by Ron Levitsky
He was up there now, but it wouldn’t do calling him for supper. He’d shake his head, as if talking to a naughty child, and say, “Lakotas eat when they’re hungry. Only white men eat when the clock tells them to.”
Kicking a clod of dirt from the porch, she muttered, “Let him wait for his damn buffalo,” and walked into the house.
“Stevie, you’d better wash up for . . .!”
Something was burning. She hurried into the kitchen, through smoke billowing from the pot of chili on the stove.
“Damn it!” She shut off the stove and flicked on the overhead fan. “Stevie, didn’t I tell you to turn down the heat at 6:30? You’re twelve years old, not a baby! I hope to hell you like peanut butter and jelly for supper! Stevie?”
Her son didn’t answer, and, after waiting for the smoke to clear, Grace went into the dining room, where she’d left him an hour ago doing homework. Books, pencils, and crumpled papers were spread like a battlefield across the table; directly in front of his chair lay the same math problem he’d copied in an angry scrawl just before she’d left for the barn. There was no answer. With him, there never was.
No need to wonder where he’d gone—he’d snuck out to play Indian with his grandfather. She thought about going up the ridge to drag him home, but that would’ve meant another fight, and she was just too tired. No more fights, not with her shift coming up in a few hours.
In her room, Grace sat on the bed and struggled with her boots. It was the time of day she always thought about her husband, Steve—the way he’d pull her boots off, laughing at “how such tiny feet could get so damn stuck.” She stripped off the rest of her clothes, stiff from dirt and dried sweat, like the shed skin of a snake, and dropped them into the hamper. Her hair unbraided, she took a long cold shower.
She lay back in bed, still nude, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror while caressing her shoulders and arms. After years of baling hay, her hands were rough, and her skin, still young and soft, tingled as if being touched by a man. Her thick black hair hung loose around her breasts. “Injun hair,” Steve would whisper, as he brushed until it shone like ebony. That and her dark eyes and broad cheekbones were her father’s. Only the straight nose and light skin belonged to her mother. “Pretty for a half-breed,” the women in town always said. She must’ve been; enough of their men had bothered her ever since she was a girl. They still did; somehow being a widow made her even more desirable. Like she was hungry for a man, any man.
Grace reached for the brush, beside Steve’s picture on the night table, and stroked her hair as he used to do. The breeze through the window felt warm against her cheek, like his breath just before they kissed. She stroked her skin the way he used to with his rough hands. Her legs stirred, as if under him, and her breath quickened.
“No,” she almost sobbed, rubbing her eyes with the base of her palms, the way her Lakota grandmother did.
Tossing the brush onto the night table—she heard it knock his picture over—Grace quickly got dressed, choosing a clean pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals. She pinned her hair back with a large wooden barrette and hurried from the room.
She opened a can of tuna, made a salad, and sat at the dining room table, across from where Stevie was supposed to be doing his homework. Through the window, the sky hadn’t grown any darker; it might not rain after all. He’d be all right on the ridge. Her father had enough common sense . . . No, she’d better ride up there after dinner.
Ten minutes later, as Grace walked into her room for her boots, the screen door slammed.
“Mom! Mom!”
“Where’ve you been?”
He ran through the house into her room.
“Mom, you . . . you gotta . . . come!”
He leaned over suddenly, his lanky frame working like a bellows to catch his breath. His hands were dirty, as were his clothes, jeans torn at the knee.
“What have you gotten yourself into?”
“Mom, you gotta . . .”
“I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. Do you know you almost burned the house down? And since when can you leave your homework . . .?”
He grabbed her arms, his eyes widening.
“Stevie, what is it?”
“There’s a skeleton up on the ridge, near Grandfather’s sweat lodge. You gotta come!”
“A skeleton? Is your grandfather all right?”
“Yeah. He’s up there. Mr. Gates is there too.”
“Oh, God. All right, let me . . .”
Before Grace finished her sentence, Stevie had already run from the house. She thought about calling the station, but to tell them what? Besides, Albert Gates being with her father . . . She couldn’t call the police just yet.
By the time she left the house, Stevie was halfway up the ridge. It was hard running in sandals, but the grass was short, the ground unbroken, and the breeze a little cooler than before. Before she reached the tall grass near the top, Stevie had disappeared on the other side, where her father’s sweat lodge stood, but she could hear a soft murmuring.
For a moment, feeling the tall buffalo grass brush against her legs, Grace remembered as a little girl walking with her father while they listened for the spirits who lived upon this holy place, especially her father’s brothers, the elk, that he’d seen on his first vision quest. He’d sworn he heard them, and she, in the foolishness of childhood, thought she had too. But it had just been the wind.
What she heard now wasn’t the wind, nor was it spirits. They were human voices, and topping the ridge Grace saw, about fifty feet past the sweat lodge, her father sitting very straight across from Albert Gates, who knelt while brandishing something in his right hand. Stevie, his hands clenched tightly behind his back, stood beside his grandfather and stared at the ground.
Gates shifted his bulk from knee to knee while wiping his pug face with a large handkerchief. A few white hairs, long and curly, covered the crown of his head like dried foam. His dress shirt was splotched with sweat.
“. . . deal’s a deal, whether with you or another member of your family. Just like at my business—salesman sells you a car for a certain price and maybe makes a mistake in your favor. Don’t matter, ’cause I stand behind it. Maybe I kick his ass later, but the deal stands. You understand what I’m saying, Chief?”
Her father replied so softly that Grace couldn’t hear. She moved past the vision pit—the deep trench where he would sit for days in meditation—and stood beside the sweat lodge, laying a hand upon one of the bent willow trees and smelling the old deerskin hides mixed with the aroma of Bull Durham tobacco offerings. As a child she had gone into the hills with him to cut and peel the twelve white willow trees, then bend them into a dome covered with hide and canvas. Despite herself, she smiled at the memory and could almost understand why Stevie kept running up here—running to him.
Gates shook his head. “I’m not backing away from this baby! Maybe I can sweeten the pot a little. Whaddya say to another c-note, Chief?”
Her father said, “I’m not a chief. For over forty years we’ve known one another, and you still make the same mistake.”
“C’mon, you know I don’t mean nothing . . .”
“I’m just Saul True Sky, a Lakota or ikce wicasa—simple Indian. Just as you are wasichu.”
“What the hell you mean by that?”
“He just means you’re white,” Stevie muttered. “That’s all. Just that you’re a white man and don’t understand.”
“Oh.” Gates crinkled his brow, then caught sight of Grace. “Kid, glad you’re here. Maybe you can talk sense to your old man. You’re the only one in the family got any real brains.”
Her father turned. He had on his work clothes, a blue cotton shirt and faded jeans. His white hair, threaded with a few raven strands, was brushed back nearly to his shoulders, except for the small braided hoop above his right ear. No wonder Gates was frustrated—her father’s face was smooth and hard like a stone, as it always looked when he was dealing with t
he whites. The deep wrinkles about his eyes and lips showed only when he was smiling. Looking from one man to the other, she took a deep breath and demanded, “What’s this all about?”
Gates said, “C’mere and take a look at this baby. Believe you me, it’s some beauty.”
He was motioning with the object in his right hand—a small trowel. That tool told her exactly what Gates was talking about.
It lay between the two men, half buried and surrounded by a small pile of earth. Its skull, mottled green and copper, grinned obscenely. The collarbone had been broken, but around what had once been its throat was a necklace of small colored stones. There were gaps in the loop where shells might have been strung. Small pieces of rotted buckskin clung to the ribs, several of which also were broken.
“Well?” Gates said, leaning forward.
She shrugged. “Body of a dead Indian, I guess. We never seen nothing like this on our property. It’s like the ones found on your wife’s ranch, back when I was a kid.”
“That’s right. Two of them down by that dried-up riverbed we use for pasture—one a woman and the other a young boy. Figured they might’ve wandered away from Big Foot’s band, when he went down to Wounded Knee back in 1890. This one here looks just like them other two, sort of the third pea in the pod. If I didn’t know better . . .” Gates shook his head. “Probably like them two, he died from fighting, maybe from hunger or the cold. The stories he could tell, heh? We’ll know more, once one of them college professors has a look-see.”
Her father shook his head.
As Gates grew even redder, Grace asked. “Why’re you so interested? There’re hundreds of remains like this in museums. Even in your collection, you must have . . .”
“Hell, yes, I got four of these here skeletons, plus another half-dozen skulls. But it ain’t really the body I’m interested in. Look closer. Here.”
Dropping the trowel, he took a small paintbrush and carefully removed some dirt on the left side, where the skeleton’s third rib emerged from the earth. Grace knelt beside him and saw what appeared to be part of a long, narrow package that had been double-wrapped in rawhide. The outer layer had nearly rotted away, but the inner one, decorated with beadwork and a design she couldn’t make out, looked intact.
“Know what that is?” Gates asked, his grin wide as the skull’s.
When she shook her head, her father replied, “Wotawe.”
“That’s right,” the other man said, “a genuine wotawe—medicine bundle. Ain’t many of those around, and it’d just about make my collection complete.”
“It’s wakan—holy. You must leave it alone.”
“Chief, your boy Will and me made a deal.”
Grace asked, “What’s my brother got to do with this?”
“Why, he’s the one who found it. A few hours ago I saw him, out by my tool shed, pulling out my digging box. This one here.” He pointed to a large tool chest behind him, filled with trowels, brushes of assorted sizes, metal and bamboo picks. “He told me what he’d stumbled across up here. Said he’d begun digging it out with a shovel—can you believe how stupid, using a shovel on something old and delicate as that? No wonder some of them bones is broken. When he saw what it was, he run over to my place for the proper tools.”
Her father said, “The boy had no right to disturb this resting place.”
“Why not? He’s Indian too. Leastways, he’s half-Indian.”
“The boy is an apple.” They all knew what that meant—red outside but white inside. “He’ll do anything for money except work—even step on the graves of his people.”
“The dead’s dead, Chief. Might as well get some use outta them. Why, when I go, they can make a flowerpot outta my head, for all I care. Know what I mean?”
“Yes. That would be an improvement. Then maybe you would finally stop talking and listen to what people say.”
Gates clamped his jaw shut. The edges of his lips turned up slightly as he drew a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. He spread the paper on the ground.
“This here’s a receipt. Recognize the signature, Chief? It’s your son Will’s chicken scratches. Up at the ranch, after he described to me what he’d found, he agreed to sell me the medicine bundle for $500. I already gave him a $50 advance. Wasn’t gonna give him a dime more until I saw the wotawe for myself. But I’m satisfied—you’ll get the rest of the money. I’ll even make out the check to you, Chief. Won’t Will be surprised. Knowing that boy, he probably wasn’t gonna tell you and keep the $500 for himself. That Will,” Gates chuckled while reaching into a back pocket for his checkbook, “maybe I should make him one of my used-car salesmen.”
“This is my land,” Grace’s father said, “not Will’s. I want you to leave now. My son will return the money you gave him.”
“But I don’t want the money, Chief. I want the wotawe. If I don’t get it—if it ain’t your son’s to sell, then I guess he’s guilty of fraud, and I’ll have to go see the police.”
“So that’s it,” Grace said. “If my father doesn’t give you what you want, you’re gonna cause trouble for Will.”
Gates nodded. “It won’t be his first visit with the cops. There were those drunk-and-disorderlies—well, boys will be boys. But that check-cashing problem—he did a little time for that, didn’t he? So how about it, Chief? Let me just dig this little bundle out, and I’ll be on my way. Like I said before, I’ll even add $100 for old time’s sake.”
Her father shook his head.
“And Will?”
“My son must learn that, for a Lakota, there are worse things than jail. Now get off my land.”
The two men stared at one another for a long time. Finally, Gates moved back a few inches, but only to reach into his toolbox for a long bamboo pick. Bending over the skeleton, he carefully scraped dirt away from the bundle while muttering, “A deal’s a deal.”
When her father reached to push the other man’s hand away, Gates jabbed him with the pick, breaking the slender stick in two.
“Get the hell away . . . Jesus!”
Something flashed against Gates’s right hand; a small blade left a thin crimson trail between his wrist and knuckles. Looking up, Grace saw Stevie standing over them, a small pocketknife in his hand. The boy chewed on his lower lip until speckles of blood appeared on his teeth. His hand jerked forward, as if to strike again.
“No, Stevie!” she cried, but it was her father who stood and took the knife away.
Putting his hand on the boy’s trembling shoulder, he said what she knew he would say—what he used to tell her. Her lips formed the words silently. “It is not done.”
For a moment there was silence, and Stevie began to relax, as if her father’s hand was drawing all the fear and anger from him.
“Damn!” Gates exploded.
Stevie jumped back and seemed on the verge of running away. Grace grabbed him tightly.
“It’s all right, honey. Just take it easy. Remember what Dr. Arens says—long, deep breaths. That’s it. That’s right.”
Gates cupped his wounded hand. “All right? Jesus H. Christ, your boy cut me! Look at this! I’m bleeding, for Chrissakes!” Shaking, he carefully twisted his handkerchief around the wound.
“It’s nothing,” Grace’s father said.
“Nothing?”
“A good scar. It will make you look manly. The women will like it.”
“You’re as crazy as the kid here. Folks say he oughta be put away.”
Grace held Stevie closer. “You shut up about that!”
Staring at his hand, he seemed not to hear her. “Yeah, put away where he can’t hurt anybody else. And the rest of you, off this land. It’s coming, it’s coming real soon. He took a step forward, almost stumbling into the skeleton. Blinking hard, he looked from the remains to Grace’s father.
“I tried to be nice, even put in a good word with my wife about that hearing next week. But now, I don’t give a damn if they kick your ass outta here. Blast that highway right
through your house. Right through this here pile of bones.” Squinting, he looked down one side of the ridge, then the other. “Yeah, that road’ll come right on through here.”
“They’ll build no road here. This land is wakan.”
“My ass. It’s more than wakan—it’s commercial.”
Grace said, “I think you better leave right now.”
Gates flexed his hand gingerly. “I oughta get the cops out here on your kid.”
“You hit my father first. Stevie was just protecting him.”
He nodded slowly. “All right, but we still got a deal about that medicine bundle. You hear me? I’ll be back with the cops if I have to.”
Gates took several steps backward, his gaze darting from Grace to her father and son. Finally he trudged down the ridge to where his Cadillac was parked. Grace watched his car grow smaller as it followed the ribbon of dirt road winding its way to the interstate.
With Gates gone, Stevie stopped trembling and, head lowered, stood very quiet beside her. It was almost worse this way, when the boy withdrew into himself; his body felt fragile, like one of those dolls made of paper and wire.
Grace lifted his face and brushed back his hair.
“You okay?”
He nodded stiffly.
“You didn’t take your evening medication, did you?” When he shrugged, she said a bit louder. “Of course not. You take it with your supper, but you weren’t at home. You were out somewhere with your grandfather, instead of doing your homework like we’d agreed.”
“You agreed,” Stevie said. “I never did.”
She felt her face grow warm but knew arguing would only make it worse. Instead she turned to her father. “What were you doing out here with the boy? I thought you were on a job today.”
