FALSE STAR

Sterling Holy White Mountain

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As we know, there is a long and storied history of a certain kind of dealing on the part of Uncle Sam with his indians, and so there have also been times when America wakes up after a long weekend of terror only to rediscover its morals and decide a renewed effort is in order, and though I would not go so far as to say these efforts have been particularly ... genuine... what did come from one such gesture was this thing people in my part of indian country-which is, indisputably, the best and most beautiful part, the Blackfeet Reservation-called a claim check, which in the end was money you might get when you turned eighteen. The check came from a land claim, settled with the Feds decades before I was born. As far back as I could remember, I had heard discussion of claim checks. There was something elemental about it: the talk circled round in a seasonal way. People joked about being claim-check rich and then later laughed about being claim-check broke. They bought claimcheck cars, got claim-check drunk, and some got claim-check married. That's how it was for us for a long time, until the money ran out. The Feds are never more careful with limits and end dates on their moral awakenings than they are with us, such is the concern that we might steal the whole country right out from under them. Then we were back to where we were before, a bunch of broke skins way out on the Northern Plains, teasing one another. So this is a story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at that time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, who I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her when she was alive.

It was near the end of April, the morning of my eighteenth birthday, and I had asked Big Man how I would get the check.

Well, he said. There is no check.

How's that? I said.