Warren Murphy: Last War Dance

Looking at the mammoth pile, Remo said, "You must sell a lot of toilet paper."

"Naaah," said Brandt. "But the guy I bought it from—now, he sold a lot of toilet paper." He laughed at his own joke, then asked, "Are you going to deliver?"

"Well, see, I wanted to talk to you about that."

"No time for big powwow," said Brandt. "I've got a business to run."

"Damn it, man, we're trying to save the world," said Remo.

"You save the world. All I want to save is this week's profits, and if I don't keep an eye on the checkout counters, the clerks'll loot me blind. I want those RIP slobs by tomorrow morning, or we're gonna blow that place up."

"How many of them do you want?"

"All of them," said Brandt.

"What are you going to do with them?"

"Give them a bath. Then hang them."

"That's against the law," said Remo.

"The hell with the law. Hey, you, leave that toilet paper alone! The hell with the law. They're ruining our church down there. And the law is letting them do it. That's bad enough. Worse is that they're ruining our image. People are watching this thing all over the world, and you know what they're thinking—so that's what Indians are like. We've gotta stop that. I want them all. The only good RIPper is a dead RIPper."

"How about just Petty and Cosgrove?"

"No way. Cosgrove'll dance around singing and give me a headache. Petty'll be so drunk he'll be hung before he sobers up. We want them all."

"Well, I'll try. But what if I can't? That cannon of yours probably won't shoot, anyway."

"Don't bet on it."

"How's a cannon that's never been fired going to shoot anything?"

"It's been fired," said Brandt.

"Oh."

"Every week for over a year."

"What for?" asked Remo.

"We picked it up from army surplus. We saw all this TV news jazz about riots and urban blight and stuff, and we figured it wouldn't take too long to get here and we were going to be ready for any blighters that tried to ruin our town.

"I'd love to see that cannon," said Remo cunningly.

"First you'll hear it. Tomorrow morning. Then if you're still around, I'll show it to you. Listen, you with the funny name, I want them all. All. All."

"Okay, you'll have them," said Remo.

"Stop squeezing that toilet paper!" yelled Brandt, turning from Remo and advancing menacingly on a sixty-year-old Indian woman in jeans and moccasins, who waited until he was close, then threw a four-roll pack at him and fled down the supermarket aisle.

Remo went out into the morning sun, disgusted with himself. Trying to get just one of the RIP people to the right place at the right time might tax his ingenuity; getting forty to deliver themselves to Brandt—and at daybreak, yet—was probably impossible.

Remo moved into a small municipal park with neatly clipped grass and manicured flowers in geometric patterns, which surrounded a large wooden monument praising the Apowa's veterans. He sat down on a bench to think it out.

The park, like the Big A supermarket, was near the edge of the mesa, and a half-mile away, well below the elevated village, Remo could see the Wounded Elk monument and the church.

Why shouldn't the Apowa be angry? They were a people with pride—pride in themselves, pride in their country. The park he sat in was a memorial to wars fought and died in. Little Indian children played among ceremonial machine guns mounted in concrete, old artillery pieces half-buried in the ground, a tank without treads—and also without graffiti. The children's happy voices hung shrilly in the clear air.

And down there at the church were the RIP ragtags. Hustlers without pride in themselves—and justifiably so. Ripoff artists who were conning the press and the government and someday, perhaps, would even convince the public. At first the public would think they were crazy. But the power of the press is cumulative, and night after night of news about oppression and the brave band of Indian liberators would cause even the strongest minds to lose track of what was really true. That was what at times made the press a threat to the country. Like water on rock, it could wear away traditions, beliefs, standards, and melt everything down in a stew of relativism until there were no absolutes, and the only god was the great savior Ad Hoc.

Remo listened to the children playing happily among the instruments of past wars.

Those kids deserved to live, even if only to be allowed to die later on for something that would be worth their lives. It was absurd to allow them to die because of a flurry of rage against the RIP garbage touched off a killing nuclear explosion.

Remo stood up and walked away from the park with its beautiful high-ground command of the monument and the church and the highway, and headed back toward his motel. He would deliver the RIP members to Brandt. Somehow.

When Remo got back to his motel, he found Lynn Cosgrove, squatting in front of his door. She looked up at him with supplicant eyes. "You have despoiled me, white man," she said.

"Yeah, sure."

"You have made of me a Sacajawea."

"Whatever you say."

"I am ruined, made worthless by the power of your evil."

"Right, right."

"There is nothing left for me but to subject myself to a life of slavery at your blood-stained hands."

"Terrific, sweetheart, but not right now."

"I am an outcast among my own people. I will be your slave."

"Go eat a Twinkie."

"Goddamn it, Remo, screw me."

She jumped to her feet and began stamping up and down,

Remo touched a spot under her ear, near her throat, and she changed from hissing panther to purring tabby. "Ooooooooh," she moaned.

"Yes, indeed," said Remo. "Look, I'm going to be very busy today. But tonight, say three A.M., I'll meet you at the church."

"Ooooooooh."

"You understand? Three A.M. at the church."

"Ooooooooh. Yes. Ooooooooh."

Remo released his light touch. "Okay, go away now."

"I go, master. This worthless creature leaves because she lives only to do your will."

She walked away, and Remo watched her leave. Three A.M. at the church. He had a plan, and it might just get the RIP band up to the town.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chiun was not in the room, but Van Riker was. He was sitting in a chair watching a late morning talk show that featured two sociologists and the minority-party senator who had been at Jerry Candler's press conference. They were talking about the deep sociological significance of the Wounded Elk uprising.

Van Riker looked away from the TV as Remo entered.

"I've been away from America too long," he said. "Is everybody this nuts?"

"No," said Remo. "Only the brightest ones. The average people are still pretty sane."

"Thank God for that!" said Van Riker, running a hand down his well-shaved tan cheek. "Listen to this crap. Will you just listen to it?"

Remo sat lightly on the edge of the bed and watched as one sociologist—black—said that the events in Wounded Elk were all that could be expected when a people had been enslaved for so long. "Eventually they must rise up against the ruling class," he said. "This is the significance of what is happening in Wounded Elk. Poor, indigent, downtrodden Indians are rebelling against a government whose Indian policy borders, at best, on fascism and genocide. There is a lesson here for all minority peoples."

Yeah, thought Remo, and there's another lesson up at the Big A supermarket, where the Apowas shop and worry about nonsense like squeezing the toilet paper in a town where they live like human beings, a town they built with their own sweat.

It consoled him somewhat to realize that probably not a soul up there in the Apowa village was watching the show. If any one was, by chance, he was probably rolling on the floor, laughing.