River Dreams

ii.

I came home two years too late. If I told you I was incarcerated, you might assume you would find my name, Bineshi LaFronde, among the “juvenile offender” statistics. No. But my crime—wanting an education—had kept me captive and broke and cut off from my family as surely as if I had been living behind bars in Red Wing. The essentials covered by scholarships didn’t include holiday trips home.

My first shiny college goal—to be an accountant and remove the corrupt white influence from our casino—morphed into hanging on through four years of business and prelaw, surviving on too much coffee and as many calls home as my phone plan would allow. The more I learned about government encroachment into tribal finances, the more I doubled down on my elective survey courses: “Legal Order and Disorder” and the true bitch course, “Statistics for Legal Scholars.”

With a diploma encased in imitation leather, the mandatory University of Minnesota sweatshirt, and tempered ideas of what either meant, I returned home to regather myself. Back now for all of two weeks, I had been sucked into the old routines—late-night poker and pull tabs, early-morning berry picking and long afternoons visiting relatives one after another. During the welcome-home meals of venison, wild rice, and a rotating array of berry pies, I also feasted on the good-natured teasing, the rivalries during croquet, and the familiar—cadences, faces, inherited loyalties of a water nation. Only my closest cousins voiced outright their theories about Smoke’s death, but I sensed a general uneasiness among my whole family. I can’t say the elders were keeping something from me, but I felt a carefulness, a shield slide in place when his name came up.

“Everyone knows something bad went down,” my cousin C-Span told me when he stopped by to pick me up during my first week back. “It ain’t that they don’t want retribution for Uncle Smoke’s death. But history’s cover-ups go way back to the three little piggy ships. Calling anyone out will only put a target on another back.” He whipped the leather of his work gloves against an open palm. “Don’t need to go to college, Cuz, to study corruption. It’s homegrown.” He stood up. Shrugged. “Careful, is all I’m saying.”

I could add nothing, so I just nodded and followed him to his truck. Careful as a warning wasn’t meant just for me, it also meant don’t put anyone else in danger.

So I determined not to ask too many questions of my relatives. Instead, I added searching county records and any available police files to my agenda. I made library archive visits when the auntie of my high school track friend, Toad, was volunteering. She didn’t pry, didn’t create lost-file roadblocks, and seemed to know intuitively where I might want to dig.

Police files were harder. By default, police reports are public records and citizens have access because of the FOIA. But officials in small towns tend to lean into the “sensitive cases” exception—redact like they are playing tic-tac-toe. Or they seal records as if they were pickle jars—letting the contents cure long past the active case stage.

My toes wiggled nervously in my sneakers while I smile-lied and played my college research card. Poking around in whatever old files I could get my hands on, I soon realized I should have studied deferred prosecution agreements at the U and maybe taken self-defense. I tingled in the research rooms. Not cold—afraid.

Before the kerfuffle about potential contamination of Inaabate, Twin Ports Manufacturing had acknowledged spewing chemicals into Lake Superior, paid a $15,000 fine, and pinky-swore not to misbehave for five years or until someone’s back was turned, whichever came first. Any underhandedness at Smoke River could throw that old grievance and this new one back into court. This time it would likely be classified as a “knowing violation,” which carried up to $50,000 per day in fines. In the legal arena, that is high stakes.

They could ill afford a vigilant troublemaker like Matthew LaFronde, aka Smoke Man.

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