COMPLETED WORKS

BROKEN PROMISES

by Curtis W. Long

A dark-haired man sat, sipping his coffee at one of the tables just outside Starbuck's in Horton Plaza. In the other hand he held a folded newspaper that he was intently reading. All of a sudden, his concentration was broken as a woman with long black hair collided with him. They glanced at each other briefly as she apologized and quickly moved on. Slightly annoyed, he mopped up the spilled coffee and went about his reading. As he began to unfold the paper in order to change to another section, a business-sized, white envelope dropped onto the table. Startled, he picked it up and found that it was addressed to him. Reflexively, he spun around, but the longhaired woman was no where to be seen. He opened the envelope and found a typewritten note and a timeworn, discolored piece of paper. The note said:

I have eluded them just long enough to get this to you. Do not look for me; it will be too late. If you want to help your people, follow these instructions carefully. Tell no one about your mission. Take this map to the tribal chief of the reservation just outside Tucson, Arizona. He and the council will know what to do. It is important for you to remain with them until the mission has been completed. At that point, your knowledge of history and the law will indicate to you the proper steps to be taken.

The man could not comprehend why he should be involved in something of this sort. He knew that he had been born on a reservation and orphaned as a small child. He had been adopted by a non-Indian couple on the East Coast. After finishing law school he had settled in San Diego. He was married and had a boy, four and a girl, two. He recalled that during various stages of his growing up he had received visitors from the reservation and, somehow or other, it seemed as though they had wielded a subtle influence on his education and the direction it took. Although he was tempted to dismiss this as some sort of prank, a strange intuition came over him, and he decided to see it through.

He pulled out a PCS and called his office, explaining that a family problem had come up. He went home immediately and told his wife that he had urgent business in Arizona.

When he landed in Tucson, he rented a car but decided it was too late to go to the reservation that night. So, he put up in a motel. In the middle of the night, he heard hoof-beats just outside his room. Looking out the window, he saw a brave in war paint and full battle dress, seated bareback upon a pinto pony. The brave whispered something to him in a language he did not understand. He blinked his eyes, and in the next second he saw the brave miles away, at the top of a mesa, framed by a huge full moon. As the brave held his arm in the air, he gradually disappeared, as if sinking into the moon. The man went back to bed, wondering if he was losing his mind or having hallucinations. He finally got back to sleep. When he awoke in the morning, he discovered that the meaning of the strange words uttered to him had been made clear in a dream. The words were, the Great Spirit is with you.

As he drove out to the reservation, all of the knowledge he had objectively acquired about his people's travails since colliding with the European culture seemed to take on a chemical consistency when combined with an occult consciousness of which he had been unaware. He had a sense of belonging and coming home.

The chief greeted him warmly, and immediately called a tribal council meeting. They did not seem curious or in any way surprised by his arrival. As the chief began to speak, it became obvious why. The chief explained that it had been passed down through oral tradition that, when President Thomas Jefferson was negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, he managed to cajole a reticent Congress into passing a secret piece of legislation. He felt it would be needed some time in the future, in order for the United States to legitimize its existence among other nations of the world. The legislation, he explained, declared that by the year 2000 one-half of the territory west of the Mississippi River was to be returned to the tribes who formerly occupied that land. And, if settlement in the area made it impractical to do so, then the current cash value of those lands must be provided to the tribes in question. The chief then looked the stranger dead in the eye. He told him, the portion of the map you are carrying is to be matched with the one we have been saving these two hundred years. He went on to say that the Government knew that the passions among both peoples would be too strong for that bill to see the light of day prior to this time. Since then, it has been in a secret hiding place.

Our tribe was given half of the map to that hiding place. For generations, families belonging to an underground treaty preservation society have been adopting children from our tribe. The family who raised the child also held the other half of the map. You did not know until right now that you are the child of this generation. Your parents, as have generations before them, sacrificed themselves and you to this great cause. Yesterday morning, you saw your mother for the first--and the last--time. Your father had already given his life in this struggle. There is anther society out there that has been looking for the map--not for the purpose of preserving the treaty, but to destroy it. In order to divert suspicion away from you, we had to keep you in the dark until the last possible moment. Tomorrow, we will form a search party for the hiding place.

The search party consisted of the whole council and the visitor. The terrain was rough, so they all rode horses. The map led to a cave that had been obscured by overgrown desert shrubs. They cleared away the foliage and entered the cave and, following the instructions, proceeded to the rear. At the indicated spot they began to dig. About three feet down, they hit upon a metal container. Excitedly, they began to dig around it. When they pulled it out, it was a cylinder with a top. They struggled to unscrew the top, but ended up by having to knock it off. The chief put his hand inside, but felt nothing. He asked them to turn the cylinder over, as he held his hands underneath it. Into his hands fell the bits and pieces of parchment that had long ago succumbed to the ravages of oxygen. The dejection all around was palpable.

They all stood, staring at the remnants of pride, dreams, honor, loyalty, humiliation, pain, deprivation, crumbling into the chief's hands. Then the mouth of the cave began to darken. They turned, and there, framed by the sunlight, they saw the brave from the full moon, still astride his pinto pony, with his head lowered in deep sadness. He uttered something that echoed off the walls of the cave. Then he was gradually absorbed into the sunlight until he was gone. The visitor asked the chief, "what did he say?" The chief replied, "the words meant, 'That is the way with all treaties!"