When Grnadfather Journeys Into Winter (5 page)

Tanner hesitated, still a little stunned by
all that happened, and then he said. "I have never in all my life seen a ride like that. Not in
twenty years of rodeo! I'm just sorry I didn't take this old man seriously at first. I could have
saved myself from losing a good horse!" He spoke as much to the crowd as to Tayhua.

"Yessiree! This man just won himself a
horse. I hope when I get as old as this man is, I hope that when I get that..."

Tayhua interrupted. "If this is gonna
be...long speech... I will fall down right now! I am whipped! Let me take....horse...and go home.
I am ambushed...from bottom up." His joking manner could not hide his pain. Tayhua's knees were
wobbling and he almost fell over.

Little Thunder put his arm around his
grandfather's waist, giving him a hug.

"I give you this horse, Grandson," said
Tayhua. "Remind me not to ask you if I can ride it." The old man tottered weakly on his exhausted
legs. His grandson held on to him tightly, helping support him. Tayhua's breath still came in
ragged gasps. He looked very sick.

Little Thunder's mother put her arms around
the old man from the other side. Painfully, Tayhua bent over and whispered in his daughter's ear.
"Take me home, Elk Woman." He spoke ever so softly so Little Thunder would not hear. "I am
dying."

The crowd parted and Tayhua, Little Thunder
and Elk Woman, his mother, moved through slowly. Rolling Thunder trailed along behind them, led
docilely by his reins. The horse was still weak. his legs and chest were bruised and there was a
large bruise on his forehead where it had rammed solidly into the tree.

They were all going home.

Home was only a short distance away, but
their progress was slow. Tayhua was having a hard time walking. He leaned heavily on his daughter
and on Little Thunder.

"Don't tell the little one yet," said
Tayhua, still whispering so Little Thunder could not hear.

"I don't know for sure yet. I have to lie
down. Just get me home, then I will know."

Tears glistened in the eyes of Little
Thunder's mother, but she did not let Little Thunder see them. Elk Woman was mad at the old man
for being so foolish but she was proud of him, too.

"How do you like your new horse?" asked the
old man.

"It's the best gift in the world," said
Little Thunder, his hands controlling the reins that led Rolling Thunder. Little Thunder was
bursting with pride for his grandfather. He was still excited. "I bet there's never been a ride
like that! Not in a rodeo or anywhere!"

Tayhua coughed weakly. "I had to struggle to
stay awake. It was such a peaceful ride that several times I almost fell asleep."

Little Thunder laughed.

Even Elk Woman smiled. Her father might be
old in his bones and weak in his body but his spirit was a blazing comet. Foolish or not, he had
danced this day in the sky like the very brightest of comets, and she would always be proud of
him. 

All that day and all that night Tayhua lay
weakly in his bed, and many were the things said between father and daughter.

Little Thunder wanted to stay home from
school the next morning, but his mother made him go.

Little Thunder wanted to be home because he
had never seen his grandfather look this way, so pale and weak. There was something very
frightening about the way the old man looked. When they had brought him home, they had had to
help him undress for bed, and that was very unlike Grandfather, who was always so
strong.

Little Thunder was very worried about him.
At school, he paid little attention in class and twice the teachers yelled at him. One of the
teachers called him a "stupid Indian," but that didn't bother Little Thunder too much because
that particular teacher called everybody a stupid Indian. Little Thunder didn't much care what
the teachers said. He had bigger things to worry about than school. Even the thought of the big
stallion running free in the pasture behind the house--his horse--did not fill Little Thunder
with any happiness.

At noon, Little Thunder's mother called the
school in the city. She asked his teacher to send him home. Tayhua was dying, his mother told the
teacher, and he asked to see his only grandson.

Little Thunder looked out the bus windows,
staring at nothing. He was the only passenger. The yellow school bus was making a special trip
just for him.

"How do you feel?" asked the bus driver,
trying to be kind.

Little Thunder just stared out the window.
He didn't feel like talking so he didn't say anything. The teacher was only supposed to send him
home, not tell him why. But the teacher had to fill out the proper forms necessary to excuse him
from class, and it was from those forms that Little Thunder had learned the truth about his
grandfather.

It was not a good way to learn that his
grandfather was dying.

As the miles rolled by, Little Thunder just
sat there. Several times the bus driver spoke to him, trying to cheer him up, but Little Thunder
was in no mood to be cheered up. He wished the bus driver would leave him alone.

The school bus turned off the main highway
onto the dirt road that led to the reservation. The old road was deeply rutted from constant use,
and the bus driver had to slow down a great deal to keep from breaking an axle.

"Not much longer," said the bus driver,
looking at Little Thunder in his mirror.

Little Thunder settled back restlessly in
the hard plastic seat. Thousands of times he had traveled this old road in the yellow school bus,
but never had it seemed to take so long to get home as it did on this day.

The thick dust rose up behind the bus in a
gray cloud, but Little Thunder did not see it. The bright sun had turned the barren land beside
the road into a shimmering haze that stretched as far as the eye could see on all sides, but
Little Thunder did not see it. For a few brief moments, a soaring hawk kept pace with the yellow
bus as if it were racing it home, but Little Thunder did not see it.

Little Thunder's eyes saw only into the
past. His eyes saw only the times gone by that he had spent with his grandfather. He saw the
long, learning afternoons of summer, the walks early in the morning when the sky was new and the
world began all over again with each day.

They had hunted together and fished
together, and in the cold nights of winter Little Thunder had slept under his grandfather's thick
blankets with him. In the morning, sometimes, his grandfather would tickle him with a feather to
wake him up.

"I didn't tickle you," Tayhua would say,
pretending as hard as he could. "An owl flew through our bed this morning. It must have been an
owl because here is his feather." And then Tayhua would show Little Thunder the same feather he
had tickled him with.

No matter how many times his grandfather
played this joke on him, Little Thunder would always laugh because it would be a chicken feather
or an eagle feather or any other kind of feather except an owl feather.

There were so many things about his
grandfather that he remembered.

The stories Grandfather used to tell!
Stories to make one laugh when the wind howled outside the house and the shadows crept out of the
corners the scary way shadows sometimes did. Or "tells how" stories that told how all the things
of creation came into being. There were hero stories about strong men and strong women, ghost
stories and vision stories. And there were, best of all, trickster stories about crafty Old Man
Coyote who played tricks on everyone and everything under the sun. There were wonderful worlds in
those Grandfather stories, scary things and sad things and happy things and things that kept
alive the wisdom of Little Thunder's people.

"I see a story riding on the back of Old Man
Coyote," Tayhua would say. "Shall I catch Old Man Coyote and tell his tale?"

"Yes! Yes!" Little Thunder would cry, and
Grandfather would lean out the window and pretend he was catching Old Man Coyote. Grandfather
always pretended very hard. Once he had pretended so hard that he had fallen out of the
window.

"What a fat story Old Man Coyote carried on
his back this night!" he would say, and then he would tell the story.

The days he and his grandfather roamed the
hills hunting rabbits and fishing in the secret places in the river that only Grandfather knew.
His grandfather's wild ride on Rolling Thunder. All of these things Little Thunder remembered.
Together they had shared a thousand things, large and small, and now inside himself Little
Thunder knew those days of sharing were coming to an end.

The bus driver hummed a cowboy song to
himself as he drove. He looked back at Little Thunder again in his mirror.

"This is it," said the bus driver. He slowed
the school bus to a stop beside the gate that led to the reservation.

When the bus came to a complete stop, the
bus driver pulled the lever that opened the door. He turned around in his seat to look at Little
Thunder. He tilted his cap back on his head. He knew why Little Thunder was going home and he
felt sorry for him.

Little Thunder hurried to the front and
started out the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow," said the bus
driver, "and I hope everything comes out all right."

Little Thunder ran down the bus steps and
away. He did not turn to thank the driver as he would have done on any other day. He just kept
running and never looked back.

He was crying, and he did not want a white
man see him crying. 

Tayhua's house badly needed paint, and some
of the windows were cracked and broken. There were more weeds than grass in the front yard, and
the battered wreck of an old Ford pickup truck with all the windows and doors gone stood in the
center.

Today, as Little Thunder ran toward the
house, he could see a great crowd of people standing around it. The relatives and friends of
Tayhua were there. Aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, all of the members of the family were
there.

Little Thunder had wiped his face carefully
so that no one would know that he had been crying. Among his own people, he felt no shame when he
cried. Indeed, many of the people there were crying too. But he did not want his grandfather to
see him crying.

His mother came out the front door. Her eyes
were red and Little Thunder knew she had been crying. She was dressed in a long, bright red dress
that Tayhua had bought for her many years ago when she was a young woman and was still
unmarried.

Elk Woman put her arms out, and Little
Thunder ran to her and gave her a hug. She looked around at the people gathered there. She raised
one arm and motioned them to be quiet.

"Tayhua has asked that you all return to
your homes. Tayhua wants to thank you for coming and to ask you to come again after his spirit
goes to another world. Today, he wants only to be with his grandson. He thanks you all for your
love, for the honor you have given him. Go and be in peace for him, for he had found peace in
you. That is what Tayhua says, these are his wishes."

Silently, the people agreed to this, nodding
their heads at the wisdom of the old man's decision. They began scattering in all directions as
they went back to their homes. Tomorrow they would come together again and talk and laugh and cry
as was right and good.

Soon, only Little Thunder and his mother
were left in the yard in front of the house.

They looked at each other for a little while
and did not speak.

"I don't understand," said Little Thunder.
"Tayhua is dying, but I don't want him to die. I don't want him to leave me."

"These things must happen," said his mother.
"You are too young to remember your father. He died when you were very little, still a baby. From
that time, your grandfather has been like a father to you, and I know it is hard for you. But it
is as it should be."

"But why? Why does he have to die?" asked
Little Thunder. "I love him and I don't want him to leave me."

"Go in and see him," said Elk Woman. "Go see
your grandfather. He knows you will be hurting inside and he wants to speak of this hurt to
you."

Little Thunder leaned against his mother,
and she gave him an extra little hug and then pushed him through the open door.

The door closed behind him, and Little
Thunder was alone with his grandfather Tayhua. Alone with him on the last day of his life on
earth. 

Inside the house it was very quiet except for the dry rasping sounds Tayhua made
when he breathed.

He lay in his old wooden four-poster bed
with a heavy winter blanket pulled up over him. A fire burned in the fireplace, sending its light
and heat throughout the room.

It was still summer, the air hot and heavy,
but Little Thunder's grandfather was shivering beside the warm fire with the cold of his old
age.

"I'm here, Grandfather," said Little
Thunder, standing in the middle of the room.

Grandfather Tayhua opened his eyes. He
seemed very fragile, like something delicately carved that could easily be broken. "Come to my
side, my grandson, so that these weak old eyes of mine can look upon you again."