

The Dream Dancer

Kenneth C. Crowe

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Kenneth C. Crowe

Revised 2011

This book is dedicated to

SugarRae

CHAPTER ONE

Coop lay back barely awake in the rickety, striped cloth chaise longue at the end of another hot August day, softened by a deliciously cool breeze. For the past three or four weeks, he had been pulled from the depths of sleep several times a night by an inexplicable, uneasy feeling that vexed him through each day. He looked through the Chateauneuf du Pape in his crystal glass, holding it high against the sky, examining the color. Deep red. His father-in-law could give a lecture on the color of the wine in this glass and a twelve-week course on the scent and the taste. Coop grew up in a world where the standard was how cold was the Iron City Beer. He sipped the wine, tasted good, and almost started into his work, but his eye caught a procession of six ducks riding the current down the Rhone River. He watched until they were gone. He lit a Gitane, sucking the tobacco smoke deep into his lungs. Six of them. A number reminding him that for years he had neglected the simple ritual an Okwe was expected to perform at the beginning of every day and at the edge of any undertaking. Something stirred him to go through that long-abandoned ceremony. He used the cigaret to smudge the air in the six directions, north, south, east and west around his head, a drop of his hand to earth, a stretch to the heavens, thanking, Koona Manitou, the Creator, for his life and energy.

Not much energy today, he thought. He placed the empty glass next to the bottle on the side table, leaning far enough out of his chair to fetch the thick file on the Algerian insurgency. He had collected newspaper and magazine clips, photos, maps, and a bound Army intelligence report that included brief biographies of the known leaders of the Front de Liberation Nationale and an account of the massacre in el Halia, a mining town near Philippeville, on Algeria's Mediterranean Coast. He had assembled the dossier just before he left Paris with Eleonore and Elise on the first day of August for the annual escape from the city's oppressive heat. Now with September and the close of the summer holiday just three days away, he was forcing himself out of his malaise to read the details of the turmoil in Algeria, which was to be the subject of his third book, the central character a French Foreign Legionnaire. Coop was attracted to the Legionnaires. Taken to their essence they were pure warriors whose loyalty was to one another, not to France, a country that was not theirs.

He opened the intelligence report on the slaughter in el Halia. Algerians, miners and peasants in this case, had used axes and scythes, knives and picks, to kill 123 men, women and children, pied noirs, as they called the European settlers. The violence was vicious and personal. Women were raped. Babies were cut up. Legs, arms, penises hacked from the men. French soldiers had evened the score by killing twelve or thirteen-hundred Algerians, perhaps including some who actually had participated in the massacre. There was a glossy print inserted in the report. He studied the picture, a row of bodies, all children, 12 and younger. The Army's justification for the frenzy of revenge. He remembered what Lenin said, "Le but du terrorisme est terrorize." He smirked. He was even thinking in French now. He turned his mind back to English: "The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize." His contemplation of Lenin's caustic aphorism in the context of Algeria was interrupted by the tinkling of the silver bell, the one traditionally used in their family to announce an important dinner or a special treat.

Eleonore and Elise were back. He was surprised they were so early. He had expected them to spend several hours more at her parents, maybe even to stay for dinner. Eleonore's mother probably had sent one of the fruit tarts she loved to bake. He picked up the glass and the half-empty wine bottle, packed up his files, and slowly walked back to the house. He wasn't irritated by the interruption. He didn't feel like working. He was annoyed to find the back door closed, forcing him to unload his glassware and files onto a table to open the door, which usually stuck. He pushed it in, and there was Eleonore, smiling, naked, slender, voluptuous. The fragrance of her freshly perfumed body filling the room. She stood in the bedroom doorway in an exaggerated pose with a bottle of champagne in her right hand extended high above her head, and two flute glasses in her left. "Voila," she said.

Obviously, Elise was staying with her grandparents tonight.

"Paradise awaits," Eleonore said, turning into the bedroom.

He followed close behind.

CHAPTER TWO

A few minutes after Eleonore left the apartment with Elise, Madame Chaland, the concierge, was at the door with a huge wicker laundry basket filled with a month's mail. "You get a ton of mail, Monsieur Rever."

"And I'm grateful for your kindness in bringing it up, Madame Chaland." Coop took the basket from her, placing it just inside the door. "Just a moment Madame, please." He fetched a bottle and a banknote he had waiting on the foyer table. "I thought you might enjoy a little Cote du Rhone." He didn't mention the 50 franc note that he handed her with the bottle.

She smiled. "I hope you had a good summer in Provence."

"Wonderful, as always."

"Paris was unbearably hot," she said nodding.

"Yet, it's good to be home."

"Now that the cooler weather is upon us."

"Pretty warm today."

"The nights are cooler, and fall is almost upon us."

"Yes. Thank you very much. I'd better get to the job of sorting this mail." He waited until she turned away to close the door. He carried the basket through the apartment to his office. He began going through the envelopes, a glance and a toss, dealing them into three piles on the floor--for Eleonore, for himself, for bills. Advertisements and similar dreck went into a waiting trash container. The hurried process stopped when he picked up an airmail envelope from the States. His name and address in block letters. From his mother. A thrill surged through his body. Something must have happened. She always sent him a birthday card with a letter. Never much to say. She wasn't comfortable with a pencil or a pen. This was the first time in years, six years in fact, that she went beyond the birthday letter. He wrote them, his mother and father, more often, but that was expected. He was a writer; he was educated. Sensing some brutal misfortune in this envelope, not wanting to open it, he turned it over reading her return address, Molly Bluebird Rever, PO Box 7, Valley of Green River Falls, Pennsylvania, USA. He carefully peeled back the sealed flap, then stopped. He lit a Gitane, smudging the air with smoke in the six directions. He thanked Koona Manitou, the Creator, for this letter from Bluebird, his mother. He would have prayed for good news if he were a Christian, but the Okwe Way prohibited him from asking Koona Manitou for anything more than he had. He put down the cigaret and opened the letter with trembling hands:

'Dear Coop,

I miss you so much. The weather has never been hotter. The Green River ran dry for two days. I never heard of anything like it. Did you? There was no water falls for two days. Every Okwe who could walked through the woods to see if the falls would bleed. Even Papa went. You know him. He says he is not a believer, but he went. So did everybody else. It was so hot. Then the water came again instead of the blood. Now Papa can't sleep he's so upset over the treaty. Everyone feels that way. Even the newspaper wrote about it. The water is falling again so maybe everything will be all right. I wish you would come home to us.

Love,

Mamma.'

He looked at the postmark on the envelope, August 10, 1956, and read the letter again. His mother longed for him to return home, to abandon his sojourn in the white world. At least his father hadn't died. That was his great fear. Or maybe that something had happened to his son, whom he had seen only twice in the last 11 years on his two visits to the Valley. The first right after he graduated from the Sorbonne; the second was a detour to the Valley on his way back to Paris from Korea. He was so proud of himself on both occasions. He wanted his father, George Redsky, and his mother to revel in his triumphs, graduating from college and returning from another war—not as a soldier, but as a foreign correspondent, an occupation that thrilled him and impressed them.

But both visits ended unhappily with Snowdrop, his ex-wife, coming with their little boy, Stanley, to Bluebird's house to demand he come back to her and to tear her hair, scream and curse when he said, "We are no longer married. You know that."

The lingering passion he had felt for Snowdrop had shriveled into a forgotten corner the moment he met Eleonore at a demonstration outside the Chamber of Deputies. He was still a student at the Sorbonne. He was there out of curiosity. She was covering the event for her magazine, 'Une Vue Internationale'. They met again the next day for a glass of wine, and they talked for hours. He told her he had been married before, to a woman in the States who had borne him a son. He loved that woman deeply until she abandoned him for another man. Eleonore had lost her great love in the war; they had been in the resistance together; they were a blend that her friends said just wouldn't work after the war: he a Communist, she a Socialist. Coop said he didn't care about politics. European politics, U.S. politics. She said it doesn't make any difference whether you care or not, politics consumes some, like her, and affects all, Coop included. She confessed she was six years older than he. "The women in my family look younger than they are. People assume my mother is my sister." "You must have a beautiful mother," he said. They had dinner together in a little Left Bank restaurant, and walked along the Seine. Everything about him delighted her. Whatever he said, the timbre of his voice, the touch of his hands, his kisses, the color of his skin, his high cheekbones, his body sculpted for athletics, soldiering and sex.

He had planned to spend the day working on an essay about Dien Bien Phu that his publisher wanted to send out to newspapers to keep the public aware of his book, 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses/La vie sinistre de Karl Witzbold,' which had come out in the spring. The English-language edition was to be called, 'The Two Million-Dollar Wounds of Karl Witzbold.' He didn't know what he was going to say. The publisher didn't care. Just a fascinating piece of prose to be used to plug the book. But Bluebird's letter occupied his mind. He couldn't write.

After he finished sorting the mail, he left the apartment. "Not working today," Madame Chaland said as he passed through the front door. "I need some air," he said.

He walked to the café on the Place St. Sulpice. He sat at his favorite table on the terrace where he could watch the pedestrians crossing the plaza and the water cresting into a thin foam high above the fountain before splashing down. He placed his order. As the waiter walked away, he reread his mother's letter. After the coffee, a pastry, an orange juice and water were laid before him, he lingered for an hour trying to suppress the letter, which kept popping into his thoughts, by mulling his forthcoming trip to Algeria to gather material for his third book on the French Foreign Legion. He grasped the unwritten implication in his mother's letter. She probably didn't want to write it out for fear the words would come true. The Okwe, which meant the People in the old language, were protected from the Americans who had taken all the land around their valley by the Treaty of the Green River Falls. He knew from the story tellers and from Redsky holding forth at the supper table that George Washington himself told the Okwe that 'as long as the water falls' the Americans would leave the People undisturbed in their valley to hunt, fish, farm, and live happily under their own laws. Every Red man knew the Americans couldn't be trusted. So many treaties with other bands and tribes of Indians with similar phrases like 'as long as the grass grows and the water flows' had been broken; the Indians' lands taken. Yet the flood of whites had poured past the valley leaving the Okwe relatively undisturbed for almost 200 years. They were required to send their children to white-run schools. They didn't like that, but they did so out of their helplessness, to keep the peace. The white men didn't have to force the Okwe to fight in their wars. That was an opportunity welcomed; a chance to fulfill the hunger to be a warrior. He had never really thought seriously about why the Americans had left the Okwe alone. Obviously, they didn't want the valley, otherwise, whether the water continued falling or not, the greedy ones would have taken it. That was the name the Okwe applied to the whites: the knowos, the cravers, the ones with the insatiable hunger, the greedy ones.

CHAPTER THREE

He is walking on the dirt road towards Bluebird's house in a night lit to twilight by the moon. The Dream Dancer, Sheehays, stooped and fragile with age, is standing on an ancient trail in the woods. "Katsi Uthayatkwai," Sheehays says in the old language. The words are a melody. Coop swells with joy. Sheehays gestures towards him with his left arm, which is wrapped in the wampum of the Dream Dancer. He holds in his right hand a long deer skin bundle elaborately decorated with bits of red and blue stones from the Green River, white beads, and soft fringe. The bundle contains the holy pipe and Indian tobacco mixed with wild mushrooms and the ground seeds of certain wildflowers. "Come with me to the Falls, Uthayatkwai." They walk together, stepping onto the surface of the river without hesitation. Coop gestures to the water flowing just beneath their feet, supporting them as if they were on a forest trail. "How is this possible?" Sheehays responds, "Uthayatkwai, in the dreamworld that connects the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit, you are more than a man."

He hears his mother's voice calling his Okwe name: "Escanish! Escanish! Escanish! Escanish!" He pauses to acknowledge her with a wave and a smile. He turns away, following Sheehays to a clearing near the falls. A vision lodge, a hut of saplings bent and lashed, covered with deer hides, has been erected. A small fire is burning in the clearing. The two of them strip to breech cloths and enter the hut. The old man pours water from a gourd onto the hot stones and the steam fills the small space; drums and rattles are sounding; he hears the Wolf mothers chanting hoy-yae hoy-yae hoy-yae hoy-yae, expanding into a string of words in the old language: 'see, listen, do for The People.' He and Sheehays run out of the searing heat into ice cold of the river, diving beneath the water, surfacing and diving again. They reenter the hut, cleared of steam, and wrap themselves in thick woolen blankets. Coop sits beside Sheehays, facing the north. The old man rises. He throws sacred herbs onto the rekindled fire creating a scented, intoxicating fog. Sheehays in trance dances, shuffling in a tight circle, calling over his shoulder to Koona Manitou. Coop rises to join him. After a while, the old man puts his hands on Coop's shoulders, signaling him to sit again. Sheehays packs utukehti-tekayesto, the sacred mixture of tobacco, fungi and seeds into the pipe, lighting it with a stick from the fire. Sitting side by side again, they pass the holy pipe back and forth, drawing the smoke into their lungs, blowing it back across the fire. Coop has never felt happier or more self-confident. At the first light of morning, the old man taps the remnants of the sacred mixture from the pipe. He returns the pipe to its deer skin wrapping and presents it to Coop. He unwraps the wampum from his arm, ties it around Coop's left arm, and is gone.

Coop awoke rolling over to slip his arm across the soft, warm flesh of Eleonore's body, cupping her breast in his hand. "You okay?" she asked turning towards him, kissing him on the lips, a gentle kiss of attachment and concern.

"Eleonore! I dreamt..." He caught himself. This was a dream, not to be told to an outsider, not even his wife.

"What did you dream?" She was laughing with excitement.

"My old dream. The one I dreamt many years ago that I can't tell you."

"The exact same mysterious dream? I never thought I would marry a man who would dream only one dream. Then, taunt me by never telling me about it."

"Yes." He turned onto his back, looking at the ceiling in the first light of morning. "The exact same dream. And no, I'm not going to give you the details." He had dreamt the dream for the first time on the night ending D-Day in Normandy. The lone survivor of his squad, he had found refuge on the parlor floor in the remnants of a house in the heights above the beach. Hungry, exhausted, and frightened, he dropped into a deliciously deep sleep as he waited for morning and the resumption of the fighting. He awoke in the dawn with the phrase "Katsi Uthayatkwai" rolling through his mind. "Come Mythical Dancing Wolf" was the literal translation. Uthayatkwai was The Dream Dancer's name in the old language. Sheehays had addressed him as Uthayatkwai four times. He knew from the songs sung by the mothers of the Wolf Clan that in the rite of selection, The Dream Dancer leaving the world of the flesh would designate his successor by calling him Uthayatkwai four times in a dream.

"C'est merde," she said in fury. Eleonore hated secrets. Her first husband, Raymond had died under torture, punched and kicked to death, for the secrets he held. She was determined to live her life openly, nothing hidden; she told Coop everything about herself, her life, her family, her desires, her angers, her innermost thoughts. She wanted the same from him. When she suspected he was holding back the whole truth or lied, she fell into a rage, lasting for days, that made him wonder if she were unbalanced. The mysterious dream had been a canker that threatened their blooming romance when they first met, but was overcome with love and receded as an issue in the passing years. She usually came to the breakfast table overflowing with her dreams from the sleep just past, taking pleasure in discussing them, asking him opinions on the meaning of spiders crawling across her, of her falling through bottomless space. She would ask for his dream in return, and he would say, "I didn't dream last night." She had come to accept that response, correctly sensing he was telling the truth.

He sat up, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. Sitting there for a few minutes until he came more awake. He pulled on the pair of pajama pants lying atop the pile of books on the floor. He went through the half-open glass door onto the balcony where he lit a cigaret and leaned on the railing. He looked along the quiet street, a stone valley of five-story apartment buildings hovering over an old, narrow cobblestoned rue with small cars parked on the concrete sidewalk; two cars whizzed by one after the other. He counted in his mind the years and months that he had awakened from sleep without dreaming: 12 years, three months. The dreamscape was the center of an Okwe's existence, the communion between the worlds of the flesh and the spirit. Coop had gone through those years accepting the notion that the penalty for putting the Valley behind him and refusing to be The Dream Dancer was to endure spending his nights in a dark hole instead in the other reality of dreams. He had awakened on so many mornings experiencing an aching emptiness.

CHAPTER FOUR

Outside the window, the weather was dismal, gray, chilly, showers lashing the street throughout the day. Coop's mind was on torture. He had just finished reading 'Votre Gestapo d'Algerie,' Claude Bourdet's article on the savage techniques French interrogators applied in Algeria. The limp pages torn from the Jan. 13, 1955 edition of the 'France-Observer' lay on his lap. He spun on his chair to face the inner wall of his office. Flanking a large map of Algeria were head-and-shoulders shots of the dark-haired, olive-skinned Ahmed Ben Bella, leader of the FLN rebels and of Luc Defferre, white, smiling, wearing the green beret of the French Foreign Legion paratroopers. The black and the white. The evil and the good. That's how the French Army and the French Government viewed the conflict. Luc Defferre was a Canadian and a veteran of a year in Indochina, where Coop had met him. Coop had selected Luc, a corporal, as the potential central character of his next book. He had used individual Legionnaires as the hero protagonists in his books on the wars in Korea and Indochina. He was building a readership base attracted to stories of the Foreign Legion. The problem was that the action in the guerrilla war in North Africa was sporadic with the Legion in the position of reacting to surprise attacks or assuming the role of a violent intrusive police force sweeping through villages, dragging suspects out of their houses to the waiting interrogators. The opportunity for Luc to play the role of the hero was slight, and he could develop into a beastly occupier. As Coop had studied his file of intelligence reports and clippings, particularly Bourdet's article and interviews of soldiers and politicians, his enthusiasm for the project had waned.

Coop was toying with the idea of searching out Ben Bella and if he were cooperative of writing the book from the dual perspectives of the dominating revolutionary with his overview of the conflict and Luc as the soldier on the ground, more interested in survival than politics and grand schemes for the decolonization of Algeria.

As he sat there mulling the complexity of the undertaking, the phone rang. "Bonjour."

"Bonjour. Mon nom est Dr. Horowitz. Peux je parler à M. Coop Rever."

"Oui. C'est M. Rever."

She switched to English. "Mr. Rever, your mother gave me your address. She asked me to deliver a message to you."

"Is my mother okay?"

"Yes she is, although this is a trying time for all of the Okwe. Would it be possible for us to get together? My main purpose in coming to Paris is to talk to you."

"May I ask why?"

"I'm an anthropologist. I did my dissertation on the mythical dancing wolves of the Okwe."

A current passed through his body. He took a while in responding. "That's an esoteric subject." He didn't want to talk to her, but was unable to tell her that flatly. He would put her off, and maybe she would go away. "I must say that you're catching me at a very bad time. I'm in the process of gathering material for a book and I expect to be out of town for three or four months. If you call me sometime after January maybe we can get together."

"As I said, I came to Paris just to see you, Mr. Rever. Your mother told me if I said she wanted you to talk to me that you would." She paused, her heart pounding. She said into the silence that followed, "I knew Sheehays very well. I got to know him when I taught in the Valley school."

How could he turn down someone sent by his mother, and what's more who had spoken to Sheehays? Dr. Horowitz knew which levers to push. He said, "It's what? Eleven o'clock. There's a café I like on the Place Saint Sulpice, the Café de la Mairie. The Place Saint Sulpice is on the Left Bank. It's the Saint Sulpice stop on Line 4 of the Metro. Meet me there at one. We'll have lunch."

CHAPTER FIVE

He wore his trench coat and Irish walking hat to the café, bowing his head against the whipping downpour. The smiling waiter brought him a fresh bar towel. "Bonjour M. Rever. Your usual table." They laughed together. Ordinarily, he sat outside.

A woman rose from a small table near the door. "Mr. Rever?"

"Yes. Dr. Horowitz?" She was short, thick-bodied with curly brunet hair. She looked vaguely familiar. He finished wiping his face before he shook hands with her. He gave the towel back to the waiter. "We'll sit upstairs. After you," he said pointing to the staircase. On the second floor, he hung his soaked coat on a rack just inside the landing. He led her to a table overlooking the square. "I'm going to have a scotch, a bowl of hot soup and a plate of ham and cheese with lots of bread."

"Sounds good to me."

He placed the order with the waiter. Double scotches, mushroom soup, the ham, cheese and bread. "Shall we talk about the weather, or how beautiful the Valley is in October, or get right down to business?" Suddenly he recognized her. "Miss Garmise?" Adele Garmise had taught in the Valley's one-room school house. Coop had gone on to high school before she arrived, but knew her by sight and reputation. She was well-liked in the Valley. Not many knowos were.

"Yes. Horowitz is my married name."

"I remember you, of course. You married Dr. Horowitz. He used to come out to the Valley once a month to run a clinic under some federal program." He remembered how the Okwe children, her students in the school house where she taught all eight grades in a single room, mimicked her, saying she 'tawks' like this and says 'war-der' for water and soda when she means pop.

"Yes. That's how Martin and I met."

"How is Dr. Horowitz, your husband I mean? When my son was born he gave him all of his shots."

"Martin is dead. I lost him and my daughter, Ruth, in a car accident." Her lower lip trembled when she said that.

"Oh. I'm so sorry." The sadness on her face softened him. He regretted having been so abrupt in his opening words to her.

"That was a while ago. Nineteen-fifty. We were coming back from the city, from visiting my parents in New York City. Of all things, a beaver crossed the road. Martin swerved to avoid it, and we hit a tree. Ruth and Martin died, the beaver and I didn't get a scratch."

Coop experienced a twinge, an unexpected connection to this pudgy white woman with her dyed hair and New York accent. A beaver. The beaver was Coop's power animal, his guardian spirit. The animal that came to him in a dream during his 90-days of initiation, the process of transforming a boy into a warrior of the Wolf Clan. He tried not to be disappointed at failing to get a wolf as his power animal, and was shocked and trembling and fully awake the next day, a hot June afternoon, when the beaver strode out of the deep pond by the Green River Falls to angrily censure him for his ignorance, telling him the beaver was the essence of courage, patience, wisdom, and strength; the beaver toppled trees, built dams, and created a house with so many exits that an enemy could never contain him.

The white-aproned waiter set the scotch, soup, bread and cheese before them. Coop raised his glass, "À une bonne vie, vécue bien!"

She sipped the scotch. "Mmmhhh. Perfect for a cold rainy day." She looked across the table, studying him. She said after a few moments, "How different your life is now. From the Valley I mean."

"I'm very aware of that Dr. Horowitz. I have no intention of going back."

"Oh dear, your mother will be very disappointed. She asked me to tell you that the Okwe need you."

"The Okwe need many things doctor, but I'm not sure I am one of them."

"Let me be more specific. You're aware the Green River stopped flowing for two days in August. No water and no water falls. I'm sure you're aware of the terms of the treaty. Summing it up, the treaty is in force for as long as the water falls."

"We both know that's a euphemism for forever."

"That might be our interpretation, but Arthur Kings is taking it literally, and his opinion carries a lot of weight. He's a congressman now."

"The Kings family owns just about everything in Kings County and Kingspost. Why do they want to take our Valley?"

"Artie has a master plan, which hasn't been made public yet, to build a dam at the mouth of the Green River Valley to do two things, to create a cheap source of power to attract industry to Kings County and to create a lake that could become a tourist attraction. You know, fishing, sailing, beautiful scenery."

"And what would happen to the Okwe."

"They would be moved to a housing development built just for them on the south side of Kingspost."

"On property owned by the Kings family."

"Probably. As you said, they own just about everything in Kings County and Kingspost."

"The Okwe need a lawyer not an expatriate."

"I doubt if Bluebird is even aware of Congressman Kings' master plan for the Valley. I told you it was somewhat of a secret."

"That you are privy to."

"Yes. And a number of others." Dr. Horowitz reached under the table, extracting a thick volume bound in heavy red leather from her briefcase. She handed the book to Coop. "There are only five copies of this. My thesis. One is in the library at the University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Kings has a copy, and I have three, including this one. I thought you might like to read it, but I would like it back."

He looked at the cover: 'The Visions of the Mythical Dancing Wolves of the Okwe.' "Tell me Dr. Horowitz, how did you get interested in so esoteric a subject?"

"I was a happy housewife, living a very comfortable life with my husband and daughter in Kingspost until the accident. I lost the family I loved, I was crazy with depression. My shrink suggested I do something with my life to get my mind off the accident and the question that tortures survivors. You know, why me? Why did I escape death? I went back to school, got my masters and doctorate in anthropology from Penn. I used my fascination with the Okwe for the dissertation you have in your hand."

"And why do you want me to read this, if indeed I have time?"

"You're probably aware of your mother's dream."

He knew, but chose not to feed into that opening. "I heard about many of my mother's dreams growing up. So which dream are you talking about? Prod my memory."

"When your mother came to my office in Philadelphia last week, she told me about a dream she had on the night Sheehays died. She dreamt she was sitting on the porch of her house, shucking corn, looking down on the river on the night of a quarter moon. She saw you and Sheehays walking on the surface of the water. Like Christ on the Sea of Galilee. She was startled. She felt a pang of fear that she was seeing two dead men. She called to you, 'Escanish, Escanish,' your Okwe name. You turned with a smile to acknowledge her. You waved at her, and she felt elated. Had you walked on as Sheehays did, she would have been certain you were leaving this world."

"I'm familiar with that dream."

"I know. Bluebird told me that she was waiting for you to announce the contents of your dream."

He stood up. His mother knew he could never relate the dream to a white woman, a knowos. She was using Dr. Horowitz to pressure him into returning home. "I have to go Dr. Horowitz. As I said, I'm very busy."

She picked up the book. "Please take this and read it. I have written about the great visions of the last four Uthayatkwai. Sheehays spoke to me at length about his vision."

"I find that hard to believe. Just when did that happen?" he asked with contempt in his voice.

"On the day after his hundredth birthday celebration. I brought him a small gift. Some tobacco. He took me by the hand and said, "Yeyestani, I will use this tobacco with pleasure. Let me tell you who I am. And he told me of his great vision of the falls pouring blood, not water." She held the book in two hands extended towards him.

Coop knew Sheehays' vision well. He heard it discussed at the kitchen table, and recounted by the story-tellers. He never expected to hear it from a white woman. He could barely believe that Sheehays would tell this woman what she claimed. And his mother, too. Somehow this yeyestani, this woman teacher, had gained the confidence of the Okwe as no white, other than George Washington, had. He took her book into his hands, feeling at once an intense craving as gripping as the fiercest hunger for heroin or sex to read what Dr. Horowitz had written.

CHAPTER SIX

Coop hurried back to the apartment through a cold mist, the book clutched against his side under his trench coat. He walked past Madame Chaland in the foyer, barely saying hello to the concierge who paused in her mopping, expecting the usual exchange of pleasantries. The lift was clangingly slow. He felt anxious, irritated.

He let himself into the apartment, throwing his wet coat across the back of a chair in the living room. He went directly to his office, placing the book on his desk. He opened to the bibliography that listed dozens of books, unpublished manuscripts, unpublished journals including 'My account of an unfortunate adventure and encounter with murderous savages on the Pennsylvania Frontier in 1770' by Isaiah Kings. He turned back to the front to read her acknowledgements. The sources of information were the foundation on which any thesis was built. He examined the long list of those to whom Dr. Horowitz expressed thanks: to the staffs of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford; the Kings Family Foundation; the Kingspost Historical Society; the Yale University Library, the University of Pennsylvania Library, the British Museum, the U.S. National Archives, and a surprisingly large number of Okwe. Three names stood out: Sheehays; Margie (Berry Eater) Little, the paramount mother of the Wolf Clan; and June (Snowdrop) Rever, his first wife. He stared at Snowdrop's name for a while, clenching his teeth, furious that she used his last name. She should have been called Standstall, the name of the guy she ran off with. He shook off his anger. The Okwe seldom told outsiders anything. He wondered, 'Why did they talk to Dr. Horowitz? What did they tell her about things no outsider should hear?' In the table of contents, she had a chapter, 'The People of the Valley of the Green River Falls.' He glanced through it, reading, "The Euro-Caucasian settlers and later residents of Kingspost, the nearest city, and Kings County, which encompasses Kingspost and the Valley, traditionally have called the Okwe the Green River Falls Band. The Okwe call themselves the Okwe, meaning the people. The 350 Okwe residents of the Valley are members of four clans: the Bear (warrior), the Wolf (story teller), the Hawk (hunter), and the Turtle (healer). The Okwe are a matrilineal society in which the land is held in common, although all shelter (houses, huts, cabins) are owned by women, and lineage (the clan) is through the mother. A custom undoubtedly traceable to long period in which men would disappear into the forest as warriors or hunters—and either be gone for extended periods or forever. The Okwe are believed to be a remnant of the Susquehannocks, once the dominant tribe of Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Northern Virginia. The Okwe contend they have always occupied the Valley, but data collected by the author indicates the Okwe were led to the Valley of the Green River Falls sometime around 1740 saving them from the fate of most Susquehannocks who were slaughtered either by the Iroquois, their traditional enemies, or by hostile Euro-Caucasians." The history she laid out was a revelation to him.

He went back to the table of contents. In 'Dreams of Action and Prophecy' a section devoted to the four great visions of the mythical dancing wolves, Dr. Horowitz offered her theory that the three visions of action were offered when the Okwe had military power, while Sheehays" great prophetic vision came after the Okwe had accepted subjugation, their ability to resist the Euro-Caucasians having been reduced to near zero.

In the heavily-footnoted pages, Dr. Horowitz described the consequences, intended and unintended, of the great visions, giving him further insights into his people's history.

Dr. Horowitz traced the first vision, 'the dream of the valley of contentment, unseen by enemies, filled with fish and game, trees and wild fruits,' to early in the 18th Century. The work of several archeologists and anthropologists, listed in her notes, indicated that the Okwe had migrated from the Chesapeake Bay region to the valley around 1740. Dr. Horowitz concluded that the vision prompted the move.

The second vision, 'the dream of crushing the knowos yootseeos (the insatiable blood sucker) that seeks to consume the Okwe and the earth,' she placed in 1770, based on Okwe oral tradition and the unpublished Journal of Isaiah Kings that she found in the Yale library. Isaiah's manuscript was written for the most part in code to hide, the embarrassing details of his unmanly reaction to the slaughter of his wife and children. A cryptographer deciphered the coded sections of the manuscript for Dr. Horowitz. According to Isaiah Kings' account, in the early summer of 1770, he emigrated with his wife and two children to the site of the future Kingspost on the north bank of the Green River, a branch of the Allegheny River, intending to establish a trading post. Isaiah was in the process of clearing the land, working at his side were his wife, Mary, and two children Israel and Sarah, when the savages came howling out of the forest. Israel was killed by an arrow and scalped. Isaiah fell to his knees gasping for breathe when an arrow pierced his throat. Sarah was tomahawked and scalped. Mary was captured, stripped and violated despite her furious screams and resistance that didn't flag until the fourth warrior mounted her. She lay like a lump, her eyes closed, her lips clenched until each had had his way. A helpless witness, Isaiah wept in his grief and cried out to God for help. The Okwe bound the couple, dragging them along Nuate Uthsysta, the trail of fire, which climbed over the mountain and down into the Valley of the Green River Falls. Mary kept her heartbreak hidden behind a stoic expression. At the Indian camp, the squaws rushed out warbling in the joy of having their warriors return in triumph with loot and prisoners. They stripped Isaiah naked. They put Mary's dress on him, mocking him as a woman, laughing at his tears. They forced him, whimpering and weeping, to watch a shrieking Mary bound to a spit and slowly roasted over a fire in a pit. They ate her flesh, and made him participate in their grisly feast, forcing him to swallow bits of his wife's meat. Isaiah's ordeal wasn't over. An Indian, who identified himself as Speaks Many Tongues scalped the screaming Isaiah then drove him into the forest. Isaiah, covered with blood and almost mad with waking nightmares, somehow stumbled through the wilderness to a settlers' cabin, was taken in and nursed back to health.

The third vision, 'the dream of the shield made of parchment' came in 1794 leading to the Treaty of The Green River Falls. The document obtained from the National Archives said: "The United States and President George Washington through their agent Josiah Windfried affirm to the Okwe Nation that the entire Valley of the Green River Falls from the crests of the bordering mountains to the east and west and from the Green River Falls at the north to the 90 degree bend of the Green River at the south will be the Okwe's alone to use undisturbed in accord with the Way of the Okwe for hunting, fishing, planting and dwelling for as long as the water falls over the Green River Falls at the northern boundary of the Valley of the Green River Falls."

Dr. Horowitz wrote, "A twist of fate saved the Okwe from the long-stewing desire of the Kings family to avenge the massacre of Isaiah Kings' first family in the summer of 1770." By her account, Isaiah Kings returned to New Haven, Conn., where he married Martha Mifflin in 1773. The following year, he named his new son, Israel, after his murdered son. Isaiah served as a colonel of Connecticut militia in the revolutionary war. On June 9, 1800, Israel Kings, now 26, returned with a well-armed party of rough frontiersmen to the site of his father's great tragedy on the bank of the Green River, where he found an encampment of Ohio Mingos, who had moved east to occupy the land no longer claimed by the Okwe since the treaty. Israel and his men attacked the Ohio Mingos, burning their houses, and killing men, women and children. The few who survived fled back to Ohio. Shortly thereafter, Israel brought his wife and two children to the site and established the trading post, fulfilling his father's dream. The community that rose around the trading post eventually became the City of Kingspost. Israel authored the family motto: "Be as we are: fearless and tenacious." Isaiah Kings, unable to face the awful memories of 1770 never returned to the Green River region. While Israel Kings subsequently discovered he had killed the wrong Indians, he never told his father. As a result, when Isaiah Kings died in 1809 in New Haven, he passed from this world satisfied, thanking God for enabling him to sire a son who wreaked a just vengeance and fulfilled his ambitions.

The Kings family's unsatisfied thirst for revenge was the root cause of spilling more Indian blood and the fourth great vision of the Okwe. Dr. Horowitz wrote that Harry (Sheehays) Loop, a corruption of the French word for wolf, was born on June 8, 1842. During the Civil War, Samuel Kings, the grandson of Isaiah Kings and the great-grandson of Israel Kings, served in the Bucktails Company of Pennsylvania Volunteers along with Harry (Sheehays) Loop. Samuel was a major; Sheehays a private. In the midst of the battle of Gettysburg, 19-year-old Sheehays experienced the dream in which the mantle of Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf, was passed to him by 95-year-old Peter (Hynaes) Little, who died that night in the Valley of the Green River Falls. Samuel Kings returned from the war to a distinguished career at the Kings Trading Company, while Sheehays went back to the Valley to farm, work as a day laborer, and to await the time when he would have his great vision. That opportunity came on June 17, 1880 within days after what Euro-Caucasians call the Battle of the Green River Valley and Okwe call the Massacre at the Falls. The incident occurred when Samuel Kings, using his position as an honorary deputy sheriff went into the Valley at the head of a posse to arrest Painted Rock, an Okwe who had killed the Kings County sheriff. Kings contended that during a pitched battle near the falls, the suspected murderer and 14 others, including several women and a nine-year-old boy, died. The Okwe version was that the unarmed victims were ambushed. No one in the posse was harmed. Samuel Kings pronounced two things had been accomplished: the murderer had been dealt with and the score settled for the horrible death of his great-grandfather, Isaiah Kings' first wife and children. He declared that Kings County probably never would be completely safe until the Okwe were moved out of the Valley to somewhere out west. The Okwe fortified the valley, preparing for a last stand. Within days, the governor of Pennsylvania ordered a National Guard regiment into the Valley to be certain the Okwe and the Euro-Caucasians of Kings County were restrained from further confrontations. Sheehays defused the threat of a suicidal attack on Kingspost by the hotheads among the Okwe through his great vision, 'the dream of the falls of blood.' Sheehays told a grand council of the four Okwe clans that his dream predicted an Okwe hero would save the Valley by destroying a monstrously powerful yootseeos, a gigantic insatiable blood-sucking pink leech, when the Green River Falls poured blood not water.

In her analysis, Dr. Horowitz pointed out that Hynaes and Sheehays each produced a single great vision in their long lifetimes. Hynaes lived for 69 years after his vision in 1794 and Sheehays lived for 64 more years. Her working hypothesis was that a mythical dancing wolf would have a single great vision during his tenure—and that vision would come in response to a crisis. In 1794, it was the realization that the era of the Okwe as a warrior nation capable of defeating the Euro-Caucasians had passed. In 1880, it was to forestall the permanent occupation of the Valley by the whites, and the probable exile of the Okwe to the Oklahoma Territory.

Dr. Horowitz came to the stinging conclusion that Sheehays apocalyptic vision provided the Okwe with a hope—however unlikely—that they eventually would triumph over the Kings family.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The sun was gently warm; the air crisp after yesterday's rain. Coop ordered a cheese omelet, Dr. Horowitz a pastry. They talked about the Valley, how beautiful it was in October with the blaze of color high on the hills. She told him of her excitement at discovering Sheehays was the Mythical Dancing Wolf. She had visited him several times a week for almost a year, taking detailed notes, imagining that their conversations could lead to a book full of an ancient Indian's wisdom, much like John G. Neihardt's 'Black Elk Speaks.' That was one of the volumes on the shelf of the small library she maintained in her teaching days in the Valley. With a self-satisfied expression, she listed the books: 'Land of the Spotted Eagle,' 'From the Deep Woods to Civilization' and 'The Soul of An Indian' both by Charles Eastman, and Helen Hunt Jackson's 'A Century of Dishonor.'

"I've never read any of them," Coop said.

"Everyone who thinks the United States is so wonderful and saintly should read Jackson's book about how we treated the Indians."

Coop didn't have to read history books to know that the whites had overwhelmed the Red peoples, taking their vast lands and reducing them to a helplessness in which they endured both innocent and demeaning racial stereotyping. He had burned with irritation innumerable times when buddies in the Army and strangers in airports and train stations called him chief because of his red skin. His most searing experience of overt prejudice came just after his 21st birthday in 1937. He had just finished a job, building a new fireplace for Mr. and Mrs. Hancock on Mountain Trail Road. His pocket was filled with the final payment for the work when temptation brought him to Smitty's Porkery for a beer, which he had never been able to buy there before because of his age, and a heavenly pig sandwich with Smitty's Secret Sauce, cole slaw, and a side of onion rings. A light rain was falling when he parked in the carhop service area. He watched while the carhops on skates in hooded plastic rain gear served the white customers who arrived after him. He tapped his horn a couple of times and was ignored. His anger overcame his judgment sending him into the comforting warmth and succulent odors of the restaurant. He had been inside the restaurant once before, on the afternoon of the final game of the undefeated 1933 football season. The coach brought the entire team into Smitty's for heavenly pig sandwiches and Royal Crown Colas. That was a great day, customers applauded them, Smitty hugged the coach, shaking hands with every player and announcing the meal was on the house.

Coop waved to a couple of customers he knew. They didn't respond. They simply watched. His mouth was watering as he stepped to the counter, sitting down on one of the swivel seats. He ordered the Pig Special, the barbeque pork on a soft bun with the special sauce and cole slaw flanked by French fries and onion rings. The fat white counter lady said with as much contempt as she could gather, "Outside." "I was outside, and they didn't wait on me," Coop said, a response that sounded lame to his ears. "Outside," she said again. This same woman had served him on the day he came in with the coach and the victorious Israel Kings Central High School football team. Mike Dermody, a deputy sheriff who was standing by the take-out area nearby waiting for his order, said, "You dull or something. Red niggers eat outside." He could hear a challenge in Dermody's tone, almost a longing for backtalk, with a punch and arrest to follow even a hint of insolence. Coop, the seething drained away by fear, turned and went outside, his heart pounding, his face flushed with embarrassment feeling all eyes on him. He stood in the rain, one foot on the running board of his pickup, for a long time unable to generate the energy to pull open the door and step inside. 'My red skin turned red,' he thought sitting at his favorite table in the Café de la Mairie over 20 years later, the memory sparkling in his mind. He could feel his face flushed with anger, his voice sounding cold, even to him, as he said to Dr. Horowitz: "You said you came to Paris to talk to me. What do you want?"

Her lip quivered, her customary dominance of any conversation slipped into uncertainty under the fury she felt from him. She bit her lip, then plunged ahead. "You read my dissertation. What did you think?"

"Aside from the academic gobbledygook there was some interesting history in there. I learned a few things I didn't know. It gave me some insights into things I didn't understand, but then I never tried to understand them."

"What for instance?"

"I'd rather not say." He remembered the tale, repeated on cold January nights around the fire on the Night of the Wolf Moon, of Speaks Many Tongues turning Isaiah Kings into a woman. 'The flesh of a woman, the dress of a woman' the story teller would end to the nervous titters of the children. He would go to bed imagining Isaiah Kings in his dress with heavy breasts on his chest and the makings of a woman instead of a man between his legs.

He seemed calmer now, a reflection, she thought, of how powerful her dissertation must seem to him. She was so proud of her research, of her ability to draw the Okwe into conversations that revealed tidbits and swathes of knowledge never before uncovered. She told Coop that she wanted to write another paper on the current Mythical Dancing Wolf. She wanted to consider in this new article whether the visions of the mythical dancing wolves were manufactured to deal with the Okwe's crisis of the moment: the migration away from the coast dominated by the Euro-Caucasians; the resistance to the invasion of their Shangri-La; the acceptance of the Okwe's subjugation by the whites. "I want to know what your contribution will be to this unique culture in this latest crisis. The water failing to fall. The treaty now moot."

"I don't live in the Valley any more. I've left the Okwe Way behind me. To be frank, I'm more interested in what's happening in Algeria than in the Valley."

"What about your family? Your mother and father. Your son, Stan?"

"I have another family now. Since you know so much about the Okwe, you know that neither my wife nor my daughter would be welcomed in the Valley. I could never take them there, even on a visit."

"The bigotry runs that deep? Even in this day and age?"

"You know what the whites in Kings County consider the Okwe, a bunch of lazy drunks with inferior blood flowing through their veins and abhorrent red skin. And you should know the Okwe believe white women are a threat to the Okweuate', the Okwe Way. The Okwe spiritual beliefs. The Okwe memory. The Okwe future. Survival. The Okwe don't like whites in general, and they hate white women."

"Would they kill a white woman if she came to live in the Valley? Do you know of any such incidents?"

"Do you know of any non-Okwe woman who ever lived in the Valley? That taboo is so strong, no one would test it."

"A question to be examined in the future is what will happen to that taboo when the Okwe move from the Valley. In the outside world there's really no way of enforcing the matrilineal ownership of property indefinitely. And I'm sure the authorities wouldn't countenance retaliation against white women in an Okwe community after the group loses its claim of independent nationhood."

"Those are questions I have no interest in pursuing. Thank you for delivering my mother's message. Thank you for letting me read your book. Now I have to get back to my current life."

"What about your role as Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf? Don't you feel an obligation to the Okwe?"

"If I follow your line of inquiry, this Uthayatkwai is a charlatan, who manufactures a vision to fit a current need. If you look into my background, you'll find I'm a journalist who turns facts and sometimes the truth into stories for the edification or perhaps amusement of readers." He picked up the tab. Took several banknotes from his wallet, and signaled the waiter.

Dr. Horowitz watched as the waiter hurried over to take the payment with thanks and a smile. She and Coop stood. As they parted, she said, "I don't see how you can do this to your people."

***

The phone rang just after 11 on Tuesday morning. "Coop Rever, please," Dr. Horowitz said.

"This is Coop Rever." They hadn't spoken in a week, since their breakfast at the café. He tensed, waiting for her request for yet another meeting.

"Last call in France," she said.

He relaxed. He wanted her gone and she was going. "When does your plane leave?"

"Four o'clock. Any message for your mother?"

He remained silent, not wanting to sound rude by saying whatever he had to say to his mother, he would without an intermediary. Dr. Horowitz was just another knowos trying to use him to further her career.

She spoke. "They need you in the Valley."

"Good bye, Dr. Horowitz," he said and hung up. Eleonore often scolded him for his abruptness. She would have been very upset at the way he terminated his connection to Dr. Horowitz. He turned back to the desktop calendar on which he had circled the 30th day of October, the border between his pleasant life in Paris and another war. That was the day he was to fly to Algeria to meet Luc Defferre at Fort St. Germain in Biskra on the edge of the Sahara Desert. He had decided to spend a month with Luc and his Legionnaire unit. Another month interviewing Algerians and colons with time out for a return to Paris to be with Eleonore and Elise for Christmas and the New Year. The third and fourth months would be devoted to French politicians, generals, do-gooders, and the leaders of the FLN, hopefully snaring Ahmed Ben Bella. His American citizenship, the color of his skin, and perhaps his record as a journalist and an infantryman himself would open Ben Bella to interviews. Ben Bella had soldiered as a sergeant with the French Army in World War II. Coop had been a sergeant, and he too came from a people victimized by conquerors. The United States imposed a second-class citizenship on the Okwe just as France did on the Algerians.

As Dr. Horowitz said in her book, the ability of the Okwe to survive a war against the Americans effectively disappeared over 150 years ago. Two great visions had saved the Okwe from being obliterated or shoved west: the one that led to the treaty and Sheehays' prediction of an apocalypse of blood pouring over the falls. The water stopped falling ergo the current red alert: the treaty was dead. Dr. Horowitz somehow reached the conclusion that he was the Uthayatkwai, The Dream Dancer, and as such should come to rescue the Okwe in this latest crisis. The Okwe belief system, as was his understanding, endowed each man and woman with a free will, the power to decide which path they would follow through life. He acknowledged that he had been chosen to succeed Sheehays in a dream, but in a carefully considered act of his free will, enforced by a serious doubt that it was true rather than his imagination at play, he wasn't accepting that role, that responsibility.

Coop didn't abandon the Valley and the Okwe Way on a whim or because of disbelief or because his growing sophistication through war, education, writing, travel, and contemplation, made Koona Manitou and the guiding spirits and the concept of the oneness of all flesh, vegetation, stone, water and air seem unlikely. He put that life behind him because of humiliation and bitterness. Snowdrop had dumped him, stripping him of all rights to his son and the house in which they lived. A return to the Valley would have meant moving back into his mother's house. With long dark hair clasped in a beaded red and yellow band, her teeth sparkling against the creamy dark skin of her face, always smiling and bright eyed, a narrow waist and round luscious haunches, Snowdrop was 16, seven years younger than him, when he got her pregnant. They had married in the Okwe Way exchanging pieces of white wampum. They lived in her mother's house for a few months, making love in clearings in the woods and in the old barn until her grandmother died, and Snowdrop inherited her house. When Coop wasn't working, he made them furniture. A new kitchen table with a mixed border of the Wolf, his clan, and the Turtle, her clan and the clan of their son. On the undersurface, where others were unlikely to look, Coop carved his spirit animal, The Beaver. He made the chairs too, and the bed they slept in. His wild passion for his beautiful wife subsided with the arrival of their son, Stan, and the passing years into a deep, comfortable love. He went into the Army looking forward to fulfilling his need to be a warrior while feeling a piece of his being torn from him in his longing for Snowdrop and Stan.

Snowdrop wrote to Coop once a week in the year he was in England up until the invasion. Her letters were filled with anecdotes about their little boy, Stan, about the weather in the Valley, some gossip and about working in the chemical factory north of Kingspost, making good money. She didn't sign them with love, just Snowdrop. In the last mail call before they crossed over to France, Coop got a small package with a letter. The soldiers around him were laughing, joking, reading their letters, writing letters home, while he sat on his bunk opening the tightly-wrapped little package. He stopped breathing when he saw the piece of beaded white wampum with the pictogram of the Wolf Clan in black. He let the air from his body in a long sigh as the implication of what Snowdrop had done washed over him. Among the People of the Valley of the Green River Falls, the man and the woman wore each other's gift of wampum as the symbol of their bond. Divorce was simple; the woman returned the man's wampum. He was supposed to return hers whether he wanted to or not. "You okay chief?" O'Brien, a buddy from Pittsburgh, asked assuming Coop was trembling over the prospect of dying tomorrow. "I just got divorced," Coop said, the shock loosening his tongue. His buddy was an Irish Catholic who was astonished into silence at the unseemliness, not to mention the sin, of anyone, outside of Hollywood or the extraordinarily rich, getting divorced.

When they moved towards France in the landing craft the next morning, Coop took from around his neck the piece of wampum with the figure of a turtle in green that Snowdrop had given him to seal their union. He held it in his hand in the bouncing boat, staring at it, reluctant to do what he had decided to do. He loved her. He didn't care if he died today. He had no reason to return to the Valley. He threw her wampum high over the side. Next he pulled himself to the railing and tossed the wolf wampum into the depths of the English Channel. "What the fuck are you doing Sgt. Rever?" Lt. Van Hoon, the new platoon leader, shouted above the roar of the craft plowing through the water. Coop didn't respond. "I asked you a question, sergeant." Coop ignored him. He was a prejudiced bastard who didn't believe Coop should be in a white man's Army. Plumes of water from German shells rose around the landing craft. The lieutenant turned away to crouch.

A few minutes later, the ramp dropped exposing the soldiers, poised for battle at the front of the craft, to a murderous onslaught of lead and steel, blotting out their lives amidst torn bone and flesh. The screams of surprise and horror came from those who weren't hit. Straight ahead was death. He shook, with fear. He didn't want to die. The will to live surged through Coop. Automatically in search of a path away from the scything machine gun fire, Coop hauled himself, as did others, to the side of the landing craft to drop over the side into the water. Bullets and shrapnel tore the life out of soldiers in front of him, beside him, and behind him. He forced his way unscathed through the clawing salt water to the beach and to the safety of a sea wall. O'Brien, Lt. Van Hoon, and everyone else in his squad were among the many who died that morning on the edge of France.

In the boredom of the pauses in the fighting through France and Germany, Snowdrop dominated his daydreams: playing with the boy, cooking breakfast, swimming, laughing, washing her hair, coming naked to his bed. For months, her loss made his insides a raw sore and clouded his mind in depression. He was leaning against a tree in Northern France eating K-Ration ham and eggs on a biscuit when his agony over Snowdrop suddenly subsided. He had put her behind him.

He went back to the Valley after the war, living in his mother's house, passing the days fishing and hunting, walking in the woods. His mother told him of her dream of seeing him with Sheehays on the river. "I don't dream," he told her. He was tortured by the discomfort of failing to reveal to his own mother and the Mothers of the Wolf Clan that he was the chosen of Sheehays; he was the Mythical Dancing Wolf. If he told them, he would be locked forever into the life of the Valley. Something in him resisted that. Snowdrop came with their son to his mother's house on three separate occasions demanding that he return to her as though she hadn't deserted him. He didn't feel angry; he didn't ask what happened to Ronnie Standstall. He just wanted no part of her even if that meant losing his son. He was so searingly embarrassed at being an abandoned husband that he avoided his closest relatives, neighbors; he turned away pretending not to see those who waved at him on foot or in cars. When he read about the GI Bill, he seized it as an opportunity to leave behind the Valley and the shadow of Snowdrop.

After dinner, listening to Elise recite the pieces of her homework involving rote memory, a long intimate conversation over wine with Eleonore, followed by satisfyingly passionate lovemaking, Coop lay back expecting to sink into sleep and the dream of Sheehays calling him to follow him. Instead, he lay awake for endless hours; checking the clock at 1 AM, at 3 AM, at 4:30 AM, until the first light of the sun shined through the bedroom window.

CHAPTER EIGHT

At first light, Eleonore stirred beneath the blankets. She turned over twice, to the right to the left, reaching out her arm to where Coop should have been. He was out of the bed, sitting in his easy chair by the window, smoking a cigaret, absently staring into the street, until her movements drew his attention.

Fatigue clawed him, his head ached, his eyes were puffy and sore. With the sun rising, he had passed through his fifth night in a row without sleep. He was facing a sixth day of exhaustion, of endless hours of being too deenergized to work or even read a newspaper. He had come to realize when he closed his eyes in his fruitless attempts at sleep, he could either watch a flashing stream of disconnected memories or focus on his predicament. He attempted many times to count himself into the sleep that wouldn't come and squirmed under the unpleasant sensation of being unable to think logically. When he could no longer endure keeping his eyes open, he closed them to consider the revelation that had blossomed in his mind that the Koona Manitou was turning the screw like the Hebrew God torturing Job in a test of his fidelity. 'Why does God need anything from men?' he asked himself, remembering Gurdjieff, the Russian mystic philosopher, contending that men are food for the moon. Gurdjieff developed a system to avoid that fate. Coop was trying in his own way to escape being a cog of the Koona Manitou. Could he change the fate imposed upon the Okwe by refusing to play his part in the Koona Manitou's production no matter the cost to him? Was this torture of sleeplessness another twist of the garrote?

He half-expected his Beaver Spirit to come out of the wall to tell him worse was yet to come. He considered that possibility. Probability! A piercing or burning pain? A body covered with sores, with warts, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head? Paralysis with the anguish of unrelenting wakefulness? Maybe beyond to being paralyzed, blind, deaf, mute, and insensitive to touch?

He lit another cigarette. His hands shaking involuntarily as he realized that worse than all he had considered, his mind would sparkle with a flood of thinking while he lay locked within the coffin of his body, unable to move, communicate, feel the touch of another while writhing without moving in unbearable agony, wanting to gasp against a closing throat for air, unable to sleep, unable to escape into unconsciousness, held short of the relief of death. How many decades would the Koona Manitou dangle him in his misery? If he were an Italian or a Spaniard or a Jew, he could cry. Tears of grief or fear or even rage didn't come to the eyes of an Okwe warrior not even over the loss of a child. In the Okwe chronicles, warriors bore with contemptuous laughter and pleadings for more, tortures that would collapse the spirits of the bravest and toughest knowos. Sensing life draining from their bodies, they sang their death songs. He decided when the worst came, he would sing his death song, over and over as long as his suffering continued, in defiance of the Koona Manitou. He was no quivering Job.

Eleonore's voice startled him. "Did you take the sleeping powder Patrice sent over?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Instead of responding to her question, he asked, "That Communist you knew during the war. How badly did they torture him?"

"Enough to kill him." Her voice was cold to mask the tears that welled into her eyes. Coop was intruding into a territory of painful memories and unforgettable love.

"Death can be the easy way out."

"Vous hybride," she screamed.

He was too tired to be angry at being called a bastard. His knees and back ached as he rose from his chair. He walked the few steps separating them with the stiffness of an old man. He put his arms around her. She pushed him away.

Her face was twisted in an unfamiliar fury, her sympathy over his loss of sleep gone. "He was braver than you could ever imagine. He wasn't from a warrior society, trained as a stoic. He was a gentle, sweet man, who wanted a better world for everyone. He couldn't stand the sight of blood, and he couldn't endure the smallest pain without whimpering like a child. I can imagine how he screamed when they tortured him. Yet he didn't betray his comrades."

"Every man has a breaking point, even a warrior. Was it in George Orwell's '1984' where the protagonist couldn't bear the thought of rats chewing on his face?"

"Raymond didn't break," she said.

"Luckily for him, he died before he reached that point."

She tried to lash out at him with her fists, but Coop grasped her arms, frustrating her. She sobbed, the tears pouring. "You're dreadful. Your suffering is a joke alongside what he endured. You probably fall asleep without realizing it."

"I wish I did. I wish I could." He barely had the strength to hold her, to stop her from pummeling him. The fatigue was consuming his final reserve of strength. His heart fluttered in the reflexive fear that all men experience under an incoming artillery barrage on battlefields. "Calm down and I'll let you go. I want to tell you why I couldn't dream ordinary dreams, why I can't sleep." He chose at that moment to join Sheehays and his mother and Snowdrop in breaking the taboo against telling a knowos about the Okwe's spiritual beliefs. He lit a Gitane, using it to smudge the six directions. Finally, he told her about the dream in which Sheehays imposed the role of the Mythical Dancing Wolf on him and of his conclusion that his dreamless nights and his repetitious dream and now his inability to sleep centered on his failure to fulfill that role.

She hugged him, whispering in his ear, "Mon homme rouge noble, you have tried to deny what you are and your mind won't let you. Your guilt is doing this to you. Can't you understand that? You must see a psychiatrist. We'll talk to Patrice. He'll recommend someone."

Coop turned from her. She didn't understand how great an abyss he had jumped into by telling her about that he had been chosen as Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf. He got off the bed. Without turning, he said, "I'm not going to a psychiatrist." He went into the kitchen to make the morning coffee. He fumbled through the measurements almost dropping the coffee canister. He put the croissants in the oven and the butter crock on the table. Every motion was an effort. He couldn't bring himself to go into Elise's room to wake her. That effort seemed too great.

He was slumped in his chair at the table when Eleonore came into the kitchen. "I have a proposition to make," she said. Both were aware those were the words she used in giving a recalcitrant writer or editor a final directive. With an effort, he looked at her. "Put off Algeria. Go back to your valley and face your demons."

"I have to do the book." He had a contract.

"You are being a fool if you think you can go to a war zone in the condition you're in. I don't even know if you can make it back to Pennsylvania, but at least you have family there."

"I have to do the book," he said again, barely forming the words.

"No you don't. First you'll go back to the valley. You do a piece for 'Une Vue Internationale' on the dam and on the valley and on George Washington and your treaty, if you can. You can even work in the merde of your god keeping you awake because you won't do his doing." She was seething over his insulting dismissal of Raymond's courage. She had accepted Coop into her life only because Raymond was dead. A substitute love for the real love of her life. And, she knew from talks with Patrice that she resented being so readily left behind by Coop's addiction to war, and the glory it brought him.

He ignored her, looking past her to the kitchen sink where The Beaver stood amidst some dirty dishes looking into his eyes.

"Look at me when I speak to you." Her voice was a snarl.

His mouth was open. He wanted to tell The Beaver to leave him alone.

"Come back to the Valley," The Beaver said in the Okwe tongue.

"Did he put you up to this?" Coop asked Eleonore. He struggled to pronounce each word.

"Stop mumbling. What are you talking about?" she said.

The Beaver smiled. Coop didn't know that beavers could smile. He had seen them many times in the Valley. Never a smile. They were serious animals.

"Buried alive," The Beaver said to him.

Coop knew exactly what he meant. He knocked his cup from the table, pottery shattering, dark coffee splashing across the kitchen floor.

"Merde," Eleonore shouted.

"Is Papa okay," Elise asked from the doorway.

"He's fine. Get dressed," Eleonore said. She picked up the shards of Coop's favorite cup, mopped the coffee from the floor with a towel.

Coop got up, stepping around Eleonore, to the sink. The Beaver was gone. He leaned on the sink, his head weighed down in his wakeful exhaustion. He tried to conjure an image of the Koona Manitou. Nothing. He had a difficult time forming the thought, but he did. He was in no condition to go to Algeria. If he stayed in the apartment, he would rot away. He turned to Eleonore. "You didn't see him, did you?"

"See who," she shouted. "Jesus!"

He leaned against the sink, trying with little success to think, to consider while Eleonore left the kitchen. He could hear a distant mumbling like the rush of the Green River. It was Eleonore's voice, a conversation with Elise. His little girl came into the kitchen, dressed for school. She looked at him as she passed, going to the refrigerator to fetch two yogurts and the milk bottle. She carried them back into the dining room. Eleonore came back to get glasses, spoons, dishes and more coffee. She ignored him. She is putting me in the past, he thought. He got another cup. He poured himself more coffee, but sat at the table unable to drink it. After a long while, Elise came back into the room to kiss him goodbye as she left for school.

When Eleonore walked past the kitchen with Elise on their way out, he summoned all his strength to call, "Eleonore."

"What?"

"I'm going back to the Valley."

"Bien." She left with no further exchange.

Coop slumped onto the table and plunged into a deep, delicious sleep.

CHAPTER NINE

Coop moaned, turning his head from side to side, groggily aware that he was in an unfamiliar bed. "He's awake. Call Dr. MacMahon," someone said. Coop looked through crusted eye lids at his right arm. A tube extended from it to a heavy plastic bag half filled with a clear liquid hanging from an aluminum hook and pole beside the bed. His mouth and chin were covered by an oxygen mask. Long red, blue, and green wires were attached to his head and body; a broad belt was wrapped around his chest. The wires led to monitors set along a solid wall. He pulled the mask away from his face. "What is this?" he asked. The words were an effort. His voice sounded heavy.

A young woman in a white lab coat was glancing at the monitors and writing what they recorded onto a sheet of paper on a clipboard. She checked her watch, and wrote down the time.

Coop sat up. "Where am I?" He was in a room with black walls and a blue ceiling dotted with silver stars and a soft-yellow crescent moon. A subdued light filled the room.

A door opened and closed. Patrice appeared at the foot of the bed. He smiled. "Ah, you're back with us at last. I didn't tell Eleonore, but you had me worried."

"What's going on, Patrice? How did I get here?"

"Could you bear with me, Coop, and just answer a few questions before I offer an explanation?"

"Go ahead, but give me something to drink. I'm dying of thirst."

Patrice took an aluminum thermos from a bedside table and filled a cup. "Water. We can have a glass of wine or two later." He watched Coop drink. "Could you tell me everything you can recall about your wakefulness and sleep and dreams over the past several days? Mlle Denny will take some notes, if you don't mind."

Coop nodded. "Very simple. I couldn't sleep for about a week, then blackness. A blank until I just woke up." Coop felt grungy. He needed a shower and a shave. His mouth tasted awful.

"Dreams?"

"None. I was in the little death, as they say. Either I didn't dream, or I don't remember dreaming at all."

"I wish we could have monitored you during your insomnia. So often people think they haven't slept, but they have. They drop into sleep, and just don't remember it."

Coop felt his face heat with anger. "I didn't doze, I didn't nap, I didn't sleep and I didn't dream. There were no dreams to recall. Not even my only dream."

"Our monitors confirm what you say. You've been in either a deep sleep or a coma for 44 hours and 18 minutes. The medical doctors we consulted felt you had fallen into a coma. We were so concerned about your breathing that we put you on oxygen. You didn't respond to stimuli at all."

"Such as."

"Pricking the soles of your feet and your fingers with needles among other tests. The usual indicators of normal sleep and dreaming were absent." He waved his hand at the monitors along the wall. "No eye movements, no muscle tension, a brain wave just above death. You barely breathed. You are one fascinating subject."

"So how did I get here?"

"After Eleonore dropped Elise at school on Tuesday, she said she came back to your apartment to talk to you and found you dead asleep at the kitchen table. When she couldn't awaken you, she called me for advice. I came right over. I couldn't get you awake either. You were breathing and there was a pulse. Your blood pressure was a bit low, but that could be expected in deep sleep. I decided this would be a chance to prove to you that no matter what you thought, you still had dreams. So we brought you here, where you could get medical treatment if necessary and I could observe you to see if you really slept without dreaming. It never occurred to me you could be in a coma until I consulted my associates. I don't know why this is happening to you. I could speculate on the aftereffects of a head injury at worst, an idiosyncrasy in nature perhaps. You were in the war; did you suffer a head wound?"

"Not a scratch. I played American football and got my head knocked around, but nothing serious."

"Eleonore tells me you have plans to visit America and then go on to Algeria. My advice and I'm sure the doctors would back me up is that you stay in Paris until we can do some more tests and perhaps get an understanding of what happened to you. You certainly don't want to risk this happening to you on an airplane or a battlefield in Algeria."

"I have no concerns about that. The root cause of my problems won't show up in a blood test or on one your monitors."

"Eleonore told me what you believe to be the reason for your insomnia and the dream you dream."

"So there you have it." Coop felt his left leg trembling under the sheet. "An explanation you probably don't accept."

"That's one point we can agree on. I don't really believe in God, and certainly can't believe that if there is a God, he would be so involved in the minutiae of human affairs. Why does He need you, or me, or any one of us to carry out His wishes if He is all powerful."

"I assure you I tried to live my life without getting involved in all this. I wasn't given a choice."

"So you do believe all this mumbo jumbo?"

"I've already answered that question. How about unhooking me and letting me go home."

"You might find it difficult to walk after being inert for three days."

Coop pulled away the tiny plastic cups glued to his head. Patrice extracted the IV needle from his arm and undid the band around his chest that monitored his breathing. Coop swung his feet onto the floor. He walked with ease to the bathroom, his legs as strong as usual. He relieved himself and rinsed out his mouth with water. He returned to find Patrice sitting on the bed.

"Eleonore is on her way here to take you home. I hope your time in America is productive. I want to pass on a little aphorism of mine: What we dream tells us who we are."

Coop laughed. "That's another point we agree on."

Coop had a plate of cold chicken with salad and bread for dinner with a dry white wine, chatting with Eleonore and Elise as though this were the end of another happy day. Afterwards, he sat in the living room smoking and reading, having coffee and dessert. Eleonore sat with him. Neither spoke. At nine o'clock, he and Eleonore put Elise to bed, kissing her good night. They went to the bedroom, and despite Eleonore's concerns that he might be overextending himself, they made lovely love, and he slept another eight hours.

In the morning, he wrote a note to his publisher telling him that Algeria would have to wait. He had to deal first with a pressing personal problem. He made arrangements to fly to the U.S., and planned the details of his trip, sending a telegram to his American agent telling him he would be passing through New York on Sunday. "Care to meet?" he asked.

He got a response late in the afternoon. "Arrive time? Will meet plane Idlewild. Welcome stay with us."

CHAPTER TEN

Coop, hauling a large leather suitcase, walked out of the customs area, scanning the crowd for Irving Brownstein, whom he knew only from a photo on a table in his Paris apartment. The picture was of Brownstein in the uniform of a U.S. Army Air Force major and his bride, Sophie Bernier. Sophie was Eleonore's best friend. They were in university together; they were in the resistance together. Sophie met Brownstein in Provence on his circuitous escape through occupied France after his B-17 had been blown out of the sky. He spent three days and nights with Sophie and Eleonore at the Lafitte's country house on the Rhone River, using the time to practice French and fall in love.

Right after the war, he came back to the house, where Eleonore was living alone recovering from the loss of Raymond. She led Brownstein to Paris and into Sophie's arms.

A grinning face. Dark hair and a sharp Adam's apple bobbing above a plaid shirt and a tweed jacket. Extended high above his head, his two hands held Coop's book, 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses' with its split display cover of two impressions of Karl Witzbold, in a German Army helmet over a worn face with haunted eyes and in the white kepi of a Foreign Legionnaire with a determined expression.

They shook hands. "Coop Rever, I presume?" Coop nodded. "Welcome home. How was the trip?"

"A ship would be more comfortable, but a lot slower."

"How long was the flight?"

Coop unbuckled his wristwatch. "What time is it in New York time?"

"Seven-thirty."

He adjusted his watch and put it back on. "Just short of 17 hours. A direct flight from Orly."

"Wow. Not bad at all. The Herald Tribune had a story saying that some day they'll be able to do it in three or four hours."

Brownstein took the heavy suitcase. He led Coop out of the terminal to a red sedan in the parking lot. On the drive along the Belt Parkway to Brooklyn Heights, where breakfast, Sophie, and their two children were waiting, they talked about the prospects for an English-language version of 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses' which Doubleday had retitled, 'The Two Million-Dollar Wounds of Karl Witzbold.' Brownstein said his Jewish mother wasn't very happy about his connection to a book whose hero was a German soldier.

Brownstein found a parking place across the narrow lane from his brick house on Cranberry Street. "Wait till you see the view of Manhattan we have." He hauled the suitcase up four flights of stairs to the top floor, where Sophie was waiting to wrap her arms around Coop, kissing him on either cheek. She led him inside to a Brooklyn breakfast of bacon and eggs, bagels with cream cheese and lox, Danish pastries, coffee and freshly-squeezed orange juice. Their conversation centered on Sophie's longing for France and Paris. She especially missed the bread, baked daily. She hadn't been back since she married Brownstein in the spring of 1946. First Brownstein had to finish his education, then her pregnancies, then the struggles with money. Publishing doesn't pay much at the outset. Now that they were a little better off financially, they were considering a move to Connecticut so their two girls would have decent schools and fresh air. Besides, her first husband, her parents, brothers and all of her other close relatives had died in the Holocaust or migrated to the U.S. or Israel.

"You're welcome to stay with us for as long as you like. And we still have the country place on the Rhone," Coop said.

Sophie moved the conversation to a brighter vein, saying to Brownstein, "We could leave the girls with Coop and Eleonore and have a romantic interlude in Provence. You could write your book there about finding the love of your life in France."

"I'd enjoy the research if not the writing," Brownstein said to the knowing laughter of his wife and visitor.

Coop slept in the Brownsteins' guestroom through the rest of the morning, dreaming the dream of Sheehays beckoning him to follow him into the woods and onto the Green River. He awoke to a mid-day meal of hot pastrami on rye sandwiches with cole slaw, potato salad, cream soda for the girls, Ellie and Jaimie, and cold beer for Coop, Irving and Sophie.

Afterwards, Irving urged Coop to join the family for a stroll on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a sine qua non for visitors. The day was sunny, the leaves on the trees and those fallen on the walkway were a mix of orange and green. From the promenade, they looked across the long sheds of the waterfront and the ships waiting to be unloaded to the skyline of lower Manhattan and north to the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Not quite Paris, but not bad, eh," Irving said to Coop. They sat on a bench to smoke and talk while Sophie and the girls walked on. He said that Coop's book would be out in a few weeks, in time for Christmas shoppers. If it sold well, Doubleday might be interested in publishing the first book, and certainly would want to see Coop's book on Algeria when he finished it.

Coop watched the seagulls soaring above the East River, tugs pulling barges, and sailboats bending before the wind. He said he would be on his way to Algeria to gather material for his next book on the French Foreign Legion as soon he looked into a problem his people were having in the valley where he grew up in Pennsylvania. He told Irving about the clause in the treaty, that for as long as the water falls, and Congressman Kings determination to build a dam that would force the Okwe out of their valley.

Irving picked a bit of tobacco from his tongue, a device he often used to extend a pause while he considered a response. He turned to Coop, leaning close to be certain no one else heard. He spoke softly, "These are very precarious times in America. I wish I could tell you that I know some one in Washington who could help, but Kings is one of the right wing crazies, one of the McCarthyites. People are afraid to go up against them. Just a few months ago, they cited Henry Miller and Pete Seeger for contempt of Congress. I'm going to tell you something, because I trust you and because you are married to Eleonore. The reason Sophie doesn't visit France is because she's afraid she would have trouble getting back into the U.S."

"I thought she was an American citizen."

"She is. I'm talking about fear. You don't seriously believe that being an American citizen is a shield against the right-wing crazies, do you?"

"I thought she was a Socialist, not a Communist."

"The McCarthyites can't tell the difference. Besides, Sophie's known a few Communists in her time and associated with them. So she really can't take a chance."

Coop studied the Manhattan skyline. Any one of the skyscrapers across the river was worth more than all the houses, cabins, and shanties in the Valley with the bank accounts of all the residents thrown in. Kings' seizure of the unintended loophole in the treaty to destroy the culture of a tiny band helpless people seemed so capricious, so gratuitous. He remembered him as a decent guy from high school, someone who never snickered at him for being an Indian. No derogatory comments. Or even using the insulting nicknames of chief or redskin. Even some of the teachers did that to him and other Okwe. He wondered whether Kings' right-wing leanings somehow were spurring his actions against the Okwe. On the long flight from Paris, he had considered Kings' motives. Money? Revenge? Prejudice? Even being a do-gooder? Coop's role as a journalist, as a nonfiction author put him in a position to examine the reasons for building the dam and the rush to abandon the treaty. He considered the possibility that he was being driven by guilt, that The Beaver and the dream and the dreamlessness flowed from a subconscious remorse over abandoning his roots. He broke his silence by asking Irving a question that occurred to him on the plane: "Have you ever heard of a river going dry?"

"Not really. I couldn't imagine the Hudson River running dry, but I'm no expert. You should talk to a hydrologist, someone who really knows something about rivers and water. Maybe you should track the river back to its headwaters, where it comes out of the ground or whatever."

"That's something I intend to do."

"How long are you going to spend in Pennsylvania?"

"I'm hoping two weeks, three weeks at the most. I'm planning to rent a car, drive out to Kingspost, do what I have to do, and get to Algeria as soon as I can."

Later in the evening, after dinner, Irving told Coop he would be happy to lend him his red Chevy sedan for the next two or three weeks. He and Sophie seldom used the car in the city. Besides, they had a station wagon to fall back on in case they decided to go to the country, which was unlikely since the leaves already had fallen upstate and in New England.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Coop experienced a strange sadness as he drove the 1949 red Chevy sedan through northern Pennsylvania over the two-lane, black-topped highway, walled by tall pines, broken only by an occasional crossroads village of a gas station and a few worn houses. Every once in a while a car or truck coming from the opposite direction would whoosh by. He passed no other vehicles, and none passed him in the direction he was going. The radio offered little but static and unbearable polkas and country music until he was almost to the turnoff for Kingspost when a crystal clear signal brought Patti Page into the car singing 'The Tennessee Waltz' with the stinging line, "and while they were dancing my friend stole my sweetheart from me."

The very first time he heard 'The Tennessee Waltz', he was drinking coffee on a sharply cold sunny morning in the bar of a café in Paris. He was waiting for Eleonore and Elise. The words Patty Page sang plunged him from a satisfied happiness into irrepressible despondency, resurrecting the memory of a party in the Valley just before he went overseas in 1943. Snowdrop and Ronnie Standstall, a corporal in the Marines, danced every Lindy together that night. Coop, a cardboard figure on the dance floor, watched Snowdrop and Ronnie swing with flying hands and feet. He didn't like the laughter they shared, or the looks between them.

Hearing the song coming from the bar radio in the Paris cafe, he realized like a flash of lightening, that was when he lost her. He put his head down to hide his face from the bartender and other customers as he wept, something an Okwe man never did.

Nearing Kingspost, Coop drove past a series of six placards with single words lettered in blue block letters against white backgrounds: 'Keep' 'America' 'Free' 'Is' 'His' 'Motto' A quarter of a mile on was a billboard: a huge picture of Arthur Kings' face alongside a U.S. Marine Corp flag; another quarter of a mile and a second billboard with Kings' picture alongside a flying stars and stripes; a third billboard with a banner above his picture: Re-elect Rep. Arthur Kings, and another banner below: Keep America Free Is His Motto.

Coop laughed, singing, "Burma shave, Burma shave" over and over, louder and louder until he reached the fork in the road; he had to choose: Jefferson Boulevard circling Kingspost past the railroad station, or Riverview Road, the main drag through the heart of town, past the Kings Trading Post, City Hall, the County Courthouse, the high school, the civic center/movie theater, Smitty's Porkery, the Freedom Steakhouse, and very core of the city, Bend in the River Park. He took Riverview. On Riverview Road almost every yard had a 'Kings for Congress' lawn sign. Just after three in the afternoon and Kingpost's streets were near empty. Some kids sat on the stairs leading up to the high school. Behind the building, he was sure the football team was in the midst of practice. For a moment, he was tempted to stop to see the football players going through their repetitious drills. Passing the Kings Inn on the western edge of downtown, he could see the Green River flowing deep and strong.

Halfway to the Valley, just beyond Reinhardt's Dairy Farm with its bright red barn and neat two-story frame house, the surface of the Riverview Road changed from blacktop to packed oil and gravel. Driving across the covered wooden bridge over the Green River, he came out onto The Falls Way, the narrow dirt road, a single lane in some places, running the length of the Valley. He drove slowly, passing three square-bodied women, who watched the unfamiliar car. To his left, spaced wide apart, separated by heavy growths of trees were houses, cabins and shanties along the river's shoreline. Dogs rushed from porches and hideaways to bark at him. He slowed the car to a crawl twice to maneuver across shallow depressions sluiced into the road by a rush of water down the mountain from the fall storms. The weather was always ferocious in the Valley: torrential rains in the fall and spring, deep, wind-driven snows in winter.

In Valley Center, where the old one-room school house now had a long green sign saying, Council House, alongside the Kings Trading Company's general store/post office and gas station, he pulled up to the pump. The sedan's fuel gauge was at a quarter full. Better get some gas now. Coop got out of the car as Peter Little came out of store and down the few wooden steps to wait on him.

"Ho, Onskaat Kakaa," Coop said, using Peter's Okwe name, meaning One Eye.

When he was four, Peter, who was Sheehays' great-grandson, lost his left eye to an arrow shot by a young man from the warrior clan, the Bears, practicing the art of the bow. Peter broke into a grin, recognizing Coop. "Ho, Wakee ne Uthsusta," he called, Coop's Okwe name meaning Runs with Fire, as he stepped around the car to stretch out a dark, heavily-calloused hand in greeting.

They chatted for a few minutes about the Valley, Paris, their families before Coop said, "Filler up."

Peter put the nozzle in the tank opening. "Check the oil?" he asked wiping his hands on a dark rag hanging from a coverall pocket. He opened the hood. "You're low," he said showing Coop the dip stick.

"Put a quart in."

While the oil was emptying into the engine, Peter asked, "Home to stay or visit?"

"I heard about the river running dry. I wanted to find out what it was all about?"

"No rain. No water. No river."

"That's a simple explanation."

"What other explanation is there?"

Coop didn't respond.

Peter took the nozzle from the car's tank. As he hooked it to the red pump with its flying horse emblazoned on a glass globe, he said, "Everyone went up to the falls expecting blood to come pouring over."

"You go up?"

"Oh yeah. I was there. Everyone was all excited, figuring something wondrous was going to happen."

"What happened?"

"Nothing. No blood. No water."

"Looks to me like there's water in the river."

Peter laughed. "They sent a couple of kids up river to see what was blocking the water. They were hardly gone before the water came pouring over the falls. The river was dry for about two days, and I mean dry. Then back it came."

"What happened to the water?"

"As I said, no rain; no water; no falls."

Coop paid and got back in the car. He considered Peter as he drove to his parents' house. He was a Wolf like Coop, so there should have been a kinship between them. There wasn't. Coop decided he didn't like Peter. Peter was two years younger than him, pudgy-faced, big-bellied and married to a girl from the Valley, naturally. Probably had a couple of kids. He certainly had a whiskey nose. Peter smelled of the bitterness of a man left behind. His lost eye had kept him off the football team in high school and out of the war that every young Okwe man, including Coop, welcomed as an opportunity to fulfill the need to be a warrior.

He parked behind a rusty Nash Rambler and a battered Ford pickup truck in the narrow space scooped out of a stand of white birch across the road from his parents' cabin on the east bank of the Green River. The truck was his father's; he wondered about the Nash. He put the black beret, with its small metal badge of a white dove against a blue background hovering over the date 1954, on his head at a jaunty angle. He lifted his old leather suitcase, covered with stickers from his travels across Europe and Asia from the trunk. When he slammed the lid, the inner door to the kitchen opened, Coop's heart raced. His father, Redsky, came onto the porch with a big barking dog. A mutt. Always big and always a mutt. Coop stopped, putting down his bag, to stand still while the dog rushed towards him, leaping and barking around him. Bluebird, his mother, came outside with her arms spread wide chanting, "Uthayoni syehse! Hawenniya teknoonyo," the Wolf Clan tremolo of gratitude to the Koona Manitou and welcome to her long gone son. Coop grinned. He covered the short distance to his mother in a few strides, the noisy dog keeping pace. Bluebird wrapped her arms around him with a squeal of delight. Redsky, his father, seemed for a moment as though he too would hug him, then stuck out a hand to be shaken, the warmest response an Okwe man could make to another Okwe man, even his son. "Welcome home warrior," Redsky said. The dog quieted, circled and pushed his nose into Coop looking for a familiar scent to go along with the happiness that greeted this stranger. "Go to bed Hawkeye," Redsky ordered in an angry tone. The dog dropped his tail between his legs. He slid through the kitchen door, as it opened again with Stan, Coop's son, stepping onto the porch. He recognized him from the photographs Bluebird sent over the years. Behind him, Snowdrop came. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, grown into a fleshy box of a woman with a double chin at 34. The happy smile and shining eyes that had drawn him to her in her teens were gone. Her lips were pressed into a thin line on an angry face, a furrowed brow. An involuntary shudder surged through Coop. 'Someone stepped on my grave,' he thought. His mother did this, brought Snowdrop to the house tonight. She was so hungry for him to come home, to stay home where he belonged.

Stan was smaller than Coop anticipated with a disappointingly rodent-shaped face, almost white skin. "Hi," Stan said to his father. Copying his grandfather, he extended a hand to Coop to shake.

Snowdrop stayed on the porch. Her arms crossed. She and Coop stared at one another. Bluebird, her hand still resting on Coop's shoulder, not wanting to separate herself from her son, said, "Aren't you two going to say hello?"

"Hello," Coop said.

Snowdrop smirked. She turned back into the house.

"I told you," Redsky said angrily to Bluebird. "Come on. Let's go inside." He picked up Coop's suitcase. They followed him into the kitchen, the fragrance of a slow-cooking stew filling the room from a covered iron pot on the wood-burning stove. Redsky put down the suitcase just inside the door. Coop hung his bomber jacket on a hook along with his beret. He knelt to open the suitcase, handing the gifts wrapped in flowered paper with red bows to his father and mother. He paused for an awkward moment, then took his beret from the hook handing it to Stan. "That's a French Foreign Legion paratrooper's beret, Karl Witzbold's beret. He's the guy I wrote my book about. He wore it at Dien Bien Phu. The pin is a collector's item. The Viet Minh gave them to the French soldiers they captured at Dien Bien Phu when they let them go after the war." The boy looked with obvious disappointment at the unfamiliar piece of cloth in his hand. "I didn't know you would be here, Stan," Coop said. Seeing Stan stirred a hunger in him for the boy. He wanted to know all about him; what he wanted from life; what he needed. He wanted to be certain Stan was aware of his accomplishments. His soldiering. His writing. His sophistication. His grasp of languages. The old Okwe language. English. French. German. Street Vietnamese and Korean, enough to get around.

"No potluck for me?" Snowdrop said, the corners of her mouth turned down.

"I didn't know you'd be here either, but I wouldn't bring you anything anyhow. My wife wouldn't like it."

"Why would you say I wouldn't like it?"

"Let's not play games. I came home to see my parents, not you."

"Not your son. That's nice. That's nice isn't it Bluebird. You invite us for a family gathering and look what he does to it." Snowbird harbored a lingering contempt for Coop for his failure to appear in her slum apartment in Chicago to drag her home. Ronnie Standstall was a miracle of innovation and movement on the dance floor but after the war, he never danced, he never smiled and always drank. He couldn't hold a job or perform very well in bed. He was the one who raised the question of whether she was really divorced from Coop since he hadn't returned her Turtle wampum. When she could no longer endure life in Chicago with Ronnie, she returned to the Valley with the hope that Coop, who had claimed to love her as no other woman could be loved, would come back to her bringing money, prestige, and sex. Meeting him again reaffirmed her distaste for him that turned into an instant dislike when she saw her fat body and lifeless hair reflected in his eyes.

"Let's not be like this," Bluebird said, tearfully.

Snowdrop made a display of kissing Bluebird. "Please don't cry, Mom. He's a bastard and we both know it. Sorry we can't stay for supper." She walked out of the house.

Stan pressed the beret back into Coop's hand. "Can't take this," he said nodding in the direction of Snowdrop. He followed her out.

Bluebird and Redsky sat down in silence at the kitchen table, their unopened gifts in front of them while Coop carried his bag into his old bedroom. The room was a barren, unused space. When he married Snowdrop, he had taken his team pictures, his high school football and track letters, the framed newspaper stories about touchdowns scored and races won down from the walls to her mother's house and later to their own house. They were never taken out of the cardboard boxes in which they were transported. He never got them back. Maybe they were thrown away or burned by now. He would never know unless he were willing to rejoin Snowdrop. He was amused at that thought.

He took his two books, 'Baionnettes Francaises en Coree' and 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses/La vie sinistre de Karl Witzbold,' from his suitcase and stood them on his old wooden dresser.

His father came into the room behind him. "When are they going to be translated into English?"

"'Two Lucky Wounds' is coming out in an English edition in the next month or so. In time for the Christmas market. Haven't been able to find an American publisher for 'French Bayonets in Korea' yet. There are German and Spanish translations of both books."

"Dinner's ready."

They walked the few steps across the living room into the kitchen. The dishes were set on the flowered green and white table cloth Coop had sent to his mother from Provence. The perfume he had brought from France was opened beside her plate. She kissed him. "Thank you so much. I love this perfume."

Redsky held up a bottle of the wine Coop had brought him. "This go with stew?"

"Sure does." Coop used the corkscrew on his pocket knife to extract the cork. Bluebird put three jelly glasses decorated with purple grapes on the table. No wine glasses in this cabin.

Redsky poured, filling the glasses almost to the brim. He raised his glass, "The warrior, the big-time writer, the college graduate." Redsky took a gulp, as if he were slugging beer. "Not bad," Redsky said. Coop knew he would have preferred the cleaner taste of an Iron City.

Bluebird, like Coop, sipped the wine. "This is really good. I've had wine, but never this good," she said.

They sat for an hour around the wooden kitchen table, talking about Coop's almost unimaginably quick flight from Paris to New York, and the beauty of autumn in the Valley, and the need to repair and blacktop the Falls Way. Coop talked about Brooklyn and seeing the New York skyline; the long road trip in the borrowed red Chevy into upstate New York, across Route Six past Scranton through the Endless Mountains to the Valley.

They finished the first bottle and opened the second when Bluebird served them from the pot on the stove. She ladled the stew, chunks of venison with corn, beans, carrots, and onions into bowls. She set out a plate full of biscuits and butter.

After his first mouthful of stew, Coop said, "Now I know I'm home.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The earliest light of morning sifted through the shadeless window. Coop stirred, not wanting to rise from the warmth of the thick comforter. The scent of strong coffee drifted into the room. He heard the movements of his parents in the kitchen and the bathroom. He lay there remembering what he dreamt as he slept, a dream of digging deep post holes in a circle around an ancient concave bluish slab of stone whose center was a fire pit. A young Okwe worked with him. Inserting supple black willow poles into the holes. Together, they struggled to bend them towards the center, lashing them onto a hoop that would allow the smoke to funnel out of the small domed hut being constructed. He dripped with sweat as they fitted the soft deerskins decorated with the signs of the Mythical Dancing Wolf over the willow-wood frame.

He got out of bed, pulled on his pants and shirt, and went into the kitchen. Bluebird was standing at the stove using a spatula to turn over a two-inch thick round of dough that had crisped on the bottom side. She was in the process of making his favorite breakfast.

Coop whooped, "Mnadrannack!" The Okwe name for hotcake.

His mother laughed, sharing his pleasure.

He put his arms around her, kissing her on the cheek. "Worth coming home just for this." He poured coffee into a thick mug. He sat at the kitchen table, enjoying the glow of warmth from the stove.

His mother sat down at her place. "How is your woman in Paris and her little girl?" She wouldn't use their names. That would be an acknowledgement of their legitimacy.

"My wife, Eleonore, and our daughter, Elise, are just fine. Some day you'll have to come to Paris for a visit." The furthest his mother had ever gone from the Valley was to Syracuse to see her brother, who had married an Onondaga. She would never travel to Paris, too incredibly far, too unthinkable a journey. Eleonore and Elise could never come to the Valley. He couldn't imagine his dainty French daughter spending even a weekend in the primitive circumstances of the Valley. In Paris, Elise's mixed race went unnoticed until he appeared at her side, then she was appreciated as exotic. Here, she would be confronted by prejudice everywhere, as a half-breed by the whites in Kingspost and the offspring of a knowos woman by the Okwe in the Valley. The Okwe Way prohibited white women from living in the Valley. The taboo flowed from the fierce jealousy with which Okwe women guarded their role at the center of their society. The only path to becoming an Okwe was through an Okwe woman's womb.

Redsky came into the kitchen without speaking. He was notoriously cranky in the morning. He poured himself a cup of coffee, staring for a while at the table top. Neither Coop nor Bluebird spoke. She busied herself checking the hotcake, scrambling eggs.

"So, you're up early," Redsky finally said.

"Wanted to see you off to work."

"Yeah." He sipped his coffee. "So how long you home for?"

"A week, maybe two. I'm thinking of doing an article on the status of the treaty."

"The water stopped falling, what more is there to say? So, there is no more treaty."

"I would like to know why the water stopped falling. In other words, what or who stopped up the river?"

"The Koona Manitou of course." The sarcasm in Redsky's voice filled the kitchen. Redsky wasn't a believer. He had been to France as a young man, as a soldier in the Great War, experiencing a world wider than the Valley.

Bluebird set the coffee pot on the table along with the hotcake, a bowl of butter and a pitcher of maple syrup, tapped by Redsky from the sugar maples on the rise above the house. She cut triangular slabs from the crisply-browned round of hotcake for each of them. They split open the hotcake and covered the fluffy-white innards with butter and flows of syrup. In the combination of scrambled eggs, Mnadrannack laden with butter and syrup, and strong black coffee, Coop experienced the ecstasy that so often comes at table. He took a package of Gitanes from his top pocket, offering the cigarettes first to his mother, it was her house and he was of her clan, and then his father. He took one for himself, putting the package on the table, and extending his lighter all around to fire the tobacco. They smoked in the aftermath of the meal, the sweetness of the good life filling the kitchen.

Redsky finished his cigaret and pushed his chair back. "So, I'm going to get going."

"You're leaving early," Bluebird said.

"I don't want to interrupt your conversation," he said, an acknowledgement that the mother formed a separate family from the father in an Okwe household. The children shared her clan, and her clan's mysteries and secrets that couldn't be revealed to an outsider, including the father.

"Wait," Coop said. He went into the bedroom to fetch a carton of Gitanes from his suitcase. He had brought them for himself, but knew that Redsky would hand out the strange French cigarets to the others on his construction crew, and would recall in doing so when he first acquired a taste for Gitanes in his own warrior days in France.

Redsky smiled at the gift. "Maybe we'll find ourselves a deer Saturday," he said to his son, and went off to his pickup.

Coop smoked a second cigaret while his mother cleaned up the kitchen; putting the leftovers away, washing the dishes and pots, wiping the table. When she was through, she said, "Wait." She went into her bedroom, returning a few minutes later to place on the kitchen table a shallow, ancient stone pot containing her chanoona, a ceremonial clan mother's pipe whose bowl was carved into a wolf's head, and a deer skin pouch containing ojeengqua, the sacred tobacco. She sat down opposite him, filled the pipe with the tobacco, lit it, and drew the smoke into her lungs, her eyes closed, murmuring a prayer. She blew the smoke to the four directions of the compass and two more to the heavens and the earth. A serious conversation was about to begin. She passed the pipe to Coop, who followed her example, smudging the six paths, the east, the west, the north, the south, above and below. She took the pipe from him and tapped the embers of the chanoona into the stone pot. She emptied the contents of the pot into the fire of the wood stove, then sat down again to face her son.

He was bound by the Okwe Way to speak of his dreams. He considered telling her only the one from his most recent sleep. "I had a dream last night," Coop said, breaking the silence. He told his mother how he dug the holes and built the domed lodge, he didn't call it a vision lodge, with the help of a young man, whose face he didn't see.

The corners of her mouth twitched as she listened. She had expected more than this dream of building. She felt disappointed. "Tell me, why did I dream of you walking on the Green River with Sheehays on the night he died? I can think of only one reason. Can you tell me another? You must remember, I called to you, Escanish! Four times. And you turned and waved."

The heel of Coop's left foot trembled, shaking his leg. He grasped his thigh under the table to still the embarrassing exhibition of his stress. He tried to hold back the words, reluctant to describe the dream in which Sheehays had called him to assume the mantle of the Uthayatkwai. He looked into the eyes of his mother, straining to hold back the words. The vibration in his foot ended as he said, "Je suis le loup dansant mythique. If I believed my dream."

"What?"

He smiled at his foolish effort to put off for another moment what was being forced from his mouth. "What I said in French, in Okwe would be, Hije Uthayatkwai; in English, I am the Mythical Dancing Wolf."

Bluebird reacted by lifting her face in the direction of the heavens, mouthing words of gratitude to the Koona Manitou. When she turned to look into his eyes, he told her the details of the dream in which Sheehays led him to the vision lodge to endow him with the powers of the Uthayatkwai. Tears streamed down Bluebird's face. She startled Coop by coming around the table to wrap her arms around him, kissing his cheek over and over, her most demonstrative display of affection since he passed into manhood in his teens. "I knew you would come to save us," she said.

"Tsinyuae," Coop said using his mother's Okwe name. "I'm not sure that because I had a dream, I really am Uthayatkwai."

"Then how could you have had the dream? How could we have seen each other in the dream? How could I have called your name four times in the dream, and you heard me?"

"There is so much to life we can't explain. A psychiatrist would say this is all mumbo jumbo from our subconscious that we inserted into our dreams. I don't want to upset you, but I'm not sure I really believe in the Koona Manitou, or if He exists whether He pays any attention to individual men or women."

Bluebird's eyes exuded a fierceness he had never before seen. "I could drive a knife into the heart of that bitch. She drove you out of the Valley and changed you. You were such a good man. I was so proud you were my son." She turned away, not looking at him, for the few minutes he remained in the house. As he was leaving for the falls, he tried to kiss her goodbye, but she pushed him away. "Are you still my son?" she asked as though wondering aloud whether some alien spirit had captured Coop's body.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Coop drove the red Chevy north along The Falls Way, catching only glimpses of the river through the heavy growth of bushes and trees, mostly stripped of leaves on this gray, cloudy October morning. He knew he should be imprinting the passing scenery on his mind as fodder for his notebook, but the confrontation with Bluebird distracted him. He was such a disappointment to her. The further he drove, the worse the road became. Twice, the underside of the car bounced onto rocks filling his ears with a discordant bam! He didn't care. The anguish his mother expressed had flooded his being. He parked where the road ended just short of a copse of willows. He took the old path that climbed high into the woods. At the crest of the rise, he could hear the thundering water fall. He could feel the power in the earth, in the trees around him and plants and herbs beneath his feet as he descended towards the river. He came onto the bank of the big pool at the base of the precipice, 163 feet high, over which the Green River's water tumbled down, bursting against steps and outcroppings of rock, creating a luminous mist. A shudder passed through him, the involuntary thrill of coming into the presence of the sacred.

He walked along the shore of the big pool to the ruins of Sheehays' vision lodge, a jumble of rotted wood and strips of deer skin, some stiff, some waving softly in the breeze. Nearby was a makeshift fireplace, a circle of haphazardly piled stones with blackened innards surrounding the charcoaled remnants. A used yellowed condom draped a rock near the pool's edge. Cardboard containers turned to mush by the elements and three crushed beer cans lay where they were tossed. Disgust welled up in Coop. How could anyone raised in the Okwe Way come here to drink beer and fuck? With a touch of revulsion, he used some leaves to pick up the used scumbag to carry it and other refuse into the woods. He scraped a hole in the earth, dumping the leavings of the polluters into it. He covered the mess with earth and stones.

Coop returned to the remains of the vision lodge. He stepped into the center, to the edge of the hearth of thick, purplish flat stones encircling a small, deep fire pit. In the absence of a sacred pipe, he lit a Gitane to purify the place where Sheehays had had his great visionary dream. He blew smoke in the four directions, towards the hearth and to the bright blue sky. He muttered the prayer of cleansing, learned among the many lessons in the three-month-long process of initiation into the ceremonies and memories of the Okwe when he was 12 years old. On the final day, the pictogram of the Wolf was notched in the flesh above his navel; the foremost clan mother whispered in his ear that to achieve the greatness of being a full fledged warrior, he must shed the blood of an enemy in personal combat. Technically, Coop had done that. He had killed as soldier for the United States, for the knowos. He mused that the original concept of the combat rite certainly meant shedding the blood of an enemy of the Okwe.

Coop sat on his heels, field-stripped the Gitane, sprinkling the tobacco into the fire pit. He rolled the cigaret paper into a tiny ball and tossed that into the pit. Uncertainty plagued him. He followed the dictates of the Okwe Way, of his upbringing in so many little ways, yet he refused to accept that he was the Mythical Dancing Wolf. It was just unbelievable. "Koona Manitou are you there?" he called into the pit. He stood up, spreading his arms, "Are you here? Are you watching me? Listening to me? Why didn't you pour blood over the falls and give the world back to the Okwe? Oh Great Spirit, all-powerful Spirit, if you really exist, if you are behind all of this, what kind of a game are you playing?" He listened. He heard the falling, splashing water, chattering of birds, the wind rustling leaves.

He climbed onto the giant boulder that towered over the clearing and the pool. He sat staring at the falls. How many millions of men, women and children would have to be drained of their blood to equal the flow of water storming over these high falls? Koona Manitou didn't have to slaughter helpless humans; he could produce the blood at will, if He wanted to.

He considered the meaning of the prophecy. Taken literally, the blood would pour and the Okwe would triumph. Or was the Koona Manitou a great cosmic joker using Sheehays' vision to snicker at the gullible Okwe, providing them not a revelation, but a puzzle whose answer was that they never would be freed from the domination of the knowos, because that much blood would never come pouring over the Green River Falls. Coop stood on the boulder. He shouted, "Koona Manitou, I need you to tell me why the blood didn't come when the water stopped falling?" He waited for an answer. When none came, he said: "I'm going to find out on my own why the Green River Falls dried up. And, I'll tell you right now, I'll give you odds there is a very human, mundane reason behind the falls drying up. Maybe nature did it? Maybe man? But certainly not You. Watch me find out, Koona Manitou."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Coop drove into Kingspost just after lunch to meet Swezey Johnson at the law office of Johnson, McGuire, Sanderson just a short walk from the Kings County Courthouse. Three laughing older men in dark suits burst into the anteroom where Coop sat on a heavy wooden chair, holding his beret in his two hands between his legs. "The big one is ours, Millie," one said to the secretary behind the desk. She jumped up squealing.

Johnson, a lean, towering man with carefully coiffed blazing white hair and a florid face, extended his hand to Coop. "Bon jour, Monsieur Coop Rever from gay Paree, I am sure," Johnson said with a gleeful French accent and a scent of martinis. "You've met Millie. May I introduce you to my partners, Bill McGuire. Bunn Sanderson." They shook hands. "This is a happy day for us. Settled the biggest case we've ever had."

"And probably ever will have," Sanderson said.

"I'm going to have to leave you fellows. Mr. Rever has come all the way from France to interview me." He opened his office door and bowed with a flourish of his left hand pointing the way. "Entrez."

The office was a small pine-paneled room with two narrow windows, their blinds half drawn, looking out onto a quiet street of Elms half-stripped of leaves by the late October winds. Johnson sat in an oversize leather swivel chair behind a broad oak desk, too big for the room. Four photos curved across the wall behind him. A young Johnson as an infantryman in WWI; poised for action with a basketball in his hands in college; a happy-faced Johnson shaking hands with First Lady Eleonore Roosevelt at a crowded labor rally in Pittsburgh;, and a smiling Johnson standing stiffly beside a somber Sheehays outside the school house in the Valley Center.

Coop took the chair facing the desk. He pointed to the picture. "That is Sheehays, isn't it?"

"Certainly is. His 90th birthday party on the reservation."

"In the Valley."

Johnson laughed. "In the Valley," he said. "You're Redsky Rever's boy, aren't you?"

"Yes I am."

"I know all about you. Football. Silver Star. Your dad told me you've written a couple of books. A son to be proud of, I told him. Your Dad did some work on our house, put an addition on. My private study. Did a great job. A dad to be proud of. May I call you Coop? I want you to know Coop your name is on the list. I checked when you called."

"The list?"

"Of full fledged members of the Green River Indian Nation."

"I assume you're talking about the Okwe. Where could you possibly get such a list? The Okwe don't have lists. We know who is an Okwe and who isn't."

Johnson bent forward over the intercom on his desk. He threw a switch. "Millie, could you please bring the files in here on the Green River Falls and the Okwe Dam." He leaned back in his swivel chair, putting his feet, ankles crossed, on the desk. He locked the fingers of his two hands behind his head, a favorite pose, the casual, understated, all-knowing lawyer about to impress a client. "Coop, you Indians don't need lists to figure out who you are, but we're going to have to provide documentary evidence to the government and probably to the courts on who has a legitimate claim to compensation when the feds acquire the valley for the reservoir."

Millie came in carrying two thin files. Johnson swung his feet off the desk and took the files with a thank you.

He held them up for Coop to see. "Just getting started. A year or two from now, and we'll probably have a couple of file cabinets full of files. Correspondence. Affidavits. Memos on negotiation. Court filings. You name it. They'll have to cut down a forest for the tons of paperwork that'll go into this case." Johnson smiled.

"I thought Arthur Kings' plans for the Valley were somewhat secret?" Coop said.

"Some people know what's going on. You're among them, or else you wouldn't be here. My question to you is this: Please forgive me for putting it in blunt terms, but are you on the up and up, really writing an article for a French magazine on an obscure Indian tribe and a rather insignificant treaty? Or are you really trying to find out what you and your mother and father will get out of this deal?"

"I told you on the phone that I was delving into the dual issues of why the water stopped falling over the falls and how this could be used as an excuse to terminate the treaty? The Okwe and their problems may appear to be insignificant to so worldly a man as you, but the French are fascinated by North American Indians. So strange as it may seem to you, my magazine is looking forward to publishing my story."

"Really. So let me show you this." He looked through a file, extracting several sheets stapled together. He handed the material to Coop. "That Coop is the list we've compiled to date. You look at the summary sheet, you'll see the tribe has 350 members in 88 families living on the reservation. Your name is on expatriates list of the 400 folks, anywhere from a quarter to 100 percent Indian, about half living in Kings County, and another half spread around the U.S., with a couple or four overseas."

Coop examined the sheets. "This says the primary source of the names is Peter Little, chairman of the Green River Indian Nation. I never heard of the Green River Indian Nation."

Johnson smiled. "I came up with that. The Green River Indian Nation translates into GRIN, a great acronym. Gives everything a happy face, a positive ring, which can be important when we use it in court papers and in the newspapers."

"And Peter Little?"

"I got together with him and three of the chiefs and everyone agreed with me that it would be easier to deal with the government through a well-defined leader. I did a little research and all the Indian tribes on the reservations around the country seem to have chairmen. So we made Peter the chairman."

"That's all very interesting. The Okwe don't have chiefs."

Johnson flushed. His integrity was being questioned. Anger replaced his smile. "You've been away a long time. Maybe you better talk to Peter. In fact, maybe I'd better talk to Peter before I talk any further to you." He stood. "So good day, Mr. Rever."

"I certainly didn't mean to offend you, Mr. Johnson. I have a few harmless questions to ask that I'm sure Peter would be happy to have you answer."

Johnson stood silently, staring at Coop. An order to leave in his eyes.

"My questions still are, do you know why the water stopped falling and how could this be used to terminate a treaty?"

"The interview is over. I'm not answering any of your questions. Please leave."

Coop took out his notebook. He wrote without looking at Johnson.

"What are you writing?"

Coop looked at Johnson, then back at his notes. He read aloud: "Peter Little chairman with a question mark. Chiefs, who with a question mark. Swezey Johnson, half drunk, arrogant, condescending. No intimate knowledge of the Okwe Ways despite being the lawyer Okwe have turned to for legal services for 20 or 30 years."

Johnson put his hand on the intercom switch. His face was a deep red. He breathed hard. "You've got some goddamned nerve. I'll be calling the Sheriff momentarily unless you stand up and leave right now Mr. Rever."

"Let me finish reading what I wrote: This hack will make a fortune in fees representing the Okwe in their expulsion from the Valley. Undoubtedly will be the biggest case of his life."

"Could you call the Sheriff's Office, ask them to send a deputy over here right away, Millie," Johnson said into the intercom.

Coop got up and left.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Coop heard the siren in the distance as he walked down Elm Street towards Jefferson Boulevard. He turned his steady stride into a faster pace wanting to put as much distance between him and Swezey Johnson's office as possible by the time the cop arrived, if indeed the piercing blare announcing the law was coming was in response to Millie's call.

He relaxed as he turned into the yellow brick building housing the Kingspost Chronicle and WKNG Radio. In the reception area, he dropped a dime into a small basket next to a pile of today's Kingspost Chronicle. He opened to the masthead, where under a block of thick black type proclaiming the newspaper had been founded in 1820, the entire staff was listed: the Publisher, the Managing Editor, the News Editor, the three Staff Reporters, the Sports Editor, the Photographer, and the Women's Page/Entertainment/Arts Editor. Arthur Kings was the publisher. He wasn't ready to talk to Kings yet. Robert Dexter was the news editor. He decided on Dexter.

He stepped over to the woman at a big metal desk. "May I see Mr. Dexter?" he said.

"Do you have an appointment?"

He said, no, asking her to give Dexter his business card, identifying him in raised, gold type as journaliste nomade for 'Une Vue Internationale' with offices on Avenue des Champs Elysees, Paris.

She studied the card, puzzling over the French. Recognizing the word journaliste, although failing to realize the spelling was slightly different from the English. She stared at him for a moment, registering his Indian skin. "Is this some kind of a joke? Aren't you from the reservation?"

The amusement that had been flickering across his face at her prolonged examination of his business card slid away. "Tell Mr. Dexter that Mr. Rever, a journalist from Paris is here to see him.

"A journalist," she said as if repeating a foul word. She pointed to the phone. "Dial 37. You tell him yourself."

Her disdain stung. He dialed 37, telling Dexter who he was.

Within a few minutes, Dexter had come out to fetch him. "Mr. Rever?" he asked uncertainly, taken aback by the red skin.

The receptionist smirked. She handed Dexter the business card.

He examined it, then shook hands with Coop. "Glad to meet you. Come on inside." Dexter led him into the innards of the Kingspost Chronicle, to his seat within the narrow U formed by the five wide metal desks in the city room. The paper's three reporters—two young men with crew cuts in shirt sleeves and an older woman with dyed black hair in a blue suit, and the Women's Page-Entertainment-Arts editor, a pretty youngish woman with strawberry blonde hair, watched Coop with an interest that told him that Dexter had announced a foreign correspondent was waiting outside. The sports editor sat in a corner under a wall covered with recent sports pages and photos of local football, track and basketball players and next to a door with a sign, Photo Department. Dexter said, "Everyone. This is." He looked at the card. "Coop Rever all the way from Paris. He's a." He hesitated. "A correspondent for Uhn View International."

Coop shook hands all around. The sports editor yelled across the room, "Welcome to the biggest newspaper in Kingspost." Coop smiled. The others laughed.

Dexter slipped past him, pulling a vacant chair from the unoccupied desk, piled high with old newspapers, boxes, and telephone directories. He rolled the chair into the narrow space. "Sit down. You got here at just the right time. Just moved past the deadline. So we can talk." Dexter fell back onto his own seat. He pulled a large brown bag from a desk drawer. He took out a thick ham sandwich on white Wonder Bread, wrapped in wax paper, and a tall dirty-blue thermos. He laid the sandwich on the desk to his right, unfolding the wax paper with his two hands. He unscrewed the dented silvery cap cup from the thermos, poured some coffee that didn't steam into the cup, then spoke to Coop: "Lunch. I am starved. So tell me what you want while I eat." He leaned back, extending his feet onto a waste basket. Alternating bites from the sandwich, heavily layered with mayonnaise, with sips of coffee. The strawberry blonde left the room. The others fiddled with papers on their desks, listening to what the visitor might say.

Coop told Dexter that he had once lived in the Valley, but WWII took him overseas, landing him in France where he now lived and worked. He wanted to see the stories the Chronicle had written about the Green River drying up last summer and the plans Congressman Kings had for building a dam that would turn the Green River Valley into a lake.

Dexter sucked the microscopic remnants of the sandwich from each of his fingers, starting with right thumb and continuing to the pinky. He repeated the process on the fingers of his left hand. He sat up, took a banana from his brown bag, peeled it, and said, "Pardon my pun, but that's a damn good story about the dam. We haven't printed it yet. We're going to, though. Mr. Kings filled me in on the plans. He asked me to hold the story till after the election. He likes to come out with something big after every election. The future for Kingspost and Kings County. You know."

"What do you know about the treaty between the Okwe and the United States, the one George Washington signed?"

"Not a damn thing," Dexter roared with laughter at his second swing at the pun.

"You won the Silver Star didn't you?" the older woman said from her desk.

Coop turned to her. "Yes I did. A long time ago."

"Kingspost won only two Silver Stars. Artie Kings got one on Tarawa with the Marines. That's where the Japs shot him up. And Mr. Rever, here, got his in France with the Army. You got a Bronze Star for Valor too, didn't you?"

"Yes I did. That was a long time ago too." He was pleased to be remembered. The Chronicle had run a story with a picture, supplied by the Army, about him being awarded the Silver Star with a mention of the Bronze Star.

Dexter packed the detritus of his lunch into the paper bag along with the thermos. He said, "Martha's our institutional memory. Don't have much of a filing system. No morgue like a big city newspaper, but we got Martha's memory. I don't know what we'll do if she ever decides to leave us."

"You must have done a story about the Green River going dry?" Coop said.

"Never happened," Dexter said. "The falls up on the reservation went dry for some reason. But the river kept flowing."

"How could that happen?"

Dexter leaned forward. He drew imaginary lines on the desk top beside Coop. "Two branches. The Valley Branch of the Green River flows through the reservation. And the Main Branch of the Green River flows around the reservation. They come together just past the wooden bridge that goes into the reservation."

"Could I see the story on the falls going dry? You did something on that didn't you?"

One of the crew-cut reporters spoke up. "I did the story."

"Can I see your story? Did you find out why the river dried up?"

"God, I didn't save it. It was sometime last August. I just keep the clips on stories I have to follow. I remember talking to some Indian out there. I got ahold of him on the phone and he said he figured the weather was so hot it just dried out."

"For two days. Then suddenly the water starts again. Any explanation for that?"

"Maybe there was a rain storm somewhere up the line," Dexter said.

The reporter said, "I can tell you this much. It wasn't a front page story. We ran it inside with a picture. If you know approximately when the river dried up in the Valley, you can look through our back copies of the paper and probably come up with it."

"I'd appreciate the chance to do that, Coop said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Coop started with the Chronicle of Wednesday, August 1, 1956. The front page was dominated by a weather story. Temperatures had registered 100 degrees in the sun at high noon on the thermometer on the side of the Kings County Savings & Loan in the center of Kingspost. Photos showed a fat man in suspenders sitting on a cake of ice drinking a fresh lemonade and children splashing in the city pool in Bend of the River Park. He turned the pages one by one through the entire edition. Coop suspected anything to do with the Valley could be far inside the paper. Maybe past the obituaries.

"Try Monday, August Sixth, Mr. Rever."

Coop turned. It was the young, crew-cut reporter who wrote the story.

On page 16, two large pictures of the rocky face of the high precipice exposed by the absence of water and a long view of the dry river bed with clumps of Okwe sitting on either bank and standing in groups at the base of the dry falls. Those photos filled the top half of the broadsheet. Below, bordering the story under the by-line Joe Bentley were two more photos of a youngster fishing off the Colonial Bridge on the edge of downtown Kingspost and a man standing waist-deep in water where the Main Branch of the Green River flowed past the mouth of the Valley Branch of the Green River.

"That's me in the river."

"Anything for a story," Coop said. He read through the report, which said the drying of the falls resulted in the largest gathering of Indians outside the annual Green Corn Pow Wow in the memory of old timers in Kings County. There were two quotes from Peter Little, identified as the manager of the Kings Trading Company's general store on the reservation. Little said, 'Last summer was dry, but this summer takes the cake. I never saw the Green River run dry before." Asked about rumors that the Indian legend that some day the falling water would be replaced by falling blood, Little said, 'I guess some of the people believe that, but I was there and it didn't happen.' Coop asked the young reporter, "Didn't you want to find out why the water stopped falling?"

"The drought, I guess."

"Why didn't the Main Branch dry up, then?"

"The drought wasn't that bad, I guess."

"How did you hear about the falls drying up?"

"Bob Dexter's the one who gave me the assignment. He called me at home that weekend. Told me to pick up Billy Ellis at his house Sunday morning so we could go to the reservation together. What really surprised me was he got Billy Ellis to work on a Sunday. Billy's a 30-year man at the Chronicle, and his deal is that he never works Saturdays or Sundays unless the sky is falling. Billy's got this side business taking pictures of weddings and picnics, whatever, on weekends. He makes more doing that than working for the Chronicle. When Bob Dexter called him at home Saturday night when he got in from a wedding, Billy gave him some shit, because he had another wedding lined up for Sunday. Bob Dexter told him to take the pictures Sunday on the reservation or get another job."

"I'm surprised Dexter was so hot for a weather story about the Valley that he would send a reporter and photographer on overtime to cover it."

Bentley shook his head. "Overtime. The Chronicle doesn't pay overtime."

"Then why did you go out?"

"I didn't want to go either. My wife and I were going swimming down at the lake. I said, what is this all about? Who cares if a waterfall that no one ever sees goes dry. You know the Indians don't like outsiders." In deference to Coop's heritage, Bentley didn't tell him that he was fearful of going and half expecting trouble at the falls.

"So what did he say?"

"He said, you may not care, but Mr. Kings cares. So I care. Get your ass out there. So I guess I did."

Coop took out his notebook. He wrote down what Bentley had said.

"Hey, you're not quoting me," Bentley said.

"Do you seriously think anyone in Kingspost subscribes to 'Une Vu Internationale', a French magazine written in French. Anyhow, I write everything down so I don't forget. I don't have a photographic memory, and I don't make things up. There's another thing, I never know what I'm going to use in a story. What you just told me doesn't sound that important. Just gives me some color in case I need it about the inner workings of the Kingspost Chronicle." He asked Bentley to get him a copy of the Aug. 6 edition of the Chronicle, telling him he would be happy to pay the 25 cent fee charged for back issues. While Bentley went to the circulation office to fetch the paper, Coop continued writing in his notebook, circling and starring the reference to Arthur Kings ordering the paper to document the failure of the Green River to pour over the falls. He wondered how Kings found out the Valley Branch of the Green River had run dry. Perhaps someone noticed it and called. Him, not the news editor? Perhaps Peter Little called? Perhaps Arthur Kings had something to do with the river running dry?

Bentley came back with the Aug. 6 edition. "No charge. Professional courtesy," he said.

Coop considered Joe, wondering if he were loyal to the Chronicle and Arthur Kings or just passing through the paper on his way to something bigger. "How long have you been with the paper, Joe?"

"Two years. Since I got out of the Army. I graduated from St. Bonnie's in `52. Graduated in May, got drafted in September."

"Were you in Korea?"

"Fortunately no. I like to tell people I fought the war of the South. Fort Benning, Fort Lee, and Fort Meade. Then the war was over, and I was home safe."

Joe Bentley was no warrior. An Okwe would have been ashamed to admit he was happy to have escaped a war. A cultural difference. The knowos lived to acquire. The Okwe lived to live. To hunt, to fish, to war. To be resentful of the knowos for their greed. To long for the freedom to roam the forests in all directions without the presence of the white intruders. How did that fit into his life with a white wife and a mixed daughter? With his hunger for the acclaim his books and reports from the front lines brought him? With his taste for wine and good food? "Well, I got to Korea before it was over. My first book was 'Baionnettes Francaises en Coree.' That means 'French Bayonets in Korea.' Published in France. I got pretty good reviews, but I didn't get an American publisher for that book."

"Wow, you had a book published?"

He decided to impress Joe with his credentials. "Two, Joe. I was at Dien Bien Phu just before it fell in May of `54. I wrote a book about that too. 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses; La vie sinistre de Karl Witzbold.' Doubleday is publishing that one under the title, 'The Two Million-Dollar Wounds of Karl Witzbold. It'll be out by Christmas."

Bentley pulled a lump of folded copy paper from his back pocket. He wrote down the name of the book and Doubleday. "You're worth a story. A guy from the reservation who won the Silver Star, writes books, works as a foreign correspondent for a magazine in Paris. War correspondent too. Wow. What a great life you've led."

He decided to hook him. "Joe, I don't have much time for what I have to do here, and I don't know my way around like you do. I could use some help. I'm willing to pay. Could I interest you in doing a little work on the side for me. Nothing that would interfere with your job. Say I give you $50 as a starter, and more if you come up with anything interesting."

"Fifty dollars. That sounds really good to me."

"How about getting a beer somewhere. And a sandwich. Give us a chance to talk."

Joe responded with a broad grin. A free meal was always on his agenda. "Great. I haven't had lunch yet. The best place around here is Smitty's. It's just around the corner. They serve a barbecue pork sandwich you wouldn't believe."

"So, get your coat and let's go," Coop said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than he felt.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Coop and Joe walked along Riverview Road past the rows of American flags, spaced a few yards apart, fluttering from ten-foot poles in the afternoon breeze. They strolled past Kings Trading Post, a combination supermarket, hardware, feed, farm equipment and clothing store, the original source of the Kings' wealth. Now just another lucrative property among the many investments in the Kings family portfolios. They passed the Freedom Steakhouse next to the Kings Hall Civic Center and Movie Theater whose marquee advertised in large blue block letters 'Kings Rally Sun/See Giant Free.' In smaller red letters against a white background: Elizabeth Taylor/Rock Hudson. The Kings family built the civic center/movie theater and donated it to the community just after the turn of the century. The Bend in the River City Park across Riverview Road was another gift from the Kings. Every graceful thing that adorned the city came from the largesse of the Kings. They passed Butler's Newsstand & Bookstore, Wendell's Ice Cream Parlor, and approached Smitty's Porkery. The place looked tired, worn at the edges. The same old swollen pink pig with wings hovered over the red, white and blue neon sign blinking 'Smitty's Porkery.' Half a dozen cars, including a Kings County Sheriff's patrol car that registered on Coop, were in the big, dusty parking lot. A fire-engine-red Mercury convertible with the top down, despite the near cold October afternoon, was the only car in the curb-service zone. Coop and Joe walked past a carhop on white high-top rollers skates, one toe down to keep her in place, in blue slacks and a red cap talking to the driver, who was eating a barbecue sandwich, a tall, half-gone strawberry milk shake sitting in a tulip-shaped glass alongside a red plastic basket filled to overflowing with deep fried onion rings on the tray attached to the side of the Mercury.

The carhop smiled. "Hi, Joe." He put up a hand in acknowledgement

"I'm a regular. You want a beer this is it in downtown Kingspost. Other than the inn. Otherwise you got to drive out to the Lumberman's or the Shamrock," Joe said, pulling the front door open for Coop.

Coop's mouth watered in anticipation of a heavenly pig sandwich covered with a healthy ladle of Smitty's secret sauce on a soft roll. On the day before he went into the Army, he and two other Okwes came to Smitty's for one last heavenly pig sandwich and a beer. They had just come from an all-night going away party in the Valley, dancing and drinking all night to celebrate the opportunity of becoming warriors. No car hops on duty, too early. When they walked into Smitty's that morning, just after 10 o'clock, Jonah Smith, usually called Smitty, set his face, ready to order the three drunken Indians out of his place. As they eased themselves onto the circular stools, Coop pointed past Smitty to the wall with the long menu next to a large poster of a stern-faced Uncle Sam in a high white hat with stars, a red cravat, a blue jacket over a white shirt, his brow furrowed, his finger pointing to the spectator. At the bottom of the poster: 'I want you for U.S. Army.' Coop interrupted Smitty's "Get the fuck" with a loudly proclaimed: "We are answering your call Uncle Sam. We are going into the U.S. Army on the four o'clock bus out of Kingspost this afternoon." Smitty's anger was replaced with a genuine smile. "Any man who's gonna fight for his country can eat at a table in my establishment. Sit down boys," Smitty said. He waved the waitress aside; he took their order himself.

Coop was through the door a step ahead of Joe. Sitting at a table on the far side of the restaurant was Smitty with his bucked teeth and bulging belly, and Mike Dermody, who had grown larger over the years, not fat, but wider. His thick neck was thicker, his face bulkier. Dermody nodded toward Coop and broke into a big smile, intentionally menacing.

Coop's left foot inadvertently trembled for a moment. He was glad to be with Joe Bentley. He doubted that Dermody would act out in front of a local newspaper reporter.

Dermody motioned with the forefinger of his right hand, a signal for Coop to come over.

Coop looked up at the wall behind the counter. Uncle Sam was gone. In his place was a big poster of a waving American flag with big letters saying 'In God We Trust.' Underneath on a cardboard were thick crayoned letters: 'All others pay cash.'

Joe waved to Dermody and Smitty. "The sheriff wants to talk to us," he said to Coop.

"I don't want to talk to him."

"I can't ignore Sheriff Dermody. I cover the Sheriff's Department."

Dermody snapped in a loud voice. "You. Come over here. There's something we got to clear up. Now."

Coop ignored him. He said to the waitress. "Can we take any table?"

"The sheriff is talking to you," she said. The few diners had stopped eating. Their eyes traveled between Coop and Dermody.

Coop sat down at a table near the door. He had lost his appetite for a pork sandwich, but couldn't bring himself to retreat out of the restaurant. Joe, obviously torn between responding to the sheriff and his awe of Coop, slowly sat down at the table.

"Gloria," Smitty called. The waitress went over to him. He whispered to her. She nodded. She looked back towards Coop and Joe.

Coop smiled. A bitter smile. He recognized her as the same waitress, heavier but with the same bleached hair, who had refused to serve him those many years ago when Dermody told him, 'Red niggers eat outside.'

Gloria came to their table. "Mr. Smith said, this table is reserved for customers, and so are all the others." She walked away.

"Wow," Joe said.

"I guess we're not having a beer here, Joe. How about trying the Kings Inn."

"That might be a good idea."

They started to rise. Dermody, with a speed that astonished Coop, strode across the room to their table, reaching them before they could step away. Dermody blocked Coop's path to the door. He stood close, craning his neck to press his face to within inches of Coop's. He spoke slowly to drive home his words: "Chief, I wanted to tell you so there's no confusion. You're getting a pass this time, because Swezey Johnson doesn't want to press charges. But that's it. You shot your wad in Kings County today. Stay on the reservation and stay out of trouble. That's an order, not advice."

Deciding that silence was his best strategy, Coop turned and walked around the sheriff.

Dermody, breathing hard, seething, grabbed Coop's arm, turning him to face him again. "Tell me, chief that you heard what I said, or you're not going out that door in one piece."

Under the painful embarrassment of a rapt audience, Coop whispered, "I heard you."

"Speak louder. I heard you Sheriff Dermody."

"I heard you, Sheriff Dermody," Coop said, humiliated by his docility.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Coop and Joe walked in an uncomfortable silence, no longer in the mood for a beer and a sandwich, past City Hall and the high school to the red Chevy parked on Court Street. Coop took out his wallet to pay Joe the promised $50, but the reporter held up his hand. "I think I'll pass on this one," he said. "Dermody is going to be asking me what my relationship with you is, and I don't want to say I'm stringing for you. He's very close to Mr. Kings.

"If you ever should wonder why I didn't come back here to live, just think of the way I was treated today. In public. By a red neck cop, by a red neck waitress."

"That's not a very nice thing to say."

Coop laughed at Joe's response. "Let's end it on that note." They didn't shake hands on parting. He put the car in gear and started to turn out of the parking place when Joe banged on the rear fender. He came around to the driver's side and Coop rolled down the window. "Yes."

"I won't take any money, but if you run into a bind and I can help you, give me a call. There's something I should tell you. I tried to do a little more work on the water running dry. I called this guy, Sy Blumenthal, at Penn State who specializes in rivers and streams. He didn't know anything about it, but he asked me to send him the story."

"Did he come up with an answer?"

"He never called back, and I didn't try him again. They don't like us making long distance calls at the Chronicle."

Coop drove directly to Valley Center. He parked at the foot of the steps in front of the Kings Trading Company' general store. He spotted Peter Little under the hood of an old pickup truck. Purposely not using Peter's name, he shouted, "Hey," a form of subtle insult among the Okwe.

Peter straightened up, wiping the grease from his hands with a dirty rag, which hung from an overall pocket. "Ho Wakee ne Uthsusta," he shouted in a genial greeting.

The etiquette of the Okwe Way called for a meandering introduction to any conversation involving a serious matter. Coop tossed that convention aside too, going directly to the question he wanted answered: "Tell me about becoming chairman of GRIN? You know, the Green River Indian Nation."

Peter's grin disappeared. "You're coming on pretty strong. Do residents of Paris, France, really care what goes on in the Valley of the Green River Falls?"

"You didn't answer my question, Mr. Chairman."

"And I don't have to. Who are you to ask me anything?"

He could have floored Peter by announcing, 'I am Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf.' Instead, he opened his jacket and pulled up his shirt, exposing the wolf pictograph tattooed around his navel. "I am a Wolf."

A woman's voice sounded from behind him, "So am I. So is Peter. Move your car from in front of the store."

Coop turned to find Berry Eater, Peter's mother, standing on the wooden porch above him. She must have heard his 'hey' to her son and his blunt demand to know who made him the chairman. She was returning his insult, challenging him to cross into the precipitous realm of insulting her, the paramount mother of the Wolf Clan. "Ho ne nuye kwai," he said, the formal greeting of 'Hail, my Wolf Mother' accompanied by the required placing his hand over the carving of the Wolf Clan symbol on his body. He went directly to the car, driving it to a marked parking place. Peter and Berry Eater remained standing where he had left them.

"It's good to see you again," Coop said to Berry Eater, going through the ritual of opening a serious conversation. He asked about her health without saying aloud what he said to himself, that she was wider and bigger breasted than the last time he saw her. He described how much he missed the Valley and the Wolf Clan ceremonies. How much he enjoyed returning to his mother's house and the foods all Okwe enjoyed. Then he told her without looking at Peter, who remained frozen in place next to the pickup truck, that Swezey Johnson told him that Peter had been named chairman of the Green River Indian Nation, a choice endorsed by several chiefs.

"Your mother told me you were back for a visit," Berry Eater said emphasizing the word visit. "You've been gone a long time, Coop. You've got a knowos wife and a knowos child. You seem to have pulled up your roots from here and put them in Paris. Are you really an Okwe any more?"

"More than you could imagine," Coop said in quick rejoinder. "I respect who you are, just as you should respect who I am. I am a Wolf warrior. A Wolf by birth; a full-fledged warrior by accomplishment" That was a stinging rejoinder, a flaunting of his elevated status for fighting in a war while Peter stayed back in the Valley with the women and children. Peter started to speak, but Coop held up his hand, "No," he said without looking at him. He pointedly spoke to Berry Eater, adding to the insult by diminishing Peter in the presence of two superiors. "Tell me, Wolf mother, how your child became chairman of the Indians on the Green River Valley reservation." An Okwe never referred to his people as Indians nor the Valley as a reservation.

Berry Eater's eyes flamed. "You had better leave now."

"I want an answer."

Peter, burning with the dishonor of being ignored, and knowing how insignificant his place in life was because he had been unable to be a soldier, said in a voice filled with rage, "The answer is that this Valley won't be here in a couple of years. We had a treaty and we don't have one any more. There's nothing protecting us any more. The federal government can take our land and we can't do anything about it."

"Is that what the treaty says?" Coop asked.

"That water stopped flowing over the falls. I saw it with my own eyes. We all did. You weren't here to see it. We waited for the blood that didn't come. So we're stuck with what we've got."

"And what's that?"

"Whatever we can get from the knowos. We can sit here and beat drums or make the best deal possible. I've decide to make the best deal possible."

"With you as chairman."

"Yes with me as chairman."

"And how did you become chairman?"

"We called a meeting at the Council House. A few people showed up, and I was picked as chairman."

"Who were the chiefs Johnson spoke about? He said there were three chiefs."

"There three men besides me at the meeting. The foremost warriors of the Bear, the Hawk and the Turtle. Maybe he thought they were chiefs. You know the knowos don't know anything about us."

"And you represented the Wolf Clan, of course. Who is the we who called the meeting?"

"Swezey Johnson and me. We had a meeting with Congressman Kings, and he said that with the treaty no longer in effect, he was going to go ahead with a plan he had for a long time to build a dam to create a big lake so Kingspost could have a good supply of water and the public could get a recreational spot. I said even though he's my boss, we would fight for our land in the courts. Congressman Kings told me, you're out of luck there. There is no treaty any more, and Swezey Johnson said he had to agree. He would file a law suit if we said so, but we'd be wasting our money. I said we don't have any money. And he said, that's right, the Okwe don't have a government so they don't have any money. You can't go to court without money. And then Congressman Kings said he would get us the best deal possible for our land if we didn't cause a lot of unnecessary hoopla."

Coop said, "Let me see. The river runs dry on Aug. 4. The Kingspost Chronicle runs a story about it on Aug. 6. And when is your meeting with Congressman Kings?"

"I don't know. Some time in August. After the river ran dry."

"And you don't connect the falls running dry with Congressman Kings pulling a complicated plan out of his pocket to build a dam and flood the Valley? Did it ever occur to you to ask what caused the river to run dry? Did you send someone upstream to see whether Congressman Kings or somebody else went to the trouble of blocking the river, diverting the flow somewhere else for a couple of days?"

Peter glanced at his mother. She stood silent, not helping him. He rocked from side to side, as he blurted out, "I trust Arthur Kings. He wants to make things better for the Okwe."

"I don't trust Arthur Kings. I don't know him as well as you do of course. I'll tell you this, I'm going to find out who stopped the water. Maybe Mother Nature. Maybe Arthur Kings."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Coop warned his mother at the breakfast table that he would be running up her telephone bill making long distance calls, something she rarely did. He assured her over his scrambled eggs that he would reimburse her. Give her more than enough to cover the bill, in advance.

At nine o'clock, he started with a call to Congressman Arthur Kings' local Congressional office on Court Street in one of the old houses converted to offices. He was put through to Bernie Pulver, an aide. Coop told Pulver he was a French journalist who wanted to interview the congressman. "Which paper are you with?" "A magazine called 'An International View.'" "Never heard of it. Sounds like a Commie publication," Bernie said with a sneering laugh. "I would say it is apolitical," Coop lied, knowing that a small-town political appointee in the reactionary American heartland, most likely would be unable to fathom the difference between a Socialist and a Communist editorial point of view. "Can you tell me what this article is about? Why a French reporter would want to speak to a Pennsylvania congressman?" Coop decided to go right to the point. "I'm working on an article about Congressman Kings' role in the plan to build a dam in the Green River Valley." There was a pause, while the aide—without covering the mouthpiece of his phone--asked someone in the office whether they knew anything about Congressman Kings being involved with some kind of a dam on the Green River? He came back on the phone. "We don't have the foggiest notion of what you're talking about. Why don't you leave me a number, and if the congressman is interested in talking to you, we'll call back and set up an appointment." Coop gave his mother's number. "Mention to Congressman Kings that I'm the Coop Rever who was a year ahead him in Central High. The one who played fullback on Central's undefeated football team back in 1933." "A constituent? What is someone from Kings County doing working for a French magazine? Could you clear that up for me. I'm sure the congressman will want to know." "Certainement," Coop replied. "I'm an American in Paris. I went to the Sorbonne under the GI Bill and as I said, I now work for 'Une Vu International.' That's French for 'An International View.' I'm combining a visit home with work on this article."

Next Coop called Joe Bentley to get Sy Blumenthal's number at Penn State.

The college switchboard put him through to Blumenthal. "I don't want to rush you Mr. Rever, but you caught me as I'm going out the door. I have to be in Pittsburgh this evening for the opening session of a conference on Pittsburgh and its three rivers," Blumenthal said.

Coop told him he was trying to track down the cause of the Green River Falls going dry last August.

"You're the third person to call on that. I took a look at it, but I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer. I have neither the time nor the money to do the job properly. But if you know someone who wants to fund a study, don't hesitate to tell me."

"I assume Joe Bentley from the Kingspost Chronicle was one of the callers. He gave me your number. Who else is interested?"

"Dr. Horowitz. Edele Horowitz from Penn."

"Oh yes. I know Dr. Horowitz. I met her in Paris just a few weeks ago."

"To make a long story short, I checked with the state hydrology folks in Albany. They knew nothing about the situation, but their interest was piqued. We've looked at weather reports, maps, called some people in the area, did a little brain storming over the phone and tried to figure out what might have happened. This much is clear, the Green River Valley Branch has four distinct sources, four tributary streams that flow from four different directions across the Southern Tier of New York merging in the Kreuger Forest Preserve, that's the largest private estate in the Eastern United States. There are four 20 to 75-foot precipices collectively called Biber Falls that deliver the water into a Lake Tiefer Schiefer, a very shallow lake, whose bottom is really a plateau of shale. That lake forms the headwaters of the Green River. The river drives straight as a die in a corridor 16 miles long, four miles in New York and 12 more in Pennsylvania to feed the Green River Falls. All four of the streams were healthy in August despite the dry spell. A little low but not dry. Streams do go up and down of course, but none was dry as far as we can determine. Let me tell you off the record, we didn't find a natural cause. I've tried getting a number for the management of the Kreuger Forest Preserve with no success. Albany was interested, but not interested enough to pursue it any further. And, I don't have any more time to devote the subject nor to talk to you. I really have to go. I hope I've been of help."

"Very much so. Is there someone in Albany I can call?"

"They're not interested at all. Their streams didn't go dry. They got no complaints or queries other than from me. And most importantly, the waterfall that stopped was in Pennsylvania. We're all strapped for money and time, Mr. Rever."

"You've been very helpful Dr. Blumenthal. I think your theory of an unnatural cause is worth pursuing."

Coop called Dr. Horowitz's office number in Philadelphia. On the eighth ring, a woman who didn't identify herself told him that Dr. Horowitz was gone for the day. He tried her home phone. No answer. He gave up after 20 rings. He fetched the road map of Pennsylvania from the red Chevy. He laid the map out on the kitchen table. The national forest began just north of Kingspost flanking the Valley on either side for ten miles and extending into New York State for another 20 miles or so on a 45 degree angle, along an irregular border that reached almost to Route 17. He found the thin blue line depicting the Valley Branch of the Green River and followed it north through Pennsylvania into New York until it ended in a blank expanse of yellow just short of a triangle marked as Kreuger Hill with the number 2300 next to it. 'Must mean 2,300 feet high,' Coop said to himself. Coop took a ruler, measuring across the blank space from Kreuger Hill to the nearest road, a thin black line without a name on the map. About five miles. Another five miles from that point was a dot, Kreuger.

He called information for New York asking for the number of the Kreuger Forest Preserve. No listing. Anyone named Kreuger in that area. Only an unlisted number, which the operator refused to give him. The village hall for Kreuger. None listed. How about a police department? No listing. The operator said she could give him the Kreuger County Sheriff's Department or the New York State Police in Batavia, or the Town of Macray Police Department. "Give me the town police, please." The chief of police, who answered the phone, was very cooperative. Not much was happening that day in the town. He said the Village of Kreuger on the map was a crossroads community, maybe 500 people, who eked out a living on the remnants of what was once a booming lumber industry. He laughed. Kreuger didn't have a general store or a gas station or a real post office; it was in somebody's house. But Kreuger did have a road house with a bar that flourished. The Kreuger family consisted of a father and a daughter as far as the chief knew. Their first names? Ulrich and Zelma. When they were in town, they lived in their big house on the Forest Preserve. They were nice folks, who employed five or six people on their estate. When they weren't in town, they lived in New York City. Coop asked for their phone numbers, explaining who he was. "Nope. That's private. That's how they want it. That's how it goes. But if you don't tell anyone I told you, you might try information for Kreuger Camera Company in New York."

"Before I let you go, chief, what do you know about the Green River going dry last August? Or I should ask did someone dam the river up your way?"

"Don't know anything about that."

Coop called information coming up with a listing for Kreuger Cameras Inc. He asked to speak to Ulrich Kreuger. Kreuger's secretary said he wasn't available. Coop told her he was a French journalist, that he wanted to ask Mr. Kreuger some questions about the Green River, which flowed through his estate in upstate New York. He left his number.

Bluebird was in the midst of serving dinner from the stove when the phone rang. "Yeah. Just a minute. He's here." She said to Coop, "It's for you."

"Mr. Rever? This is Zelma Kreuger Sullivan. You called my dad. He said you were a French journalist?" There was a hesitancy in her voice.

"Yes."

"Who are you with?"

'"Une Vu Internationale'. It's a French magazine based in Paris."

"Je ne suis pas familier avec ce magasin."

He was amused. She was testing him. "Peu d'Américains sont. Après que tout il ne soit pas l'International Herald Tribune. Heureusement, nous avons les lecteurs français.

"J'ai lu des français, M. Rever."

"And you speak French very well too."

"I went to school, for a few years, in France."

"So did I. The Sorbonne. That's how I got into journalism. That's how I got onto the staff of Vu."

"My father said you were asking about the Green River."

"I'm home visiting in Pennsylvania. I don't know if you are aware that the Green River ran dry for a couple of days last August."

"I certainly am. I saw it happen."

"Then maybe you can help me. I'm trying to figure out what caused the water to stop flowing? Something natural, like drought? Or man-made like a dam?"

"Not one, but four dams."

"Four. Are you sure, four." His pulse raced. Four was a mystical number to the Okwe. Four seasons. Four directions. Four clans.

"This could be a very interesting story, Mr. Rever. The four dams were built by beavers, all at once. Intellectually, I am reluctant to attribute a grand scheme to a bunch of beavers, but talk about synchronicity. In order to stop the river, they had to build four dams and they did it at the same time. I don't know how you figure the odds of that happening coincidentally, but they are mighty big."

His left leg began the usual tremble in a time of stress. His head shook too. Coop felt a fright that made him weak. He had a hard time breathing. He managed to say, "I'd like to take a look at those dams."

"Come right ahead, I'll be here tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. I'm staying in our camp in the Kreuger Forest Preserve. Do you know where it is? Go to Kreuger, turn onto Kreuger Hill Road. If you're driving north, that would be a right hand turn. Follow the signs toward Kreuger Hill. At the base of the hill, take another right onto an unmarked paved road with a sign saying Kreuger Forest Preserve, private property, no trespassing, no hunting, no fishing, no strangers allowed, and we mean it. Not very friendly, but you're welcome."

"I'll be there tomorrow morning," he said hoping she couldn't hear the tension in his voice.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Coop lay awake through the night, staring into the darkness or closing his eyes to see images of sleek, powerful brown beavers building dams on narrow streams in the woods of New York State. At the first dim light of morning, a few minutes after six by his alarm clock, he swung his feet onto the rag rug beside his bed. He was up, dressed, and leaving the house as his mother came out of her bedroom. "What about breakfast?" she asked. "I'm not hungry. I have to get going." "Not even coffee?" "I'm not in the mood."

He drove south on The Falls Way, hampered by an early morning fog that forced him to move at a crawl, unable to see much beyond the glare of his headlights. He turned across the covered bridge onto the county highway. He went west, the road gripping the Main Branch of the Green River, his Chevy still enclosed in the fog that hung a white wall around him. The strain of steering the car almost blindly through the curves of the unfamiliar road eased when he locked onto a lumber truck. He followed the truck's red backlights. The ordeal ended when turned north crossing the river on a comfortably wide old beam and brick bridge. He emerged from the haze onto a higher road and a brighter morning with puffy white clouds moving before a brisk west wind.

With the driving eased, he began to feel a little hungry, and out of sorts, somewhat fatigued, missing his morning coffee. This back country road, hemmed for the most part by stands of white pine or dairy farm pastures with clumps of cows, led him to the outskirts of Kreuger without encountering a diner or even a country store. In the hamlet, several cars were parked along the narrow road; teenagers awaited a school bus, women in aprons moved about porches and in yards of old wooden houses with picket fences, some badly in need of paint, and uneven blue slate sidewalks. At the crossroads, there was a hand-lettered sign above the door of a shabby, little cottage, Blau's Diner. A sign in the window said, Closed.

The road towards Kreuger Hill was a narrow concrete ribbon, laid sometime in a prosperous past, cracked in places by the heaves of the expanding and contracting earth in the shocks of winter cold and warming spring. Within a few minutes, he reached the green on white board signs, hanging one below the other, linked by brass chains, Kreuger Forest Preserve/private property/no trespassing/no hunting/no fishing/no strangers allowed/we mean it. He turned onto the narrow forest road, butterflies adding to the discomfort of his hungry stomach. After a mile, he heard the faint rumble of the water falls. As the road turned to the right, he passed onto a rise giving him a view of the morning sun glistening off the water, sparkling. He stopped to look at the four waterfalls pouring over 20 to 75 foot precipices churning the lake with a continuous rushing sound. A stiff wind rolled the water in microwaves onto the far shore overhung with towering, ancient pines, barren of branches for 40 or 50 feet. The wind moaned ominously in the high, needle-laden tree tops.

What Zelma had called a camp was an impressively large two-story log house with a peaked roof and a broad wrap-around porch. Huge field stone fireplaces pierced either side of the roof. Coop parked beside the house. As he opened the car door, a shaggy old German Shepard, his black muzzle peppered with gray, came silently down the broad porch steps. The animal barked three times, then stopped poised to spring, growling. Coop froze, waiting.

A door opened and closed. "Be nice Reuther." The woman's voice came from the porch beyond the edge of the house, out of Coop's range of sight.

Reuther turned to look at her, looked back once more at Coop, and trotted back up the steps to the pool of sun on the porch out of the wind.

Coop felt the muscles in his shoulders and back relax. He waited until she came down to meet him. She was lean and tall, at least six feet, with tightly-cropped curly blonde hair. An athletic face with a mannish edge. Somewhere in her late 30s. No make up. Thin lips. She was dressed in jeans and a blue, v-necked cashmere sweater, raised nipples pressing the soft, expensive weave. That caught his eye. That surprised him. He had seen European women on the beach bare-breasted, often braless under thin shirts in the heat of summer. He never expected an American woman, even in the fastness of her country estate to walk around with her breasts hanging provocatively unbraced. She wore a large diamond ring on her left hand. No wedding band.

Her eyebrows rose in a flicker of astonishment at the color of his skin. "Mr. Rever?" she asked with the trace of caution he had heard in her voice on the phone.

"Yes. Zelma Kreuger Sullivan, I presume."

She looked at her watch. "You're early. We haven't even had breakfast yet."

"Neither have I. I was so anxious to talk to you and to see those beaver dams that I didn't want to waste any time on the mundane, such as eating and drinking coffee. I must say my body tells me that was a mistake."

Her deep-bred civility overcame the moment of unconscious prejudice. She extended her hand. "We'll eat and talk, then see the sights."

"Sounds good to me" He followed her up the steps and into the house.

She stopped just inside the door in a long, wide foyer with pegs for hanging jackets, snow shoes strung from ceiling hooks, a high bench over a row rubber boots, racks of fishing poles, and a glassed gun closet with an arsenal of half a dozen rifles, a German Luger, a 19th Century Colt revolver, and two shotguns. "Let's hang up your coat," she said.

They passed through the Great Room with a 20-foot-high, beamed, cathedral ceiling. A huge picture window looked across the wide porch onto the lake and the four waterfalls. A couch and heavy chairs formed a semi circle around a coffee table at the face of the fieldstone fire place. A large caddy held a stack of dried split wood. Across the wall above the fireplace mantle were four enlarged crisply defined photos, mounted and framed: a red-shouldered hawk, a chipmunk, a white-tailed deer, and a rattlesnake. They went through swinging door into a pantry equipped with a sink, work counters, and storage cabinets through another door into the kitchen.

Two place settings of red and green flower-decorated breakfast plates and matching mugs, knives, forks, spoons and cloth napkins sat catty-corned at one end of a substantial wooden table capable of comfortably seating eight. Another tall, young woman, about five-foot, eight, chubby cheeks, wire glasses and hair in disarray, still in her pajamas, robe, and slippers, was stirring eggs in a bowl. Bacon was frying in a pan on the stove.

"Dilly, we have an unexpected guest for breakfast. And he's hungry. So, let's scramble a few more eggs and throw some more bacon on the fire. I'll take care of the coffee and toast."

"Well, thanks from the serving classes," Dilly said good-humoredly.

Zelma turned to him. "Coop Rever I want you to meet my, my. What are you, Dilly?"

"I hope I'm your everything." She grinned. She shook his hand, her eyes appraising him. He read in her expression a mix of contempt and concern. She ranked him in her mind below her status as a semi-servant.

Zelma raised her hands wide and laughed. "Mr. Rever meet my everything."

Zelma fetched a plate, silverware and a mug for Coop. She took the chair at the head of the table, indicating Coop should sit to her left. Dilly poured coffee into their mugs, then placed a platter piled high with scrambled eggs and smaller plates with bacon and toast before them.

Coop told them that what had spurred his interest in the Green River running dry was the proviso that would nullify the Treaty of the Green River Falls, which assured the Okwe, as the Indians in the Valley were called, that they would be left alone on their land by the United States. "As a cynical journalist, I suspected that someone, some human being who could somehow profit from building a dam, might have stopped the river on purpose. I'd like to take a look at those dams to assure myself that it was a random undertaking by beavers."

"I don't know how someone could get beavers to do their bidding, Mr. Rever, but I have photographic proof that the beavers did the work from beginning to the end of the process," Zelma said.

"Maybe Nature or God was working through the beavers for some grand scheme beyond the understanding of Man," Dilly said.

"I wondered the same thing myself, whether Koona Manitou was working in His mysterious ways."

"Koona Manitou. That sounds so Hawaiian. Is that your name for God?" Dilly asked. Coop nodded.

Zelma pushed back from the table. "When you finish your coffee, Mr. Rever, I'll show you my photographs."

"And I'll show you my paintings," Dilly said.

"Is this an artists' colony?"

The women laughed. Zelma explained that after she and her husband split last December, she had turned to photography as a form of therapy. She had a degree from Cornell in math, but the only use she had made of it was as grade school teacher during the first year of her marriage, before her first son was born. She had two boys, both of them away at school in Connecticut. Photographers always had been part of her life. Her father, who manufactured cameras, often brought home famous clients for dinner. She had been particularly impressed by the women photographers, their poise, their self-confidence, their achievements, their meaningful lives. She had decided she wanted nothing to do with anyone, particularly men, for a long, long time. Photography gave her the opportunity to try to do something meaningful without having to depend on anyone else. Her best friend, in whom she confided her woes and hopes, hooked her up with Dilly. Dilly, an aspiring painter with a degree in art from Cornell, also had gotten a divorce last year. A single year of marriage had been enough to convince her that she and her husband couldn't stand one another. She decided to hire Dilly as a companion, assistant, or whatever, so they could help each other through this trying time in their lives. Dilly needed a job that would give her some free time to paint. So while Zelma roamed the preserve in pursuit of birds, trees, animals, wild flowers, exotic ferns, rocks, snakes, colorful sunsets, sunrises, cloud formations, Dilly fitted her painting in around simple chores like making breakfast, hauling the occasional piece of camera equipment, and providing Zelma with warm companionship and intellectual dialogue.

"How long have you two been here?"

"We got together in February, got here in April, on a nice warm day after the snow receded and we've been here ever since. I wasn't sure how long I could endure it. I was intent on photographing the preserve over the course of the four seasons. Dilly turned out to be just what I needed." The two women smiled at one another.

"Yes," Dilly said.

They went into the Great Room, where Zelma laid out her portfolio of the four waterfalls, Little Biber, Big Biber, Bigger Biber and Biggest Biber in the rush of spring when their four streams were fed by the deep snows of upstate New York, and the barren cliffs of the precipices in the heat of August when the beaver dams stopped the water flow. She placed the picture of a barely perceptible brown-furred body in the water upstream from the highest falls. She told Coop that was the first impression she had taken of the beavers' great undertaking to dam four streams at once, blocking the four waterfalls feeding Tiefer Schiefer Lake. She told Coop that she and Dilly had gone with a picnic supper to Seneca Rock in July for an overview of the falls. Looking down on the closest and highest of the falls, they noticed outcroppings of debris, branches and logs upstream. Zelma scanned the area through her camera's powerful telescopic lens. She saw and snapped the flash of lean brown body in the water. "I'll bet that's a beaver and she's building a dam," she said to Dilly. In the morning, they hiked upstream, easily finding the beginnings of the dam, and half a dozen beavers working on it. From her wildlife studies, she knew that beavers were nocturnal animals with a tendency to work from sundown to sunrise. "This is really weird," she said, and photographed them in action. She knew that naturalists would find this intriguing if not unbelievable. She was there every day. As the dam moved towards completion, the water over the highest falls diminished to a trickle. They looked across the lake on an August morning to realize that the flow of the four falls had become so sparse that the rocks of the cliff faces were uncovered. Upstream from each of the other falls, they discovered a beaver dam in the final stages of construction. Zelma got photos of the beavers at work on those dams too. In just a couple of days, the level of Tiefer Schiefer Lake dropped low enough to stop feeding the Green River which went dry. The preserve's handyman urged Zelma to dynamite the dams, which she was reluctant to do. She spent the next few days on the phone hunting for a beaver expert for advice. By the time she found one, the waters had overflowed the four dams; the four Biber Falls were rolling water into the lake and the Green River began flowing again.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Zelma fetched a pair of cameras for herself and binoculars for Coop. She pointed across the lake. "We'll canoe across to Little Biber Falls. Hike about a mile upstream above the falls to the dam. Probably won't see any beavers, but you can see their work. Then we'll come back here. Have lunch and climb up to Seneca Rock. About a two mile hike across rather tough terrain. It's awkward and uphill, but the trail is well-marked. Seneca Rock looks right down on Biggest Biber Falls. You'll be able to see the dam that stopped up Biggest Biber. It's not that far upstream."

"Suppose I want to see the other two dams, and maybe even go up to the one on Biggest Biber?"

"They're all alike. Certainly won't be enough time to see all four today. If you must take the grand tour, you can come back tomorrow. It's not that much of a drive from your place is it?"

"Not at all. That's very nice of you."

"I have a reason for being so accommodating. I've always wanted to canoe down the river to your valley. Maybe spend a few days meeting people, taking photos. I would be thankful if you would show us around the reservation, introduce us to people. Get us into any ceremonies that might be taking place.

The word reservation rankled him. He hoped it didn't show, because he needed her to learn as much as he could about the beaver dams. "I'll do whatever I can to help you out, of course. But I'm only going to be around another week or two. I'll ask my mother and father to take care of you if I'm not available. I must warn you, there's not much to see in the Valley. No teepees. No bonnets. Not exactly a tourist attraction. There are clan signs that an outsider probably would miss. Some skins drying here or there."

"Whatever. My grand plan is to canoe the river to the falls. Camp and rest up there for the big portage. Then camp on the reservation for a couple of days, take my pictures and canoe through the Valley to Kingspost. From there, I'll arrange to have the canoe hauled back here in a pickup truck or something."

"My mother's house is small, but she'll fit you in."

"We would prefer to camp. Part of the adventure."

"Then you can pitch your tent on her land. There's no public camp sites in the Valley, and to be honest the Okwe don't welcome campers. So my mother's hospitality could be crucial. Something else, I don't know how tough the river is between here and the falls, but I don't think it will be much fun hauling the canoe down into the Valley."

"As long as there's a decent amount of water in the river, which there has been lately, the passage shouldn't be any great problem. It's been done before. My father did it, my grandfather did it. And they portaged the falls."

"Sort of a rite of passage in the Kreuger family."

"You might say that. And, I'm confident, Dilly and I can manage the portage."

The canoe, a 16 footer of birch bark, rested on a rack about three feet off the ground beside a small boathouse. Coop moved towards the canoe, but Zelma waved him away. She and Dilly lifted the canoe from the rack to the ground. Zelma picked it up, shifted the craft onto her knees, and swung the canoe over her head and onto her shoulders.

"I'm impressed," Coop said.

She carried the canoe down to the shore, and lowered it into the water. Dilly, with a paddle, waded into the shallow water, climbing with practiced ease into the bow. She knelt down, facing ahead. "Get in the middle," Zelma said. Coop complied, stepping into the water, wetting his hiking boots and socks. No seats. He too knelt. Zelma got in the back with her paddle. The two women maneuvered the canoe out of the shallows onto the lake. They slid through the deepening water at a pleasant speed under a warm sun and a brisk northwest breeze that rippled the gray water ahead. Just short of the landing west of the Little Biber, they heard the gobble of a wild turkey before they saw him. "I want to shoot him from here," Zelma said, easing her paddle out of the water. Dilly did the same. Coop watched the bird, his wings bronze in the sunlight as Zelma took her photos. The sharp clicks of the opening and closing shutter, three times in rapid succession, sounded loud in the comparative quiet of the lake. The turkey snapped its head towards them, and was gone into the woods. "Got him," Zelma said. She smiled. "You brought me luck today, Coop.

At the shoreline, Dilly stepped out of the canoe into the shallow water, holding the craft steady while Coop and Zelma got out. His legs pained him, with a passing threat to lump into cramps through his first few steps ashore. Dilly pulled the canoe high enough out of the water to anchor it. The women sat on logs to change from wet socks to dry. They hung the socks on branches to blow dry in the wind while they continued upstream.

They climbed from rock to rock, covered for the most part by fallen leaves and a few rotted tree limbs, ascending along a dark narrow trail on the forested hill, thick with trees and interlocking branches that dimmed the sunlight. The air had become cold. Dilly led the way, holding back an occasional branch until Coop, who followed in second place, could grasp it from her, and hold it in place until Zelma took it. The oblique, tangled path, soft and damp in places, over sharp rocks in places, led them to the bank of a wide stream, which they followed to the beaver dam, over which water was pouring. An hour of hard hiking in sodden socks gave Coop a view of a dirt, rock, log and brush dam, 15 feet long and eight feet high. No sign of beavers. No fresh tracks in the earth along the shore.

"You would have to be here after dark, sundown at the earliest, to see them if they were around maintaining. They do that, you know, maintain their dams," Zelma said answering the question she suspected was in his mind. "But after these dams were finished, the beavers disappeared."

"How did you get close enough to photograph them?"

She led him along the shore of the pond created by the dam. She pointed to a crude blind built onto the thick lower branch of an ancient white pine that rose out of the pond's water. "I sat up there and took their pictures."

"With what?"

"This camera," she held up the camera slung around her neck. "With high speed film and a flash."

"You didn't frighten them away."

"They practically posed for me. Nothing is stranger than nature."

His stomach swirled as he absorbed that information. He said, "All dams were finished at once? All the beavers have disappeared?"

"That's the story."

They rested for a while, then Zelma took more pictures of the setting, her photo blind, the dam, Coop staring at the dam from several angles including over his shoulder. Coop realized beyond any doubt that he had been ensnared in an elaborate trap by The Beaver, Negarjaago, his power animal, and his allies in the beaver tribe. Adele Horowitz' husband and daughter died, no were killed, as part of the process. Even the core name for the four falls: Biber, German for beaver. He asked Zelma, "When did they start calling these the Biber falls?"

"God, I have no idea. Maybe a 100 years ago. Two hundred years ago. Maybe that's what the Indians called them. In the old days, this was a big hunting ground for beaver."

Coop stared at the dam. He had found the answer to his question: What stopped the water from flowing over the Green River Falls, and the answer awed him.

"A penny for your thoughts," Dilly, who had been watching him, said.

"Negarjaago," he said, knowing that the word would sound a tongue twister to a white American ear.

"Sounds like an ugly word."

"An ugly word? No. Certainly not."

"What was the word again?"

He put out his hand.

She laughed. "Am I going to have to give you a penny?"

Zelma came over. "If we're going to get up to Seneca Rock today, we had better head back. I don't know about you two but I've worked up a real appetite. I'm really looking forward to lunch.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

A hefty, gargantuan-breasted woman in a green apron waited at the kitchen stove, stirring a thick pea soup in a big black iron pot. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Hanisch. We are absolutely famished," Zelma said in a booming voice that filled the room. Mrs. Hanisch nodded. Her eyes went to Coop, examining the color of his skin. "Coop Rever, this is our Mrs. Hanisch, who makes the best pea soup in the world," Zelma said. She was elated by the morning trek to the dam above the Little Beaver, the composition of the photos putting an honest to God American Indian in the context of a beaver dam, along with the demonstrations of her strength in hauling the canoe into the water and the skills of her and Dilly in paddling the canoe. Coop could feel the aversion Mrs. Hanisch had for him. "Let's wash up and have lunch," Zelma said.

After he washed his hands and changed into the dry socks that Zelma found in her father's bedroom, Coop joined Dilly and Zelma in the Great Room. They went into the kitchen together. The table was laid out with three settings on the one end around a large platter of cheddar cheese, sliced ham and roast beef next to a round woven basket of hot fresh rolls. Zelma went to the refrigerator. "Dilly and I are having Chablis. How would that be Coop? We have beer too."

"White wine would be wonderful."

Mrs. Hanisch ladled soup into three substantial bowls, placing them on the table. Zelma, who had uncorked the wine and was in the process of filling the glasses, said, "Not lunching with us today, Mrs. Hanisch?"

She took a deep breath through her nose, glancing at Coop. "I'm not hungry," Mrs. Hanisch said.

Zelma's pleasant expressed disappeared in anger as she realized the servant she treated almost as an equal didn't want to eat at the same table as an Indian. "Suit yourself, but I would like you to wash Mr. Rever's socks, and dry them. Please do it now, because Mr. Rever will want to wear his own socks home tonight." Before Mrs. Hanisch could exit the kitchen, Zelma called, "Oh, Mrs. Hanisch, I'm sure Mr. Rever is wondering whether you or Mr. Hanisch have read any of his books. One of them, 'Deux Blessures Chanceuses/La vie sinistre de Karl Witzbold' is a marvelous account of a German SS soldier in the French Foreign Legion."

Mrs. Hanisch flushed, pausing at the door, "I don't read French," she said.

"Oh but there's a German edition. Coop would that title be, Zwei Glückliches Wunden/Das Grimmige Leben von Karl Witzbold'?"

"I don't read German either," Mrs. Hanisch said.

Zelma turned her back on Mrs. Hanisch, as insulting a dismissal as the servant's attitude towards Coop.

Coop endured with indifference Mrs. Hanisch's obvious prejudice and Zelma's reaction to support him by putting down her servant. His mind was filled with the implications of the beavers, proof that supernatural forces were manipulating his life. Yet, he was so surprised that Zelma knew that he was an author, and even knew the name of his book about Karl Witzbold, that he asked: "Did I mention my books, and somehow forget that I told you?"

She laughed. "I made out I was Nancy Drew and did a little digging to make sure you were who you said you were. So, I called the cultural attaché at the French embassy in Washington last night. He knew who you were the moment I mentioned your name. He's a fan. Read both of your books." Zelma placed her hand on Coop's. "Mrs. Hanisch doesn't approve of me either. There's not much I can do about her. She and her husband came with the house; second generation housekeeper/groundskeeper team. My father just adores her husband, Kurt. They spent every summer together when they were kids here, hunting, fishing, hiking, skinny dipping. Despite being narrow-minded, she is a good cook and keeps the place immaculate."

Dilly sipped a spoonful of soup and said, "Whoa, old Mrs. Hanisch is a nasty old bitch, but she can sure make pea soup." She raised her glass, "To the nasty old bitch."

Zelma raised her glass. "To the beavers." Drawing a giggle from Dilly.

"To The Beaver," Coop said.

"How do you mean that?" Dilly asked playfully.

He wasn't in a mood to be amusing. "The Beaver is my power animal," he said seriously. In response to her puzzled expression, he said, "The power animal is like your guardian angel, only more so. He comes to us in our dreams and sometimes when we're awake."

Zelma said, "Beavers are very much a part of my family history. My great grandfather Ulrich the first, we like to call him, was in this area before the revolution buying beaver pelts from the Iroquois, the Seneca. The Indians called Ulrich das Bibermann. That's German for beaver man."

"I speak German," Coop said.

"At any rate, Ulrich the first took Bibermann as his middle name and so did his descendants right down to my father."

"And are you Zelma Bibermann or Biberfrau?"

"I am Zelma Alma the First. I never asked my parents why they dropped the beaver tag from my name. Perhaps, they thought it redundant for a girl."

He knew he was supposed to laugh. Coop managed a smile. Her telling of the family's entrepreneurial history left him with a sensation of being crushed under the weight of The Beaver presence. He ate in silence, while the two women continued to chatter and laugh, too polite to ask why he had become so somber.

After coffee and apple cake with strawberry ice cream in the Great Room, Zelma said that it was almost two o'clock, so they had to move onto the second event of the day.

The uphill trek along a well-worn path through the old heavily shaded forest of sugar maples, hemlocks and beech was easier than forecast. Within an hour, they were climbing down onto a huge rock outcropping hovering high above the hammering Biggest Beaver Falls. Coop could see the beaver dam and its broad pond upstream without the need of the binoculars. Neither the dams nor the ponds above the other three falls pouring their waters into Tiefer Schiefer Lake were visible. At the southern end of the lake, he could make out the very beginning of the Green River.

"How did this place get to be called Seneca Rock?" Coop asked.

Zelma pointed to the rock wall. "The Indian markings. Supposedly this was a sacred place for the Seneca."

Coop took a closer look at the section of the wall indicated by Zelma. Half-hidden by ferns and moss, deeply chiseled into the rock was the pictogram of the Wolf Clan:

o

*

* o *

*

His hands trembled as he ran his fingers over the six cuts, four stars to symbolize the four directions, and two circles indicating the earth and heaven. He turned to his companions; he opened his jacket, unbuckled his belt, pulled the front of his pants down a bit and lifted his shirt to display the Wolf Clan tattoo of the four stars equidistant from the circle around his navel and the second circle a short distance to the northeast of his navel. "Perhaps, you should rename this Okwe Rock."

"Whoa," Dilly said.

Zelma pulled her camera to her eye and snapped three photos. With Coop's unspoken cooperation, she took a light reading, adjusted the lens and took more photos. She stepped back to the edge of the rock to broaden her vision, getting Coop with his raised shirt and the markings on the wall in the photo.

When she finished, Coop stuffed his shirt back into his pants, rebuckled them, and decided that there was no question about what he had to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Coop was using the long-handled shovel to scrape the earth from the shelf of blue stone around the fire pit when he felt a presence sending a shiver of fright through him. He paused, his hands sore from the unfamiliar drudge work, sweat dampening his armpits, trickling down his back. He cautiously turned around, steeling himself for whatever was there.

A teenager with long black hair, that hung over his shoulders, dressed in an old Army field jacket, worn dungarees, and heavy work shoes, sat with his knees drawn up on the biggest boulder, watching him. "Ho," the boy said, lifting his right slightly in greeting.

Coop leaned on his shovel. "Ho. Anhooda giaja? (What is your clan?)"

The teenager pushed himself up into a precarious standing position on the boulder. "Uthayoni," he said, touching the flat of his right hand to the area where his navel lay hidden beneath a big belt buckle.

Coop smiled at his seriousness. He judged him to be about fourteen. "A full fledged Wolf?" he asked.

"Not yet, but someday."

"Hije heykayta Uthayoni," Coop said touching his own waistline, telling the youth he was a full-fledged Wolf, a warrior who had shed an enemy's blood. "Hije Wakee ne Uthsusta," Coop said, telling him his Okwe name was Runs with Fire.

"My mother told me about you. You're Coop Rever, Koona heykayta (the great warrior). She told me you won the Silver Star. Hije Kajunchecke Sisshoo (I am Black Fox). My American name is Jeff Ford."

Coop flushed with the pleasure of being known as a great warrior. There wasn't a higher calling for an Okwe. "I know your father. And your mother's name?"

"Tzuwee."

"So Robin married Billy Ford. I remember now, just before the war. So what are you doing here, Jeff?"

"Sometimes I come here to look at the falls. What are you doing here?"

"Being a Wolf, you know this is where the vision lodge stands, rajene y tiggene." Rajene meant four, the mystical number reflecting the four poles of the lodge planted in each of the directions, north, east, south and west. Tiggene were the other two directions, the fire pit representing the earth of this world and smoke hole the path of dreams to the other world.

Jeff hesitated. Not wanting to be impolite by saying aloud what he was thinking, that Coop shouldn't be meddling with on a sacred site.

"I could use some help," Coop said to break the long silence. He was tired after spending three hours digging out a growth of bushes and small trees, hauling away garbage, debris, rocks, and logs. Now he was cleaning the dirt from the thick stones deeply implanted generations ago and impervious to simple neglect and casual misuse of the site.

"This is a place that's supposed to be left alone," Jeff said.

"Hije Uthayatkwai (I am the Mythical Dancing Wolf). I have to clear the site to build my vision lodge," Coop said.

Jeff stood with his hands on his hips. Absorbing what had Coop told him. Not speaking again for the longest time. "Wait till I tell my mother," he said.

"I said, I could use some help." He thrust handle of the shovel towards the boy.

Jeff scrambled off the boulder. He took the shovel.

Coop told him to clear the remainder of several inches of dirt and detritus from the stone platform around the fire pit, then to level the earthen surface within the circle which the structure would enclose. While he was doing that, Coop would use his mother's gardening trowel to dig out the rotted wood and dirt that filled the four holes where poles had been inserted by Sheehays to create the frame for the lodge. They dug, scraped and swept without speaking for several hours against the occasional sound of cars and truck motors starting somewhere in the Valley, birds calling in the woods, water rumbling over the falls, a breeze rustling the trees. In a break, Coop shared his sandwich and thermos of coffee with Jeff. They smoked two of his Gitanes while discussing the building of the lodge. Coop said they needed four supple black willows, about fifteen feet long; deer hides, if they could find them, to cover the frame, or canvas if necessary. "Maybe you could get the skins from my father and uncle," Jeff said. "They make deerskin jackets and gloves and moccasins for a store in Philadelphia."

"When you get home, tell them what it's for. I'll call them tonight." Coop smudged the air in the six directions with the smoke from his Gitane. He stood. "Let's get back to work. Tomorrow we'll get the poles and build the frame and maybe cover it with the deerskins from your father.

They finished the clearing of the site late in the afternoon. Coop was tired, dirty, and happily satisfied over what he had accomplished this day. In the walk through the woods back to his car, Coop mulled over the dream of building the vision lodge, realizing that Jeff was the faceless youth of his dream.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Jeff, his father, Billy, and uncle, Jackie, were waiting at the head of the trail to the Falls in a pickup truck loaded with softened dehaired deer hides. Billy and Jackie were light-skinned and thick-bodied, and heavily-muscled from their lives as hunters and woodsmen. The Okwe could hunt deer on their nation's land the year round, which they did. The choice cuts of venison were sold to the Kingspost Inn. They gave any excess meat to Okwes who needed it. In the Pennsylvania deer season, they worked with a butcher in Kingspost to strip the deer of their hides and process the meat from the carcasses. They tanned and softened the deerskins; their wives made the deerskin jackets, gloves and moccasins. Sometimes the brothers worked as lumberjacks or hunting and fishing guides. They were always busy.

Coop went through the formality of greeting them, and chatting with them about the weather and the Valley, asking after family members, and laughing at memories.

Billy pointed a thumb over his shoulder, "We thought 10 skins would do the job, so we brought 15 to be sure. These are third grade skins with scores in them, but soft, easy to handle. And we brought a bunch of strips for tying and sewing; if you have to do any sewing. I don't know how you're putting this together?"

Coop, who was carrying an Army duffle bag in his left hand, held up a box of paints. "I have to do some drawings on the skins."

"That can be done."

Billy asked a question that had been stewing in his head since his son told him that Coop was the Mythical Dancing Wolf and he was helping him to build his vision lodge. "How long have you been Uthayatkwai?"

Coop considered his response, remembering that Sheehays had come to him on the night of D-Day. Earlier that day, he had sunk a bayonet into the chest of a hapless German soldier, stepped on his writhing body to pull it out. The German in an anguished voice begged, "Bitte, bitte," as Coop thrust the blade of bayonet into his throat, killing him. "Eleven years and four months ago."

Billy nodded. He said to his brother, "Been a long time since the Okwe had a vision to guide us." He turned back to Coop. "We were here when the Falls went dry. Expected blood to come pouring over."

"Nothing happened. Just more water," Jackie said.

Coop said, "Something did happen. The dry falls have given the knowos an excuse to take our Valley. The treaty said the whites couldn't touch our Valley for as long as the water falls. Well, you were there. It stopped falling. Now they're going to build a dam and flood our Valley."

"What?" the brothers said together.

"Peter Little knows all about it. Artie Kings showed him the plans for the dam and the lake that's going to be sitting where our mothers' houses are now."

"Peter? Why did they show the plans to Peter and no one else?" Billy asked.

"Because he's the chairman of GRIN, the Green River Indian Nation. They made him chairman so the whites would have someone to deal with."

"Are you serious?"

"No joke. Peter and Swezey Johnson, the lawyer, got together and decided that the treaty doesn't exist any more so the whites can shove us out of the Valley."

"What can we do about it?"

"I don't know. First, we have to finish the vision lodge. So, let's get going."

Three men, a couple of boys, and two women arrived as they were talking, greeting Coop and the three Fords, chatting amiably for a few minutes. Looking down the road, Coop could see several cars and trucks approaching. Gossip, starting from the Ford household, must have spread the news that Coop Rever had returned to the Valley as Uthayatkwai. "Lets' get going," he said again, not wanting to be caught in more prolonged, polite conversations. Everyone helped, carrying the deer skins and tools needed to build the lodge. As he walked along the trail, Coop felt a deep attachment to the Valley, to the river, to the falls, to the Okwe. No one spoke as they moved through the woods. Coop felt a flash of pride, knowing that Bluebird and Redsky, would be coming this morning to watch their son build a hut for an ancient ceremony at the center of their belief system. A dozen Okwe, men, women, girls and boys were sitting on boulders and rocks at a respectful distance from the site where the lodge would be constructed. They had come by water; a canoe and two boats with outboard motors were pulled up on the beach.

Coop sat with the three Fords in a small circle. He lit a Gitane, inhaled the smoke, passed the cigaret to Jeff, who did the same, and passed it to his father, who did the same and passed it to his brother. The four of them blew their smoke from their mouths and smudged the smoke in the six directions. The audience, now in the dozens, watched in silence. A soft, rhythmic tapping on drums began, covering the sound of the falls and the birds and trees in the forest around them. The men and the women sat separately in their clans; the uninitiated boys and girls stayed near one parent or another. The men began pounding their feet in sync with the drummer, chanting: "Hiss Uthayatkwai?" The women, slapped their right thighs, and responded: "Hije Uthayatkwai!" That surprised and distracted Coop. The men were asking: "Are you the Mythical Dancing Wolf?" And the women answered for him, "I am the Mythical Dancing Wolf!" He knew instinctively he must ignore them. He asked the Ford brothers to search the woods along the river bank for four supple black willows about three inches in diameter and about 15 feet long.

Coop spread the four largest deerskins on the ground. He rocked to the beat of the drums and the chants as he knelt on the skins carefully painting the symbol of the Wolf on the first, the Hawk on the second, the Bear on the third, and the Turtle on the fourth. Jeff followed behind painting a band of green around what was to be the base of each skin and of blue around what would be the upper rim. When they finished, Coop signaled his audience with his palms facing them to stay put. He picked up the duffle bag and led Jeff up the slope into the woods. "We need six rocks about the size of a little boy's head," Coop said. The chanting dimmed as they climbed higher through the maze of bushes and trees until they reached a raw rock face from which the trees and soil had been torn in some fierce storm. Rocks lay scattered about the base of the cliff. Before they took the six they needed, Coop climbed up to the outcropping above them. Jeff followed. They stood on a floor of solid blue rock. Coop ran his fingers over the face of the cliff, searching under the ferns and moss, tearing pieces of the covering away, and quickly discovered the worn six-figured pictograph of the Wolf Clan cut into the rock. His hands shook as they did two days before when his fingers touched a similar pictograph on Kreuger Hill.

"You knew about this place?" Jeff said. He had his right hand over his navel.

"I've never been here before. But I saw a Wolf sign on a mountain up in New York a couple days ago. Somehow, I suspected I might find it here too."

Jeff followed Coop's example of running his fingers across the symbols.

Coop wondered if Jeff too felt the electricity that sparkled from the symbols through his fingers shaking him to the core of his being. He didn't ask the boy, deciding it would be inappropriate. He nodded his head and went down to the base of cliff. They loaded six rocks into the bag and carried it between them down to the riverside. The Fords were waiting with the four black willow poles. He placed the stones in the fire pit. With the help of the three Fords, he inserted the poles into the post holes and bent them towards the core of the circle. They lashed the tips together to form a frame for the deerskin coverings with an opening for the smoke to escape. The Ford brothers punched holes in the deerskins to tie them to the poles. They cut an opening on the west side, the riverside, of the structure. Hours had gone by. All the while the crowd drummed and chanted. More drummers with larger drums had come while Coop was on the mountain and building the vision lodge. He walked around the structure feeling the sensation of being the center of attention, knowing the eyes of every Okwe followed him. He was tired and hungry and thirsty. He knew the next step in the process would be to fast and meditate through the third day and to enter the lodge on the fourth day in search of a vision to guide the Okwe. He said to the Fords, "Let's go back to my mother's house and have a couple of beers and something to eat."

Berry Eater, in a white deerskin dress with the markings of the Wolf Clan in red and with a dark wolf skin flung over her shoulders, rose from the audience and stepped into the space between them and the lodge. She was joined by eight women, all including Bluebird wearing ceremonial dresses of the Wolf Mothers. The drummers and the chanters fell silent. "Who are you?" Berry Eater shouted, a challenge in her voice.

"Hije Uthayatkwai," Coop said, adding for those who didn't speak the old language, "I am the Mythical Dancing Wolf."

"How can you prove that?" she asked with contempt.

"Sheehays called me in a dream."

Bluebird said, "I saw Sheehays lead him up the river, walking on the water in my dream."

Berry Eater stared at him. He saw hatred in her countenance. The only sound for a minute was the falling water and the wind rustling the tree tops. Berry Eater shouted, "I too saw Sheehays lead him up the river, walking on the water in my dream."

The drumming and the chanting filled the air again. Men and women rose to begin a slow dance encircling the vision lodge.

Coop studied Berry Eater, who stood looking at the ground. Did she really dream that dream? he asked himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Bluebird shook him awake from his pretended sleep at the first light of day. He had heard motors arriving and falling silent, car and pickup truck doors slamming shut outside the house for half an hour. He had waited for his mother with his eyes closed, knowing she was coming to begin the ceremony of the day of preparation. He looked at her; she wore her ceremonial dress. "Get up. From now until your vision quest begins tomorrow morning, you must fast, not even drinking water, and give thanks to Koona Manitou." He started to speak, and she put her hand to his mouth. "Don't make a sound. Don't speak. You have to prepare yourself."

Coop realized that Bluebird was fulfilling the dream of every Wolf Clan mother, to send her son out on the third day to prepare himself for the crossing to the spirit world. She had been taught in the ceremony celebrating her motherhood with the birth of her first child what to tell the chosen son on the day of preparation. He was thirsty; his mouth was foul from sleep. He went into the bathroom to empty his full bladder. After washing his hands, he reached for the toothbrush, but pulled back. He shouldn't even wet his mouth. Many years before in his own initiation into the Wolf Clan when he was just 12, his guides had instructed him that Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf, must walk Kehes Uate, the long river trail, to the Falls, and from there climb Uatehe Ukwaa Karoon, the trail to the place of the stones. No one had told him where those trails were.

He washed his face, dressed, and went through the kitchen, aching for the coffee whose scent filled the room. His father sat at the kitchen table, coffee cup in hand, having just sipped some, watching his son with the curiosity of a man humbled by his limitations of birth.

Redsky belonged to the Bear Clan from whom the Okwe war chief was chosen. That post had gone unfilled for almost 100 years. The warpath lingered as a memory of the distant era when the Okwe fought for themselves, not the United States. He stepped onto the porch. All nine Wolf Clan mothers were waiting for him. The rattles in their hands came to life. Berry Eater took his right hand in her left hand, shaking her rattle with the other hand, and led him past the mothers to the road. Instinctively, he turned south on the Falls Way walking along the dirt road with the Wolf Mothers following with their rattles chattering. Okwe came out of their houses to join the procession. Some danced with hands raised as they walked; a few tapped small drums with their fingers or sticks. At the Bridge in Valley Center where the lands of the four clans joined, a couple of hundred Okwe men, women and children waited. No one had gone to work or school today. The moment they spotted him at the head of the procession, a chant rolled from one, a few, finally everyone: "Hije Uthayatkwai."

The crowd parted to enable Coop to walk onto the bridge, which quickly cleared of people. He looked north towards the falls, "Hije Kaatzie" (I am coming) he said over and over in the old language, sometimes aloud, sometimes within himself, a phrase that poured from his mouth unbidden. Along the river bank, women were chopping away the bushes and tree branches that had overgrown the ancient path, Kehes Uate (the Long River Trail) that stretched from the bridge to the falls. His stomach rumbled with hunger, and he ached a little for the comfort of his usual morning coffee. Not today. A long day and night stretched ahead of him without food or water. He couldn't find comfort in reading or talking or letting his mind wander through memories or plans for the future. No one had instructed him that this was what he must do today. He just knew. He came back to his chant, continuing it, his eyes on the river and the women working on the trail. When they went out of sight, he turned to walk off the bridge. He saw Peter Little standing silent on the porch of the Kings Trading Post, while everyone else chanted, drummed, danced.

Coop went down to the trail that began under the bridge. He walked north, the way made easy by the women. He had a seven mile hike ahead of him, but at least 17 hours to consume before the ceremony of the vision quest began. A stiff wind blew cold against his face, while the October sun warmed his back. Even at a strolling pace, he soon left the sound of the chanting and the drums behind and passed the women, a dozen of them from the Hawk Clan. The trail was a mix of easy, rocky stretches and places where he stepped into the running water, holding onto overhanging branches. He slipped several times going into the river up to his knees, continuing in less comfort. The women had disappeared as he went on. From time to time, he sat to rest. No need to hurry. Cormorants swooped along the surface of the water. On the far shore, a turkey vulture tore at the strips of the flesh of a snake. The clouds above moved fast before the wind.

He heard the falls before it came into view. The last mile was easy; the river bank became wider and clear of obstacles other than the uneven surfaces of stones and minor bits of brush beneath his feet. He reached the pool and stepped past the freshly-built vision lodge. The only sounds were from the water and the woods, trees rustling and birds calling. The Okwe had abandoned him until morning.

He climbed the rise to Uatehe Karoon, the trail to the stones. He reached the platform where the Wolf Clan sign had been etched in the surface, and stood for a while looking over the river and the falls. He sat down to pass the long tedious hours through the rest of day and into the night chanting "Hije Kaatzie."

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Long before dawn, noises rising from the riverside roused Coop from the torpor of meditation. Heavy tree limbs being dragged, the echo of an axe against wood. Voices. He smelled the smoke, which drifted through the crisply clear and cold air. He rose with difficulty, a painful stiffness in his knees and calves, from the cross-legged position that he had tried to maintain through the night with his back lodged against the base of the cliff. He had risen numerous times, walking in a tight circle on the platform of stone before the Wolf Clan pictograph. He might have slept; he couldn't remember. His chant, "Hije Kaatzie" (I am coming), was interrupted by a sporadic awareness of boredom and a repetitious temptation, which made him smile, to manufacture a vision of leading the Okwe out of the Valley north to settle around Kreuger Hill, another seemingly sacred place where the Wolf Clan pictograph was cut into the rock of the mountainside. They could exchange four falls at the headwaters of the Green River for the one falls that had failed them. The faces of his wife, Eleonore, and his daughter, Elise, flashed into his mind during the night as did a memory of scoring a winning touchdown in high school and the numbness that followed the fear of his first encounter with death and pulverized flesh in battle. At last, light enough to see, he moved down the mountain, his body pierced by a chill and stiff from inactivity.

As he came into the clearing around the vision lodge, Okwe were arriving from the trail leading to the Falls Way. They were dressed in jeans, slacks, cloth dresses, a few in elaborately beaded leather skirts, sweaters, windbreakers, bomber jackets, field jackets, coats. Many wore one or two feathers, a few men and many women had braided their long hair, the girls and women wore jewelry peculiar to the Okwe of necklaces of polished stones reflecting their clans.

The people glanced at him without greeting, without speaking, turning their eyes away as if fearful of inadvertently defiling the sacred atmosphere because of their own inadequacies and failings. A love for the Okwe people plumed from the base of Coop's stomach through his body, swirling through his mind. Smoke was rising from the opening in the vision lodge. What more could a man achieve in life than being a guide for his people.

Jeff, his father and uncle, sat beside a pile of cut wood, an axe left sunk into a thick log. They tended a small fire beneath an iron kettle.

Rattles came alive with Berry Eater appearing, leading the nine Wolf Mothers—Bluebird among them--in a shuffling, bobbing dance. Berry Eater signaled that he should sit, which he did while anxious for the warmth that he knew the vision lodge offered. The Wolf Mothers encircled him. Drums joined their rattles. More and more Okwe flowed from the trail. They sat on blankets, on the ground, on rocks and boulders; they were filling the space around the vision lodge and along the shore of the pond. Coop felt weak, hungry and thirsty. Several times, Jeff entered the vision lodge to feed the fire.

He wondered how long it could go on. How much longer he could last when the dancers stopped. Berry Eater raised her rattle towards the heavens. Coop looked into the sky. The moon was a slender silver crescent far above in a radically blue sky with wisps of clouds flying by. Berry Eater nodded to him. She raised her hands to silence the drums and whatever conversation was taking place in the crowd. She produced a leather bag, from which she sprinkled seeds into the shallow hollow of a stone, using another stone to grind the seeds into a powder. She poured the contents of the hollow into a cup and half filled that with boiling water from the iron kettle with the help of another woman. She stepped to Coop. "Drink," she said.

He held the cup, hot in his hand; he sipped the yellowish liquid cautiously, not wanting to burn his mouth. Everyone waited in silence while he drank and finished the contents of the cup, enjoying the warmth that spread through his body, his fatigue slipping away. "Strip," she said.

Coop slipped out of his clothes. At the entrance to the vision lodge, Berry Eater poured a mound of dried sage into his left hand. "For the fire," she said. And handed him a small bucket with a large wooden spoon. "For the stones," she said. She opened the flap of the vision lodge, and Coop dropped to his knees and went, awkwardly balancing the contents of his two hands, into the dark space lit by the fire and the glowing stones. He sat on a folded blanket with his back against the southern wall and tossed the sage into the fire, filling the air with its sensuous scent. He ladled spoonfuls of water onto the stones that sizzled, enveloping his body in a deliciously hot steam that drove the chill from his bones and flesh. Sweat burst from the pores of his skin. When the heat became too much to bear, Coop burst out of the vision lodge, raced to the shoreline and plunged into the icy pond, the cold water punching the breath out of his body. He surfaced. His audience shouted, "Ho." And he submerged again.

"Ho," sounded as a single sound from hundreds of mouths, greeted him as he emerged from the water, tingling and vibrant with energy, Berry Eater was busy grinding more seeds, mixing the powder with tobacco and packing it into a long, pipe whose bowl was decorated with a carving of a clan animal on each side. A Wolf facing the smoker, a Bear to the left, a Hawk on the far side, and a Turtle on the right. She lit the pipe, took a long suck, and handed it to Coop. Before he re-entered the vision lodge, she wrapped the Wolf Clan wampum around his right arm.

Coop, crouching, crossed the short span to his blanket seat under the low-slung ceiling of the lodge, which had cleared of steam. Settling down, he sucked at the pipe, offering the smoke expelled from his lungs to the four directions, North, East, South and West, down to the earth and up to the heavens. His brain was expanding, bursting the container of his skull. His body floated off the blanket. Outside, the distinctive sound of the sacred Turtle rattles sounded. Drums. Then the rhythmic chant of the men, "Katzha gaije?" (What have you got?), answered by the women, "Tzatzie!" (Sit and stay).

He sucked the pipe again, drinking more numbing smoke deep into his lungs; he bobbed back and forth to the beat of the drums and the chants. His mind stilled, no thoughts, no images. The sounds around him faded and disappeared into silence. Blackness. He opened his eyes to an immediate sound of drums and dancers with rattles round their ankles. Almost touching him in the crowded space, the figures, dozens of them in breechcloths and painted bodies emerged from the fire. As they danced round the fire, which burst into enormous flames, Coop rose to join them. Conscious now of the vision lodge having grown in width and height to accommodate the band of dancers, Coop looked across the fire to see his naked form sitting cross-legged, pipe across his lap, bobbing forward and back to the beat of the drums, of the rattles, of the dancers' feet pounding the earth floor. The dancing Coop wore a cloak whose hood was a wolf head, the skin covering his shoulders and back. The dancing continued for hours with Coop becoming a wolf, bounding in a single movement to the shelf of rock on the mountain. Looking down, he saw the river was gone, replaced by a lake that covered the Valley. He ran along the crest of the mountain, atop the trees, to the very end of the Valley where a thick dam, heavy with snow, a tower on either end, held back the waters that hammered against this white concrete barrier. Coop raised his head to howl in anguish and rancor, his cry rising from the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit. As his howl echoed off the far hills and through the night, he leapt onto the dam. He danced in the snow, his feet pounding the dam, the man-made barrier began to tremble, and the earth roared. The white sheath of the dam rippled in the motion of a snake slipping and flowing until the concrete wrinkled and burst with the sound of a vast, echoing clap of thunder. A churning wall of dark water burst through the shattered dam carrying slabs of ice, boulders, trees and mud down the river. Uthayatkwai stood on the mountain, watching the scouring force of the river until he returned to an awareness of being alone in the sage scented hut. The chanting, the drums and rattles sounding from outside.

He crawled the short distance to the flap that divided the inner from the outer world. He pushed back the covering. The watchers fell silent as he stepped outside a naked human once again. The sun was setting. He dressed without speaking. Berry Eater started to speak. He held up his hand, silencing her. He needed time to think about what he had experienced and seen, to consider the meaning of his vision for the Okwe. He walked past Berry Eater. People stepped away opening a path for him. He walked all the way back to Bluebird's house, where he collapsed in exhaustion on his bed.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Coop sat on the porch, his chair propped at precarious angle, his feet lodged on the railing, looking across the Green River, unable to generate the energy to overcome whatever it was that was suppressing the words that would describe what he thought he had seen in his time alone in the vision lodge. He had awakened from a long sleep, wondering whether this was a message from Koona Manitou to the Okwe, passed through him, the unwilling intermediary, or an hallucination prompted by his days and nights of fasting and the strange concoctions mixed into the tea and tobacco by the Wolf Clan mothers? His doubt was shaped by the horror of his vision. Had he been dragged back to the Valley to be the bearer of a message of doom, that the Okwe's last bit of land would be taken from them, covered by deep waters? That the Okweuate', the way of life of his ferociously independent people, was coming to an inglorious end.

Despite his anguish, he was famished "How many eggs do you want?" Bluebird asked in greeting. He held up three fingers, not wanting to break his silence. He sated his hunger with bacon, three eggs, toast, butter and coffee. Four cups of coffee. His father, who normally would have been at work, sat across the table watching his son who had become the center of everyone's attention.

Bluebird waited until Coop threw down his napkin. "Everyone is waiting to hear what you have to say. People are afraid of what you are going to tell us, but they want to know."

Coop shook his head. He got up without responding and went out onto the porch. He sat with his chair propped back on its two hind legs, his feet on the railing, mulling over what he had seen in the vision lodge. He wished he could speak to Patrice MacMahon to ask him what he thought of this vision of the flooded valley and the bursting dam.

His mother came onto the porch. "Berry Eater is here asking when you are going to speak. The whole Valley wants to know?"

Berry Eater said over Bluebird's shoulder: "No one has gone to work; the kids are staying home from school. They're waiting for you."

"Are they outside?"

Berry Eater became furious. "Don't you care about the people at all any more? You're just like the knowos."

He swallowed his own anger. "When can you get them together?"

"How about 3 o'clock at the meeting house?"

He thought about that. Three o'clock would give him the grace of another six hours. "I'll be there," he said sitting down again, turning away from Berry Eater. She didn't like him. He didn't like her. Mutual distaste. He didn't feet constrained to be polite.

Berry Eater stood staring at him. Hating him for being what her son couldn't be. She left without saying good bye to either him or Bluebird, a grave insult.

With tears in her eyes, Bluebird put her hand on Coop's shoulder. "She's a bitch, but you owe her respect, because she is the principal mother."

He ignored Bluebird, continuing to look across the river at the fading orange, greens and reds of the trees on the far bank. Suddenly, he felt ashamed, not of his curt dismissal of Berry Eater, but of being rude to his own mother, whom he loved, deeply. He would be leaving her again, soon. Although she probably assumed that he was obligated because of his vision to stay in the Valley. Sheehays had spent the long years after his great vision, if that's what it was, being an Okwe wise man, dispensing advice, interpreting dreams, accepting gifts from grateful supplicants. He hunted, fished, and probably fucked until he got too old. How old was that? Coop wondered. He never remembered Sheehays working. He had been an old man all of Coop's life. Coop decided he wasn't going to stay in the Valley no matter what the pressure from the Okwe or his Beaver power animal. He was going back to the woman and child he loved in France; he was going to Algeria to do his next book. Perhaps this would be his final visit to the Valley. He would miss Bluebird and Redsky, but he hungered even more for Eleonore and Elise. For the touch of Eleonore's hand on his body. After he got through this afternoon's difficult revelation of his vision, he would drive back to New York as soon as he could, return the red Chevy to the Brownsteins and take them to dinner at some good restaurant with a decent wine cellar in Manhattan. Then Air France back to Paris. A reunion literally with Eleonore. He rolled that image through his mind, becoming aroused in the process. Spend a week at home, and then to Algeria. No more Foreign Legion books after this one. He was tired of the macho, rootless soldiers and the bloodshed that went with writing about them.

The telephone rang drawing Bluebird back into the house. She returned a few minutes later. "A man named Joe Bentley called. He said he was a reporter for the Chronicle. He wants to know what's going on. I told him you were busy He wants you to call him back..."

Coop stood up. "I could tell Joe Bentley, and he could tell the world what I saw." He managed to tease despite the fatigue gripping him, and his mother reacted.

"You can't do that," Bluebird said, anger and annoyance in her voice and on her face.

"What should I do?" He felt amused that his mother would think him that dense.

The phone rang again. She spoke loudly for his benefit. "Yes. This is Bluebird. He can't come to the phone now Dr. Horowitz. I'll tell him."

"What did she want to tell me?"

"She's in Kingspost and wants to see you. She gave me her number, but I didn't write it down. She asks too many questions about things that aren't her business."

He nodded. He was surprised as his mother's hostility. She was usually sweet to everyone, even white people. He knew Dr. Horowitz would be hungry for the details of his great vision. Before he even considered telling her, he had to get through the hurdle of telling the Okwe that he saw the dam and their Valley flooded. He wasn't looking forward to his performance at the meeting house that afternoon.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Redsky pulled up behind another pickup truck on the side of Falls Way. Parked cars and pickups filled the approaches and the low slung hill around the old one-room school house, now called the Council House. Coop stepped from the truck. His face was painted black, the color of war and death, with the symbol of the Wolf Clan in white on his forehead. Aside from his face, his dress was modern, a blue cashmere sweater over a checked yellow shirt and gray slacks. He walked in silence, while Bluebird and Redsky called ho to this person and that. They came dressed in ceremonial finery. Bluebird in a beaded black dress; Redsky with his face painted brown with a black circle on each side of his face and a bear skin cape over his shoulders. Every Okwe in the Valley and more from surrounding Kings County had come to hear Coop's great vision. The members of the Blood Society, men who had been in combat, had painted their faces, half white, half blue. The Wolves among them had the pictogram of the four stars and two suns on either cheek in red. Women and girls wore traditional deer skin dresses decorated with their clan signs in colorful beads, blankets or shawls over their shoulders for warmth. Every space inside was jammed, the crowd overflowing onto the small front porch and bunched around the three open windows on either side of the white clapboard the building.

Coop and his parents went in the back door to reach the raised platform from which he would speak. They threaded through the packed bodies. The conversational murmur that filled the room stopped as Coop came into view, stepping onto the platform, joining the paramount mothers of the four clans and the foremost warriors of the Turtle, Hawk and Bear clans. As Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf, Coop was the foremost warrior of the Wolf Clan.

Berry Eater, her hair braided, dressed in a black deer skin dress decorated with the Wolf Clan pictogram, stepped to the podium. "He is here to tell us what he saw."

Coop looked over the crowd. "Ho," he said stretching his right hand over the heads of the Okwes who filled every chair and all the space in the aisles and the narrow cloak rooms for boys on one side and girls on the other dating back to the time when the Valley Meeting House was a one-room school house. No responding ho came back. No one spoke or moved, no child cried. They awaited the details of his vision, which he knew would disappoint them.

He decided to start at the beginning, telling them of the dream on the battlefield in which Sheehays called him to be the Mythical Dancing Wolf. He told them of the dozens of dancers emerging from the fire, every one of them an Uthayatkwai who preceded him, who experienced a great vision, a message from Koona Manitou for the Okwe. "In my vision, the Valley was a lake; the Green River blocked by a dam covered in snow. I cried out in sorrow and my voice was the howl of the wolf. I danced onto the dam. My feet sunk deep into the snow, pounding the dam, every step shaking the earth. The high wall of the dam writhed like a snake, then crumbled, the dark waters of the unwanted lake bursting through carrying ice and boulders and trees, and a wave of mud down the river towards Kingspost.

"Ohhhhhhh," an agonizing moan from many voices joined into one that swelled and filled the room. They knew they were lost. Their homes and fields in the narrow valley would be covered by deep waters.

Coop bowed his head his stomach burning with a hatred for Arthur Kings and all the knowos, the greedy whites who had reduced the Okwe to pathetic powerlessness.

"When is this going to happen?" a young man called out.

Coop hadn't considered the possibility of anyone raising questions. He hadn't thought about the timing of the fulfillment of his dream.

Berry Eater pointed at the questioner ordering him to be silent. This wasn't a town hall meeting. "If this is what Koona Manitou wants for us, then this is how it will be," she shouted.

Her loud voice stirred Coop out of his torpor. "How many of you know about Arthur Kings' plan to move the Okwe out of the Valley so the federal government can dam the Green River?"

"I never heard about that," the young man who had assumed the role of interlocutor yelled.

"None of you are aware of Kings' grand plan to transform this Valley into a lake," Coop said with sarcasm and anger.

The audience became boisterous, bemoaning the inevitable end of the Okwe in conversations within families and between neighbors.

Coop held up his hands to quiet the outburst. "Peter Little," he called out. He looked around the room. "Are you here?"

"He's right here," an old woman shouted from the depths of the audience.

"Come up here Peter. Tell everyone what you know about Arthur Kings' grand scheme to flood our Valley."

"Yeah. A lot you care about the Okwe," Peter shouted. "Tell them about going to Swezey Johnson to make sure you got paid when the government takes the Valley. Yeah, tell them."

Pandemonium. People shouting. The interlocutor screamed, "God damn it be quiet. Tell us what you know Rever?"

Coop said, "When the Green River Falls went dry, Congressman Kings decided that the treaty no longer applied so the land could be taken from the Okwe by the federal government. He needed a quisling in the Valley to grease the rails so he arranged for Peter Little to become chairman of the Green River Indian Nation, that's their name for the Okwe." His monologue was interrupted by Berry Eater slamming her fists into his back propelling him off the stage.

Jersey Foraks, the foremost warrior of the Bear Clan, grabbed Berry Eater by one of her braids, jerking her away from the edge of the platform over Coop. Foraks shouted, "Everyone stop. Sit down and be quiet. Swezey Johnson did meet with us." He indicated himself and the foremost warriors of the Hawk and Turtle Clans. "He told us the best way to deal with Congressman Kings over the treaty was to appoint one man to talk for the Okwe. He suggested Peter because the congressman knows him and he has a head for business. So, we went along with it. Peter wasn't supposed to agree to anything without coming back to us. We just wanted to find out what Congressman Kings had in mind."

Coop climbed back onto the platform. "Come on up here Peter and tell us what Kings has in mind."

Peter pushed his way through the crowd to the platform. He stepped up next to Coop. He turned to the audience. "Yeah. There isn't anyone in this room who doesn't know me, who hasn't come to me when they needed a little food on the bill or to sell a skin. I've always done my best for everyone. Yeah, like you're supposed to do in life. Yeah, Congressman Kings told me he was going to build that dam, and flood the Valley, but he was going to make sure the Okwe were taken care of. Every family gets a house on the other side of Kingspost, and a little money for moving. There's no way we can stop him. But, we'll still be together."

"Why was it kept secret?" the interlocutor asked.

"No secret. Congressman Kings asked me to hold off telling everyone until after the election so he could come here and explain it all to everyone. Then he would have time to answer everyone's questions."

"I don't want to leave my house," Bluebird said. "I don't want a new house or any of their money."

"Swezey Johnson said we don't a choice. The treaty is gone. There's nothing protecting us."

"Koona Manitou," a woman yelled. Others took up the cry, turning it into a chant, filling the room with Koona Manitou."

Berry Eater yelled: "Koona Manitou has told us what is going to happen." The chanting subsided. "The dam is going to be built. The Valley is going to be flooded. If Koona Manitou didn't want it to happen, it wouldn't." The inescapable logic of her analysis defused the fury that had blossomed and silenced the angry voices. People left the school house bowed under the weight of the dismal vision Coop Rever had brought to them.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Just before noon, Bluebird called Coop to the phone. "That Joe Bentley is on the phone again. Says it's very important. Has to talk to you."

Coop took the phone. "Hello Joe. Sorry I didn't get back to you last night."

Bentley said that was okay. He was calling to get Coop's reaction to a story he had just finished writing for today's paper. "My lead," he said, "On Halloween night the scariest place in Kings County was the old one-room school house on Green River Valley Indian Reservation." He went on to describe Coop's vision of the Valley being flood by a ghostly dam that didn't exist, and the dam falling down under Coop Rever's frighteningly powerful stomping feet in a magical Indian dance. Bentley said that in reaction to a line in his account that said, "Everyone in the audience shook when they heard Rever's Halloween story, Congressman Kings' comment was "Did they shake with fear or laughter?"

"I don't find your story amusing, Joe," Coop said.

"Well, I did my best. My editor wanted a light touch. Make people laugh." He said he ended his story by writing: "About 75 years ago, another Okwe Indian visionary predicted that when the Green River Falls poured blood instead of water, an Indian hero would appear to save Green River Valley from a gigantic blood-sucking leech. They are still waiting for that prediction, which sounds suspiciously like the legend of Sir George slaying the dragon, to come true. No one is sure whether Mr. Rever's prediction of the ghostly waters bursting through a ghostly dam will happen before or after the falls pours blood. But everyone agrees it's a great story to be told on Halloween night, especially the really scary part about the giant pink blood-sucking leech."

"And you want my reaction?"

"I wouldn't bother you, but my editor insisted I get a comment from you. I'd appreciate a short, funny answer so I can fit it somewhere into the body of the story without disturbing the writing too much."

"Let me ask you off the record, how did you get this story? How do you know someone isn't pulling your leg?"

"I was there. In the basement. With a tape recorder. And a witness."

"Why don't you go to a Catholic Church on Sunday with a tape recorder and write a funny story about the transubstantiation? That's kind of eerie too, don't you think?"

"Let me tell you this, off the record. I wanted to write this as a straight story, but my editor said, no way. I have to give it a light touch, so I said how about as a Halloween story. You'll notice that Artie Kings was a good sport about being quoted. He could have killed the story. He owns this paper. Why don't you be a good sport and give me a nice quote. You're a writer. You can come up with something. I wrote funny about your prediction, not your religion."

"Your story is very much about my religion Joe. I can't say something lighthearted about a deadly serious subject."

"Whatever you say. Let me ask you this, does the tribe get together for wild predictions like this every Halloween, or was this something special."

Coop hung up without responding. He seethed with anger. The knowos had stripped the Okwe of a vast forest filled with game. Now they were coming for what little was left of the Okwe lands, and wanted to reduce the Okwe to objects of humor. His hand was still on the phone yoke in its cradle when its ring startled him. "Rever ici."

"Is that French?" the caller asked.

"Sorry. Coop Rever here."

"That's better. Bernie Pulver calling Coop Rever."

"From Congressman Kings' office?"

"You got it. You called last week and asked to interview the Congressman."

"Yes, I did."

"Congressman Kings read that story that's going to be in the Chronicle today, and I'll tell you he wasn't very happy."

"Then why did he let them print it?"

"Freedom of the press. We're coming up to an election, and Congressman Kings doesn't want to give his opponent an opening to say we were suppressing the news. Let me ask you, off the record, did Greg Hofer put you up to this?"

"I don't even know who Greg Hofer is"

"We love to hear people say that. Greg Hofer is a long-time troublemaker around here. He's secretary-treasurer of the union over at the chemical plant. One of those guys who just won't leave well enough alone. He runs against Congressman Kings every two years like clockwork. About the only ones who know he's running are the union members and most of them vote against him."

"So this Hofer is the token Democratic opposition."

"He says he's a Democrat, but he gets the Daily Worker mailed to him, if you can believe that. Tells you what a moron the man is."

"How do you know he gets the Daily Worker?"

Pulver laughed. "Maybe I look in his mailbox. Maybe it's one of those things everybody knows."

"And now I know."

"Let's get down to brass tacks. The Congressman wants to see you, say at 4 o'clock this afternoon."

"I'll be there. Where is this interview to take place?"

"Our office on Court Street."

CHAPTER THIRTY

As Coop walked up the three steps to the wide, cheerily yellow porch of the big blue Victorian that housed Arthur Kings' Congressional office, the front door was opened by a bald-headed man with a spongy, double-chin. He extended his hand to Coop. "Bernie Pulver. We talked on the phone. Congressman Kings is expecting you." The hand was as soft as Pulver's face. He insisted that Coop slip off his leather jacket, which he hung in the hallway closet. "The Congressman feels people are more at ease when they aren't weighed down with a coat." Coop followed him through a waiting room. Four men in pin-striped suits sat in leather-upholstered wooden chairs in front of four long narrow windows waiting to see the congressman. The solid wall leading to the door of the inner office was lined with four large paintings: Phineas Kings in one as a fit young, smiling congressman shaking hands with President Warren Harding on the lawn of the White House; a slightly fuller-faced Congressman Phineas Kings shaking hands with President Calvin Coolidge in front of a full-length painting of Abraham Lincoln; and a fleshy, serious Phineas with President Herbert Hoover. The final painting near the doorway at the end of the room depicted a grinning, trim, baldish President Dwight D. Eisenhower with Phineas, considerably older and fatter, on his left, and Congressman Arthur Kings, smiling with a fullness of body heading towards pudginess. The three stood erect, no shoulders or hands touching.

"This must be the presidents' room," Coop said.

"How did you guess." Pulver tapped the door with his right knuckle, opened it and walked in. Coop followed. "Doris this is Mr. Rever. We are going in to see the boss. We're expected," Pulver said to a woman with a helmet of blonde hair.

She nodded, pressed a button, and said into a box on her desk, "Bernie's on his way in, Congressman Kings."

"Hey fella." Artie Kings' greeting exploded from the couch where he was sitting with Adele Horowitz. "Adele and I were just talking about you. Anthropology and politics. Quite a combination. And here you are, the old time religion personified. What a mix we've got in this room." He wore a big grin on a smooth-skinned face that was filling along with his body from too many hors d'oeurves at cocktail parties and too many rich meals with lobbyists in expensive Washington restaurants. "I don't have to introduce you two do I. Adele tells me she met you in Paris." Kings shook his head still lit by his grin and punched the air. "What a great place to say you met a beautiful woman like this. Paris." He dropped back onto the couch, which faced a large fireplace on a wall dominated by a painting of Kings as a lean, young Marine officer his eyes wide, his mouth open in a shout with a carbine in his left hand, dragging a dead or wounded comrade from the surf onto the beach, a dark sea and sky behind them. At the base of the frame was a golden plate with the title: Arthur Kings at the Battle of Tarawa/Nov. 20, 1943.

A burning anger stirred inside of Coop's gut, his ego singed by the realization that Artie Kings didn't reach out to shake his hand.

"Nice to see you again, Mr. Rever," Adele said, rising. She stood with her hand out, waiting for Coop to cross the room to shake it before returning to her seat. She had picked up the insult.

"Bernie get Coop, you don't mind me calling you Coop. Get Coop a scotch straight up and healthy. Adele tells me that's your drink, Coop. Surprised me. I thought Francophiles were into wine, and Injuns into rum." He pointed to an arm chair opposite his spot on the couch. A square coffee table with a reel-to-reel tape recorder stood between them. "Sit down fella. We got lots to talk about."

"So I understand, Artie, you don't mind if I call you Artie. There are questions we both want answered." A tiny riposte that softened the burning in his stomach.

Kings continued to smile as he put up his hand, "I prefer Congressman Kings. The appropriate title. Upholding the dignity of the office. You understand, don't you fella."

He had scored. "No Artie, I don't." Pulver came over with a crystal old-fashioned glass filled with an amber scotch. Coop swirled the scotch and snuffled the aroma. "Very nice, Artie." He held up his glass to toast: "To fulfilling our dreams."

Kings laughed, a laugh without mirth, raised his glass and sipped his drink. "Bernie. If you were from around here and went to Israel Kings Central High with us, you'd realize the absurdity of the mythical 33 becoming the Mythical Dancing Wolf. I still remember the star of the football team of 1933, the year the Patriots went undefeated. The cheerleaders would yell." He leaped up pumping his fist, "33, 33, 33, thrust, thrust, thrust." Raising his hands on the 33s and punching his fist on the thrusts.

"You do that so well, Artie, were you a cheerleader?"

"No I wasn't Coop. I was an athlete of a more sophisticated sort. Tennis. Can you imagine how different your life might have been Coop, if you were white and played tennis. With your war record you coulda been a congressman." Kings shook his head. "The burdens God puts on us."

"You don't know how true that sentiment is, Artie."

Pulver reached over to pour more scotch in Coop's glass. "Let's not forget Congressman that prohibition ended in 1933. And while I don't like to repeat bad news, that was the same year the New Deal began and they painted the White House red."

"That's a color you're familiar with." Kings burst into laughter, slapping his knee. "I'm in rare form today. That was an unintended pun, Coop. I was talking about your politics, not the color of your skin. But both apply, don't they."

Coop clenched his teeth. He took a drag on his scotch. To calm himself. To swallow the temptation to say, 'You fat fuck.' He put his glass down on the coffee table and opened his last pack of Gitanes. He lit one, dropping the match in one of the ash trays on the table. He blew a plume of smoke towards Kings. "You remind me, Artie, of why I like the French so much."

"You should have stayed there with the soufflé-eaters, fella. What the hell brought you back here?" Kings said. He waved his right index finger towards his desk on the far side of the room. "Get me his dossier," he said.

Pulver put down his glass and strode over to the desk. He took a boxy manila envelope from a drawer. Three large paintings were hung on the wall behind the desk: Kings standing behind his seated parents; Kings with his arm around Senator Joseph McCarthy against the background of a U.S. Marines Corp emblem; and Kings seated with his daughter on his lap and his wife behind him resting her hands on his shoulders.

"Could I get one of those cigarets, Coop?" Dr. Horowitz said.

Coop took the pack from his shirt pocket. He tapped one out extending the pack towards Dr. Horowitz. "How about you, Artie? Want a taste of France?"

Kings opened a cigaret box on the table. He took one from the box, holding it up. "I prefer the American way. Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. But you can light me up."

Coop struck a paper match into flame, lighting first Dr. Horowitz' cigaret and then Kings. He blew out the match as Pulver returned to hand Kings the dossier.

"Surprised you didn't offer Bernie the third on the match."

"I try to avoid clichés, Artie." His dislike for the Congressman was making him edgy, anxious to end this meeting. "Could we skip the rest of the preliminaries and polite conversation and get into our interview?"

Kings sucked at his Lucky Strike, and mimicking his adversary, blew a stream of smoke from his pursed lips. Put the butt back in his mouth and held the file in his two hands before him. "I shouldn't give you the courtesy of even talking to you, an associate of Communists, a man who has turned his back on a country that has given him so much. But I'm a prisoner of my heritage. I'm driven to look a man in the eye when I decide to destroy him."

"I came here to interview you about tearing up a 200-hundred-year-old treaty so you can steal the last piece of land the Okwe own."

"Fella, do you think I believe your horseshit cover story that you're here to interview me. I don't know what your real mission is, but I'm working on it. And, we know all about you. Got it right here in this dossier. Your wife is a Red. You're driving a car that belongs to a Red in New York City. You come back here after 11 years and you go on a drug binge, and try to stir up trouble with the Indians, when all I want to do is help them! Bernie here thinks Greg Hofer put you up to this. I said no, Greg Hofer's a dope but he's not so dopey he would expect a couple of votes from the reservation to mean anything. There's much bigger fish behind this. Maybe the same people who set out to destroy Sen. McCarthy realize I'm a worthy opponent too?"

"You're unbelievably paranoid, Artie. Before we go any further, I'd like to know what drug binge you're talking about?"

"Adele tells it all in the book. Your great vision came from taking dope like a heroin addict. Tell me, fella, has the dam that isn't even built going to get built and get broken before or after the Green River Falls pours blood? That's the big question someone asked last night and you didn't answer."

"How do you know that?"

Pulver picked up the decanter, filling Coop's, Kings' and Dr. Horowitz' glasses again.

"Joe Bentley and I were in the basement of the Meeting House yesterday," Dr. Horowitz said.

"Play the tape, Bernie," Kings said.

"Tape?" Coop said. He watched Bernie Pulver flick the switch and listened as he heard the shuffling of feet and scraping of chairs on the board floor of the old school house coming from a speaker. His voice came through with a clarity and power. He heard himself recount his dream, the shouting, his accusation that Peter Little was a quisling for Artie Kings, and Berry Eater's conclusion that Koona Manitou had decided their destiny. As the tape ended, he said to Dr. Horowitz, "I thought you were an anthropologist. You turn out to be a spy for this man."

"Don't you understand, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a first-hand account of the great vision of a Mythical Dancing Wolf."

The congressman stood, intending to dominate the conversation. "Let's put aside the mumbo jumbo.

"No. Tell me where the hell do you get off tearing up a 200-year-old treaty? You'll be driving the Okwe men, women and children out of their homes if we let you get away with your scheme."

"Scheme! Your own lawyer will tell you the treaty is moot."

"He's not my lawyer. He's probably in your pocket. You think you're so powerful. You heard what I dreamt, a message from Koona Manitou."

"Koona Manitou. Oh, the boogie man."

Dr. Horowitz licked her lips, uncomfortable in the role pressed upon her. "As you know I offer the theory that once the Okwe realized how helpless they were in the face of American power, the visions, the so-called messages from the Koona Manitou changed from directives to act to suggestions to be patient that things might change. So, we can take the dreams and interpret them literally, that when the falls poured blood, the Okwe hero would appear to slaughter the yootseeos, the mythical blood-sucking leech. Or, a negative interpretation would be that the Okwe never would shed themselves of the threat of or the domination by this yootseeos, because the Green River Falls will never pour blood."

"And my vision?"

"Clearly, there's no saving the Valley. In your dream it is flooded. And somehow the dam is shaken to pieces, either through some supernatural force or even an earthquake, but the Valley is still flooded."

King laughed uproariously. "You can't win, fella. A winning team makes its own breaks, and Koona Manitou is mit uns. I just wanted you to hear with your own ears how tight a grip I've got you in. You'll be hearing more from me, but until then this meeting is over. Bernie will show you out."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

As he got into the red Chevy parked on Court Street, Coop decided to pack his bag tonight and leave in the morning. Berry Eater was right. He had transplanted his roots to Paris; certainly that's where his heart was. He had fulfilled the role imposed on him, now he wanted to go home. He thought about Eleonore and Elise, smiling at the prospect of wrapping his arms around them, his loins stirring in anticipation of the reunion with his wife.

Dusk had settled. He turned the key in the ignition; the motor churned to life. He pulled the knob for the lights, and drove the car out of the parking place onto Court Street. A Kings County Sheriff's car came out the Courthouse parking lot falling in behind him. No coincidence. Coop considered pulling over immediately. Any half-witted cop out to harass him could find something wrong with him or his car as an excuse to write a ticket. He chose instead to drive just below the 30 mile per hour speed limit through the streets to the edge of Kingspost. The Sheriff's car stayed close behind. Coop moved up to 39 miles an hour when the posted speed on Riverview Road moved up to 40. Just past Liberty Lane, the twirling lights on the Sheriff's car came to life along with a jarring burst from the siren. Coop pulled his car to the side of the road. He turned off the motor.

Mike Dermody's face appeared at the driver's side window. He twirled his left index finger, and Coop rolled down the window. "Out chief," Dermody said, stepping towards the right outside the swing of the door. He had a long, eight-battery flashlight in his right hand.

"What a compliment. The sheriff himself."

"Out, now. I'm not going to say out again. Anyone can tell ya, I can't stand wiseass red niggers."

Coop stepped onto the road. He pressed down on his left foot, which had begun trembling. "Why don't you just write out whatever ticket you're going to give me, and let's get it over with."

"Turn and face the front of the car, wiseass."

"And have you jab me with the flashlight. With all due respect, no." Dermody thrust the flashlight into Coop's groin, doubling him over with a blinding, sickening pain. The sheriff grabbed his hair and pulled Coop after him to the front of the car, where he flung him down. Coop raised himself to his knees, one hand resting on the ground for support. Dermody swung the flashlight into his chin, a metallic uppercut, knocking Coop onto his back. When he was able to focus again, he looked up at Dermody, who had drawn his .38, leveling it at Coop, whose body shook with unexpected fear. Was this it? The end?

"Turn over you son of bitch and put your hands behind your back." The sheriff knelt on him and put the pistol to the back of his head. An involuntary terror painfully ripped through Coop's body, which arched in anticipation of a bullet smashing his skull. He relaxed as a cuff was snapped onto his right hand and then his left. The sheriff dragged him into a kneeling position and up onto his feet.

Coop's chin swelled and ached. "I wasn't speeding. I didn't do anything wrong. What's this all about, Sheriff?"

"Driving while intoxicated. Resisting arrest. Maybe a stolen car."

"I wasn't drunk. I didn't resist arrest. This is a friend's car. The registration is in the glove compartment."

Dermody slammed him across the face with the back of his hand. "You were driving in an erratic manner. I smelled alcohol on your breath, your eyes were glassy. You were unsteady on your feet. And you resisted arrest. And we know who owns the car. A fucking Commie in New York City. You come to Kings County looking for trouble, trying to spread your Communist shit and we're ready for you. Just say another word, just give me the smallest excuse and you won't have any teeth you red mother-fucking red nigger."

Coop stayed silent. His left foot throbbed in the stress of helplessness with this beast in charge. Now he understood the dismal feelings that enveloped the German soldiers who had been captured by his unit in World War II France and Germany. The helplessness of the French soldiers marched from Dien Bien Phu to the Vietminh prison camps in Indochina. He was experiencing what they experienced. He became calm. Nothing he could do. He would soon find out whether he was being taken off to his death in some lonely quarry or wooded gully or into the maws of the rural American justice system.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

After a breakfast of a small container of black coffee and a donut, Coop was chained by the right wrist to three other prisoners, one whose face was covered with a bloody bandage, for the walk from the holding cells in the basement of the Kings County Courthouse up four flights of back stairs to a district courtroom on the fourth floor. A deputy sheriff unlocked the handcuffs then directed them into a jury box. Huge portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln looked across the narrow courtroom over the two small polished walnut tables. An assistant district attorney sifted through papers at one; the other, for defense lawyers, was vacant.

Swezey Johnson, Edele Horowitz and Joe Bentley sat together in the first row of the spectator's section. Swezey nodded to Coop. Sheriff Dermody and Bernie Pulver leaned against the back wall of the courtroom just inside the door. They whispered together until the clerk ordered everyone to stand, the judge was coming onto the bench, and the criminal calendar was about to be called. Judge Henry, a rigid, nasty man with a scowl, nodded indicating that the sparse audience and the prisoners could sit down. He banged his gavel. "No talking, reading, eating or chewing gum while this court is in session," he said. He scanned the courtroom, taking in the relatives of the prisoners, Swezey, Dr. Horowitz, Bentley—and Congressman King's operative, Bernie Pulver, leaning close to Dermody. He glanced at the people in the dock. All were disheveled, a typical array of unimpressive minor offenders. He shuffled through the charges. A domestic assault, a drunk driving, and a speeding. His trained eye caught Sheriff Dermody's name on the heavier charges against this Coop Rever. Resisting arrest, drunk driving, driving without a license. Dermody was here for him. He looked at Rever. His face was puffed from the beating the sheriff must have given him. He had a fixed, sullen expression. Thought highly of himself, the judge could see that. Pulver was the problem. His presence implied an interest by Congressman Kings in one of the cases before him. He guessed the Rever case. Then was certain. He remembered the Halloween story in yesterday's Chronicle. That explained Joe Bentley's presence too. He decided to hold the Rever case for last, his antenna tuned for a hint of what was going on. Why the hell didn't Dermody just come into the office this morning and tell him what to expect. He didn't like uncertainty. He banged his gavel, beginning the process.

The domestic assault pleaded guilty. He warned the wife beater never to come back into his courtroom again or he'd spend six months washing toilets in the county jail. He sent him on his way with a suspended sentence to his tearful wife sitting with their teenage daughter in the third row. The drunk and disorderly was well known to him and everybody else in Kingspost. The bloody bandage told the judge that he must have talked back to the arresting officer or fell on his face in a drunken stupor. Another guilty plea. Fine $50. Almost a week's pay for that bum. Another $50 fine for the speeder with his guilty plea. He had more words of warning, but couldn't generate any real displeasure since the guy had only gone two miles over the limit, meaning the deputy was out to get him, or gave him a break.

As soon as the speeder was taken away to pay his fine, Sheriff Dermody strode to the front of the room. He sat next to the assistant district attorney.

Judge Henry made a display of his angriest, most disgusted expression as he read a thin file on his desk. Looked like a grand jury case. He knew from his years on the bench that Sheriff Dermody was pretty fast with his fists whenever anyone gave him lip. The judge usually dealt with Dermody's excesses by dropping the charges to disorderly conduct if the defendant were willing to plead guilty. No worry about the assistant DA. He was terrified of the judge. He looked at the address box: Paris, France. "Paris, France," he couldn't help but saying aloud.

"I gave my," Coop said starting to explain that he had given his mother's address in the Valley.

"You be quiet," Judge Henry said, pointing his finger at him. He spoke with a fearsome authority, a threat of immediate punishment that Coop grasped. He was on quicksand. Better to sit silent until this arraignment played out.

"Paris, France is what his French license says. He doesn't have a Pennsylvania license. And he was driving a car registered to a man in Brooklyn, N.Y.," Sheriff Dermody said from the prosecutor's table.

Judge Henry ignored Dermody. He turned his attention to the Chronicle reporter who was scribbling notes on a sheaf of tan copy paper, folded into three sections. "This case brings you in here Joe?" he said to Bentley.

"Yes, your honor." Bentley said, thrilled that the judge deigned to speak to him in the courtroom.

"Well, well. Maybe I should have worn my new robes. You gonna take a picture of me today, Joe?" He grinned. A touch of the sardonic. He didn't allow the press to photograph the proceedings in his court.

"Not today your honor."

"That's a relief. So what have we got here today. Mister." He said the title mister in a loud voice intended to convey contempt. "Coop Rever of Paris, France?" Swezey Johnson stood, but before he could speak, the judge held his hand up to silence him. "Hold your horses, counselor," the judge said. He pointed to Bentley, calling him to the bench with a sweep of his right index finger.

The reporter went through the small swinging wooden gate from the audience into the well of the court. He stepped close to the judge.

"You going to be writing a story about this?"

Bentley said softly, "I sure am, judge. Mr. Rever is an honest-to-goodness war hero, was a football star at Israel Kings Central back in the 30s, a journalist, an author pretty well-known in France, and just lately some kind of a religious leader out on the reservation. You keep him in jail judge and I'll bet they'll be reporters from New York and Philadelphia here before the week is out."

"How would they even find out about it, Joe?"

"This story is going to make the wires judge."

Judge Henry pursed his lips. He looked at Pulver in the back of the courtroom. He still didn't know why he was here, and that irritated him. "This one of yours counselor?" the judge asked Swezey Johnson, who continued to stand.

"I got a call just within the past hour from the chairman of the Green River Indian Nation asking me to represent Mr. Rever. I'd like a moment to confer with Mr. Rever, if I may, your honor, so I can get his version of what this is all about."

"You see the police report?"

"Not yet your honor."

"Well then, I'll carry this case over until tomorrow to give you time to read the files and talk to the defendant."

The judge was about to hammer his gavel; before the hammer could reach the wood, Swezey called out: "Your honor, if I may, would you set bail please."

"Bail?"

The assistant district attorney jumped to his feet. "This man attacked the Sheriff of Kings County. Dermody smiled. Pulver smiled. The court clerk cackled. The judge's irritation grew. He would dress down the court clerk later. Everyone knew that any assault involving an Indian and the Sheriff was started by a kick or a punch from Dermody, but that was no excuse to be publicly derisive. It didn't look good.

Swezey said, "If your honor please, I want to inform the court that I will be making motions to dismiss the charges as groundless. We both know the reputation of Sheriff Dermody. I'll be seeking fulsome hearings and making motions along the way. A miscarriage of justice is underway that I am sure the court will not countenance. Dr. Edele Horowitz, the distinguished anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania, a woman well known and respected in this county, the widow of Dr. Martin Horowitz, is in the courtroom and is prepared to testify that she was present with Mr. Rever when he had less than two small glasses of Congressman Arthur Kings' very good scotch."

"Stop there," Judge Henry said.

Swezey continued, "Since Mr. Pulver is in the back of the courtroom, and he was pouring the drinks, actually urging them on Mr. Rever, I would consider calling him as a witness, perhaps a hostile witness."

The judge banged his gavel. "Mr. Johnson, I said hold it there, and I mean hold it there." He wanted a moment to think. The damn reporter was scribbling away. Dermody was steaming. The assistant DA still standing was ready to launch into an objection. The judge waived him back into his seat with his left hand, shaking his head. He wouldn't dare defy the judge. He sat. Swezey Johnson was another matter. He was trouble. He represented all of the county's troublemakers. The Indians, the few unions and the few Democrats in town. He was the only lawyer in Kings County unafraid of him, unafraid even of Artie Kings. He was trouble, but not a flamboozling rabble-rouser or a suicidal beau gester. He only picked fights he could or should win. Joe Bentley's warning that the big city newspapers could get interested in this case flickered through his mind. This was a double setup. The Sheriff set up the Indian, and Swezey Johnson was grabbing the chance to set up Artie Kings. Judge Henry didn't know what to do. He fell back on one of his favorite court room tactics. He asked the lawyers what they would consider an appropriate bail.

"I would urge that Mr. Rever be released in his own recognizance," Swezey said.

The assistant district attorney said, "A million dollars."

That snapped Judge Henry out of his uncertainty. He had asked a serious question, and this moron had responded with a ridiculous number. "Two hundred and fifty," he announced hammering the gavel for emphasis.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand?" the assistant DA asked.

"Are you trying to provoke me?" the judge said. He was back in control, back to his usual mood, short of fury. "I speak English. Do you understand it? Two hundred and fifty dollars." He held up his hand. Examining his calendar. "Case adjourned until Wednesday, November seventh." The day after Election Day. That would defuse any political bomb.

Swezey Johnson looked down. Not daring to smile. Not daring to seem pleased. He opened his briefcase and ruffled through it.

Dermody spoke up. "Judge Henry! This defendant has a passport and a family in a foreign country. With only $250 at stake, he could be across the border and on his way back to France in the blink of an eye. There are people in this county, important people, who don't want criminals getting away with attacking their law enforcement officers."

Judge Henry had no difficulty in translating in his mind "important people" to mean Congressman Arthur Kings. "Okay Sheriff Dermody. You accompany the defendant to his local residence and collect his passport to be filed with the court pending the outcome of this case."

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Sheriff Dermody himself shackled Coop with a chain linking his neck to his wrists at his waist, bending him into a half crouch. He was walked down the four flights of stairs to the holding cell in the basement of the courthouse. "I'm going to lunch. I hope you don't mind waiting here until I get back," Dermody said. He instructed the jailer, in front of Coop, to leave the shackles on and not to bother feeding the prisoner since he would be making bail sometime before midnight. Dermody smiled at that witticism. He looked at Coop, who knew even a word or gesture of contempt would bring a punch from this bully. He kept his eyes downcast burning with humiliation. Had he dared, he would have asked whether he was being humbled on orders from Artie King or was Dermody the initiator?

Darkness had fallen when the jailer came for Coop. "Get up," he said. He unlocked the cell door with a big key. Coop swung his feet onto the floor. He was stiff with a fierce ache in his back, and cold and hungry. He hadn't eaten since the donut and coffee before his court appearance.

The jailer took Coop up a flight of stairs to the street level room where a high counter and a low wooden swinging gate divided the public from the innards of the Kings County Sheriff's Office. He led Coop past a radio dispatcher, a small squad room for the deputies, three narrow interview rooms, to the door of Sheriff Mike Dermody's office. Dermody sat behind the desk with Swezey Johnson in a visitor's chair. The jailer knocked on the open door.

"They're here. Let's go counselor," Dermody said.

Swezey said from his chair, "I've been trying to get you out of here all day." He turned to Dermody, "Can we take the cuffs off him, Sheriff."

"Not while he's still in my custody."

"What about his personal effects?"

The sheriff grinned. "Good man. I loved a good goddamn paragraph checker who doesn't miss a point. He's worth whatever you're paying him, chief. Saving you a trip back here tomorrow to get your personals." He stood up. "Bring the prisoner's personal effects from the vault," he said to the jailer. "I'll keep an eye on him."

Swezey stepped towards Coop.

"Stay away from the prisoner, counselor. He's still mine."

Swezey dropped back onto his seat. Coop stood silently in his shackled crouch until the jailer returned with a bulging sealed manila envelope.

"Give that to Mr. Johnson." The sheriff signed a paper on his desk and slid it towards the lawyer. "He'll be yours as soon as we pick up his passport, counselor."

They went out into the parking lot, where Coop was put into the caged back of a waiting deputy's patrol car and Swezey and Dermody got into their separate cars. They drove in caravan with blinking red emergency lights and wailing sirens catching the attention of people on the streets of Kingspost, in cars on the highway, and once across the Covered Bridge drawing Okwe out of their houses to view the spectacle. They parked in front of Bluebird's house, half blocking The Falls Way. She and Redsky came onto the porch with their barking dog. Sheriff Dermody got out of the lead car. He opened the back door of the patrol car and tugged Coop out onto the road. His parents stood petrified on their porch watching their son in chains being led to them by the hated sheriff, who seized every chance to mistreat an Okwe. Some neighbors stood at a distance, watching.

Bluebird and Redsky were stunned. This was the son who had been the fountain of so much pride; a success in the white world and a triumph among The People. And, here he was being dragged, disgraced in his powerlessness, to their home.

"We came to get his passport," Sheriff Dermody said without preamble. He looked over his shoulder at his deputy, speaking loud enough for Swezey, who was approaching, to hear: "Clip his wings so he can't fly back to France."

The deputy laughed.

Swezey said, "This is so unnecessary, Sheriff."

"Let me be the judge of that. Just get his passport and you can him have until next time."

Coop asked in his mind, how could the Koona Manitou allow this to happen to Uthayatkwai, the one chosen to carry his message to the Okwe? Coop thought this. Bluebird thought this. Redsky thought this. The neighbors, eight of them including a young man and an older man with hunting knives in their belts, standing on the hard-packed dirt road, thought this.

The sheriff, with his jacket pushed back, his thumbs stuck in his leather belt, his shoulder holster exposed by the pose, stood next to Coop while Bluebird found her son's passport in his carry-on bag inside the house. She handed it to the lawyer who turned it over to Sheriff Dermody. The sheriff unchained Coop, warning him to be on time for his next court appearance, and left with his deputy, the sirens on their cars screaming.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Coop walked to the house with Bluebird's arms wrapped around his waist, his right arm enclosing her. They followed Redsky and Swezey Johnson inside, where, to Coop's surprise, Edele Horowitz waited at the oilskin-covered kitchen table, an untouched cup of coffee set beside her.

"I need something to drink. Scotch not coffee. And I'm starved. I have an ache in my stomach from hunger. Most of all I want to get washed up," Coop said.

Swezey said, "I don't want to rush this. I'll only take a minute of your time now, and you can come into Kingspost Monday to talk to me. I would like to see you tomorrow, but we're going to a wedding in Williamsport, and Sunday is out because my wife insists that I take Sundays off. In the interim, I want to make clear that the bail agreement limits you to Kings County. Another way of putting it is that you're restricted to Kings County."

"So, I'm a prisoner of sorts."

"Lot better walking free than sitting in the county jail with Mike Dermody as your keeper."

Bluebird fetched glasses from a cupboard as they spoke. She poured several fingers of Scotch into five smoky gray low-ball glasses she had purchased from the Trading Post a few months ago, feeling a certain pride at being able to offer visitors matching glasses. She handed the first glass to Dr. Horowitz; in the Okwe tradition, the visiting woman was served first. The other glasses went first to Swezey as another visitor, to Redsky as the man of the house, to Coop, and finally to herself.

"To freedom," Coop said raising his glass before sipping. The Scotch rolled down his throat and through his body in a spreading ecstasy. "Bien. Bien. Bien," he said.

Swezey took a small sip and put his glass down. "I'll see you, say, at two o'clock Monday in my office. I'll just say before I go that I held an exploratory conference with the District Attorney. I was hoping he might tell me that all of the charges against you would fade into a disorderly conduct with your promise to go away and never come back, but he didn't."

Coop clenched his teeth. He wanted to put the Valley and Kings County behind him, but rebelled at giving anyone the impression that Arthur Kings and his hoodlum Sheriff had cowed him into leaving. Unable to bring himself to say that, he attacked Swezey: "I had the impression you were one of Artie Kings' boys. Why are you suddenly representing me?"

Swezey flushed. "You jumped to a false conclusion. I told the court right in front of you why I was representing you. I'll remind you. Peter Little asked me to take on your case. I don't have to represent you. You can decide right now if you want me or not. No. Why don't we wait until Monday. That will give me two days to swallow my pride and maybe be willing to continue as your lawyer. If you decide you don't want me, then my willingness will be moot. I'm giving you some room to maneuver, Mr. Rever, because I realize I reacted too quickly when you insulted me in my office last week. I'm sorry I called the Sheriff on you, but I wasn't sure whether your talk came from being drunk or arrogant. No reason for me to endure either one. Is there?" He nodded to Redsky and Bluebird then walked out of the house.

To respond, Coop would have had to shout after him, and he wouldn't put himself in so undignified a position in front of his parents. He knocked back the Scotch. Poured himself another drink, and said to Dr. Horowitz, "And what's your story?"

"My story is that I was one of Artie Kings' girls." She blushed, not meaning to express herself that way, a cliché which she meant to be amusing, a play on Coop's question to Swezey, but it was the truth. She not only accepted funding for her research from the Kings Foundation, she was infatuated with the powerful, war-hero Congressman. He had financed her, dined her and fucked her. She dreamt of him at night and thought of him in pauses in her day, while recognizing he considered her just another sexual flit. Her ardor for him cooled whenever she considered the impact their affair, if ever discovered, on Mrs. Kings and their teenage daughter, Merry. And went cold when she realized in their recent conversations how vengeful a man he was. He had everything: a family, wealth, political power, recognition as a war hero, yet he was consumed by vengeance and an irrational fear. "I think of myself as an objective scientist. I took funding from the Kings Foundation, but I didn't sell out in the process. I was dismayed when I realized that you are either with Arthur Kings or he considers you against him. Let me say parenthetically that he has no use for Swezey Johnson, because he has stood up to the Kings Family."

"Did Kings send you to France to lure me home?"

"I think he did. He's a master manipulator."

"Why should he care about me?"

"A lot of things intersect here. Artie hates Communists. He considers the Okwe to be Communists. I don't know what he expected me to produce in my research, but the role of the Mythical Dancing Wolf in shaping the Okwe, bringing them to the Valley and being behind the horrible murder of Isaiah Kings' first wife and children has made him hate the Okwe even more. And my book plays a role too. Since reading it, Artie has had a persistent dream in which he looks through Isaiah Kings eyes to see his wife, Mary, knocked to the ground by the Okwe warriors, stripped naked and raped again and again. And, he saw her dragged through the forest and roasted alive over a slow fire. Pieces of her flesh are forced into his mouth in the dream, and he weeps as he chews Mary's burnt flesh. Then her dress is put on him and they drive him into the forest, taunting him as a woman because of his tears, because he was captured alive, because he was unworthy of being tested by torture."

"So he wants to destroy me for something that happened 200 years ago?"

"His dream makes it real now. You were the football star and no one paid attention to whatever he did on the tennis court. Then he goes off to war and wins the Silver Star. And so do you. So you diminish him as a hero, and besides you're an Indian, a people he despises. And finally you emerge as the top man of the Okwe culture, Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolf. You personify all the guilt and glory of the Okwe. He crushes you and he humbles the Okwe. And there's even more. The guy who lent you the car turns out to be a Communist."

"How did he know enough to send to France after me?"

"I jumped to the conclusion you were the Mythical Dancing Wolf after your mother told me her dream. And, I told Artie."

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Sleep didn't come easily to Coop that night after a supper at which nothing was said, but both his mother and father stared across their plates and ate little. He consumed four Scotches, twice his normal limit. He fell onto his bed just after nine o'clock aching from exhaustion. He decided as he lay there that in the morning he would go on the run out of Pennsylvania across New York into Canada. Somehow he would get papers or maybe stow away on a ship bound for France. He would seek political asylum as a persecuted American Indian. He would ask for the protection of the French government, which has a long history of taking in political exiles. With Eleonore's contacts in the government and her influence through 'Une Vue Internationale,' there was little likelihood the French would turn him over to American authorities. If necessary, he would ask Dr. Horowitz to testify for him about Congressman Arthur Kings' crazy desire for revenge for something that happened almost 200 years ago. The third book on Algeria and the French Foreign Legionnaire would have to be shelved, at least for the time being. Instead, he would write about the powerful right-wing congressman persecuting him because of his race and his hatred for the Okwe. The French loved a good Cowboy and Indian story, and he would give it to them with Artie Kings as the brutal heavy. Coop's Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor would serve him well now. So would his books on the French fighting in Indochina and Korea. He drifted off away from the waking world.

***

He stood in the vision lodge rubbing the black paint onto the right side of his face, covering half of his forehead and nose, carefully circling his eyes. His throat, chest and arms already were blackened. He went outside into the moonless night to the bank of the Green River to wash his hands in the cold water. Returning to the mirror, Coop painted the left side of his face white, washed his hands again, and dipped the very tip of his right index finger into the pool of paint in the hollow stone container. He skillfully drew the four small stars and two circles of the pictogram onto the white canvass of the left side of his face. "Hmmmh," he intoned as he studied himself in the mirror.

His ear caught a strange sound. The roar of the falls had been replaced by a hum. He pushed back the entrance flap peering into the darkness. The falls looked black. The usual vapor cast into the air by the churning of water on water and rock had been replaced by a gummy fog that floated across him. He rubbed his face. Blood on his hand! He stepped to the pool. Normally crystal clear and cold, it had been polluted by an opaque substance. He studied the falls. Despite the pitch blackness of the night, he could see that blood was pouring over the high precipice, tumbling down staining the rocks and greenery. Millions of tons of blood.

The words of his medicine song were being sung behind him: "Be bold! Be bold! The time has come." Coop had sung his medicine song on the morning of D-Day, on the days when he won the Silver Star and the Bronze Star, at Dien Bien Phu and in Korea. The only other time he heard the words from another's lips was when his power animal, The Beaver, sang it to him for first time when he was 12 years old and passing into manhood. He turned. The Beaver sat on the shore of the blood-filled river singing, "Be bold! Be bold. The time has come." Coop nodded. He walked through the blackness to Kwa n Uthsysta, the Trail of Fire. The trail that climbed over the mountain between the Valley and Kingspost was taboo. Only an Okwe intent on war could pass over the trail with the understanding he could not return until shed an enemy's blood.

***

Coop awoke at first light. Lying in the coziness of his bed, the thought was thrust into his mind that a bold warrior could shake the earth. A cold rain was falling outside making his stay under the covers even more delightful. When he heard Bluebird in the kitchen making coffee and putting a heavy frying pan on the stove, he swung his feet over the side of the bed and pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt, and heavy socks. He went into the kitchen. Redsky was at the table, dressed, waiting for the morning coffee. Coop experienced the euphoria of knowing what he would do. His mouth watered in catching the scent of Mnadrannack frying on the stove. His mother turned the hotcake and the thick sliced bacon in another pan, then brought the coffee pot to the table for Coop and his father. While the hotcake finished cooking, Coop described his dream. His parents nodded, understanding that this special son of theirs had been chosen by Koona Manitou to carry out some great, possibly fierce, deed. Their insides shook a little and they fought an inclination to be submerged in sadness. They tried to hide their feelings with impassive expressions. Tears trickled down Bluebird's plump cheeks as she lifted the Mnadrannack onto a breadboard for cutting into pie-shaped wedges to be slathered with butter and maple syrup. She wondered if some invisible messenger from the other side, the "real world", had whispered in her sleeping ear that this was the morning to make her son's favorite dish.

After breakfast, Redsky drove Coop to the paramount Turtle mother's house for the war paint. They had coffee with her in her livingroom. She listened to Coop's request for the sacred paints and studied him for a while hoping to prompt him to explain why he was asking for real war paint instead of the make-believe stuff made for the Okwe entertainers who performed at schools and state fairs and twice in films. She had never mixed the sacred pigments into the white and black paints used by Okwe warriors to decorate their faces and bodies for battle. A few times, young men, soldiers and Marines going to fight in WWII and Korea, had requested the war paints, but she had said no. Sacred paint could be made only for those going on the warpath on behalf of the Okwe not the knowos. When Coop didn't fill her long silence, she said, "I know who you are; everyone knows who you are. But I must say, the sacred paint can only be used by an Okwe warrior for the Okwe people."

"I had a dream last night. I wore the paint," he said with some reluctance.

She put down her coffee. She went to some hiding place in the house and returned with two oblong containers, the size of shoe boxes. She put them on the kitchen table, then got two ancient gray stone bowls, decorated with the pictograms of the four clans, one on each side. She brought out tobacco and a pipe. The three of them stood around the table. She smoked first, smudging the six directions; passing the pipe to Coop and next to Redsky, who followed her example. She sang her medicine song. Before grinding an ancient piece of Beech wood for the black and limestone powder for the white, she asked: "How many?"

"Me."

She measured out the ingredients, the freshly-ground pigments and a clear oil, mixing them into a gummy substance, which she poured into two plastic bowls. She snapped covers onto the bowls. "Stir this just before you use it." She put the bowls in a large brown paper bag from the Kingspost Trading Company's supermarket. This was the most exciting moment of her life. She could barely wait for the two men to leave before calling the other women of the Turtle Clan. Her own mother had gone through her entire life as the paramount mother of the Turtle Clan without mixing the sacred war paint.

Coop could see the glow in her eyes of the self-satisfied thrill coursing through her. He couldn't insult her by asking her to be silent. He could only hope for her discretion. At the door of the house, he slipped off the expensive watch Eleonore had given him last Christmas. He pressed it into the woman's hand, a gift for a gift, looking into her eyes, hoping she understood how important surprise was in warfare. She couldn't restrain a smile. She touched her hand to his back. A gesture of support to take with him into battle.

As soon as Coop and Redsky drove away, she was on the phone to her friends, the other Turtle Clan mothers.

They were hardly back in the house before the phone rang with Joe Bentley on the line. He told Coop he had something wild to tell him. A geologist at Penn State, who read his Halloween story in the Kingspost Chronicle, called to tell him that as a graduate student he had done a study uncovering an earthquake fault line crossing the area where the Green River flows out of the Valley, just about the spot where the dam would be built. "No guarantee there'll ever be an earthquake, but that is some coincidence, you dream the dam is shaken down and it turns out there's a fault line right under the dam." He laughed.

"I am the earthquake," Coop said cryptically. He felt as though he had floated out of himself and was performing perfectly.

Bentley wondered if Coop had gone over an edge. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Hije atsootaha, if you understand Okwe. I am the shaker of the earth. Or, if you understand English in its simplest form, I am the earthquake. Got to go, Joe." He hung up the phone.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

The three-and-a-half mile climb up the Trail of Fire to the crest of Stockade Mountain started in the trough of a stream bed swept clean of debris by the morning rains. No Okwe who revered Koona Manitou had climbed the trail for more than 75 years. Not since Painted Rock, a Bear Clan warrior, his face and chest covered with the sacred war paint, had stepped and slipped and stumbled along this same stream bed and through the trees and rocks of the narrow path above it, to the other side where the road to Kingspost lay, to kill Virgil Grippings, the Kings County Sheriff, who had beaten his son and insulted his wife. Painted Rock ambushed the offender, dragged him to a rock quarry, stripped him naked and branded the soft white flesh of his belly and breasts with a red hot knife to his screams and pleas for mercy before cutting out his tongue. Painted Rock hung Sheriff Grippings by his ankles from a thick tree branch for a prolonged, agonizing death with the top of his skull just inches above a small fire. Major Samuel Kings, using his position as an honorary deputy sheriff, went into the Valley at the head of a posse to avenge the unbearably horrible death of Sheriff Grippings. Along with Painted Rock, the Kingspost avengers killed Coop's great-grandfather Matthew, who had served with Major Kings and Sheehays in the Pennsylvania Bucktails at Gettysburg.

Coop sang the song that told of the Okwe warriors who had climbed the trail on the warpath as he struggled up the mountain, his way lit by a flashlight on this moonless night. He moved on instinct and assumption, startled to pick up the sign of the Bear Clan on a boulder just below the crest. Had Painted Rock paused those many years ago to memorialize his adventure that day with a guidepost for future Okwe warriors who would follow his tracks over the trail? Coop picked up a smooth oval rock that lay at the base of the boulder. He hefted the rock, feeling a heaviness of at least ten pounds, before slipping it into the big right-hand pocket of his field jacket.

The way down, another three-and-a-half miles along a firebreak cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935, was an easy walk. Congressman Phineas Kings, Artie's father, had arranged for the CCC to clear the trees and brush for a width of ten feet along the Old Indian Trail with the intention of building a path and eventually a road to what he and other knowos called the Hidden Falls, a spectacular sight seldom seen by outsiders. The plan was to widen and improve the trail down the other side of the mountain into the Valley. Phineas envisioned a comfortable lodge being built on the very crest of the mountain, where the visitors could dine and rest in comfort on holiday, or on fishing or hunting expeditions. From the verandas of the lodge the view to the east would be of The Fort, a name belying the comfortable three-story residence with a broad wrap-around porch on a rise at the very center of the 95-acre Kings Family estate with its manicured lawns, flower gardens, labyrinth, copses of cherry, oak and birch, two ponds, and a wide stream flowing into the Green River at the border of Kingspost. The view to the west into the Valley would encompass the dam in the distance—that Phineas Kings intended the Army Corps of Engineers to build—the lake created by the dam, and the shorter, but still beautiful and impressive Hidden Falls. Phineas Kings' grand scheme for extending the firebreak into the Valley, the dam, the lake and the lodge atop Stockade Mountain at the small expense of consuming the last of the Okwe land was scotched when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt heard about it. She sent a note to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who didn't have to be told that Phineas Kings had opposed the creation of the CCC in 1933 and was one of the 33 Republicans who voted against the Social Security Act of 1935.

The cloud cover had broken into gray slabs surrounded by sparkling stars. Coop stiffened, sensing a pair of eyes watching him as he climbed the rail fence at the end of the trail where the woods opened into a pasture, owned by the Kings Family and leased to a dairy farmer. He turned to his left to see the white figure of a snowy owl, sitting on a limb 15 feet away. No hoot. No movement. A stare. A wondering why this man in a black beret and Army field jacket was walking so far afield in his night frightening his prey? Coop answered his unspoken question: "Like you Brother Owl, I am a killer in the night." He walked across the soft pasture behind the funnel of the white cast by his flashlight, trying to avoid the cow plops, sinking occasionally into sodden ground, until he climbed through a barbed wire fence onto the shoulder of the paved road that separated the Kings estate from the dairy farm. Two dogs barked from down the road, from the barn next to the dairy farmer's house. Big dogs from the depth of their barks. Coop turned off the flashlight. He took the heavy rock from his jacket pocket and stood still, hoping the farmer annoyed at being roused from sleep in the middle of the night or tedium would quiet them. He decided if they came within range, within the arc of his arm, he would kill them. He waited for a while. After they fell silent, he continued without a light, over the low stone-piled wall, across the manicured lawn. An easy walk on a grass-soft surface, swept of leaves and branches. The stone swung in his right hand, the unlighted flashlight in his left. He was almost at the house when a dog yapped from some place inside.

He went up the steps, four of them, the little dog was barking in the highest range of his small voice. The door opened as he was stepping across the wide porch. He slipped from his field jacket, tore open his shirt. Switching the stone from one hand to the other to get out of the sleeves. Artie Kings, shaking himself from sleep, roared, "Who the hell are you?"

"Death yootseeos." Coop slammed the stone into Kings' face propelling him backwards toppling him onto the stairs, leading to the second story. The dog stood aside barking lustily. The congressman had both hands over his face, shocked by the unexpected onslaught. Coop went after him, calmly, without emotion. He jammed the stone into his enemy's groin. Kings howled in pain. He rolled over onto his knees, trying to rise. Coop raised his arm high above his head to smash the back of Kings' skull. Blood spurted from his victim's ears. He smashed again, cracking the skull, sending King into unconsciousness. The dog ran up the stairs, passing Merry Kings rushing down. Coop pounded again and again. Shattering the broken skull into pulp.

"Dadddddy," the girl screamed. She put her hands over her mouth, to contain her horror.

Coop, his painted body and face, splashed with the blood of her father, looked at her, knowing that she carried within her the seed of the yootseeos. With no hesitation, with no examination of conscience, he struck Merry on her forehead with the stone. He pounded her head, losing his grip on his weapon twice. Each time, he wiped his hands and the stone on the rug for a better purchase and continued until he was certain she was dead.

"I've called the police," a voice above him said.

Coop looked up. Mrs. Kings, he thought. She had an automatic pistol in her hands, two hands. He rushed her, crouched, a low, moving target. She fired, missing him, as he had been missed so many times in combat while other soldiers died around him. He knocked the weapon towards the ceiling as she fired a second time, and pushed the rock against her throat. They stumbled in a tangle together, landing on the floor. He held her right wrist, aiming the gun away, and came into a kneeling position above her at the top of the stairs. She looked at his painted face and body, splattered with the blood of her husband and daughter, her eyes wide with horror. She shook her head back and forth screaming. He hesitated for what seemed like a long time, but was only a second, while considering whether he should kill her. There was no reason to spare her. He smashed the stone onto her nose. Raised it again and smashed her mouth, her forehead. Her howls stopped. He pounded until her face disappeared into a pulp of mangled flesh, broken bones and blood.

He could hear the dog whimpering somewhere near.

He pushed himself onto his feet. He took the hunting knife from the sheath on his hip. Artie Kings' pajamas had pulled away from his swollen, pinkish belly and backside. He cut the congressman's throat, suddenly understanding that his compulsion to kill had a purpose: the fulfilling of two prophesies—his and Sheehay's. Tonight he had destroyed the insatiable blood-sucking monster and his offspring and with her his direct descendants. Only time would tell whether this bloodshed would destroy genesis of the dam and save the Valley. He cut Merry's throat and Mrs. Kings', making certain to slice the carotid arteries, a skill learned in an advanced combat course in the U.S. Army. The girl had to die, but her mother was an accidental casualty. He hoped the memory of the unnecessary killing of Mrs. Kings wouldn't haunt him. The German soldier he bayoneted to death in France continued to live in the corners of his memory, flashing into his mind every once in a while. The remembrance always was accompanied by an unpleasant ache throughout his body.

He was pulled from his reverie by the sound of a siren. He ran out the front door straight across the broad span of manicured lawn until he reached the edge of the road. He dropped onto the ground, waiting as the Sheriff's car swung off the road onto the driveway to the house. He watched a single deputy get out of the car, go through the headlights and across the front porch.

Coop went over the low wall. The farmer's dogs in a frenzy of barking. Chained, unable to come after him. He resisted a temptation to rest, pushing himself to walk at a steady pace up the mountain. The cold gripped him as he walked and stumbled in the darkness, making him conscious of his half naked body, He had left his torn shirt and field jacket on the porch. His fingerprints must be all over the place too. Even the Kings County Sheriff's Department could solve this case, he thought.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

He stumbled out of the woods at the end of the Trail of Fire in a near stupor of fatigue and chill. Will power nurtured as an Okwe boy, as a high school athlete, as a soldier in the U.S. Army enabled him to put one foot in front of another, despite his numbing exhaustion, to cover the final quarter mile of rocky ground and bushes to the Vision Lodge, whose outline was barely visible against the river in the bleakness of night. He had intended to plunge into the river, a cleansing ceremony to wash away the war paint and blood, then to warm himself over a fire in the Vision Lodge. He had stacked wood and kindling just outside the entrance for the fire. Right now with his energy at the edge of zero, he decided he needed warmth and sleep, something hot to drink before undergoing the cleansing ceremony in the frigid river.

As he approached the Vision Lodge, he smelled smoke. Adrenalin stirred strength back into his muscles. He slipped his hunting knife from the sheath and pulled back the entrance flap. Embers glowed in the fire pit, casting barely enough light to reveal a sleeping bag filled to capacity with two occupants. One a long-haired woman. He stood frozen, poised to use the knife. He heard a soft snore. He took four small logs from his woodpile, half shaved sections of the bark on each and put them in a pyramid on the fire. In the flaring of the bark, he saw two field packs. Moving as quietly as he could, he crawled to one of the packs in the darkness. The snorer snorted and mumbled. Coop froze, his hand atop a heavy winter shirt on the pack. He waited until he was certain the sleeper was undisturbed by his presence. He picked up the shirt. A faded scent of perfume. He draped it over his shoulders.

Coop resheathed the knife. He sat down cross-legged close to the fire pit, his bare shoulders warmed by the shirt, his face, chest and knees enjoying the expanding heat of the growing fire. His head dropped forward and he slipped into sleep and stepped into the dreamworld. He sparkled with energy, part of a dancing circle of half-naked warriors with bodies painted black and faces half black and half white, like his, with four small stars and two circles of the Wolf Clan pictogram engraved in black on white. He waved the bloody stone that had crushed the skulls of the Kings above his head as he beat his feet on the ground to the rhythm of the drums and chants. Warriors waved knives, tomahawks, trade hatchets, rocks, and scalps in outstretched arms as they moved round the fire pit. He joined the chant, "Be bold, be bold." His legs felt strong enough to run forever; his arms strong enough to tear trees from the earth and to hurl boulders.

He came awake to a scream. He was on his feet, bumping his head and back against the curving frame of the Vision Lodge, throwing him onto his knees almost into the fire. He pulled out his knife, ready for combat. The fire was blazing, and the first light of day was coming through the smoke hole in the roof. The sleeping bag came open with the screaming woman, dressed only in heavy socks, crawling in a rush past him on her hands and knees and out of the shelter. She howled for help outside. Another woman, her bare breasts bouncing in the effort, pulled a revolver from somewhere, and leveled it at him without speaking. He recognized her from her lean body and curly blonde hair. Zelma Kreuger.

"Don't shoot. You know me. Coop Rever." He held up his left hand, returning the knife to its sheath.

Zelma lowered the pistol. "You scared the hell out of Dilly. What's going on? Some kind of a ceremony?" Blotches of dried blood were smeared across the war paint on his face and body.

"How did you get here?" Coop asked.

"Canoe. We told you we were going to do the Green River. By the time we portaged the falls, it was dark. We saw this place and camped for the night."

Outside was quiet. Dilly had stopped screaming. Zelma stashed her weapon in a holster by her sleeping bag, coming up with a 35 mm. camera. She snapped on a flash, inserted a bulb, and took a photo of Coop. She repeated the process three more times, making adjustments to the lens each time. "That has the feel of a great shot," she said of the final one. She slipped the camera strap over her head. She pulled her shirt from Coop's shoulders. "That's mine." And picked up her jeans and boots from beside the sleeping bag. Unembarrassed by her nakedness, she said, "Listen, I'm going to get dressed, calm down Dilly and get a pot of coffee going, then we can talk. You look like you could use some coffee." She crawled past Coop, through the flap, the camera dangling from her neck.

Coop moved around the fire to Zelma's sleeping bag. He found the gun, a Luger, Wehrmacht issue. He had collected one just like it from a German officer's body in France. He examined the weapon, checking the magazine. Fully loaded. He returned it to the holster, which he planted next to his right thigh. He wrapped himself in the thick bedding still luxuriously warm from her body, and in a moment, fell back to sleep.

And came awake to the sound of a booming voice. "Okay you son of a bitch. Throw the gun out and slide out of there on your belly."

Coop flattened himself on the floor. He cocked the Luger, pointing it at the entrance.

A different voice: "This is Sheriff Dermody, Rever. You have until the count of five to surrender. One. Two."

He wouldn't have a chance if he stayed in the hut. They could pepper it with bullets, knowing he was trapped inside. "I'm unarmed, Sheriff."

"Bullshit."

Coop fired two shots in the direction of the voice through the wall of the Vision Lodge, and dove, blindly, through the entrance flap. Rifles, shotguns and pistols responded, tearing into the hut. Coop rolled on a shoulder, somersaulted, and was rising on his knees, raising the Luger to fire again, as Sheriff Dermody slammed a rifle butt into the back of his head, knocking him unconscious.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Coop awoke lying on his side, gagging on his own vomit, his head aflame with pain, his ears ringing. He discovered when he tried to move that his hands were chained behind his back, and his ankles were tied together.

"He's awake Sheriff."

Coop turned towards the voice. The speaker was a blur. He couldn't focus his eyes. A moan came out of his mouth when he tried to speak.

"Sit him up," Sheriff Dermody said.

The deputy grasped Coop by the neck and right arm to haul him onto his haunches.

"Ohhhhhh." His head throbbed. He grimaced.

"What the hell are you doing in that getup?" Dermody asked. He stood over Coop with his hands on his hips.

Coop closed his eyes, trying to remember how he got where he was. His thoughts were a muddle.

Dermody kicked him on the sole of his bare left foot. "That war paint, chief? That the blood of innocent people, chief." Hatred in his voice.

Coop looked at him. He didn't speak. He stared sullenly at the sheriff decorated too for war: a metal star emblazoned with the Kings County crest and the word SHERIFF on his short woolen jacket and a grey cowboy hat on his head.

"I ask you a question, you answer, you fucking red nigger," Dermody said balancing on his left foot to put more power in the swinging arc of the heavy boot on his right foot, landing it on the bare sole of the manacled prisoner. A ball of pain rushed from his foot through his body to the crown of Coop's skull.

"Ohhhhh," he howled.

"Goddamit," Dermody said, turning towards Zelma who was snapping away with her camera. "Put that Goddamn camera away. You take another picture and I'll shove it up your ass."

She came out of her photographer's crouch. "You touch me, Sheriff, and you won't have a badge any more. I'm not a helpless Indian."

"That man murdered Arthur Kings last night in cold blood. He cut the throats of a helpless woman and a helpless girl. He shot one of my deputies. I'm a little out sorts this morning ma'm. Artie Kings and his Mrs. was good friends of mine. And Merry Kings, their little girl, was the sweetest girl you could ever meet. I shouldn't of said I was going to shove your camera up your ass, but don't think I'm gonna treat this son of a bitch like he's an innocent school girl. I'd hang him right from the nearest tree if it was up to me. Maybe you better just get away from me before you provoke me any more." He nodded his head, a signal to a deputy, who took Zelma by the arm. She jerked her arm away.

"Don't you touch me either."

Dermody shook a finger at her. "Another word, and you're under arrest." She took his picture. Dermody turned away. His was a controlled anger. His violence a show for his men and the photographer. He wanted a reputation. The picture of him slamming his rifle butt into the back of the head of the still armed Coop Rever was one that could be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States, certainly the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia papers. Kings County offered few opportunities to make a name. The typical murder was a wife using a kitchen knife to stab a drunken husband, who had been punching her around. Capturing the wild, painted Indian within hours of murdering a congressman and his family could be the making of Michael Dermody.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Coop awoke to a sensation of enormous pressure on the inside of his skull, as though the innards, the brain and whatever else was up there, were trying to break through the bone. He tried to move, discovering a chain around his waist, linked to the bed. Other chains tied his right hand and right foot to the bed. A nurse in a white uniform came into the room with a cart, a deputy sheriff behind her. Wordlessly, she took Coop's temperature and blood pressure, the deputy watching. She poured water into a plastic glass, placing it on a tray that she swung over the bed; she tapped a couple of capsules into Coop's right hand. "For the headache," she said. The chain offered enough play to swing his hand to his mouth. She gave him the water, and he drank, washing the medication down. Coop fell back into a blank sleep.

He awoke again to a bright light being turned on. The light hurt his eyes, but he could see, clearly. Joe Bentley stood at his bedside, a pleased expression on his face.

"How did you get in here?"

"The deputy owes me one. I promised I wouldn't tell anyone we spoke directly. So this is between us, okay?"

Coop nodded.

"How's the head?"

"I have a headache, but it's receding."

"You might want to read this." Joe proffered the Kingspost 'Chronicle.'

Coop sat up. The headline across the entire broadsheet said: INDIAN MURDERS KINGS FAMILY. Subheads said, Captured in Gun Battle; Sheriff Dermody Subdues Killer.

Large head and shoulders shots of Congressman Arthur Kings; Mrs. Mary Stoddard Kings; and Miss Mildred (Merry) Kings lay across the top of a huge photo of Sheriff Dermody delivering the knockout blow with the rifle butt to the back of Coop's head. The story recounted how the farmer's dogs led their master and a deputy sheriff to the mouth of the Old Indian Trail to the Hidden Falls. Dermody quickly laid out a strategy for pursuing the killer. He instructed the farmer, his two sons, and a deputy to climb the trail with the dogs at first light. Meanwhile, he took a force of five deputies and four civilian volunteers, all World War II or Korean War combat veterans, to the spot where the trail ended on the Green River Reservation. The posse reached the targeted area at dawn and ran into a naked Dilly Madison screaming hysterically. After a deputy wrapped her in his jacket, she told Sheriff Dermody that a bare-chested man, painted black and covered with blood, had surprised her and her companion, Zelma Kreuger Sullivan, the noted photographer, as they slept in the hut. Moments later, Mrs. Sullivan, whose professional name is Zelma Kreuger, emerged to tell Sheriff Dermody that the painted man was Coop Rever, an Indian, well-known locally as a fullback on the legendary undefeated Patriots football team of 1933 as well as one of the two Kings County residents who won Silver Stars in World War II. Ironically Congressman Kings was the other Silver Star winner. Asked Rever's motive for brutally slaughtering the Kings family, Dermody said that while there will be further investigation, historically there has always been bad blood between the Indians and the Kings family. During the gun battle leading up to Rever's capture, Deputy Sheriff Myers Christiansen was grazed on his left side by one of the shots fired by the suspected killer. Rever, who suffered a cerebral concussion and possibly internal hemorrhaging from the blow to his head, was in no condition to be questioned. Currently, he is being held under guard in a room at Kingspost General Hospital.

Coop looked at the credit line in tiny type in a corner of the photo of the sheriff knocking him unconscious: Zelma Kreuger. He turned to page three where there were four sidebars on each of the murder victims and him. Another photo by Zelma showed him in his war paint blotched with blood inside the Vision Lodge. He studied his face, poorly reproduced on the cheap newsprint. He looked wild. Across the bottom of the page was a short, narrow story by Joe: an interview with a Penn State geologist who said an earthquake fault ran under the proposed site of the dam on the Green River.

Joe had pulled the visitor's chair to the side of the bed and had taken out a pencil and folded copy paper as the slate for his notes. Coop put down the newspaper, his head still aching him. "What time is it?"

"Four o'clock, the witching hour when the bars close in New York and all of Pennsylvania is asleep on an ordinary night."

"What do you want to know?"

"Why did you do it?"

"You've got the answer right in the paper, the story with the guy from Penn State. I am the earthquake."

"So this is the old Indian stuff about acting out a dream."

"The Koona Manitou speaks, and I obey."

"So you heard voices?"

"More complicated than that."

"You going to plead insanity?"

"I'm not going to plead anything. I'm a prisoner of war. I killed the enemy."

"I don't want to upset you, but there's not going to be much sympathy for that argument after you bashed in the heads and cut the throats of the wife and daughter."

"Civilians get killed in war all the time. Lots of them in England and Germany and France and Japan and Russia, and I can go on."

"That's accidental. Maybe the Nazis and the Japs killed women and children on purpose, but the U.S. certainly never did."

"Joe, that's how much you know."

CHAPTER FORTY

Coop looked out the big window on the second floor of the Kings County Courthouse at the back of the stone head of Major Samuel Kings, commander of the Bucktails Company in the Civil War as a stream of prosecution witnesses took the oath and testified against him on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the second week in February. Sometimes the snow, which fell every day, was so heavy that the stone head was obscured. Inside, the courtroom, with its worn plank floors, high ceilings and ancient steam radiators, was drowsily warm. Occasionally, Judge Carrollton asked the jurors to stand, stretch and take a deep breath. "Juror Four is the sleeper," Swezey Johnson whispered in Coop's ear each time the judge interrupted testimony to order the jurors to perform the wake-up exercise.

One afternoon there was a break in the clouds, and the sun shone briefly, but not warmly enough to melt the mound of snow atop the stone head. Only once in the four days of testimony from six deputy sheriffs including the one grazed by a bullet from the Luger, from the county coroner, from the farmer and his sons, from two of the civilians in the posse, from Zelma Kreuger Sullivan, from Dilly Madison, from Kings County Sheriff Michael Dermody, from a state police laboratory technician, and from a psychiatrist assuring the court of the defendant's sanity, did Coop turn his steady gaze from the window. He laughed a little when Sheriff Dermody testified that in the moments after his capture, Coop said to him, "You got here pretty fast. How did you know I did it?" The judge looked at him, somehow restraining himself from admonishing the defendant from being amused in the midst of a serious trial for a heinous crime. Coop rested his chin on his fist, elbow on the heavy, ornate wooden defense table, listening to see if the Rex Rooney, the Kings Country District Attorney, would press the issue.

"What was your response, Sheriff?"

"I didn't get a chance to respond. Mr. Rever passed out before my eyes."

"Did you make notes of the defendant's statement?"

"No sir. I was so overwrought by the murder..."

"Objection."

"Overruled."

"Exception, your honor."

"Noted. The witness may continue>"

"I was so overwrought by the killing of the foremost member of our community, a good friend of mine and every good citizen in this county, along with his lovely wife and precious daughter, I didn't remember that statement for several weeks. It came to me at breakfast just recently. And now I can't get those words out of my mind."

"He's lying and showboating," Coop said to Swezey, loud enough for the jurors to hear."

Judge Carrollton slammed his gavel onto his desk. "Mr. Rever kindly pay attention and speak softly, when you feel you must, to your attorney."

Coop pursed his lips and turned to look out the window. The judge breathed deeply, containing himself again, more irritated by the defendant's indifference than his talking.

When the prosecution rested, Swezey Johnson rose to address the court: "Your honor, I plan to call only one witness, Mr. Rever, the defendant. I wish to place on record, Mr. Rever's refusal of a number of defenses, which he deemed inappropriate. Simply put, they are by reason of insanity; mitigating circumstances, and cultural. The defense calls Coop Rever to the stand."

The clerk handed Coop a Bible, which he handed back. He turned to the judge, "I'll swear to tell the truth, judge. As a form of thanksgiving to Koona Manitou, not your god."

The judge said, "Step down, Mr. Rever. Counsel come to the bench."

In a whispered conversation with the judge and prosecutor, Swezey told them that Koona Manitou was the Okwe's Supreme Being, God in other words, who created the world and everything in it. Judge Carrollton was a pragmatic jurist, whose primary interest was in getting through a trial without providing the defense an excuse for an appeal. He hoped to finish this case by Friday afternoon. A near blizzard was in the forecast for Saturday when he had a vision of sitting in front of the fire with a Tom & Jerry, his wife's wintertime specialty and 'Ten North Frederick.' He loved John O'Hara's work, and wife had given him the novel this morning for Valentine's Day. "How long do you expect him to be on the stand?"

"Half an hour for my case."

"And the prosecution?"

The district attorney knew the judge well. "I'll limit myself to half an hour your honor unless there is something extraordinary in the direct."

The judge looked at his watch. "It is now 11 o'clock. As soon as direct and cross are finished, we'll break for lunch. I'm limiting you to one hour summations. In the morning, I'll give my instructions to the jury and maybe we'll be out of here before the storm. I have a solution to the oath problem. Return to your seats gentlemen."

Swezey, who was just as practical as the judge, nodded. He returned to the defense table; Coop resumed his seat in the witness box.

Judge Carrollton said to the clerk, "No bible. Mr. Rever do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but truth."

"Yes, your honor." Coop wanted to get it over with too.

Swezey stood: "Mr. Rever, did you murder Arthur Kings, his wife, Mary Stoddard Kings, and their daughter, Mildred Kings?"

"No. On the night of Nov. 4, 1956, induced by Koona Manitou, I killed a yootseeos and the progenetrix of yootseeos. In an act of self defense, in a combat situation, I also killed Mildred Kings. I used a rock to smash their skulls, and a hunting knife to cut their throats." Coop looked into the audience. Behind the prosecutor, Kings' father, Phineas, worn by cancer and sorrow looked two decades older than his 75 years. Phineas' children and other members of the Kings family from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York along with Mildred King's parents, sisters and brothers occupied all of the seats on the prosecution side of the courtroom. They glared at Coop trying to project the hatred and disdain they felt for him. His only supporters in the audience were his parents, Redsky and Blueberry, who were ferried to the courthouse early every morning before the local citizenry and potential troublemakers began arriving for Kings County's trial of the century. No other Okwes dared come into Kingspost.

Swezey asked him to explain what he meant by those strange terms, yootseeos and progenetrix of yootseeos.

"A yootseeos is an insatiable blood-sucking leech. Arthur Kings was a yootseeos. A progenetrix of yootseeos is the potential mother of future yootseeos. Merry Kings could have mothered future generations of yootseeos."

"I understand that Koona Manitou is your name for God. How did Koona Manitou prompt you to kill the Kings family?"

"In a dream."

"Could you explain that further?"

"No. And I won't answer any more of your questions."

"Your witness, Mr. Rooney," Swezey said to the prosecutor.

The district attorney jumped up. He strode across the room, stopping halfway to the witness box. He had a reputation for seizing any opening in a defense case. He demonstrated his sharpness in his first question. "Mr. Rever, could you have refused to carry out your god's direction?"

Sitting in the jail, waiting this trial, Coop had thought through this very question. He answered honestly without the complications of what tortures Koona Manitou might have visited upon him for failing to kill Arthur and Merry Kings. "Yes," he said.

Rooney spun around, nodding towards the jury. He went back to the prosecution table. He shuffled a few papers, turned and asked another question. "I didn't hear Mildred Kings described as one of those whatevers. What was she?"

"She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could say she was a combatant, so fair game. In war, the soldier goes to the battlefield to kill the enemy."

"The Kings family wasn't at war with you?"

"I would say they were. Under the Treaty of the Green River Falls, George Washington and the United States agreed to leave the Okwe alone, undisturbed with the Valley as theirs for as long as the water falls over the Green River Falls. And the Okwe agreed to leave the residents of the United States unmolested. Well, as we all know, there came a day or two when the Green River dried up enough so the water didn't fall. Artie Kings seized that as an opportunity to declare the treaty moot and the Valley open to exploitation. His dam and lake and everything else. With the treaty moot, the Okwe returned to a state of war against the United States."

"You can't be serious in saying that your tiny tribe of what, 350 people, could take on the most powerful nation in the world with what a population of 165 million or so?"

"We wanted to be left in peace. Artie Kings moved against us. And through me, Koona Manitou, taught him a lesson that even the biggest and most powerful are vulnerable. I would call him a casualty of war."

The audience murmured. The revulsion District Attorney Rooney felt for Coop was reflected in the anger in his voice: "How can you describe Mrs. Kings and Merry Kings as legitimate casualties in your war? You were a highly-decorated soldier in the United States Army during the war in Europe. How can you justify by any stretch of the imagination the killing of Mrs. Kings and her teenage daughter?"

"Under the Okwe Way, the family flows through the woman, not the man. Artie Kings had set out to erase the Okwe. I retaliated by erasing his family, his blood from future generations forever."

"You son of a bitch," Phineas Kings said from the audience. "I don't want you to die. I don't want you to be a martyr for your crazy cause. I want to rot in a cage and suffer for the rest of your life like I am going to suffer because of you, and every member of my family sitting around me is going to suffer remembering that a brute like you killed so wantonly."

The judge banged his gavel.

"One more word judge. I swear on the graves of my son and granddaughter that I'll obliterate your stinking valley. The dam will be built and the damn Indians turned out of that land as they should have been two centuries ago."

"Congressman Kings, please," Judge Carrollton said, half expecting Swezey Johnson to move for a mistrial.

"No further questions," the district attorney said.

That afternoon, Swezey and the prosecutor delivered their summaries. Swezey spent about a quarter of an hour, telling the jurors in a monotone that indicated his disbelief in his own words that Coop Rever should be found innocent of murder, because he acted as a soldier in killing an enemy who threatened his people's way of life.

District Attorney Rooney, aware of the press gallery filled with reporters from the big cities, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh as well as the wire services and WKNG Radio, and WKNG TV Channel Six, with Joe Bentley covering it as a staffer of the Kingspost Chronicle and as a stringer for Eleonore's 'Une Vue Internationale', spent almost two hours depicting the victims, Artie Kings as a monumentally great man possibly headed for the White House, Mary Kings as the perfect mother, home keeper and hostess, Merry Kings, as the sweet daughter everyone would wish for; he went through the horrible details of the crime—faces battered, skulls broken, throats cut; and ended by saying this savage beast deserved to die.

Redsky and Bluebird had remained impassive in the best Okwe tradition throughout the trial. Still, there was a saturation point. She gasped and wept when the prosecutor called Coop a savage beast.

Judge Carrollton charged the jury the next morning. A brief summary of the facts alleged and the law involved. "Sentencing is my job," the judge said. The jury filed out.

As soon as the door closed behind them, the judge called the prosecutor and Swezey into his office to tell them that he didn't see a need for probation reports and motions and hearings on the penalty since he decided the extenuating circumstances of a political motive, as much as he disagreed with it, as well as Coop's exemplary life, called for some understanding on the part of the state. No death sentence. Neither attorney objected. They assumed the judge was acting in deference to Phineas Kings' curse-like wish that Coop be caged for the rest of his life. Before they could leave the judge's office, the bailiff knocked on the door.

"The jury's got a verdict, your honor."

The judge looked at his watch. "Fifteen minutes. Must be a record."

The jurors returned to the courtroom. Every one of them stared at Coop, pride and vengeance playing across the faces. "Guilty!" the foreman said to each of the first degree murder charges.

Judge Carrolton told the defendant to rise, and with the jury still in the box, asked if he had anything to say for himself.

"As I said on the stand, judge, I consider myself a prisoner of war outside of your jurisdiction. I wore a uniform into battle, my war paint. I didn't surrender. I was captured. Red men have always suffered at the hands of the whites, because your military has been more powerful, we have been near drowned in the ocean of your population, and you have been more brutal, always willing to destroy what we need to live, murdering our women and children, taking our land, trying to leave us with nothing. So send me to death. I am not the first innocent to fall victim to knowos and I'm certain I won't be the last."

"Mr. Rever I couldn't disagree with you more. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania certainly has jurisdiction in this case, a murder case. You went into the home of a peaceful family in the middle of the night and as the evidence so clearly showed you murdered them, not as a soldier in battle, but at best as a terrorist for a cause no else believes in. I hereby sentence you to three consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison. May you spend that time reflecting on your crimes and somehow bring yourself to ask the surviving members of the Kings family, who have given so much to this community and this country, for forgiveness."

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Coop lay staring up at the bottom of the upper bunk which held his distant, mostly silent cellmate Gray Cloud, a Seneca from the Southern Tier of New York. Eight months and seven days down with the rest of his life to go in the boredom of the Big Dump with its dreadful food and the ugly population of beastly guards and inmates. The exercise yard, enclosed by the high prison buildings and 40-foot walls, was a dusty, gray wasteland, the surface ground to a fine grit by more than 100 years of the feet of cons, shuffling, walking, dancing, grinding. No running. That was prohibited. Clouds, threatening black clouds, rolled across the blue sky. There was an occasional flash of lightening and the sound of thunder, at times the sun could be seen. Aside from those snippets of nature, there were no trees, no grass, no flowers, no flowing water, no stars, no moon. To twist the knife in the wound of his punishment, they denied him writing materials. Although he knew he could get around that easily enough, he didn't want to. He didn't have energy enough to write. They denied him access to the library. The books on the library cart, trundled by a trustee along the tier every Tuesday, were mostly worn paperbacks of comic-book level novels with missing pages, presumably of the characters' sexual encounters, and sometimes the final chapters. He had given up even trying to read. There was little conversation with Gray Cloud. The Seneca was somewhere in his 20s with the deadened, shiny face of a hardened con, a missing eye, and an emptiness that Coop could feel. Neither had anything much to say to the other. Usually their exchanges were in the sign language of nods.

His day had begun, as every day did since sometime in the first month in the Big Dump, not with a ceremony of thanks, what did he have to be thankful for, but with Coop saying to the Koona Manitou, You got me in here, get me out of here! No response came inside his head or in his dreams. Now he lay in the desert between the 5:30 lockdown and his first sleep in a practiced stupor, thoughts, memories, angers racing through his mind. He remembered and regretted the cold-blooded decision he made on the first day of D-Day to plunge his bayonet into the throat of the wounded German soldier. Had he not made that decision, he would have escaped becoming the Dream Dancer and the killer of Artie Kings and his family. He had come to the conclusion that Sheehays had lived so long because none of the Wolf Clan who fought in WWI had the blood of an enemy on their trench knives or bayonets. Faced with three consecutive 25 years to life sentences, Coop realized he could be in the Big Dump until he was 116 in the year 2032. And, maybe if he lived on, they would never let him out.

When he awoke at 8:30 or 9 or 9:30 PM, never later, he would confront the Koona Manitou again with his complaint and demand: You got me in here, get me out of here! He repeated it over and over for minutes or hours until falling into sleep. A process repeated every night and through the night until the prison came awake in the morning for inspection and another dreadful breakfast.

"Hey Chief."

Coop came awake, pulled from a dream of opening the door of their apartment to greet a smiling Eleonore, her arms laden with bread and fresh vegetables for his dinner.

"Not you Lost His Eye. Go back to sleep. You Chief."

"What the fuck time is it?" Coop said, furious at the interruption of his sweet dream of Eleonore.

"Calm down, Chief, I'm here on a friendly mission. It's 7:30, too early to be in bed. Alone." He laughed. "I've got a delivery for you." He held up a square package tied in rough twine. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Spam, bread, Scotch, dessert. Yum, yum, yum." And he smiled.

Coop flushed. "Shove it up your ass," he said, knowing that there were no gifts in prison, just exchanges. Cigarets, money, or your mouth and ass for goodies. He sat up on his bunk.

"The package is from Eleonore, Chief. You sign the chit. You get the package and we're in business. Your Eleonore wants a receipt."

Coop stepped across the cell to the locked bar door. "Who are you?" he asked, but he knew this was Rocky Sullivan, a thug from New York's West Side docks, in for killing an off-duty cop in a barroom brawl in Philadelphia. He was the Catholic chaplain's assistant with a license to roam the Big Dump seeking souls for his nominal master, Father Ignatius Garrity, S.J. and to service his customers.

Rocky was a jailhouse entrepreneur who provided real food, dope, decent wine or whiskey. No beer. Beer was too voluminous to handle. No boys. Rocky was no pimp.

"I'm Rocky Sullivan," he said overcoming the temptation to say, 'You know who I am.' "There's a note inside for you. From Eleonore."

"What does it say?"

Rocky smiled. "I don't read other people's mail."

Coop took the package. He tried not to smile in the anticipation of a letter from Eleonore, but he was unable to suppress that sign of pleasure. In doing so, he violated one of the rules of prison: a display of a hard, frozen face. He hadn't heard from Eleonore or anyone else from the outside. He suspected his mail was being held, and probably the letters he mailed out. He held the package in his two hands, looking through the bars at Rocky. He said, "Unless you read French, Sullivan, you couldn't read it anyhow."

"Call me Rocky, Chief. If things go right, you should be seeing me twice a month."

Coop examined the package. Hefting it. There was some weight to it. "What did this cost?"

Rocky smiled. "It's gauche, isn't that the French word, to ask the price of a gift."

Coop signed the receipt and handed to back to Rocky.

"One more thing," Rocky said. "How would you like a cup of real tea and a slice of home-made pound cake, maybe with a lemon sauce or maybe a scoop of ice cream?" Rocky explained that he had made an appointment for Coop for 6:30 next Tuesday with his priest, and that was part of the price for a continued flow of packages. He said he needed to keep Iggy Garrity happy. When he wasn't daydreaming about being Father Connolly in 'Angels with Dirty Faces' or Father Duffy in 'The Fighting 69th', the priest longed to do what Jesuits before him had done: convert American Indians to the one, true faith. "Enjoy your goodies. I'll stop by to take you down to Iggy's den on Tuesday."

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Father Garrity, dressed in the Roman Catholic uniform of black suit and white collar, greeted Coop with a broad grin and a hearty handshake. "Welcome, welcome, welcome. Great to meet you finally Coop Rever. May I call you, Coop?" The priest's eyes, wary and examining, reflected the fear rolling through his innards, although he seriously doubted anyone would attack a priest, and Rocky, whom he knew was as fierce as any man walking the earth, was in the kitchenette, a swinging door away. Yet, a pagan inspired by his god to murder had entered his den. He knew from his readings of 'The Jesuit Relations' how savage, how driven by superstition an Indian could be. And this one, with his bronze, stony face, his lips clenched tight, downturned at the corners of his mouth, had murdered an entire family in the most brutal fashion imaginable, without pity and afterwards without remorse. He had read the interview with the anthropologist from Penn State, a woman with a Jewish name he couldn't remember, who claimed that Coop Rever was the latest in a long line of visionaries who transmitted messages from the Great Spirit to the Okwe in times of crisis. Father Garrity wondered, as did the Jesuits writing the reports that formed 'The Jesuit Relations' in the Seventeenth Century, whether this Great Spirit was the Devil in another guise? "Please, sit down," he said to Coop.

"Rocky tells me you might be able to help me with something, Father," Coop said without preamble.

"Sit down, then we'll talk," the priest said, conscious that his usual opening gambit of asking permission to call the convict by his first name had been ignored by this one. He sat in the one of the four leather easy chairs set in a circle around a pale wooden coffee table. Coop sat opposite him, instead of catty-cornered as Father Garrity would have preferred.

Rocky came through the swinging door with the tray of tea things, pound cake, and a dish of fresh whipped cream. He nodded to Coop. He set the tray on a cherry wood hutch, whose upper shelves were filled with china cups and plates, tumblers, a crystal decanter and four stemmed red wine glasses. He transferred the china tea pot, cups and cake dishes, silverware, clothe napkins, the sugar and milk service along with the pound cake and bowl of whipped cream to the coffee table.

"Thank you, Rocky. That will be all for the time being. You might stay close by in case we're in need of anything else."

Rocky smiled. "Close by and ready, Father," he said winking at Coop. He could smell the priest's fear.

Father Garrity poured the tea. "I take mine black. Ever since I was at Fort Benning, we were in the field one time and no way to get cream or sugar for our coffee or tea, I've drunk my coffee and tea black." He hoped Coop would take that as an opening to inquire about his Army days, an opportunity to show they had something in common. He didn't.

Coop dumped three spoonfuls of sugar and a dollop of milk into his tea. He sipped the hot tea, his taste buds almost shocked by the pleasure of real tea, well-made tea rolling through his mouth and down his throat. He paused in enjoyment.

"A piece of cake?" the priest asked. "I made it myself from a French recipe, as it turns out. A pound of eggs, a pound of flour, a pound of butter. I bake as a form of relaxation. Gets my mind off some of the things I see in the Big Dump." He smiled. Another proffer at establishing common ground, that the padre as well as the inmates called the called the Western Penitentiary at Saugerties, a massive, unkempt, 100-year-old prison, the Big Dump. Coop's only response was a request for whipped cream on his slice of cake.

They ate their cake and drank their tea in silence. Coop had more tea and more cake, ladling a pile of the whipped cream on his serving. Father Garrity tried to suppress the irritation that welled up, knowing from experience some convicts were so intellectually or psychologically damaged by the horror of their crimes or the prison environment that opening a hole in the wall around them could be time consuming and in some cases impossible. He knew he shouldn't be using negotiating tactics in what was a missionary venture, the salvation of a pagan soul, perhaps one in the thrall of Satan. This con had not responded when he asked whether he could call him by his first name, so in reaction, he had not offered any response to the suggestion by Rocky that the priest's help might be forthcoming. Please God, forgive me for my sin of pride. He decided to try again by responding to Coop Rever's query. "So Mr. Rever, how can I help you? You said there was something I might help you with."

Coop wiped his lips with the clothe napkin. He had forgotten how nice a soft napkin could feel. He placed the napkin next to his cake plate.

"Another piece?" the priest asked.

Coop said, "I prefer you don't call me anything. I'll know when you're talking to me. And there is something you might be able to do for me. I've been inside for 8 months and haven't gotten the letters my wife sent to me and she hasn't gotten mine." Eleonore's letter in the package told him that she hadn't received any letters from him. She didn't know how long she could go on writing him every week without a response. Did he intend to end their marriage?

Father Garrity raised his right index finger, a signal for a moment of patience. He went to the hutch, pulling open a drawer and extracting two bundles of letters bound by rubber bands. The priest handed the letters to Coop. "Rocky told me about your problem, and I went immediately to the warden. I said, 'How can a good Christian like yourself do this to a man?' His reasons were logical. I'm not going to repeat them. One snag was that your wife wrote in French. Fortunately, she has a nice, clear hand, and I have a friend who teaches French. She translated them and to the warden's satisfaction found nothing objectionable. I sent your letters to your wife along with a note explaining if she could to please write in English, it would speed the censorship process."

"I'm grateful beyond belief, Father," Coop said, anxious now to return to his cell to read Eleonore's letters. The two packets, lightly scented with her favorite perfume, sent a warm and sensual reminder through his fingers what he had lost forever. He rose. "Thank you for the tea and cake. I never expected this to be so pleasant an experience, Father."

"May I have a moment more of your time? Mr. Rever."

"You can call me Coop, Father."

"Sit down. Please." The priest waited until Coop eased himself onto the edge of the chair, obviously poised to rise and leave. "I had hoped to talk to you this evening about the state of your soul, of your conscience as well."

"I'm not a Catholic, Father."

"I know that. Does your wife have a faith?"

"Eleonore's a Catholic, and so is our little girl."

"Were you ever attracted to the faith?" Father Garrity asked seizing the opening.

"Not at all, Father."

"Perhaps we could kneel together and pray for your salvation? For the forgiveness of God. You do believe in God, don't you?" This was the opening question on the test that Father Garrity hoped to apply to determine whether this poised, well-educated, accomplished man was driven to his murders by the Devil.

"I believe in the Koona Manitou; in English the Great Spirit."

"Are you familiar with 'The Jesuit Relations,' the accounts of the Jesuit priests who went among the Huron, the Iroquois and the Algonquins in the Seventeenth Century? The lives of those Indians were shaped, as I believe yours was, by a spirit they called the Manitou, who spoke to them in dreams."

"Koona Manitou has never spoken to me, Father. I wish he would. I wish he would explain what I'm doing here. Why he hasn't freed me from this place."

The priest said: "The Jesuit fathers reported that this Manitou was a manifestation of the Devil. The Evil One used sorcerers as his intermediaries, speaking to them through their dreams. Perhaps you should ask yourself whether a good spirit would ask you to kill an innocent child and an innocent woman."

Coop never expected to be asked by Father Garrity to discuss the motives of the Koona Manitou. He was surprised that he wasn't angered by this Catholic priest and his predecessors presuming that theirs was the one true God and the Koona Manitou was the Devil. There were so many ways he could have replied to put the Catholic Church in the context of the Devil's work. The Inquisition. Slavery. War. The theft of the New World from the native peoples. Instead he spoke words that sounded awkward the moment they left his mouth: "In the Okwe Way, Father, women and girls are not innocents, they are not killed by accident. They provide the path for generations to come."

"What a bestial thing to say." The Jesuit trembled, trying to overcome the revulsion and fear this cold-blooded murderer stirred in him. He bowed his head in prayer for a moment, asking Jesus Christ to give him the strength to treat Coop as a soul to be saved, not an appalling brute beyond the pale. He repeated in his mind, the Jesuit motto with which he preceded every significant undertaking of his life from schoolboy exams to the rescue of a man or woman polluted by habitual sins: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. He pushed his lower lip above the upper lip, wetting it. He wiped the moisture away with the fingers of his right hand. He wanted to get away from this man. He was suddenly frightened by the thought that the Devil was present in him and could reach out to grasp him. He made the sign of the cross in the air between them. He said: "I must ask you to consider whether this Great Spirit of yours could indeed be the Evil One, the Devil. God, as we know Him, and the Son He sent to earth to save us from our sins to save us from the way of the Devil (Father Garrity considered that a nice play on the Okwe Way), our God of goodness would never ask us to murder on His behalf."

"Thank you, Father. Thank you for the tea. Thank you for giving me something to consider in the loneliness of my cell. Thank you most of all for giving me Eleonore's letters to read." He stood, extending his hand.

The priest hesitated and said to himself: 'St. Isaac Jogues protect me.' They clasped hands. Father Garrity's hand wet with sweat. He spoke in a loud voice, a challenge to the Evil One that he was invoking his saint as a shield in this battle for Coop Rever's soul. He was certain who would win. "Do you know who St. Isaac Jogues was, Coop? He was a Jesuit father who suffered terribly at the hands of the Iroquois. They cut off his fingers when he first tried to bring the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ to them. He escaped, but was called again by God to return to his mission among the Iroquois. On Oct. 18, 1646, that was 311 years and 11 days ago, a savage crushed the back of Father Jogues' head with a tomahawk, martyring him."

"And you think the Devil made him do it?"

"I ask you to consider this, Coop. That act of savage murder turned Father Jogues into St. Isaac Jogues." He stared at Coop as though watching his statement being hammered into his head. "In a very real sense, Isaac Jogues martyrdom has brought us together today. When I was a boy and a good nun told me the story of St. Isaac Jogues, I decided then and there that I wanted to be a Jesuit, to spread the faith among American Indians."

"Thanks again for the letters, Father. I'm not interested in being converted. I think Rocky has to take me back to my cell." He walked to the kitchenette door to tell Rocky he was ready to go. As they left Father Garrity's den, the priest made the sign of the cross and said in parting: "God bless you."

Coop managed to read six of the letters before lights out. Eleonore ended each letter with the same sentence that summed up their mutual longing: 'Je suis affamé d'être dans le paradis avec vous.' (I hunger to be in paradise with you.)

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Sweaty and irritated from the heat and noise of metal presses, and the fog of cutting oil polluting the air, Coop stepped out of the Big Dump's license-plate factory into the cool, breathable air of the yard. He walked across the pounded earthen surface of the huge enclosure where the cons clustered, standing and sitting, a few throwing softballs and footballs back and forth under the bored watch of the guards in their towers atop the 40-foot walls. "Hey Earthquake," cons called with ingratiating amusement to Coop as he went by. They generally despised niggers, red or black, but he commanded respect. He had arrived in the Big Dump with a reputation. His crimes had been celebrated in the newspapers and magazines. A killer. A cop shooter. A man who had soldiered in WW II and had been a war correspondent in Korea and Indochina. A quiet man, physically able to take care of himself. He knew all about surviving. And, he walked with 360-degrees of awareness.

Coop had yet to be tested. None of the wolves wanted his ass. He was too old and seasoned, wore a hard Okwe face. And, he was lucky. Somehow he didn't offend anyone, the crazies or the gunfighters—the Big Dump nickname for cons building their reputations with fatal encounters—in a world where an inadvertent glance could be taken as a challenge, a reason for bloodshed.

Coop reached the eastern end of the yard, to join Gray Cloud, his cellmate, leaning against the rough stone wall in the soft warmth of the early November sun. "Ho Gray Cloud," Coop said in greeting. He tapped two Gitanes out of his pack, offering one to Gray Cloud, who accepted it with a nod of gratitude. They lit up, taking deep drags, backs against the wall, looking at the blue sky. They didn't speak.

Among a population of thousands, there were only six Indians in the Big Dump: Coop, Gray Cloud, two Mingos from West Virginia, and two Oglalas from South Dakota. The Mingos and the Oglalas had been a stick-up team that robbed big-stake card games in Pennsylvania and New York. After they finished their ten years in Pennsylvania, New York was waiting with more time for them. The four held themselves in high esteem, because of the nature of their convictions and their unrepentant devotion to the criminal life. None of the whites or blacks dared cross them. They were dangerous, vengeful men.

The two Mingos and the two Oglalas tagged Gray Cloud with the name Lost His Eye to the delight of other cons and the corrections officers. Rocky Sullivan told Coop the rebaptism to Lost His Eye came after Gray Cloud lost his virginity and his eye to the Gouger, a beast kept in the Isolation Tier on the first floor of the west wing. Gray Cloud arrived in the Big Dump as an arrogant 19-year-old car thief. The wolves--the sexual predators who seized on the weak, the young, and the beautiful—were kept at bay by Gray Cloud's size and strength, his obvious willingness to defend himself, and his dark skin with high cheekbones that gave him a sinister appearance. For two years, he walked tough, watched his back, and was accepted into the circle of the four stick up warriors. His mistake was to sass Tim Dermody, a corrections officer, in front of other cons and Dermody's father, a Captain of Guards.

On the assumption that having been savaged and raped by the Gouger meant he had been transformed into a girlie, a pair of wolves picked the lock on Gray Cloud/Lost His Eye's cell one Tuesday night. Their intended victim slammed his shank into the left eye of the first attacker. The second one fled. Gray Cloud/Lost His Eye pushed the wounded wolf onto the walkway, wiped up the blood as best he could, cleaned his prints from the shank, and threw the used weapon over the railing to fall five stories into the arena below. The wolf died, and no one came to Gray Cloud/Lost His Eye's cell in the intervening years, but he was shunned. In the unforgiving world of the Big Dump. He had been fucked by a con, and perhaps should be considered a woman, although a dangerous woman, a woman to be scorned by the stand up cons.

Coop didn't like most of the prison inmates with whom he was forced to pass his life. He stood with Gray Cloud to demonstrate to himself he was different from the horde of losers and criminals, the cons and guards, who populated the Big Dump. When the four stick-up warriors indicated to Coop that Lost His Eye was an unworthy, he said nothing. He continued to stand with him in the yard, watching the other prisoners. He always addressed him respectfully as Gray Cloud.

With the sun starting down beyond the 40-foot western wall, Coop stepped away from Gray Cloud to intercept Rocky, who was hurrying by. He went through the formality of offering a Gitane to Rocky. He whispered a question to Rocky: Whether his buffet of services included a way out of the Big Dump? Rocky told said," Where there's money, there's always a way." Rocky told him that he had studied prison carefully, deciding that the only the path to freedom was under the wall. Three cons, all lifers like him, had tunneled out in 1930, and gotten away. The Gouger had tried twice and failed. In 1935, the Gouger was burrowing under the wall when his tunnel collapsed. The guards dug him out. In 1943, he almost made it. He was climbing out of his tunnel on the bank of the river when a night-time fisherman spotted him, howled in surprise or fright, and was beaten to death by the Gouger. The fisherman's partner rowed to mid-stream and screamed for help, loud enough to attract a state trooper on patrol. That trooper came running and shot the Gouger, taking a piece out of his left thigh. The Gouger got life in Isolation—24 hours a day in a lighted cell or a darkened cell, at the whim of his keepers, with a 15-minute cold water shower twice a month, visitors only at Christmas and Easter, one letter out and one letter or package in once a month, no more commissary privileges, which was no burden on the Gouger since he had no one to send him money or packages. "That's the risk. They'll stick it up your ass if they catch you. They really don't like people escaping," Rocky said.

Static came first. A sound that silenced their conversation alerted the occupants of the yard that something was about to announced over the yard loudspeaker. "Inmate KK Dash 57317 Dash 65. Inmate KK Dash 57317 Dash 65. Report to the central office."

Coop said, "I got to go."

"That you?"

He pinched the hot coal from the tip of his cigaret. He put the butt in his top pocket. "See ya," he said, curious about what lay ahead.

Others in the yard watched him cross the barren, dusty space. He walked through a long corridor to the edge of the rotunda, the heart of the Big Dump from which the four wings, the North, South, East, and West, radiated. He identified himself. The corrections officer, who didn't know him, checked his number and photo before admitting him into a foyer through a locked gate. The gate behind him slammed shut and one in front of him opened. He stepped inside and walked past a glassed and barred window at the direction of the corrections officer inside to a doorway. Another corrections officer said through a small opening in a solid steel door. "Identify yourself, inmate." Coop told him who he was. A list was checked. The door swung open. "Go to the end, turn left, take a seat in Cubby Six.

He had never been here before, but he knew this was the visitor's room. He sat down on the straight-backed chair, screwed to the floor. He waited, looking through the glass. His eyes widened as she came into the cubby on the other side of the glass.

Eleonore!

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Eleonore, smiling broadly with tears pouring down her face, pressed the palm of her right hand against the glass that divided them. Coop rose to do the same, ignoring his trembling foot. A rush of sexual hunger and intense love surged through the intended barrier arousing and frustrating them.

"Sit down visitor and inmate," a harsh voice above them said. The corrections officer on the ramp not more than five feet above Coop referred to a piece of paper in his hand, continued, "Inmate KK 5731765."

They sat. Tears streamed down Eleonore's face. "Mon beau garcon. Mon homme rouge noble."

"No gobbledygook. Speak in English or don't speak," the guard said.

She turned to English, "I've missed you so much my lovely boy, my noble red man."

He started to speak, but couldn't. The emotions flooding his body and his mind threatened to allow the tears pressing against his eyelids to flow embarrassingly.

Eleonore whispered that this special visit had been arranged by a State Senator who knew the warden, who was on some kind of a committee overseeing the prisons. He had been shot down in France and rescued from the Germans by the Marquis. Not her unit, but a friend's. When the friend read Joe Bentley's story in 'Une Vue Internationale' describing how she had been blocked from entering the United States because of her Left Wing connections, he wrote the State Senator, a Francophile, telling him an opportunity was at hand to be as unselfishly courageous to a Frenchwoman as the Marquis had been to him. The friend flew from Paris to New York for a reunion of old comrades in arms. The Senator told him that if Eleonore could slip unnoticed into Pennsylvania, he could clear her way for a visit to the prison.

Eleonore flew to Canada and walked across the border at Niagara Falls, where Joe Bentley met her. He drove her to the prison. They arrived hours before the rendezvous time with the warden at a local restaurant. Eleonore used the time to circle the fortress-like prison with its 40-foot walls and surveillance towers looking for a soft spot. She had been part of a team that broke two high-ranking members of the Marquis out of a village jail and out of the grip of the Gestapo in Provence. She saw the guards with rifles in the towers, and the heavy steel gates at the entrances. The breakout in Provence was accomplished with blazing guns and bloodshed by underground soldiers willing to die as well as kill for their cause. It couldn't be done here, she decided.

She met the warden in the parking lot of a diner near the prison at the appointed time. Joe stayed behind while she drove with the warden to the prison. Following his instructions, she spoke to no one. He guided her through a side entrance and a maze of locked gates that were opened for him without question to the visitor's room.

Speaking softly to Coop through a circular wire screen at face level, she said, "Do you remember my famous Provence adventure? I thought we might do the same here, but no, it would be just impossible."

"I've been talking to someone about a way out myself."

"Speak in a normal tone of voice," the guard said.

She forced a smile at the guard, and said in a clear loud voice, "Une autre possibilité; peut-être, nous pourrions creuser un tunnel sous le mur. Il a été fait avant."

"Goddamn it, say that in English," the guard ordered.

She smiled a little more broadly. "I said, if we ever want to get together again, I'll have to dig a tunnel under the wall. A tunnel of love." She expected that to amuse the guard.

"Any more of that bullshit and you're out of here. I'd like to know what we're doing here after visiting hours anyhow," the guard said.

Coop studied her face, wanting to remember this moment when she looked so beautiful. Her high cheek bones and smooth skin with a touch of rouge; blonde hair pulled back from her face and forehead, her sharp nose, long fingers, her slender body. Hers was a reserved, sophisticated beauty that for the uninitiated disguised how lustfully passionate she was. She had always told him that the outer limit of sexual abstinence for her, and only because of her love for him, was six months. He forced out the words, "It's been just about a year."

"I haven't. Have you?" There was a sudden sternness in her voice.

"Not yet and never. I don't think I could find a man or a woman who could take your place."

"It hasn't been easy. I stopped for a drink in a bar in Montreal, the place was a little rough, and these two tough looking characters looked at me with such open lasciviousness that I experienced a fear that if they followed me out of the bar, they would rape me. I have to admit I said to myself, maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea."

"What happened?"

"They went home to their wives and children, and I went back to my hotel to fantasize about love in the afternoon with you. You remember our last afternoon in Provence?"

"I remember it all the time." He knew the odds of escape were infinitesimally against him. He had been looking for an opening from the moment he arrived in the Big Dump, a way under or over or even through the wall to freedom. Rocky Sullivan and Eleonore separately had raised the prospect of tunneling out. Perhaps that was a signal from the Koona Manitou that that would be the way out. A dream would confirm it. His dreams, and he dreamt and remembered every night, on the dark side had been nightmares of smashing Mrs. Kings' face to a pulp or horrifying scenes of bloodshed from his wars as a soldier and a correspondent, or more pleasantly of encounters with naked women, on occasion Eleonore or Snowdrop, and once with both, a ménage a trois, he relished in his waking, dreary days.

The sadness he projected was contagious. More tears flowed from her eyes. "Oh how I miss you in every way. And how Elise misses you. I had to tell her you wouldn't be coming back to us for a long, long time, if ever, and she asked me if you had died."

"I don't want her to know I'm here," he said with a flash of anger.

"She'll find out some day."

"No. Tell her I went to Algeria and died there. Another useless casualty of another unnecessary war. And you can find someone to love you instead of rape you. Just don't tell me about it. And if I ever find out, I'll understand."

She wiped away her tears. She stared at him for a moment. "I always knew I loved you, but I never realized how intensely until you were gone forever. Alongside of my love for you, the feelings I had for Raymond are insignificant. They're gone. You are the love of my life. No matter what, I'll always love only you."

"If you do find someone, you can divorce me. I'll understand."

She tried not to be angry at his response. She said, "Let's make a pact, I won't divorce you, you won't divorce me. We'll always love one another. For eternity."

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

He dug into the soft dark-brown sand with a short spade, chilled by the wetness of the tunnel. There were no supports on the ragged sides or roof. A fear of being buried alive in a collapse ate at the core of his being. He realized that he could see as clearly as on a sunny day, yet there was no source of this light. He paused to consider this anomaly. And snapped awake to the metallic grind of a key turning the cell-door lock. He reached under his bunk for the barbed shank and was out of bed and on his feet, the weapon in his right hand hidden by his thigh, his heart pounding, his left foot trembling in the stress of the unexpected. The door was pulled open revealing two corrections officers on the walkway.

"Let's go Earthquake."

Coop pulled his trousers from a wooden cupboard under the bunk, slipping the shank into a cloth sheath sewn into the waistband.

"What's going on," Lost His Eye asked from the upper bunk.

"Gonna take your asshole buddy downstairs to the honeymoon suite."

Lost His Eye recognized the speaker as Tim Dermody, and he said over his fear of punishment, a beating or solitary, "That's Dermody. He's taking you down to the Gouger..."

"Shut the fuck up," Dermody said.

"...To be fucked," Lost His Eye continued.

"Should I take my things?" Coop asked as he finished dressing.

"You don't need to bring anything but yourself," Dermody said.

"I want to see the warden, Mr. Dermody" Coop said.

"Put in a request tomorrow," Dermody responded drawing laughter from the second guard.

"Anything happens to me, you can have my stuff," Coop said to Lost His Eye.

"You afraid? Don't be afraid, Earthquake. No one's gonna cut your throat tonight. You're not a helpless girl or woman," Dermody said with an artificially weepy voice.

Coop knew that Tim Dermody was a nephew of Kings County's Sheriff Dermody. "This because of Arthur Kings, Mr. Dermody? Why after all this time." He realized as he spoke that it was after midnight. The new day was the anniversary of his slaughter of the Kings family.

"Just shut your hole and let's go," Dermody said in a commanding voice.

Coop took his jacket from a hook, and stepped outside. The other officer pulled the jacket from his hand and threw it back into the cell, He slid the door closed, and locked it.

They went down five flights of stairs. The other guard unlocking the barred gate on the first floor with a master key. They led Coop into the Isolation Tier, to Cell 13. Dermody drew a nightstick from his belt and knocked on the solid steel door. He slipped open the port. "Gouger! You awake. Got a little something for you. Get up and stand at the far end of your cell." He gripped Coop's upper left arm and nodded to his cohort, who unlocked the door with one hand and held his club in the other.

Coop could sense the apprehension of Dermody and other guard. He relived the intense fear of D-Day associating the squeal of the opening cell door with the sudden clang of the ramp falling onto Omaha Beach. The soldiers moving forward to be cut down by the scything machine gun fire. He had climbed over the side of the landing craft, dropping into the smothering water that clogged his nose and throat. Dermody's hand pushed him into the cell, no way around whatever awful fate lay ahead this time. "This is an anniversary present from Uncle Mike," Dermody said.

The Gouger, his member erect, stood still and naked, a living pornographic statue of a fiend aroused. His world into which few willingly intruded was a gray, narrow cell with a stinking seatless toilet, a bunk with a dour lumpy straw mattress without a pillow and a lone thin blanket to warm him in the piercing cold of the western Pennsylvania winters. There was a little sink with a cold water spigot, and a metal stool welded to the floor. A low-watt bulb in a cage in the ceiling cast a yellow light.

"Welcome, lady killer," the Gouger said, breaking the tense silence, blowing air from his two nostrils, and sucking spit through all the teeth in his mouth. He was built like a bear, not as huge as a grizzly, but big with thick arms and legs and a wide body and a neck that seemed joined to his shoulders without a throat by sloping muscles. "So this is the killer of a Congressman and his lady and their little girl. Did you do them too?" He opened his mouth in a dry laugh that showed the crowns of his broken and blackened teeth.

The solid door closed with a bang, the key was turned in the lock. Coop, his heart pounding so that he could hardly breath, put his left foot forward, his left hand waist high and slipped the shank from its sheath, holding it pointed down beside his right thigh.

The Gouger smiled and looked into his eyes across the span of the cell. "I ast you. Did you fuck the Congressman and his women before or after you cut their throats?"

"Neither."

"Missed opportunity. I prefer little boys but I do what I can get. Now I got you." He pushed the head of his penis down, and smiled as it sprung upward. "Now they promised me a treat, a nice tender, young one for doing you. Gotta fuck you up a little too." He sucked his teeth again. "Do you have a name?"

"I am the Earthquake. Hije etsootaka in my language." Coop's prison name. He didn't want to diminish his other names by saying them aloud in the presence of this malevolent thing.

"I am the Gouger. You know why they called that? I suppose they could call me the Poker cause I like to poke my cock up asses. A woman if I have to. A man if I have to. But I prefer boys. And I like to leave my mark. I don't know how many people I fucked or killed, it only occurred to me, oh maybe ten year ago, to let 'em live and mark 'em to keep count. Just before they put me away in here. I got 29 right eyes gouged out to my record." He held up his left thumb. "I'm left handed. You gonna be number 30."

"Aren't you being a little foolish, warning me?" His voice trembled.

"Timmy Dermody told me to let you know what you're in for. He wants to find out if you're a pussy. Whether you're just gonna bend over or put up a fight. I like a scrapper. I'll tell ya. I'm gonna fuck you up no matter what. Fuck up your face. A couple of teeth, an eye. And then fuck you up the ass. You weren't a red nigger, Timmy Dermody told me to say that, I'd give you a choice, which you want first, the poking or the gouging, but I got my instructions. I got a contract. I'm a man who sticks to his word." He laughed. "I don't know what I enjoy more, gouging or fucking. Both ways you stick it in, thumb or cock. If you got a virgin he howls. A big cock like mine hurts a lot the first time. The thumb always hurts a course." He was enjoying himself immensely, scratching his balls as he talked. Several times wrapping his right hand around his swollen erection and sliding it along the length of it.

Coop took a deep breath and sang his death song in Okwe:

I have lived the dream

I have lived the dream

I have been bold

I have been bold

I am ready to cross

the covered bridge

to the real world.

I am ready to cross

the covered bridge

to the real world.

The mournful sound of Coop's dirge sent the Gouger into body-shaking laughter. Catching his breath, he howled: "Hoyyyy-a hoyyyy-a." His mocking Indian sound was dying as he stepped across the cell.

Coop fell to his knees, grabbed the Gouger's erect poker in his left hand and swung his shank upwards, aiming for the sack holding his balls, intending to rip upwards to cut through the testicles and penis, but in the collision of their bodies, the razor-sharp blade pierced his attacker's thigh, cutting into an artery. Coop fell backward under the weight of the Gouger's body. The Gouger screamed from the pain of his penis being twisted, unaware at first that the dampness that soaked him was his own blood bursting out of the severed artery. The Gouger was puzzled by the unfamiliar weakness that allowed Coop to slip from under him. The power of his hands and arms ebbed, leaving him helpless under Coop's pounding fists pummeling his face, crushing his nose as he slipped into unconsciousness and towards death.

Tim Dermody who had been watching through the portal the unfolding drama of two gladiators in confrontation, song, and ferocious battle, was consumed by rage as Coop pushed himself onto his knees, stood, and turned to see his tormentor as the witness to his triumph. Dermody slammed the portal's metal cover shut. He told the other guard to fetch Jimmy Locklie, the night-watch sergeant, and Monty, the trustee, from the prison hospital unit along with a straitjacket.

Coop sat hunched in exhaustion on the Gouger's scant pile of clothes inside the cell, watching the blood in the yellow light spread across the tile floor to the metal wall becoming a rivulet flowing under the locked door. "Thank you, Koona Manitou," Coop said as he watched the life force bleed out of the Gouger and he waited for the guards to surge into the cell, as he knew they would, to reassert their authority with punches and curses. He decided he would be passive in response to their rage and overwhelming power.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

When the reinforcements arrived, Tim Dermody slid open the portal in the solid door. He told Coop to stand up, put his hands behind him, and face the far wall. He unlocked the door and pushed inward, banging the Gouger's head while Jimmy Locklie, the night-watch sergeant with his usual unrestrained willingness to violence flung himself into the cell stepping without hesitation on the prostrate Gouger's arm and leg. He purposely slammed into Coop's back smashing him into the wall. Coop fell stunned to his knees, immediately gagging as Locklie's nightstick was slipped across his throat and snapped into a well-practiced chokehold. Coop's hands automatically went to the nightstick in a vain attempt to break free. Locklie's knee was jammed against the back of his neck giving the night-watch sergeant a devastating leverage and absolute control of the prisoner. "Put your fucking hands at your side or I'll crush your windpipe, you son of a bitch," Locklie snarled. Coop dropped his hands passively allowing Tim Dermody and the other officer to entangle him in the straight jacket. They held him against the wall while Monty and Locklie dragged the Gouger out of the cell.

"I'm not getting a pulse," Monty said. "He's gone. Dead."

"What?" Dermody's question came out a wail of shock and disbelief, a realization that serious trouble lay ahead.

Coop laughed. An involuntary reaction and Dermody whirled grabbing him by the hair on the top of his head. "Funny?" Dermody said in rage. "Hold him steady," He said to the other officer who grasped Coop by the back of the straightjacket with his left hand and pressed the flat of his right hand against the back of his head to create a solid target, expecting Dermody to slam his fist into the con's face. Instead, Dermody jammed his right thumb deep into Coop's left eye and twisted. Coop screamed from the shock and pain.

"Jesus Christ!" Locklie shouted.

Monty shook. He didn't want to be seeing this. A fear of being murdered by the frenzied guards to cover their crimes flashed through his mind.

"Timmy. Why did you do that? You could have punched him around," the other officer said.

"I want no part of this," Locklie said.

Monty stood silent, frightened, trying to be unseen.

Coop hung his head. His eye was gone. He caught himself beginning to collapse in fear before this ugly enemy. "Koona Manitou," he said, "Will I be the last Mythical Dancing Wolf?" He raised his head and began singing his death song: "I have lived the dream..."

Dermody punched him across the face, stopping the chant.

Coop began again, "I have lived the dream..."

Dermody pulled his night stick from his belt and jammed it into Coop's mouth breaking his two front teeth and the left incisor. Coop slumped, gagging on the blood that filled his mouth. "Don't say another fucking word," Dermody said.

Coop spent his energy trying to breathe, swallowing blood, retching.

Monty, Locklie, and the other guard waited in silence for Dermody to decide his next move.

Dermody studied the Gouger's body. "That shiv kill him?" he asked Monty.

"Have to be an autopsy. Maybe it was a heart attack or something, but the blood's from a severed artery. Nothing else would pump it out that fast."

"I seen that happen in the war. Plenty of times," Locklie said.

"Maybe the Gouger jammed the shiv into himself? Suicide? What do you think Monty?"

"Definitely, Mr. Dermody," a relieved Monty said.

"Nobody's gonna miss this fucker."

"What about Earthquake, Tim?" Locklie asked with a nod towards Coop who knelt with head bowed.

"We'll put him back in his cell. Maybe he takes the next two days off and then goes on sick call for the pain in his eye."

"And his teeth," the other guard said with a grin.

Just before Easter, the prison dentist, feeling queasy all the while because he had to look at the disgusting lump of tissue and scar where Coop's left eye used to be, pulled the remains of the con's three broken teeth with little Novocain or sympathy for the pain. Coop had had frequent headaches and his mouth hurt him all the time until the stubs of the teeth were pulled. The pain that night was near unbearable with Coop moaning sleeplessly through the night. In the morning, Lost His Eye found a dealer with a cache of Demerol. The drug sent the exhausted Coop into a long narcotic sleep in which he dug and dug the sand from the tunnel. His mouth didn't hurt. He put his fingers to his teeth. They were there. He realized he was seeing with both eyes. He searched but couldn't find a mirror. And awoke to his throbbing gums and blinded left eye.

The sexual predators who stalked the prison, made loud kissing sounds, always repeated twice, smooch, smooch, when Coop walked by on the tier or in the yard. Dermody and the other guard, who seemed always together, smiled happily when they came across Coop with his face burning with anger and an unaccustomed shame. "Lost His Eye Too," Dermody would call making his own two smooching noises to his partner's laughter. Gossip, spread by Dermody, was that the Gouger enjoyed one last double poke before committing suicide. The two Oglalas and the two Mingos stopped acknowledging Coop. He was too proud to tell them or anyone else, even Lost His Eye, what really happened. They knew who he was, even if the whites didn't, and they could very well be telling other Oglalas and Mingos that the Mythical Dancing Wolf of the Okwe had taken it up the ass and lived to think about it. Not dying that night meant his reputation had been stained forever and all of the Okwe had been dishonored in the process. "Lost His Eye Too, I'd like to try a little piece," a wolf called to him.

"You must have a death wish," Coop said.

"Ooooow," the wolf said derisively to the amusement of the wolf pack standing around him. "If you weren't so ugly and so old, we might come by to visit you. Maybe we will anyhow. Put a flag over your face."

Later in afternoon, Coop intercepted the hot-water carrier for the third tier and without a word took the container of water from him in his gloved hands. He went to the wolf's cell, threw the container of warm water in his face and jabbed his shiv into his windpipe, and twisted, pulling a bit of the trachea out on the barbed head of the shiv. As the wolf stood stunned, gripping his throat, Coop struck again, piercing the artery in his throat. He left his homemade knife with the razor-sharp barb in his victim's throat.

The investigation was cursory. No one, including the wolf's wife, who shared his cell, saw anything, but word spread through the prison. Everyone, all the cons, all the correction officers and the warden knew who killed the wolf. The code demanded that the wolf pack, the cons who raped the tenderest of inmates as a prelude to turning them into wives and hookers, would even the score.

Jimmy Locklie had come to his cell in the night to ask if Coop wanted to move into protective custody. Coop wondered if this were another attempt to demean him, asking him if he wanted to go to the section of the prison where the fairies and the softies hid to avoid sucking cocks and being fucked.

Coop watched his back and waited. His blind side caused particular tension. He lay in bed uneasily every night until he drifted into sleep, aroused by the slightest unusual noise from his dreams of Eleonore, or standing by the falls, or digging the tunnel. A raid in the night. A shiv in his back. Boiling water thrown in his face. A hammer blow to the back of his head. Glass in his food. The stress ate him night and day. His existence was dismal. "Is this the reward for the life I lived, hell on earth, Koona Manitou?" he asked almost every night as he lay on his bunk. He stopped smudging his cigaret smoke in the four directions plus the heavens and earth. Koona Manitou didn't deserve it.

In June in saying goodbye to Lost His Eye, who had served out his five years, he asked him a favor, to stop in the valley on his way back to Salamanca in New York to ask his mother, Bluebird, to visit him, telling her that she must come because this involved the honor of the Okwe.

Bluebird came on the next visiting day, going into the prison while Redsky waited in his truck in the prison parking lot. She sucked in her breath and burst into tears when she saw Coop's twisted face, the ugly place where his eye had been, his upper lip beginning to sink into the space of his lost teeth. His black hair had gone to gray. The handsome, self-confident, powerful son of a year ago had been turned into an aging, ugly man with a single joyless eye. He seemed exhausted. In the hubbub of 20 visitors speaking at once in the cubicles, there was no way the one guard on the walkway above the visitors could distinguish the dialogue between the cons and their visitors. Coop spoke in Okwe telling his horrified mother that Tim Dermody, the nephew of Sheriff Michael Dermody, had gouged out his eye with his right thumb, knocked out his teeth, and spread the rumor throughout the prison that Coop had become a female, a man with useless balls. This shameful lie was being told about the Mythical Dancing Wolf so the Okwe could not endure it. She must go to the Mothers of the Bear Clan, from whose loins sprang the hereditary warriors, to tell them that the Mythical Dancing Wolf demanded vengeance.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

The creak of the portal being slid open snapped Coop from his sleep. A light beamed into the cell. His hand had gone to the shiv stashed under his bunk. He sat up, feet on the floor, poised to defend himself.

"On your feet, Rever. Face the wall."

He wasn't going to fall for that one. "Show yourself."

"Goddamit, Rever, this is Sergeant Locklie. Get your ass against that wall."

He didn't move. The portal was slammed shut. The key turned into the lock. Coop stood, ready. The cell door slammed inwards with a corrections officer, a wooden shield held ahead of him, flying through the opening. Coop's right hand flew forward, an automatic response to a sudden danger. The shiv glanced off the heavy shield. He tumbled atop Coop. Locklie leaned past his shoulder to pummel Coop's face with three rapid punches, flattening his nose, drawing blood. "The prick tried to stab me," the guard on top said.

Coop turned his head to the side, pretending to be unconscious. He remained limp, unresisting as they rolled him over, locked his hands in cuffs behind him. They pulled him onto his feet. His eyes opened looking at Locklie. "You son of a bitch," the sergeant said and clocked him again. A punch to the jaw. He was shoved onto the walkway, to the stairwell, and hustled down five flights of stairs to the Isolation Tier. He was hurried to the locked heavy wooden door at the end of the corridor. Locklie shouted through a barred opening in the door, "Another one coming down." He unlocked the door, nodded his head to the guards on either side of Coop. They propelled him forward. He struggled to stay on his feet, bouncing off a rough stone wall and flopping painfully onto his back, banging his head on a worn, wide stone step before he slid the rest of the way into the subbasement. They pulled him to his feet and walked him to a waist-high planked wooden door crisscrossed with thick iron bands held closed with a hinged crossbar resting on two brackets set in the frame. The Tomb. He knew of this dungeon by reputation. The worst hole in Pennsylvania. Maybe in the whole northeast. Hardened cons had come out of it as gibbering idiots. They unlocked the cuffs. One of the guards took a dirty straightjacket from a hook above the door.

"Open it up," Locklie said.

Coop stood silent. He had heard of this ceremony, peculiar to The Big Dump. The con opened the door to his tomb, there were four such doors in the subbasement, in a symbolic gesture to show that he had put himself into this predicament. "Why?" Coop asked, suspecting Dermody was the answer.

"You know why you bastard," Locklie said giving him a short powerful punch to his kidneys.

Coop collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.

Locklie grasped his hair pulling him involuntarily to his knees. "Open the door."

"Dermody?" Coop, still on his knees, asked.

"Captain Dermody, CO Dermody, the knife upstairs." Locklie slapped him across the face.

The mention of Captain Dermody's name puzzled Coop. Perhaps he was with his son when the warriors from the Bear Clan struck. "An act of war," he said, not looking at any of his captors.

"Let's cut the bullshit and get him inside," one of the guards said.

"No. He's got to do it himself."

Coop knelt unmoving. Locklie tried to jerk him to his feet, but he drooped, too heavy a deadweight for the sergeant to move. The others didn't intervene. Locklie loosened his grip letting Coop slip to the floor. When he caught his breath, he said, "Put the jacket on him."

One guard slipped his nightstick across Coop's throat. A hold designed to encourage cooperation. Coop let the others slip his arms into the sleeves of the straightjacket and to lace it closed behind his back. With his one good, right eye, he could see how swollen his nose had become. Blood was leaking from that nose past his lips. Locklie took his nightstick from his belt. He said, "I'm not afraid of you, you murderous son of a bitch," and struck Coop across the side of the head, raising a huge lump. One of the officers pulled back the crossbar. Another tugged on an iron ring to pull the door open. They pitched Coop inside, his knees landing on hard, dirt-caked tiles. The door closed behind leaving him in pitch blackness.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

The blood dried clogging his nose; his face ached, his skull was filled with unrelenting pain. The Tomb was a little longer than his extended legs and not too much wider than his body, maybe two inches on either side. Barely wide enough for him to roll onto his side when his rear end became sore from sitting on the hard tiles. He tried to sleep, to escape his suffering, but he lingered awake and in agony for an endless time. He knew the night had passed when a bit of daylight sifted through the tiny grate above his head. He could see now that there was nothing in the Tomb but him. Thirst seized him, turning his mouth into a dust hole aching for water. A desire to piss plunged him to another level of anguish. He called out: "Mister! Mister!" No response. He counted to 25, and called again. He did this until the urine dribbled, then burst from his body. He experienced a searing embarrassment. The uncomfortable wetness became bearable after a while. Sometime during the first day, his belly filled with gas, and as much as he strained and willed, he couldn't hold back the torrent of shit that dirtied his buttocks, legs and pants. His clogged nose spared him the odor. He drifted into sleep, awaking in darkness to chills and an excruciating thirst.

How long would they force him to go without water before relenting? Wasn't bread and water the due of even the worst offenders? "Please," he called out. And felt a deeper embarrassment than wetting himself. They wanted to break him, and in begging for water, for relief from this torture, he was proclaiming their victory. An easy win. All they had to do was put him in The Tomb, and leave him there. He remembered the story from his boyhood of the Seneca, captured by an Okwe war party, who laughed when the Mothers of the Bear Clan cut off his fingers and stripped away his skin. He sang his death song, haltingly, instead of screaming when firebrands were touched to his raw wounds. In the final moments before his spirit crossed from this world, Okwe warriors ate flesh cut from his body so that he could carry with him the vision of his most relentless enemies honoring his courage. Coop caught himself, realizing that as the helpless captive of the knowos, he could choose to die whimpering or with the courage of that great Seneca warrior.

He raised his head and sang his death song aloud: I have lived the dream/I have lived the dream/I have been bold/I have been bold/I am ready to cross/the covered bridge/to the real world/I am ready to cross/the covered bridge/to the real world. He sang it over and over until drained by the effort, his voice slipped into a whisper and into silence. He continued to sing in his mind until he fell into sleep again. He awoke several times, wetting himself, until he was aware again of the feeble sunlight in The Tomb.

His haunches and back hurt with an ache that loomed above the other torments of his head and face until that was replaced by suffocation and the fear of paralysis—with his arms pinned in place. "Let me die, Oh Koona Manitou! You are crueler than any knowos." His attempt to confront Great Spirit came out of his dry, cracked mouth as a murmur. He would have cried, but he conjured the Seneca singing his death song, longing for release, when the firebrands were touched to his body.

He was moaning when The Tomb's door was pulled open and fresh air was sucked in a narrow stream across his body. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph save us!" Father Garrity exclaimed when the smothering stink of Coop and his confines struck his nostrils. The corrections officer, who had opened the solid wooden cell door, had turned his face in the other direction, and pulled a soft, white handkerchief from his uniform pocket to protect his nose. Father Garrity forced himself to kneel down to look into The Tomb. "How can I go in there? There's not enough room for me." He stood, turning to the corrections officer, "Can he come out of there for a few minutes?"

"He's in there for ten days, Father. Nothing I can do about it."

"How can he breathe in there?"

"There's a little window, Father."

Rocky Sullivan, who had stepped backwards along the dank corridor to avoid the scent of the corrupt air, came back. He knelt and looked inside. He turned to the priest, standing above him. "There's no shit can in there, Father. And he's in a straightjacket. How does he eat?" Rocky knew that no corrections officer would spoon feed a con. His stomach was turning from the awful putrid smell of human feces, dried blood, and stale air. He grasped Coop's feet and began pulling him into the corridor.

"Stop," the corrections officer said coming out of the torpor that had frozen him into spectatorship.

Rocky said, "Fuck it. I'm doing the work of the Lord Jesus Christ," and continued tugging until Coop was lying face up in the corridor, still moaning, a distant dribble of sound.

The corrections officer clenched his teeth, restraining himself in the presence of the chaplain from slamming his nightstick across this arrogant con's head.

"His face," Father Garrity said putting his own hands over his soft, clean face, rosy from a day in the sun yesterday on the golf course with Warden Swettham and State Senator Lincoln Gordon. They had played a round on the manicured fairways and greens in the morning, followed by lunch in the Warden's Dining Room, eating at Sen. Gordon's insistence, the same lunch menu as the prison population, although the grilled cheese sandwiches they were served were fresh from the private dining room's separate kitchen and came on China plates with crisp French fries and freshly-made cole slaw—instead of the soggy, cold grilled cheese, the limp fries and cole slaw dumped from pots the size of barrels that went onto the cons' metal plates. Warden Swettham poured a white wine as he jokingly said, "Sorry, but you won't find this on the menu." The senator, as usual, had asked the chaplain whether he had anything to say about the operation of the prison. "Warden Swettham does the best he can in the circumstances," Father Garrity said diplomatically. He, too, adhered to the prison code to mind his own business as much as he could.

The three of them looked down at Coop's face—a twisted mask of dried blood and whatever oozed from his nose and mouth before congealing. The lips were swollen and cracked. His breath was near unbearably foul.

"Ten days! How long has he been in there?" Father Garrity asked.

"Maybe four days, Father."

"How did he get in this condition," Rocky whispered in the priest's ear.

"H-H-How did he get in this condition?" the priest asked, embarrassed by his stutter.

"I really don't know, Father, I was off Tuesday when they brought him in. He's a bad one, you know."

"That's no answer," Rocky whispered.

"T-T-Th," the priest stuttered.

"You!" the corrections officer said pointing his finger at Rocky. "Shut your fucking hole."

"Bullshit," Rocky said. "Is this what you're gonna do to me if I keep talking? You gonna let him do this to me, Father? They're killing this guy, and you know about it, and you're letting them do it."

The corrections officer slammed his open palm into Rocky's face.

Father Garrity shoved the corrections officer knocking him down. "Don't you dare!"

The corrections officer jumped up, his arm cocked to belt the priest, but caught himself. The warden would sack him for hitting the chaplain, and there was Rocky to consider. He would use it as an excuse to sail into him, and he was afraid of an unleashed Rocky. He dropped his fist to his side. "I'm calling the captain of the watch," he said.

"Good. Get the warden while you're at it." The priest knelt beside Coop to lift him into a sitting position.

"Water," Coop croaked so softly the priest couldn't hear, and had to ask several times what he wanted. "Get some water," the priest said.

"There's none down here," corrections officer said with angry authority in his voice.

Father Garrity had an awakening. "When was the last time you gave this man water?" he asked in a demanding voice.

"I, that's not my job."

"What?" He took the small vial of holy water he carried for emergency blessings from his pocket. He unscrewed the cap and poured the water, carefully and slowly, into Coop's mouth. Father Garrity had a great deal of confidence in the mystical powers of holy water to heal spiritual and physical ills. He had never considered ingesting holy water. Perhaps God had created the conditions in which he would decide to use his precious vial of holy water in this unusual manner to rescue Coop from the abyss. He realized he shouldn't let this opportunity pass. He mumbled into Coop's ear, "May the Lord Jesus Christ through this blessed water heal your body and cleanse your soul." Whatever the impact on Coop, Father Garrity felt filled with a guiding light. He turned to the corrections officer to say with an unaccustomed fierceness in his voice. "What are you waiting for? Get the captain of the guard and the warden and a stretcher from the sick ward. You've just about killed this man, and you're responsible."

"Your ass is on the line, to put it in English," Rocky said. He said to the chaplain, "We make this into a movie, only Pat O'Brien could play you, Father."

CHAPTER FORTY NINE

An ache that made every movement agonizingly painful pierced Coop's arms, and back and legs. His head throbbed. He opened his eyes to see an IV, like so many he had seen on battlefields, slowly dripping a clear liquid into a tube connected to his right arm.

"You awake?" Rocky Sullivan said.

"Something to drink." The words croaked out of a desert-dry mouth.

Rocky filled a paper cup from a gray plastic container. "Ahhh, if this could only be a cold beer, but water will have to do."

Coop propped himself on an elbow. He drank. The liquid pushing delightfully across his tongue. He held the cup out, and Rocky refilled it. Coop swished the water around his mouth, some dribbling from his lips. He handed the empty cup back to Rocky. He tentatively touched the skin over his bristly upper lip with the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand. He rubbed his full hand across his unshaven face. "How long have I been in this place?"

"Since last night. Listen, I'll be right back. The padre wants to talk to you."

"But do I want to talk to him?"

"That's up to you. The padre got you out of The Tomb, I would say just short of you ending up in your grave. Permanently."

Coop struggled through the pain into a sitting position, leaning back against the thin pillow propped on the low metal tubular ridge at the top of the bed. The prison ward held ten beds. Every one of them filled. Coop's was near the nurse's station; at the far end of the room, a man with his belly swollen as large as a pregnant woman in the ninth month moaned and wept. The other sick cons lay sleeping or propped, as was Coop, against pillows reading or staring at the ceiling, every one of them aching for a smoke, prohibited in the prison ward, because of the oxygen tanks and as a subtle pressure to get well quickly.

Father Garrity came through the door alone, a thick prayer book in his right hand. His lips were drawn in a tight line, a signal of discomfort as a bearer of bad news. "H-H-How are you feeling, son?" he said to Coop.

Coop didn't like Father Garrity with his sparkling eyes, elongated face and curly brown hair. He was gentle and sweet in a vicious environment. "I'm not your son," he said, his own lips tight in distaste.

"Forgive me. An expression I use too much. I didn't mean to offend. Everyone calls me father, so son might be a natural response."

Coop fixed a smirk on his face and his gaze on the priest. He didn't respond.

"Do you have any friends in the institution, Rever?"

No response.

Father Garrity went on filling the silence of Coop's failure to speak. "I would like to be your friend." He held up the black book. "Jesus would like to be your friend."

"I'm not interested in your proselytizing."

Father Garrity had seen an abundance of suffering in his life, in the prison and in the war. He had seen soldiers of all ages slip into death, calling for their mothers and wives and children. He strained not to take Coop's hand. He consciously wished he didn't stutter at times like these, but he did. "I've been asked to p-p-pass some v-v-very bad news to you, Rever. I got a call from a friend of yours in Kingspost, Joe Bentley, the other day. He asked me to t-t-tell you the s-s-sad news that y-y-your wife, Eleonore, and your beloved daughter, Elise, have been killed."

Coop, who had tensed at the phrase 'bad news', expecting to be told something had happened to one of his parents, gasped. "What?" he managed to say, tears coming with the word.

The priest reached out to touch Coop's shoulder. "I am so sorry," he said. He waited while Coop composed himself.

"What happened?" the prisoner asked.

"Joe mailed me this Associated Press account. I waited until it arrived because I wanted to be certain. I wanted no doubts in my own mind before I spoke to you." He handed Coop a clipping from the Kingspost Chronicle and the heavy, yellowish piece of paper torn from an AP wire machine that described the accident in which Eleonore Lafitte Rever, founder and editor of 'Une Vue Internationale' and her eight-year-old daughter, Elise, were run down by a truck, owned by Castor Fourrures de Paris, during a sudden downpour in Paris. The mother and daughter were taken to the American Hospital, where they died from their injuries. The driver wasn't charged. The AP and Chronicle stories were similar, noting that Mrs. Rever, 46, had been a member of the Marquis, and that her husband, Coop Rever, a journalist and author, was serving three life sentences in a prison in Pennsylvania for murdering Congressman Arthur Kings, his wife and daughter. The Chronicle story added that Rever was an American Indian who grew up on the Green River Valley Reservation and was the fullback on the undefeated, 1933 Israel Kings Central High School's football team. The Chronicle story also said that Rever's motive for the murders was to prevent Congressman Kings from carrying out a plan to build a dam across the mouth of the Valley Branch of the Green River, which would result in the flooding of the Indian Reservation. Subsequently, the congressman's father, Phineas Kings, was elected to fill his son's vacant seat on a platform promising to build the dam.

Coop sat on the edge of the bed holding the wire story and the clipping in his two hands, feeling a hollowness in his midsection. His left foot trembled as it always did in moments of stress.

"Perhaps we could say a few prayers together," Father Garrity said.

"No. I'm not in a prayerful mood."

"Turning to God can be very comforting at times like this," the priest said, squeezing Coop's shoulder.

"Who do you think did this? Castor Fourrures de Paris! Do you know what that means? Beaver Furs of Paris. Koona Manitou did this to torment me."

"Koona Manitou?"

"The Great Spirit. The one you would call God. I've had enough of God and his works."

Father Garrity was taken aback for a heartbeat, then recognized an opportunity offered to him by the Lord Jesus Christ. If Rever was rejecting the pagan entities that roiled his life, the priest was ready to fill his void with Christ. "Our Lord Jesus C-C-Christ acts in mysterious ways at times, but His is a G-G-Gospel of love, Rever. If you turn to Him now, I promise you will be reunited with your loved ones in the Kingdom of Heaven."

"I know you mean well, Father, but I just want to be left alone. I don't want to hear any more about your God."

Anger surged through the priest erasing the pity he had felt for this ungrateful convict who probably would have died in The Tomb if he had not gone there, in the service of Jesus Christ, to tell him of his family tragedy. "I believe in a personal God, Rever, who awaits the good with open arms in the Kingdom of Heaven. And, I believe just as strongly in a personal Devil, who betrayed God and was cast out of heaven into the fires of hell. And that Devil works relentlessly to spread his evil through men like you. God sent me to save you from certain death in The Tomb, to give you a chance to choose between Him and the Devil. I can only hope you see the error of your ways before it is too late."

"Padre, if you're set on undoing the Devil's work then shut this place down. You're working right in the midst of hell in case you don't know it. Can't feel the fire? I can. Go tell the warden and the rest of the assholes who operate the Big Dump to stop torturing us. Did the Devil or God put me in The Tomb with nothing to drink or eat for I don't even know how long? The warden ordered his flunkies put me there, didn't he? So you figure it out. Was he doing God's work?"

"No. I can see the Devil's hand in this. Warden Swettham is a good man and his logical assumption that you were behind the heinous murder of Tim Dermody led him to punish you severely, perhaps justly. I tried to see the good in you, because of the tragic accident that took the lives of your wife and daughter. I ignored the sign of the Devil, the perversion of the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in my misplaced fervor to save you."

"What happened to Dermody?"

"Oh you don't know. You don't know that your savages cut off his thumbs and jammed them into his eyes. That they cut out his tongue That they emasculated him. That they hung him upside down over a fire. Can you imagine the pain he endured? When Capt. Dermody heard about what was done to his son, he suffered a massive heart attack, and he died. And to make sure the world knew this was the Devil's work, they burned the perversion of Cross into the tree from which they hung Tim Dermody."

Coop immediately realized that the priest was confusing symbols. He held his right hand parallel to the floor. "Were there six circles carved in the tree? Four straight across and three up and down?" He held his extended left hand perpendicular to his right. Like this." He drew four imaginary circles on the bed sheet in a line, then two more. One above and one below the second circle in the line.

"Yes. Like a toppled cross. Signaling, I suppose, another triumph of evil."

Coop laughed an empty, bitter laugh. "Wrong again, Padre. That's the sign of the Bear Clan, the Okwe warrior clan."

CHAPTER FIFTY

His sojourn on a soft bed with clean sheets, a pillow, and fresh water at his side ended the next morning when the captain of the guard showed up with two burlies from the Storm Trooper Squad. One of them carried a set of chains and shackles. They threw the orange and white striped jumpsuit that marked the Big Dump's incorrigibles on the floor. "Get dressed," the captain said.

"I need underwear."

"You need to put on the clown's suit before I lay this billy on the side of your head," one of the Storm Troopers said in a purposely soft tone. A whack would follow even a scintilla of resistance. The prison staff prided themselves on exercising a civilized restraint in always requiring an excuse, perhaps a tiny one, for their violence against the cons.

Coop responded with the haste that the prison culture required. He swung his legs onto the floor, feeling light-headed with a churning, aching stomach, and began pulling on the jumpsuit.

The other Storm Trooper, who held the chains and shackles in his right hand, gripped Coop's hospital gown and jerked it, intending to tear it from his body. Instead the ribbon of cloth tying the loose garment around Coop's neck held, and he was toppled onto the floor. The trooper delivered a short kick with his steel-tipped boot onto the point of Coop's left shoulder that sent a singeing pain down his arm, drawing an involuntary grunt.

Coop reached behind and undid the bow that tied the garment to his neck. He threw the gown on the bed. He got into the striped jumpsuit, buttoned it, and stood, as the rules required in the presence of a captain of the guard, with his arms crossed and his head bowed, the pose of the helpless in the presence of overwhelming power and ruthlessness.

"Put your arms straight out and spread your legs," the captain said.

They snapped an iron collar around his neck. The shackles that went onto his wrists were linked to his neck. He was tugged into a half bow when the shackles were snapped onto his ankles.

"Warden Swettham wants to see you," the captain said. He led the way out of the hospital ward with Coop following in a hunched shuffle, the Storm Troopers on either side clutching his arms. They trekked through a series of guarded locked gates and doors to the core of the prison on the third floor. The captain knocked on a thick, polished oak door. A buzzer sounded releasing the lock. He opened the door. The warden's secretary, a woman with her hair swept into a beehive, wearing a crystal white blouse with a pink stone necklace, said as they entered. "Go right in. You're expected." She offered Coop an angry look as the small procession went past her. The captain and the two Storm Troopers removed their hats as they entered the warden's private office. Several oriental rugs covered most of the highly-polished white oak floor. Three couches were set in a semi-circle to the left of the door around a large window that looked onto the inner gate leading to the Big Dump's main entrance. Two large oblong paintings, one set above the door and the other on the opposite wall, depicted a rising and setting sun. The warden, sitting behind his broad desk on the north end of the room, could glimpse a narrow strip of sky over the prison gates and wall or he could look to his left to see the yellow rising sun or to his right to see the painting of the red setting sun. On the wall behind his desk were plaques and photographs of the warden with several different governors, with the full State Senate Corrections Committee, and with Father Garrity and the movie stars James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, the four of them beaming, seated at a white-cloth covered table with full plates and high balls in their hands.

"He's here, sir," the captain said.

Warden Swettham picked his wire-rim glasses from the desk. He nodded to the captain, who stepped to the side of the prisoner. The two burlies took a step back leaving Coop on center stage. The warden rocked back in his chair. He was a soft man, inside and out. His hair and jowly face were matching grays. He studied a single sheet of paper before looking up to Coop, who stood, head bowed. "What's your number, Lifer?"

"Inmate KK 57-31-76-5, sir." Coop said raising his head to look into the face of the warden, whose eyes were fixed on the sheet of paper. One of the Storm Troopers jabbed him with his baton in the kidney. "Ohhh," Coop yelped.

"Lifer KK 57-31-76-5. You will remain respectful and silent when you are in my presence."

Coop, his stomach turning, his legs wobbly, lowered his head, eyes looking at the base of the desk.

"You bastard," the warden said. "It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure the connections—your asshole buddy, that one-eyed bastard gets out of the institution; your mother, who never comes to see you, shows up for a visit; Tim Dermody is tortured and murdered. And with unspeakable arrogance they leave their Devil's mark behind, this Bear Clan of your God forsaken band of savages. You're going to get yours from this moment on. We're going to start with the weapon that was found in your cell."

"I," Coop began and endured a second piercing jab in the kidney. His knees buckled, bile burned up his throat into his mouth. The two Storm Troopers pulled him to his feet. He could barely hear what else the warden had to say. He had told the priest the Bear Clan had killed Dermody, and the priest told the warden, and the warden undoubtedly had told the Kings County Sheriff. Oh Koona Manitou take me out of this world of agony. He cringed at his stupidity.

The warden continued, "The institution's administrative committee on severe violations and punishments has reviewed your case, the discovery of a deadly weapon in your cell, and your past record of misbehavior. The committee normally is composed of the three senior watch captains. Of course, Captain Dermody who suffered a fatal heart attack over what this Bear Clan of yours did to his son was unable to attend. The committee has found you guilty with no extenuating circumstances and recommended a sentence of restricted life in isolation. Restricted life means that you have forfeited the right to communication with the outside world, that you will be denied reading and writing materials, that you will be denied smoking privileges." The warden placed the sheet of paper on his desk. He opened the top right-hand drawer and withdrew an envelope. He pitched it across the desk.

Coop raised his eyes without moving his head. The red bordered envelope clearly was from Eleonore, her personal stationary. He was tempted momentarily to reach for the envelope, but knew one of his keepers would smash his wooden baton onto his hand. He kept himself still.

Warden Swettham said, "Because this letter from your wife arrived before you committed your serious violation of this institution's rules, and as a humane gesture in recognition of the loss of your wife and child, I will permit you to read this letter from your wife, the last piece of reading material you will be permitted for the rest of your life. Pick up the envelope and read the letter right now. Then it will be confiscated. Give you something to remember and reflect on for the next 30 or 40 years."

Coop leaned over the desk, barely reaching the envelope with the tip of right index finger. He used his finger to slide the envelope across the desk. He managed to lodge it in his left hand and to use the fingers of his right hand to extract the folded sheet. He opened the letter. Aside from the greeting, "Coop Chérie, J'écris le dernier jour de l'été de notre peu du paradis sur la côte du Rhône," over which someone had written a translation in pencil, 'Coop darling, I am writing on the last day of summer from our bit of paradise on the coast of the Rhone.' The entire body of the three-page letter had been blacked out by the prison censor. Only the closing lines were left untouched: "Elise s'ennuie de son papa, et envoie son amour. Je suis à vous, pour toujours. Amour, Eleonore." Again the penciled translation in English: 'Elise misses her daddy, and sends her love. I am yours, for always. Love, Eleonore.' Coop shook, and tears streamed down his face.

CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

Coop awoke at 4 o'clock, as he often did, to take the two steps across the cell to the commode, to take the leak that had forced him from the bare warmth of his blanket and thin mattress. His back ached in the torturous stiffness that always came in his first rising for the day. He shivered in the winter chill, but rinsed his hands under the tap of icy-cold water. He had no soap. He cupped his left hand and sucked the water into his foul-tasting mouth. The first sensation was a frisson of pain in his molars until the swishing water warmed as it pushed through the space where his front teeth once were and flowed quickly along the narrow canals between his gums and inner cheeks. He spit the water into the small grimy sink. He took another handful to drink the water, laced with bug-killing chemicals, that he never enjoyed.

He stepped back to his bunk. He knew from seeing the calendar when they took him out of his cell for his weekly shower on Friday that today was the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, the day on which the singing of the Okwe cycle of sacred legends began. Wrapped in the blanket and dressed in his thin socks and striped jumpsuit, against the cold that never left him alone in the winter nights when the Big Dump's heat was turned down, he sat cross-legged in his dark cell to chant the Song of the First Mother. How she rose from the deep water on the back of The Turtle to walk onto the paradise of the land with endless forests, crystal clear rivers and lakes abounding with fish, a warm sun, star-filled nights, flowers everywhere, birds thronging the sky, bushes heavy with delectable berries, and all the animals of earth living in harmony. Despite this peaceful world of abundance, she was sad. The Turtle, her power animal, asked her why she was so cheerless in so sweet a world? "I am alone with no other like me to share the joys of the existence," she said. The Turtle, uncertain of how to make her happy, crossed to the other world to confer with Koona Manitou. He returned in the morning with the Great Spirit's solution. The First Mother copulated on that night, the first winter solstice, with The Turtle and The Bear and The Hawk and The Beaver. Six months later, on the longest day of the year, she bore four sets of twins, each pair the product of a different power animal; each pair a boy and a girl. The four clans of the Okwe came from the womb of the First Mother and the seeds of the four great power animals. From that time on, the First Mother reveled in her offspring and the lineage of the each clan was passed through her daughters and the daughters who sprang from them.

Coop sat legs crossed, hunched under his blanket considering the implications of the legend of the First Mother, grasping the meaning of the matrilineal legacy in the context of the Okwe way. When his forefathers slaughtered Isaiah Kings' first wife and daughter, they were destroying a lineage that could threaten them. When he took the rock to smash the heads and the knife to cut the throats of Arthur Kings and his daughter, Merry, he was fulfilling a divine mission to end forever their menace to the Okwe. His introspection was interrupted by the first conversational human voice directed at him in the two years since Warden Swettham sentenced him to be buried alive in the five-foot by ten-foot brick and steel box of his cell. "Is the song over, chief?"

He jumped, startled by sound breaking the deep silence.

"Sorry, chief." The speaker from the other side of the solid door closed the well-oiled portal that slid silently into place.

Coop's heart pounded. What a pleasure, the sound of a friendly human voice. "Thank you, Koona Manitou," he said.

Coop dozed until the caged light bulb in the ceiling came on at seven o'clock. Daylight didn't pierce the isolation wing in the Big Dump. At 7:15, the tray gate at the bottom of the cell door opened, a bell was rung, and his breakfast was shoved through on a plastic tray: a plastic bowl half-filled with soggy cereal, a slice of cold toast spread with white margarine, and a banana, surprisingly yellow and large. The cereal was some sort of corn or bran flake before watered milk was poured on in the kitchen transforming it into a sodden lump. Coop took the tray and put his plastic cup in the opening. Steaming black pseudo coffee was poured into the cup and pushed back to him. "Thanks," he said. No response from the other side. No talking allowed.

Coop put his hands round the hot cup, relishing the warmth. He sipped the hot liquid that would rapidly cool in the plastic cup. It was supposed to be coffee, but it wasn't. Sometimes the taste of a good cup of coffee or tea or wine or a forkful of the exactly perfect dinner entrée in a country restaurant somewhere between Paris and Lyon would blossom in his mouth. Avec plaisir, his taste buds recalled those delightful moments. For now, he dug into the glop in the bowl and tore the hard toast into bite size pieces. He missed his front teeth. He was still hungry when he finished. He was always hungry. His longing for cigarets had subsided within the first few months of the first year. But he could never overcome his craving for first class meat and fresh vegetables cooked with respect for the kitchen arts into an unforgettable meal, accompanied by an expensive wine. The best wines were always expensive.

The bell rang. He peeled the banana, hiding the firm, white flesh of the fruit under the edge of his mattress for later in the morning. He pushed the plastic tray with the banana skin, empty bowl—cleansed of every speck of cereal, and the spoon through the opening at the bottom of the door. Next, he rolled up the mattress and folded his blanket into the required square. He stepped to the wall at the end of the cell to stand at attention until the corrections officer on duty looked through the portal for a visual inspection. The portal opened silently and closed. Coop was relieved that the cell door didn't burst open for a shakedown. Rarely was there anything to find in his cell. This morning there was the banana. He could be punished for stealing food. That would be three days in The Tomb; three days on dry bread and a cup of water for brunch and dinner; three days smelling his excrement in the shit bucket that was emptied every other day; three days sitting naked and shivering at this time of year, with barely enough room to stretch out his legs, with a ceiling too low to stand. The pain inflicted by Okwe warriors lasted minutes or hours, depending on the strength of the captives. White men tortured their prisoners for years on end. In his first year in isolation, when the corrections officers' blood burned over the deaths of the Dermodys, father and son, Coop was plunged into The Tomb on some construed excuse every few weeks. He passed the time sitting in the darkness by singing his Death Song over and over until exhaustion put him to sleep. He ended up there only twice in his second year. Neither sentence was justified, both stemmed from contrived violations.

The portal opened and closed. Inspection made and over. He could begin the daily routine he had developed to keep fit and to avoid going mad. He sat down on the little stool allotted to him to daydream for about an hour. A favorite was a visit to the puppet theater in Luxemburg Gardens with Elise, then ice cream, the walk home holding hands past the familiar buildings and through the ancient streets to rise in the lift to the apartment, where Eleonore would be in the kitchen preparing dinner. Or Elise would be handed over to her aunt and he would rise alone in the lift. Eleonore would be waiting in the bedroom. He ate the banana slowly. Too good to gobble. Waited another hour to do the first 50 of his daily 300 pushups and sit ups. His knees hurt too much for deep knee bends. He walked 600 yards, three short steps and turn, three times a day.

The question offered like a gift from heaven by the unseen, unknown lobster-shift corrections officer echoed in his head like an advertising jingle or a popular tune that pops up and can't be turned off: 'Is the song over, chief?' He relished those words like sex after a drought, like a hot bowl of soup in the Korean winter, like a cold beer in the steaminess of Indochina, like a hot, luxurious shower, something he hadn't had in years, and would never have again if Warden Swettham's sentence was fulfilled without mercy. "Koona Manitou, let him come tonight and speak to me again. Please let him speak longer. Let there be a dialogue," he prayed aloud. He prayed without embarrassment, like a Christian begging his god for some boon or other. He was weary of his stark environment, starving for the sound of another human voice, for words to read, pictures to see, flowers, air, the sun, stars, the moon, to feel the soft, warm flesh of a woman.

The days passed more slowly than he ever remembered. He slept fitfully and less. Often, he didn't dream, or didn't recall his dreams. Isolation drove men mad. His last thought as he fell into the blindness of sleep was that he had lost his hold on his life, and was sinking into an abyss with his head aching, his limbs tortured by stinging pains.

He awoke with a jerk to the whispered: "Merry Christmas." His heart pounded, his eyes were blurred by sleep. The portal door was open. "Merry Christmas," the voice said again.

"Merry Christmas," Coop responded.

"There's something for you," the voice said and closed the portal. The tray gate opened at the bottom of the door. Something was shoved inside, and the gate closed.

Coop went on his knees, feeling in the pitch darkness. He touched a small bottle, next to it the cylindrical shapes of three cigarets and what he knew must be a matchbook. Something round, flat, soft. He picked it up, knowing it was a cookie. The scent of oatmeal and raisins, stronger than he had ever experienced poured through his nostrils, flooding his head, filling his mouth with water. He touched the sweet cookie with the tip of his tongue, bit it, and slowly consumed it with small bites, chewing each morsel with deep appreciation. He unscrewed the cap on the bottle. Sniffed it. Alcohol. He sipped the liquid. Gin. The best gin he had ever tasted. When he was finished, he felt the final gift, running his hands around the oblong presence of a paperback book. He wept in gratitude and in joy.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

Coop lay awake on his bunk reveling in the sensuous pleasure of holding the paperback by both hands pressed to his chest. The moment the lights came on, he examined the book. '1984' by George Orwell. He had read it years ago. That didn't matter. He could hardly contain his hunger to savor Orwell again. He had read his 'Animal Farm' too. He said as he had said so many times before in his life, "All animals are created equal; except some are more equal than others." He read the opening line: 'It was a bright cold day in April.' He stashed the book. He would wait until after breakfast and inspection when he could lean his back against the door, smoke the cigarets and read until lights out. Suspicion suddenly replaced his euphoria. Was this a set up? Would they come crashing through the door this morning to shake down his cell, find the book and the three cigarets—prohibited contraband, prohibited bits of happiness--and drop him into the Tomb for three days of dry bread and water? A knowos Christmas joke?

He felt ill. Weak. His stomach pained him. He couldn't eat the limp, cold pancake sprinkled with confectioner's sugar, accompanied by a small cup of dark syrup, a short link sausage, and an orange, something special for the lost souls of the Big Dump's Isolation Tier on the day Christ was born. He drank the coffee. Real coffee that stunned his tongue with a glorious flavor. He would take the tastes of the oatmeal raisin cookie and the real coffee into The Tomb to recall them, to cling to this joyous experience to keep from sliding into the abyss of madness. If they intended to break him by loosening the garrote and then choking him without mercy, they were wrong. The cookie and the coffee had given him a strength they could never imagine.

He peeled the orange and popped the pieces into his mouth, enjoying the crisp juice that flowed across his tongue. He ate the pancake and the sausage. Not great, but the best breakfast of the year. And, the year had been very long.

He took out a cigaret. He would get one down before they came for him. The matchbook from an Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh held three paper matches. He lit up, coughing at the first blast of smoke. "Ohhh," he said aloud, orgasmically.

The bell rang. He pushed the tray through the gate in the door. He went through the ritual of rolling up his mattress and folding the blanket. He stepped to the end of the cell. And waited. The portal opened and closed. He remained at attention against the wall, his stomach filled with butterflies in anticipation of the violence to come. Nothing happened.

He got out the book, sat against the door, read, and smoked the cigarets to nubs. He field stripped the tiny remnants and flushed them down the toilet.

He went to bed at lights out, a happy man.

He awakened again to the sound of the voice. "Hey."

Coop got up. He stepped to the open portal. He could make out the nose and lips by the dim light of the tier walkway.

"I got something for you." The partial face disappeared. The gate at the base of the door opened. A flashlight held against the opening showed a wedge wrapped in waxed paper.

Coop unwrapped it. A small, sugar-powdered cake and a plastic cup from a thermos filled with black coffee.

"Try that."

Coop bit into the delicacy, sweetness swelling through his mouth.

"My grandmother's recipe from the old country."

"This is so incredibly good."

"There was one piece left when I got home this morning. My mother saved it for me. Then I said to myself. Can you imagine how that poor fuck in IT Cell 7 would enjoy this? I mean I stuffed myself with the seven fish on Christmas Eve and what does that poor fuck have to eat."

"The seven fish?"

"That's an Italian thing. What they call the Christmas Eve feast. We can't eat meat, you know. The best part is the grilled eel and clams. My uncle lives out in Long Island. He comes home every Christmas, always brings the eels and clams. Right out of the water that morning. Well the clams anyhow. The eels they get a few days earlier, maybe. He knows the clammers and the fishermen."

"What do you call this cake?"

"Panforte. Got everything good you can imagine. Almonds, honey, chopped up fruit, hazelnuts, sugar, everything. It's great isn't it? My mother says, 'Donny, why ain't you eating Grandma's treat?' That's what we call it in our house. And I said, "Mom. I'm gonna give this to someone up in the Big Dump, who I bet never had anything as good as this in his life. God's gonna grant me a thousand indulgences worth ten-thousand years off in purgatory. Catholics believe that shit. You do good and you get time off for good behavior."

"What did your mother say to that?" Coop said enjoying the Panforte, the strong coffee, and the conversation.

"She said, 'Donny you always was different. Don't you get yourself in trouble trying to be nice to someone who maybe don't deserve it.'"

"Why did you do this?" Coop asked.

"Let's just say, I'm a Christian." There was an arrogance in his voice. Coop wished he could see him. He suspected he walked with a swagger and chose to be independent in whatever way he could, comfortably, in his life. He continued, "Let's just say I don't like the way they treat you, because nobody deserves to be treated like they're treating you."

"You could get in trouble. Lose your job."

"This shitty job. I could care less. As soon as there's an opening at the mill, I'm outta here."

"How long have you been a corrections officer?"

"I got out of the Army in July, sat around drinking beer for a month, and got taken on here. Changed one uniform for the other. But I'm going to college in the day time. So it's not as bad as it seems. The mill will be the lobster shift too. But the money's a lot better. Unionized, you know."

"I was in the Army," Coop said, using the long-tested journalist's technique of establishing a common ground.

"I joined the Army so I could overseas. France or Germany or something like that. They sent me to Korea. The coldest fucking place I've ever been. Don't let them tell you the war's over, because they took pot shots at us all the time."

"I was in Korea too."

"The Army? The war?"

"I was a foreign correspondent for a French magazine. I did a book about it."

"You're a writer. Wow. I heard you're in for murder. A really bad murder. And they treat you like shit because they figure you behind the killing of a corrections officer. A really bad killing."

"I was sent to prison for killing a congressman, his wife and daughter. I was a soldier for my people and I killed as an act of warfare. I was a soldier for your people too. In World War II. And I killed for the United States, and they gave me medals. They didn't send me to prison."

"What medals did you get?" Donny asked, thrilled to be talking so frankly with so dangerous a man.

"Combat infantryman's badge, Bronze Star, Silver Star."

"Silver Star! You must have really done something big."

"If I had known what I know now, I would have tried for a Congressional Medal of Honor." Coop was amused, knowing that the context of his remark was beyond Donny's understanding. Had he known that the Koona Manitou was preserving him from harm until he had his great vision, he could have charged machine gun nests, pillboxes, and even tanks without the fear he had felt in combat.

"I'm impressed. Listen, Chief, I can't stand here all night talking to you. I'll be back though. Tomorrow or the next night. When I figure the captain of the guard isn't gonna be around. Tell me though, how is the book? Get a chance to read it? My sister's an English major at Penn State. She's the brains of the family. She recommended it."

"Your sister's got good taste. I'm in the midst of reading it." He was fearful Donny would ask for the book back.

"Shove the cup back out the door. When you finish that one, let me know. I got another one you'll like, 'From Here to Eternity.' by a real soldier like you."

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

The roach, one of four that crawled through an ancient crack in the wall, scurried across Coop, startling him awake. He swept the roach away, but endured a lingering sensation of the bug on his face. Spiders, waterbugs, roaches found their way into his sealed cell on many nights. He got up, flickering his tongue out of habit into the space where his two front teeth should have been. He didn't feel well. His stomach seemed full to his throat. Soon, Donny Castoro would be leaving him, disappearing, never again to come with his offerings of food and an occasional airline bottle of wine or booze, never to bring him books that sated his need to read. He trembled at the prospect of being totally isolated again.

"Koona Manitou, Koona Manitou," he chanted for hours to keep despair at bay, to remind the Great Spirit he still existed.

Finally, the portal slid open. Coop stepped to the door. "This is my last night, Coop," Donny said without preface.

"Oh God, Donny, what will I do without you?"

"You'll be okay."

Coop's left leg trembled. "You're all that I have," Coop said.

"Wait till you see what I got for you. My sister cut this out and sent it to me. She's really impressed, and so am I." He pushed a rolled-up newspaper clipping through the opening. "Read it right now." He shined his flashlight through the portal so Coop could read the clipping.

"I know this guy," Coop said seeing Joe Bentley's by-line with a Washington dateline in the Philadelphia Bulletin.

"You really got around before they clipped your wings."

He read the story that spun off a recent White House press briefing in which Pierre Salinger ticked off the books President John F. Kennedy had read over the summer. The list included, 'Two Million-Dollar Wounds in Stalingrad & Dien Bien Phu' by Coop Rever. He turned to Donny, "I didn't know they had published that book in the U.S." He continued reading. Bentley noted that the author of the book was serving a life sentence in prison for the brutal murder of Rep. Arthur Kings, his wife and daughter, and while he had never been charged, Pennsylvania authorities suspected he was somehow involved in the ritualistic murder of Tim Dermody, a corrections officer, who had disciplined Rever. The subsequent investigation of Dermody's murder resulted in a shootout on the Green River Falls Indian Reservation in September, 1958 in which five Indians, all suspects in the Dermody case, and the Kings County Sheriff Mike Dermody (Tim Dermody's uncle) were killed. Rever's mother, Molly (Bluebird) Rever, who had visited him in prison just before Tim Dermody's murder, died of breast cancer without revealing what she knew to the authorities. Coop read and reread the words that described his mother's death. The bastards had never told him. He forced himself to read the remainder of the story. President Kennedy wasn't available for comment, but Salinger did say that Bernard Fall, the French historian and an authority on Indochina, had recommended the book to the president.

Coop asked Donny to give him a few minutes alone so he could compose himself. "I didn't know my mother had died or about the shootout."

"But JFK reading your book," Donny said, dismayed that the clipping he had brought to make Coop's spirit soar had had the opposite effect.

"I didn't even know about the book being published here. They cut me off from the world. You gave me hope, Donny. Without you, what have I got?"

"I'm sorry Coop. I wish I could do something for you."

"You've done a lot. You've made me realize that for every bastard like the warden, there's someone decent like you."

Donny spoke with difficulty, choking back tears, "I'm gonna call that reporter and tell him what they're doing to you. It ain't right. I can't do anything. Maybe he can."

CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

Coop was sitting on the floor of his cell, his back leaning against the door reading "Bridge Over the River Kwai" for the fourth time, the last book Donny had given him, when he heard the key turning in the lock. He jumped to his feet. He slipped the thin paperback into the pocket of his jumpsuit. He stepped back away from the opening door.

The captain of the guard with a grim expression, a subdued Warden Swettham, and a skinny, young man, in a black suit, with horn-rimmed glasses, dark curly hair, and a nervous expression stood on the walkway looking at Coop, who had taken the required position of attention at the far end of the tiny cell.

"Rever, you've got a visitor," Warden Swettham said.

The skinny young man switched his briefcase to his left hand, to extend his right hand to Coop. "Mr. Rever, I am Brian Donohue from Governor Lawrence's office. Warden Swettham was kind enough to permit me to see you. Coop stood silent, uncertain of what this was about. He shook the stranger's hand, the first flesh other than punches and manhandling that he had felt in years. The hand was strong, but soft. Warm. Donohue turned from Coop, "Thank you warden. I won't be too long. I'll signal when I'm finished."

The warden nodded, his lips set, his eyes conveying an unaccustomed sadness. He waved his head in signal and the captain of the guard followed him away.

"Please relax Mr. Rever. Take a seat," indicating the bunk. He sat on the stool. Their knees almost touched. "Let me break the ice by saying Joe Bentley asked me to say hello, and another friend of yours, Donnard Castoro, asked me to bring you this." He withdrew a brown paper bag from the thick, leather briefcase. "Some cigarets and another book to read."

Coop looked into the bag. He took out a waxed paper packet, opening it to find three chocolate biscotti. He put that on his lap. The book was a hardcover, 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre.' And the cigarets. Two packs of Gitanes and two full paper booklets of matches.

"There's an inscription."

Coop opened the book. On the title page: "Sometimes you find gold where you don't expect to. All the best, Donny."

He must have looked puzzled, because Donahue said, "He meant you. The gold. Donny's very impressed by you Mr. Rever. Looked past your skin and your crimes and found an amazing man."

Coop looked into his eyes. "What is this all about, Mr. Donahue?"

"A number of things, man's inhumanity to man as a starter. This cell for example. I suffer a touch of claustrophobia and I'm having a hard time sitting still with door open and knowing that I'll be walking out of here in a few minutes."

"If you think this is bad, you should go downstairs to The Tombs in the cellar."

"The Tombs?"

"That's what they call the hole in the Dig Dump. It's about five feet long and five feet high, maybe three feet wide, or less. No bunk, no blanket, a tin bucket for a toilet. And they put you in there bare ass naked."

"That's unbelievable."

"You can hardly breathe. They're supposed to give you a cup of water and a piece of dry bread twice a day, and they don't always do that."

Donohue was uneasy. He hadn't come to hear this. He didn't want to hear it. He bit his lip with his upper teeth.

"I used to do that until Tim Dermody knocked out my front teeth." Coop pulled back his sunken upper lip to show his visitor the space where his front teeth once were. "He did this to me too," he said pointing to his eye. He stopped talking, wondering why he was blurting these sordid details to Donohue. Perhaps it was seizing the opportunity to speak, to offer a meaningful conversation instead of the usual empty phrases of the polite conversation.

"I'm not your lawyer, Mr. Rever. I'm sure the Dermody case has never been closed so I would be careful what I said about that."

"They must have some great investigators pursuing it. No one has ever spoken to me about it except when the warden put me in this cell two years ago; he mentioned Tim Dermody and his father. I guess they had no evidence tying me to Dermody's killing, but that didn't stop them from sentencing me to life in extreme isolation. Extreme means life without talking or contact with the outside world. No reading. No cigarets. No nothing. Supposedly the sentence was for having a weapon in my cell."

"Did you have a weapon in your cell?"

"No," Coop lied. "They planted it. A nice easy way to punish me for the Dermodys' deaths without the inconvenience of having to prove it."

"Hmmmh. All of that is very interesting." He withdrew two more books from the briefcase. "One of these is for you, and one is to autograph."

Coop took the books, putting one on the bunk; he held the other in his two hands. He examined the cover, pictures of a lean, crew-cut Karl Witzbold looking very much the combat soldier in battle dress amidst the ruins of Stalingrad and the torn landscape of Dien Bien Phu. The title in two lines of thick red letters across the top was 'Two Million-Dollar Wounds' The word 'in' hung between the pictures of Karl, underneath the one of him as a German soldier was 'Stalingrad' and as a Foreign Legionnaire, 'Dien Bien Phu.' He turned the book over. The back cover was his photo portrait from a decade ago. He held it beside his deeply wrinkled, scarred face: "I've changed a bit."

Donohue nodded. He said, "Donny told me that you read Joe Bentley's story about JFK reading your book? Well, the president loved it. He's coming to Pittsburgh next week for a fund raiser so Governor Lawrence asked me to ask you to autograph a copy of your book for President Kennedy. You know, say something nice or profound. You're a writer. You know what to say."

"I don't know much about Kennedy. I've been in solitary since 1958. I assume he got elected in 1960."

"Right, and you'll be happy to hear that Greg Hofer got elected to Congress on JFK's coattails."

"Isn't he the union guy, who could never beat Artie Kings?"

"One and the same. A real liberal too. The first thing Hofer said when he got elected was the Indians have rights so the Kings family could forget about building the dam and flooding the valley. After Phineas Kings became so feeble-minded they couldn't run him again, the Kings family moved one of their own from Philadelphia to Kingspost to run for Congress. Hofer went to town on him as a carpetbagger. The guy was a distant cousin who never set foot in Kingspost, knew nothing about politics. It turned out to be a squeaker, but he lost and that's what counts. If you don't know anything about JFK, let me tell you, he's a great man, and his wife, Jackie, speaks fluent French."

"My wife Eleonore spoke fluent French so the president and I have something in common." Coop smiled, an unusual experience for him. "Let me see, what can I say to the most powerful man in the world?" Coop wrote: "To President John F. Kennedy be as good as you are powerful, and history will never forget you. Coop Rever. November 15, 1961."

"Not bad. Let me tell you, Governor Lawrence will really appreciate this."

"Do you mind if I light up now. I'd like to have a smoke and eat the Biscotti while we sit here in case all of this disappears when you do."

"Go right ahead."

In the morning, the captain of the guard opened Coop's cell door after inspection. "Get your stuff together, Rever, you're moving." Coop trembled, a fear that they were taking him downstairs forever. He got his stubble of a toothbrush, the same one he had been using for two years, and his plastic cup. He held them in his hands, nothing to wrap them in, nothing else to burden him, except the books. He wouldn't need those in the Tomb. The cigarets he had in the jumpsuit pocket. Those he would lose when they stripped him. With a sigh of resignation, he looked at the two books, his and 'The Treasure of Sierra Madre.' on the small shelf that had never held anything before. The captain watched him, realizing his hesitation. He snickered and took down 'Two Million-Dollar Wounds in Stalingrad/Dien Bien Phu.' "You wrote this?" he said in as derisive a tone as he could manage. He turned the book over, to Coop's portrait. "You used to be a good-looking guy, Rever." He handed both books to Coop. "We don't want to leave Cell 7 smelling of the previous tenant, do we?"

Outside in the corridor, two corrections officers took up positions on either side of Coop. The captain led the way to the end of the tier, through the locked cage-door to the staircase leading up. They climbed to the fourth floor, to the guard's office at the end of the tier. "Got a real bad ass for you Matty."

"Don't worry Captain, we know how to handle troublemakers on Tier Four."

The captain laughed appreciatively. "Give us our jump suit, Rever," he said. Coop slipped out of the striped jump suit, taking the cigarets and matches from the pocket. The captain and the two corrections officers left with Coop standing self-consciously naked holding all his worldly goods: the cigarets, the matches, the toothbrush, the cup, and the two books in his hands.

Matty looked Coop over. "What's that tattoo on your belly?"

Coop stood silent, uncertain whether to respond.

"When I ask you a question, you better goddamn answer and quick."

"Sorry, sir. That's the sign of my clan. Wolf."

"You're part of my clan now. I know all about you Rever. Friends in high places and all that shit. In my clan, you keep your nose clean or I'll break it. Got that?"

"Yessir."

"Jesus you stink. When was the last time you had a shower?"

"Two weeks ago, sir. I think."

Matty waved to the trustee sitting at another desk in the office. "Tommy take Rever down to the shower. Get him a towel and some soap, and some clothes. Put him in Number 27 with that other Indian."

Coop followed the trustee out of the office onto the cellblock. "We'll drop your stuff in your new house and get you your shower, Rever. Welcome back to the general population."

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

Geronimo was small with skin so dark it was almost black. He was a Shinnecock from Long Island. His mouth was a thin line that rarely broke into a smile. His eyes examined the new arrival, dressed only in a gray towel held by his right hand partially around his waist, his right haunch exposed by the paucity of the cloth, the missing teeth, the missing eye, the deep furrow in his cheeks and brow, but he said nothing. He welcomed Coop to Cell 27 with a nod. He indicated the upper bunk would be the new arrival's bed.

Coop hauled himself onto the upper bunk and lay there on the bare mattress, the towel across his middle, staring at the ceiling. He enjoyed the luxury of his new mattress at least five times as thick as the dusty, rag he had lain on for more than two years in Isolation.

"Hey Chief, your new wardrobe is here," the trustee said coming into the cell with a shirt, pants, socks, and set of underwear.

Coop swung onto the floor. He took the open package of Gitanes from where he had stashed them behind the two books. He tapped out three cigarets. A tip for the trustee.

"What's this? French cigarets. Oh my, we're classy. Thanks Chief." He put the cigarets in his top pocket. "Hey Geronimo. This is the Chief." The two cellmates nodded at one another.

When he left, Coop dressed. He lit up a Gitane, deciding not to offer one to Geronimo to avoid the impression he was looking for a date or was kowtowing. He smudged the smoke in the six directions, thanking Koona Manitou for all that he had given him today: a cell with a window to see the sky, human beings who spoke to him as if he were another human being, the shower with warm water, the real mattress, the freedom to display and read his books. And this afternoon lunch, and tonight dinner in the dining hall. Lousy by free world standards, but luxurious after what he had experienced.

Within a week after his arrival in Cell 27, Rocky Sullivan stopped by with a package of Belgium chocolates, a carton of Gitanes, cans of stews, canned bread, and a note from Eleonore's friend, Sophie Brownstein. She said that Eleonore's family in France had asked her to look after his needs, to visit him on their behalf, and to urge him to write a book about the circumstances that sent him to prison. She and her husband, Irv, agreed that a prison memoir could sell well in bookstores and would have the therapeutic value of giving him a project that would exercise him mind. Did he need writing supplies? No, he wrote back in a letter mailed through Rocky's connections. Writing required an energy that Coop no longer had.

Geronimo sat with Coop at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They leaned against the wall in the yard, smoking and watching the carnival of the Big Dump's cons at leisure—playing basketball, chatting, arguing, looking distant. Neither Coop nor Geronimo described their crimes in their long relationship as occupants of Cell 27. The grapevine provided them with the details. Geronimo, whose name on the outside was Jack Auster, had gotten drunk and run his tractor trailer across a car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, killing an elderly man. He was in for vehicular homicide. Coop as a murderer was a notch higher in hierarchy of the Big Dump.

Redsky Rever now visited Coop once a year around the Winter Solstice.

The cigarets, treats and money arrived, as always, just after the first of every month. The good life continued with Coop taking the winter sun on clear days, bitter cold or not. He appreciated the view of the clouds, the occasional bird, the airliner passing high in the sky, and fresh air. He was left alone by the corrections officers and other cons. He stayed in shape too. He wrote poetry, read, studied Greek and Latin to keep his mind in trim. He returned to the ritual of thanking Koona Manitou with his first smoke of the morning and his last before turning in to sleep.

His dreamt nightly, a buffet of his life: Eleonore and Elise, occasionally the naked Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, English, French and German women he had experienced as a soldier and war correspondent, even his first wife, Snowdrop and Dr. Horowitz; sometimes he remembered the unpleasantness of killing the Kings and with horror men falling dead and being chopped apart by shrapnel on the battlefields of France and Germany, Korea and Indochina.

In 1965, Geronimo was paroled and replaced by Ed Pacino, a middle-aged black burglar from Philadelphia doing his second stint in the Big Dump. Ed would have preferred a black cellmate, and Coop another Indian, but they got along. Warden Swettham retired mid-way into 1966, and a month later, Father Garrity was reassigned to teach theology at a Jesuit high school in Seattle. Rocky Sullivan took over the newly-created job of wheeling the prison library's books on the special order cart, which enabled him to continue his thriving business.

On the first day of winter in 1966, Redsky was driven to the Big Dump by Stanley Rever, who waited in the prison parking lot while his grandfather visited his father. The old man was a frail 69, his breath drawn torturously in the grip of emphysema and lung cancer. "I dreamt last night that you walked through a long tunnel deep in the earth," Redsky told Coop.

"Where did the tunnel end?"

"By the river," the old man said through a phelgmy cough. He died the following afternoon in his daughter's cabin on the east bank of the Green River.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

Coop lit his first cigaret of the day, smudged the six directions, thanking the Koona Manitou for his life, such as it was, and immediately, as it did almost every morning, Redsky's dream popped into his mind. Lying on his bunk, he would see himself walking through the tunnel of his father's dream to the Green River. He added the sound of the water rushing over the rocks, the sensation cool of fresh unpolluted air passing into his lungs, the sight of a bright yellow Golden Finch with a black cap and wings against a thick green bush.

His addendum to Redsky's dream seemed prophetic when the mail arrived that afternoon bringing a letter from Yellow Bird, his sister. He hadn't seen her or heard from her since she had run off to Chicago with a half breed before the war. The letter was type-written and cryptic: 'Dear Coop, I'm back in the Valley. I need to see you. Put my name on your visitors' list. Yellow Bird.'

A month later, on a Sunday morning, Rocky Sullivan came to his cell with a manila envelope. He suggested that Ed take a walk, giving him two cigarets to smoke, while Coop and he had a little meeting. He extracted a heavy sheet of folded paper from the envelope. "Can you read blueprints, Chief?"

Coop sat on his bunk, unfolding the bluish paper onto his lap. Printed on the lower right hand corner was a box entitled McChesney & Lantini Ltd., engineers. Underneath: Saugerties River Water Tunnel Section XVIII. The remainder of the box contained data on measurements to scale and the depth of the tunnel. He glanced at the lines and measurements crossing the sheet. On the lower left hand corner was a heavy line and in barely perceptible print the two words, Saugerties Penitentiary. "So?"

"So you're looking at our way out of here." He traced his finger across a pair of lines with all kinds of figures marking widths and depths. "That's the path of the water tunnel that's going to tie the Saugerties River into Pittsburgh. They figure in about a year, maybe January or February, the head of the tunnel will be just about here, maybe 100 feet from the north wall."

"Our north wall?"

"The Big Dump's north wall. What I'm gonna tell you is between you and me and no one else. You got that?" Coop nodded. Rocky ran his finger from inside the wall to the tunnel. He said, "Part of the crew building tunnel comes out of NISU's hiring hall in my old stamping grounds in Hell's Kitchen."

"What is NISU?"

"The National Independent Sandhoggers Union. The guy who runs it is a buddy of mine, Teddy the Thumper. His crew is going to do a little detour just for me, and maybe for you too, if you got the money and the balls. They're going to drill a tunnel from here to here. I got it figured so they'll come inside the maintenance shed just inside the north wall."

Redsky's dream flashed into Coop's mind blotting out his suspicion that the scheme was too neatly convenient to be true. He could see himself walking through the tunnel to freedom. "What's the price tag?"

"For three people, $100,000. That's $50,000 from you, $50,000 from Cornhole, and a free ride for me because I put it all together." Cornhole was Cornelius Horan, a 23-year-old inmate whose current husband made him wear lipstick, rouge, and earrings. He landed in the Big Dump after being convicted at the age of 18 of raping a 16-year-old cheerleader, whose father was a Philadelphia police captain, at a drunken victory party after Cornie, as he was called growing up, had quarterbacked his Main Line high school football team to its third straight victory. "What's your name sweetie?" his first cellmate, a muscular, tattooed lifer with a face mashed in from a lifetime of brawls, asked him. "Cornie," the frightened ex-football player replied. The lifer laughed. He subdued the boy with just a few punches, cornholed him, whispering in the sobbing boy's ear, "I'll bet you liked being fucked as much as she did," and gave him his nickname. He kept Cornhole for two years, renting him out once in a while, until he had to sell him to cover his gambling and goodies debts. Cornhole had been sold twice more until his current husband acquired him.

"Why Cornhole?" Coop asked.

"The big question you should be asking is why you? I'll tell you, chief, because Cornhole's family could only come up with $50,000 and I needed a hundred. I'd rather go with only two. Fewer lips to sink ships. I look around and I say to myself who else can come with that kind of money, who I can trust to pay their bill."

"That's an incredible price. What makes you think I've got that kind of money?"

"I don't know if you do. You're a big famous writer. Your friends on the outside seem pretty fancy. If you come up with the money, we can get you out of here. You get what you pay for, chief. You can save $50,000 by sitting in this shithole for another 30 or 40 years. Or you can invest the money in freedom. The whole thing may not work out. I don't have to tell you it's a gamble, but these are pros who are going to be digging the tunnel for us. Getting outside the wall is just the first step. There's a little airfield a couple of miles from here. We get a light plane that takes us a thousand miles away before they even know we're gone. All that costs money."

Coop did have the money. Documents he had to sign several years ago giving his father-in-law control of his and Eleonore's estates indicated there was about $100,000 available, well invested and generating a comfortable income. That was the money used to pay for the monthly treats Rocky delivered to him. He had no doubt that his father-in-law would make his money available to finance the escape. He was well-liked by Eleonore's father, who was convinced by her that he was a political prisoner rather than a common criminal. Coop suspected that Rocky was well aware of his wealth, because of the financials detailing his holdings that were mailed to him once a year from France since Eleonore's death. "I wouldn't dream of giving you $50,000 up front," Coop said.

"Teddy the Thumper isn't the kind of operator who works on credit. He'll want the money up front."

"We'll have to figure out a payment schedule. Something down and something on delivery. I trust you Rocky, but I wouldn't dream of putting that kind of money up front."

"You're complicating my life. Teddy might have a different view point. So we'll be talking."

Later that afternoon, Coop was called from his cell to the Visitors Room. He was startled to see Sophie Brownstein, a broad grin on her face, sitting on the other side of the screen in the cubicle.

"How the hell did you get in here?" he whispered.

"Just call me Yellow Bird," Sophie said.

"Oh. Now I understand said the dullard. Is Yellow Bird really back in the Valley?"

"No. She claimed the house so your father would have a place to live. She never went back. Someone else is taking it over now. But I was able to use her post office box at the general store as a mail drop to arrange this visit."

"I'm happy to see you. I want to thank you for the packages. They make life bearable in here. Now tell me why you had to see me?" She delivered the answer he expected.

Sophie told him that Connie, Rocky Sullivan's wife, through whom the packages were sent, had come to her with a very expensive plan to get Coop out of the Big Dump. There was so much money involved, $50,000, and the scheme seemed so wild that she felt compelled to make sure in person that he approved of the deal. Connie had introduced her to Tanek Rudzinski, the business manager of the National Independent Sandhoggers Union, at his office near the docks on the West Side. He wanted her to meet him so she could assure Coop he was legitimate.

How in the world, he asked, did Sophie find Connie Sullivan to play the role of intermediary for the monthly packages to be delivered to him?

She said that Eleonore, using her connections from the Resistance was introduced to a French intelligence operative who made the arrangements. Sophie delivered the cash payments for the packages to Connie Sullivan in a different little restaurant every month in Manhattan or Queens. She said that Connie was unbearably crude with a foul mouth but she understood that the people used in these circumstances often were from the dregs of mankind. She had been exposed to them during the war in France.

"What concerns me Sophie is you and Irv getting involved in this. There would be hell to pay and prison time if things went wrong."

"We are staying as far away as possible. I do have experience in this sort of thing. We've arranged for someone in Washington to handle any direct payments. And speaking of Irv, he said that if you do make it out of this place, he'll probably be able to get you a book contract that could pay for the..." she searched for a word. "Your flight back to France." They laughed explosively. Coop felt so much better about the scheme.

He and Rocky worked out a payment plan that required a bit of trust on both sides and that Teddy the Thumper approved: $10,000 down; $10,000 when the sandhogs started building the escape tunnel from the main water tunnel; another $10,000 when they arrived at the airport near the prison; $10,000 more upon Coop's arrival in Montreal; and the final $10,000 when Coop reached France.

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

His left leg began to tremble as he spotted the shop supervisor leading Jimmy Locklie, the captain of the guard, and two corrections officers towards him along the grimy walkway between the thundering license-plate presses. Coop tried to appear detached as though he didn't know they were coming for him. The escape! What other reason would bring them to him. He had become an institutionalized nonentity, who did what he was told by the staff and walked tough but never lost his temper or offended any of the cons.

"Rever. Hand off your machine. The warden wants to see you," the shop supervisor said.

He didn't ask, why? He wiped his hands on the rag hanging out of his left pocket. "Willie," he called to Willie, a new fish he had been training, who had been standing nearby, watching with undisguised interest. He nodded his head to the machine. "She's yours now."

They surprised him by escorting him back to his cell ordering him to fetch his tooth brush, shaving makings, soap and a towel for a shower along with fresh underwear and a clean jumpsuit. They took him to the showers. Coop relaxed under the sparkle of the hot water on his back. His anxiety over the escape plan having been uncovered was replaced by a speculation that some important personage had come to see him. Yet the size and significance of his escort concerned him. One corrections officer could have accompanied him to the warden's office, leading him through the maze of locked gates. A captain of the guard and two corrections officers usually meant a serious situation. They didn't chain his ankles or cuff his hands, a usual precaution against a con, even a seemingly calm one, inexplicably going crazy. Maybe they were an honor guard for the benefit of the visitor?

Coop walked alongside Captain Locklie, the two corrections officers behind him. They went through the gates and heavy doors to the administration center on the third floor. Captain Locklie knocked on the polished oak door with the large gold plate that said WARDEN BERTRAM JACKSON. He opened it, and Coop and the two COs entered behind him. "Got a two-thirty with the boss, Jo," Captain Locklie said.

"You're a little early, but why don't you go right in. He's expecting you," Jo said. She was a slender woman, with long blonde hair, glasses and a pleasant smile.

The warden who had been sitting at his desk to the left of the door jumped up as they entered. "Come on in fellas. Coop, you don't mind if I call you Coop do you, you and Captain Locklie take those chairs," he said, indicating a straight-backed wooden chair and a comfortable maroon leather wing-backed chair. Coop sat in the wooden chair, surmising without being told that was his assigned seat. The corrections officers sat behind him, positioned, he knew, to grab him if anything went awry. The warden pressed a button atop a box. Speaking into it, he said, "Jo could you bring us a round of Cokes and a couple of baskets of those potato chips we got from Hanover." He looked at his audience. "Cokes okay? Or you could have coffee. Whatever you like." There were murmurs of that's fine. Coop swallowed a temptation to offer a snide, 'I'll have a beer.' He had no illusion of how helpless a bind he was in, no matter how gracious and disarming the warden appeared.

The office had been changed to reflect the different style of the new warden. His desk was centered on the large window overlooking the inner gate leading to the prison's main entrance. Visitors now viewed the warden against a background barely showing the top of the 40-foot wall and the peaks of the two towers framing the Big Dump's main entrance, topped by the open sky, blue and with flying wispy clouds today. His predecessor's paintings had been replaced by oblong photos, taken by Warden Jackson. On one wall was the Boston Red Sox marching onto the field for the final playoff for the 1967 American League championship. On the opposite wall was a montage of Red Sox players enduring defeat in the final game of the 1967 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The warden and Coop sat for a while watching one another. Coop not daring to speak. The warden with a smile playing across his face, bouncing a bit in his seat, pushed his wire rim glasses back in place with his right forefinger, barely able to contain the nervous energy that usually sent him pacing about any room in which he was meeting with cons or subordinates. He presented himself as calm and poised when dealing with state officials in the hierarchy above him, state legislators, representatives of the government or members of the press.

Jo appeared with a tray with five bottles of coke and a substantial basket of Utz potato chips. "I love my coke right out of the bottle, Coop, so I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all, sir."

The warden pushed the chips across the desk to within easy reach of Coop. "Dig in. I'll bet you haven't had these in a while."

"A long while, sir. I prefer French-made French fries."

"Oh, I've had them in Paris. You're right. I'll bet you have warm memories of steak frites with a cold beer or a nice red wine." He shook his head smiling. "You don't need ketchup for that meal boys," he said for the benefit of Captain Locklie and the two corrections officers sitting behind Coop.

This was going somewhere, but Coop couldn't figure out where. He didn't touch the potato chips. Instinctively, he knew the warden was playing with him.

Warden Jackson took a blue cap with a red R from the head of a bust on the window sill behind his desk. He put it on. "You know who that is?" he asked pointing over his shoulder with a thumb.

"I have no idea, warden" Coop said.

"Not a baseball fan, I can see that."

"Yessir."

"That is Karl Yastrzemski. One of my heroes. He led the American League in RBIs and home runs last season. Yaz, that's what they call him. He was directly responsible for the Red Sox winning their first pennant in 21 years last season. He hit three homers in the World Series. Can you imagine the feeling of triumph, not only for himself, but for everybody in Boston and every good Polish-American in this country." He paused, waiting for a reaction from Coop. The warden waited, leaning forward, staring at him, now without his smile. Coop just looked back, uncertain of the connection between the Polish-American baseball player and him. The warden laughed. "I forgot to mention my mother was one of those hysterically happy Poles, and besides that she's a Sox fan and lives in Boston." He took a folder from his top desk drawer. "You're an old journalist. You must be familiar with the New York Herald Tribune."

"I've read it a few times."

"They have some great columnists. I just got a copy of this from today's Herald Tribune. I thought you might like to read it." He slid the folder across to Coop. "Take your time. I found it fascinating and I think you will too."

Coop opened the folder. He took the newspaper clipping and read:

On the Docks

by Homer Kott

I knocked on the door of Connie Sullivan's apartment in one of those dreary Hell's Kitchen walk-ups, a bar on street level, rusty fire escape on the alley side.

People in the neighborhood know her as the Mrs. of Billy (Rocky) Sullivan. Rocky had a reputation for being the guy who was the last one to say goodbye to any number of people foolish enough to cross the West Side Irish Mob.

Rocky is now a lifetime resident of a Pennsylvania penitentiary for a fatal barroom brawl, witnessed by Philadelphians who weren't afraid to testify against him. Luckily for the prosecution, those good citizens who took the witness stand didn't know Rocky's reputation.

So, you can imagine my surprise when Connie's door opens and who is standing there in boxer shorts and undershirt? Tanek (Teddy the Thumper) Rudzinski, boss of the National Independent Sandhoggers Union. Don't get Teddy's scam operation confused with the real sandhog union that digs the water tunnels and subways around the city.

"What the %&#* do you want?" Teddy asked. He knows me from my occasional forays into the local watering holes.

I'm not a guy given to fear, but coming face to face with the Thumper in a state of almost undress in the apartment of another man's wife, I must say I was concerned. Maybe, unconsciously, I took a step back, ready to scoot down three flights of stairs to the front door if need be.

"I came by to ask Mrs. Sullivan about a case I'm sure she knows nothing about," I managed to say. I begged, no that's not the verb appropriate for a crusading newspaperman, I said, "Don't get overwrought Mr. Rudzinski. No one is getting indicted. The Brooklyn people aren't talking. But they did tell me they don't have that kind of money."

What kind of money? The $50,000, Connie and Teddy tried to scam out of them to dig a tunnel to rescue Coop Rever, another murderer serving life with Rocky, from Pennsylvania's Saugerties Penitentiary, better known as the Big Dump.

I'll telegraph who Rever was. He was an honest-to-goodness war hero (Bronze Star, Silver Star) and war correspondent (Korea, Dien Bien Phu) and author (about the French Foreign Legion) and was married to a very wealthy French woman, now deceased, who had her own magazine and was an honest-to-goodness heroine of the French Resistance with lots of friends in the world of espionage.

Oh, Rever, who happens to be some sort of American Indian sorcerer, murdered a Pennsylvania congressman who was trying to tear up a treaty with the Indians.

To make a long story short without revealing all my sources, I'll tell you, a couple of very sharp sleuths from the Manhattan DA's Rackets Squad discovered that over the past few months, someone flew from Paris to New York to deliver two $10,000 payments to Teddy the Thumper at his Hell's Kitchen union hall.

The French operative balked at making the third payment because the promised tunnel was never dug. The final $20,000 was to be delivered only after Rever was free on French soil. They love him over there.

Teddy the Thumper's comment, as he stepped towards me: "I don't know nuttin about what you're talkin' about." With that quote, carefully committed to memory, I raced down the stairs, passing Mrs. Sullivan as she climbed upwards with a fresh six pack from the deli and a bag of odorous Chinese. She called after me, "What the %&#* are you doing here?"

I just kept running.

He could feel the warden's eyes planted on his face, for his reaction. Homer Kott's column was a heavyweight punch to the solar plexus. The escape scheme had endowed him with anticipation, a state of unusual delight for a lifer. Coop hoped his expression didn't reflect the despair that flooded his being. The satisfied look on Warden Jackson's face told him it did.

The warden reached across the desk, taking the untouched potato chips and dumping them in his waste paper basket. "Finish your coke." Coop swallowed the remnants of the sweet liquid. He held the bottle in his hand, wondering where to deposit it. Captain Locklie took it from him and passed it along with his own, barely touched coke, to one of the corrections officers behind him. A weapon removed, the captain was relieved.

"So," Warden Jackson said, leaning back in his chair, we have two spectrums of the Polish-American experience reflected in our lives, yours and mine, Coop. My hero, Yaz, and your scumbag, the Thumper. You can tell a lot about a man by his associates.

"I don't know anything about the Thumper," Coop said.

"Speak only when I give you permission," the warden snapped, and one of the corrections officers took that as a signal to slam the open palm of his hand against the back of Coop's head. "Stand at attention." Coop stood, hands at his sides, feet joined at the heels, knees slightly bent, toes pointing outward, his chest relaxed in the military posture of attention, a position he could endure for quite a while if necessary. "I'm not going to dillydally with you, Rever. I want a statement from you telling us about everyone involved and everything you know about this ridiculous scheme you were dumb enough to participate in. I expect you to adhere to the code of the stand up con and not to cooperate at the outset. So, I'm going to send you down to The Tombs for 10 days and then to severe isolation for 10 years. But I'm going to give you the key to the locks on those doors. After three days in The Tombs, I'm going to give you another chance to write the statement. No cooperation, no release. Then you stay in there for the full 10 days. On the anniversary of every year in severe isolation, we'll make the same offer. Cooperation and a shorter sentence. Up to you."

Coop couldn't help, but smiling. The shorter sentence probably would be nine years, 364 days in severe isolation.

"Don't laugh at me you, bastard," the warden raged. The corrections officer punched Coop in the kidney sending him into a paroxysm of agony, collapsing him against the desk. "Take him downstairs," Warden Jackson said, returning his cap to Yaz' bust.

CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

Captain Locklie took the key for Cell One from the screw in charge of The Tombs. "Unhook him," the captain said. "Strip."

Coop did what he was told. He stood naked in front of the captain and the three correction officers. His head bowed, he dreaded what lay ahead.

"How many times you been inside?" he asked Coop.

"Seventeen."

Captain Locklie's amused expression was replaced with a hard one.

Coop knew what he wanted. He didn't want to say sir, but a show of arrogance could mean the next ten days in a straight jacket. He didn't think he could endure that again. Age had softened him. "Sir," he said.

"Take the key, Rever."

Coop unlocked the door. He handed the key back to Captain Locklie.

"Inside."

Coop bent down to enter the low slung chamber, and Captain Locklie booted him in the ass propelling onto his knees, to the laughter of his audience. The door slammed shut behind him plunging his Tomb into darkness. Coop knelt on the dirty tile floor, waiting for the pain in his backside to subside, gagging from the stink of the previous occupant, his sweat, his wastes.

"Happy Birthday to me," Coop said aloud. Today was Jan. 9, 1968, his 52nd birthday. He knew that in six days, his clan would gather for the annual feast on the night of Wolf Moon with dances and songs retelling the visions and achievements of the Uthayatkwai, the Mythical Dancing Wolves, including his slaughter of Arthur Kings and the daughter through whom his seed would have passed. "Thank you, Koona Manitou for this birthday of mine for making me a mythological figure among my people," he shouted, knowing that if the Great Spirit was as all powerful as He was said to be, He could free Coop from this little piece of hell in a moment.

He sang Happy Birthday to himself over and over through the long hours until supper was served at 4:30, he knew the hour from the Big Dump's inflexible routine. The thick piece of bread atop a tin cup of water was slid through the tray door. "Thank you, Koona Manitou for this food and water." Again meant with sarcasm. He tore the bread in pieces, eating slowly, drinking the water in sips.

When he fell asleep, he dreamt of digging the tunnel. He moved rapidly through soft earth, throwing shovelfuls over his shoulder until he reached a solid rock wall. He chipped at the granite barrier with a hand chisel and small sledge, making no headway at all.

A wisp of light told him it was morning. He had slept through the night. He took an imaginary cigaret from where a shirt pocket on his chest should have been. He lit a make-believe Gitane with a make-believe match, pretending to blow smoke in the six directions. He ended the ceremony by saying sarcastically: "Thank you Koona Manitou for my good night's sleep and all that you have done for me."

He did 50 sit-ups, 50 push-ups, and 50 toe-touches in a sitting position, the first set in his usual routine of 300 a day. He wasn't going to let them wear him down easily. At 7:30 breakfast, a slice of dry bread and a cup of tepid water, was served through the slot at the base of the door. He spent the entire day, interrupted only by exercises, naps and dinner in a fantasy of Rocky Sullivan bursting in on Connie and her lover, Teddy the Thumper, in flagrante. He had seen Connie a short, bulky woman with wiry dyed blonde hair and a harsh face going into the visitors' room several times. She looked as grungy and hard as her neighborhood, Hell's Kitchen. He envisioned her riding the skinny Pollack, the two so enthralled that they weren't aware of Rocky slamming his hammer, his weapon of choice, into the back of Connie's head, and smashing the face of Teddy trapped beneath her bulk. He daydreamed the encounter in detail, imagining them as unwashed, sweaty, feces clinging to the clefts of their backsides, blood flying through the room as Rocky hammered away. When the bedroom drama was played out, he began it again, adding more details, hearing the New York traffic through the dirty windows of the West Side tenement, hearing their grunts of pleasure before the screams to come, the fury on Rocky's face.

He had used this technique of exercise, sleep and self-induced hallucinations, seeing every facet of every person and bit of furniture and the glories of nature when outside, to move through his usual three-day sentences in The Tomb. He shivered at the prospect of seven more days in this dirty hole. The Spartan diet was bearable, although not enough to sustain the energy he need to continue his exercise routine beyond the fourth day.

On Friday afternoon, the heavy door to Coop's Tomb was pulled open. He crawled out, dragging his stinking pail of excrement and urine after him. Captain Locklie waited with three corrections officers and a trustee, all with handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses. The stale air of the larger chamber seemed fresh and invigorating to Coop. The trustee took the pail, picked up a second one from beside Rocky, who sat on the floor next to the adjoining Tomb, and ran up the stairs to empty them. Cornhole lay whimpering on the floor beyond Rocky. Striped jump suits were thrown in lumps next to each of them.

"Your asshole buddies are going upstairs. You going with them today, Rever?" Captain Locklie asked, holding up a jump suit for Coop.

"I got the key in my hand, eh Captain?"

"No wiseass answers. Yes or no."

"Don't be a hard head. You can't beat them Chief," Rocky said.

Coop struggled to his feet.

"What's the answer Rever?" the captain said.

"Let me take my walk, and I'll tell you, captain."

"Answer right this minute or back in The Tomb."

"I'm entitled to 20 minutes of exercise every three days in solitary, Captain. That's what the rulebook says."

"You're entitled to shit. Put him back inside," Captain Locklie said. A corrections officer grasped him by the back of the neck, forcing him down and into the chamber. "Seven days more and no breaks, no exercise. We'll see how tough you are," Captain Locklie called after him as the door was being pushed shut.

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

Just before midnight on his fourth day in The Tomb, Coop had a slight headache along with an uncomfortable fullness in his stomach. He had done a total of 250 sit-ups, push-ups and prone toe touches through the day and was trying to talk himself into doing the sixth set of exercises that would bring him to his targeted 300 count. He attributed his inertia to the chill that gripped him through the day. He had been too miserable to daydream.

Lying in the blackness, he suddenly felt the need to vomit. He crawled to the corner that had become his latrine for the past 48 hours since he had been returned to The Tomb without a pail. There was little in the corner; two pieces of bread and two cups of water over that span left his body with a modest amount of waste to dump.

He heaved, his stomach jerking, filling his mouth with tiny solids, burning his throat with acid. He wiped his face with his hand. Returning to his sleeping place, Coop lay with his eyes closed, discomfort clawing at his stomach. He had to throw up again. Back in the corner, he heaved and heaved filling his mouth with unpleasant substances from the depths of his body. His first thought was food poisoning. Could a simple, rough bread give him food poisoning? Some bug from an unwashed hand that handled his bread and water? Maybe Captain Locklie or the crazy warden had put some poisonous substance in the bread? No. That would be murder of a sort their consciences couldn't countenance. Locklie could readily beat him to death while only intending to batter him. The warden would cover it up. But neither was capable of premeditated murder.

The upset in his stomach turned to an ache that rose to a piercing pain. Through the night he writhed in agony, throwing up more than a dozen times. His eyes tearing, his body on fire. He called out for help. He pleaded with the guard to open the door. He was tortured by a deep thirst. "Koona Manitou," he pleaded, "Help me."

When he felt he was going mad in a crescendo of unremitting pain without succor, he managed to control himself long enough to begin his death song in Okwe: "I have lived the dream/I have lived the dream/I have been bold/I have been bold/I am ready...

He was in the tunnel again, fully aware he was in the dreamland. He couldn't endure another boring night of chipping at the hard rock. He threw away the chisel and with all his might, smashed his small sledge hammer against the face of the granite blocking the way. The rock shattered like glass, falling to pieces that melted into nothingness. In the opening that appeared sat The Beaver. He turned and Coop followed. They walked out of the tunnel onto a narrow dirt dike in the humid heat of a rice paddy. Just beyond a tree line, a skinny American soldier with captain's bars on the lapel of his green fatigues, shorn as soldiers in combat often are of almost all his hair, with skin like Coop's, slept with his mouth open in a depression scooped from the earth, an M-16 at his side. Coop recognized him. He was the teenager, grown to manhood, who had helped him build his vision lodge in the clearing below the Green River Falls. He remembered him saying: "My mother told me about you. You're Coop Rever, Koona heykayta (the great warrior). She told me you won the Silver Star. Hije Kajunchecke Sisshoo (I am Black Fox). My American name is Jeff Ford."

Coop knew the boy had become a warrior and shed blood, as he first had, not on behalf of the Okwe, but the knowos. Coop extended his hand into the sleeping soldier's dreamland. "Katsi Uthayatkwai," Coop said experiencing an intense euphoria. The soldier, confused, came towards him. "Wakee ne Uthsusta," he said in awe, using Coop's Okwe name. Coop gestured him to follow with his left arm that was wrapped in the wampum of the Dream Dancer, holding a long deer skin bundle elaborately decorated with bits of red and blue stones from the Green River, white beads, and a soft deer skin fringe. The bundle contained the holy pipe and Indian tobacco mixed with wild mushrooms and the ground seeds of certain wildflowers. They walked together. Coop said to Jeff, "Come with me to the Falls, Uthayatkwai." They stepped onto the river without hesitation. They walked on water flowing just beneath their feet as though they were on a forest trail. The soldier asked, "What's going on?" Coop said "Uthayatkwai, in the dreamworld that connects the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit, you are more than a man."

They heard a woman's voice calling. "My mother," Jeff said. "I know," Coop replied. The soldier stopped to wave, then caught up to Coop striding over the water, following him to the vision lodge in the clearing near the falls. The two of them stripped to breech cloths and entered the hut. Coop poured water from a gourd onto the hot stones and the steam filled the small space; drums and rattles sounded; the Wolf mothers chanted hoy-yae hoy-yae hoy-yae hoy-yae, expanding into a string of words in the old language: 'see, listen, do for The People.' Jeff and Coop ran out of the searing heat into ice cold of the river, diving beneath the water, surfacing and diving again. They reentered the hut, cleared of steam, and wrapped themselves in thick woolen blankets. They sat facing the north. Coop stood. He tossed the sacred herbs onto the rekindled fire to create a scented intoxicating fog. He danced in a tight circle, calling to the Koona Manitou. Jeff rose to join him. After a while, Coop placed his hands on the soldier's shoulders, signaling him to sit down. Coop packed utukehti-tekayesto, the sacred mixture of tobacco, fungi and seeds into the pipe, lighting it with a stick from the fire. Sitting side by side again, they passed the holy pipe back and forth, drawing the smoke into their lungs and blowing it back across the fire. At the first light of morning, Coop tapped the remnants of the sacred mixture from the pipe. He returned the pipe to its deer skin wrapping and presented it to the soldier. He unwrapped the wampum from his arm and wrapped it around the soldier's left arm.

He awoke wheezing in the fetid air of The Tomb. He had dreamt the dream, yet he was still there locked in the bowels of the Big Dump. His brain throbbed, every joint, large and small from his toes to his elbows, ached. He had assumed that he would walk from the dream into the real world, but here he was back in absolute agony and helplessness. How many more hours or days or years of this lay ahead of him? What could be worse? The answer came to him in a rush that filled him with a fear that shook his body: the void. Phlegm filled his throat cutting off the life-giving air. The thought occurred that he should sing his death song, but he rejected that impulse. As bad as this life was, he didn't want to die. "Let me live a moment longer, Koona Manitou," he prayed like a knowos, his finger nails digging into the raw earth of the floor of The Tomb as though that would save him from sliding into the abyss. A long, whistling sigh issued from his mouth as he died.

CHAPTER SIXTY

He sank his nose deep into the bowl of the crystal glass snuffling the scent of the wine. The black pepper and plum bouquets filled his nostrils. He held the glass by the stem to study the barely translucent ruby wine. He swirled it again, a light twist of his wrist, then poured a trace of wine into his mouth. Licorice. Dry. A Syrah.

He picked up the bottle. The label was from a vineyard, owned by his father-in-law's best friend, in St. Gervais. He had never had an experience like this with a glass of wine. He had watched so many Frenchmen go through the wine ritual proclaiming the scent of strawberries, a breath of coffee, roasted pepper and smoke. At last he understood. The experience was his. He could hardly wait to tell Eleonore.

A gentle warm sun, softened by a pleasant breeze, played on his face. He sat up in the white wooden chair. He looked across the lawn to the river, where three green-headed ducks flowed with the current. If that weren't the Rhone, it was a perfect copy. Above was the French blue sky with bursts of white clouds, tinged with gray flying past.

The pain in his stomach was gone. The headache, the burning in his throat, the cold that pierced his being, gone. He found a pack of Gitanes in his shirt pocket. He lit one with a lighter decorated with an entwined E&C. He sucked the tobacco smoke deep into his lungs, blew it out, smudging the air in the four directions around his head, smoke trailing from the glowing tip of the cigarette, thanking the Creator for everything. He knew there was no need to do the fifth and sixth directions. He was there. This was no dream.

The soft tinkle of a silver bell sounded. He put the glass on the wide arm of the chair, rising to turn towards the cottage. There it was, the old kitchen table from his in-laws' Paris apartment in the backyard. As he walked towards the cottage, he pushed his tongue out of habit into the opening that should have been formed by his missing teeth. His tongue touched the inner sides of his front teeth. He smiled. He touched the teeth with the two foremost fingers of his right hand. Simultaneously, he was seeing with two eyes. He brought his fingers towards what should have been the missing eye. It was there. He closed his right eye for the pleasure of using his left eye to see his fluttering fingers.

He went through the back door and kitchen to the bedroom. She was waiting. Naked, slender, young, voluptuous, thick black hair. She held a bottle of champagne in her right hand high above her head, and two glasses in the fingers of her left hand. Music was playing.

"Come dance with me," she said.

He ran his hands across her breasts around her body, the feel her soft warm flesh enflaming him with desire. She was more beautiful than he remembered or ever imagined. "Thank you, Koona Manitou," he said softly.

"Welcome to paradise," Eleonore whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck.

The End

About the author

Kenneth C. Crowe was a journalist for 40 years including 36 at Newsday. From 1976 to 1999, he covered labor for Newsday and New York Newsday.

His novels include THE JYNX, THE DREAM DANCER, OOOEELIE, THE HERO, THE TRUCKERS, and THE ABSCONDER.

In addition, he is the author of two nonfiction books: COLLISION/How the Rank and File Took Back the Teamsters and AMERICA FOR SALE/An alarming look at how foreign money is buying our country.

Crowe won an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1974 to study foreign investment in the United States. He was a member of the Newsday investigative team whose work won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal.

Website: www.kennethccrowe.com

Blog: www.kennethcrowe.blogspot.com

If you enjoyed THE DREAM DANCER, I would appreciate you writing a brief review and rating it on the website from which you ordered it. And, please encourage your friends and relatives to read it too.

