She had dressed down to the extent tolerated at Bennett & Haversham, LLP — a silk blouse and black trousers, expensive but not eye-catching. The satellite offices monitored appearances even more closely than the LA headquarters, to avoid the PR office’s microscopic attention.
Yet this was Billings, her hometown. LA had no context for the people in front of Vera today. If they were preparing for trial, Rita from Santa Monica with the improbable eyelashes would dress up these reluctant witnesses. She’d Hollywood-ize them with beads and make them speak in parables. It would be unbearable, alien. Still, Vera checked her cuffs and smoothed her gold collar necklace. Beyond the plate glass nine stories up, postcard views extended from sandstone cliffs to the north and southeast down to the swift Yellowstone fringed by refineries. This town, she thought. Country clubs and nickel casinos, half the folks trying to be something fancier than they were and the other half just trying to get by. PR would never understand that they’d have more credibility here in boots and jeans than suits.
At a nod from the court reporter, Vera stepped up to the table. “Thank you for coming. We’ve all spoken by phone, so you know what to expect today. I’m Vera Ingalls, the lawyer who called. I’ve reviewed all the documents forwarded to me and there’s no record of any applications for homestead patents by your ancestors, but we have good evidence that they did homestead in the area you’ve identified. The army has records of the promises made to honor homestead rights, and there’s the Indian Homestead Act itself. We’ll start with that and take your oral testimony. This is Kristie, who’ll be taking down everything you tell her. She has instructions about what we need. I’ll be just down the hall in my office if any questions come up. Is there anything you want to ask before we start?”
Shifting and sidelong glances moved up and down the row. Finally, a heavy man in a denim work shirt and a white cowboy hat leaned on his forearms. “We want copies of the testimony,” he said. “For each of us and for the tribal college. For the history department.”
“Certainly.” Vera ran an expectant look along the row of faces. They raised and lowered their eyes, but no one spoke. “Okay then. My assistant will be in around eleven thirty to take lunch orders if you’re still going.”
Beck was coming up the hall as she emerged from the conference room.
“This that pro bono project?” He slowed, but Vera still had to quicken her pace to join his efficient progress toward the restroom in order to have a conversation with him.
“They’re recording oral history today. What they told me by phone backs up the archived documents, so I’m getting it down.”
“Good stuff. LA wants this in the news as soon as you can get the complaint filed. We’re getting hammered — all the media wants to cover is those damn Navajo protestors. We need the redirect.” Beck halted at the restroom and put his hand on the doorknob to let her know the consultation was over.
“I’m on it, but we don’t have any record of homestead applications. That’s the real problem. Army generals making empty promises to Indians isn’t exactly a federal case.”
“I get it. But we need a win here. Your partnership review is coming up and LA is big on team players. Knock it out of the park for us, kid.” He raised a fist to her shoulder but didn’t punch it like he used to. A big sexual-harassment payout against one of the Denver partners had recently created a new, and welcome, force field around the associates. Beck disappeared into the restroom and Vera unconsciously rubbed her shoulder.
If the elders had been paying clients, she would have stayed to hold their hands and rack up billable hours, but they’d be fine. Vera had heard too much on the phone to hanker for the live performance.
“My ancestors traveled to Fort Keogh to meet with General Miles, before the reservation time. They promised peace and he promised land...”
“The soldiers gave no warning. They came with horses and wagons and told all the families east of the river they had to move to the new reservation west of the river...”
“The babies were buried down there, near the river. We had to leave them. We still go, for ceremonies. It is a sacred place...”
Anybody who grew up around here was raised on the litany of white savagery against the local tribes — what more was there to say, Vera asked herself, but mea culpa, mea maxima culpa? It was a bloodstain better assigned to the past. No present guilt could change it. Knowing the outcome, the century of community her ancestors and their neighbors had built, she wasn’t sure that changing it would be for the best anyway. Jimmy Beck and the management were so smug, so sure that they knew better than the locals how things should play.
“You don’t own me,” she whispered to the innocuous Western landscape art.
Her office had a glass door and wall onto the corridor. Nothing hidden. The managing committee frowned on the use of the blinds by associates. We thrive as a partnership in an atmosphere of maximum transparency, the employee handbook read, when what it really meant, Vera had discovered by observation, was maximum transparency for associates while the equity partners operated from the security of an absolute black box.
She glanced up and down the empty corridor, stepped into her office, and snapped the blinds shut. She had only just opened the complaint document when knuckles rapped the glass, a knock she recognized. Vera held a hand to her forehead, coughed, and said, “Come in.”
Peter was in business casual for the flight.
“Hi.” He greeted her in that tentative voice he used around women. It used to fool her, but since she’d met him she’d come to understand that the unassuming manner was a deliberately disarming front for Peter’s litigating MO, which was to reach down his opponent’s throat and rip his beating heart from his body.
“Moving up to the big leagues,” she said. He checked the time on his smartphone.
“Flight’s at eleven. Just turned in my keys.” He advanced to stand before her desk as if inviting some gesture from her, but she stayed seated, half turned toward her monitor.
“Good luck.”
He sighed. “Vera, can’t we put things behind us and be friends? I don’t want to leave bad blood between us.”
But he hadn’t seen the blood, had he? He wasn’t there when the toilet filled with blood like some cheap effect in a horror movie. He couldn’t spare the time to hold her hand as the gyno completed nature’s messy work, because it had all been her mistake. He’d made that clear.
“There is no us, Peter. Go to LA. Have a nice life.” She indicated the door with head and eyebrows.
Another sigh, this one more aggressive. “Fine. Just remember, you’re the one who wanted to leave it like this.”
She held her peace as Peter stalked out and enjoyed the little victory of the door whispering shut on its strong hinge in spite of his best attempt to slam it. The complaint sat before her, uninspiring, for the next half hour or so, until finally she went to check on progress in the conference room.
She was back at her desk, boxed salad open in front of her, when the phone rang. Muriel had instructions to take messages today while Vera drafted the complaint, but calls from her great-uncle Marshall were different. He was as likely as not calling from the hospital, after he or another aging relative wound up in care. Since her parents migrated to Scottsdale a few years earlier, Vera batted cleanup at home in Montana.