David Dun - Unacceptable Risk

Yodo came walking toward them. Obviously, he had already talked to Sam.

"Good luck." He held out his hand and Grady shook it.

"What'll you be, a pallbearer?" Grady smiled.

Sam and Anna walked along the edge of Central Park toward the Plaza Hotel. Tonight he had a blond handlebar mustache and blond hair with eyebrows to match and wore a beret. Anna wore a Snoopy hat complete with earflaps. Looking at her, a person would never think celebrity. The driver of a horse-drawn carriage shivered in the autumn cold and snubbed his cigarette under a Red Wing boot. Sam could tell that Anna wanted to take a ride through the city. The horse pawed the pavement, maybe bored, maybe pissed off. Since the horse's ears were forward, Sam banked on bored and ready to go.

"Take us on a thirty-minute round," Sam said.

In the carriage was a heavy blanket. Sam pulled it over them. He wanted to think, and it didn't surprise him that Anna knew his mood. Under the blanket she put her hand on his arm and looked off at the people and shops as they rode down Fifth Avenue. Sam knew he was at a crossroads in his life. There were decisions made at forty-two that could not be made at sixty-two. There were choices a man could re gret, some irreversible, and he didn't want to make one of those.

He thought about his grandfather and a talk they once had. Sam had been trying to decide about a young woman in his neighborhood who wanted to go away to college, but she had become so infatuated with Sam that she was losing her will to leave home. Sam wanted her to stay because he wanted to hang out with her, but at the same time he be lieved that for her own sake she should leave and go to school and get a career. It was a struggle.

"I want to tell you a story," he said to Anna. "A story my grandfather told to me."

"Shoot."

"It may be a little corny." Sam grinned.

"Corny is good when you're pregnant. You have to make your thinking more basic."

"Back before my grandfather's time, the Tiloks had a very old chief. One tooth left in his head just before he died. Black Hawk. Called himself Jones to the whites. Grandfather had a painting of him and talked about how he kept the tribe from violence."

"I suppose the tooth part is apropos of nothing but a lack of dentistry," Anna joked.

Sam loved her sense of humor.

"So, Black Hawk was confronted with a choice of two men to be his successor. One was Charles Curtis, the other Andrew Wiley. Wiley had many enemies. He was arrogant and contentious, but also strong and impressive, and men followed him. Nobody could beat him in wrestling. Curtis was a good planner; he could read and write and he helped the widows. And he understood growing crops. He never talked of gaming revenge on the whites-unlike Wiley, who doted on the fantasy.

"Black Hawk needed to choose one of the two men. If he chose Wiley, the young men would be happy, at least most of them. There were a few young men, those more educated in the white man's ways, who wanted Curtis and would have nothing of Wiley. These men tended to live off the reserva tion. In his heart Black Hawk knew that for the future, living with the white man and abiding by his laws, Curtis was the best choice for the people. But on his deathbed the chief wanted also to please the young men.

"Black Hawk devised a test question to determine the best man for the job: 'Suppose the white man's government came to the village and wanted to buy a piece of the reservation for very little money. Suppose the money was so little and the land was so great that the tribe might not survive, so that the white man was stealing our future. Suppose there were two ideas. One idea was for the chief to starve himself and to tell the white man's newspaper of the injustice. The other was for the strongest braves to take a hostage, a power ful white man in the government who was known to be traveling in the area. What would you do?'

"Wiley was quick to answer: 'The men would sneak out at night and at daybreak, in the gray of the morning, they would take the government man and blindfold him so that he could not recognize them; then they would hide him in the mountains, where no one could find him. They would offer next to negotiate for their land and say nothing of the gov ernment man or his whereabouts. If they could not change the mind of the white men in the negotiation, they would at least kill their hostage and they would take more government men in the night and kill them as well, and they would have some retribution for their loss.'

"This answer pleased the young men.

"Curtis gave his answer 'I would go out alone in the night. I would sneak up to the government man's house. If possible, even on the threshold or even inside. At first light I would show myself. I would ask to speak with the govern ment man in front of the man who writes newspapers. I would tell him that I had come to prevent violence and to stop an injustice. I would tell him that I would take no food until the matter was resolved so that the Tiloks could survive.'

"Wiley scoffed, or so the story goes. He says: 'But they would ignore you and laugh or even put you in chains and then the people would be without a leader.'

"Curtis argued: 'That is where you are wrong. If they put me in chains or even killed me, the people would have a greater leader. Because a leader is a man who shows the way. You cannot kill the white men and go unpunished and it is foolish to try.'

"Wiley figured he had him. Turning to the crowd, he said: 'So you would give up without a fight.'

"And this was Curtis's answer: 'But that is only me,' he said. 'If they killed me, or put me in chains or merely ig nored me and ignored my plea, the village could make a new plan. Perhaps another man could come and another. I would trade my life for a chance to buy peace for the people and I would teach others to do the same.'

"Wiley's view of the world was essentially that the chief must survive because he viewed the tribe as an extension of himself and saw himself as at the center of value. Curtis, on the other hand, saw himself as only one man and saw that there might be good in giving himself for something greater than himself. He saw value in other places. 'Every person has a Wiley and a Curtis inside them,' Grandfather said. 'They are always with us.' Regarding that girlfriend of mine, Grandfather said that my Wiley and my Curtis were in a struggle for my soul.

"I think that's what is happening now. There is something epic about a child-a small person with his whole life in front of him. A mind that a man could nurture and teach. But with the child would come diapers, whining, parent-teacher conferences." He decided he'd said enough and kissed her on the lips.

"What did you do?"

"Told the girl to go to college. She met a man and fell in love. I know I never would have married her."

"There are all those future potential girlfriends of Sam," Anna began, "or Robert, or whoever. Beautiful women. Beaches full of them, malls full of them, on the sidewalk, in the restaurants, tending their gardens, going about life, every one of them an extraordinary adventure and you would be forfeiting all of that. I know, Sam. I know how it is."

"But there is that child. A child that is ours together. And there is you."

He kissed her again, and this time she kissed back. People were watching, so they cooled it and went back to playing under the blanket.

He looked in her eyes and saw a calm certainty. Oddly, he was both pleased and distressed that she looked so wise. Still, he thought he should make things plain and give his lit tle talk.

"I've decided."

"Yes?"

"I want to marry you." He paused. "So, I'm asking if you will be my wife."

"I love you." She began kissing him anew despite the onlookers. "You will marry me in public?"