West Indian brothers but just wants a motherlode for himself, with all the publicity that goes with it? We knock his faked-up good character off, we knock his case off. It’s done all the time!”
“I dunno, Vin,” countered Meat haltingly. “You yourself told me that when you questioned that White House legal brain—the one with the colored chalk—he said that five or six of those judges admitted crying their eyes out when they read this Sitting Bull’s case. How there was a whole litany—you said ‘litany,’ Vin, I had to look it up—of deceit and dishonesty, even killing and starving whole tribes in the original U.S. of A. Now, you, me, and Fingers here—you bein’ the smartest, naturally, and me maybe pretty far behind and Fingers not actually in the running— but do any of us figure a crumb phony could flatten out the brains of these high-type big judges with pure bullshit? It don’t make sense.”
“We’re not looking for sense,
amico
, we’re looking for a way out of a possible national emergency, get thatthrough your skull. And right now its name is this Thunder Head. Send Goldfarb’s boys out to Nebraska!”
“Nebraska …
Nebraska
… Nebraska,” intoned Hyman Goldfarb into the telephone, as if the state were incorporated into an Old Testament psalm. Seated behind his elegant desk in his elegant office on Atlanta’s very elegant Phipp Plaza, he rolled his eyes upward and brought them down to gaze fondly at the slender, well-dressed, middle-aged couple sitting in front of him—middle-aged being mid-forties, only several years younger than the muscular, tanned Goldfarb, himself attired in a tight-fitting white linen suit that framed his still awesome athlete’s body. “I should once again send my best people out to this—to say the least—this out-of-the-way Nebraska so they can chase after a fog, a mist… a cloud of vapor who calls himself Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis? Is that what you’re saying? Because if it is, I should have been a rabbi, which I studied for, instead of a football player, which entailed very little knowledge.” Hyman Goldfarb paused, listening, every now and then removing the phone from his ear, sighing, and finally, obviously, interrupting the caller.
“Please pay attention to me and let me save you some money, will you do that?… Thank you, just listen. If there
is
a Chief Thunder Head, he’s nowhere to be found. My people cannot say he
doesn’t
exist. Whenever they mentioned the name among what’s left of the Wopotamis on their pathetic reservation, they were met with silence, interspersed with incomprehensible whispers in the Wopotami language. They tell me that suddenly you think you’re in some cathedral cut out of a scrawny forest primeval where there’s far too much available alcohol, and you begin to believe that this Thunder Head is more of a myth than a reality. An icon, perhaps, a tribal god sculpted on a totem pole to which his believers pay obeisance, but not a human being. In plain words, I do not believe such a person exists.… What
do
I think, is that your question—and it’s not necessary to shout? Quite frankly, my excitable friend, I believe Chief Thunder Head is a symbolicamalgam of—no that is
not
a reference to sexual preference—of narrowly defined special interests, no doubt benevolent, and centered about our government’s unfortunate treatment of the American Indian. Perhaps a small group of legal scholars from Berkeley or NYU who’ve unearthed sufficient precedents to embarrass the lower courts. A scam, my friend, pure and simple a scam, but a very
brilliant
scam.”
Goldfarb pulled the telephone away from his ear and briefly closed his eyes as the voice over the line metallically filled the elegant office. “
What kind of talk is that
?” roared the caller. “
This great country could be in a big national crisis, and you got nothin’ to offer but ‘presents’ that don’t make no sense? Well, lemme
“I dunno, Vin,” countered Meat haltingly. “You yourself told me that when you questioned that White House legal brain—the one with the colored chalk—he said that five or six of those judges admitted crying their eyes out when they read this Sitting Bull’s case. How there was a whole litany—you said ‘litany,’ Vin, I had to look it up—of deceit and dishonesty, even killing and starving whole tribes in the original U.S. of A. Now, you, me, and Fingers here—you bein’ the smartest, naturally, and me maybe pretty far behind and Fingers not actually in the running— but do any of us figure a crumb phony could flatten out the brains of these high-type big judges with pure bullshit? It don’t make sense.”
“We’re not looking for sense,
amico
, we’re looking for a way out of a possible national emergency, get thatthrough your skull. And right now its name is this Thunder Head. Send Goldfarb’s boys out to Nebraska!”
“Nebraska …
Nebraska
… Nebraska,” intoned Hyman Goldfarb into the telephone, as if the state were incorporated into an Old Testament psalm. Seated behind his elegant desk in his elegant office on Atlanta’s very elegant Phipp Plaza, he rolled his eyes upward and brought them down to gaze fondly at the slender, well-dressed, middle-aged couple sitting in front of him—middle-aged being mid-forties, only several years younger than the muscular, tanned Goldfarb, himself attired in a tight-fitting white linen suit that framed his still awesome athlete’s body. “I should once again send my best people out to this—to say the least—this out-of-the-way Nebraska so they can chase after a fog, a mist… a cloud of vapor who calls himself Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis? Is that what you’re saying? Because if it is, I should have been a rabbi, which I studied for, instead of a football player, which entailed very little knowledge.” Hyman Goldfarb paused, listening, every now and then removing the phone from his ear, sighing, and finally, obviously, interrupting the caller.
“Please pay attention to me and let me save you some money, will you do that?… Thank you, just listen. If there
is
a Chief Thunder Head, he’s nowhere to be found. My people cannot say he
doesn’t
exist. Whenever they mentioned the name among what’s left of the Wopotamis on their pathetic reservation, they were met with silence, interspersed with incomprehensible whispers in the Wopotami language. They tell me that suddenly you think you’re in some cathedral cut out of a scrawny forest primeval where there’s far too much available alcohol, and you begin to believe that this Thunder Head is more of a myth than a reality. An icon, perhaps, a tribal god sculpted on a totem pole to which his believers pay obeisance, but not a human being. In plain words, I do not believe such a person exists.… What
do
I think, is that your question—and it’s not necessary to shout? Quite frankly, my excitable friend, I believe Chief Thunder Head is a symbolicamalgam of—no that is
not
a reference to sexual preference—of narrowly defined special interests, no doubt benevolent, and centered about our government’s unfortunate treatment of the American Indian. Perhaps a small group of legal scholars from Berkeley or NYU who’ve unearthed sufficient precedents to embarrass the lower courts. A scam, my friend, pure and simple a scam, but a very
brilliant
scam.”
Goldfarb pulled the telephone away from his ear and briefly closed his eyes as the voice over the line metallically filled the elegant office. “
What kind of talk is that
?” roared the caller. “
This great country could be in a big national crisis, and you got nothin’ to offer but ‘presents’ that don’t make no sense? Well, lemme
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