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On the morning of Thanksgiving, or rather, "Feast Day," because Mack decided Passage Rouge would not honor the colonialist origins of the holiday, the people of our midsized reservation line up along Peace Pipe Road, the main drag in town. They're in good spirits because we're handing out the annual per capita checks—two G's, double the usual amount, thanks to our last-minute raid on the general fund. Credit cards and overdue rents are about to be paid off, used cars and Christmas gifts are about to be bought, and on top of this, the first fifty tribal citizens in line get a free meal and a $20 casino voucher for a couple of spins inside. Are we buying votes or delivering on promises? Depends on whose camp you're in.

I watch our constituents from the window of the Migizi Suite on the top floor of the four-story hotel, and Mack sees them too, a wary, contemptuous look clouding the usually ursine friendliness of his face. He's going down there to dole out meals, hand out per capita checks, and remind them that in a week, they're going to vote and they better make the right choice, although it's possible—even probable—that these same people will vote for Gloria Hawkins, which has the president feeling morose this morning. He hasn't said a word to me since I've come up to the suite, so I startle when he croaks, "Where the hell's Bobby Lone Eagle?" He's referring to our chief of police, who's fetching the president's ride, the Big Chief, from the car wash in town.

"He's on his way. Wasn't gonna make you walk your ass over there."

"I just don't want to be waiting on him at the valet stand with my hands in my pockets. Wouldn't be a good look, right, Cuz?" We're not really cousins in the literal sense. We are not related. Cuz is a name to keep me close, to make me feel like we are bound together by something other than our jobs, our office, our ambitions. We are family in our deeds. Our conspiracy. And maybe it's his way of reminding me that if we're going down, we're going together.

I grunt in the affirmative and gently prod him over toward the door to get him moving. On our way out, he stops to check himself in the full-length mirror at the door, smooth down the whiskers, tug the front of his ribbon shirt to get it to drape just right. We get into the elevator, his breath whistling through the hairs in his nose. He's white-knuckling a hangover, but when the elevator doors open up to the Golden Eagle's gaming floor, he has willed himself sober, wearing a dreamy half-smile.

There's a word for him, and that word is massive—he is a solid mass. Growing up, he was tall and skinny, but now he is tall and massive—not fat, not muscular, just massive. Covering this mass like a tarp is a satin shirt trimmed with blue and red ribbon, embroidered with flowers and vines. A beadwork thunderbird medallion as big as a teacup saucer dances a soft two-step along his massive chest as he walks through the casino. A flat-brimmed Washington Nationals hat sits on his head just a little off-center, and underneath, his hair is woven into a tight, long braid that lands in the middle of his massive back.

It doesn't matter what they say about him in private—all the sniping, all the whispers. The gold-uniformed dealers and pit bosses stand at attention when they see him, and he nods at them as they tend to the twenty-four-hour churn of cards and chips. He can relax here. He can be himself. He lives upstairs.

His gravitational wake pulls me along with him into the casino. Bobby Lone Eagle, the chief of police and—let's not forget, because I haven't—one of my childhood tormentors, intercepts us at the mouth of the double row of blackjack tables in the grand atrium. Mack gives him a fist bump and Bobby falls in with us, and we set out for the golden doors that lead to the valet stand. That's where our former tribal president and current shadow advisor Buzz Carlisle waits for us, making a big show of tapping the face of his Rolex to remind us that Indian time ain't gonna cut it today. Our people are waiting in the cold for their checks. We see him, but that doesn't make Mack walk any faster. We may have been good sports and kept him on as a consultant to preserve institutional knowledge, all that—no sense throwing out the pilot after hijacking the plane, right?—but he sure as hell acts like he's still the boss. I guess after you've been tribal president for two decades, it's hard to let go of the power. Get your asses in gear, he's saying. He needs to teach us kids a few things, like the importance of punctuality.

But we're fast learners, aren't we? For instance, we learned in the last go-round that if you want to be chief and your name isn't Arnault or Cota, you put on your piously traditional Indian persona and get your ass in front of the electorate and speak with a serious and measured tone about the need to go back to the old traditional ways, to rediscover the language of our ancestors, to build our nation to provide for the next seven generations of ancestors to come. You shake some hands and learn some names and make it rain for the right people at the right time. This work doesn't happen on the gaming floor. Sure, on this Feast Day morning, there's no drought of gamblers leashed to their nine-line machines with their loyalty cards tracking their compulsions, inhaling Newports and exhaling gossip between slot spins. These are not our voters. The people most likely to actually vote await us outside the doors of the William R. Paulson Tribal Government Center, cold and hungry for their checks and free meals, which will be handed to them by their tribal president.