shaw winked, treacherously. Yes, Justice thought. When this was all over, he would make sure to do that very thing. There was a comfortable silence that lasted a few moments. Justice looked up at the white-hot sun, rotating it, altering it in his minds eye to mesh with the face of Cadence Lilywhite. Everything was so clear. He knew what he had to do. His future course of action had come into focus; shifting from the abstract to the concrete. Come hell or high water, he would contact her at the Star once he got back to Broken Arrow and settled in. One last favor, Brandi-Shaw? Justice asked. One for the books. Brandi-Shaw waited. Take him with you Justice pointed towards the young man in sunglasses. He has a story of his own to tell the world. Have that kid reporter talk to him. Give him his first breakhis first real story. The more people we get on our side the better. Sure. Brandi-Shaw smiled back, eager to play big brother. Ill do that favor for you. Wont cost you a red cent. A dirty martini with plenty of upside will do just fine. Is that price reserved for your enemies? Justice joked. BrandiShaw laughed vigorously in return. Brandi-Shaw walked over to the young man. He draped his arm over his shoulder. He stared into the dark sunglasses, catching his own reflection in the process. Ready for an adventure? The young man looked over at Justice, a puzzled expression filling out his otherwise pristine face. His eyes, however, remained concealed by the shades. Justice nodded. Its ok. Go on with him. Justice said. Hell take care of you from this point on. Pause. Its what weve talked about. The young Indian adjusted his dark sunglasses, nodded languidly, and began to walk away after waving a terse goodbye to Justice. His face was smooth in texture, unlined, free of worry, like a perfect day in late fall when the fallen leaves have all assembled under the largest trees, ready to be swallowed by something incomprehensible, the coming white blanket of frost. His dark red skin, glazed with sweat, glowed in the sunlight, proudly reflecting the cutting edge of his pedigree. He did not speak, and he did not feel the need for physical contact. The young man merely turned his back and walked away like a man that had much to forget. Like a man that had swallowed the bitter pages of his own history, absorbed them into his core by a complex manner of attrition. Overcome by fatalism and an inexorable past that would never cease to haunt him. Yet he had his entire future before him, bright days full with the promise of understanding, and Brandi-Shaw would see to it that this 166

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future would come to him sooner rather than later. It was time to leave it all behind; the black hole that had swallowed light, time and energy. Time to reach inside and pull out every shred of darkness and selfloathing that existed. Justice remained where he stood, gripped by the weight of departure, not wanting to press the issue. He watched, held fast by a wave of melancholy as Brandi-Shaw and his two new recruits crossed the gravel apron towards the half-deserted parking lot, separated by fifty yards from the prisons receiving bay and that dreaded arch that would exist until the end of time, throwing concave shadows over the ground beneath it that resembled the sinister smile of a conquering giant. They walked close together, comrades in arms, bodies bumping along the way, kicking up a cloud of prairie dust. Brandi-Shaw towered over the young reporter, who seemed eager and vibrant; smiling fondly like a high school senior whod just uncovered a story on cafeteria malfeasance. Justice called out. Hey, kid. The reporter turned. He beamed, looking positively happy that hed been invited to go along for the ride. If you have the time, ask Brandi-Shaw to tell you all about The Trail of Tears. Its a hell of a story. Justice stared down at the ground, lost in the tunnel vision of his thoughts. Hell of a story. He murmured under his breath. The young reporter waved back affirmatively. He clasped one finger over the back of his ear. The other hand was extended outward, palm up in uncertainty. He hadnt heard a single word. For the third time that day Justice Reywals voice went ignored, lost to the vast amphitheatre that was Greer County. Justice waved the reporter off. They continued on, led by Brandi-Shaw. He quickly navigated the postage-stamp sized lot, five rows of largely non-descript cars, haphazardly parked, and soon found his rental car. A minute or so later Brandi-Shaw gunned the engine to his vehicle and tore out of the parking area, hastened, hell-bent on making up time. Tires squealed, kicking up gravel and dirt. The front fender struck the tarmac where the apron dipped and met the highway and gave off a sick, metallic crunch. As the car sped off Justice could have sworn he heard BrandiShaw laughing inside the vehicle, taking utter glee in the rental car companys misfortune. Lawton and the governor and destiny awaited him. Justice found himself alone. It was the first time in as long as he could remember that he was blessed with a moment of such solitude. A moment to think and reconcile himself. The serene moment was virtually broken when a shard of sorrow crept inan inexorable accumulation of memories and sentiments Reywal was unable to displace. They went through him, a commonality

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filling the voided channel left by the departure of the two men he considered to be his best friends in the world. He peeled his eyes away from the highway, trying to forget BrandiShaw and the young Indian for the moment. He turned, giving his back to the valley below. He took a few measured steps across the bone white stretches of salt that had leeched up from the lifeless soil. With deft precision he sidestepped a patch of rabbit brush, all twisted and gnarled and dried out and scratching at his knees and calves like the hands of a thousand dead bodies asking for water. The last of the reporters and the prison walls were now in front of him, wedged into the space between himself and the sun, which loomed just above. The orange sphere continued to creep down towards the horizon on a gentle, astral plane. He put his hand up to the sky, palm and fingers arranged sideways. He locked in on the sun. One, maybe two hand widths away from slipping behind the mountain range to his left on its journey to the far side of the world. So close was the sun, in fact, that Justice felt if he stood up on the tips of his toes he could reach out and grab the powerful star by its halo, whereupon hed drag it away to the nearest reservoir and submerge it, drowning out its virulent ferocity in one steamy, hissing moment, throwing them all into instant night cloaked in cool comfort. He checked his watch. The hands showed it was getting close to 2 pm. The inception of shade. Silhouettes began to materialize out of thin air, the byproducts of time-lapse photography. Shadows were beginning to unfurl, spreading slowly across the powdered basin. A few hours away from the gentle reprieve of dusk. He watched the few scattered trees that pockmarked the general vicinity. They swayed softly as the balmy afternoon wind teetered on the edge of birth. He turned to watch the men and women, gathering like a flock of sheep in the vast ocean of dust that lingered underneath the sun in eternal damnation. The sunlight, though diminishing in strength, was still unrelenting in its course. It recoiled sharply off a multitude of shiny objects: metal camera equipment and plastic press badges, aluminum soft drinks and Coke bottles, glass camera lenses and expensive sunglasses, the guards guns, the guards shoes polished to an ultrahigh gleam, scattered automobiles with their glossy, high-impact windshields and glinting specks of chromecreating a withering, humanity-driven strobe light effect that made seeing difficult. Justice had trouble making out the geometry of angles, capturing each moment in his mind, deciphering the places where all those shadows originated. The reporters were busy closing up shop. Testing tape recorders. Rewinding, fast-forwarding. Words that came out as non-sequential blurbs. They checked cameras of all kindsvideo, digital, and autofocusmaking sure the molded, metal housing units were free of the refined sand that could easily breach the tiniest opening and ruin 168

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mechanical or electrical parts. They held the various accessories of the continuous loop up to their ears and out in front of their eyes. They crossed their fingers, praying the equipment had worked properly and captured every clever sound bite. Cameramen wiped their gear with gentle woolen cloths, removing diaphanous films of dust that had latched on to the concave, glass lenses, the inevitable attraction built through static electricity. The last of the TV journalists filmed the coda sequences to their exposes. In vain they attempted to alter slapdash appearances and expel all remnants of the reddish land from their physical bodies: Men and women pealed off leather loafers and leather pumps and batted them against their thighs to shake the sand loose. With handkerchiefs and tissues and shirtsleeves they wiped away pools of perspiration off their foreheads and applied fresh coats of fleshbased makeup to their faces; they removed long-sleeved, sweatstained shirts and slipped fresh ones over dirty torsos; they replaced shriveled neckties with newer ones. They vainly combed their hair; primping and prodding wet, flattened hairdos back to life in the same rote manner as a trainer giving orders to a circus elephant. Justice Reywal, Avarice and Thom Lake soon closed ranks. It was inevitable. The circus was in town, they reasoned. And they had been granted a front row seat. They stood off to the side, segregated, huddled in a semi-circle. Ignored by all, this triumvirate of proud Indian blood, two ex-cons and an activist, watched, completely engrossed and amused by the brainless display of humanity unfurling before them. They stood with their backs to the sun, like gunfighters in the old west often did, listening to the comforting sounds of technology that filled the air: The gentle crackle of the guards hand held analog radios far up in the towers; the rumbling dissonance of the occasional diesel truck that sped by on the highway, loaded with timber or farm machinery or cattle; the faraway sound of the steam engine pressing on as the governors train powered up near the raised platforms of the Granite station, ready to rush headlong into the gentle folds of primitive land; the nasal, high-pitched whine of a colorful crop duster that swept in low across the plains, looking for a full cotton field to drop its insecticides upon. Justice stared at the two brothers. Passing silence. What now? He asked. Avarice shrugged, noncommittally. Head to the highway and wait for a bus, I suppose. He said, after a while. He produced a frayed, yellowed bus schedule from his back pocket. They keep a regular schedule, Im told. Im sure one ill pass by shortly. Where you headed?

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I got just over thirty-six dollars, wherever that takes us, Thom Lake piped in. $36. Partial payment for the bodies hed buried. Blood money, paid directly from state coffers. Anywhere outside of Oklahoma. Avarice ignored Thoms remark. Northern Cheyenne Reservation, probly. Up in Montana. Some people up there Thom and I know. Got jobs waiting for us, if we want em. Rounding up feral Mustang herds along the Big Horn Valley. Avarice paused. His eyes grew sad and distant. Thats how Ill spend the rest of my life, I guess. Cornering and lassoing mares and stallions, taking them down one-by-one, making them prisoners, trying to forget about this entire messtrying to forget that I was once a prisoner myself. Montanas a good a place as any to make a fresh start. Justice said. Esperanza Ridge was there. His past was there, still living and breathing up on that sacred mountain promontory. Justice suddenly thought of something. What about your probation? Thatll have to work itself out. Only time will tell. Avarice said. Justice nodded in agreementthough inside he knewthe state of Oklahoma had no doubt seen the last of the Lake brothers. Did you know the Cheyenne fought side by side with Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn? Avarice shook his head. No. They were allies by then. Cheyenne and Sioux. No tribal rivalry or hatred existed. They shared common hunting grounds. Lived together as one tribe. Cooked and ate and slept under the same teepees. You know why they made peace, Avarice? Again he shook his head, disinterested. Because they had no choice. They had to band together. All the tribes of the Great Plains had to band together. It was the only way they could fight off a common enemy; in this case the enemy being the white man. Pause. Even back then serious, valiant warriors knew how to set aside their differences and work together for a common goal. What goal was that? Obliteration? The churlish Cheyenne replied. Survival, Avarice. The ground on which we prove ourselves may never change, but the rules of engagement state otherwise. Why dont you ask the warden about his rules of engagement? Wonder what hell tell you? Ask Thom, too. See if hes even heard of such a thing. The whites called our ancestors savages, but they seriously underestimated their bravery. Their sense of honor. Justice paused, the words forming in his mind. Sometimes all people can do is cling to their past. They latch on to that last rung on the ladder and hold on for dear life. Whats wrong with that? If a ladders all you got, then a ladders probly worth fightin for. Dyin for, too. Thats what I think, anyway.

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Its a different kind of fight today, Avarice, and it proves your thinking wrong. Well, your idea of survival aint what I had in mind, Mr. Reywal. Pause. Not for a damn stretch. There are thoughts and there are words, Avarice. And there is a difference between them. Sometimes neither can be undone. Sometimes though, the word is all that matters. Pause. Justices head was beginning to blister from an oncoming headache. Dont make your last remark to me hard words that cant be undone. Theres no reason why you and I cant put aside our differences and depart as friends. Justice placed his outstretched arm in front of him, the palm of his hand facing down. The veins on the back of his sunburned hand stood out like miniature mountain ranges. He watched Avarice. He watched his irises expand into two round, brownish masses; flourishing with pride. The main artery in the Cheyennes neck stood out like that highway, as blood screeched up to his head. His breathing became rapid; almost super-human. Justice was filled with trepidation; for he had no idea what Avarice was thinking. It was important for Justice to sway him. If Avarice fell suit, Thom would surely follow in his footsteps. After a moment of silence filled with dramatic eye contact, Avarice clicked his tongue, shook his head and quietly placed his hand on top of Justices. After a moment Thom did the same. They stayed like that for a brief spell; three men with their hands pressed together with surprising weight and essence. In that moment they were no longer enemies. They had transcended the pain and the betrayal and the disparate bloodlines within. They were not brothers yet, for that was too much to expect; but Justice knew that sometimes great things started with a simple gesture. Justice managed a smile. We are young men with hearts of stone, he thought, proudly. Sifting through the detritus of lives fueled by shame and hate and reckless abandonment. Lives we knew were never meant to be glorious. Hearts we never meant to break but did. Young men with hearts of stone. It was John Ravage who had originally coined that phrase to Justice Reywal. They had just met. It was on the road to Crow Agency and even then Ravage had had an impeccable sense of timing for dredging up the demons that haunted Justice Reywal, devils that had driven him all his life like a herd of feral mustangs racing through the highlands with the lasso following close behind, always tightening, always constricting. Justice had an idea. Or more like a plan. One more simple gesture to make. One small act that would add to the strength of the first and thereby cement together a burgeoning friendship. Because responsibility did not come in moderation, Justice surmised there was no other way to act. He had to go the distance on this one. It was his fate. 171

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Take you as far as Elk City if you want. Theres a Greyhound terminal near the center of town. Busses run all night to Rapid City, Im certain. Justice had the sudden urge to drop everything, to head out on a road trip with the two brothers, travel with them state-to-state, time zone-to-time zone until they reached the safety of Ashland, Montana, a small town lingering in the middle of savage country, a stones throw away from the reservation. It would be a ride through arid, hostile terrain; a ride not all that different from the one John Ravage had taken him on years before when hed breached Esperanza during the first days of spring. Sudden noise above them. The helicopter, empty now except for its pilot, had returned, a mere twenty minutes after having dropped the governor and his men off at the train station in Granite. It hovered fifty feet above them, a gleaming mechanical bird fighting inertia, rotors flicking away clouds of dust from underneath its wide belly. The menacing blades, fitted with anti-erosion strips to protect them from wear and tear as the helo navigated the abrasive dust bowl air, sliced the air into red-laced ribbons tinged with the reflecting red sand of the Oklahoma plains. So engrossed were they in watching the helicopter perform its perfunctory maneuvers above the playing field that the three men never saw the large, squat man move in silently behind them. The man, dressed in bleached overalls and muddy field boots marked by holes in the aged leather, slipped furtively from the pool of harsh daylight into the dark wavering shadow thrown by the helicopter. He left behind the munificent sunlight and all feelings of sympathy. He entered into hallowed ground, a bright candlelit country connected to a grayish-black blind spot unfurling in the middle of the day as the helicopters frame continued to cast a deep silhouette below its belly. Standing alone like a beacon, with a sense of continuity and purpose, the stranger lingered, then stepped out of the shadow after a brief hiatus. His rotund form cast a malignant, black, corpulent shadow ahead of him. A shadow within a shadow. It was as if the shade itself had given birth to its own gloominess. Justice Reywal and the Lake brothers stood all but twenty feet away, completely oblivious to the mans presence. They had turned slightly to watch the helicopter, and in so doing had put the sun in front of them. The direct sunlight in their eyes and the updraft of prairie dust swirling over them made it impossible to see anything. The man had come, cloaked in silence and invisibility and deception. The man did not think. He wore the blank, stolid expression of a man who had a large, improbable task before him; like an engineer charged with building a spindly rope bridge over a treacherous gorge or undertaking a massive waterworks project in the dessert or clearing out a stubborn section of slums in a country with no economy. He knew the road leading into the prison andalthough he 172

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did not reside therehe knew the tiny town of Granite well. He had kneeled in the wooden pews of the protestant church over on Main St. and had just recently picked ripe produce at the farmers market over on Common Avenue with its bins full of lush, red and green fruits and vegetables. He had walked the perfectly manicured, green-grassed square of Bicentennial Park where every Fourth of July under an inky black night they held a fireworks display. He had watched the roman candles shooting up into the summer darkness fifty or so times in his life; each time marveling at the height and power in which those colorful pyrotechnic stars and comet shells would discharge, always exploding in a myriad of colors, always at preordained, controlled altitudes. He had taken many deep breaths into his lungs over the years and had held those breaths for great intervals, waiting breathlessly as the delay powder stretched out the moments, and then inevitably, the lifting charge catching and the chain reaction that followed, and the countdown would begin. A sudden bombardment of stars sounding off into the purple-black blanket of night. Hed count them one by one, and in return, the night itself would reach out and seize those fluttering, ephemeral moments of color, bathe them in its own feathery moonlight before they flickered out. Onetwothree one after another the stars shot out into the darkness, traveling so high and far he thought theyd bring daylight with them when they fell back to earth. In the few seconds of time between each explosion, from the muffled whoosh of ignition to the sharp popping sounds of the explosion, the man sat on the same grassy knoll, year after year, wondering if that was indeed how the heavens had been built by God above. The man did not think of these simple pleasures now. Fireworks on the 4th. Praying at the altar. Sinking his teeth into a fresh, red apple. Planting his crops. Caressing the small of a womans back. The man only knew what he had to do. A task that had no earthly reward. He had washed his hands and cleansed his soul. He had gone to confession, kneeled in front of the lord and repented for sins to come. He had exited the small church earlier that morning, recanting prayer after prayer, his resolve growing as intractable as his faith, and stepped headlong into the realms of shadows. Justice leaned in closer to the brothers, taking comfort in that newfangled, fraternal bond. He was ready to take leave, to depart the prison grounds for what he hoped was the last time. He would take the Lake brothers, the heartbreak, and the memories of his five-year struggle with him. And he would begin life anew. Somewhere. Anywhere. A mystifying smile encompassed his face. Justice forced it into submission quickly, though; before the Lake brothers could detect it and decipher the force emanating within Justice Reywal.

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That feeling, abrogated and removed from him so long ago he couldnt remember how to react to its presence, was happiness. Pure and simple. Happiness An unbroken column of joy rising up in his soul, mixing with the soft afternoon sunlight that caressed his face, ready to conquer all the hostility and aggression and ugly passion that had become so second nature to him. Happiness It had started five years ago, in Esperanza, and had traveled like a coin or a cloud through time and space, meeting him here at the precise moment, when everything hung in the balance, when the scales of justice had finally tipped his way. A fatalist will tell you that a circle traced on a sheet of paper has the same exact beginning and end point. It is the artists hand that guides the mark around and around the paper, traveling within its circumference, sometimes wavering, sometimes true, but eventually the pen comes back to its point of origination. Justice could empathize. He himself had navigated the rough waters of life and come full circle. Suddenly he was seven years old again, sans the scars and wrinkles of time, living a life of bliss on the reservation with his father and grandfather at his side. Happiness It was all most people wanted out of life. Yet to many, it had proved to be a steely enigma so hard to come by. Like drawing off drinking water from a dirty stream. Harder than winning the lottery in some cases. Harder than drawing a straight flush on the river. But it was his now; as it was his to lose.

Justice Reywal, perhaps acting out of intuition, had turned his face against the grain, against the blinding sun when he heard the first of the shots ring out. The unexpected sound of gunfire was chaotic, deafening, and quite unexpected. But it was the recurrence of echoes of bullets traveling at supersonic speeds that threw the entire prison complex into chaos. Justice Reywal, perhaps listening to the small voice of instinct in his head, reacted by covering his ears with both hands. He remained upright, unflinching to the unseen danger before him, concealed out in the open, safe in the womb that was the suns glare. The look on his face was one of pure bedevilment. It only occurred to him long after the fact that what hed heard was, in fact, gunfire, and the expression on his face conveyed the belief that the bullets were surely meant for someone other than him. He checked himself. He seemed perfectly intact, his body unscathed, as if the ghost shirt he wore had 174

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miraculously repelled the bullets. He instinctively padded down his chest and stomach, but could not find any damage, no apparent blood. All but the bravest or most dim-witted reporters hit the deck immediately. Electronic equipment and reams of notebook paper filled the air, thrown up callously and without recourse as to where theyd land. The crazy few that stood, unwavering, heads swinging towards the source of the ruckus rather than away proved to be the ragged, battle-hardened veterans of the journalistic community. They had covered Iraq and Somalia and Little Rock and had heard gunfire many times before; they knew when to hide up in a tree like a squirrel dodging a fox and when to stand their ground and ask questions. The guards up in the towers immediately dropped down to their combat stances. They covered each others flanks by rote, ready to locate and take on the shooter. They searched the ground below, zeroing in on the echoes for the source of the sound but the diffused light reflecting off the salted land like a giant vanity mirror made it difficult to see anything. The beatific grin that had filled Thom Lakes face instantly vanished; replaced by a look of utter astonishment. This was followed by the mortal expression of pain. A thin stream of blood appeared just below his left clavicle, staining his shirt inches below his neck with a bright red menace that matched the Oklahoma soil in shade. Thom Lake looked down at the shredded mess that was his shirt, the cotton fibers ragged and scorched, staring at the exposed, perforated skin around his shoulder. Without thinking, he brought his left hand to the wound and gently felt around it, poking and prodding. He brought his hand up to his face for closer inspection. His fingertips were stained bright red. His face was passive. The perplexed look on his face grew wider with each passing second. He neither winced nor displayed any outward manifestations of pain. He searched for words, trying to call out to Justice, to Avarice, but his lips remained motionless, frozen, failing to respond to the signals sent from his brain. In seconds, the recoil of shock would set into his system. That much was apparent to Justice Reywal. It had not yet dawned on Thom Lake that he had just been shot by a large caliber weapon. And then, Justice heard many more shots, fired in rapid succession at least five of them in allthe inimitable, earsplitting pop-pop-pop sounds of a behemoth weapon that proved so loud they could be heard over the rising din and screaming. It was as if the entire basin had just been struck by a violent thunderstorm, its earsplitting pangs yawing back across the padded grain. Justice immediately felt a sharp pain in his lower abdomen, a spot very near to his liver, followed by an even sharper explosion in his upper left bicep. Avarice Thom Lake finally called out feebly, a second before he fell forward to his knees. The look on his angelic face said it all: he was 175

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still unsure of what had happened to him. That same innocent, childish look was frozen eternally on his face. The bloodstain around his upper torso was growing rapidly, spreading out like an angry roadmap. And then another bullet found him. His body jerked forward, immediately, due to the high velocity impact. Blood poured out in great volumes from a fresh exit wound centered in the larynx, the bullet having partially severed his vertebrae. His windpipe crushed, he was now unable to speak. He clutched his neck with both hands, pawing at something he could not see; trying to fix the ravaged mess he could feel inside of him. His eyes grew wide with the sudden terror and realization that not all was well. Justice, stunned and unable to move his feet, looked down and saw Avarice Lake lying on the ground, writhing in agony from multiple gun shot wounds. The back of his head looked like a ragged, red, caked mess; with flaps of skin and hair hanging off the scalp. Brain matter slowly oozed onto the ground, mixing with the blood to form an ugly, red-black tidal pool over the hardpan. Justice, astonished to be alive, barely able to position himself, turned his feet slowly. He was the only one left standing. His gaze fell upon the archway and the prison beyond and for some odd reason he saw them as a means to survival. There was an infirmary somewhere behind all that black granite, he reasoned. A primitive one, no doubt, but one that could very well save his life. And then a stark realization: where there was an infirmary, Justice remembered, there was also a morgue. Thom Lake had worked inside, cleaning and prepping deceased cons in a cynical ritual of death, receiving $2 per body, the states way of compensation. And then, his mind filled with disturbing questions: Which room would Justice make it to first? Who would work on his body now that Thom Lake was gone? How long would it take for his body to reach that state of chilliness morticians identified as room temperature? Justice tried to walk, but his efforts proved fruitless. The Oklahoma sand may as well have been mud, the way it coagulated around his boots and held him in its grip. He looked down. A sudden, terrifying inclination of sight and reason. It wasnt fear that was holding his feet in check, or the soft pocket of sand, for that matter; but his systemic reaction to several bullets that had found their mark, and found them well. Numbness quickly set into his lower extremities. His legs and feet were as useless as cords of stacked wood. The ability to experience sensation and move about had been dismantled. His left shoulder seemed useless, as if a giant hammer had smashed it to bits. His left arm hung down low, useless, nerves atrophying by the second from the bullet that had pulverized his upper arm. Thick, red blood poured down his arm to the ground, dripping off his fingertips in chaotic

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patterns, painting a grim picture on the sandy soil that resembled a decadent, indecent Jackson Pollock. He looked up, in the direction from where the shots had come. He heard nothing. Only the dry sound of startled crows cawing away at the day filled his ears. He saw nothing. Only the bright, orange fireball above that poured generous waves of pale light over him. Entering the dark tunnel with him, this all encompassing brightness filtered thru his eyes and rushed into the dying parts of his body to fill a void he could not place or namehe only knew that this chasm existed within him, like the forsaken soil underneath his boot heels belonged to Greer and no other place on earth, and it would not enter the realm of death until he himself chose to. He heard footsteps approaching, great plodding footsteps that shook the land, but he could not see the force or face behind them. Justice looked up at the sky and located the small squadron of black crows passing overhead. The scavengers flew out of formation, incongruous, recklessly shifting places in the airborne column. Twenty wide-bodied, winged creatures, crazy from the sheer heat, half-deaf from the echoes of gunfire, struggled to recapture any semblance of normalcy and order. But the heat that fired their dark bodies up to a slow roil was getting the best of them, and like fighter pilots edging into the surrealistic arena of dogfights, the squadron widened, dispersed, and disbanded altogether, each bird a vessel lost in the vaporous light diffused over the wide open expanse of blue sky. And then Justice Reywals world slowly began to gravitate towards blackness. His body tilted, then fell foreword in a slow motion, shifting freefall. He buckled forward onto his knees. His system reeled from the awesome shock of the powerful bullets, and in his mind he performed quick calculations before his ability to analyze and problem-solve faded: there was shock and massive, internal bleeding. No doubt about it. He could feel the injuries deep inside. He took a deep breath, sighed, and let his eyes fall down to his wound. A gaping, neat entrance wound surrounded by charred flesh to the right of his naval, down near the liver, followed by a deep and substantial wound channel. Too large to have come from a 9mm round. Definitely a large caliber weapona .44 magnum or .357. .45 caliber bullets were moderate in power and subsonic and would not have produced those loud cracks theyd all heard. Maybe even hollow points. Standard military 230 grain. Effective in lowering blood pressure almost immediately; followed by death. He was now hemorrhaging vast quantities of blood. He could tell by the way blood made its way up his esophagus, leaking into each internal cavity on the way up to his mouth. He pressed his right hand against his liver, trying his best to stem the tide of blood; but he knew it was pointless. The blood, darkish brown in color, mixed with a lethal portion of green bilea terrible sign, a doctor would later sayseeped out from 177

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the wound like a flashflood roaring down a narrow gulch. He paused, bracing himself for what he had to do next. Carefully, he peeled his right hand away from the entrance wound and reached behind his back, fumbling around, fighting the urge to scream out for help, hoping to find an exit wound. The pain was not excruciating; in fact, each passing second brought more numbness and a strange, lukewarm comfort. Yet all of this could not compare to the sense of dread that set in when he failed to find penetrated, fleshed-out skin on his lower back. Justice was now convinced the bullet was lodged inside him, wedged somewhere between his liver and his spine. The transmission of kinetic energy to tissue had been awesome in its intensity. The damaging cone of energy had spread forward along a two-inch wide path of destruction, beginning at the entry point below his naval and ending near his spinal column. A bullet from a large caliber handgun traveled at twice the speed of sound. So fast, in fact, that the gunfire echoes had fooled Justice into believing if he had just moved quicker at the first sound of danger he would have had a fighting chance. In actuality, the bullet had found him a split second before the sonic boom had filled his ears. The truth be told, Justice was already dying before hed even heard the actual sound of the grim reaper coming for him. A few feet away, Avarice Lake showed only the slightest signs of life. His legs weakly kicked out at the air, but Justice knew those were the last remnants of primitive nerve endings, the last gasp of synapses in the brain firing away final orders to an abandoned foxhole. Justice, his face going pale and dropping, counted down the seconds to the inevitable moment of unconditional surrender. He couldnt believe the irony. Death had come for him quickly, but it had come at this late hour. Showdowns took place at high noon, and not a second later. It was the code of the west. It was the way things were supposed to be out there. This time the slouching beast had taken over five years to engage him, crawling over rough terrain he couldnt imagine or traipsing through the darkest corners of his dreams to meet him in that hellish territory; gunmetal against the present and the future held in doubt. Mesmerized by the events unfolding, Justices gaze fell to the ground at his feet where an untidy, clotting effluence had already begun to pool beneath him. He almost feinted at the sight of his body leaking slowly out onto the basin floor; the oxygen-rich blood and the tissue and the plasma, all the things that made him whole and could not be recaptured abandoning his tortured body. He saw the mans shadow first. It crawled to him, slowly, licking its way across the threshold like a Brahma bull searching for saltlick. It grew in scope and size and quickly encumbered him. It threw all its weight around him. That was the precise moment Justice caught the 178

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first feint whiff of death. Real death. It made him sick, this singular, violet-like sweetness that lingered in the stagnant air. It wafted up into his nose and grabbed hold like a poacher holding court, his steady hand guiding the knife into the heart of the buck. The smell was repellent and disgusting and overwhelming, and, what was worsehe could not remove himself from it. Nor hide from it. This time, there would be no clattering of echoes or cold light of dawn to mask the unmistakable ripples emanating from the deadly wave. This time, the very essence of the dead had come for him, the handwriting on scrolls full of ancient lessons. It had lied dormant for five years, an inevitable cloud of destiny, quietly waiting for this summer day, quietly promising retribution, and in the end, it had had no trouble latching onto the dark shadow; the very embodiment of evil. This time the smell of death had actually reached Justice moments before his eyes had had the chance to glimpse it, his hands had had the chance to stroke it. A thick, massive frame suddenly materialized out in front of Justices gaze. The shadow the colossal frame threw over Justice as this wraith kneeled over him threw him into complete darkness. A coolness came with it, a feeling so alien and new to the day that Justice actually felt his body tremble slightly with chills. Oddly enough, Justice welcomed this soothing presence as a respite from the brutal sun. Though he could not place it, the face that loomed in front of him seemed oddly familiar. One could never forget such undesirable characteristics in a human being. Glutinous eyes that proved to be nothing more than the most minuscule slits, struggling to peek out from behind a bloated face, cheeks and eye sockets flush and full with subcutaneous fat. His very eyes, filled with the seeds of distrust had recessed back into the mans sockets, resisting all penetration. His enormous jaw was agape, resembling a fishing trawler in a vast sea with no name, accenting a pinkish, piggish double chin that hung fallow from his neck down to the top of his chest. It was the farmer. The fiery, carrot-topped man who proudly wore the universitys colors and had spoken so philosophically about cotton pickers and boll weevils and the magnanimous governor. Justices eyes blinked rapidly in incomprehension. His confusion added to the ghastly, pale patina on his face. The farmer reached out, agonizingly slow, a sloth of an arm put into motion, and cupped his enormous hand underneath Justices chin. Unable to resist, his lower jaw disappearing inside the mans grasp, Justice winced as the farmer roughly lifted Justices up to face him. Unable to move, slightly paralyzed, Justice had no choice but to look directly into a countenance so full of wrinkles and age-spots, the pores on the skins surface flush with scourge and hate. It was a face

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emblazoned with a thousand years of hurt and pain, a world of sin magnified in front of Justices very own eyes. You? Justice asked, weakly. The farmer studied him intently with a face devoid of passion. He pulled his hand away. He looked down to see it covered in Justices blood. He brought the hand up to his own face, inspecting it. He stared hard, unyielding, turning the appendage over and over in front of his eyes, as if hed never seen the sight of blood before but nonetheless reveled in it significance. Justices head remained motionless, if not steady, as he returned the mans gaze. Justice frailly licked at his lips, running his tongue slowly over cracked, sunburned skin. He ran his tongue over his parched lips more than a few times, for the last rays of summer was the last kiss he wanted to feel. He tasted the sweet, unsavory essence of his own blood. He looked down at the terrible wound in his lower abdomen and knew it was just a matter of time. Mortally wounded. Serious blood loss. Fifteen minutes, at best. Then he looked at the broken, useless limb that was his left arm. Blood was still leaking into his esophagus, filling up his windpipe. It welled upwards, thick and viscous, engulfing his mouth. There was little he could do to fight the overwhelming feeling that he was drowning. Every few seconds or so he coughed out his lifeblood, a vicious guttural hacking to clear the lungs, each time staining the ground at his knees with an unpleasant pool of effluence. He recalled a few lines from a poem hed memorized long ago, Invictus.Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody, but unbowed He had come across the poem back in law school and had found its fiery dialogue awe-inspiring. Language that paid stark homage to laughter at the face of death. But now, mortally wounded and rapidly approaching the eleventh hour, those words took on new meaning. Justice began to view those lines, so rife with stoicism and defiant imagery, as patently absurd. Justice managed an insolent laugha stab at the irrationality of bravery in the face of death. A torrent of blood spurted out and ran down his chin. His teeth were gritty from a mixture of grainy sand and blood. The helicopter, still hovering above was inadvertently blowing plumes of prairie dust all over the scene. Bitter, upbraided, windlashed grains of sand and broken parts of the caliche smacked him fully on the face and body. He winced, closing his eyes to protect his vision from the swirling, fragmenting earth. In his mind Justice wondered if this was how it felt to be trapped in a dustbowl storm, swallowed whole, animal or man suffocated in a sea of sand. Does death seem that funny to you, counselor? The native Okie asked. For the first time Justice noticed the presence of cold steel. In his giant bear claw of a hand the farmer clutched the shiny, double action .44 magnum Colt Anaconda that had done so much damage. The black, metal lunch pail that had concealed the gun lay thrown to 180

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the ground, tipped over on its side, lid open, filling rapidly with billowing sand. As he spoke, the farmer waved his hand about, trying to drive his point across in that distinct, exaggerated manner indigenous to most Oklahomans. The smell of gun-oil and spent powder reached Justices nose. Sunlight reflected off the stainless steel barrel, boring directly into Justices face. His eyes blinked and wavered, but Justice listened intently, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Trying to figure out who this planetary man was that had called him out by past occupation and not name. What had he done in that past that had put him on the wrong end of the barrel? What egregious sin or damaging oversight had Justice committed? There are no martyrs out here, counselor. None that I can see, anyway. Counselor? Justice asked, softly, weakly; as forcefully as the ebbing tidal flow of blood permitted. His voice could barely be heard above the droning thwack-thwack-thwack noise of blade-vortex interaction. Funny. No ones called me that in a long, long time. I havent seen the inside of a courtroom since...well since He looked over at the fallen brothers, and suddenly he knew. The realization hit him hard; the mental picture came shooting out from his memory like those bullets that had pulverized his vital organs. Justice Reywal was rapidly coming to grips with the insanity of the situation. He sighed. And then he laughed. He laughed loud and hard and didnt stop until the farmer moved in closer. The farmer crouched down beside him. His massive frame spilled out on all sides and Justice drew back instinctively. I aint gonna hurt you, son. The farmer gazed thoughtfully at Justices wounds. Gently lifting Justices hand away from his abdomen, he carefully inspected the damage. A few seconds later found the farmer shaking his head. He clicked his tongue three times, shook his head and delivered a caveat in that same peculiar, high-pitched quality. Nope. It dont look good, son. Bullets done its job and done it well. Found the liver. See how dark the blood runs. He stood up, tucked the gun away in a space behind the upper portion of his overalls and wiped his blood stained hands on the faded denim. He performed this rote cleansing over and over again until he was satisfied his hands were sanitary. Then, once again, he pulled the gun out. In his hands the massive revolver looked like a childs toy. The bore of the ventilated, elongated eight-inch barrel pointed downward, staring at Justice, like judge and jury of the west coalesced into one. The farmer flipped open the gate and quickly reloaded. Six more down the pike. Looked like hollow points, after all. That explained the absence of an exit wound. The bullet had mushroomed inside Justice. Shards of metal had torn away from the pulverized bullet, outward and back, unfurling inside his organ like a rainy day umbrella. Itll all be over soon. I promise you that. You shouldnt feel that much pain. 181

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Bullets severed your Vagus nerve. Dysphagia will soon set in. So be careful you dont choke on your own blood while we wait. Justice tried to wipe the pungent blood away from his mouth. But his arm had gone numb and was all but useless. Each time he brought the back of his right hand up to his mouth, releasing pressure on the wound, more and more blood and bile would rise up into his chest cavity and fill his mouth. Choking, he let out a vicious cough, dispelling his mouth of the life sustaining fluid, which ironically, was threatening to drown him, to ease him towards those gates of eerie darkness. It was no use, he thought, fighting the constant urge to gag. Justices face broke out in a stolid grin. He had to accept the inevitable truth that he was dying, and nothing or no one could save him. Why you grinnin like that? The farmer asked. Its too late. No ones coming for you. No ones gonna step out o the daylight to save your soul. A pause. No one but the good lord willing. God always has time for his children. Even the ones whove lost their way. Justice kept up a valiant grin. The farmers face grew red, heated. Stop that nonsense. Clocks runnin out on you. Its time for you to reach out to the Lord and beg his forgiveness for your misguided, iniquitous ways. Imaginecoming all the way down to tiny Granite Justice spoke in garbles, fighting the gag reflex. His voice was growing hoarse. only to find myself in danger of drowning. No water round for miles, he stared at the farmer, beatific, sunlight splattering all over his face. He held his bloodstained fingers up for inspection. But Im drowning. Drowning in blood, anyway. He paused. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a camera crew, standing safely about thirty yards away, filming the entire ordeal. Justice gestured over to them. You killed me in front of the world. You wont get far, either. Looks like were both in a heap of trouble. You know what the bible says about righteous indignation, son? The farmer asked. Justice looked on in silence. Weakening, his gaze began to waver. The farmer rapped the top of Justices head with the . 45s solid steel barrel. Justice looked up, shocked. Righteous indignation is an emotion one feels when one becomes angry over a perceived act of malice. According to Christian doctrine, righteous indignation is the one form of anger which is not considered a sin. In fact, one actually sins in not acting upon ones righteous anger, especially if it regards blasphemy against the lord, or one of the lords children. An arrogant pause. I think I wont have to look hard to find kinship in a judge and jury. This land takes care of its own. When God hands down his verdict I spect Ill be just fine. Probly serve less time than your Indian friends over there. And then everythin ill be square. The farmer inched ever so closer; and as this overbearing wraith of a man closed in, his giant pocket of a face looming inches away from his own, Justice caught the powerful breath of death closing in fast. It emanated from the mans cavernous mouth, the brown, tobacco182

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stained teeth that courted rot and stench, the backward passage of air receding from the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, the famine that struck the families of the dust bowl so long ago, the wars and the continuation of terrorism and the world warming over inside a hot, round oven; all these forms of putrescence and every unspeakable moment a world tilting on its axis brought with itall these things escaped from the mans mouth and enveloped Justice in a suffocating mass that made him want to open his mouth and scream. You know, I used to have this dream years ago Justice collected himself as a distant memory flooded his brain and overrode his fear. A constant dream. Itd hit me just about every night, while I was still practicing law back in Oklahoma City. Made it impossible to sleep. Reflection. In that dream the devil would come for me. Come for me in the snow as my own Sioux brothers and sisters lay dying, massacred by the Calvary. Justice stared directly into the farmers calculating eyes, trying to match his resolve. At first I thought Id been sent there to protect them, crossing from the mainstream world into a vexing nightmare, but I know now I was wrongturns out I was right there all along, riding alongside those Army men, wearing the same uniform, shooting down everything in sight. I did nothing to stop them. I helped kill my own brothers and sisters. I cut them down in the snow and took comfort when the ground flowered red with their blood. Pause. Justice looked over at the brothers, their bodies lying prone and still, skin and blood glistening red in the sun. That was my dream. Thought Id killed it off long ago. But now I see I thought wrong. Now theres onlythis. A moment of silent ensued. The farmer nodded, prodding Justice to continue. Is that why youre here? Justices expression remained ambiguous. Have you come for me? Are you the devil? No, son. The farmer shook his head in a consternating manner. I aint the devil. And I aint Jesus Christ neither. But I am here to do his biddin. He pointed the menacing .45 at the Lake brothers. Your Indian friends lyin there on the ground killed my brother five years ago. Shot him down like a mangy dog on their own front porch. Left him to die in Indian land. Tainted land. And then fabricated a story. Pause. With the help of you, of course. The color in his eyes dissolved as vengeance took over. White man deserves better than that. White man deserves to live and die among his own. Youre Justice was beginning to comprehend the situation. Jericho may have been the bad sheep of the family, kicked out of home, school, and church in succession. But he was my blood. And just like you protected yours Justice glanced at the two Indians lying motionless beside him. He felt an upwelling of sadness that lasted a few seconds, replaced by an all-encompassing sense of peacefulness when he realized hed be with the Lake brothers shortly. I had to protect mine. The farmer leaned in and whispered in Justices ear. 183

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Shiloh told me everything. I know bout her weakness. Her sins. I know about her affair with that Indian boy. Justices head fell forward as his nervous system finally collapsed like a house of cards. The bullets and Blacks brutal admission had wrested away his ability to control his body. He gagged on a fresh mass of blood that shot up from somewhere in his depths. It was amazing how much blood the human body could hold, he thought. How much you could lose before you faded into the black void that was death. This was it. He no longer had the strength to fight. No inclination to keep breathing. No amount of sticky-tape on earth was going to keep him together. Keep his guts from spilling out all over the dreaded saltpans. This was his last moment on earth, and it would be spent not on hallowed Indian ground, not in the company of Brandi-Shaw or John Ravage, the two men he trusted most in this life, but in front of the cameras in a burnt out forgotten tundra out in the middle of nowhere, a land abrogated by all but the lawless and those that meted out just punishments. Drowning in a vast ocean of blood and sand, Justice felt the onrush of deaths locomotive coming. He embraced the cold slide into the sphere of death, and as the men and women of the continuous loop continued to film his demise, he took some comfort in the knowledge that he would not die alone. From the corner of his eye Justice saw a flash of blue running towards them like a racehorse locked on the home stretch. It was a prison guarda small urchin of a man with a thick head of black hair that blazed vibrantly underneath the sun, like some mammoth, shimmering wave breaking repeatedly over on the same shoreline. His name was McCreedy, reporters would later write in their columns. William McCreedy. He had left the relative safety of the guardhouse and was racing over, fast on the move, fumbling at the holster at his side, trying to retrieve his service revolver. Justice grinned, happy to see him, for he had noticed the mans strange habit of peering straight into the sun without protection while he was talking to Avarice Lake earlier, and to Justice Reywal, a man that could look up and accept the sun without blinking was a man capable of great things, perhaps even a miracle. Perhaps he would be the agent to extract vengeance upon this farmer, the anonymous brother of Jericho Black, a man who had stepped out from concealment in broad sunlight and callously stolen the life away from the Lake brothers, and in a few minutes, from himself. The farmer lifted Justices face and began to caress his cheeks gently. He pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and snapped it open over the air with a savage crack. A small cloud of latent prairie dust floated off quickly, caught in rotor wash. He opened Justices mouth wide, and after inspecting it closely, placed the squared cloth inside. In little time, the handkerchief soaked up a good amount of 184

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blood seepage from Justices mouth. We dont have much time, Reywal. Justice looked on, puzzled. His eyes were fluttering, opening and closing rapidly. His heartbeat was slowing down; crawling to a languid standstill; like the indolent movements of farmers toiling underneath the Oklahoma sun during the midst of a torpid summer. His gag reflex kicked in. He could not talk. His mouth was full with the cotton cloth that had soaked up much of his insides. A sickening, bloody effluence filled his mouth, like the many thoughts that filled his head, staining the handkerchief a dark, crimson-red. Finally, when Justice felt he could hold out no longer, the farmer pulled the wet, gory swab out of his jaw. So you can pray, boy. I dont under Justice replied, bewildered. You do know how to pray. Black cut Justice off mid sentence. Dont you, boy? Or did you forget to like you forgot the letter of the law? The farmer grew irritated. His face went an impressive shade of purple, matching the blood-caked soil at Justices feet. Do you recall the Lords Prayer? They taught it to you at that Christian school you went to a ways back, or so your book says. Justice thought long and hard, but the words to the prayer that had united billions of people of disparate faiths eluded him. They floated off the banks of his memory and failed to latch onto his tongue. I dont rememberIts been so long. Pause. So, so long. Like I said, we dont have much time. The guards manning the nearest tower had by then collected their wits and reacted to the gunshots. They had already radioed ADMIT unit, the nearest location to expedite a response, and requested guards to the scene. They had drawn their automatic rifles, locked and loaded, and quartered the farmer in their sights. Assault rifles zeroed in on the target; yet the guards could not firethey could not risk hitting Justiceor the Lake brothersfor that matter. Being good men, smart men, obedient men, they waited anxiously, perhaps a little enthusiastically, for the order to let loose. They shouted orders down to Black, urging him to drop his weapon. But it was futile. Their commands were lost to the helicopter above; harsh directives blown away like so many clouds of dust as the helos blades chopped away at the air loudly. The farmer screened his eyes to the sun and looked up at the west tower, its black granite blocks soaked in a column of bright, angled sunlight, expecting any second to feel a full volley of lead. He was careful to keep his gun hand down to his side; lest the guards mistook his intentions as hostile. Repeat after me, Reywal. Need to git it right the first time. He half-shouted, trying to be heard over the rotor blast. Our father, which art in heaven. Jericho Blacks brother closed his eyes and began to recite the Lords Prayer. hallowed be thy name. 185

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Justice remained silent. He was feeling the massive effects of blood loss. His vision was deserting him now, in these final minutes. Squinting, he could barely make out the guards lined up in the tower, apocalyptic figures dressed like Nazis standing against the backdrop of heatshimmer, fifty yards away at best. As the immaculate sun reigned down bolts of blazing light on shiny-soled leather and chrome badges and polyester uniforms, a half dozen or so glistening rifles drew a bead on the massive bulls-eye that was Black. There was a sharp drop in clamor as the helicopter pilot, ostensibly sensing danger, pulled back on the throttle and banked away sharply from the scene. Although his hearing was fading fast, the resulting vacuum brought to Justice the guards commanding voices, competing against the farmers for supreme control. In his mind Justice heard abrupt commands intermingled with religious discoursethy kingdom comedrop the weaponon earth as it ison the deckin heaven right now! Amen. And although he feared the worse, a hail of withering gunfire from above cutting both the fat man and himself down in two, finishing the game the farmer had started, Justice showed no external reaction. It was getting late. Justice could tell what time it was by the way the farmer moved. Slow and measured, yet each step purposeful and economical in its deportment, as if Black had already sensed that time was running out on him. He could tell by the elongated shadow thrown by Blacks rotund frame that increased in length by a third as the seconds stretched on and lingered and the sun dropped towards the horizon like a lead plumb attached to a fishing line. He could tell by the way the pale blue sky deepened to a rich, cobalt blue, as if some giant unseen hand had drawn a shade over the partition between heaven and earth. He could tell by the interlacing network of white contrails marking the troposphere, lengthy, sharp and lean streamers left by passing jetliners in the morning that had now dissolved into splotchy, billowy, broken white lines and spaces in the afternoon, filling the sky with uncertainty and chaos. He could tell by the dissolution of light. Where previously the skys color had been ratcheted up to extreme levels of harsh, white blandness, it now basked in a soothing radiance, a canvass awash in the suns comforting, orange glow, accenting the more peaceful layering of profound blue in the deep afternoon. Justice thought about the immaculate white light of Christianity. At the hour of ones death it was supposed to rise up like a beacon and lead the way to the Promised Land, or so the Christian faith proselytized, but all he could see was the dimming bulb that was his life before him, the wattage and effervescence going out in a cruel, whimpering fizzle and not a bang. It was all a matter of observation. A power that seemed to grow stronger inside Justice even as death grew nearer. 186

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Youre too proud to pray with me? The farmer shot Justice a frightening, malevolent stare, a look full of venomous anger. Too proud to seek forgiveness for your treason? Justice froze, feeling a cold chill pass through his body. It was the hottest day of the year quite possibly the hottest day ever in that part of the stateyet he was shivering as his core body temperature continued to drop. Well then, close your eyes boy. Go on. Aint no shame in dyin out here. You aint the first and by my count wont be the last. Black reached out and twisted Justices face hard to the left, making sure Justice could see his fallen brethren. Justice stared at the Lake brothers, bodies lying prone on the hard caliche, cold and lifeless, limbs intertwined in death. I promise you you wont die alone. The farmer held on firmly for a few more seconds, his thick, strong fingers digging into the carotid artery, pressing the life slowly out of Justice. Justice came dangerously close to passing out. If you dont have nothin to say, then I guess this is where you and I part ways. Black paused to wipe the sweat off his brow with his free hand. We all have someplace to go son, someplace much hotter than this. Only youll get there a lot sooner than most. His face took on a glorious confidence, as if by some sense of entitlement he had stumbled upon something sacred, something Justice would never have the time to discover. Though his eyes grew stern and haughty, there was no enmity in them. God will forgive me. I will atone for this. But youyou are by my count a different breed. You defy the lord by ignoring his prayer at the hour of death. You ignore his mercy. Your chance at redemption. You leave me no choice. The lord or I wont keep you from your appointment with the devil. Releasing his vice-like grip from Justices neck, Black slowly backed away. His enormous shadow retreated with him, leaving Justice to bake in the harsh sunlight once again. Absolved from the wraith of the mans shadow, Justice gazed upward towards the clear blue sky. He took in the suns comforting rays, drawing warmth into his numbing body for what would be the last time. Where were the clouds? He wondered. Where were the cottonballed, tumbling cumulus clouds of his youth, able to surf the wind and seed the sky with cleansing rains? Would the sky above him ever again be graced with their elegant beauty? Justice licked his dried out lips, gathering strength for the finality of his life. The long stretch of hot days plaguing Oklahoma that week had worn him to a nub. The media had worn him to a nub. He asked Jericho Blacks brother a set of questions; concise inquiries reflecting the clarity of his thoughts. Sure was a hot one today, Black. Pause. Mercifully, the chopper had climbed in altitude and Justice no longer had to shout. His voice had become a guttural rasp. You think we set the record high today?

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Black looked up at the sun. His face bathed in reddish tint, he resembled a version of the devil. Maybe so. If we didnt, we come mighty close. And sometimes close is good enough. Think it might rain today? The farmer paused, leaning back on his heels, stunned by the unusual questions. He followed Justices gaze; looking up at the mighty orange sphere that had slid off its zenith. He stared open mouthed and wide eyed, scratching his expansive forehead with the barrel of the gun, as if he had never seen something quite so beautiful in his entire, miserable life. No, son. It dont appear likely. No cloud cover to speak of. None as far as I can tell. Thats too bad. Justice lamented. The sun filled his eyes and the brownness in them came out bold and resolute. We could really use some rain around here. The farmer nodded in agreement. Rains always been a stranger to these parts, Reywal. Been a stranger to me my whole life. Guess it always will be. Seems like we spend our whole lives picking up things, letting go things. Always trying to find a mediumnot always a happy one. Pause You think its a poetic accident weve met? More like poetic justice, I think. Black replied, sternly. His eyes fell on Justice, measuring him. And finally. Two dollars a body, Justice said cautiously, under his breathe. What? Two dollars a body. Thats what Thom Lake got paid burying people out there in those graves. His eyes shifted to the prison, then to Black. What about you? How much they gonna pay you? Dont really know. But I got a lifetime to think about settin a price. Thom Lake got paid two dollars for every grave he dug; every single body he put six foot under. Youll be putting me under shortly. I hope you get whats comin to you. Farmer Black nodded in agreement. Just as he had accepted this small victory, he would accept the fall of the coin, the fate of his life that hung in the balance. He would cash in his chips, surrender, and await the arbitrary judgments of local men hed probably known all his life. For a fraction of time, nothing happened. The two men stared at each other, not as enemies, the conqueror and conquered, but as mutual adversaries who had begrudgingly accepted the laws of nature. Of victory and defeat. Everything came to a standstill. The clocks inside the prison. The watch latched around Justice Reywals wrist. The hands that marked time all over the world. The mirages that dissipated. The heatshimmer that remained pressed to the roads 188

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surface. The mortuary birds that had abandoned the skies. The reformatory that shrugged off an accumulation of hate like an early morning fog threatening to drift over the walls onto the prison grounds, feathery mist banking against mortar and granite, climbing and climbing, and then, just as it neared the cusp of the wall, just as it promised to float off into the atmosphere in all its brittle essence to become a cloud, succumbing to the day. Silence lapsed into silence. Only a slight clicking sound from the stainless steel hammer of the .44 as the farmer uncocked the weapon, flipped open the gate and flicked the hollow points out with a turn of the wrist. The bullets fell down to the ground where they scattered like seeds to a celestial, dangerous crop. The damage was done. The farmer no longer needed them. Only the dark shadow returned, hovering over Justice like a mothers blanket. But it wasnt the cool, soothing silhouette Justice had felt moments before as Black loomed over him. No. This one was different. Justice knew this shadow was the final curtain call, the divine hand reaching out, ready to snatch him and pull him into the dark void, the rabbit hole, the dark watery womb where everything in life began and everything ended. Justice spied the subtle form of McCreedy a few yards ahead. Kneeled down. Shooting position. Gun raised, aimed at Black. Lips moving but no words coming out. Lost in the powerful downdraft thrown by the helicopter. His eyes ablaze with fire, like the glistening hair on his head. On his tired face, Justice managed a smile. The avenging angel had, indeed, come at last. And Then Justice Reywal felt himself slip into that final freefall. Too weak to fight the necrosis in his body any longer. Despite the triple digit heat, his body reversed its polarity, growing from uncomfortable coldness to a wintry chill as the remaining parts of his blood thickened, slowed and retreated to the center, away from his arms and legs in a final last gasp, trying to save vital organs. First the limbs went, then the rest of him followed. Lungs began a quick, cold collapse and became lax. He felt the slightest pressure upon them. His breath went shallow. His brain stopped sending messages to his nervous system. The snapshots of his life raced past him now, like a movie reel set in fast motion. His father, his grandfather, his Appaloosa, the dry lightning storm at Esperanza, the circling eagle and the circling courtroom where he maneuvered lives and yearsthese all went through him now, too fast and frenzied to think about, to extract meaning. The heart, as you would have it, was the last to let goironic considering Justice had ignored the initiatives of this organ for much of his life. In those intimate final seconds, the world spun its black web around him in a disenfranchised spiral. The harsh light of the plains subsided into an eerie orange glow that sullied by degrees. It melted away as a burnt out ember in the fiery pits of his mind, softening by 189

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degrees towards earth tones, shades of rust and sepia and sienna, like the abandoned, idle brownfields down in the valley below or the dead bark peeling away from the trunks of weeping willows, and then, finally, after his ability to think and reason had subsided, after his soul expelled itself from his mouth with an audible hiss that sounded like the great serpent lashing out in angst, Justice Reywal experienced complete blackness. The last thing he saw as his right cheek slammed against the Oklahoma dirtthe black dirt that had come all the way from Kansas, piled loose and wide all over the territory, mile after mile, dust storm after dust storm, year after year, intermixing with the red and orange and yellow powdered earth from other whereabouts, brought here, as Brandi-Shaw had once told him, atop the gentle wingspans of an army of angels, only to be sloughed off as the angels grew mad from the inexorable sun and heat and like Icarus before them they began to beat their wings furiouslythe last thing he saw was the helicopter above, a mad raven circling the scene, a mortuary bird itself made by man, returning to the scene of the crime, rotors intermittently cutting through the golden shafts of sunlight. With his lips pressed to the ground all Justice could do was manufacture a pathetic, almost non-responsive smile. Through the hard-baked, ablating clay the helicopters downdraft blasted over his body and propelled into his mouth, through the small mound of grit and sand that piled up against his face and entered his eyes with the furious prickling sting of a thousand small needles, he continued to grin. As the chopper circled steadily above, the droning engine wheezing and laboring, the thought came to him that his last breath would not be drawn on foreign soil, like he once had thought, but at home, in Oklahoma, a fierce, sterile land that had taken him in years ago when he had nothing left in his tank, no soul or future, and the ghosts of the land had called on him to perform one last majestic act that would stitch back together his heart, an organ that had, in these last few minutes of his life, beat so regal and strong. As he lay bleeding on the ground, a cloud of flies descending over him, the ghost shirt soaking into the red, broken parts of him, Thom lakes book, the one Justice had proudly written a year before came to rest near his outstretched hand, courtesy of the helicopters relentless downdraft. The violent column of air had easily broken the books spine and blown away countless pages. Paper flew around the air in a jangled, fluttering, flapping mass of off-white and black typo. In another moment in time, for a hero returning from war or a movie star, the airborne pages would have served as a ticker tape parade of sorts. But this was the present, the unbreakable, unmerciful present, and this bittersweet moment served nothing more as a reflection to the last chapter in Justice Reywals life.

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Justice struggled against the sand and the wind to read the chapter heading atop the page that had come to rest near his face, wedged between the ground and his now paralyzed fingers. Save the Last Bullet for Yourself. It was the last chapter in Suburban Arrows. Thirty-three dynamic pages written under the pretense of a cock-and-bull story. A fabrication. A what if scenario presented with viable facts and timeline. He wrote about a possible murder. He wrote about the Lake brothers and their interment at the reformatory, giving false names, false pedigree and a fictitious location. He wrote about revenge, and the details surrounding the birth of his plea bargain. Under his pen, the state became Arizona; not Oklahoma. The Indians charged with the crimes became Comanche. He railed about a twisted justice system; and how a man could lash out at it from sheer desire, twist the rules of engagement so that for once an Indian man could actually grip the reigns of justice in his own hand and mete out his own punishments. Thirty-three pages the governor and many men of his ilk had read, and some of them, like Governor Holloway, had seen right through. Like a flaming arrow shot through a metal ring. And as bad luck would have it, this chapter was also read late one night, by the light of a candle, by none other than Jericho Blacks brother. A small-town farmer by trade, an American patriot by birth. Religious. A proud man. A man driven by earthly desires; primitive and rancorous. By the time Blacks fingers had turned over the books final pages, his anger had boiled over like a kettle of tea, a terrible plan formulating in his mind. Justice reflected on the chapter headings meaning. A fitting, poetic, end? Or a ruthless predictor of fate? A parenthetical harbinger of things to come? Or a statement laced with irony? Justices final, poignant smile lingered, unwilling to dissolve into the wind. The last few moments of his life had presented him with a cruel paradox. Save the last bullet for yourself, indeed, he thought. Because when the chambers were emptied, when the cartridge casings lay scattered over the ground and all that remained was an empty, useless gun, all you were left with was the inalienable curse of solitude, hate, repression, and racism, and all the vile things that kicked you to the ground as you made your way through this cruel world. And then the empty gun could be turned on oneself, pressed to the temple, awaiting the blowback with eyes shut in a useless and stupid final gesture of compromise. And the hammer would fall on an empty cylinder. And nothing, of course, would happen. And the world would go on as it did; a frail vessel on the verge of collapse, carrying the servants of God along for the ride. And thena requiem. He would not exit this grand, mortal coil without one last act. Justice Reywal arched his body and craned his neck, fighting the cold numbness that had spread to his limbs. He spied them out of the 191

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corner of his eye. He maneuvered his body, a wiggle here, a twist there, pushing out with his elbow, leaning and grinding his way over the topsoil, trying to position himself closer to Thom and Avarice Lake. It took what seemed minutes. The dullness in his limbs expanded. The razor-sharp caliche cut into his elbows as he crawled. His sweaty arms were caked with a disparate mixture of colored earth. A solitary beam of sunlight fell down in front of his hand, leading the way, guiding him towards the Lake brothers, now lying dead five feet away from him. Gone. They were all gone. The bodies were still. The proud Indian men were not breathing, displayed no external signs of life. The bullets had found their mark with stunning precision; hitting vital organs in a tight, orderly spiral of scalpel exactitude that belied a tumbling ferocity once the fragments had penetrated flesh and mushroomed outward. The brothers had died with their limbs entwined, Thoms left hand lying on top of his older brothers arm, as if in their last, violent seconds the brothers had sought some sort of fraternal magic that could save them. Avarice Lake died face-up. He died with his eyes open, unrepentant and defiant against the sun. It was a fitting end to a rebellious life. His face was angry and red, and wore the dead-mans eternal promise of revenge. His lips were locked in an ugly sneer, no longer able to speak, unable to spell out the promise that he would one day return and get his due. In contrast, Thom Lake lay to the left of his brother, sprawled out, arms outstretched, like a placid snow angel; only the snow was the rough and tumble, Oklahoma grit and grime and the genteel expression on his face was born out of sheer surprise and not from blissful thoughts for the great beyond that awaited him. His right hand was clenched into a tight fist, knuckles cool white in color, his fingers latching onto the soft fabric of Avarices shirtsleeve in a viselike death grip. His eyes were lidded and peaceful; a direct affront to the violent way in which his life had been snatched from him. A slight, half-smile graced his lips. Thom appeared to be taking with him to the afterlife a secret Justice would never get to hear. At least they died instantly, Justice thought. Without pain or discomfort. Without time to reflect on past sins. At least they died together, like brothers. And he would soon join them in death; also like a brother. Justice managed to reach out and grab Thom Lake by one dead ankle. This last, desperate act was all that his strength would allow, but it was enough to satisfy him, satisfy the thirst for that fraternal bond. All three would die now, linked together. And then Justice Reywal, so tired and so alone, his face wrinkled and aged, looking like a man that had spent his entire life squinting at the sun, drew his final breaths on earth. He listened for the distant 192

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sounds of the train whistle, of smooth metal wheels gliding across metal track, of prisoners digging into the rock-strewn garden underneath a hot sun, the calling of the guards, of McCreedys voice lashing out in vengeance, of a world that would go on without him, but nothing was all he heard. His hearing now failed him. No dogs barking. The voices belonging to his father and grandfather did not call out to him. No sound of feet running to his rescue. The train, the governor, Brandi-Shawthey were all long gone. The young man in sunglasses he had saved so long ago but had betrayed in the processgone. Cadence Lilywhite and her lustrous flower and delicate facegone. All had vanished into the cloudless day, dust and memories and broken promises and life sentences all merged to one. As his entire world faded and entered the long, murky tunnel, a tunnel men lingering near death and saved miraculously had long described as one replete with forgiveness, he could swear that his grandfather, Black Crow of Midnight, was right there alongside him, guiding him to that perpetual place where nightmares refused to enter, where men looked out for one another as friends, where famine and bigotry and dustbowls and droughts were forgotten words, where only goodness flourished and the heavens promised rains. His last memory was of the weathered scarecrow that had presided over the prisoners garden like a vagabond judge. His face pressed to the ground, Justice watched as the straw figure finally succumbed to the mighty downdrafts created by the helos rotor wash and blew across the tundra in tumbleweed fashion, its scrawny torso shredding and ripping into half a dozen pieces as the chopper powered up its turbine engine, remaining in a directional hover fifty feet above, a huge beast blotting out the sun and filling the deep blue sky. Justice marveled at the way the scarecrow came apart; arms and legs full of dust and straw, full of years, shedding off layers of land and history as it fell apart at the seams like a deranged person becoming unhinged in the mind. Edged on by the wind, the head and upper torso came to rest against a telephone pole near the highway and settled into a hunched position, reclining against the grain in a state of slumber. It looked to Justice as if the scarecrow would close its eyes at any moment and drift off into a deep sleep. To any unsuspecting passerby, the figure leaning against the wooden cross that was the pole could have been a wino or a hobo sleeping off a savage drunk or Jesus Christ himself, waiting to jump the next train that led out of this godforsaken place, out of the dustbowl and into the valleys of green and the flowing rivers that lead to another promised land. Those huge, bright, black-button eyes, unable to shut themselves to the sunlight and to the torment of summer, unable and unwilling to close themselves to the prickly specter of death, the only shadow visible for miles, were the last things on earth Justice Reywal saw before his own eyes closed. From the suffused lighting in front of his 193

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face, he embraced the embryonic blanket of darkness that had come at this late hour. What do you know about death? John Ravage had asked acerbically out in the barren wastelands of Montana on that fateful morning when his life had turned. A small buck lay dying by the roadside, having survived an attack by a large wolf. Ravage had produced a gun and prodded Justice into putting the animal out of its misery. Justice had looked on in horror, refusing to take the cold steel, refusing to kill any living creature. What did Justice Reywal know about death? Moments away from a certain meeting, hed soon know everything there was to know about this beast. He would arrive at the dark palace gates wearing a crown and he would embrace this entity as a brother. Pushing the coldness out from his body, putting a lasting embrace over the unknown, Justice sighed heavily and drifted off into an enduring, comfortable sleep, knowing he would not be traveling alone for long.

Circling fifty feet above the prison yard, waiting for clearance to land (he had returned to the reformatory after having dropped the governor off at the train station down in the valley, to see if any members of the media needed a lift back to Oklahoma City) EMS helicopter pilot Anderson Hunt could not believe what hed just seen and heard on the ground below. As he waited for approval on the flight plan hed filed, routinely checking instrumentation on the panel in front of him, hed heard muffled, consecutive pop-pop-pop soundslike a starter pistol going off repeatedly at a track meetcoming from the ground below. An expert in firearms, Hunt was fairly certain a large caliber weapon had produced that loud resonancethe propagating sound waves being loud enough to be heard over the Bell LongRangers powerful 650 horsepower Rolls Royce engine and high-inertia rotary blades. For one terrifying moment, before he had looked to the ground below and discovered the bloody fracas, Hunt thought the gear shaft assembly had fractured and he was going down. Oh my God! Did you just see that? He shouted into his headset, half-expecting the voice on the other end to answer affirmatively. Startled, he stared through the side-viewing window down at the courtyard below, where a mob of people, guards decked out in their Gestapo-like uniforms and reporters dragging microphones and cameras threw themselves to the ground or ran helter-skelter, either away from or towards the source of the gunshots. It was carnage. Three men were lying prone and still, sprawled out in close proximity to one another thirty yards outside the prison gates. One 194

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other figure, a large, rotund man whose huge, red pumpkin head reflected the suns glare, appeared to be standing over the fallen men, waiting patiently for the group of guards who now approached him, crouched in deep formation with automatic rifles drawn. In his hand the fat man held something shiny, something that absorbed the suns latent rays and reflected them into Hunts eyes; perhaps the weapon that had discharged those shots. Another guard, a small, slender man with black radiant hair stood alone, off to the side, kneeling on deck with weapon in hand, waving his other hand to the ground, ostensibly giving the larger man orders to drop his firearm. Alpha 1. Dispatch Hunt calmly spoke into his headset. Come in. A few seconds of static hiss followed. WolfTracker5 to Alpha 1. Someone at HEMS please get on line. A few seconds went by. An operator finally came on. Coming through loud and clear, WolfTracker5. Dispatch. Something just happened down at the prison in Granite I think He paused, deliberating; making sure his reporting was accurate. I think I heard gunshots down there. Will you repeat, WolfTracker5? I heardwhat I thinkwere gunshots. No Rethinking his course. He noticed a widening pool of blood amassing underneath the bodies. Im certain gunshots were fired. Men are down. Bleeding. Say again. Men are down and definitely in need of medical attention. WolfTracker5, did you say someone fired shots at you? Dispatch sounded puzzled and alarmed at the same time. Negative, Alpha 1! Hunt half-shouted into the mic. Shots were fired at ground zero. Im in control. The helo is functional. But its a bloody mess down there. WolfTracker5, please remain in a holding pattern until we ascertain what is going on. Negative. Im going to switch frequencies and see what I could find out. Hunt reached down with his free hand and fiddled with the dials of WolfTracker5s tunable avionics, which allowed him to transmit and receive on a large number of public service frequencies. No relay was needed with this device and if he had any luck, hed be able to get immediate, unfiltered remarks from an authority at the reformatory. He heard cracklinga disembodied voicemore staticadjusted the knobthen a myriad of voices, whining and alarmed, coming through loud and clear, cutting through the din, pleading for all sorts of assistance. Hunt had no idea who or what agencies were behind those voices. But he could tell by the obvious levels of confusion that anarchy was running amok. Desperate pleas and brusque commands filled the airwaves. This was a moment reserved for clarity, Hunt thought, for reason, not hyperbole and histrionics. So he waited patiently for his chance to speak. He circled the drain. And as he did,

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the sun above circled the helo in kind. He picked his moment during a lull and spoke calmly. Please be on the alert. This is EMS pilot Anderson Hunt aboard WolfTracker5. We have a hot condition down on the deck. I need someone to notify the reformatory situation room. Repeat. The deck is hot. I have shots fired below outside main gate 1, B-wing. I say again, shots fired outside the main gate. B-wing. Be aware, guards are approaching the scene and conditions are hot. Say again, EMS Hunt? A voice in the electronic wilderness asked. Can you reaffirm your last transmission? I repeat! This time Anderson Hunt shouted into the microphone affixed to his Gentex helmet. Multiple shots firedlooks like three possibly four men downI really cant tell whats going on down there. Looks like one hell of a giant fur ball. Hunt maneuvered the chopper through a tight turn, trying not to put too much strain on the cyclic control resting between his legs. He looked down across the parking area and spotted the sinuous stretch of Highway 9 that separated the prison grounds from the naked cotton fields. He tried to frame the moment in his mind, to record a clear picture of the killing field below for the report he would have to file back at base. It was very difficult, though. The sun had alighted off its zenith. The low angled, refracted light coming in through the bubble shield hit him directly in his eyes and blinded him during stretches, and it was these moments that truly put his faith to the test, when he felt vulnerable and lost, when he felt that God himself was flying the aircraft. He gently pressed the foot pedals beneath his feet, decreased pitch, and put the helicopter into a steady directional hover a mere thirty feet or so above the ever expanding assemblage of bodies. He was above them now. The sun behind. He could see the prison guards, in their distinctive blue uniforms. They had already apprehended the portly man dressed in dungy overalls. Even from this height, Hunt could make out the pumpkin-orange color of the mans hair and the pink, sunburned flesh of his arms, raised high into the air in capitulation. The gun the man had previously waved about was now lying safely on the salted ground, about ten feet away. In one hand the man held aloft a black book, leather-bound and gleaming intensely in the sunlight. A bible, Hunt reasoned. Lots of religious zealots out here in the sticks. Kooks. Walking around with copies of the New Testament in their back pockets or in the crook of their arms; always proselytizing, never missing the chance to convert a stranger or non-believer. To EMS Hunt, the man looked local; and closely resembled the thousands of other farmers that lived in this vast, agricultural region, unmarked by time and progress. Upon orders, the assassin fell to his knees. He put his arms behind his head and interlaced his fingers. The bible dropped to the ground 196

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behind him, landing at his feet, which hed crossed over the back of his legs like a fat, lumpy X. At least four guardsmen formed a perimeter around the man, two of them crouching, guns and rifles drawn, lockedand-loaded. The other two began to rifle through the mans clothing. They padded him down and picked his pockets clean. The ominous guard towers that so terrified the reformatorys less than scrupulous populace were now empty; the guards having abandoned them in this time of crisis. EMS Hunt couldnt be sure that all was safe, that the situation was well in hand, as the unflinching light outside the cabin mixing with the hot air agitated by the sweeping rotors had a way of creating dreamy like, surreal images. The world outside his view window became a teetering prism. The sunlight, the raging depravity of an oppressive sun prying its way through the thick blanket of unraveled topsoil that hung in the air was ethereal, something Hunt had never seen, not even during his tenure as pilot for the 126th MED Air Ambulance in the first Gulf War, not even on the night the Kuwaiti oil fields went up in a stark conflagration, a million candles lit up all at once, bathing the fields themselves in an eerie, reddish luminescence, and the poisonous black smoke of fossil fuel burning filled the biosphere and nearly suffocated him and the twelve snipers he ferried across the wasteland like apostles of the apocalypse, and the black droplets of oil exploding out into the darkness came down from the heavens and rained all over his bubble shield, making flying nearly impossible. And when he landed as a precaution in a field covered in black, the heavily weighted Sikorsky Blackhawks landing skid sinking into the oily muck, caught in the earths strong grip, dragged down by the force of suction, for one panicky moment he thought he had breached some unforeseen barrier in the fabric of space and had touched down in a distant hell they would never get the chance to fly out of. Static. Garbled traffic. WolfTracker5. Can you define the situation? Alpha1. It appears the guards may have a suspect in custody. EMS Hunt spoke cautiously, not wanting to spread a false sense of security. Repeat. Someone is in custody? A break in the static. Affirmative. My aspect is clear. It appears the guards have the situation under control. Although someone better contact the reformatory. Be advisedsend a doctor ASAP. Theyll need a few ambulances, too. I think there are men seriously hurt down thereI thinkthey may bedead. Hunt was surprised the word had come out of his mouth so easily. He didnt want to make a bad situation any worse by spreading panic. What the hell happened out there? A dispatch supervisor had come on the line, and now yelled frantically.

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Hold on. Reconciling gouge. Gouge was pilot lingo for a summary of important information. Anderson leaned forward on the cyclic. The front end of his copter dipped instantly, and he now hovered a mere twenty-five feet above the sight. He was careful to stay out on the left fringe; about twenty yards out, making sure his rotors wouldnt kick up dust and debris over the guards. One of the men dressed in blue, the feckless, scrawnier one, had broken off from the main group and appeared to be administering CPR to one of the fallen men. I dont knowits the weirdest thing. Three men are down. I repeat. Three men are downprobably from gunshot wounds. I can see pools of blood everywhere. Repeat. Blood on the deck. I cant detect any movement coming from the victims. One second, WolfTracker5 A pause for thirty seconds. Static white noise filled the airwaves. Then. WolfTracker5. Can you confirm that Governor Holloway is safe? Is he still on the scene? The dispatchers voice sounded a bit nervous. Negative, Alpha1. The governor left the reformatory twenty minutes ago. Dropped him off at Dreamland, myself. WolfTracker5, whats your sierra? I think one of those guys lying on the ground might be that activist fellow that came up to debate the governor, thoughReywal, I think is his name. EMS Hunt. Is this a confirmation? The dispatch officer had left his nervousness behind and lapsed into exasperation. Or did you wake up this morning with newfound psychic abilities I was unaware of? Smart fellow, Hunt replied, ignoring the dispatchers derogatory question. Very tough. Fought like a bandit at the edge of the envelope. Had the governors number, Id have to say. He had listened to the two men bickering in front of the media as he performed his preflight check. Reywal had lashed back at the governor tooth and nail. Dirty politics. A knife fight in a phone booth. One man enters, one man leaves. That type of thing. Despite the governors moral high ground and mastery over the press, despite Reywals relative youth and uneasiness in the spotlight, Hunt believed Reywal would have cracked Holloway if only hed had more time at him. But sometimes the circumstances were against you. Sometimes there just wasnt enough time. Sometimes you shot better with one eye closed than with both eyes wide open. Suddenly, a solitary beam of concentrated sunlight fell on his hand as it rested on the collective control. It spotlighted the ghostly pallor of his skin, stretched taut across his knuckles. The light came through the triangular-shaped greenhouse window above him, an ethereal display of energy shifting and dancing, prodding his hand forward, and to EMS Hunt, a devout Christian who studied the New Testament regularly and believed in the power of salvation under the church, it seemed like the hand of God had come from above, urging him to flee the scene before 198

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the gruesome sight of the three men lying dead would imbed itself forever in his mind. EMS Hunt remained in a directional hover just long enough to take in a lasting peek at the carnage below. The guards looked up at the mechanical beast above them, and Hunt could make out their faces, flush with incomprehension, mouths drooping open in a dawning, rapidly expanding inability to deal with the situation. Hunt shrugged. He flashed the OK sign. One of the guards, a burly man with epaulets adorning his shoulder, waved him off with two hands. Two other guards were already leading the stout farmer away; heading towards the very same archway and heavy steel door the Lake brothers had passed through an hour earlier on their start to freedom. Hunt nodded. He pulled back on the collective, gaining immediate altitude. It had been a long, hot Oklahoma day. One of the hottest days ever. Maybe even the hottest. And stickiest. And it was now time to head home. Dispatch. Can you ascertain from the warden if further assistance is needed? EMS Hunt wiped the sweat off his brow. Im available for CASEVAC. Static. A minute went by. Hunt yawned. His eyes became lidded and heavy. Then: Thats a negative WolfTracker5. Officials are reporting three fatalities and one perp in custody. Nothing you can do. The state police have jurisdiction and are on their way. Prison officials will rope off the crime scene for them. They will transport the bodies straight to the prison hospital. No one is to infringe upon the scene. This means you, EMS Hunt. They are beaded-up but seem to have the situation under control. Bravo1, Im out of here, then. Hunt adjusted the headset and spoke into his mouthpiece, relieved. Time to throttle back, fang out and make myself a dot on the horizon. Bravo WolfTracker5, affirmative. Head for home base using flight plan One-Six-Charles. Affirmative. Got my home padlocked and the key in the ignition. Hunt adjusted the pedals, turned tail and opened up the throttle. He added forward cyclic, giving the helicopter forward momentum. He pulled back simultaneously on the collective, guiding the helicopter up the widening ladder of blue sky until his altimeter read five cupids (five hundred feet.) The cabin shuddered slightly as the helicopter transitioned through ETL. At that point he leveled off, gripped tighter, fighting, nudging, and asserted control over the chopper. Like all other experienced combat pilots, EMS Hunt fought to suppress the urge to fly nap-of-the-earth all the way back home. There was something terrifying, yet at the same time exhilarating, about watching the land zip by you a mere fifty feet below as you traced the contours of valleys and rivers and train tracks, slipping underneath power lines, flying close to the spaghetti, pretending the Republican 199

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Guard stronghold was hiding just over the next fold of land. No pilot would ever deprive himself of the thrill obtained when hugging territory; gaining intimate access with the unfolding land through unfiltered contact, like a long lost lover looking for someone or something to hold onto in the broad stroke of day. Soon after experiencing the high-warble shudder caused by ETL, Hunt found himself riding on the back of a strong, steady tail wind. The comfortable, low-noise, low-vibration ride evoked a strong sense of mind over muscle. Unlike airplanes, it was legal for helicopters to fly lower than one thousand feet above ground level. Five hundred feet was where he intended to stay. In this latent stage of the day, his ceiling and visibility were unlimited, the skies devoid of cloud cover and turbulence and refraction. It was CAVU, the best possible flying conditions one could hope for. An hour and a half to OKC, he thought. Touch down on the elevated helipad at the OU Medical Center, check down the aircraft, an hour or so in administration, jump in his car, and head for home. He looked up. An abrupt shudder went through him as Hunt caught sight of dark storm clouds piling up on the prairie basin, stacked up in disarray about fifty miles ahead. He could see the ominous, truncated piles of black-gray tufts and strands in motion, rough and unhinged, pushed around by some unforeseen wind. The entire mass was locked in the process of assembling together, like a primitive strand of DNA trying to put frayed polymers back together. Hunts grim ETA: No more than forty minutes before he hit the soup if he didnt alter his course. What do weathermen know anyway? He thought, sarcastically. And although a huge part of him inside felt broken and beaten from what hed witnessed back at the reformatory, his face brightened, and he managed to smile. His uneasiness gave way to a rugged resignation that quickly turned to sheer joy. It was going to rain. These weathermen were the so-called experts who had predicted the drought would last through the end of the summer. But they were wrong. There was hope. Two massive cloud formations, full of high-level moisture and lightning, had blown over from the Rockies out west and the Mexican Cordillera in the south, converging as a cumbersome, beautiful whole, bellies full of precipitation. The colossal cloud heads appeared to be solidifying, rolling across the bleak tundra against an emerging Northern cold front. Looks like we will get a reprieve after all. Hunt said to himself. EMS Hunt pressed on, leaving the inert bodies of Justice Reywal and the Lake brothers, leaving the massive weight of the prison and its ugly walls, leaving Highway 9 and the withered cotton fields all behind him for good. There was no need to look back. This was a harsh land, a land that was hard on her people, and between the backwash and all the dead brush that lay scattered about and the primordial creatures that had chosen the darwinistic route in order to survive, little good 200

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could be found out there. Between all the broken promises and the handshakes, between the candidates empty-vesseled wisdom and the vote, between the empty fields and the plow, a savage, organic emptiness was all that was left. Four hundred and ninety three feet in altitude and flying steadily, drifting in a comfortable pocket, Hunt could feel the energy growing in the breeze, the overwhelming victory of machine over gravity. It overcame drag and friction, everything that could prevent a helicopter from achieving maximum output. The constant droning of the helicopters powerful engine and the chopping sound produced by the elongated blades calmed and soothed him, and soon Anderson Hunt had completely forgotten the horror hed witnessed back at the yard. Anderson, snug in his NOMEX flight suit, leaned back against the leather pilot-seat, a lone, gentle man taking comfort in the tiny fuselage. He gazed outside the cockpit at the wide, expanse of land, mesmerized by the dense rows of cottonwood trees planted long ago in the shelterbelts to fight the deadly forces of erosion. He gazed at a land plowed and re-plowed over and over again by generations of Great Plains farmers into wide, jutting terraces and deep furrows; gazed in wonderment at the myriad of farm implements scattered throughout the farm beltthe yellow Caterpillar tractors, the giant, rusting harvesters, the 4 bottom plows, the long, worm-like orchard sprayersand he smiled for the men and women and children below, the players on this rustic field, smiled for the hands that steadied the plow and milked the cow herds each morning as the sun peeked over the horizon, smiled for their futures, because the long promise of rain was soon to come, bringing all their hopes and dreams to fruition. Directly in his flight path lay the murky line of demarcation; an invisible barrier he dreaded approaching, passing through, for on the other side of that line the blue sky had devolved three shades darker. The wind kicked up a notch and began to howl. Searing tips of white light cut thru the atmosphere like mighty spears unleashed. Each passing minute the space outside his bubble-screen grew full with ghostly shadows and the crackle of lightning, full of frightening forces previously held in check by the long drought. The torch had been passed, relinquished by the unresponsive land over to natures conquering resolve, its disaffected flame floating upwards to the heavens like a headless corpse, ready to be purged and exorcised. This was Anderson Hunts future, this burnt out flame, and it lay just a few minutes ahead, just on the outskirts of tornado alley. Hunt pointed the LongRanger due east, heading towards the fringes of the storm. With each passing moment the thunderheads were intensifying, bulging, busily harnessing the ferocious power of electricity. This feat took a bit of courage, since the friction produced by dust particles rubbing together in the air would sometimes create strong electrical currents that would erupt into unexpected, vicious 201

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storms of sheet lightning that could, if he were caught inside, tear the LongRanger to bits. Hunts luck holding, he continued to find long stretches of gentle drafts and warm pockets of air and flew steadfast over the giant folds of land, over the hayfields and dairy farms that stretched as far as the eye could see, over the gypsum and copper mines whose open pits and sinkholes scarred the prairie, to the end of the horizon where the dark, flat land met the wide blue sky. Most of those plots of land below had remained fallow and unproductive since the end of world War II. Just inside his visual range, abandoned farmhouses and single family dwellings still pockmarked these sightsfifty-acre lots, hundred-acre lots, two-hundred acre lots all overrun by tall, sweeping fields of weeds and inert native grasses and broken fences and rusting, decrepit autos and household appliances long ago abandoned in front yards. Huge moonlike craters, forming in areas where the wind had blown away topsoil lacking the natural, protective buffalo grass that glued the land together, gave Anderson the strange sensation that he was an Apollo astronaut flying over the moon itself. He passed over the network of pipelines laid out in the 1930s by the Army Corps of Engineers to bring water to the most parched, affected areas of the dustbowl. Not surprisingly, many of those pipelines were still in service to this daystark hommage to the sturdy men and women who long ago built things that would last. The massive clouds ahead blotted out the sun. Lightning licked at the edges of the formation. Unwavering, Hunt guided his helicopter over amber waves of grain that bowed in the prairie wind. He flew over small shacks sitting trackside. He flew over countless farmhouses, spread out wide, with their tar and shingled roofs, two-room, box-like dwellings entrenched with the common man, workers, dreamers, misfits, the ravaged tide known as Okies that had once been forced to practice crop rotation in order to survive the scourge of dust, forced to tack oiled cloths to every crack and opening in their homes, forced to wake each grim day to newfound bleakness and despair. Andersons eyes grew heavy-lidded and tired. He felt the arterial walls behind them thicken. The continual sound of helicopter blades chopping away at the air filled his ears. He was weary. Underneath him he could see the yards of the Union Pacific Railroad, a massive compound consisting of a terminal station, a myriad of shacks and tracks and switches. The enormous complex, located in a strategic point along the main line, was used to store locomotives of all kind loaded or unloaded, broken down, in need of repair or shiny new. Hunt could make out the main Up-yard and Down-yard tracks that made up the west central oklahoma route, rows of heavy steel laid out on wooden coss ties stretching in opposite directions as far as the eye could see. What he could not see, no matter how hard he tried, were 202

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the pithy movements of railyard workers. The absence of all human continuation and existence was very unnerving to him. Strange. Maybe they had all sensed or seen the rainclouds forming, coming together, he thought? Maybe they had all scurried about to safety? He closed his eyes, his mind becoming a closed portal to the world below. He wished hed remembered his small Styrofoam cooler; it would have been nice to have an ice cold Pepsi in his hands or frozen ice chips to moisten his mouth with. He hoped the serenity that had overcome him would not retreat into that same blackness that lay ahead. He hoped by some miracle of God Justice Reywal made it through alivethough he knew this was a crazy thought, a foolish rumination the likes of which one might have found in a child. He thought the weather would hold, and drew some comfort in that fact. Yet, deep inside he hoped it would rain. He wondered if the chopper had sufficient fuel to carry him home. EMS Hunt suddenly found himself commiting the two acts pilots deemed hazardous to the spatial awareness necessary to navigate an aircraft: hoping and wondering. He smacked the side of his head to clear his thoughts. He closed and opened his eyes for a few moments, blinking rapidly, trying to bleed the lethargy from his head. He took measure of the land below; trying to identify certain objects, trying to kill the stultifying feeling that had settled inside him by an act of sheer willpower and concentration. His steady hand guided the LongRanger over cemetaries with their gray, weathered tombstones and granite mausoleums, overwrought with deep, black fungus and long, probing tree roots that threatened to pry many the lid off a sarcophagus. He flew over the tiny, sleepy farming communities, each one no different than the next, isolated and framed by the corn and wheat fields that boxed them in, sectors within sectors, each one seemingly retreating back in time, back to lasting innocence and naivete. He flew over empty football stadiums that waited for the lights of Friday night, arenas built for modern day gladiators, the gentle arch of thrown leather, the abrupt meeting of color and flesh and emotions; he flew over the scattered honky-tonks that dotted the outskirts of prairie towns, lone, square structures surrounded by vast, empty parking lots that come weekend would be chock full with American muscle cars, pick-up trucks, muddied four wheel drive vehicles and fist-fights. He flew above the many main streets, wide and empty and exposed, and except for the occasional stray dog or senior citizen scurrying to safety as the wind and electricity contuinued to build, nothing moved. The wind outside his cabin howled viciously, picking up exponentially as the storm front moved in. It tore across the land, gathering parched wheat and dead leaves and stray garbage and paper cups and empty beer cans and yesterdays newspapers, it pushed big trees and small trees and traffic

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lights sideways, and ripped at the earth itself, loosening the bland topsoil of the prairie in a widening, naked path of destruction. But most of all, EMS Anderson Hunt flew low and fast, thinking about his simple brick-and-mortar home in the OKC suburbs, wanting to go back to those familiar objects; the minty aroma of leaves in the fall, the perpetual rains of late spring, his oversized bed encumbered in warm, flannel sheets and the ornate oakwood bedboard he had handcarved himself at the insistance of his wife, the way his dog, a beloved ten year old spaniel and his five year old son with crystal blue eyes that matched the very sky he had just flown through would gear up and hurdle onto the bed on Sunday mornings and they would all huddle together, one big, happy family, and the way these moments made him forget about everything dirty he had ever seen and done in his entire life. His home in the Southern Plains, surrounded by stands of dense low trees and shrubs and gentle rolling hills, shielded from the elements, and sometimes even shielded from time itself, shielded from the memories of the Dust Bowl by towering cement and mortar and crucible steel and treacherous eight-lane thoroughfares, surrounded by neighborhoods with colorful names like Automobile Alley and the Deep Deuce, surrounded by the gleaming, glass-fronted superstructures and manicured golf courses and manmade lakes and art galleries and ritzy mansions of the Paseo Arts District with wide, sweeping front lawns adorned with silly, hooded ornamentseach one by itself a disrespectful slap to the face of the simple farmer who worked the fields and eeked out a miserable existancehis home was his sanctuary; what California had been to the Okies long ago. Lost in all of this was the cruel lesson unleashed by Mother Nature, the massive storms that swept inexorably through the region during the 1930s and sent these farmers and families and laborers packing west, to work the onion fields of California dawn to dusk, for mere pittances. Backs bent, stooped over the fields they picked clusters of shallots, and with each layer peeled back, a plight was revealed. First layers produced enmity and self-pity. The next gave way to homesickness. The final layers brought shame, and when that was gone, all that remained was the shallots core, and in that tightly bound, watery essence they would look deep and find the acids that brought tears to their eyes, and this would force them to take stock of their lives, of years and memories discarded in the wind and the lost highways that raced long into the night behind them. Lost in all of this was Justice Reywal, the brave Indian activist whose even braver words had stirred EMS Hunt, the magnificent argument so passionately and eloquently delivered in front of the governor, and the mutual admiration Hunt had garnered for him, the unequivocal respect one warrior was able to bestow upon another. Something civilians would never understand. Something someone whod never fought for 204

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that square inch of turf or fought for a simple, God given right would ever understand. Lost in the darkening storm clouds ahead was the haunting image in Hunts mind of Justice Reywals face pressed down against the dry, Oklahoma dirt, lifeless and desecrated, blood oozing out in a sickening, widening pool, the pages of a broken book swirling above his prone body, dancing along on a wire, caught in shafts of golden light, caught momentarily in the helos violent downdraft. EMS Anderson Hunt guided his helicopter, a bit saddened, unable to shake the feeling hed lost an old, dear friend. He took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds, holding until his lungs seared, until his eyes began to tear up. He checked himself, gaining strength and momentum. Almost there. He could almost feel the delicate texture of the Oklahoma soil beneath his feet, feel the crunching latticework of leaves that would, come Autumn, cover the sidewalks as he walked his son to his first day of school. Hunt felt a strong urge to climb high into the sky, to bank over the massive cloud formation and fly far above the weather. He wished he could fly upwards towards the sun, to touch it and capture a bolt of fiery light and bring it back down to earth with him. He would touch the cold body of Justice Reywal with it, like the tip of a hot spear probing, and he would let the suns energy work its magic and try to reverse the cold spell of death, and he would hope for a miracle. The man inside him, the patriot, the veteran warrior, the reckless voyager, ached badly to get clearance from the HEMS operator to let him shoot on final approach, as any brave pilot would do, as any loving father would do, to fly so high hed entrench himself in the troposphere, dueling friction and radiation, bouncing off the dividing line of time and space and riding gravity back to earth and hitting the tarmac at a steep angle, to have a heroic story of his own to one day share with his son. Instead he performed a steep turn, an acrobatic twist exceeding 40 degrees that pushed him deep into his seat, made him suck up his seat cushion with his behind while being able to see the ground below through the tiny, side portal. He steadied the LongRanger. He was awake now. As awake as he would ever be. The miles rolled beneath him, rapidly, like early morning dew blending into afternoon dryness. Very quietly he pressed the chopper onward into the heart of tornado alley. He crossed his fingers and hoped God would spare him the unnerving sight of a twister forming high up in the clouds; a gray and black tassled snake that would spiral downward, ready to leech the blood-red color from the ground once it touched down on oklahoma soil. He waited for a passage of light in the clouds ahead, a narrow tunnel that would guide him and steer him home. He looked ahead at the massive cloud formation, coming together quickly, a vortex gathering steam, sucking life, spiraling in upon itself, a giant, swirling beast assembling in the 205

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heartland, then looked down towards the ground below, at communities dying equally as fast. Hunt was looking for something he couldnt quite name, something he hadnt seen in a long, long time. Somethinga thought maybeor a word, to grace his lips, to dot the tip of his tongue like a sour-lemon candy, melting with all its tart deliciousness into the moldings in his mind. He waited like a witness from heaven, gazing at a world below, watching it shoot by in absolute silence. Hunt breathed hard. He opened his eyes wide and spied a small hole in the clouds ahead, a tunnel burrowing directly through the clouds like a wormhole to another galaxy. The entryway was embalmed in a light so lyrical and pure, so golden, in fact, that Hunt thought it may have emanated from the garden itself. He said a quick prayer for Justice Reywal, shifted direction, and checked his fuel. The light beckoned him. He aimed the LongRanger towards the center of the passageway and prodded the chopper for more velocity. As shafts of golden light began to penetrate into the cockpit and splash over him, he finished his prayer and waited for the tall, downtown buildings of Oklahoma City to show up on the horizon, on the other side of the portentous darkness, on the other side of Gods rain.

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