Chapter 20
Madmen multiply
I looked pretty stupid walking down the street swinging my head from one side to another and twisting as far as I could one way and then the other. And I can’t say it helped much. If anything, the cold made things worse. But I was headed for food, so my general mood was pretty good. It got better when I got to the hotel and found the dining room pretty empty. Apparently all the thugs were sleeping in. The one man who had not slept in was Marc, who was waiting for me at a table. I sat down, ordered almost one of everything off the breakfast menu, and had more coffee while Marc filled me in.
“It turns out there is an angry-man radio station out in the desert that is going on and on about the martyrs up here and how they need to be avenged. A couple guys are counting, and they think over forty have already gotten into town, with more on the way.”
“The hotel is full, and the bar was full last night, so I believe the forty number. If more come, where will they stay?”
“There are a couple fairly sad places out by the highway, but after that, there isn’t much.”
“Good. If they have no place to stay, maybe they will go home.”
“Maybe, but there are still going to be a lot of them. Do you know if the government will be sending help?”
“I don’t think they have made their mind up. By the way, I recommended they not send anyone.” I watched Marc to see how he would react to that idea. He gave it some thought, but I could see he was ambivalent.
“That puts a lot of pressure on the local cops. I think there are only four or five on the force. You add in auxiliaries, and you still have less than a dozen. Pretty tough against eighty or a hundred angry-men with assault rifles.”
“True, but you bring in a company of troops, and it looks like they have launched the Sioux wars.” The food arrived and we both focused on that for a while. I think it might have been the biggest breakfast I had ever ordered, but I had no trouble eating every bite of it, even the chopped buffalo omelet.
“I suppose we could bring in some men from the villages to help.”
“No, I think that would just make things worse. You put too many men with guns in the same place, and nature will take its course. What if we tried the opposite, and got people out of here. What’s the population of DeSmet?
“About four thousand, but that varies with the seasons. Lots of folks visit relatives in the south this time of year. It is hard to have much love for the place in January.”
“What if the government employees were called to a conference in St. Paul, and other folks decided to visit relatives. Could we clear most of the town?”
“It sounds like your strategy is the same one we used with the village – isolate them and let them leave on their own.”
“It didn’t clear them all out, but it did cut their numbers down.”
“Let me talk to some people and see how they feel. You can imagine they will be uncomfortable leaving their homes undefended with a bunch of strangers in town. But let’s see.”
Marc went off to talk with his people, and I went off in search of a new cell phone. Mom was waiting – and worrying. By now the stores were open, and I was able to find a cheap phone in a local store. As I walked there and back, I could see an increase in traffic on the main drag. Big pickup trucks cruised up and down the street. There were also angry-men walking the streets with rifles slung over their shoulders. Were they walking around to look the place over, or to intimidate the locals? I had no idea. But Marc was probably right about the local cops. This could not be an easy situation for them.
Back in my hotel room I called home. They had spoken with Elise several times as they tried to track me down. I got the impression the calls had gotten increasingly frantic as the silence on my end got longer and the general word from this region got worse. I spent much of the call apologizing and calming. Yes, there had been shooting, no I had been in no danger. Everything was fine here. Was I lying to them? A bit. How much danger had I really been in? Who knew? How dangerous were things now? Another mystery. I explained I would be staying in DeSmet for a few more days “to do some reading,” and then I would head back to Green Bay. I also promised to call more frequently and not to “lose this phone in the snow.” I wasn’t about to tell them how my last phone had really met its end, and well, it could have been lost in the snow.
My next call was to Elise to give her my new number. She was still in Arkansas, still visiting ag colleges. So far things were going well. Her reception was warm in some places, tepid in others. I imagined places were far warmer after she had been there a day or two. She can be a charmer, and of course that was part of the plan. She didn’t have much to say about the morning meeting. They had talked for a long time after I had left the meeting. If there had been a decision, she wasn’t sharing it with me. I was fine with that. We talked for a while about flying off together some place warm when things calmed down, both of us knowing that time was unlikely to be any time soon. But it was good to talk about better times. It was good just to talk about being together.
My phoning done, I took a shower and changed into the first clean clothes I had warn in far too long. It occurred to me the smell I had been noticing the last few days had been me.
About this time my phone started ringing. I took calls from my brothers. Yes, I was fine. Yes, it was cold here. No, nobody was currently shooting anyone. A television reporter called. He must have been pretty bright to already have my number. He had seen a clip of me as I came into town with Foster. Did I have anything to say? I summarized what had happened over the last week and explained I thought Foster was a threat to the town. I think my answer was longer than he wanted, or different than he expected, because he said he had to handle a breaking story and thanks for my time. Oh well.
By now I was hungry again. Who knew buffalo burgers could be so attractive? But once I got to the lobby I saw I was going to have to find a new restaurant. The lobby was packed with angry-men. The bar was doing a great business, the restaurant was full, and a line of men was waiting at the registration counter demanding rooms. The clerk there was doing his best to mind his manners, but he was faced with angry-men who were, well, pretty angry. I heard disparaging comments about the town – “what do you mean you’re full?” and “what do you mean this is the only hotel?” leading to “what kind of jerk-water town only has one hotel?” after which “jerk-water” became the least obscene adjective used. As ugly as the scene was, it was more intimidating since each man with a complaint had an assault rifle over his shoulder.
I stood and watched for a minute, and then realized I was becoming an object of attention. Did any of them recognize me from my comments the night before, or did I just stand out as the one guy in the place without a rifle and an attitude? Either way, it was time for me to hit the street. Outside I found a dozen pickup trucks parked in front of the hotel. Every one had a gun rack in the cab, and every gun rack was full. How many guns did these guys need? I found myself staring, fascinated. But that made me an object of attention again, and I forced myself to move along before anyone got out of a truck to come my way.
There was another restaurant several blocks away near the provincial offices. I had eaten there in the past. It was identical to every other restaurant near an office complex any place in the civilized world. It served a variety of salads for the women employees, and sandwiches for the men, or for the very creative, it offered a cup of soup and half a sandwich as the daily special. Like I said, like every other restaurant near an office building.
At least it had been. Today it had a totally different feel. For one thing, every person was looking toward the windows to see what was happening on the street. Were they curious, or scared? My guess was scared. To the extent there was conversation, it was oddly framed with people talking to folks at their table, but looking out the windows. I doubted anyone was talking about how boring the last HR semi
nar had been.
I started to sit down at an empty table when one of the government people waved me over. “Why not join us?” I vaguely recalled him from the morning phone meeting. I had no idea what his name was. There were two others at his table, and I could not remember if they had been at the meeting or not. Good thing I’m not in sales. I don’t network worth a damn. But I’m not hostile. I sat down and shook hands all around.
“The town seems to be filling up, “ one of the government guys said. Should I bother to describe him? I don’t want to be unkind, but he – and the other two – looked like middle aged, mid-level government employees. I am sure all of them are important in their department and important to their families, but if you saw them on the street you would probably look right through them. If there was anything special about them, it was that they were not Sioux. They just didn’t have the features or color. I took them to be career government men, transferred here at some time in the past.
“Yes, I was just over at the hotel, and it is full to overflowing. So I thought I would come here for lunch.”
“Even during hunting season you don’t see so many men walking around with rifles on their shoulders,” one of the other said, looking out the windows the whole time he was nominally talking to me.
“I understand you were out in the villages with them,” this came from government guy number three.
“Yes, do you know Marc LeGrande? He invited me out to see his village a week or so ago. When we got there, we discovered the outsiders had just arrived in one of the other villages.”
“And there was shooting?”
“Yes. It was spread out over several days, but in the end about ten or eleven of them were killed and about ten or eleven Sioux.” At some point I realized that conversations at nearby tables had stopped. They hadn’t been very loud to begin with, but now it was obvious they were listening to us.
“What were they doing out there? Twenty-some guys drive up from the desert and then take snowmobiles out into a Sioux village. Why would they do that?”
“That’s a phenomenal question, and I wish I had an answer.” I said. “It would be clever to say they went out there to cause trouble, but that still makes no sense. Why there, and why now?” It actually was a pretty good question. I get why Foster wants to make trouble, but why would these guys go along? What’s in it for them?
“These desert guys,” government guy number one observed. “I know the folks here call them angry-men, and frankly, the few I have encountered tend to be very angry – do sometimes come up to go hunting and they get very upset if you try to tell them what to hunt in what season or where they can hunt. They seem to feel they can do what they want, when they want, where they want. But nobody hunts in January. It’s too damn cold. And twenty men in one hunting party? Game would hear them miles away. No, something else is going on with these guys.”
“So what are they hunting now? I mean these new guys.” Government guy number two asked. “Every hour there are more trucks and more guys with guns.” He kept his face turned toward the front windows as he spoke. Just then two men walked past. You would think werewolves were walking past the door the way everyone stared at them.
“My hope is they just go away,” I said. Did it sound like wishful thinking? I suppose it did. “They are a long way from home, it is very cold out there, and the hotel is full. With luck, a couple days from now we will be seeing them leave as quickly as they came.”
“The bunch that went out to the villages killed how many before they left?”
“Eleven.”
“That was with twenty men. Now there are far more. It might be time to take the kids on a vacation.” As he said that, I thought I saw small signs of agreement from others in the room – a nod here, a raised eye brow there. He was voicing what others apparently also felt.
“The kids would probably like some beach time anyway,” I said. Why not encourage them a bit? And it seemed to work. For the rest of lunch the conversation was mostly about vacation sites. It didn’t take long for folks to one-up each other with tales of the best resort or best city or best restaurant they had enjoyed. I had to smile. Now it felt like people were having a normal conversation. Except even as they talked about beaches, they kept one eye on the front windows.