Today's Reading
I may run the operation, but I'm meant to be invisible, to blend in. Mack, however, must dominate the room, and watching him never fails to fill my ears with that pleasing electric hum, the low-frequency rumble of power. Our grip on that power is shaky now, but we aren't dead quite yet. Furtive glances shoot through our bones like gamma radiation as we parade across the gaming floor. He smiles at people who recognize him, his head tucked down in rehearsed humility. He is a head taller than anyone else, which is probably not true but feels true. Hands come out of nowhere and reach up and slap him on the shoulder. He turns his head slightly to acknowledge them.
We walk down the double row of blackjack tables underneath the ornate dome, its rim decorated with the silhouettes of our Anishinaabe ancestors and chimokomonaag traders meeting together in brotherhood to sign the treaty of La Pointe, and when one of those silhouettes moves, I realize I'm looking at a janitor with a vacuum cleaner strapped to his back. I know him. We paid for his mother's wheelchair ramp because we look out for our people. With his free hand, the janitor waves at the president, but I'm the only one who catches it, and the sight of that silhouette cleaning up after the other silhouettes chills me like a blast of air-conditioning, and I lag after the entourage until the president turns around and notices I'm a few paces behind him. I can see him talking at me, but I don't quite hear it over the electric dissonance of 250 video slot machines chiming at once, so he repeats himself: "You okay, Cuz? You got that look on your face."
"Don't worry about my face," I say, more testily than I mean to. He pauses for a moment, takes too long to think of something smart to say, but he's got nothing. He keeps moving down the aisle.
The casino is staffed by the recipients of the largesse we've bestowed on the people of Passage Rouge. There's Tara Pochette, disinterestedly counting twenties behind the cashier's cage in her gold uniform. Didn't I grease the tribal housing authority to find her a new place after her husband almost ran her down in his truck outside the little HUD home she shared with her daughter? I did. And didn't I lean on the head of personnel to get a sit-down job in the security room for Darrel "Petey" Pederson, who lost a chunk of his lower leg and his right foot in an ambush in the Anbar Province but now watches over all of us from the eyes in the sky? I did that too. I could go on. We've doled out these favors, hoping the word gets around that we're here for the people. We care.
If Mack were running against a replacement-level candidate, some high school dropout with a big mouth and the ability to scribble their name on the tribal election form, reelection would be a slam dunk. But we're running against Gloria Hawkins, Indian Country celebrity, or whatever passes as one. Perpetual granola party candidate, activist, best-selling memoirist, and go-to talking head pundit on Indian issues. This year, instead of running her usual stunt campaign for governor, she's gotten it into her head that tribal president is less of a reach. She's not wrong.
We arrive at the big golden doors of the casino and assemble next to the valet stand. The president needs to make an entrance, and he must come correct. A Ford Super Duty F-350—extended club cab, ice-white exterior, bulletproof tinted glass—idles in its haze of diesel exhaust.
The president does a walk-around. Bobby has just brought the Big Chief back from the car wash, but the ride from town has splattered the bumpers with sleet and road salt. Mack silently points them out, and Bobby kneels next to the truck like he's whispering to it and rubs a chamois cloth over the white steel, stopping to give a last polish to the tribal license plate to make sure everyone can read the gleaming red letters: BGCHIEF.
Only then does the president heave open his door and climb into the passenger seat.
Buzz and Bobby and I get in after him, and Bobby guns the engine loud and whips out of the parking lot and onto the main road so we can cruise down Peace Pipe to be seen. It's not far, just a minute of drive time over to the Government Center, where Bobby beep-beeps and the people in line all turn and wave as we drive by at ten miles an hour like we're running a deer. The president sticks his paw through the half-open window to acknowledge our people as we pass.
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