behind us like a flat-track racer. “What?”
I braced a hand against the dash. “Nothing.”
KRZZ’s was not the most inspiring of buildings, but then most everything concerning radio rarely is. I’d done a brief semester as a freshman at KUSC, University of Southern California’s student radio station, where I had been the worst DJ they’d ever heard. The programming in the early sixties was almost exclusively classical and didn’t require a great deal of talk between the twenty minute tracks, but even I had to admit that I was horrible.
It looked to be a utilitarian building from the sixties with a slab roof and a wall of small-pane windows overlooking what there was of downtown Lame Deer. The white paint was peeling off the concrete block, and the front screen door was propped open with a cardboard box full of CDs that had been marked on the side with the plea, TAKE ME, I’M FREE! There was a battered Honda Civic in the parking lot as well as Artie’s truck.
Lolo parked and we got out. I could hear music drifting through the open door, John Trudell’s Bone Days, a stream of consciousness blues opus I recognized from hanging around Henry.
In the tubular-style font of the seventies were the words KRZZ, LOW POWER-HIGH REZ, the lettering also peeling like a second-day sunburn.
“Looks like Native radio’s seen better days.”
Inside there was a green carpet that showed the fiber grid underneath, and a surplus steel government desk where a pretty-enough young woman, who was a friend of Melissa Little Bird’s, was working on a book full of Sudoku. She raised her head as we entered. “Can I help you?”
Lolo looked at the large poster behind the girl’s head-it was a badly done offset print of four men dressed in period western costume with the words REGGAE COWBOYS, I SHOT THE SHERIFF in red. She glanced at me. “No offense.”
“None taken.” I thumbed my Tribal Police patch. “Anyway, Poppa’s got a brand new bag.”
The young woman was uncertain, looked at the two of us, and decided the only course was to repeat her request. “Can I help you?”
I smiled. “I’m sorry. Is Nate here?”
She rolled her eyes toward the inner sanctum and immediately went back to the puzzles as we turned and made our way into another room with a few more desks and a glass wall that gave a view of the “on-air studio,” principally discerned by the large red light with white lettering that read ON AIR. Nate was standing in the middle, swaying to the Native beat-poet’s words and the searing guitar accompaniment.
I stepped forward and knocked on the thick glass. The young man couldn’t hear us with the headphones on, so I knocked a little louder, afraid that if I applied much more pressure the glass would most certainly fall out of the frame onto the floor.
Nate finally swayed around so that he was looking at us and immediately motioned that we should join him through the door he pointed to at the left.
KRZZ’s studio was a world apart from the tawdry outer office where the receptionist sat-there were multiple computer screens, sound boards with about a hundred slide controls, and banks of CD and computer inputs. The inside of the room was covered in acoustical foam and at the center was a stylish, air-cushioned chair. There was another window to the outside, but it was so plastered with Indian Power, AIM, Thunderchild, and New Day Four Dances Drum Group stickers that I doubted you could tell the weather by looking out of it.
“Welcome to the nerve center. Federal grants can go only to actual transmission equipment. Say what you want about Herbert His Good Horse, he knows how to write grants.”
It was an impressive setup. “I guess.”
“Hold on just a second.” He reached up and, just as the song finished, swung the elevated mic in front of his face. “John Trudell, my brothers and sisters, just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human. It’s ten o’clock in the AM, daytime for you Indians, and you’re listening to KRZZ 94.7, Low Power-High Rez, the voice of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Nestaevahosevoomatse! ”
He touched another button on the computer and a strong drum beat filled the studio with background singers chanting something I vaguely recognized. “Are they singing about Mighty Mouse?”
Nate smiled. “Yeah, a group called Black Lodge. It’s a favorite of the kids down at the elementary school.”
I pulled the CD out of my pocket, slipped it from the paper envelope, and handed it to him. “This isn’t likely to make it on your top-ten list.”
Lolo added, “Even with a bullet.”
Nate put the CD in one of the players, punched a few buttons, and we listened to the beginning of the recording before realizing we were hearing it over the same speakers as the Mighty Mouse powwow song.
“Is that going out over the air?”
He rapidly hit a few more buttons and made a face. “Just a little.”
“I don’t know if this is a two-party consent state, but I’m pretty sure we could get sued for what just happened.”
He shrugged. “We’ll just keep it between ourselves.”
“And a couple of thousand listeners?”
He adjusted the volume on another off-air track. “I think you’re overestimating our listenership.”
I glanced at the studio phone as the lights began blinking, not unlike the ones in my office that regularly plagued me. “Uh huh.”
We ignored them and carefully listened to the recording again, but I couldn’t make out anymore than I had before. Nate’s fingers jigged on the computer keyboard, and then he hit a button on the CD player. “I downloaded it to the computer, so now we can manipulate it any way we want.”
The Sudoku woman flung open the studio door. “Nate, did you just put some kind of crazy shit on the air? People are calling and want to hear the John Trudell song about Mighty Mouse again.”
“Um, tell them it was a demo.” He flicked his hand at her, and she disappeared. He hit a few more buttons and turned down the on-air volume, and we were once again listening to the hiring of a hit man.
We got to the portion where I thought I’d heard music; Nate’s fingers tapped on the keyboard and isolated the track, bringing the background noise up and the primary voice down, allowing us to hear the melody of something.
“Do you recognize that song?”
He listened intently to the simple chord progression but shook his head. “No.”
Lolo leaned in and propped an arm on the counter. “Play it again.”
Nate did as he was told, and we listened to the music as he lifted the volume-a strong bass-baritone and a chicka-boom rhythm passed through the speakers. “Jail was often his home They’d let him raise the flag and lower it…”
The rest was lost in the background noise and angry voices.
“Johnny Cash-that’s The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”
Nate looked at me. “Who?”
Lolo Long gently slapped him in the back of the head. “The Pima Indian who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.” She glanced at me and gestured toward Nate. “This is what we fought for-you know that, right?”
“When was that?”
She looked at him. “Iwo Jima?”
“No, the song. When was it released?”
I thought about it. “Before I went to Vietnam, ’64 I’d guess.”
He made a face. “The sixties? No wonder I don’t know it.” He looked at the CD player as if it held the Dead Sea Scrolls. “Wow, man.”
I glanced at the chief. “Well, we need to go up to the Jimtown Bar anyway. I don’t think anybody’s going to remember anything, but we’ve got to leg it out. I’ve got a couple of hours before Cady and Lena come back from Colstrip.” I gestured toward the computer again. “Can you play the part with the woman’s voice?” He did, but the only word that I could discern was the word dome/dose/dole.
Lolo Long had a strange look on her face. “Play it again.”
Nate did as he was told and then played it again and again.
I leaned a little forward to get her attention as she stared at the blank screen. “Anything?”
She didn’t hear me, or she was concentrating.
