Sovereign Territory

I worked crisis in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest. When nobody official showed up, people set up governments of their own.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Duane T. Fink got elected president of a weekly motel, fourteen votes to nine. Management insisted nobody lived there. Everybody was a guest, including a few guests who'd been staying since the Clinton administration.

Then a resident knocked on Duane's door at two in the morning, because management wasn't answering the phone.

Almost two years in, Duane told me what being president means. "Everybody needs somebody to blame who they can still talk to. They cannot talk to corporate. Half the time they cannot find the manager. They can find me."

Hank ran a restaurant near our office and fed our clients for years, whether they could pay or not. One of them robbed Hank anyway. He took a cherry pie.

Hank fed him again. The man eventually paid for another pie and never robbed Hank again. Hank had no program, no service plan, and no written warnings. By every measure anybody ever asked us to report, Hank's approach worked. We were humiliated.

Horace swore he wasn't going to die in a hospital. He'd quietly made Tallulah, another client, his medical power of attorney. When the doctor wouldn't listen to Tallulah, I came in and said exactly what she'd been saying. Afterward she told me, "You came in and said it in white-man syntax and suddenly we had a care plan."

Horace died where he wanted to die.

Sovereign Territory is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

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