Not Dead Enough (3 page)

Chapter Three

Winona looked out at the water as she began to speak. Whitecaps blanketed Celilo Lake now, glittering in the afternoon light like silver coins. Downriver, a low-riding barge slogged silently toward us. “I never knew my grandfather. He disappeared nine years before I was born. But I grew up on stories about him, told mostly by my grandmother. He was a man of principle and a political activist.” She smiled with a tinge of bitterness and waved a hand toward the water. “He fought hard to prevent this back in the fifties. He was a warrior, too, a Marine during World War II. He earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart overseas. Italy, I think. When he came back he had no tolerance for the racism that was prevalent around The Dalles at the time.”

I frowned and waited for her to continue.

“My grandmother loved to tell about the time he went into The Dalles for a haircut shortly after being discharged. He waited patiently for his turn and was denied service. He refused to leave the shop, and when three men tried to throw him out, he beat the hell out of them, all three.”

I laughed out loud, the scene playing in my head like a movie clip.

Winona smiled, shook her head, and looked back out on the river. “He spent ninety days in jail for that. He was well respected in the village and became a member of the Celilo Fish Committee. The committee managed the fishing at the falls. You know—who could fish, where they could fish, that sort of thing. He also worked with the fishermen and the cannery to settle disputes. There was a lot of cheating going on at both ends. When the dam became an issue, he threw himself into opposing it. He wrote letters, gave talks locally, traveled all the way to Washington to testify at congressional hearings. He was uncompromising. He urged the tribes to refuse a buy-off from Washington. ‘Don't trade the falls for money,' he used to say. ‘You can't put a price on the falls.'”

“I think he was right about that. You must be very proud of him.”

“I am. That's why I wanted to talk to you.”

I raised my eyebrows and waited again, wondering where she was going with this.

“That night, after the flooding of the falls, my grandfather disappeared. Without a trace.”

“Oh.” I nodded and waited for her to continue.

“One man claims he saw him that night out by the river, stumbling around like a drunk. So the police assumed he got drunk, fell in what had become a lake, and drowned in typical Indian fashion. Case closed.”

“They didn't find his body?”

She looked out at the lake. “No. The lake isn't particularly deep, but the Narrows, where the river used to run, is a deep trench. And the turbines at the dam, of course…”

“You don't believe it was an accident?”

“No. And neither did my grandmother. She had to live with the shame of the accusation—you know, just another drunk Indian—but she never believed it. Not for a minute.” Winona looked at the barge out on the lake and hesitated for a moment, as if weighing what to say next. “I…I didn't know my grandfather, but I feel like his spirit lives within me. I know he didn't die like they said.” She clinched a fist and put it to her chest. “And the anger I feel at him being remembered like that sits in my heart like a heavy stone.” Her eyes narrowed and the muscles along the line of her jaw rippled. She was right. I could sense the warrior in her.

My prosecutor instincts kicked in. “Who was this witness?”

“His name's Sherman Watlamet, a Yakama.”

“Still living?”

“I think so.”

I waited, and when she didn't continue, said, “So, Winona, how can I help you?”

“I want you to try to find out what really happened to my grandfather. I want to know the truth.”

I started to laugh but caught myself. “Uh, that would be next to impossible, I'm afraid. Except for one possible witness, any physical evidence is probably long gone after fifty years. Besides, I'm just a small-town lawyer. What you need is a private investigator.”

“Philip told me that you went to law school at Berkeley and that you were a prosecutor for the city of Los Angeles.”

“That was a while ago, Winona, another world.” What I didn't tell her was that it was a world I'd left and didn't care to revisit.

“Well, Philip said that if anyone could help, it would be you. He said you're brilliant.”

I laughed. “He must have been talking about my fly fishing.”

She didn't smile. “I'll pay you, of course.” Then she lifted a hand, palm out. “Before you make up your mind, let me tell you the rest.”

“Okay, I'm listening.”

“I found something the other day I think might be important.” She raised her eyes to meet mine. Hers were filled with an eagerness that made me uncomfortable. “I was going through some of my grandmother's papers. She, uh, died two weeks ago.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

Winona nodded, a weak smile creasing her lips, and surveyed the lake again. “She raised me. My father was killed in a logging accident when I was two. My mother has never been in the picture much. Alcohol and drugs. I think she's somewhere in Eastern Oregon now. She didn't make it to the funeral. Anyway, last Wednesday I came across a trunk in Grandmother's bedroom closet. This dress was in it,” she said, looking into her lap as she swept her hands downward in a gesture of display.

“It's beautiful.”

“Thank you. She was married in it. I also found a packet of letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother. She had TB during the time the falls were flooded and was in a sanatorium in Warm Springs. Grandfather was a faithful letter writer, and he told her what was going on in Celilo Village in great detail.”

I leaned in a little.

“I mentioned the letters to Philip, and that's when your name came up. Cal, I think there's new information in the letters. My grandfather had enemies, and the so-called witness, Sherman Watlamet, was one of them. I don't think it was an accident. I think someone murdered him.”

“Why did your grandmother keep the letters to herself if they shed light on what happened to him?”

She smiled wistfully. “Grandma Tilda was a very private person. I don't think she could bring herself to let anyone else read the letters. But I'll never know for sure.”

I looked out at the lake this time. A ragged row of gulls followed above the wake of the barge, which had moved well to the west. Trying to solve a fifty-year-old cold case—even with a handful of chatty love letters—is undoubtedly a fool's errand, I told myself. But what could I say? Even if she wasn't the cousin of the first good friend I'd made in Oregon, the earnestness of her request made it hard to say no.

I exhaled a long breath. “Tell you what, I'll take a look at the letters and make a few inquiries, and then we'll decide if there's anything we can do here. How does that sound?”

She gave me the full radiance of her smile. “Thank you, Cal. I…uh…have read the letters a couple of times and put some notes together. Do you want to see those, too?

I paused to consider her question. “No. Hang on to those for now. I want to read the letters with fresh eyes. We'll compare notes afterwards.”

A quick read. A few phone calls. That would be the extent of it. Or so I thought.

Chapter Four

I was hunched over a pile of papers at my law office in the middle of the following week when my phone rang. “I didn't catch you working, did I?” It was Philip Lone Deer. My friend had this deeply ingrained notion that unless you're out rowing drift boats through white water or felling trees, you're not really working.

“Actually, I was just finishing my manicure.”

Laughter. After some additional banter, he said, “Thanks for talking to Winona, Cal. You think you can help her? Nelson Queah's disappearance has been eating at her for years.”

“Too early to tell. Fifty years is a helluva long time, Philip. A lot of the people who might've known something are dead and gone by now.”

“Yeah. I guess you're right.” He paused. “You think there's anything in those letters she found that might help?”

“I've been jammed up and haven't gotten around to them yet.” I felt a stab of guilt. “I was planning to take a look tonight.” In truth, I was having a hard time getting started, despite my promise to Winona Cloud. The accordion folder she gave me still sat on my desk at home, untouched.

“You don't really want to help her, do you.”

It wasn't a question. I tried to come up with the right response but couldn't seem to find it. “Uh, not really.”

“Goddamnit, Cal, I—”

“Okay, I'm on it tonight. It's just that you both need to understand that the chances of this going anywhere are slim to none. Fifty years is an eternity in a case like this.”

“I get that, and I'm sure Winona does, too. Just give it a shot. And look, if you need any help, anything at all, just let me know.”

I thought for a moment. “As a matter of fact, there is one thing. Winona mentioned a witness, allegedly the last person to see Nelson Queah alive. Name's, uh, Sherman Wat-something.”

“Watlamet. Sherman Watlamet. I remember her telling me.”

“Yeah. That's the guy. She said he was a Yakama. Could you try to get a line on him? I'd like to talk to him if he's still breathing.”

“Consider it done.”

I locked up my law office around five and headed for home with my pup, Archie, in the backseat. Dundee and its three thousand inhabitants sat wedged between the Willamette River and the Dundee Hills, thirty-five miles southwest of Portland on the Pacific Highway. A blue-collar farm town careening down the path of gentrification, it was becoming known as the center of the Oregon wine country, at least by those owning vineyards there. I urged my old BMW out of town and up into the hills, which rose sharply on the west side of the highway, the road winding through orderly rows of pinot noir grapevines whose buds were swollen but had not yet unfurled into leaves.

Archie, a six-month-old Australian shepherd, began to whimper as we turned off and made the final climb up Eagle Nest, the graveled lane that serves my house and that of my only neighbor. When I let him out to open the gate, he jumped from the backseat without hesitation and landed chin-first. Undeterred, he picked himself up and, ignoring my laughter, shot past me to scatter a covey of quail grazing up by the weeds that marked the vegetable garden of the previous owner.

I'm perched on five acres that slant down to a ridgeline overlooking an abandoned gravel quarry. My old farmhouse, a four-square with a wraparound porch and the original shiplap siding, sits with its back to the ridge. The view out the back is straight south and carries the eye down through the vineyards and out to the Willamette Valley, a hundred-and-fifty-mile-long agricultural cornucopia that's squeezed between the Cascade Mountains and the Coastal Range.

The old farmhouse is no treasure, but the view's worth a million bucks, as far as I'm concerned.

Archie followed me through the front door, and we both headed for the kitchen. I fed him, let him out, and then opened a bottle of pinot noir. I was still acquainting myself with the local wines. This particular bottle was made from grapes grown in a vineyard I could see from my kitchen window. I poured some, swirled it, and held it up. Not inky like a typical cabernet sauvignon, it scattered the light like a jewel. I sipped it, enjoying the complex flavor that belied its lighter color. “This will do nicely.”

My stomach grumbled, which started me thinking of dinner. My cooking skills were severely limited. Not because I was indifferent to good food. Just the opposite. My wife had been an exceptional cook, but I'm ashamed to say I took her skills for granted. Now I found myself trying to recreate some of the magic she worked in the kitchen, but with decidedly mixed results. My daughter, Claire, had insisted I bring Nancy's cookbooks in the move from L.A., but they remained packed in a box up in the attic. I thought about bringing them down every now and then but hadn't gotten around to it. Too many ghosts up there.

I hated to shop more than anything, so it was no surprise that the fridge was nearly bare that particular night. I settled for two grilled cheese sandwiches made with the last slices from a block of Gruyere I'd picked up at a shop in McMinnville. A couple of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and Kalamata olives dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar completed the meal. At least I had a good wine to go with it.

After dinner, I carried a second glass of wine down the hall to my study and slid the contents of Winona Cloud's file onto my desk. Three curled and yellowed newspaper articles from The Dalles Chronicle were on top. The first was dated March 13, 1957—a small item noting that Nelson Queah, resident of Celilo Village, was missing. He'd failed to pick up his daughter, Rebecca, at the Warm Springs Reservation on March 11 and had not been seen in Celilo Village since the falls were inundated on the 10th.

A follow-up piece two days later quoted Sherman Watlamet, a fellow falls fisherman: “I saw Nelson Queah cross the highway and head toward the river at about 9:10 p.m. on the night of March 10th. He was weaving and staggering, and I figured he was very drunk.” The article also said that Queah's house in the village had been broken into and apparently burglarized, although his daughter, Rebecca, stated that nothing seemed to be missing.

The article went on to describe dragging operations performed by the police in newly formed Lake Celilo and the fact that no body was recovered. The final piece described a memorial ceremony held in Queah's honor at the village a month later. His war record was highlighted, and a huge turnout of Native Americans from around the region was noted.

I attacked her grandfather's letters next. The envelopes had been opened carefully with a letter opener, and I could read most of the postmarks. The letters themselves had been written on cheap paper that had turned the color of dead leaves and was nearly as brittle. The ink was faded sepia, but Nelson's handwriting was precise and legible. There were forty-six letters in the stack, and they were arranged in chronological order. The first was dated April 9, 1956, and the last, March 3, 1957, a week before the falls were flooded.

I went over to the sound system looking for something mellow to work by. I put on Coltrane's Blue Train and added one of Monk's solo CDs behind it. By the time Monk came in on “Ruby, My Dear,” I'd finished reading the letters. My first reaction was full-on admiration for Nelson Queah. The Dalles Dam was nearing completion as he wrote the letters, and the social order at the falls and in the village was disintegrating as longtime residents drifted away, and the tribes began jockeying for compensation from the Corps of Engineers for the loss of their fishing grounds. But as Winona had told me, Queah was unwavering.

In May of 1956 he wrote,

“…Some of the tribes can't wait to get their hands on the white man's money. I told them today at the meeting I would take no money. It would be like putting a price on the moon and the stars. I cannot do that, Tilda…”

There was precious little to go on. I had tossed the pages that might contain leads in a separate pile. When I finished reading I had only a half dozen pages.

In August of 1956 Queah wrote,

“…Chief Thompson has been sick this week. I am in charge of the fish committee, but some do not care to listen anymore. Sherman Watlamet told me I was a fool and that he would fish wherever he wanted. I told him as long as the falls are there, we would fish as it has always been done. I went to the river and put a lock on his cable chair. This made him furious, and I thought we were going to fight right there…”

I imagined the scene unfolding. I knew the cable chairs were rickety affairs used by the fishermen to pull themselves by hand across the rapids to their fishing platforms. By locking the chair, Queah had denied Watlamet access to the other bank, where his fishing platform apparently was located. I set the item aside.

The next page I set aside was from a letter sent in October of 1956,

“…I ran into Cecil Ferguson and two other white men today. Ferguson is the man who offered me a job before construction of the dam started if I would stop speaking out against the project. He was angry when I turned him down. Do you remember this, Tilda? They were drunk and if Sam Katchia and Sonny Jim had not been with me, I think there would have been bad trouble. Dearest, I am trying hard to keep my promise to you not to fight, but I will not let this man Ferguson bully me…”

Another item of interest was from a letter in late February of 1957,

“…I met with the newspaperman I told you about, Tilda. His name is Fletcher Dunn. He works for the big Portland newspaper, The Journal, I believe it is called. He is writing a story about the falls and the dam, and he interviewed me for a long time today. I like this young man. He seems to be sympathetic to our side. It is too late to save the falls, but perhaps he will tell the truth about what is happening to us.

I culled two entries from the last letter of the series, dated March 3, 1957. On the first page he wrote,

“…The newspaperman came by this morning. He brought me a copy of his first article on the dam and the falls. I think it tells our story well, although I don't think many white people can truly understand what losing the falls means to us. He also writes about what the whites are saying, that we need the dam to keep the country strong. I think he had to write this because mostly whites read the paper. I am enclosing the article for you to read. I hope you are proud of the words I spoke for our people, Tilda…”

On the back of the second page he wrote,

“…Something surprising happened tonight, Tilda. A young man named Timothy Wiiks came to see me here at the house. He is the nephew of a man I served in the war with, Jacob Morning Owl of the Umatilla Tribe. Jacob was killed in Sicily. Timothy works at the dam and has discovered that a contractor there has been cheating the Corps out of a great deal of money. He is afraid to go to the police and asked for my help. I told him I would talk to the newspaper reporter who interviewed me. I trust the reporter and I think he might know what to do about this…”

I scanned back through the key pages and jotted down some actions on a single sheet of paper. It was a short list.

1. Can Philip locate the witness Watlamet? This is key!

2. Who is Cecil Ferguson? Who did he work for? Try to locate and interview him. Ditto for Timothy Wiiks.

3. Find Fletcher Dunn and the articles he wrote about the dam and the falls.

4. Assess possibility of an accident or suicide. Queah's mental history? Drinking? Tribal attitudes toward suicide? Talk to Winona.

I stepped out on the side porch to watch the sunset through a stand of Douglas firs on the west edge of my property. A Rufus hummingbird buzzed my ear on a last trip to the feeder. I watched through the trees as the sun sank in a pool of orange and red fire, the firs stark silhouettes against a violet glow.

I still wasn't optimistic. But after reading the letters, I was no longer indifferent. Winona was right—Nelson Queah deserved to have the truth told about him.