Chapter 3

Rock, Bear, and Linc all arrived at 6:45 the next morning, just when I’d gotten back to sleep. It was a rough night for the Spirit of the Hunter traveling circus. Only Cap was still asleep in his hotel room, but that was okay. He’d be driving our airplane and I wanted him to be well rested when he did. I guess he couldn’t get his co-pilot for this trip.

I didn’t sleep much, what with the green glow from his computer screen and Chas getting up every few minutes to use it.

The five of us, including Chas, had breakfast at the Mr. Luigi Pizza place. They served egg sandwiches, fried hash browns, and drinks. Good enough to get us going. We were at President O’Connor’s office at nine, and he wandered in about fifteen minutes later.

He greeted us in the waiting room outside his office.

“Mr. White? What can I do for you today?” He oozed administrator oil.

Chas froze up. “Go ahead. Tell him what you decided,” I said as I patted him on his shoulder.

“Umm ... I decided I don’t like it here. I want to be with my uncle again.” Chas was mumbling.

“Maybe in the future he’ll feel differently,” I offered.

“And you are?” he asked me.

“I am one of the First People. I was in the area and came to help Charles out,” I prevaricated. “I can help him reconnect with his uncle and grandmother.” In Canada, I think they called ‘Indians’ the ‘First People.’ I like that a whole lot better than ‘fucking redskins,’ like I’d heard too often in the U.S.

“And all these other gentlemen?”

“Oh. They were just traveling with me. They have nothing to do with Charles. In fact, they can wait outside.” I turned to my three guys and said, “We’ll be right out. I’ll see you outside.”

Linc just nodded. Rock and Bear headed for the exit, too.

I said, in a conspiratorial way, “My dad – the Medicine Man – told them to watch out for me. I’m not married, you see.”

“Ah huh.” He nodded in understanding. He understood exactly nothing, which was my intent.

“Anyway, we didn’t want to leave without telling you. Charles is eager to see his relatives, again,” I non-explained.

“Well, we’ll be sorry to see you go, Mr. White. Perhaps we’ll see you again,” he oozed.

And Chas and I left. “Wow. You really laid it on thick,” he said, laughing.

“What? I only told one lie. The Medicine Man is my grandfather, not my father. The rest is all true – maybe he understood it differently,” I laughed along with him.

We went out to the car and headed back to Chas’s room to pack his stuff. Linc had an idea. “Why don’t we go to Thunder Bay, and meet Chas’s grandmother. She can come with us to Arizona. Then his uncle can stay behind and supervise moving all their stuff, and join us later?”

“Oooo! That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “What do you think Chas?” He just nodded.

We packed up all his stuff, clothes and books and everything, including the lemonade from the fridge, in his cardboard suitcase and a couple of pillowcases, and flew out to Thunder Bay, Ontario. I figured the University could afford a couple of missing pillowcases.

It extended our time in Canada by a day, but that’s exactly what we did. I called ahead to Washburn down in Burnside North. He found a pair of homes for Chas and his grandmother near to Gerry’s place.

It took a little convincing to get grandma to come out to Arizona. And then another convincing to get her to come with only one suitcase. But we did it.

By the way, grandma Nanta was a great cook. We had duck for dinner. She just went out to the back yard and grabbed a duck by the neck, swung it around her head twice, and SNAPO! the duck was deader than a doornail. Not a wasted movement. She took the rest of the afternoon preparing the duck for our feast. She made duck stew for Uncle Fancy Hat to feast on while he was on his own.

Maybe she’d take a place as my household cook; she seemed to be good at both killing critters and cooking. Who wouldn’t want that combo?

...

During the flight, Red wanted to review everything. Grandma and Chas slept the whole way. Red and I had last had an ‘everything’ discussion about two years ago.

[Lexi, as you know, we made a boatload of money in silver when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market. About a billion on the way up and twice that on the way down.]

So how come we wound up four years later with only half that? I think I asked that before. But I still don’t understand.

[So, you don’t understand the US tax system. Join the crowd. The simple reason is the U.S.Government. Since we wanted to play in public, we had to pay about a third of that in taxes. Remember you are in the highest tax bracket, even with that financial planning firm in Denver that we hired. The big donations you made to the local colleges saved a lot on taxes, but that just lowered your holdings by the same amount. If you give one million to the college, it does lower your income by a million, but it still costs you one million and your taxes go down by a portion of a million. Same thing with the money you gave to the tribes directly. And then we had to lose a sizeable amount in sugar and copper speculation, or the government would have gotten suspicious.]