Chapter 2. Lennix
LENNIX
A thousand needles pierce my eyes. I knuckle-scrub my eyelids, even while knowing from our protest training that flushing with water is the only thing that will help.
Preparing for tear gas and doing it are two completely different things.
Lesson number one in civil disobedience, but I’m not sure any amount of training could prepare me to face a snarling dog, held back by a flimsy leash.
I stumble, my eyes clenched tightly against the discomfort, and slam into something hard.
“Sorry,” I gasp, reflexively reaching out to put space between me and whomever I plowed into.
I ease my eyes open. Backlit by the sun, a man towers over me.
Considering I’m in the middle of a riot, growling Dobermans barely kept at bay, tear gas still hanging in the air, and standing shoulder to shoulder with a line of protesters howling in pain and rubbing their eyes, it’s bad timing to notice this guy is gorgeous. And that he smells really good.
“Uh…um, hey,” I stammer. “I mean, hi.”
Idiot. Nincompoop. I just gave a rousing speech that still has my heart twisted and my cheeks wet from tears, but I’m tongue-tied because a hot guy showed up to protest the pipeline?
“Are you okay?” His voice rolls over me, deep and husky with the slightest trace of a drawl. Texas, maybe? Did he come all the way from Texas to join us?
“Uh, yeah.” I rub my eyes again. “I will be.”
I’m dragged back, figuratively, also literally, kicking and screaming, into this nightmare scene with frothy-mouthed dogs and masked cops wielding tear gas.
“Shit!” The curse comes from my right, and a grimace of pain skitters across the face of Jason Paul, one of the protesters and my teacher from fourth grade.
He struggles to shake his hand free of a dog’s lockjaw bite.
My heart leaps to my throat when a growling dog comes right for me .
The really tall, great-smelling guy jerks me back and out of harm’s way but gets bitten on the arm himself before the cop jerks on the leash.
I don’t have time to thank him for sparing me or to apologize that he got caught in the cross teeth, as it were.
I’m shoved forward, my arms wrenched together, plastic handcuffs drawn tight at my wrists.
“What are you doing?” I shout over my shoulder at the officer cuffing me. “This is a peaceful protest. We have every right to be here.”
“Private property, lady,” he murmurs close to my ear, spite slickening his voice. “Apparently your permits weren’t in order.”
“This is a mistake,” Tall and Good-Smelling says when they slip plastic cuffs on him, too.
“You’ll get a chance to have your say.” The officer shoves him toward a police van. “Call your lawyer.”
“Trust me. You don’t want my lawyer involved,” the guy says, his voice as cutting as the glance he shoots the cop. “Let me go. Let them go, and don’t give me that shit about permits. I know what this is.”
“This,” the officer says, pushing the guy’s head down to clear the van, forcing him inside, “is you having the right to remain silent.”
Six of us fill the benches lining the van interior, three on either side and facing each other.
The cops give us bottles of water to flush the tear gas from our eyes as much as possible.
We prepared for this moment, but I don’t think any of us actually expected to be arrested.
Even if we had, none of us would have done anything differently.
Everyone in this van has a vested interest in what happens with that pipeline.
It would endanger the reservation’s water supply.
It would desecrate sacred burial grounds.
We all grew up drinking from that stream.
Dipping in it for ceremonies that mark pivotal moments in our lives. Each of us has a reason to be here.
Except him.
Now that we’re not surrounded by dogs and choking on tear gas, I study him more closely.
In all the confusion, I only had time for a general impression of hotness, but now with us both shackled in the paddy wagon, I have all the time for a closer examination.
Or at least as long as it takes to get to the police station.
He has one of those magazine faces. Not exactly like a model, but a “someone” face.
An “I should know you” face. It’s not about how handsome he is, really.
Though I can’t overstate the impact of dark, mahogany-dusted hair licking around his ears and down his neck.
Or his green eyes, the color of the peridot stone we mine in our holy hills.
Precious metal eyes. And seriously. The Creator must have used a protractor to achieve a jaw so perfectly angular.
But there’s something more, like if you get caught up in that face and what is, admittedly, a fantastic physique, all lean muscles and a “from here to there” chest, you’d be missing the whole point of him.
“So you came all the way from Cali for this?” I ask, nodding to the Berkeley T-shirt straining across his pecs.
“Uh, yeah.” He shifts in his seat.
“That’s great that people all across the country are hearing about the pipeline,” Mr. Paul says, smiling at magazine-face man. “And coming to stand with us. Thank you.”
“Yeah,” he says again. “So how long have you guys been fighting, um…Cade on this?”
He spreads the question to all five of us, but I answer first.
“Last year, Senator Middleton sold the property to Cade Energy,” I offer, gritting my teeth. “Of course, as usual, disregarding that it was supposed to be protected. Not theirs to actually sell.”
“Their promises,” Mr. Paul says, with a bitter twist to his lips, “are worth no more than the paper every treaty they’ve ever broken was written on. Senator Middleton got this pipeline passed by tacking it on at the last minute to another bill that already had support.”
“It was done before we even knew about it,” I add. “We started organizing immediately, but at every turn, Cade has politicians, the Army Corps of Engineers, local police, everyone on his side and in his pocket. The worst part is he could reroute this thing.”
“What makes you say that?” Berkeley T-shirt asks.
“The original proposal ran the pipeline near a suburb about ten miles north,” I answer, “not near a water supply or anything, but the people there didn’t want it. So guess what? They didn’t get it. They didn’t even have to protest. Just said no.”
“Guess their voices are louder than ours,” Mr. Paul mutters.
“Basically, environmental racism.” Berkeley T-shirt sighs and shakes his head.
“No, exactly environmental racism,” I correct. “But we won’t take it.”
“We’re not going anywhere. We know how to last,” Mr. Paul says, a proud set to his head. “We were the last tribe to surrender. We have warrior in our blood.”
“What do you mean?” Berkeley asks.
“Geronimo was the last Indian warrior to formally surrender to the U.S. government,” I tell him. “He was Apache.”
“Wow,” Berkeley says. “I didn’t know that.”
The van comes to a stop, and through the back window, I see the small police station.
I’ll be grounded for the foreseeable future. There goes…well, life, pretty much.
My father knew about the run. I founded the sponsoring organization, REZpect Water, an action group for youth water protectors, but I conveniently left out the part where I’d actually be in the protest with the dogs and tear gas…
and such. When they offer us our one phone call, maybe I’ll just pass and live out the rest of my senior year in a holding cell.
I could redirect all my college acceptance letters to the police station.
That wouldn’t raise any red flags, would it?
What self-respecting place of higher learning isn’t recruiting from the penal system?
“Out,” the cop standing at the door barks, her voice rough and impatient, her unibrow dipped into a frown.
The six of us shuffle toward the police station.
The officers don’t seem bothered by the fact that I’m a minor and take my mug shot without incident.
The police station is a small-town operation with one holding cell we’re all tossed into together.
I don’t anticipate these charges sticking.
Cade probably just wants to intimidate us.
Good luck with that, you rich prick.
I may not actually live on the rez anymore, but staying with my father in town hasn’t made it any less my home. I’d still be living there if Mama…
I shove that thought down to a dark hole where I keep the really painful stuff. Why deal with it now? Save something for the therapist I’ll start seeing in my thirties when I finally decide it’s all too much to handle on my own.
My mother was murdered? Taken? Stolen?
Gone.
One of those “unseen” women, an unheard voice, whose disappearance wasn’t shouted about on the news or fretted over by the world.
And I’ll never get over it. Not ever.
There are days when I go a few hours without thinking about it—without wondering what happened to the beautiful woman who gave so much of herself to me and everyone around her.
Yeah, there are those days, but not many.
Mostly there are a thousand things every day that remind me of her, not the least of which is my own reflection.
“Good to have those off,” Berkeley T-shirt mumbles, rubbing his wrists and reminding me of our current less-than-ideal circumstances. I don’t know how long they’ll keep us in this holding cell.
“This thing hurts like crazy,” Mr. Paul says, touching the reddened, punctured skin of his hand.
“You need medical attention.” I walk over to the bars and glance back over my shoulder to Berkeley T-shirt. “So do you.”
Berkeley. According to that T-shirt, he’s probably already in college. Yeah, he’s already a man , not a boy . My dad would strangle me and maim him.
“I don’t think I’ll lose it.” He nods to his injured arm, one corner of his mouth tipping up.
Focus on first aid, not his lips.
“Hey!” I yell through the bars. “We need a first-aid kit in here.”