What A Uranium Conspiracy Theory Taught Me About Sedition
The Chevy dangles my keys from its ignition the way a puppy dangles toys from its maw, playing a frustrating game of keep away. The doors are locked. I’m in the toolbox, looking for anything to get into the cab and out of the Ideal Market parking lot in McDermitt. When Hanley Jack offers his assistance I haven’t seen him yet, and I hit my head when startled. Hanley is a man of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone, whose brutal relationship with manifest destiny is best told by Paiute Sarah Winnemucca.Hanley tells me he can get into the truck, because he saw a coat-hanger in the dirt behind the store a few years ago. He goes and looks a while, but returns empty-handed. Smokes a cigarette with me, inspects my unsatisfactory tools, and resolute, he goes back to the dirt, and returns with the coat-hanger that I no longer believed in. He uses it and my pocketknife to deftly open the truck. He slices his finger, but is unfazed because it’s “far from the heart.” I give him a band-aid and buy him 3 packs of Marlboros. We talk for a minute, and he tells me, among other things, that there is an old mercury mine and uranium deposit nearby. That was in May 2001. I never see Hanley Jack again, but I did hear of him from a friend that worked on the rez for a while.