A Rendezvous to Die For Read Free

for one
day.
    He grabbed my arm and spun me
around. “We’ll see who ends up being exposed as an amateur,” he
said, his face turning a shade redder with each decibel of his raised
voice.
    “ Should I interpret that as a
threat?” I wrenched my arm away.
    “ Interpret it however you want,
you lying bitch!” He sprayed saliva into the air and shook a fist
at me. “Nobody does what you did to me and gets away with it!”
    I leaned toward him. “Are you
talking about revenge, Mr. Hartfield? That should be great for your
already sputtering career. I can see it on your résumé . . . right
under the part about your photo-doctoring skills.”
    He glared at me, spun around, and
stalked away. He’d gone about ten steps, when he turned back. “If
I were you,” he shouted, “I’d watch my back.”
    I lifted my chin. “The next
time I see you, I’ll fire two warning shots . . . straight into
your head!” I pointed my index finger and wiggled it, imitating the
pulling of a trigger. Immediately, I was annoyed with myself for
engaging in such a juvenile reaction. No one else had the ability to
raise my hackles in such a way, but that was no excuse.
    Eric
Hartfield was a columnist for the Minnesota Issues Review. He
used whatever clout he had to attack anyone or anything outside his
narrow political comfort zone. American Indians were one of his
favorite targets. Shortly after I moved to Colton Mills, Frank Kyopa
was running for his second term as tribal chief of the Prairie River
Band. Eric wrote about it, as a reporter for the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune. In one of his news stories, he ran a picture of
Frank entering the building of a land developer in Chicago, implying
that Frank was secretly meeting with the developer to make deals.
Because I had often photographed Frank, he knew about my
photography-computer skills and asked if I could determine whether or
not a photo was a fake. His attorney hired me, and it was easy to
prove that the photo had been rather crudely doctored. A photo of
Frank had been super-imposed on the picture of the developer’s
office entrance. Eric was discredited and fired. When I testified
against him, he blamed me for his fall.
    I displayed a few Indian
photographs in a Minneapolis gallery, and, because I had access to
the Indian community, I became a “go to” person for photos to
accompany American Indian newspaper and magazine stories. Every
favorable gallery review and photo credit rubbed more salt into
Eric’s wounds. He pestered me regularly. His telephone calls and
e-mail messages belittled my photos and became so frequent in
numbers, I could have sued him for harassment. Unfortunately, my work
often took me to events he was covering, so I hadn’t been able to
avoid him.
    Although he said he was working
as a freelancer, I wondered what had really brought Eric to the
Rendezvous, a nonpolitical family event. He usually went where there
was news . . . or where he intended to stir some up. Feeling uneasy,
I resented the pall he had cast on what had been a promising day.
    The
’hawk-throwing competition was slated for 10:30, so I made my way
to the edge of the encampment where targets had been erected away
from the main Rendezvous traffic. I arrived too early. Officials had
postponed the event for a half hour to wait for one of the
competitors. Must have been a short list of competitors, I
thought. ’Hawk throwing was definitely not ready for prime time.
    The break gave me much-needed
time to run back to the parking lot to replace my battery packs and
get some fresh CF cards. I had three digital cameras with me: one to
shoot newspaper-style photos, one for my own use, and a smaller one I
was testing. Crossing the field to the parking lot, I compulsively
shot up the last few megs remaining on the small digital. I usually
separated the CF cards into envelopes. Since I had brought only two
envelopes with me, I pulled out the card from my small camera and
tucked it into the watch pocket of my