—St. Exupéry
Burial Grounds
“You want to put a windmill on my people’s Ancestral Burial Grounds? You’re nuts, bro.”
Jay did everything but put his hands over his ears.
“Look Jim, I’ve had archeological consultants in and they say the site’s not culturally significant.”
Jim Crow didn’t flinch. “Not ‘culturally significant’? Every burial mound is sacred—even if it’s a thousand years old.”
Jay looked helplessly at his attorney, Walter Sutton.
Silver-haired and in a Savile Row suit, he exuded his trademark Bay Street lawyer ambience.
“I should remind you, Jim, that the Magna Carta, that great charter of rights and freedoms, protects my client’s rights—it says and I quote, No freeman should be disseized except by the lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”
The older Indian wasn’t fazed. He stood his ground in Jay’s driveway, pushed back a shank of long grey hair and glared back at the two men.
“Disseized?” he smiled scornfully, “—that sounds like a lawyer’s word—but the white man’s charter is not our charter. I too will quote, but from a great Indian leader, Chief Joseph. When his father was dying, he said, I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land. That’s how we feel—We’ll spill blood, if necessary, to protect our ancestors.”
Having spoken those words, Jim turned and walked away. The two men watched him stomp off looking for the world like a caricature of the Marlboro Man. It wouldn’t have surprised either of them if he leapt on his horse and rode off into the sunset.
Instead, he leapt into his F-150 pick-up and spurted stones as he fishtailed out of Jay’s driveway.
“He’s an impressive man.” The two men looked up to see an older, distinguished gentleman emerge from Walter’s Cadillac. It was the elder Sutton—Eric, Walter’s father—a retired teacher.
“He may have charisma, Dad, but he’s dead wrong on this one—Jay’s got a right to build whatever he wants on his own property.”
The elder Sutton shook his head and then said to Jay, “You’re neighbours can’t be too happy with three large windmills being built so close to the county road. Aren’t they upset too?”
“Ah, the media’s got them all worked up about possible health effects—it’s all nonsense. Windmills have been around for hundreds of years.”
“Maybe so, but so close to the road and to your neighbours’ houses—Couldn’t you have picked a better place?”
Walter shot Jay an apologetic look.
“C’mon Dad, we’ve got to get back to the office. Whether or not Jay’s neighbours agree or disagree, Jay’s got a right to do what he wants on his own land.”
Jay watched the two men drive away and mentally cursed the day he decided to buy the property.
I should’ve stayed in the city, he mused. What’s a mystery writer doing running a wind farm in the sticks?
A female voice whispered behind him.
“I thought I saw smoke coming out your ears—C’mon, let’s go inside—I made coffee.”
Jay glared up at Melody Bride, his literary agent.
I blame her for this, he grumbled to himself while ignoring the fact he had fallen in love with the Victorian manse which just happened to come with a 150 acre woodlot.
Regardless of his feelings, he needed coffee—and maybe something a whole lot stronger. Firewater, he hissed.
Melody poked his arm. “Stop mumbling—and please stop grinding your teeth. The last time you did that, you ended up at the dentist’s in pain and couldn’t write for a week.”
It was true. His Thoreau-like vision had ended up as a nightmare instead of the American Dream.
Back to the land, he groused—we should have let the Indians keep it.
The older and younger Suttons were quiet on the car ride home. Walter was feeling a bit guilty, correcting his dad in front of Jay. He tried to break the ice.
“How’s the battle going with the municipality, Dad?”
“Oh, you mean in the sense, the taxman cometh? They’re idiots.”
“Now Dad, you bought that property thirty five years ago for twenty thousand dollars—it’s appreciated in the meantime.”
“I know that,” The older man bristled.
“Well, you could sell it for quite a bit of change—that house and land are worth close on to half a mil by now.”
Eric always hated discussing money with Walter—not that Walter didn’t have good ideas, but it was more he lacked the life experience.
“Why don’t you sell the place, Dad, and buy a condo?”
Eric ground his teeth. Buy a condo and give up his ravine lot? Give up seeing red-winged blackbirds, raccoon and deer and trade it all for a glorified filing cabinet for humans? —Because that’s what those bloody apartment buildings were.
“I like where I am.”
“Just sayin’,” Walter winced.
He didn’t understand, Eric mused.
Raising three kids on a teacher’s salary with a stay-at-home wife—he barely kept his head above water. He kept on mortgaging the house to take out lines of credit, until now, he couldn’t afford the taxes.
If the municipality didn’t cut him a break he would lose his house and end up in one of those filing cabinets, filed away under discarded—or what was that word—disseized?
He was a good man, Walter, but definitely lacked life experience.