Prophecy Read Free Page B

Hawks?”
    “I’m finished with this speech, if that’s what you mean.”
    Laughter rang out; the Indian was smiling. He knew just how to leaven the proceedings when it was needed, knew just when to make his attacks and when to retreat. A few of the Senators were smiling, too. They knew they were being manipulated by a master in the craft of verbal combat.
    John Hawks was not an easy man to reckon with. He was articulate and poised, and he had righteousness of his side. No one knew exactly where he had come from; his rise in the ranks of militant spokesmen had been meteoric. Three weeks ago no one had heard of him. Today he was the chosen representative of the group calling themselves O.P. It stood for
     
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    Original People. A hastily formed amalgam of Masaquoddy, Ashinabeg, Yurok, Wampanoag, and Cree, tiny tribes along the Maine-Canadian border who were trying to protect their land from a company called the Pitney Paper Mill.
    “What I was about to say, Mr. Hawks,” the Senator continued, “is that although I can appreciate your feelings, the blockade you’ve constructed in your forest is against the law.”
    “The law will not bring justice,” Hawks declared.
    “The blockade will lead to confrontation.”
    “Abstinence from confrontation will not bring justice.”
    “You’re aware that the Supreme Court has issued a restraining order against this blockade?”
    “Which Supreme Court is that, Mr. Senator?”
    The Senator looked at him warily. “The Supreme Court of the United States.”
    John Hawks sat back and smiled. “That’s not a very high supreme court, Mr. Senator. My supreme court is much higher.”
    Whistles and cheers resounded in the darkness; Victor Shusette had heard enough.
    Leaving the Senate chambers, he walked out onto the front steps of the old Senate Building and squinted into the sun. The branches of the cherry trees were turning white and their fragrance wafted through the air, but it did not bring him the pleasure that it had in the past. This spring he was facing a problem. After a lifetime of building the Environmental Protection Agency into a respected force, he was now watching it being suddenly placed in jeopardy. In the land dispute between the lumber company and the Indians, the Agency was being used as a pawn. The Pitney Lumber Company was planning to exercise its right to harvest the timber in the Manatee Forest; the Indians were standing in their way. The lumber company had the money with which to win the legal war, but the Indians had gained national sympathy. The result was that the Supreme Court was unwilling
     
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    to make a decision. They had turned to Shusette to provide them with an Environmental Protection report as a means of breaking the deadlock.
    It was not as simple as it sounded. The lumber companies employed over half the working people of Maine. The working people of Maine supported their Senators. Their Senators had control of the purse strings that kept the Environmental Protection Agency alive. One Senator in particular, the Republican from Maine, had already started working the territory. Shusette had received an invitation to go fishing at his private cabin on the Kennebec River on the opening day of salmon season. It was easy to resist this kind of obvious bid, but there were others that were not so easily ignored.
    In Washington one hand, it was said, washed the other. Fittingly, Shusette had noticed, politicians were a breed of one-handed men. They seemed to rely on their right hand. For handshaking, gesturing, and pointing fingers in people’s faces. The left hand was usually kept in a pocket or in a tight fist, no doubt concealing what the handshaking, gesturing, and finger-pointing was all about.
    In the case of the Republican Senator from Maine, the left hand concealed a grab bag of threats and promises. The promise that if Shusette’s Agency wrote a positive, or sufficiently ambiguous, report, he’d honor their sacrifice of the first