Deer Creek Casino had the connections and the pull to unleash hell on Mike’s family. But what was the motive?
Why did these people want to kill him and his daughter?
The notion was like a snake, coiled deep around his brain stem. It twisted, and he felt it again down his spine.
A cocktail waitress emerged from an unmarked door to his side, revealing a glimpse of hall stretching back to offices. Her tray now empty.
‘Excuse me. Where can I find out more about the tribe?’ He wondered if he was standing close enough that she would notice the sunflower seeds tucked into his lips.
She smiled from beneath her Indian-princess headband, the side feather nodding over her red curls. Her skin was pale and freckled; she might have been Irish. ‘At the Tribal Shrine there off the stairwell landing.’
Mike drifted dreamlike up the stairs, through an archway labeled THE STORY OF THE DEER CREEK TRIBE and into what appeared to be a gauche history exhibit. The lights were dimmed reverently, faded photographs and museum-like captions set into black velvet fabric panels. A few tourists made their way around grudgingly, as if fulfilling some educational requirement. Through hidden speakers issued crackly chanting, sounds Mike associated with sweat lodges and Sunday-morning cartoons. The room, like the rest of the casino, recalled nothing so much as a Disneyland attraction.
A copper-faced Indian greeted comers from a mounted television. A computer-generated simulation, he seemed the archetypal Native American – high cheekbones, generous mouth, formidable nose, erect bearing. The stoic, lined face glowed with earth-baked wisdom. Mike found himself staring at the braided blue-black hair with disbelief and horrified recognition. All those fragments and inklings slid into shocking alignment.
‘Welcome, friends. Follow the trail and I shall tell you the tale of the Deer Creek Tribe.’
Mike trudged along, his head thick and soupy, as if he were emerging from general anesthesia. Pinned photos and clippings related the promised tale.
‘The Deer Creek people,’ the Indian intoned from a new flat-screen, not missing a beat, ‘have been in Northern California for nearly four thousand years.’ As the stilted voice continued, Mike did his best to focus on the exhibit pieces. Various sketches showed tribesmen hunting with bows and arrows, setting snares, using harpoons and fishing nets. The women were depicted gathering and grinding acorns and weaving their hair into figure-eight loops at their napes.
Mike’s feet moved at a normal pace, but his blood had quickened, surging in his veins.
The next section covered the tribal member’s beliefs. Woodpeckers symbolized wealth and good luck. Sleeping with one’s face exposed to the moon was thought to be unwholesome. ‘And a blowfly in the thatch house,’ the virtual Indian informed, ‘meant evil was stalking the family.’
A tingle crawled along Mike’s skin.
A waft of tribal incense from the back reached his nostrils. Sage. The smell of his childhood.
His legs had locked up, but the digitized tour guide continued. ‘At their peak, these proud Hokan-speaking people, distant relatives to the Yana tribe, numbered nearly two thousand. But then came the white man. Many of the Indians in this region were relocated in forced marches. Measles, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculoses, and dysentery thinned the ranks of those who remained. The 1860s saw endless raids and counterraids between Native Americans and white settlers, and many tribes were exterminated. But fortunately, a remnant group of the Deer Creek Tribe survived into the next century.’
More sketches – Indians mourning, their hair shorn, heads covered with pitch. The burning of the dead. Woeful faces. Mike willed the Indian to drop the cigar-store shtick and speak at a normal clip, but there was no speeding up animation. ‘They were granted their own humble reservation, the government holding in trust for them title to two thousand acres. Then came the modern scourges. Suicide. Diabetes. Alcoholism. Over the decades the land was broken up and parceled out until precious little remained. By the 1950s many assumed that the Deer Creek Tribe was no more.’
Dusty maps and laminated government treaties organized neatly in binders composed a history section. Agreements between sovereign Indian nations and the United States were public domain, and Deer Creek’s were on proud display here. It took no time for Mike to zero in on a trust agreement buried inside a compact between Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc., and the federal government. The casino – and the attendant corporation – were being held in trust, just as what remained of the reservation was held in trust by the U.S. government.
He skimmed, legal phrases jumping out at him, confirming what he’d already grasped. Casino management had been appointed as trustee ‘with all attendant general powers’ concerning the land and assets. Management would remain in charge as long as there was ‘no member of the tribe able and willing’ to serve. Any tribe members who materialized would become the sole trustees and would enjoy ‘full power and discretionary authority’ over the entire business.
Mike’s mouth was bitter and dry with sunflower-seed residue.
With shaking hands he flipped furiously back a few pages to the definition of terms. ‘ “Tribe Member” shall mean a person, as defined in the tribal bylaws, with a combined minimum of one-eighth (1/8) Deer Creek Tribe blood quantum.’
Mike’s insides had gone cold.
The robo-Indian had been speaking for some time, Mike realized, his words repeating on a loop. ‘One cold April morning in 1977, a hiker discovered a woman living quietly in a lean-to cabin. Her name was Sue Windbird. She was the last of the Deer Creek people.’
Nineteen seventy-seven – just a few years before Mike was abandoned at that playground. His head abuzz with anticipation, he stepped around a small partition and beheld a photograph portrait of an ancient Native American woman. His breath left him.
Her hands curled like claws, resting on the woolen blanket drawn across her knees. Her sun-weathered face retained an impish liveliness. Teeth better than one would have thought. But it was her eyes that left Mike clutching for air.
One brown. The other amber.
Chapter 47
Mike’s legs felt like stilts as he stepped out of the shrine onto the landing, the crisp air-conditioning welcome on the heat of his face. He leaned against the wall to catch his breath. When he mopped at his brow, his sleeve came away damp.
His mind remained fastened on that image of Sue Windbird. A brass plaque beneath her portrait had given her name, a question mark for a birthday, and the date of her death – August 10, 1982.
Yet Sue Windbird, clearly, wasn’t the last of her people.
Though she was decades gone, those mismatched eyes might as well have been an arrow pointing from her through him to Kat. What had William called them? Cat eyes.
Mike couldn’t remember if his mother, too, had heterochromia, but he could picture distinctly the view up at her when she bathed him as a child, her black-brown hair draped along one tan arm. The pronounced cheekbones. That golden brown skin, dark even in winter. A buried lineage to a culture he knew no more about than he did the Mayans or the Pennsylvania Dutch. But there it was, a birthright running through his veins. And Kat’s.
The ramifications swirled around him, leaving him dizzy. As long as there were no Deer Creek tribal members living, casino management ran the show and kept all profit.
These people were willing to kill generations of a family to ensure that the tribe stayed extinct.