In the early seventeenth century, well before it was a state, the Connecticut colony gave the Quepochas 17,000 acres of prime farmland. Who knows why? Guilt over killing so many of them with guns or disease? Fear that they would encroach on lands inhabited by European settlers? Whatever the reason, there was an acknowledgment of their existence even before the Revolutionary War. And an attempt was made to live amicably with them. Over the years, members moved off or assimilated. Large tracts of tribal lands were sold by tribal leaders until the reservation reached its present size of approximately 300 acres-small for a reservation but huge for a property in Connecticut.
For some lucky tribes, the reservation is a tax-free gated community where few people work, but that’s by choice. Why work when the money from gaming just keeps falling on your head? Other tribes suffer from as much as eighty-five percent unemployment-and that’s not because the members are staying in their mansions, eating bonbons.
The Quepochas reservation was neither. From what I could see, most of the reservation’s inhabitants seemed to be dead, as evidenced by the lack of homes and the dozens of listing, wafer-thin tombstones I passed driving the dirt road that ran through the property.
Betty Smallwood had told me that enrolled members of the tribe were not required to live on the reservation. Hell, most of them got away as soon as they could, and as far away as possible. Like Betty herself had done.
Unofficially, a handful did live there, scattered across the reservation, scratching out an existence in shacks and cabins and quietly dying out. Officially, it was just Chantel and Sean in a two-room cinder-block house close to the road.
The farther I drove the more the road narrowed and the potholes deepened. It reminded me of the road to Oksana’s place; she was on a reservation, too, in a way. The switchbacks took me higher and although I hadn’t noticed it on the way up, on one side of the mountain I could now see the top of Titans. There were fewer tombstones and still no houses, just the occasional dilapidated shack built into the side of the mountain. I pulled over to a carved-out spot on the road to enjoy the view.
Peak time was probably in the fall when the mountain would be awash in color, but it looked pretty good to me; I fished out my phone to take a picture.
Just then it rang.
“Where the hell have you been?” the woman asked.
It was Lucy.
She’d been trying to reach me for the past three days. When she called the hotel, I had checked out. When she tried me at home, I’d already left to come back to Titans. And the cell didn’t work until I drove up the mountain and got a signal.
“Where the hell are you?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure.”
“Can you talk? Are you safe?”
“Yes. I’m alone now. I don’t know when they’ll be back. Come get me.”