Listen to the Silence Page 5

  It was after ten now, and John hadn’t called me back. He’d said he would go over to Pa’s house right after work, but I supposed something more pressing had come up. Either that, or he hadn’t found anything and didn’t feel any urgency about letting me know. If the latter was the case, what would be my next logical step…?

  The phone rang. I looked at the base unit, saw the receiver wasn’t there. Just as the call was about to go to the machine, I located it on the kitchen table under a bundle of clothes I’d put out to take to the dry cleaner.

  John. “Sorry I took so long to get back to you. A client came into the office just as I was closing up, insisted on taking me to dinner. Anyway, I’m at Pa’s. There’s a box of stuff here that looks like it belonged to Fenella. What should I do with it?”

  “Can you FedEx it first thing in the morning?”

  “Sure. There’s also a marriage certificate for Great-grandma and -grandpa, tucked inside a family Bible that nobody’s written in since Uncle Jim was born. Her maiden name was Tendoy.”

  Tendoy. Somewhere in my reading I’d run across it.

  Tendoy was chief of the Lemhi Shoshones from 1863 until his death in 1907, a buffalo hunter with close ties to the white community and a fondness for the white man’s whiskey. He spearheaded the Lemhis’ efforts to stay on their land in the Idaho River valley. Through periods of extreme privation, when allotments of food and clothing from Washington were inexplicably given to less friendly tribes and withheld from the Lemhi, he kept his people together and eventually saw the establishment of a small reservation. But, as usual, the government stinted: the land allotted to the Lemhi amounted to one-tenth of an acre per individual, as opposed to one and a half acres at Fort Hall—not nearly enough for the agriculture-based existence the federal powers-that-be were determined to impose on the tribe. When the governmental push for the Lemhi to move to Fort Hall began, Tendoy vowed he would never do so; and after many lobbying trips to officials throughout Idaho and Montana, as well as to the nation’s capital, he kept that promise by falling off his horse into a creek and dying of exposure—drunk on whiskey supplied by an unscrupulous white man.

  As he lay dying in the creek bed, Chief Tendoy may well have reflected that the humiliation of such a death was nothing compared to the humiliation of his tribe at the hands of the U.S. government.

  I stood in the door of my home office, surveying the new iMac computer that looked out of place on my old-fashioned desk. The machine seemed to call to me, a siren song of cyber-language.

  You and I are friends now! Let’s take it further!

  Dammit, why had I—in a fit of boredom—taught myself to use the Macintosh that Hy kept at our seaside retreat in Mendocino County? If I hadn’t gone up alone one fateful week last summer to monitor our contractor’s progress on the new house we were building there, I’d still be pure.

  Think how good we’ll be together!

  And then why had I returned home and bought the iMac? Indulged in the guilty pleasure of selecting printer and software—to say nothing of color? (Tangerine.) Then taken the machine home, made it comfortable, honed my technique, learned the delicious curves of the Information Highway?

  Disgusting, McCone. Just disgusting.

  Come on over here and play with me!

  Seduced. Shamefully seduced.

  You can do anything you want with me! Anything at all!

  I went over, pushed the power button. The machine gave a happy, welcoming chime, and soon the screen glowed.

  Anything!

  Not tonight. It’s late.

  Anything…

  Including a trace on Mary Tendoy McCone’s surviving relatives.

  Let’s do it now!

  I reached for the mouse—rolling over for the very technology I’d sworn never to embrace.

  White pages/yellow pages. Click on white.

  City & state. Fort Hall, Idaho.

  Party. Tendoy.

  Searching.

  Thirteen Tendoys in the Bingham County directory.

  Print.

  White pages/yellow pages. Click on white.

  City & state. Fort Washakie, Wyoming.

  Party. Tendoy.

  Searching.

  Two Tendoys listed in Fremont County.

  Print.

  Late now. Too late to start calling. But tomorrow…

  Friday

  SEPTEMBER 8

  8:22 A.M.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no Tendoys. It’s my old man’s name, and he’s long gone.”

  “Lady, do you know what time it is here? I work nights, and I just got to bed.”

  “Chief Tendoy? Never heard of him.”

  “It’s a common surname. As I understand, the chief had many descendants, but most of us don’t know too much about him.”

  “Sorry, we don’t accept telemarketing calls.”

  “I’m so out of touch with my Indian side that I couldn’t find it with both hands.”

  “I think Chief Tendoy had a daughter named Mary by one of his wives, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “Why don’t you try Dwight Tendoy, down in Nampa? Genealogy’s his hobby.”

  “Yes,” Dwight Tendoy said, “the chief had a daughter named Mary by his third wife, Ta Gwah Wee. The girl was kidnapped by a corrupt Indian agent, John Blaine, in 1888. You say she was your great-grandmother?”

  “That’s right. She met my great-grandfather in Flagstaff that same year and went with him to California.”

  “Interesting. No one ever found out what happened to her, but John Blaine was murdered near Fort Hall in 1891. The consensus was that two of Tendoy’s sons had a hand in it.”

  “Mr. Tendoy, do you know where I might find someone who could tell me more about Mary?”

  “Hmmm. There’s Elwood Farmer. His mother was Tendoy’s youngest daughter, married a white man. Elwood’s living in Saint Ignatius, on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. He married a woman from there.”

  “D’you have a phone number for him?”

  “No, but I have a feeling you’ll do better if you just show up and talk with him in person.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Elwood’s an unusual man.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ll see, Ms. McCone. You’ll see.”

  Go today? Wait till tomorrow when the box of Fenella’s stuff is supposed to arrive, see if there’s a more promising lead in it?

  But what’s a lead from the dead past, compared to meeting a living, breathing relative of Mary Tendoy McCone?

  Go today.

  4:10 P.M.

  Montana’s big sky was overcast by darkly bruised cumuli as I turned north on Highway 93 outside Missoula. The two-lane road paralleled a railroad track and ran through a big bowl-like valley surrounded by low, folded hills. Lodgepole pine crowded in on dirt roads that led to small ranches with prefab houses or doublewide trailers. In the distance I could see the Rockies: stark and one-dimensional, like blue-black cardboard cutouts of mountains.

  I was feeling mildly depressed—a late-afternoon sinking spell brought on by the weather—as well as nervous about approaching Elwood Farmer. Normally I had no difficulty striking a rapport with total strangers, but usually I did so for professional reasons, and this meeting would be deeply personal, perhaps emotional on my side. I wished that Dwight Tendoy had told me more about Farmer, but before I could press for further details, he’d had another call, given me Farmer’s address, and ended our conversation.

  Arlee, the first town on the Flathead Reservation, was tiny—little more than a scattering of small frame houses, a bar, and a red water tower. I passed through quickly. As I neared St. Ignatius my nervousness intensified, and I stared at my surroundings as if they were an alien landscape. Here in Indian country lived my people, and yet I had nothing in common with them. I’d been raised to think of myself as Scotch-Irish with a touch of Native American blood, and nothing in my background had prepared me to understand their world or way of
thinking. Frankly, I felt so dislocated that I wanted to make a U-turn, head back to Missoula, and catch the first plane home to San Francisco.

  A sign for St. Ignatius appeared and then, on the left side of the highway, a harbinger of tourism: Doug Allard’s Flathead Indian Museum. The town itself was on the right, so I headed that way. Church, community center, shops, bars, cafés, medical and dental clinics, school. A classic movie theater had been turned into a realty office. Most of the buildings were old and false-fronted, with roofed porches; they could have been the set of a Western movie. I’d driven through reservations before, both in California and Arizona, and found this one very different; there was no sense of a closed community, and many of the people on the streets were white. From some hastily assembled information on the Flathead reserve that I’d read on the plane, I’d learned that outsiders had acquired a great deal of the tribal lands from financially strapped Indians, beginning in the Great Depression. St. Ignatius was far from cosmopolitan, but it presented an ethnic mix.

  I stopped at a place called Yesterday’s Cafe and got directions to Moose Lane, where Elwood Farmer lived. The counterman seemed surprised I had to ask; I might feel like an alien, but to his eyes I fit right in. He was white, and his gaze slid over me, then moved away in dismissal. Not a prejudiced look; to him I simply didn’t count, and it made me wonder how many other such looks I’d received in my lifetime but never noticed. I glanced around at the half-dozen diners seated in the shabby vinyl booths and realized with some shock that this was the first time I’d ever been in a room with so many people I resembled.

  Moose Lane was off Second Street: narrow and unpaved, with small frame houses, many of which were flanked by what John called classic car collections. I followed it away from town through a pine forest that got denser with every tenth of a mile. Farmer’s house sat in a clearing where the lane ended, a tidy log cabin with a new red pickup pulled in front of its porch and a plume of smoke drifting from a stovepipe chimney. I parked next to the truck and sat there for a moment, trying to trick myself into thinking this was a routine call on a witness who might provide useful information.

  Sure it was.

  The man who answered my knock was tall and muscular, with deep wrinkles on his nut-brown face and gray hair that hung to the shoulders of his plaid wool shirt. A cigarette was clamped between his lips. The nape of my neck prickled as I recognized a more masculine version of Mary McCone’s chiseled features. A version of my own, too. His narrow eyes looked at me through the cigarette smoke, betraying nothing, not even curiosity. He cocked his head and waited for me to speak.

  “Mr. Elwood Farmer?”

  A slight nod.

  “I’m Sharon McCone. My great-grandmother was your mother’s sister.”

  Another nod, as if citified strangers often showed up on his porch, claiming kinship.

  “May I talk with you, ask you some questions?”

  He stepped out of the house, shut the door behind him. Removed the cigarette from his lips, dropped it on the floor, crushed it out. And waited.

  I said, “My great-grandmother, Mary McCone, was Chief Tendoy’s daughter by his third wife. She met my great-grandfather after she was kidnapped by an Indian agent, and went to California with him. I’m trying to trace my family’s roots.”

  A long silence. Then, in a voice roughened not so much by age as tobacco and disuse, he asked, “Why?”

  “Because… I need to know who I am.”

  A frown. Elwood Farmer drew in his lower lip, sucked thoughtfully on it.

  “You don’t know who you are?” he asked.

  “Yes. No. I mean—”

  He regarded me sternly. “Young woman, come back tomorrow, after you’ve assembled your thoughts.”

  Then he went inside and shut the door.

  8:21 P.M.

  “Assemble my thoughts,” I muttered as I shifted position on the hard bed. “What the hell does that mean?”

  My motel was on the northern end of town, twelve linoleum-floored units containing some of the ugliest and most uncomfortable furniture this side of Grand Rapids. Everything, even the remote control for the TV, was screwed down. I pressed the On button, flipped through the channels. Snow, snow, more snow, and a sitcom with a laugh track. Off!

  After leaving Elwood Farmer’s, I’d gone back to Yesterday’s Cafe, had a bowl of chili, and asked for a recommendation of a place to stay. The man who waited on me this time was Native American; he took one look at my clothing and hairstyle and directed me to the AAA-endorsed motel. But they were full, so here I was. I folded my arms and stared glumly at a garish mountain landscape on the far wall.

  I hadn’t expected Elwood Farmer to welcome me with open arms; I was, after all, only a distant relative—if one at all. But I also hadn’t expected to be greeted with silence and then a thinly veiled criticism of my mental processes. Maybe my blood relatives would turn out to be as weird as my adoptive family. Maybe I’d regret tracking them down.

  One thing for sure, I’d regret spending any more time in this room than was absolutely necessary. I got up, combed my hair, grabbed my bag and jacket. Earlier I’d spotted a bar across the street, the Warbonnet Lounge; I’d go over there, have a drink, and assemble my thoughts—hopefully on a well-padded bar stool.

  The Warbonnet Lounge was overly warm and smoke-clouded. No California-style outlawing of tobacco in drinking establishments here. A jukebox played country songs, and a few couples danced on the small floor in front of it. Danced with a Western flair like Hy did. Seeing them made me miss him, wish he’d been able to come along on this trip. But he was still at his ranch, working on a new project for his firm, and I was stuck in a small Montana town on a Friday night, where everybody seemed to be having a good time except me. I claimed one of the few unoccupied stools and ordered a draft.

  Two men on my right were talking about cattle. On my left a couple were locked in such a torrid embrace that I felt like offering them the key to my motel room. After a few minutes they got up and wandered to the dance floor. Quickly the stool next to me was claimed by a thirties-ish man with thick raven hair and a silver hoop earring. He ordered a Coors, turned to me, and said, “You’re the private detective from San Francisco.”

  “What?”

  “Sharon McCone, the private detective who’s related to Elwood Farmer.”

  “How do you—?”

  He laughed with genuine pleasure. “Surprised? Maybe you should hire me, huh?”

  “… Maybe.”

  “You know, that stuff”—he motioned at my draft—“is terrible. Let me buy you a real beer.”

  I studied him. His narrow, elongated eyes gleamed mischievously; there was strength of character in the line of his jaw and good humor in the set of his mouth. This was someone I could like, and maybe develop as a contact within the reservation.

  “Look,” he added, “I’m not trying to hit on you. I’ve heard about you, is all, and I’m nosy.”

  “In that case, I’ll take what you’re having.”

  “You got it.” He spoke to the bartender. “I’m Will Camphouse, by the way.”

  “And you already know who I am. How?”

  “Moccasin telegraph.”

  “What’s that?”

  The bartender set down our beers, and Will Camphouse told him to run a tab. Then he looked around, spotted a booth opening up, and motioned toward it. After we were settled he said, “Okay, the moccasin telegraph. Indians communicate on it from coast to coast. Here’s how it works: This afternoon Dwight Tendoy called his sister Millie Wasockie in Fort Hall and told her a descendant of Tendoy’s missing daughter had surfaced and would probably come up here to talk with Elwood Farmer. Millie called her best friend, Candy Ferguson, in Arlee and asked if you’d arrived yet. Candy called Jane Nomee, here in Saint Ignatius, who called Elwood and confirmed the rumor. Moccasin telegraph.”

  Gossip central. “That doesn’t explain how you know I’m from San Francisco, or a private investigator.”
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  “Well, at the beginning of your conversation with Dwight Tendoy, you mentioned where you were calling from. So Jane Nomee asked her son Gilbert, who’s a primo hacker, to find out more about you. He got a phone listing for your agency, plus some basic facts, and then he called his former college roommate, Keller Redbird, who lives in Frisco. Keller said he’d read about you in the papers, so Gilbert accessed some of the articles and printed them out. Jane took a set to Elwood, then got on the horn, and by now everybody in the original chain of information, plus their aunts, uncles, cousins, and dogs, knows about the private eye from the big city.”

  I shook my head. “I could use something like the moccasin telegraph in my business. But one thing still isn’t clear: How’d you recognize me?”

  “From a photo they printed with one of the articles. But I probably would’ve spotted you anyway; you’re not dressed like most people on the rez.” He pointed to the leather flight jacket that lay on the seat beside me.

  “Neither are you.” He wore an expensive-looking sweater, and when we sat down he’d shrugged out of a suede coat.

  “Nope, I’m from Tucson. Creative director at an ad agency. Was born and raised there, but I visit the rez at least twice a year, once for my grandma’s birthday—that’s tomorrow—and for the Fourth of July powwow.”

  “Powwow? I thought that was something out of the movies, or strictly for tourists.”

  “Certainly not. Haven’t you ever been to one?”

  “No. What’re they like?”

  “Well, they’re celebrations—our way of reinforcing our traditions. And they’re a lot of fun: all sorts of traditional dances and games, tons of food, friends and relatives you haven’t seen since the year before. The powwow makes you proud to be an Indian.”

  “I notice you say ‘Indian,’ rather than ‘Native American.’”

  “Most of us prefer ‘Indian,’ or our tribe’s name. Or simply ‘Native.’ ‘Native American’ is mainly used by the media or academics or the politically correct. I’ve heard everything from ‘Indigenous Americans’ to ‘Indigenous People’ to ‘Native American Indians.’ But why speak a mouthful when one word’ll do?” He paused, frowning. “You talk like an Angla. How the hell were you raised?”