THE WINDMAKER

Omaha Reservation Disbanded

By Eileen Barstow

WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

LINCOLN -- In accordance with federal regulation, the Nebraska Legislature voted 26-23 on Thursday to close the Omaha Reservation, the last Native American reservation in the United States. Citing such factors as a rapid decline in public health, falling property values, diminishing tribal population, and a state of poor welfare and living conditions, the legislature voted to conform to current government ruling.

This historic decision was reached after the Nebraska legislature spent several months in deferment of federal ruling. The federal Restoration Act passed last May has caused a stir within many states rich in Native American heritage, and only the state of Nebraska claimed protraction status. The Thursday vote handed full jurisdiction to the federal government.

The Omaha Indian Tribe of Macy, Nebraska, has been promptly ordered to turn its properties over to the government and vacate. However, the Restoration Act will allot stipends to all registered members of the tribe for the purpose of relocation, unemployment, and temporary welfare support.

The controversial Restoration Act was borne out of a proposed amendment to the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act as a desire to improve the declining state of Native American reservations across the country. Instead the bill evolved into a disbanding of the largest reservations and steady progression to close the smaller ones.

With the aid of Nebraska’s legislature, the Omaha Tribe was the last such of these groups to resist. This vote will see them removed from the only home they have known since first signing a treaty with the U.S. Government in 1854.

Senator David Hammond (D-S. Dak.), the Senate minority leader adamantly opposed to the Restoration Act, said of the vote, “The Great Plains mourn as the last remnants of a proud people are to be forever scattered across the four winds.”

In favor of the Act, Senator Gerard Hadley (R-Mass.) was reported to say, “This is the best thing we’ve ever done for these people. This Act will turn them into an economic force of productive citizens instead of having them sit around a fire smoking their peace pipes. It’s time their lands were put to good use.”

Omaha Tribal Council Chairman Matthew White declined to comment on the legislature’s decision.

Other members of the tribe are more vocal about

See Omaha Tribe: Page 3

#

A Sioux shaman once claimed the earth had been created long ago on sixteen sacred hoops by the sun. Four orbits then came and breathed onto the sixteen hoops, and the newly formed ball sprang up with life. Countless eons later, on these sixteen hoops lived a man named Jefferson Reed, a man who knew or cared nothing for hoops or orbits. Only one thing occupied his mind, and it had nothing at all to do with Native American shamanistic cosmology.

Jeff, like all good, natural born Americans, hated his job with a passion defying words. Working as a database analyst for a reputable logistics company was not bad as far as the biweekly paycheck was concerned, but the numbers, the charts, and the stark black-on-white spreadsheet lines burned into his retinas day in and day out, sometimes even at home. A deluge of daily emails inundated in his inbox. The fax never worked. Pointless meetings crawled along for hours. Some mornings he could barely drag himself out of bed long enough to slog into the office. Coffee only made him run to the men’s room every twenty-two minutes on the dot. The sugar of donuts or breakfast pastries burned off rather quickly, leaving him drained and even more groggy the rest of the day. Then there was that nasty crick in his neck he woke up with every morning, the one that never bothered him at all on his days off.

Yes, Jeff hated his job. Only one thing he saw every morning made the commute, the coffee, the donuts, and the hassle all worth the while.

Stephanie.

She was sitting at her desk that morning reading the front page of the Omaha World-Herald while waiting for the phone to start ringing. The short but trim, thirty-something, longhaired brunette wasn’t drinking coffee or eating a donut. The hand not holding the paper held a half eaten red apple. A granola bar sat by her elbow, and a clear cup of orange juice waited in front of her multi-line phone. Her ocean blue eyes scanned the morning paper with fury. The apple bite in her mouth was chewed faster and faster. When she finally picked up the cup of juice, Jeff was certain the contents would spill from how hard she clamped her hand around it. She grumbled in frustration, making her all the more beautiful to his eyes. The paper landed on her tidy desk with an angry thump.

“Of all the nerve...” she muttered. Her wheeled chair swiveled to face Jeff, who immediately shot his bleary eyes back to the computer screen to avoid her noticing his blatant stare.

“Jeff, have you seen the front page today?” she said. Her face was reddening. Her left foot tapped on the multi-colored, commercial style carpet.

“Not today,” he said, seasoning his voice with innocence.

“Maybe you can take a break from your ‘work’ and read something designed to ruin such a wonderful Friday.” She scuttled over to his desk with that wonderful, feminine walk and plopped the A section atop a haphazard mess of papers and memos that could only loosely be called a workspace. “Your... grandfather was Omaha, wasn’t he?”

“Something like that,” he smiled nervously, “but I don’t see how this relates to—”

His eyes widened in decaffeinated surprise at the headline: Omaha Reservation Disbanded. He blinked. “You’re kidding me, right? This is a May Fool’s joke, isn’t it?”

Stephanie’s phone rang. She scowled, bit her lip, and said, “Gotta get that. Talk to you later, okay?” To the answered phone she said with all cheerfulness, “Omaha Logistics, Mr. Potter’s office.”

“Sure,” Jeff said to the air. The ache in his heart returned, and glancing down at the newspaper did not help. “Any time at all,” he whispered across the path to her desk.

He inhaled sharply and tried to read the whole article without his gaze once wandering in Stephanie’s direction. Shaking his head, he called to the neighboring cubicle. “Hey, Elliot, can you believe this tripe?”

“Believe what?” Elliot chimed from the next cubicle. Though Jeff’s department partner, the gray-haired analyst shared neither Jeff’s looks nor disposition. Jeff’s rumpled knit pullovers never compared to Elliot’s nicely pressed Oxford cloth shirts and ties, nor could scuffed Doc Martens match Elliot’s immaculate Rockport wingtips. The mess of Jeff’s desk always bordered on a black hole; Elliot’s desk always remained clean, proudly displaying his twenty-five year service commemoration plaque, his membership certificate for the Nebraska Republican Liberty Caucus, and his varied collection of family portraits. Though Jeff always wanted to smile despite all odds, Elliot never bothered to unless a joke was played on someone else. Elliot wasn’t completely unlikable, but Jeff had to force himself to remain civil and friendly with the man.

“Here.” Jeff thrust the paper into his hands and casually leaned on the cubicle wall while the sour-faced man read the front page.

“So?” Elliot said at length, depositing the newspaper back in Jeff’s hand.

Jeff glared at him. “’So?’ What kind of answer is that?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” he shrugged. “’Bout time someone did somethin.”

“Come on. Are you serious?”

“The way I see it, it’s like getting ghetto kids out of the Projects. Give em a better life.” He frowned at Jeff from the corner of his eye and flitted his attention back to his computer screen. “Is that report on the Thurmond shipment finished yet? The chief will have your eyes for breakfast if it’s not in by Monday morning.”

Jeff folded the paper under his arm and rolled his eyes. “I’ll get to it when I feel like it, ‘Mr. Crackpot.’”

Elliot usually offered a good-natured chuckle whenever Jeff pretended to mouth off to their stuffy boss, Raymond Potter, Value Added Services Director, but that time he just grunted and let the matter lie. “I mean it, Reed. You’ve been wasting far too much time around here these past few weeks. Remember when you messed up last week?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, looking away and scratching behind his ear.

“So get your head out of the clouds, stop worrying about some danged reservation, and get crackin.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Jeff murmured and plunked himself back into his miserably uncomfortable chair.

Office furniture was in theory supposed to be comfortable, but somehow his ergonomic, adjustable chair just no longer cut it. No matter how he tried to settle into his seat, he kept fidgeting, supporting his weight on this armrest or that, slouching back, or leaning forward.

And then, twenty-two minutes on the dot from the first scalding sip of morning mocha, his walnut-sized bladder was ready to stretch its legs. He sighed. Nothing had really been accomplished those first twenty-two minutes. Sure, he’d answered a call from one of their out of state terminals needing this, that, and the other looked up, but his most productive time had been spent watching Stephanie type up “interoffice memos from the desk of Mr. Crackpot.”

Fleet footing it to the bathroom, he nearly knocked over Al the Fed Ex guy before whirling straight into Veronica Hargrove, the Operations manager’s glassed, curly haired assistant. The pair would have collided in mid-step had Jeff not twisted his elbow away at the last moment.

Veronica wrinkled her nose and shook her head while her heels clicked on by.

“Sorry,” Jeff called out after her, but she had already turned the corner. Apparently some people in the office were a tad more touchy about things on Friday, he thought.

With another sigh of resignation, he stepped inside the bathroom. The Omaha Logistics building was older than one might expect from the glass double doors leading to each department, the cherry wood veneer on the walls, and the new carpet, but the bathroom told its true age. The light switch cover was made of patinated steel. The black plastic switch made a loud, hollow click when flipped on. Blue and white, one-inch-square tiles covered the floor in no discernible pattern. The space between the tiles was nearly black with years of caked dirt. The walls, stalls, and privacy panels had all been painted the same sick, pale green hue that no respectable interior designer would use. The urinals and sinks were all flaking, old-fashioned chrome and white porcelain -- nothing automated. Only the long fluorescent tubes overhead could be called remotely new, but even one of the pair was burnt out.

Jeff liked the bathroom’s atmosphere simply because it was darker than the antiseptic, bright white of the rest of the building, and on such a morning his eyes needed as much relaxation as they could get.

The restroom was entirely silent. Jeff attended his business rather quickly and washed up. He could see all four of the stalls in the mirror when he gave himself a once-over. All of the swinging doors stayed ajar when unlatched. All of them but one. In the mirror he saw the very last stall’s door was latched closed even though he didn’t remember seeing or hearing anyone walk in after him.

Instead of violating the understood rule of the men’s room by asking who was there, Jeff craned himself down to see below the door while drying his hands on a paper towel.

Dropped gray slacks surrounded Elliot’s unmistakable Rockport wingtips. Jeff’s brow scrunched. He didn’t remember hearing Elliot get up from his desk. With a shrug he shoved the wadded paper towel into the flip-top trash can and went back out into the bright world.

Elliot’s desk was empty. His swivel chair had been rotated a few degrees from its north. His computer screen displayed an open database query with a few empty fields. His mug of cold, black coffee had been only half drained.

Jeff hummed curiously and strolled over to Stephanie’s desk. She was typing an email while supporting the phone receiver between her shoulder and cheek. She looked up at him with a smile in her eyes and silently mouthed, “Need something?”

“Did you see where Rosenbloom took off to?” he whispered, not wanting to interfere with the phone call.

She held up her index finger. “Yeah, okay,” she said in the phone. “I’ll pass it along.” After she hung up the phone, her eyes wandered to Elliot’s cube before giving Jeff her full attention. “I, uh, don’t remember seeing him leave. Why?”

He shrugged. “Just need to ask him something,” he lied.

She smiled from the corner of her mouth. “Maybe he just went to the bathroom.”

Jeff shoved his hands in his pockets. “Maybe.”

When he turned back to his desk, she stopped him by touching his arm. The white gold, diamond engagement ring and matching wedding band on her third finger dominated her entire arm as far as Jeff was concerned. “Hey,” she said, her lips a thin, unreadable line.

Caught off guard he said, “Hey what?”

“I... uh...” Their eyes met. Her voice faltered. “I forgot to tell you,” she said, her leaden hand falling away. “Higher ups told Ray he needs Thurmond by tonight.” She laughed hollowly and forced a smile that faded as soon as it appeared. “Last minute thing. You know how it is. Anyway, I figured you’d like to hear it from me before the chief drops the bomb on you.”

“Thanks for the notice,” Jeff said with a frustrated shake of his head.

He didn’t immediately run back to his desk. Something was wrong. Something about Stephanie’s demeanor did not add up.

“Is... everything okay?” he said tentatively.

Her gaze met him for only a moment when the phone rang again. She moved her mouth to form words that would not come. The ringing continued. “I’d rather... I mean... Maybe some other time.” Still ringing. “I have to take this.” The receiver magically appeared in her hand, and a false smile plastered her face. “Omaha Logistics, Mr. Potter’s office,” she said into the phone.

Squelching the pain in his heart, Jeff shrugged again and returned to his own desk to plow through the day’s work. Elliot was still away, which annoyed Jeff just as much as Stephanie’s unusual reticence. The old coot was supposed to be helping him with the Thurmond report, and since Big Chief Crackpot was going to want it sooner than tomorrow, that would consume all of his time.

The white and black grid on the computer screen never looked less inviting. Regardless of the new deadline, he did not feel like putting the final touches on the database paradigm for the report. Only solitaire, the crossword puzzle, reading the rest of the newspaper, and wishful dreaming about a married woman he’d known for far too long remained to occupy him. Solitaire bored him after the first ten failed attempts. The crossword was a Friday edition—specially engineered to be easy for the weekend-focused brain. Other than the front-page article about the reservation closing, the rest of the paper contained nothing else that captured his interest.

Fortunately, Jeff had folded up the paper and started concentrating on real work when Raymond Potter emerged from his stately, glass-walled castle into the farmlands of the indigent. Jeff cringed when he saw Ray coming down his row of cubicles. He liked Ray as much as anyone else did, but sometimes he just wished the man would leave. The distinguished, balding man was even more ironed and pressed than Elliot, with a snappy wardrobe costing probably three times that of any other department director in the whole company.

Ray adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and leaned casually on the low cubicle divider separating Jeff’s area from the walkway. “G’morning, Reed,” he said, with that pathetic I-really-need-something-from-you smile.

Here came the hammer blow Jeff had been dreading ever since Stephanie had clued him in. “Mornin, Ray,” he said, trying so hard not to bite through his tongue.

“Hey, the guys over at the Dallas terminal called me this morning and said they were running a bit ahead of schedule, so, as to not interrupt their shipping schedule, they would like the Thurmond report by three so they can have it before the weekend rush,” Ray said all in one, seemingly coherent breath.

Jeff had to fight his temper down to keep from shouting.

Ray held his hands up in defense before Jeff could retort. “Now, I know what you’re thinking, Reed. You’ve got too many crosswords to do and not enough time in the day to do them. I don’t care if you do crosswords for the rest of your life or even on the weekends—which is when you really should be doing them, by the way—but what I need today is that report sitting on my desk by three o’clock sharp. Capice?”

Jeff shook his head. “With all due respect, sir... That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not, I guarantee you. Elliot and Alex can lend a hand, I’m sure. With their help you should be done with more than enough time to finish your crossword puzzle.”

A boy-faced kid with short, dye-blond hair poked his head out from the cubicle in front of Jeff’s. “Someone invoking the mighty powers of Alex again?” Alex’s future career consisted of either playing video games for a living or programming them, whichever garnered the best effort versus pay scale ratio. Fresh out of college, he thought the entire world focused around him and his near godlike cognitive abilities. Jeff pitied the day Alex turned thirty, when he would find just out how harsh and inhospitable the real world could be.

“You’re helping Reed with Thurmond,” said Ray.

“Excellent,” said Alex with a sarcastic grin. “Collaboration, man. You gotta love it around here.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Jeff chimed, again fighting the urge to bite off his tongue so he could bleed to death.

Ray then peered into Elliot’s empty cube. “Where’s Rosenbloom?”

“He’s been gone since my last nature invitation,” said Jeff. “Haven’t seen him since.” He smirked and added, “It’s possible he might have fallen in, sir.”

“Then maybe you should find out. This report isn’t going to write itself, and if it’s not on my desk by three o’clock Central Daylight Time, heads are going to roll, understand? Our clients are priority number one. If we can’t deliver their goods on time, we’ll lose a lot of future freight business.”

Jeff pursed his lips. “Thanks, Ray. No pressure.”

Ray frowned and crossed his arms in resignation. “I’m sorry, but it was the best I could do. I’m not all that happy about it either, but we do what the clients tell us. If you ask me, I’d say the whole damned thing’s the result of their end getting wires crossed, but there’s nothing we can do about their screw ups right now, okay?”

Jeff rolled his eyes and sighed. “Okay,” he relented, turning back to his abhorrent computer. “Just leave me alone so I can finish this, all right?”

“All right, all right,” said Ray, backing away. “I won’t bother you and just let you do your thing.”

Jeff looked up at him with intent. “I’d appreciate that,” he said, and Ray left him in peace.

He sighed and rubbed his irritated eyes with both hands. He ruffled his hair with frustration and then forced himself to stare back at the white grid. The sun was just barely up, and he already had a set in stone deadline. This was already shaping up to be the worst Friday in his longstanding recollection.

“You ready to get started on this shit?” asked Alex. He had wheeled his chair to Jeff’s cubicle opening so he could see where he was in the report. He was chewing on a granola bar, and darned if he didn’t bounce a bit too much considering how early it still was.

Jeff was not at all looking forward to working with a know-it-all kid almost half his age, but he had to hand it to him: the kid was a genius. Only a year out of college, and he could whip up an SQL database paradigm from scratch in less than an hour. Where Jeff spent free time at work doing crosswords and surfing the Web, Alex had his face ear deep into advanced level programming manuals. He designed and programmed his own websites and desktop icons, fiddled with everything that could possibly be fiddled with on his computer, and fixed things faster than most of the IT technicians could. One thing was clearly obvious: Alex was in the wrong department.

“Let’s get this over with,” Jeff acquiesced.

“Man, I gotta tell you,” said Alex, crumpling the granola wrapper, “that’s fucked up that he dumped this on us. I’ve got other stuff I need to do, and I’m sure Elliot’s plate is full too. Sounds like he’s piling all the responsibility on you.” He took a rather vicious bite out of the granola, nearly a third of the whole thing. “I don’t envy you, man. But at least you take his bullshit so the rest of us don’t have to.”

“Hey, watch the language,” Jeff snapped. “This is an office building.”

“Sorry,” said an indignant Alex. “I keep forgetting you’re not young anymore. Anyway...”

Jeff let the slight go while Alex poked at parts of his screen and asked him questions, but the core of the remark lingered. It seemed only a few years ago he had graduated from the University of Nebraska, but he wasn’t getting any younger. His fortieth birthday loomed a few years off; he expected to walk in to work that day to find his desk so covered with black balloons that he couldn’t sit down.

Alex politely smacked him on the arm. “Hey, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah,” Jeff lied, thinking of anything but databases.

Not more than a few moments later, the twenty-two minute timer went off again. The coffee was really working its magic.

Jeff shoved his chair out away from the desk and stood. “Hey, I gotta take a leak,” he said. “Be right back.”

“Don’t choke it too hard,” Alex sniggered while taking down a few more notes.

Jeff could not refrain from heaving a humorless sigh and giving his eyes a hearty roll. He ducked past Stephanie and gave her a platonic smile before pushing through the glass double doors into the hallway. In less of a hurry this time, he failed to run into Holly from Marketing and managed to make the restroom without anyone spilling hot coffee on themselves.

Once past the old, creaky door he rushed to the nearest urinal for blessed relief. Not until he washed his hands and glanced in the mirror did he notice the last stall door was closed. Still.

Elliot’s wingtips could again be seen in the space below the door.

The time had come for the unwritten law to be broken.

“Rosenbloom, you fall in?” His voice gave a tinny echo.

Silence met his question. He had violated the men’s room rule, but no rule said Elliot couldn’t reply. He gulped and took a step closer to the stall. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Crackpot dumped a doozy on me, and he wants you to give me a hand.”

Again silence returned to him. Anxiety crept up within him. Swallowing made his nervous mouth dry and scratchy.

This time he rapped on the pale green, hollow metal door. “Elliot?”

Nothing.

“For chrissakes, no one sits on the can for almost half an hour,” Jeff said.

Only his hollow echoes spoke.

Curiosity and a morbid sense of anxiety filled his every thought. “Well, goddammit,” he mumbled, then opened the door next to the occupied stall and stood on the toilet seat. Both hands grasped the top of the stall panel, and he took a deep breath.

“God of bathrooms everywhere forgive me...”

Jeff closed his eyes and poked his head over the stall divider. Instead of the cantankerous cry of an old man’s violated privacy, he heard nothing. He opened his eyes slowly, and an iron weight clawed at his stomach.

He bit back a scream so hard that his tongue, the one he had been threatening to bite all day, gushed blood into his parched mouth. Elliot sat naked from the waist down. His unmoving body lazily slouched against the corner of the stall with open, unblinking eyes. His mouth hung partially open. A string and bead of spittle suspended between dry, cracked lips.

“Oh—God—” Jeff blurted.  “Ohgodohgodohgodohgod!”

Near hyperventilation, Jeff moved his right foot to jump back down. Instead his foot slipped on the toilet seat and landed in the bowl with a deep splash. His other foot crumpled beneath him, and he crashed headlong into the free-swinging door.

#

Colors, shapes, and sounds faded into Jeff’s waking awareness. Red and white flashing lights. Sirens. Blue crosses and caducei. Emergency Medical Technicians scurrying into the building. A large, black bag the size of a man. Ambient noise of the nearby freeway.

He was only vaguely aware that he had even been carried outside. Neither was he aware that Stephanie was sitting right beside him on the ambulance gurney.

A shorthaired female paramedic stepped into the back of the ambulance and flashed a penlight into his eyes. “Can you hear me, sir?”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” he murmured while fighting to keep his eyes closed against the brightness. His head felt like a hardboiled egg that had been tossed in an empty oil drum rolling down a steep hill.

The penlight disappeared into her pocket. “Can you tell me your name?”

“My name...? It’s... Jefferson... Reed...” He winced and held his hands to his head. “God, I’ve never had a migraine like this...”

“Judging from that nasty bump on your head, I think you’ve suffered a mild concussion,” she told him.

He propped up his torso on the gurney to get a better look at what was going on. “A concuss—ow!” He took a sharp intake of breath and laid back down.

“Easy,” soothed the paramedic. “Just take it easy. You’re going to be fine, but it’s best we take you in for observation just to be sure.”

But instead of lying still he beseeched the EMT while he still retained consciousness. “What... about... Elliot...?”

Seemingly from nowhere Stephanie answered in a calm mask of bleary-eyed serenity. “The... police want to ask you a few questions,” she said.

“Questions?” Jeff blurted, instantly regretting it for the knife lancing through his forehead. “But I didn’t... I didn’t do anything... I didn’t do anything...”

He felt the gurney being lifted into the ambulance, the wheels and struts being folded and locked into place. Stephanie’s worried face drifted toward him as the paramedics closed the doors behind her.

Jeff did not remember the ride to Bergan Mercy Medical Center. In the back of his wandering, drugged up mind lingered thoughts he could not quell, notions that ate at him until he could bear them no more.

Though he felt quite capable of walking when they arrived, the medical staff refused to let him. Instead they wheeled the gurney into the ER, propped up the back so he could see, and pulled a white curtain around him. Stephanie stayed with him, but his drowsy mind only wandered through peripheral thoughts.

A kindly Dr. Keller walked in past the curtain shortly thereafter. He asked him a few rudimentary, common sense questions, listened to Jeff’s heart, looked into his eyes, and sent him down to radiology for an x-ray.

A half hour later Dr. Keller returned through the ER curtain with a clipboard, a manila file, and a grim face. “You seem to have suffered a mild concussion, Mr. Reed,” he said, examining the file and the x-rays. “Although nothing’s broken, you should take it easy and rest for a few days. Some confusion and tiredness is normal, both of which should pass after a matter of time.” He scribbled on a small, gray square of paper and handed it to Jeff along with a clipboard of blank forms. “I’ve prescribed some Tylenol-3 for the pain. Now, if you’ll fill out these forms, we’ll get you on your way.”

Someone behind the curtain cleared his throat rather loudly. “Dr. Keller?”

Keller smiled politely. “If you’ll excuse me a moment?” With a swish of the curtain, he disappeared.

Jeff numbly looked over to Stephanie. Her arms were crossed thoughtfully, and she smiled weakly at him. He wanted to smile right back, but he couldn’t find the strength. Everything, including her, wanted to spin wildly in his vision.

Dr. Keller returned a few moments later. A tallish, dark haired man in a beige London Fog trailed in. “Mr. Reed, this is Officer Murnahan,” said Keller. “He would like to ask you a few questions.”

“Doctor, Miss, if you’ll give us a few moments?” said the stone-faced policeman.

“You can leave those forms with the receptionist,” said Keller. “Hope you feel better soon, Mr. Reed. If not, don’t hesitate to come back.” He smiled, and both he and Stephanie disappeared behind the white curtain.

The officer casually drew up to Jeff’s side and whipped out a golden shield attached to a lanyard. “Detective Bill Murnahan, Omaha Police Department,” he said, extending his hand.

Jeff shook it weakly and let go. He wanted to roll over and go to sleep, not answer stupid questions. “Jeff Reed, Omaha Logistics Enterprises,” he said, mimicking Murnahan’s tone. His arm draped across his eyes to shut out the light. “What do you want to know other than how much my head hurts?”

Murnahan thumbed through a small notepad. “Tell me about Elliot Rosenbloom,” he said.

“What’s there to tell? I found him in the bathroom and smashed my head trying to help him out.” Jeff paused to let his arm drop from his eyes. “Is he okay?”

Murnahan cleared his throat. “He was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Jeff’s stomach lurched. Elliot? But how? And why would police be questioning him like a common criminal? “I’m... sorry to hear that.”

Apparently the detective was not thrilled with the response. His eyebrows creased. His mouth twisted into even more of a suspecting frown. “You should understand that you are in a precarious position, Mr. Reed. I want you to answer me truthfully.”

Jeff swallowed. Why was he so nervous? He hadn’t done anything. “Ask away.”

“Where did you last see Mr. Rosenbloom before you reported him missing?”

“Right after my morning coffee,” Jeff answered. “I was showing him a newspaper article.”

“An article that a Mr. Alex Crenshaw overheard sparking a debate between you?”

“Yeah. Well, no, not an argument, really. Just a difference of opinion.”

“I see.” Murnahan flipped through a few more pages of notes. “What happened when you found Mr. Rosenbloom in the bathroom?”

Jeff took a deep breath and sighed. When was this guy going to finish? “When I did my business the first time, I recognized his shoes from outside the stall. I came back some twenty minutes later and saw his shoes again. I knocked, asked if he was okay. He didn’t respond, so I stepped on the toilet in the next stall and slipped.” He smiled painfully and pointed to his forehead. “Got me a... concussion out of the deal.”

“I see.” The detective wrote more notes. “How would you characterize your relationship with the deceased?”

“It was a business relationship,” Jeff replied.

“There was no tension between you? No harsh words?”

“Nothing more than a generation gap’s worth of misunderstanding.” Jeff’s head pulsed in rhythm with his heart. He wanted the questions to stop. He wanted to go home. “Are you done yet?”

Murnahan folded up his notebook and tucked it in his coat pocket. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Reed. We’ll keep in touch.” Without further ado he turned and walked crisply out of sight beyond the curtain.

Stephanie blessed him with her presence while he was filling out the requisite forms. “You going to be all right?” she asked, the corners of her mouth ever so lightly summoning the dimples in her cheeks.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain then set to filling out the next line. “I’ll be fine once I get that stupid report done.”

“Don’t worry about the report,” she said. “Ray’s having Alex take care of it.”

“Well, at least that frees up my weekend,” he chuckled, bringing back more throbbing pain to his forehead. “Here I thought I was going to have to take it home with me.”

She sighed. “I still can’t believe about poor Elliot, though.” Was that a tear in the corner of her eye? “Not even ten years from retirement... I’ll miss the old sod.”

“I don’t care what that cop said,” Jeff said as he signed his name on the x, “I had nothing to do with it.”

“I believe you,” she nodded. “I just don’t understand what happened.”

“He looked fine last I saw him.”

“Makes you think twice about appreciating life while you can, doesn’t it?” She smiled bitterly and looked away from him.

“I know what you mean,” he answered, trying so hard to focus his hurt, primal mind on anything other than her respectable bosom or her beautiful eyes. “Thanks for staying with me.”

“No problem,” she said. “I was worried about you, and at least it got me out of the office for a while.” She offered a hand to help him to his feet. “C’mon. I already called us a cab. You can take it home or back to the office if you think you can drive home okay.”

“Thanks,” he said. An unbidden laugh escaped his throat; a goofy smile lit his face. “You wanna know something?”

“What?” she said, slowly leading him out of the ER to the receptionist.

“I think all of this did a better job ruining my Friday than some tribal displacement.”

#

Jeff pushed open the flimsy door to his dark apartment and slung his courier bag into the nondescript pile of indigenous, bachelor mess. The door shut and engulfed him in darkness, but he didn’t care if he tripped and fell on a pile of clothes or the hit his arm on the edge of his card table or anything else. All he wanted was a shot of vodka, his prescribed codeine pills, and some heavy sleep. With luck he would sleep all weekend.

Or so he hoped. Hope and reality tended to be rare bedfellows, as it were. In all probability a telemarketer would awaken him before he got a good eight hours in.

But telemarketers did not leave messages. The red light flashed on the answering machine. Who would have called him this early in the day? Only a small handful of people would want to leave messages, and two of them were dead. No, with Elliot dead, that made three. God. Even with his head pounding, he could barely latch onto that thought.

Elliot is dead, he told himself. Dead. D-E-A-D. Figured he might as well start getting used to the idea. Maybe he’d go to the poor guy’s funeral. Maybe. But he was too tired to decide, let alone care.

With a perfunctory sigh Jeff mashed down the button on the machine and proceeded into the kitchen to find his lucky shot glass.

Beep! “Hey, it’s Andy. I would’ve called you at work, but I know you’re busy this week. Just thought you’d like to know I finally tracked down that guy mentioned in your father’s will. Call me later if you’re not busy. Anyway, be sure to check the paper for my big story tomorrow. Later.” Beep!

“Great,” Jeff mumbled, bordering on a growl. “Of all the lousy timing...”

He clenched his jaw and slammed the heel of his fist on the countertop hard enough to make his whole arm tingle. His head, miraculously, still hurt worse. If there was one thing Jeff hated more than work, it was being reminded of his father’s death.

Michael Reed, a well-respected widower, had died two years prior from complications of a massive stroke. He and Jeff had never been on the greatest of speaking terms, but his sudden passing left so many unsaid things between them. In a way Jeff blamed his father for dying before he could tell him what needed to be said.

Further adding to the acrimony between them, Jeff’s father had died almost penniless, leaving behind little more than a cryptic last will and testament. Other than the conventional inheritance of his father’s meager assets, one line in the will baffled the estate executor:

“To my only son Jefferson, I bequeath my friendship with Joshua Yellow Smoke. This is my “living gift” to Jefferson, and I hope he finds it as insightful as I have.”

At first Jeff said to hell with meeting a man he had never heard of, but after persistence on Andy’s curious part, he finally caved. He thought talking to this man might help bridge the gap between father and son, somehow give Michael Reed’s wandering spirit some comfort.

But tracking down someone Jeff had never met proved more challenging than expected. It did, however, help to know a journalist with a lot of unexpected connections.

Jeff sighed resignation. Maybe he would call Andy back tomorrow if his head felt better. As much as he had been wanting to put off meeting this Mr. Yellow Smoke, it could bear to wait for at least one more day. Some old friend of his father couldn’t be in that much of a hurry to see him or he’d have done so by now, Jeff reasoned.

His hand shook noticeably when he poured the drink. Shot glass in one hand and pills in the other, he downed them both in a swallow of warming fire. He didn’t bother rinsing out the glass or turning on any more lights in the place. The bachelor mess went unattended as he plodded to the bathroom to brush his teeth and drain more coffee out of his system.

With his black hair, copper complexion, and dark, wincing eyes, he thought he looked more like an upset ogre in the mirror than a disgruntled man with a concussion. His forehead sported a tennis ball sized knot that was hard to the touch. Just experimentally grazing his fingers over it shot a bolt of nausea and lightheadedness through him.

The alcohol and medication worked fast on his empty stomach; he felt the effects hitting him just before he landed on the bed of rumpled sheets. He did not bother to undress any more than taking off his shoes and placing his silver Fossil watch on the nightstand.

No alarm was set. He just lay there in his haphazard bedding and let the codeine and alcohol wash over his senses, hoping he would dream of something pleasant enough to make him forget about Stephanie, Elliot’s strange death, or the name Joshua Yellow Smoke.

He dreamed of thunder.

©2004 Philip A. Lee