Jenny Cussler's Last Stand (14 page)

“I think we are. I don’t know what to expect, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“You’ll like it. I was in Clint’s family last year. It’s pretty intense, but worth it.”

“What do you mean...intense?” Kate chimed in.

“Well, it’s hard to explain. The veterans have some pretty heartbreaking stories, but other group members, like VA employees, shared stories about their lives, and some were surprisingly sad.”

Jenny bit her lip. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting in the week, but it wasn’t listening to the woes of her fellow employees. She made herself a promise to keep her mouth shut in group.

“I-I don’t think...” She scrunched her face.

“Oh, don’t worry, Jenny. You don’t have to share if you don’t want. I held back last year, but I might talk about myself a little this year. Especially about being single. I’m tired of it. It’s lonely.” His smile drooped just a bit.

Jenny threw Kate another quick look. Kate slid her gaze toward the fire.

“Oh,” Jenny said. “I’m sorry,” she added ineffectually.

“No problem,” he replied. He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m used to it. I just want to talk about it this year. I don’t know why.” He broadened his smile. “I hope I don’t start bawling in the middle of the group or something awkward like that.”

Jenny touched his hand lightly as it rested on his knee.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll talk about the same thing, too.”

Steve tilted his head and stared hard at her, as hard as a man with powder-blue eyes could stare.

“You?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe that.”

Feeling completely foolish about her revelation to a stranger, Jenny tried to hide it with a grin and another friendly pat of Steve’s hand.

“Believe it. Looks like we all have a dose of the lonelies!” With a red face, she jumped up from her seat on the boulder. A check of her watch indicated it was five minutes till the hour.

“Well, I’m going to head down to the group building. Anyone coming?” She couldn’t wait to see Clint again. It seemed like longer than twenty-five minutes since she’d last laid eyes on him.

“Sure, let’s go.” Steve rose, and Kate followed. They made the one-minute walk to the building and entered through a narrow white-painted door. The interior of the single-room building was cool, due in part to the gray-painted cement floor. The overhead lights were off, but a muted light came in through four screened windows on both sides of the room. The room was empty of furniture except for gray metal folding chairs that lined the entire length of the room in a circle. Jenny winced for a moment. This definitely resembled a group therapy session.

Some people had already arrived and lounged about in the chairs. All appeared to be camp attendees. Jenny quickly scanned the room, but she didn’t see Clint or any of the other staff members. Kate took the lead and found a chair. Jenny sat beside her, and Steve took a place on Jenny’s right. Subdued greetings and nods were exchanged across the room as people often do who have some connection—employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in this case.

Jenny studied the people who continued to file in and sit down. A low hum of conversation filled the long room, growing proportionately louder with the increasing number of participants.

A door at the opposite end of the room opened, and a hush fell across the room as Clint stepped in, followed by Celia, Auntie Martha, Sam Two Dogs, and a man with blond hair. Celia grinned to the room in general and tiptoed over to the vacant seat on Steve’s right.

Jenny’s heart beat an unsteady rhythm in her chest as she watched Clint escort Auntie Martha over to a seat at the opposite end of the room. He delivered her carefully into her seat and continued to stand silently while Sam and the other man took seats to his left. Then he spoke.

“Welcome to Camp Chaparral. My name is Clint Hastings, and I’m going to be your Interpreter, your facilitator. I’ve already met some of you at the sweat lodges, and some of you around camp—” his eyes flickered toward Jenny— “but I’m pleased to meet the rest of you.” He gave the room a relaxed smile. Jenny melted at the confidence he projected in front of this group of about twenty-five people, not an easy task for many, and something she herself could not do.

“I’m Yakama, and I’m a social worker here at the reservation. I work for the Indian Health Service. This is Auntie Martha.” He cast an affectionate glance at the plump, light-skinned woman with the sweet smile, who nodded toward the group. “She’s Nez Perce, and she teaches school on the reservation at Lapwai.” He turned to his left. “This is Sam Two Dogs. Sam is from the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, and he is Lakota. He’s also a Vietnam veteran.”

Sam crossed his arms as best he could over his rotund belly and nodded toward the group.

“And on his left is George Carswell. George is Cherokee from Oklahoma. His great-great-grandmother walked the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma.”

Jenny studied the blond man, who looked down modestly with high color in his cheeks. His features showed little of his Indian heritage, but she remembered from her college anthropology courses that the Cherokee had often intermarried with white people before they were forced off their ancestral lands.

“So, that’s who we are. I’d like to go around the room and have you introduce yourselves.” Clint nodded encouragingly toward the man on Auntie Martha’s right before he took his seat. He relaxed into his chair, clasped his hands together in his lap, and extended his legs, looking for all the world as if he were settling in for a therapy session.

Most of the people in the room introduced themselves as employees, but two young men stated they were veterans just recently returned from Iraq. The elders at the end of the room made various sighing sounds when the young men, Brian and Dave, introduced themselves. Auntie Martha murmured a word which sounded like “hoh,” and Sam and George nodded in greeting and echoed her. As a rule, they did not interrupt anyone to ask questions, and often kept their eyes on the floor while participants spoke, unlike Clint who made direct eye contact with every speaker and often asked a follow-up question about why they came to the camp. All too soon, the introductions made their way around the room to Steve on Jenny’s right.

“I’m Steve from the Portland VA. I know some of you already, because I was here last year.” He raised a casual hand in greeting. “I’m back because I loved it here last year. I learned a lot.”

“Welcome back, Steve,” Clint said. Auntie Martha, Sam, and George made their “hoh” sounds of greeting.

When Clint’s gaze slid to Jenny, she could have died. Self-consciously aware that all eyes were on her, she mumbled the barest minimum of introduction.

“Hi, I’m Jenny from Boise, Idaho.” She opted to save herself any possible snickers about her last name. “I’m a mental health counselor at the VA there.” She scanned the sea of faces around the room and dropped her eyes to her clasped hands.

“And what brings you to camp, Jenny?”

Jenny threw Clint a beseeching look, but he gave her a reassuring nod. She could have hoped he would spare her the ordeal of speaking in front of the group, though she supposed he was not to know how nervous she was about public speaking.

“Uh...” Jenny cast Kate a quick look, and Kate patted her knee and nodded encouragingly. “I...uh...well, I don’t have any Native American clients, but...I might some day. You never know.” She darted another quick glance around the room. Faces watched her attentively. What? Were they all therapists? One would have thought so by the way they gave her their undivided attention. Where were the class clowns? Where were the people who joked in whispered asides and distracted others?

She heard her trite words, wished them back, and rushed in to make matters worse.

“I mean...I might not always work at the Boise VA. I might return to Portland, and they have a larger Native American population...at the VA...there.” If she could have slid under her chair, she would have. She avoided looking at Clint and turned to Kate with a silent plea for rescue, but in doing so, caught sight of Clint’s face as his lips twitched. She was such a fool. She dropped her gaze to her feet.

Kate piped up immediately.

“Hi, my name is Kate, and I’m a nurse at the Boise VA. I’m here to immerse myself in cultural awareness and sensitivity training so that when we have patients in the hospital who are of Native American ethnicity, we can do our best to meet their particular needs.”

Jenny’s eyes flew up and her jaw dropped as she regarded Kate, who took a deep breath, smiled serenely and settled her hands primly in her lap. Jenny reluctantly slid her gaze toward Clint to see him nodding enthusiastically.

Brat! Jenny gave Kate a narrow-eyed, glittering gaze. At least, she hoped it glittered. Kate turned an innocent face toward her and masked a grin.

Once the introductions concluded, Clint rose again. He held a thick, white-painted, foot-long stick adorned with feathers on one end and beads on the other. He moved slowly to the middle of the room and passed the stick lightly back and forth between his hands as he gazed at it thoughtfully. All eyes beheld him expectantly as he seemed to study the stick for a few moments.

After what seemed like minutes but was probably only sixty seconds, he raised his eyes and scanned the group with a solemn expression.

“It’s good to meet you, and once again, welcome to Camp Chaparral.” He began to walk around a small circle in the middle of the room in a pensive fashion, his attention focused on the object in his hands.

“This is what we call a talking stick. In the old days, Indians passed this around at tribal councils to honor the holder of the talking stick, who has the right to speak from the heart without interruption. When that person has had their say, they pass the stick to someone else who wants to speak. Some tribes use talking feathers or other sacred objects instead of the stick. It is a symbol of respect and honor.”

Clint stilled and scanned the room with a grave expression on his angular face that enhanced his high cheekbones and the exotic tilt of his eyes. Jenny watched him in awe, completely mesmerized by this new side of him...the Native American man whose beliefs were steeped in centuries of tradition and spiritualism. Her heart fluttered for a brief second before it dropped to her stomach with a flop. In the short time she had known the typically smiling Clint, she had never felt so distant from him—from all that he was...from the often mysterious and mystical other world of an aboriginal people—as she did now.

“I’m going to pass the talking stick to Sam Two Dogs now, as the elder in this family.” Clint handed the stick to Sam, who took it and regarded it solemnly for a few moments. Clint took his seat, crossed his arms, and looked down at the floor.

Two minutes of silence passed while Sam continued to study the stick in his hands, seemingly lost in thought. Jenny caught Kate’s inquiring eye and gave her a miniscule shake of her head. Clint continued to gaze at the floor, as did George and Auntie Martha. The campers threw looks toward one another, feet began to shuffle, legs crossed and uncrossed. Jenny felt their discomfort. Was Sam going to speak? Was this some sort of test to see how well the group could behave under the weight of extended silence?

“Hoh,” Sam said. Clint, George, and Auntie Martha responded in a like manner, as did Steve and a few other voices.

Sam rose slowly and shuffled to the center of the room as if on bad knees. He paused and gazed at the faces of the campers, who regarded him expectantly...now that he had finally said something. He dropped his eyes to the stick in his hand once again.

“As most of you heard, I’m Sam Two Dogs and I’m Lakota from South Dakota. I live on the Rosebud reservation. Lived there all my life except for the time I was in the military.” With small, shuffling steps, he began to navigate the center of the room as Clint had.

Jenny cast a curious glance at Clint, who continued to sit in a relaxed fashion, arms crossed, eyes on the floor at his feet.

“I got drafted back in ’67 and sent to Vietnam, me and my best friend, Jack. We decided to join the Marines instead of the Army. It was our first time off the reservation. Boot camp scared us to death. I never knew people could be so mean. My grandmother raised me, and she never cursed like they did in boot camp back then.” Sam paused and scanned the faces of the campers again. Then he resumed moving. “At first, they thought we were Mexican, and they called us names. Then Jack said, “No, we’re Indians...Sioux,” and they started calling us ‘Chief.’ I guess that was nicer than what they were calling the other folks with brown skin.”

Jenny watched Sam hobble painfully around the room, determined to tell his story, pausing occasionally to study the talking stick while he formed his thoughts.

“We got sent to Vietnam right out of infantry training, Jack and me. Sent us to Khe Sahn.” He scanned the room as if looking for reaction. On cue, several indistinct murmurs were heard.

Most people who had worked with Vietnam veterans knew about the seventy-seven day siege of the Marine base at Khe Sanh by Vietnamese forces in early 1968. In the course of her work, Jenny had read about it. If a Marine had not been stationed there, he certainly knew about it.

“Because we were Indians, someone thought we’d make good scouts, so they sent us out on patrols more than anyone else...” Sam’s craggy face curved into an unexpected smile. “But Jack and I didn’t care. We were just glad to get off the hill and out into the countryside.”

Sam stopped pacing for a moment and grew silent. He dropped his head and stared at the talking stick. Jenny’s heart broke as she watched Sam wipe at his eyes with the back of his hand. His strangled voice revealed the depth of his emotions.

“I ain’t gonna go into too much detail about the battle except to say that I didn’t think we’d make it. Jack didn’t. I held him in my arms while he bled to death from shrapnel. I don’t know if it was friendly or enemy. Doesn’t really matter. Wasn’t anything anyone could do.” Sam started moving again. “Nothing was the same for me after Jack died. Nothing mattered. I didn’t care if I lived or died. Wasn’t much better when I got home, either. My grandmother didn’t know what to do with me. I learned how to drink in Vietnam, and I didn’t quit when I got back. Stayed drunk every night. Got into a lot of trouble, a lot of fights. I wasn’t ever going to let someone call me ‘Chief’ again.”