The Great Payoff
                                by Dave Laird
                          From Tales of Springdale
                        Copyright 1994 by Dave Laird

Like a tidal wave appearing on the horizon, rumors of the great Indian
payoff surfaced long before Sammy Crowfoot pronounced with great gusty
blasts of beer breath, that a majority of the tribal members would all be
getting their settlement checks any day now.

This, of course, set into motion all-day drinking sessions, which of course
were followed by all-night fights. In the interim, whole families seemed
doomed to eternal separation, only to be reunited hours later with
passionate promises of abiding faith and trust. These amends were sewn with
battered stitches into the ripped and tattered social fabric of the three
taverns of the town.

Months later, Helen Longfeather, one of the prime matrons of the Tribe,
kicked the marathon off in earnest by announcing from behind a decanter of
port wine that she knew that at least half of the tribal members had
received their settlement checks that morning from Uncle Sam. Since she
works in the front office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office, this news
was immediately put on the rumor mill as fact by Gladys Mullenieux, who
repeated it twenty minutes later, while cashing her Welfare check at the
Reservation Tavern.

"Christ, somebody bar the doors and send the women home.." Freddy the Logger
groaned, peering down the bar at her over his fourth glass of beer. "The
last time they got their damned settlement checks, Stinky Padrone shot up
the bar next door, killed the bartender's tomcat and started a riot."

This was only partially true, since the bullet from Stinky's gun had missed
the cat entirely, passed through the floor, and buried itself waist deep in
the dirt beneath the barroom floor. A fact of which Helen was quick to
remind everyone, including Freddy the Logger.

"That wasn't no  riot at all." she muttered, punctuating each of her words
by plugging a stack of quarters into the pull tab machine. "The fight
started when everyone in the bar found out that Stinky had only one bullet
in the gun to begin with. Everyone tried to get at least one good lick in on
his head for the scare he'd put them through, but pretty soon everybody
forgot about him and started beatin' on each other outta sheer meanness.
That damned fool cat died afterward."

"I remember that cat!" Freddy laughed wildly, lighting up a cigarette.
"Stupid animal had one eye missing, a broken tail, missing rear leg and just
had his balls cut off the day before the riot. 'N everybody called him
Lucky. God but he was a crusty-looking old thing."

"That cat was crushed flatter'n a dime", Harry Bondweiler chimed in from
two bar stools down. "I hauled the carcass out back of the Regal to bury it
after the brawl."

"Screw that fight. I heard about the pile'o checks they were handin' out
this morning at the Post Office." Helen gave everyone a glance over the top
of her glasses, and scoffing at the pile of losing tickets on the bar,
heading uncertainly for the door. "There's a bunch of rich Indians gonna be
in town tonight, mark my words. The shit's gona hit the fan for sure! "

Within minutes of the news of the Great Payoff, the gossip lines in town
began humming like a choir of demented electronic coyotes. As the few
passive observers prepared themselves for the worst, the early celebrants
began reaching for new heights of alcoholic illumination.

The bars were packed and all evening long money flowed like water. Several
of the United States Treasury checks already had made their way into the
tavern safes. A familiar, but haunting old recycling program had begun. A
check would be cashed and either consumed on the premises, used to buy
rounds for the house, pay for gambling at the pull tabs, pay bar tabs or
just to gamble on several of the high stakes pool games that sprang up. The
money, taken in by the tavern proprietor, would then be recycled and used to
cash yet another check, ad nauseam.

The Mayor of Springdale in his dual role as the owner of the Reservation
Tavern, had already consumed enough beer that he tried to punch out the
pinball machine in the corner after losing two games in a row, but only
succeeded in gashing his hand to the bone. He stood in front of the wounded
machine, reeling back and forth in pain, his hand spattering blood over the
carpet, angrily firing obscenities at the machine like bullets from a gun.

As his fist bounced off the metal cover of the pinball machine with a crash,
his girlfriend, Lila, who had drank herself into insensibility earlier in
the evening, suddenly raised her head off the bar. With a strange look of
cheerfully glee, she peered right at Freddy the Logger and yelled at the top
of her lungs, "Goody! That's Jim-Dandy and fine with me," and to the
absolute amusement of everyone, passed out once more, slumping further off
into her personal bottomless oblivion.

Meanwhile in the back room of the tavern, a band of Indians from a
neighboring tribe blundered into a family feud between two members of the
Padrone family. At the touch of these interlopers, the delicately balanced
tendril of human anger burst into a full-blown firestorm and a free-form
pushing match started, joyously consuming them all in the process. In less
time than it took for Freddy the Logger to move himself and his beer down
the bar to get a better view of the proceedings and begin rolling himself
another cigarette, half a dozen members of the Padrone family and the
strangers in town had exchanged preliminary insults, swung their first
punches and were groveling on the back room floor like some giant, throbbing
disembodied creature from beyond.

The visitors hadn't really wanted a fight. They originally objected when
Steve Padrone had smacked his wife on her face. Cardy Padrone really didn't
hold anything against his half-brother, Steve, nor his sister-in-law, Patty
Anne, and definitely not a group of half-drunk Indians that nobody new.
Steve Padrone, who was already on the bottom of the stack of bodies, didn't
particularly want a fight, either. He really had been interested in getting
Patty Anne home and into bed, but she didn't want to go, since she was
already half-drunk and still had a pocket full of money, but after Cardy had
stuck his nose in, what the heck...

Johnny Red came in the front door, flush from buying a double round of
drinks for everyone in the Regal Tavern with part of his settlement check.
He took one look into the back room to see what the crowd at the end of the
bar was all about and nearly ran into one of the irate Colvilles who had
somehow managed to extricate himself from the pile of squirming bodies. To
five foot tall Johnny Red, the huge man smelled like death, and he ran back
to the Regal Tavern to spread the news of the fight and gather up some
reinforcements.

Upon hearing of the fight, the bars on both sides of the Reservation emptied
in seconds, Men of all ages, women, even the waitresses from the Regal and
the Springdale Lounge surged out into the street in one expansive flood.

'A riot next door.'' A buncha' strange Indians fighting over someone else's
woman. 'and alternately, 'One woman holding six strangers off her husband.'
The word rippled through the crowd, as they surged in the door of the
Reservation Tavern like a herd of runaway bulls.

Alas, the fight had fallen apart by the time everyone arrived on the scene.
The strangers, realizing that formidable reinforcements had been summoned
and that they were far from home, disappeared out the back door of the
Reservation Tavern about the time Johnny Red had dashed off with the news.
Steve Padrone, his wife and his half-brother Cardy, little worse for their
experiences, were standing up and examining each other for major injuries,
their family fires banked once again, for yet another day.

As the evening began to wane, the historians of the town could observe the
blood stains from the Mayor's battle with the pinball machine and deduced
that, beyond a doubt, the Riot of 1990 was far bloodier than any other in
history.

The Great Payoff and Civil Riot had been, in everyone's opinion, an event
worthy of historical record. For a short time, money had flowed in the
gutters of the taverns as in days of old, folks had purchased rounds for the
house, as they once did long ago, and even the fights had exceeded the great
bloody matches of years gone by.

In the eyes of the beholders, history had paused a moment, turning its
besotted old head, smiling congenially back on Springdale, and then
continued its resolute path on into the future, trailing a train of
Budweiser cans that some prankster had tied on its behind in jest.