Another Chance Novel Pt 3

Wolf didn't like this conversation or the track it had taken. He had never been a person to give up on a job until it was finished and he liked this even less, because they had allowed it to leak out that he had been killed. "You know, I'm sure there's a dirty cop in your office. How do you know that he hasn't already figured all this out?"

Captain Ferguson shook his head negatively. "Because no one else but me and the chief know you're still alive."

"And the doctors and the nurses. That's too many people to assure security. This won't work. You need to let me grow a beard, or long hair and go back undercover." Wolf wanted to get another chance to bust the ring and get rid of the contract on him and there was also the matter of the shooters who had put him in this bed. He was sure he had wounded one of them but didn't know how bad. He hated not finishing what he had started.

Again Captain Ferguson shook his head from side to side. "They know your voice, the way you walk, it's too much of a risk. Your sister would come back and take my scalp if I did that. She almost lost you once and you are her only relative. I won't do that to her again. You are leaving here soon as you're able, as a corpse. You will be transported to a local mortuary by hearse. I will meet you at the mortuary and from there, you will go join your sister. The two of you will have new identities and will build new lives. You are not to come here again. The department has selected a very nice stone to mark your grave. That is the way it will be."

"So I am officially dead?"
The captain nodded. "Hank Silver Wolf is dead and buried."
"So, who leaves the hospital?"
Ferguson shrugged. "A John Doe."
Silence and acceptance settled on the man lying in the hospital bed.
"Who am I now?"
"Whoever you want to be. I think Feather chose the name Chetan (Chee-tan) to be her last name." Ferguson said, a shrug moving his tired shoulders.
A slight smile played at the edge of the lips of the man before known as Wolf. "It was what Grandfather was called. She would like to honor his name. Translated from the Lakota language, it means, Hawk."
Ferguson watched the younger man's face for a moment. "I hate to lose you, but better like this than to another bullet. You will walk away from this alive, but dead. However, you have done good work for your people and for all our citizens in this area. Among honorable men around here, you will be remembered as a hero."
A dry ironic chuckle came from the throat of the man on the bed. "Just remember me as an honorable man who died in the line of duty. A corpse that lived again."
A little later, lying alone in his hospital room, he remembered his past and wondered about his future.
His father had been full blooded Lakota from the Brule people. He had grown up on the reservation being called Silver Wolf, but took the name Joseph Silver Wolf and left the reservation when he finished school. He didn't keep in touch with his father or his people. He wanted to stop being and Indian. Joseph was working in construction when he fell in love and married a white girl.

She was his boss's daughter and when the white boss found out she had married an Indian, he disowned her and fired Joseph. They drifted down to Texas and it was there that their son was born. They named him Henry Silver Wolf, but called him Hank, after his white grandfather. Somehow, his mother hoped that naming her half white son after him, might heal the breech between her father and herself, but it didn't work. Three years later, Hank was presented with a small sister who was named Rita Silver Wolf.

The family stayed in Texas and Joseph continued to struggle with not being white. He didn't understand why he didn't want to be an Indian, and it wasn't even being an Indian that was the problem. It was not being born a white that drove him down. Down into the darkness of alcoholism and depression. Finally one night in a drunken blur, he had smashed his car head on into a telephone pole and died there, alone and drunk. His widow, Barbie, called her parents and they told her she was welcome back with them, but there would be no Indians allowed, and no half Indians either. She sobbed and pleaded but her father was adamant. If she came home, she came alone. Still young and tired of the struggle of living with racism, she gave her children to Children's Services and went home to rebuild her shattered life. The one good thing she did for her children at that point was to contact the Brule tribal council and tell them who her husband had been and where her children were.