RavenShadow (24 page)

He grinned big, and his eyebrows danced like Groucho Marx’s. But he held in whatever was funny. “You know,” he said at last, “I’ve seen a lot of different reactions from people about their ancestors dying at Wounded Knee. I’m a member of the Wounded Knee Survivors’ Association, you know about that?”

I shook my head no.

“Maybe you want to check it out. Anyway, all the reactions I’ve seen, yours is real strange.”

I looked at him, and he looked back.

“You said, ‘My grandmother’s father died at Wounded Knee.’” He looked at me and I waited. “Those were your relatives that died that day.
Your
relatives. How come you didn’t say that?
My
ancestors were murdered here.”

I didn’t have anything to say.

“There’s stuff you gotta check out,
kola
. About yourself.”

Tyler did his business at the tribal office and we ate lunch at Big Bat’s, the gas station–convenience store. When we finally started rolling back toward Kyle, I said, “Okay, you think I should come on the ride?”

He raised that right eyebrow at me. “I can’t say,
kola
. And we don’t recruit people for the rides. Curtis told us that. Don’t ask nobody. The spirits will bring those that should come. The spirits will bring them.”

The right front wheel of the truck hit a pothole hard. Nobody fixes rez roads.

“So tell me about the rides. Who are the leaders?”

“Our leader is the staff. Nobody’s the leader, we all be common as grass.” This is an important virtue to us Lakota, and hard to explain. It’s important to be common, not exceptional. “We follow. The staff, it guides us.

“In the first year there were nineteen riders and one support vehicle. Each year there have been more. Whatever number comes this year, it’s the right number. The spirits bring the right people. The ride’s been growing each year. Arvol Looking Horse been riding with us too.”

My head did a little dipsy-doo. Arvol Looking Horse was the keeper of the White Buffalo Woman Pipe. This Pipe to us is like what the Cross or the Ark of the Covenant is to you, except it’s still with us, still working, a living presence. Our ways are, more than all else, our stories, our ceremonies, and the Pipe.

The Pipe Keeper still bears the original Pipe White Buffalo Woman brought. Scientific tests show that it’s at least four thousand years old. Seldom is it displayed. When it is, our people cherish its appearance, and use the occasion to deepen their dedication to our ways.

For me, if the Pipe Keeper was involved, the Big Foot Memorial Rides were connected to the center of the sacred circle of Lakota life.

“This year we’re expecting … well, we don’t know. It’s the centennial. It’ll draw some press. Media people been in touch, but just Europeans, not the American media. Pretty funny, huh? European, not American. These guys, still carrying on the fight.”

He took a curve too fast, and a pothole bounced us to the outside. He corrected with a little jerk. His face, though, showed his mind was somewhere else. “Truth is, we’re still carrying stuff, too.”

“What do you mean?”
Hoka hey
, we lost the Indian Wars a century ago. The end was when they killed Crazy Horse, or when Sitting Bull gave up and went to live on a reservation.

Tyler was quiet a while. Finally he began, “Let me tell you a story. I saw this war movie with Gene Hackman. He tells a story about Korea. On the retreat from Choisin Reservoir, we were getting our asses kicked, and the ground, it was too frozen to bury the dead. Day after day, more dead, more trucks full of stiffs. Hackman says he dreamed about those dead for years.

“Guy asks then, ‘They ever go away?’

“Hackman, he says no. Then he kind of smiles. ‘Finally I made friends with them, though.’

“We gotta make friends with our dead,
kola
.”

We were passing Wounded Knee, and we both fell silent. My mind went up and stood in the mass grave. One hundred forty-six of Unchee’s people there. My people.

Tyler didn’t stop this time, and I was relieved. We rode on and on in silence, passed Sharps Corner and got nearly to Kyle before I broke it.

“So. What’s the program for this year’s ride?”

He looked quick at me. “The rides are hard, you know that? We tell people, you gonna ride, be sure you mean it. It’s tough. You start, you have to go through with it, can’t back out in the middle.

“We start at Cheyenne River, Big Foot’s camp. We’ll ride the old path.” His mind wandered somewhere, maybe into the previous rides, maybe into the journey of the Big Foot people.

Before I knew we were there, he pulled up behind the Lincoln at Little Wound School, stopped, and turned off the engine.

“We get to Wounded Knee, on the hill by the church we will do the ceremonies. At the mass grave. Two reasons. Release the spirits of the people killed there a hundred years ago, and wipe away the tears of all the people. We hope we can end seven generations of grief right there. We can heal.”

“And heal the riders?”

“Here’s something I’ve learned. To heal, you have to start right where you are. Right where you hurt. So you have to know that place first.”

I gave a sort of half nod, looked at Tyler’s soft eyes, and received their blessing.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s healing in it.” His eyes were kind, and in their gaze I felt the meaning of compassion.

It was time to get out, to let Tyler go about his business,
and to go about mine, whatever that was. The trouble was, I didn’t know.

From my heart I gave a lurch of words. “I want to ride.”

Tyler studied me. Finally he said, “Then getting ready starts today. You know in your heart what you need to do to get yourself ready. Nobody else knows.”

I felt a moment of panic.
I didn’t know. What should I do?

I got out of the truck, said, “
Washtay
,” and waved. Tyler headed back to his house. I stood in the dust in the town where I’d started one kind of learning so many years ago, and abandoned another.

What should I do?

Suddenly a big breath burst out, and I relaxed. I could see the first step.
Go to Grandpa and ask questions
.

I didn’t know the second step, or the third step.

Hell, nothing to do but take the first one.

The Past Bites My Ass

I
t was a warm day, Indian summer (why do you call it that?), and Aunt Adeline was cooking in the shed kitchen. I said, “
Washtay
.” Having heard my car and my steps, she just nodded at me.

Grandpa was in the old recliner a few steps away—God knows where it was scrounged. An old wool blanket covered him to the waist, his hands and forearms were under it, and his eyes were closed. Since he was turned to the west, the late-afternoon sun rested on his face, and I thought maybe there was a half smile from the pleasure of the sunlight.

This was the way I found him on most of my visits the last few years. He was ninety-one now, and had the right to doze with the sun on his face if he liked. But I didn’t like it. I hated seeing him that way.

I turned toward Aunt Adeline at the wood stove. Even keeping my eyes a little down and to the side, I saw that her look was suspicious, or mean, or bitter, just like it had been for years—not welcoming for sure.
No welcome for your brother’s son
, I thought—
strange
. But hey, Aunt Adeline was over forty when I was born, and even when I was a kid she was mean.

I handed her the groceries. “
Washtay
,” she said. Good. She
was making a stew on the old wood-burning stove, and my contribution was welcome—not only potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes, and onions, but ground beef. Meat was expensive, and whatever other meat she had in the stew would be what she caught or trapped, or what someone gave her. Rabbit, probably; sand turtles, maybe. If she was lucky, deer meat. We Lakota love flesh, and we like lots of different meats in the same stew. No matter how many there are, I can taste them separately, and enjoy each one.

She broke one pound of burger straight in and set to chopping the vegetables. I saw that the corners of her mouth were turned down, like always.

I took the rest of the burger, soda pop, cheese, and ice inside to the ice box. Not being on the electric grid, Adeline and Grandpa use an ice box. For years Grandpa cut ice from the river in winter and stored it in the ice house, though it never lasted through the summer. Now Adeline probably bought dollar blocks of ice from the convenience store, when she could afford it. Since she liked cold orange pop, a block of ice was always welcome.

I carried three opened bottles of orange pop back outside. Grandpa was still dozing. I handed one to Adeline. She was starting the cowboy coffee now, which meant we’d be eating soon. I liked cowboy coffee.

“
Washtay
,” Grandpa said behind me. I turned and offered my hand. “
Takoja
,” he said, meaning grandson, and shook my hand spryly. He was like that—one minute looking like he was dwelling half in the spirit world, and the next minute ready to joke or gossip or play cards. These days he passed a lot of time playing solitaire, which he learned in France during World War I.

It was hard for me to get over the way he was, out of this world (seemed like) one minute and all the way alert the next, and smart as anything. Guess that’s what it’s like to be ninety-one years old.

I pulled a log end up to his chair while he sat back down. “I quit my job.”

“
Washtay
,” he says. Good. Grandpa always thought spinning tunes and splicing them together with patter was a truly silly way to make a living.

“I quit drinking.”

“
Washtay
,” says he. This time there was a glint in his eye, and it wasn’t hard to read. His only son, the only one that lived, threw his life down the toilet of booze. Was still throwing it down.

“I went on the mountain.”

“
Washtay
,” says he.

“Pete Standing put me on,” I said.

“
Washtay
.”

I could see he understood every bit all the way.

“Supper,” says Adeline.

We went inside, the sun was sinking fast. Grandpa and I sat across from each other on benches at the Formica table, the sort popular in the fifties. Adeline sat next to Grandpa, and put the corners of her mouth into sourness.

It’s not our way to rush to our reason for visiting. After all, the main reason is just to be there, with your relatives. At least it should be. And eat.

After dinner, over cowboy coffee, I couldn’t wait any longer. “I’ve never known,” I said to Grandpa, “about my ancestors at Wounded Knee.”

“The one that knows is me,” says Adeline—kind of mouths it half soft, really.

“There’s been snow, so I can tell,” Grandpa says. I don’t think he was shutting Adeline out or being rude to her, he just didn’t hear or didn’t notice. Now he set out in a high voice and a serious, respectful style. “My family is all Oglala,” meaning Pine Ridge Lakota, not from Big Foot’s band, which was Cheyenne River people. “But Unchee’s family, they were Big Foot people.”

“The one that knows is me,” repeats Adeline, louder. Now her jaw was sticking out, made her look like a bulldog.

Grandpa took notice this time. “That’s true,” he says, “Adeline does know best about your ancestors through Unchee.” And he waited politely for Adeline to take up the story.

“You never paid no attention to me,” says Adeline, giving me a sideways flash. She’d been muting anger her whole life. Now she jutted her chin out again and spoke out the window to the Badlands, not to me. “I am Unchee’s oldest. By her first husband, John Running. He died when I was seven, in the influenza epidemic of 1918. I barely remember him.
Atay
here, he’s the one raised me. I never forget that, he’s my real dad.”
Atay
is our word for “father,” and Adeline really did never forget it—that’s why she was here taking care of Grandpa in his old age. Her old age too, for that matter.

“Don’t know what you know. I had a sister, Ainie, was eight, a brother, Robert, was two. They all died of influenza, all on ’em.” She stared out at something no one else could see, at least not anyone in this reality.

“Janey Running, your Unchee, she was born in 1890. Not
just
in 1890. She was born the day after the massacre.” Adeline looked at me triumphantly.

My head did a loop-de-loop.

“Her mother died in childbirth. That was one killed in the massacre, though she died the next morning. Shot, lost too much blood.”

She sat there and waited to see the impact of her revelation.

Though I was beginning to shake inside, I outwaited her.

“She told me this story, told lots of times. She didn’t tell it to nobody else, she couldn’t stand to. I was the one. ‘You remember,’ she said, ‘someone’s got to. But you keep it inside, don’t gab it around.’ So I didn’t.”

She flashed her eyes at me irritably. “Do you want to hear this story?”

The first time my voice didn’t work. Then I got out, “Yes.”

“Then you listen good.

“Your great-grandfather, Unchee’s father …” She hesitated. It’s not good to say the name of a dead person, better just to point to him with another name—your uncle, or like that.

“You don’t know his name, do you? Unchee never told you.” She paused to give it emphasis. “Blue Crow, he was called Blue Crow.”

I’ll be damned
.

“Yah, yah, that’s the name Unchee gave you the day you started white-man school. She told me all about it. Unchee got nothing of her mother and father’s, nothing but that Pipe. Everything else lost. She save that Pipe, give it to the right one.

“You come along, she say, ‘He is Blue Crow, he carries the spirit of my father.’ That’s why you got the name. That’s why you got the Pipe. That’s why you were held aside as a child, away from white people.”

Her tone said,
See, you don’t know everything
.

Feeling flooded up and carried her along. “I am mad about this fifty years, yes mad fifty years, still mad.” Now she almost glared at me, and threw her voice hard. “My son, that Pipe, it should have gone to him. My son. I was the one my mother shared with, this burden, this strength. She save her father’s Pipe, she think it bring something back, someday. My son, the one to carry that Pipe.”

She stood up abruptly. “I got to do the dishes,” she said. “Two men, sit living room.” In other words,
Get outta here
.

I stifled my own anger, and Grandpa helped me. He took my elbow, and I steered him to his favorite living room chair, another Salvation Army-style recliner, not as threadbare as the one in the yard.

If I wasn’t going to piss off Aunt Adeline, I needed to calm down. I wandered around the room, looking at the things I’d lived with the first fourteen years of my life. There were old, ceremonial things on the walls or displayed on tables—an eagle-wing fan, an eagle-bone whistle, a drum painted with a featherburst
pattern, a rattle made from a buffalo scrotum. Unchee told me about that rattle once. It was used by a
yuwipi
man and had 405 stones in it, pieces of crystal and agate he gathered from ant hills. These were the talking stones, the tiny rocks that spoke spirit language during the ceremony that only he could understand. But that
yuwipi
man was not my grandfather—everything was lost but the Pipe, Aunt Adeline said.

I reached up and took the rattle off the wall. Even the bone plug that kept the stones inside was missing. I felt the old hide, then raised it and shook it in the air, empty. No sound.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
And the rattle didn’t speak to me. It struck me that this rattle was like a lot of what we have from the old days, a remnant of something that was good, but with the essential part missing, the voices of the spirits.

“Adeline,” cried my grandfather in his high, weak, old man’s voice, “Make us another pot of coffee.”

So he intends to patch things up
.

Anyway, my great-grandfather’s things, they were lost. Like most of our ways. Like the old power.

Aunt Adeline brought us each a mug of coffee, hot and steaming, then joined us with another cup.

I waited. She waited. Finally I said, “Aunt Adeline, will you tell us what you know about my great-grandfather Blue Crow?”

For a while I thought she wasn’t going to answer. When she did start, her voice was mild.

“He was a good man, Blue Crow, respected, and a
yuwipi
man. He had a
pte hiko
, buffalo stone. True, he was young, only twenties, but people saw, he was a
wichasha wakan
. He found a missing child. Parents were haying on a white man’s ranch, child got into the mother ditch, swept away. No one saw it. Time they missed her, too late. Your great-grandfather saw with the inside eye where the body was, took people to it.

“This story, it comes from the people who raised your Unchee.

“Blue Crow, he had two children already, your great-grandfather,
with his first wife. Your great-grandmother, I don’t know her name, she was his second wife, Unchee was the third child.

“The day of the massacre, I don’t know much about it. You could look it up in them books they got, maybe, if they ain’t all lies.”

She gave a harsh look, like the books in the libraries came from me.

“This is what Unchee told me. She was in her mother’s belly the day of the killing. Blue Crow and the two wives, they was Ghost Dancers. Not everybody in that band was, they was divided on it, but your great-grandparents was, big ones. Regardless what anybody tells you, the Ghost Dance was a peaceful way.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear all this. You ain’t never cared.”

“Adeline,” Grandpa said gently. He was still her
atay
.

She waited. She sniffed. “I don’t actual know more,” she said.

“Tell him about Lucky.”

She sniffed a couple of times, and I realized Aunt Adeline was teary.

“Lucky was my last-born, my baby.”

She waited so long I thought she’d gotten lost, maybe in the past or maybe in her sadness or misery.

“He was smart. Everybody saw it, he was smart. I asked your Unchee to hold her father’s Pipe for Lucky, until he was old enough. Right quick Unchee says no. He’s smart, she says, but he don’t have the spirit for this, the spirit that’s right. She was sure she’d know the spirit when she saw it.”

Sniff.

“The white people thought Lucky was so smart, they wanted him to go away on the railroad to school. That Carlisle. I argued against it. My husband, he was for it. Thought on it long and hard but came down for it.

“Lucky didn’t even last till Christmas. Then he could have
come home for vacation and I’d have kept him. He hung himself in the boys’ toilet, hung himself by the neck.”

She stood up, swinging her empty coffee cup in such a way I thought maybe she’d throw it. “I’m clear about this, Joseph Blue Crow, have been for a long time. You got my boy’s name, you got my boy’s Pipe.

“Here’s what else I’m clear on. You throwed the name in the mud, with your drinking. You throwed the Pipe away, with your drinking.

“It’s you deserves be dead, my boy alive.”

She stomped into the kitchen, rude as a Lakota can be.

I looked at Grandpa, but he didn’t look back, probably too embarrassed.

There was nothing to say.

Over the next weeks I thought a lot about Aunt Adeline’s stories about Blue Crow. I don’t know what I did with her accusation about me dishonoring the Pipe. I’d been a drunk for ten years, for sure. I guess maybe I put her words in a place where I didn’t have to look at them. Every day I knew real clear what they said, and I held them in cold storage, until the day came when I could throw each word on the hard ground of truth and it would break.

I wasn’t sober long enough for that, not yet. I didn’t know when I would be, or what I had to do.

What I did was get ready for the Big Foot Memorial Ride. I don’t mean ready physically, gear in order, horse rented, that sort of stuff. I mean spiritually ready. I went to a meeting every day. I talked to Chup about how to stay straight and about how to do the ride in a good way. I went to Pete’s every Sunday and sweated.

I prayed, too, using the Pipe handed down to me from my great-grandfather Blue Crow. I’d never prayed that much. I asked for the ride to teach me. I asked for the ride to show me
how to help the people. I asked for the ride to wipe away the people’s tears. To make the sacred hoop whole again. To make the tree flower.