Chapter 31
More waiting
When we got back home I had to help Marc into the house, which must have made Nicole’s heart stop as she imagined all the things that could be wrong with him. When she found out it was an ankle, she got out an adhesive bandage and some ice. With two sons, she was ready to respond to basic injuries. As Marc described it, he had just slipped as he got out of his truck. As for the incident (it was already on the local radio), yes, he had been in the area, but two others been had been involved in the shooting. I wasn’t sure how he was going to explain the condition of his truck, but he had until morning to think of something.
Why is it men lie to women about the risks they take? Partly they are trying to be helpful, but I think we are also trying to minimize our own sense of risk. Yes, Marc might have been shot, but he wasn’t. The bad guy had lots of bullets, but no real skill. Could bad things have happened? Yes, but why dwell on that? So we come up with some approximation of the truth and move on.
I had my own series of white lies to tell a few minutes later when Elise called. My freshly charged – and now available – cell phone rang minutes after we got in the door. Someone had been shot? Yes, an arsonist. No one else was hurt. And me? I was perfectly safe the whole time. We were all back in the house now and headed to bed. That was my story for Elise. Most of that was true. Was I ever really in danger? Not all that much. I knew to stay hid, and I knew to stay down, and the men who had rifles knew to be careful who they shot. It might be an interesting story to tell the grandchildren, with lots of laughs about grandpa lying in the snow. If she had any doubts, Elise didn’t voice them, and we ended the call with lots of “love yous” and “see you soons.”
Did we really go straight off to bed? No. I think we sat in that kitchen for over an hour until we had calmed down enough to finally feel like sleeping. But we did sleep. At least I did, and I noticed when I got up the next morning Marc and Nicole were still in their room.
I walked down to the restaurant for breakfast and had my “usual.” I was a little concerned about my waitress. She was good at refilling my coffee, but she kept her distance otherwise. I tried to make up for yesterday’s shouting by smiling extra wide whenever she came by.
Charles came by after a while. I was not too surprised. There aren’t that many places in town to eat, and if he wanted to find me, this would be a great start.
“The man you killed last night – his partner beat it out of town.”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I was half buried in a snow pile the whole time.
“Okay, the man your team got. His partner raced out of town last night. By dawn, four more were gone. That takes them down to thirteen.”
“That’s progress.”
“Yes, and there is progress with the radio station too. When they described the death, they just said – and I quote – we have just learned that a local man has been shot in DeSmet. No details of the shooting have been released.”
“That’s progress?”
“Yesterday they were all martyrs being killed by Indians encouraged by the white-hating government in Green Bay. Now suddenly he was just a local man, and they don’t know anything about his death. They didn’t know anything about the other deaths either, but that didn’t keep them from making up all kinds of conspiracies.”
“Okay, so you think they are coming around?”
“No.” He gave me a look he must have used a thousand times on the dumbest private in his unit. How could anyone be as stupid as I was? “They will never ‘come around.’ They make their living entertaining desert rats with conspiracies and hatred. But they – like the rest of the world – sometimes need to cover their backside. If the LNA has told them the background of these boys up here, maybe the station is seeing how getting caught supporting common criminals might not be good for their advertising revenue.”
“If the LNA has talked with them.”
“Yes. If the LNA has talked to them. We do have access in a few places, but we may never be sure who said what to whom. But we may be making progress. We will have to see how far the station goes. Maybe they repudiate the Dubuissants, maybe they just decide to ignore the boys. Maybe they decide to go all in and call them freedom fighters until the end. We shall see. But I think we are making progress.”
“I hope you are right.”
“We shall see. By the way, good job not getting shot last night.” Had he heard about me diving into the snow bank and now was laughing at me? Or was he genuinely concerned? I have no idea. He was up and out the door. End of conversation.
I got back to work on my omelet and had most of it gone when visitor number two arrived. Was I so easy to predict? It was my favorite policeman, and he walked over to my table like he knew exactly where I would be and when I would be there. I guess I am a creature of habit.
“You should know,” he said as he sat down. Somehow people seem to think they can just sit at my table without asking. “Some things are happening here that are not normal.” I must have made a face when he said that. “not normal?” Let me count the ways. Twenty men are shot in the villages, houses are being burned in town, guys with automatic weapons are opening fire in the night… I hope that is not normal.
“What I mean is that there are judicial procedures here, just as there are everywhere else in the civilized world. People don’t just shoot people and walk away. Killing is a crime. We have a small police force, but we are the authorized police in this town.” I had no idea where he was going with this. Did he expect an argument from me? “Last night the men who encountered the arsonist were police auxiliaries. They had to right to use deadly force to protect themselves.”
“I completely agree. The man had an automatic weapon and very nearly killed Marc LeGrande.”
“Good I just want to make the legal issues clear to you, since you are from a foreign country. I did not want you to get the wrong impression.”
“Thank you for the clarification. By the way, were there any robberies last night?”
“Yes, there was a break-in at one of our pawn shops. We are investigating that now.”
“So, Foster was right. They are just crooks.”
“We don’t know who did the crime. But we are investigating. If you will excuse me…” and he was gone. What in the world had that been about? The arsonist had a machine gun. Anybody anywhere in the world would have had the right to return fire. And why bother telling me?
The answer came within ten seconds. The synchronization was amazing. Elise came first. “Shawn, you are going to get a call from a reporter in St Louis. I would like you to take it. Do you mind?” I gave the obvious answer and got off the line. Two sips of coffee later, I got the reporter’s call.
Hi, this is so and so from the daily whatis. Sorry, but that’s about all I remember about the preamble. It was his question that mattered.
“We understand there was a shooting last night, and you were a witness.”
“Yes.”
“Could you describe what you saw?”
“A man had broken into a house and was pouring gas on it to burn it down. Two similar fires had been started the night before. When he was spotted, he opened fire with an automatic weapon. He very nearly killed a man. Two other men returned fire and killed him.”
“The men who returned fire, who were they?
“I don’t know their names, but they are police auxiliaries who have been trying to protect more homes from arson.” The minute “police auxiliaries” was out of my mouth, the light bulb came on. My favorite policeman had prepped me for my interview. Pretty clever.
“I understand you are an American professor in DeSmet to do research?”
“Yes, I am a history professor, and I am here for a short time to study the early French explorers.” And that was that. There were other questions, but the salient points had been made. The guy killed had been an arsonist. The men who had s
hot him were legally allowed to do so. I was an objective witness who could verify everything was above board. Pretty cool. My compliments to whoever had thought up the interview. A point was being made. Even the fact that the publication was in St Louis and not in Green Bay had been carefully thought out. I hoped I eventually would get to meet the genius behind this event.
One other good thing happened. My waitress smiled back when she refilled my coffee. Apparently I was a good guy again. Not a bad way to start the day.
What do you do after a good breakfast and productive newspaper interview? Good question. It’s not like DeSmet has an unending list of attractions. For reasons that didn’t make any real sense, I found myself walking down the street to the hotel. Staring at the hotel wasn’t real logical. It’s not like I have x-ray vision and could see what was going on inside, and there is not much happening outside, but I found myself standing on the sidewalk staring at it. And the funny thing was, I was not alone. There were several other men and a couple kids, just standing on the street or on the sidewalk staring at the building. It had probably not drawn that much attention since the day it was built.
What did we see? Not much. One of the men I recognized as a hotel employee came out, and another hotel employee went in. Not much excitement there. I did see one of the angry-men leave. He had a rifle over one shoulder and a bag over the other. He walked to his truck, threw everything in the back, and drove south out of town. Another one gone. There was something about the way he threw his bag in the truck that made me wonder just how angry the angry-men might be. In the meantime, us watchers didn’t exactly cheer, but there were some shared looks and smiles. DeSmet might get its hotel back.
As exciting as it might be to stare at a century old hotel, it was still Dakota, with Dakota weather. We had been spared wind since the blizzard, but temperatures were still below zero. It occurred to me a Dakota thermometer might be interesting. I wondered if they had to be made special. I’d have to talk to my father about any exports we made along those lines. Of course I did all this wondering as I walked back to the nice warm home of Marc and Nicole.
I arrived to find Nicole on the verge of throwing crockery at Marc. She had seen the truck. He’d had all night to come up with a good story, but apparently it wasn’t good enough. Worse yet, Nicole turned on me the minute I walked in the door and wanted to get my version of events. Since I had not heard Marc’s version, this could be really bad.
What did I say? Very little. In truth, she had the right to know what had happened. We should have given her the whole story the night before. We thought we saw a bad guy, we went looking for a bad guy, and the bad guy opened up with an assault rifle. The bad guy got the truck, and two other men got him.
Her response? “Don’t lie to me. Ever.” She said to Marc. “Don’t try to protect me. I know these nuts have guns. I was sitting here with a rifle too. So were the boys.” With that she left the house.
Marc poured me a cup of coffee and we sat at the kitchen table to drink it. What do you say when you have walked into a domestic spat? Not much.
“How’s the ankle this morning?” I needed to break the ice somehow.
“She has it taped up pretty good, but I should probably stay off it. I won’t be taking the truck very far anyway until we get the windows replaced.”
“Do they have a plan for tonight?”
“We’ll get a call later this afternoon.” And with that we moved into fill-in-the-time chatter. Still cold out. One more guy left the hotel. I talked to a couple guys at the restaurant. Just stuff to say while time passed. Eventually we moved into the living room and watched lacrosse reruns on the tube. Just an observation – if you think lacrosse is boring live, it is not any better in reruns. But it killed a couple hours while we waited for the phone to ring and Nicole to come back home.
Nicole got back about five minutes before the phone rang. She had been at the police station talking about the shooting and about the plans for the night. She already knew what the phone message would be – change of plans. Rather than fan out across the city, volunteers were to park in front of the hotel. A show of force. Oh, and two more men had left during the afternoon. There were just ten angry-men left.
We had dinner and then loaded up the car. There would be a change in personnel there too. She and I and the boys would take the car, and Marc would stay home to guard the house. He didn’t object. He took his rifle and hobbled to one of the front windows, while Nicole and the boys took their rifles and I took my pistol. Nicole drove.
It was interesting at the hotel. There had to be eighty cars and trucks parked all over the street in front of the hotel. Traffic was completely blocked. And, oddly, it seemed a bit like a celebration. People got out of their cars and talked to neighbors and friends. Everyone had a weapon handy, and most stood facing the hotel, but there was almost a festive atmosphere. People shared food they had brought along, and folks who had not seen each other in a while got caught up on events. I mostly stayed in the car where it was warm, but the boys got out almost immediately and talked to friends. It was hard to tell under all the layers of clothing, but I thought a couple of the friends might have been female. Nicole found several other women and they talked and laughed. A party on Main Street? Almost.
There was always the risk that the angry-men would do something stupid, but all four of the local police had taken up places right across from the front doors of the hotel. They actually stood guard along with a few other men, while the rest of the crowd walked between the rows of cars and talked to friends.
How long did this go on? Pretty long. But eventually the cold became more important than the conversations, people slowly retreated to their vehicles, and a few people left. By two in the morning, most of the people had gone home. The point had been made. The police stayed at their posts, but the street slowly cleared of the civilians. Nicole left then too, and we went home to a warm house and warm beds.