Burning Ground

by D. A. Galloway

  * * *

  As Redfield pulled out his tobacco pouch and cigarette paper to make a custom smoke after lunch, Graham broached the subject of Redfield’s diplomacy. “How do you get along so well with all the people in camp?”

  “What do you mean?” Redfield asked without looking up from the thin paper as he filled it with tobacco.

  “Well, I was thinking about that time a month ago when you defused the situation where the two guys accused one another of stealing.”

  Redfield licked the paper, twisted the ends, and lit the cigarette. “Everybody has to decide what matters. Keepin’ or makin’ peace matters to me,” he proclaimed succinctly.

  Graham’s mind went immediately to one of the Beatitudes that Jesus shared in his Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the peacemakers . . . He couldn’t remember the second half of the declaration. All he knew for sure was these people would be blessed.

  “What led you to be a peacemaker?”

  Redfield glanced at his wristwatch, then regarded the young man sitting across from him. “Okay, Gra’am. We’ve got a little time. Would you like to hear a story?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Redfield leaned against the oak tree. He spoke more in the next twenty minutes than Graham had heard him say all summer.

  “Crow people refer to the Creator in several ways. We believe it is possible to acquire the sacred power of the Creator. This power is called Baaxpée. It is given to someone by a spirit that often appears in the form of an animal. One of the ways to acquire Baaxpée is to go on a vision quest, which I did when I was a young man of sixteen.

  “I began by visiting a medicine man to make sure I knew the correct prayers. The day before my quest, I took a sweat bath to remove my human smell so the spirits would not be afraid. Then I used a hatchet to cut off part of my middle finger.”

  As he said this, Redfield held up his left hand and showed the shortened middle digit Graham had noticed when they first met.

  “I thought you lost the end of your finger in an accident somewhere on the farm,” Graham said, interrupting. “Why did you mutilate yourself?”

  “It proved my dedication to God,” Redfield said flatly. “And it was part of my penitence. You must humble yourself if you want to acquire Baaxpée. The spirit is more likely to listen to someone who has an imperfection.”

  “I see,” Graham said. But privately he was appalled.

  Redfield continued: “I hiked up to Castle Rocks in the Pryor Mountains to be close to the Creator. There I constructed a sheltering place called a fasting bed. I fasted in solitude for three days, waiting for a spirit to have pity on me and bestow Baaxpée. On the evening of the third day under a full moon, I was in a trance from my fasting and devotions. It was then I experienced a vision.”

  “Can you tell me what it was like?” Graham asked. He was fascinated by Redfield’s story.

  The Crow took a final puff from his cigarette, which had burned down to a small nub. He crushed what was left of the rolled tobacco under the heel of his boot. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees.

  “It’s kinda hard to describe. You know the merry-go-rounds you see at elementary schools? It was like I was sitting on one of those with my head tilted backward and my eyes open while someone was pushing it faster and faster until everything around me was blurry. When the spinning finally stopped, I had lost my sense of balance. I just sat there in total darkness. There was a single bright star shining in the eastern sky. The full moon had disappeared. I knew I had entered the spirit world. Then a truly clear vision came to me as a gift from the bear spirit.”

  Redfield paused and closed his eyes, remembering the vision as it played like a movie in front of him.

  “A bear started walking west toward a red sun. As the bear got closer to the sun, the air became very hot. The earth started to shake, and fire rained from the sky. Night came and lasted four winters. When the sun came up again, the bear walked east toward a rising yellow sun. He came upon a flock of birds sitting in orderly rows of trees. Some birds in one tree were making noise. The birds were different colors. Some were black; some were red; some were white; some were brown. The bear sat under the noisy tree, and the birds became silent. Any time the birds chattered loudly, the bear would sit under their tree and they would be quiet.”

  When Redfield opened his eyes, his pupils were dilated even though it was a sunny day. This frightened Graham, because he recalled one of his roommates at college had the same look after snorting cocaine. Redfield’s brain had reacted to the re-created vision sequence as if it were real. The two men sat there for a moment in silence. Graham looked into Redfield’s eyes every few seconds and saw his pupils slowly constrict and return to normal.

  Redfield took in a deep breath, exhaled, and continued with his story.

  “After the vision ended, I felt like I was tumbling backward down a hill, but never hitting the ground. When I awoke and looked around, I was sitting in the same place, but the stars and moon had returned to the sky. It was like I never left earth or entered the spirit world. But I know that’s where I went. When I returned to the reservation, I visited the medicine man and talked through my vision so he could interpret its meaning.”

  Nothing was said for several minutes. Graham knew Redfield was unaccustomed to speaking for any length of time and needed to gather his thoughts. While his friend deliberated what to say next, Graham anxiously prompted him. “What did the medicine man say?”

  Redfield leaned to one side and spit on the ground. “He said my Baaxpée was given by the bear spirit. In my vision, the bear represents me. Soon I would travel west to a foreign land. He did not know the meaning of the red sun, but the shaking earth and fire were bad omens that represented warring nations. The fighting between nations would last four years. It became clear what this part of my vision meant a few years later. Late in 1941 when I was eighteen, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and our nation entered World War Two. The red rising sun was the nation of Japan. I enlisted in the navy and served in the Pacific alongside white people, Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians from other tribes.”

  Another pause. Graham marveled at the symbolism in Redfield’s vision. The congruence of his vision and future events seemed more than coincidence.

  “After the war, I was looking for direction. There was no work on the reservation, and I wanted to find my way. I turned to the vision for an answer. I knew my calling was somewhere in the East. First, I went to Oklahoma, because my grandmother told me some of my ancestors were from the Kiowa tribe. Many years ago, the Kiowa and the Absaroka lived in the Yellowstone area and formed an alliance. They lived together and sometimes even married someone from the other tribe.”

  Graham interrupted Redfield. “Wait a minute. You said Kiowa and Absaroka lived together. Who are the Absaroka?”

  “It’s the name we call our people. Absaroka, or Apsaalooke, as we sometimes call ourselves, was translated by English speakers as Crow and the name stuck. The actual meaning of our Indian name translates into “people of the large-beaked bird.” But you can think of me as a Crow. I won’t be offended.

  “Anyway, the Kiowa were eventually forced by the Sioux and Cheyenne to migrate to Oklahoma. I wanted to see if I could find a home among these people. I worked for about ten years in the oil fields, but it never felt like the place in my vision.

  “One day I got on a bus and headed east. I stopped and worked for a few months on farms and in kitchens looking for my new home. I kept going further east with each new bus ticket. When I was in Maryland sleeping in a bus depot, I met a group of migrant workers coming from Florida. They were headed north to work in the fruit orchards of Pennsylvania. I decided to go with them and ended up here on Big Hill Farm working for Mr. Floyd.”

  As he said the last words, Redfield glanced at his watch. “Hey, we need to get back to it. Lunchtime is over.”

  Graham had many questions after what he just heard. While he was glad to know much more about Redfield’s
background, the obvious questions hung in the afternoon breeze like a bedsheet on a wash line. What about the birds? What did this part of the vision mean? And how did he become a peacemaker?

  Before he could say anything, his work partner jumped to his feet, pulled some poles off the truck, and started supporting overweighed pear-tree branches. Enough talking for one day, Graham thought.

  The two men worked steadily for the rest of the day. At three thirty, they met back at the truck. Graham took his seat on the passenger side of the cab, but Redfield told him to drive. “We need to take the paved county road back to the barn. You need to drive,” he said. The younger man climbed into the truck and slid behind the wheel.

  “Do you mind telling me why you can’t drive on the county roads and only in the orchards?” Graham asked.

  “Don’t have a license.”

  “Did you take a driver’s test?”

  “Yep. And passed. But I lost my license. Actually, they took it from me.”

  Graham decided not to pursue this line of questions further as he could not imagine a good reason for losing a driver’s license.

  The big truck pulled up to the barn beside the tractor that had sunk up to the axles. Large clods of drying mud were caked in the open wheel wells and had splattered halfway up the chassis. The tractor had been rescued, but it would need a thorough cleaning.

  It was Friday, which also meant it was payday. The men gathered in a semicircle at the barn entrance. Floyd hobbled up to the group with a stack of envelopes and started calling out names. As each name was announced, the recipient stepped forward and took the check handed to him. After receiving his check, Graham noticed something, although it could have happened every Friday and he simply had missed the exchange.

  Floyd walked over to Redfield and asked, “Do you want to work tomorrow?”

  Redfield hesitated, then responded, “Yeah.”

  Floyd did not give Redfield his paycheck. Instead, he placed the Crow’s check in his shirt pocket, then called the next name in the stack of envelopes.

  After the last envelope was distributed, everyone dispersed to his car. Redfield hitched a ride to camp with one of the migrant workers.

  Floyd approached Graham with the same question he had asked Redfield a few minutes earlier. “Do you want to work tomorrow?”

  “Sure. I can always use the extra money,” he said with a grin.

  “Good. I’m going to have you and Redfield clean up that tractor tomorrow morning. It’s going to take some work to remove the mud and grime before we can see if there’s any damage to the engine or differential.”

  “Floyd?” Graham asked the farm manager as he started toward the house.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was wondering something about Redfield. He said he lost his license and that’s why he can’t drive on the roads. Is this true?”

  Floyd waved Graham toward the barn. “Come in and sit down for a few minutes. Let me share a few things about that Indian.”

  Once they were seated at one of the picnic tables, Floyd said, “Let me tell you this first. Redfield is a good man.” With this opening comment, Graham already sensed he was about to learn an aspect of his friend he did not know.

  “I think so, too.”

  Floyd sighed. “But he’s got a drinking problem. No—make that a liquor problem. He can handle a six-pack of beer. But if he has any of the hard stuff, he doesn’t know when to stop, and he drinks till he can’t stand up.”

  That explains his lack of a driver’s license and not driving on county roads, Graham thought. “Does this have anything to do with him working weekends?”

  “Yep. We have an understanding. It’s really an agreement,” Floyd explained as he crossed his arms. “If there’s work available on Saturday, I always ask him if he wants to work before I hand him his paycheck. If he says he wants to work, I hold on to the check and give it to him Saturday afternoon. That way he isn’t tempted to spend it on liquor and wake up drunk Saturday at noon. He has all day Sunday to sleep it off if he wants to drink himself into a stupor.”

  Graham swallowed hard. He was disappointed. This wasn’t admirable behavior for a man he had grown to respect.

  “On the other hand,” Floyd continued, “I need him on this farm. When he’s sober, he’s a hard worker. He will do anything you ask of him. And most importantly, Redfield has a gift. Every week there are disagreements among the migrants. When tensions are running high in the orchards or in the camp, he calms everyone down. I’ve seen him step in and stop knife fights. He keeps the peace.”

  Blessed are the peacekeepers, thought Graham. “I know. I’ve seen it myself.”

  “Anyway, now you know about Redfield,” Floyd concluded as he got up from the table and limped toward the barn door. “See you in the morning,” he said over his shoulder with a wave of his arm.

  * * *

  The muddy tractor was sitting on a grassy area beside the barn when Graham arrived early Saturday morning. Redfield had already hooked up a pressure washer to blast the mud off the wheels and tires. He handed Graham a yellow rain suit as he put on an oversize set of bib overalls. Soon they were hosing, water-blasting, and scrubbing the farm vehicle.

  As they worked side by side near the back of the tractor, Graham encouraged Redfield to finish the interpretation from yesterday. “You never had a chance to tell me about the birds in your vision.”

  Redfield nodded. “Oh, didn’t I?” He took his finger off the trigger of the pressure washer and laid it on the muddy grass at his feet. He wiped his big hands on the front of his overalls before speaking. “Well, the medicine man claims the colored birds represent different people. The trees were planted in rows like these orchards. When the bear sits under a tree and quiets the noisy birds, it means I find ways they can live in harmony—at least for a while until they start arguing again. I knew this was my destiny within a few weeks of arriving at Big Hill Farm and living with these migrants. These are my people. This is my flock.”

  Redfield picked up the nozzle of the pressure washer and continued blasting dried mud from the tractor.

  Graham smiled. His Crow friend was living a simple life he found immensely gratifying because he had a purpose. Redfield made peace between others, and he was at peace with himself.

  Graham yearned for a chance to meet the spirit of his God to reconcile his family’s tragedies and find a purpose.

  Chapter 5

  October, 1970

  Walking on campus was always pleasant in autumn. By mid-October, yellow, red, copper, and scarlet leaves had given up their tenuous attachments and were cascading from a multitude of trees on the Penn State campus. Chimes from the bell tower atop Old Main played Westminster Quarters. Students and faculty on this campus and universities across America were living in a bucolic world discordant with the war that continued to rage in Vietnam.

  Although Graham would occasionally stop and listen to the small groups of war protesters gathered in the student union building, he was never inclined to add his voice to their cause. It had been three years since Frank lost his life in this war. He decided long ago protesting would not accomplish anything. In his view, demonstrating would dishonor the memory of his older brother.

  Graham sighed as he left the dormitory and headed toward the dining hall at ten o’clock on a beautiful Saturday morning. It was one of those picture-perfect fall days in central Pennsylvania. The overwhelming majority of students would soon be tailgating outside the football stadium before attending the game later in the afternoon. He would not be among them. He was scheduled to work the lunch and dinner shifts in the dining hall both weekend days. Missing the football game didn’t bother him. But he was irked by the thought of being in a windowless kitchen for hours at a time knowing what the weather was like outside.

  His food-service job was essential. The savings from his summer jobs simply did not cover the cost of tuition, room and board, and books. To make up the difference, he signed up to work in the dining hall
and accepted as many hours as possible while still taking a full course load.

  Graham recalled the moment he shared the news of his acceptance to the university with his parents three years ago. He thought they would have been elated. After all, he would be the first one in the family to attend college. His mother had been supportive and pleased. Leroy reacted differently. “If that’s what you want to do, fine. But you’ve gotta figure out how to pay for it. Too bad you can’t join the military like Frank. Uncle Sam could have footed the bill for your education.”

  Had his father realized how ludicrous those statements were? Had it been Graham’s fault he was the lucky deaf boy who couldn’t pass the required physical? And what about his father’s sardonic reference to Frank? The promise of the GI Bill did his brother a lot of good since he was lying in a grave like so many other unfortunate soldiers of war. But Graham had held his tongue and contained his anger. He resolved to find a way to go to school even if this meant working a series of part-time jobs and assuming a stack of student loans.

  After working long hours in the dining hall over the weekend, Graham was looking forward to going to class Monday. He had a plant pathology class in the forestry building and decided to walk across campus early. As he entered Ferguson Building, he stopped to check the bulletin board outside the dean’s office to see if there were any new postings. A large cork board was used to display an eclectic variety of notices. It was adorned with announcements about club meetings, seminars, and class schedules. Students also used this space to solicit roommates for off-campus apartments, promote ride sharing to various parts of the state on weekends, and sell personal items. A new posting immediately caught Graham’s eye as he studied the board.