The evening before opening day, Cork met with those who were going to spearfish. They gathered in Russell Blackwater’s trailer on the reservation. Jo was there. So were half a dozen other Anishinaabe including Joe John LeBeau, Wanda Manydeeds-Joe John’s sister-and Sam Winter Moon.
“I promised I’d do everything I can to protect you tomorrow. In order to do that I’m going to need some help from you.”
“What help?” Blackwater asked suspiciously.
“I’m most concerned about getting you from your vehicles into the boats and onto the lake. My guess is that we’re going to have quite a crowd there to greet you. The faster you get onto the water, the better.”
“We’re not going to run down there like rabbits,” Blackwater said.
“That’s not what I’m asking. But the longer you present yourselves as targets to angry people, the greater the chance something can happen. And, Russell, if you saunter down there in front of these folks with some kind of attitude, you’re just begging for trouble. That’s when someone will get hurt.”
“Is that a threat?” Blackwater asked. He glanced at the others in the small room.
“It’s a potential.” Cork looked around the room himself, pausing briefly to study the Anishinaabe he’d known all his life. “These people don’t see the world the same way you do. A lot of the resort owners believe that what you’re doing will ruin them. These are desperate people. And what I’m trying to make you understand is that there’s real danger in what you’re going to do tomorrow. It won’t be a cakewalk.”
Sam Winter Moon gave a single, slow nod. “There’s danger in acting,” he said. “There’s also danger in sitting still, Cork. The law’s finally on the side of The People. If we sit, what have we gained? Seems to me that if trouble comes, it won’t be our doing.”
“It never was,” Cork replied. “But it’s always The People who suffer in the end, regardless of right. My own wish is that you’d hold off doing anything until your counsel here has had a chance to negotiate a settlement of some kind with the state. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it, Russell?”
“A settlement with the state will be easier to negotiate if the state knows we’re serious in our intent,” Blackwater pointed out.
“And if someone has already been hurt,” Cork added, looking straight into the hungry hunter’s eyes of Russell Blackwater.
“Sounds like another threat to me,” Blackwater said.
“Cork,” Joe John LeBeau spoke up. “Nobody wants anybody to get hurt. We just want what’s ours for a change. Don’t you get it? The world’s looking on. How can we lose?”
“I can’t absolutely guarantee your safety, Joe John. That’s my point.”
“When did you ever?” Wanda Manydeeds said with a little bitterness.
“Some of your customers will be in the crowd that gathers tomorrow, Joe John,” Cork reminded him. “You, too, Sam.”
“This isn’t about business, Cork.” Joe John looked around the room. “I can’t ever remember feeling so much like one of The People. That’s more important to me, to all of us, than anything else.”
“It’s not a question anymore of fishing,” Sam spoke up. “It’s a question of what’s right, Cork. We’ve bent like reeds in a river for generations, bent so far over we’ve just about forgot how to stand up straight. Look at us now. None of us has ever been so proud of being a Shinnob.”
Cork knew that was true. The feeling in the room of Blackwater’s trailer was sweeping all of them along toward some inevitability. Russell Blackwater had brought the possibility of power to the reservation, and everyone gathered was ready to follow him anywhere.
“We’re going to exercise our rights,” Blackwater said. “We expect you to do your job.”
“If you get your boats in the water with your gear ready tonight, I’ll have a couple of my men watch them to make sure nothing’s touched,” Cork promised. “When you get to the landing, you can move quickly to the boats and out onto the lake. Would you be willing to do that?”
Blackwater and the others exchanged glances. Sam Winter Moon gave a nod. “We’ll do it,” Blackwater said.
Jo followed him to his sheriff’s car. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. The night was very dark.
“You intend to be there, Counselor?” Cork asked her.
“We’ve come this far together.”
“You don’t have to. You’re not one of The People.”
“I’ll be there to make sure their rights are observed.”
“I’ll be there for that.”
She regarded him with the same skepticism Russell Blackwater had. “You’re divided. I’m not.”
“I have a duty clearly spelled out.”
“You have an electorate clearly at odds with you.”
“I’ll do my duty.”
“So will I.” She looked back toward the trailer. “It doesn’t have to turn ugly.”
“Blackwater wants it that way.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“He’s not everyone.”
“It only takes one asshole, Jo.”
They stood in the dark under the threatening sky and seemed at a loss for words. Cork reached out to hold her, but it was as if they were too full of the responsibilities they both bore, and there was no comfort in it. “I guess I’ll see you in a few hours.”
She went back to the trailer. When she opened the door, Cork heard the sound of Wanda Manydeeds, a Midewiwin, singing words he couldn’t translate. He saw how they all welcomed Jo among them. Although she had not a drop of the blood of The People in her, she was more one of them at that moment than Cork had ever been.
Morning came gray and drizzly. Well before dawn, Cork had his deputies deployed along the path from the parking area to the boat landing. The small motorboats were tied up and waiting, their nets loaded. Cork was glad he’d talked Blackwater into that at least.
Some of the crowd had been there a good part of the night, but most had begun to gather an hour or so before dawn. A few barrels had been filled with wood and fires started, and people gathered around them warming hands and sipping coffee from thermoses. A couple of equipment trucks from television stations in Duluth and the Twin Cities were parked with their engines running, white exhaust mixing with the gray drizzle. Placards leaned against trees and the barrels, ready to be grabbed up when the moment arrived. There were some children in the crowd; Cork didn’t like that at all. He asked the parents to take the children home, but they refused.
At 5:35, he got word over the radio that Helmuth Hanover of the Aurora Sentinel had received a call from an anonymous spokesman for the Minnesota Civilian Brigade threatening some form of retaliation if the Indians fished. Cork had no time to consider this development. Less than a minute later, just as the drizzle seemed to let up and the faintest hint of morning light crept across the lake, Deputy Jim Bowdry radioed that the procession of vehicles he was leading from the reservation was only a mile from the landing. Earlier Cork had given instructions to his men to clear a corridor from the parking area to the lake as soon as he gave them the word. He told them now to get started. The crowd, who’d been quiet and had even seemed a little sleepy, came suddenly to life and began chaotically to gather behind the lines formed by the outstretched arms of the deputies. The morning had been still enough to hear the lap of lake water against the shore, but now shouts back and forth across the empty corridor shattered the quiet. Placards rose above the crowd, swinging back and forth like signals at a dangerous railroad crossing. The news teams had crawled out of their trucks and started their cameras rolling.
Cork had a bad feeling in his gut. And for the first time in years, he was so afraid he was shaking.
The procession of five vehicles-the patrol car, two old pickups, a station wagon, and Blackwater’s motorcycle-came slowly up the access toward the parking area. Jim Bowdry stopped his patrol car far short of the lot, where some of the crowd were waiting. Cork walked over and asked Blackwater to keep his people there a few moments. Then he hauled a bullhorn from his car, stood on a picnic table, and addressed the crowd.
“This is Sheriff O’Connor! Listen up, everyone!” He waited a moment for a quiet that never quite came. “This is Sheriff O’Connor! I want everyone to stay back of the lines my deputies have formed. I want a clear corridor for these fishermen to walk to their boats. Stay behind the deputies. I repeat, you will stay behind the deputies and
