Bad News

15

The room was somehow both cluttered and bare. A lot of folding chairs in messy rows on the left faced a raised platform behind a wooden rail on the right, with a long table and more folding chairs on the platform. Straight ahead, opposite the door from the hall, windows showed a nearby stone wall, probably some other official building. The walls of the room were covered with posters to do with fire fighting, drugs, AIDS, the Heimlich maneuver, and the implications of school being open. One man and one woman sat behind the long table, and a few more people were scattered among the scattered folding chairs.

“Sit there,” said one of the detectives to Little Feather, pointing at the nearest folding chair, and before she could tell him where he could sit, he went off to confer with people at the long table. So she sat.

What Little Feather mostly was was furious. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, just hustled off like some penny-ante crook. There was supposed to be a conversation, a dialogue, an unfolding of events. It was as though the world had suddenly jumped to the last chapter.

They’d taken her bag with her ID in it, and now the detectives and the people at the table studied all that for a while, then studied some other papers, and then the detective turned to crook a finger at Little Feather, who mostly by this point wanted to kick him in the shin. But she would contain herself, because sooner or later somebody would have to stop this folderol and pay attention.

Or maybe not. She went over to the long table, and saw on it a three-sided brass plaque in front of the man, reading:

MAGISTRATE

R. G. GOODY IV

R.G. himself didn’t much live up to the billing, being a spindly little balding man in a rumpled brown suit and crooked eyeglasses, who had no interest in meeting Little Feather’s eye. The woman beside him, schoolmarmish, was a steno or something, with pad and paper at the ready.

“Shirley Ann Farraff,” Goody began, and Little Feather nearly corrected him, but why bother? This was clearly a flunky. “You have been charged,” Goody went on, and then, not looking up, concentrating on the papers in front of him, he reeled off a list of numbers and sections and subparagraphs, after which he said, “How do you plead?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Little Feather said.

Goody looked at the steno. “Was that a not guilty plea?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“So noted.” Still not looking directly at Little Feather, he said, “Your Miranda rights were read to you.”

“In the car,” she agreed. Mumbled to her, really.

“Have you an attorney?”

“No. I don’t see—”

“Can you afford an attorney?”

“What? No!”

“Would you like the court to appoint an attorney?”

“Well, uh . . .” Not at all what she’d expected. “Maybe I should,” she said.

Goody nodded, then beckoned somebody from the spectators, and Little Feather turned to see moving toward her, lugging a big heavy old black battered briefcase, a woman of Little Feather’s age, but pretending to be her own grandma, with narrow reading glasses tipped forward on her face, black hair pulled severely back into a bun, and makeup so slight as to be almost not worth the effort. She wore a bulky black sweater, shapeless brown wool slacks, and black hiking shoes, and she gave Little Feather a quick impersonal nod before saying to Goody, “Your Honor, I need time to consult with my client.”

“She pleads not guilty,” Goody said. “She claims to be indigent. Did you want to seek bail?”

“Your Honor,” the woman said, “as I understand it, Miss Farraff has no previous criminal record, and would not be a danger to the community, so her own recognizance would—”

“The defendant,” Goody pointed out, “lives in a motor home, which would make the prospect of flight, I should think, very appealing. Five thousand dollars bail.”

Five thousand dollars! While Little Feather tried to think where she’d get hold of money like that—Fitzroy? Forget it—more words were handed back and forth by the woman attorney and the magistrate, remand and calendar and other words not part of her normal vocabulary, and then the woman turned and extended a card to Little Feather, saying, “I’ll speak with Judge Higbee.”

The card said she actually was an attorney-at-law and her name was Marjorie Dawson. Little Feather said, “Isn’t this the judge?”

“This is the arraignment,” Marjorie Dawson explained. “Judge Higbee will hear the actual trial. I’ll report to you after I talk to him.”

“But—” Little Feather said, and a hand closed on her elbow and she was taken away from there.

After the arraignment, Little Feather was run through a process that was handled so easily and so calmly that it was clearly routine for these people, and probably routine for most of the arrestees as well, but it wasn’t routine for Little Feather, and it shook her confidence. She’d never been arrested, had never had a conversation with a suspicious or hostile cop, had never even had a traffic ticket. Sure, she’d been involved in a number of low-level scams in Nevada, mostly as decoration, but nothing that had ever drawn her to the attention of the law. The world these people lived in inside here contained a lot of assumptions about guilt and innocence, good guys and bad guys, freedom and obedience, that she didn’t like at all.

But she had no choice, did she? They just walked her through it, the mug shots and the fingerprinting and the writing down on a long form all the personal effects they were taking away from her. Then a hefty woman deputy sheriff took her in a small bare room for a strip search she didn’t care for in the least, after which, her own clothing was taken away, replaced by denim shirt and blue jeans; not the best fit, either one.

“They don’t have different ones for women,” the deputy said, not quite apologizing, which was about as human as anyone got around here.

And now she was on her way to a cell of her own. They walked down a long corridor, past the cells for male inmates, and Little Feather looked in and saw a concrete-floored communal area with a long wooden table and some folding chairs and a TV set tuned to the Weather Channel. Three losers in denim shirts and blue jeans like hers sprawled around on the chairs, gawking at the set. Down both sides of the communal room were cells with only bars for their inner walls, so you could never be out of sight.

Well, at least, Little Feather thought, they’re not putting me in there. And then she thought, what do those clowns care about the weather?

Past the Weather Channel fans at the end of the hall was an iron door. One of the two male deputies escorting her pushed a button beside the door, a nasty electronic buzz sounded, and the door popped open. “You go in there,” the deputy said.

She wished she could think of an argument, but at the moment, there didn’t seem to be one, so she went in there, and they shut the iron door behind her, and here she was. The women’s quarters, looking very much like an afterthought. A fairly large long room had been fitted with vertical bars all around, just inside the real walls and over the large window at the end. When she went over there to look out the window, she could see some old brick walls and, in the distance, a white spire against a gray sky. That was it.

The furniture in the room consisted of two sets of bunk beds on opposite side walls, each with a thin mattress on it, folded in half—you can’t fold a thick mattress in half—plus one sheet, one scratchy-looking wool blanket, one pillow, and one pillowcase, all neatly stacked on top of the mattress. There were also a square wooden table and two folding chairs like the men’s, but no TV set. For the weather, she’d have to rely on the window.

And also for the time, since they’d taken her watch. So now and then, when the spirit moved her, she could go over to the window to see how much the shadows had lengthened out there, if she wanted to confirm that a whole lot of dead time was passing by.

When the nasty buzzer sounded at the door again, she happened to be over by the window, shoulder leaning on a bar as she looked out at the world, where now the shadows were so very long, they’d definitely combined into nighttime; she’d been in here for hours. At that sound, she moved away toward the center of the room and stood by the table as the door opened and a different deputy stood there, saying, “Visitor.”

Visitor? For one fleeting instant, she thought the visitor was Fitzroy, come to say forget it, let’s call the whole thing off, let’s just go home, we were nuts to think we could try this stunt. But no. A) Fitzroy wouldn’t do that. B) Fitzroy wouldn’t show his face anywhere near Little Feather. C) They weren’t nuts to try this stunt, they were going to go ahead with this stunt and it was going to work, and she would have the biggest, whitest, grandest, softest, cushiest house on the reservation, and screw everybody.

So she said, “What visitor?”

“Your lawyer, ma’am.”

Oh, Marjorie Dawson. About time. Little Feather didn’t want to have to spend another second in this damn place. “Then let’s go,” she said, and they went.

Walking past the men’s cell compound, she just caught a glimpse of herself, doing the perp walk on TV. Goddamn! After six o’clock, then—the local news.

Down another corridor, and the deputy opened a door and said, “In here, ma’am.”

She stepped inside, and he shut the door behind her, and she looked around. This was a women’s cell again, without the bars and the bunk beds, but with the square wooden table and the two wooden chairs, on one of which sat Marjorie Dawson, facing Little Feather but studying papers spread on the table in front of her. Looking over her reading glasses, she said, “Come in, Shirley Ann.”

Little Feather stepped forward, rested a hand on the back of the empty chair, and said, “My name is Little Feather.”

“Sit down, Shirley Ann,” Marjorie Dawson said as though Little Feather hadn’t spoken at all.

“My name is Little Feather,” Little Feather insisted.

Marjorie Dawson gave her a flat look, as though she were a file put away in the wrong place. “We’ll discuss that, if you wish,” she said. “In the meantime, please sit down.”

Little Feather sat, placed her folded hands on the table in front of her, and waited. She was not, she sensed, going to warm to Marjorie Dawson.

Looking down at the papers on the table, Dawson said, “You’re a very foolish young woman, Shirley Ann, but you’re also a very lucky one.”

Little Feather waited.

Dawson looked up at her. “Don’t you want to know how you’re lucky?”

“I already know I’m lucky,” Little Feather said. “I want to know how I’m foolish.”

Dawson gestured at the top document in the folder, and Little Feather saw it was a copy of her letter. “This isn’t even a good attempt at extortion,” she said. “If you escape jail time—”

“It isn’t an attempt at extortion at all,” Little Feather said.

Dawson shook her head and her finger at Little Feather. “I’m afraid you don’t realize the seriousness of the situation.”

Little Feather frowned at her. “Whose lawyer are you supposed to be?”

“I’m your lawyer, as you well know, and I have spoken with Judge Higbee, and—Don’t interrupt me!”

Little Feather folded her arms, like Geronimo. “You talk,” she said, like Geronimo, “and then I’ll talk.”

“Very well.” Dawson seemed a bit ruffled. She patted her hair, none of which was out of place, and looked down at Little Feather’s letter, as though to gain strength from it. “You have attempted here,” she said, “to obtain money through false pretenses. Let me finish! I’ve spoken with Judge Higbee, and I’ve pled your case, and—Let me finish! And I’ve pointed out to Judge Higbee that you have no prior police record of any kind, that this is your first offense, and that I very strongly suspect others put you up to it. The judge has agreed to let you go with only a warning, if.”

Again she glowered over her glasses at Little Feather, who this time didn’t try to say anything at all, but merely watched, and waited her turn.

“If,” Dawson finally went on, “you will sign a statement renouncing the claims in this fraudulent letter, and if you will depart Clinton County at once, never to return, the judge is prepared to release you. I have done the statement,” she finished, and then found another document in the folder and pushed it across the table toward Little Feather, who didn’t bother to look at it.

Reaching down to her briefcase again, Dawson came up with a fat black pen with a screw top. She unscrewed the top, extended the pen toward Little Feather, and, when Little Feather didn’t take it, Dawson at last looked up and met her eye.

Little Feather said, “You done?”

“You really must sign this,” Dawson said.

Little Feather said, “You done? You took your turn, and if you’re done, it’s my turn.”

Dawson did an elaborate sigh, put the pen on the table, and leaned back. “I don’t know,” she said, “what you could possibly have to say.”

“And if you don’t shut up,” Little Feather told her, “you never will.”

That did it. Dawson gave her a look of stony disbelief and crossed her own arms like Geronimo.

Little Feather uncrossed her arms and said, “You don’t act like you’re my lawyer, you act like you’re the other guy’s lawyer.” She pointed to the letter she’d sent. “I am Little Feather Redcorn,” she said. “My mother was Doeface Redcorn, my grandmother was Harriet Littlefoot Redcorn, my grandfather was Bearpaw Redcorn, who was lost at sea in the United States Navy in World War Two, and they were all Pottaknobbee, and I’m Pottaknobbee. I’m Pottaknobbee all the way back to my great-grandfather Joseph Redcorn, who fell off the Empire State Building.”

At that, Dawson blinked and said, “Are you trying to make fun—”

“He was working on it, when they were building it, he was up on top with a bunch of Mohawks. My mama told me the family always believed the Mohawks pushed him, so I believe it, too.”

Dawson stared hard at her, thinking. “You believe the claims in this letter.”

“They aren’t claims, they’re facts,” Little Feather told her. She felt indignant at the way these clowns were treating her, not even giving her a civil conversation, and indignation gave her as much self-assurance as innocence would have done. She said, “I never extorted anybody. I never demanded anything. I just said I want to be back with my own people, and since I don’t know any other Pottaknobbees, I wanted to get back with the Kiota and the Oshkawa. And this is the way they treat me, their long-lost cousin. Like I was an Iroquois!”

Dawson looked less and less sure of herself. She said, “The tribes are certain there are no more Pottaknobbees.”

“The tribes are wrong.”

“Well . . .” Dawson was floundering now, looking at her documents for help, finding no help there.

“If you’re my lawyer,” Little Feather said, “you’ll get me out of here.”

“Well . . . tomorrow . . .”

“Tomorrow!”

“There’s nothing further can be done tonight,” Dawson said. “You can’t post bail—”

“I thought about that,” Little Feather said, “and I can put up property. I can put up my motor home, I’ve got the title to it. That’s worth more than five thousand dollars.”

“But that would also have to be tomorrow,” Dawson said. She looked and sounded worried, as she should. “Shirley Ann, if you—”

Little Feather pointed a very stern finger at her. “My name,” she said slowly and distinctly, “is Little Feather, but I think you should call me Ms. Redcorn.”

“Whoever you are,” Dawson said, trying to rally, “of course if you were willing to sign the statement, you could leave immediately—”

“And forever.”

“Well, yes. But, as things stand, and I can see you are adamant about this, I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done now until tomorrow.”

“And what are you going to do tomorrow?”

“Speak with Judge Higbee, ask the judge to speak with you in chambers, see what’s best to be done.”

“But I spend tonight in here.”

“Well, it’s not possible to—”

“Not charged with anything, didn’t do anything, but I spend the night in here.”

“Tomorrow—”

Little Feather rose. She felt very angry, and didn’t see any reason to hide it. “I’ve been in here for hours,” she said. “My real lawyer would have spent that time getting me out of here and not trying to get me to confess to things I didn’t do.”

“Tomorrow, we’ll—”

“There’s still one thing you can do for me tonight,” Little Feather told her.

Dawson looked ready, even eager. “Yes? If I can.”

“Call the deputy to take me back to my cell,” Little Feather said. “I have to make up my bunk.”