“Brought some Japanese tourists here once. They were nice people, asked good questions. When we got close to the range, they started crying, really crying, very loudly. I did not realize that the American bombardiers who dropped those atomic bombs got their target practice here.”
“That’s one of the saddest stories you’ve ever told me.”
“Yeah. Guess I never told you about the years I went to boarding school in Pine Ridge, 1959 through 1961.”
“What was it like?” I ask.
Vernell takes a deep breath, slows down but continues to drive on while he looks over at me.
I remember three dates when I was nine years old (that would have been about forty-five years ago). The first was July 4, when my grandfather died; he was ninety-eight. Next was August 7, my birthday, when my parents took me to the clinic to get some shots that hurt; guess I needed them for school. Finally, on September 6, we rode with Leo and his kids to Holy Rosary Indian Mission school in Pine Ridge. They left us with these scary black demons with white faces who took us into the basement, where they shaved our heads and put us under a shower. There was a little bench next to the shower room where they handed you some clothes and you got dressed. Then they marched all of us outside, through a yard, and into the church.
When we sat down inside, I looked up, and there was this man with no clothes, nothing. He was hanging there with his arms stretched out, a war bonnet made of thorns, blood flowing down his face; it looked like someone had pounded nails through his hands and feet. I was scared, wondered if this was what they did to little kids here. I just wanted to run away. At night I could see the stars, so I knew how to get home. But these things play in your head. I was too afraid to run away.
When somebody did something wrong, they punished all of us. Along one of the walls there was a long bench with little hooks above it where kids hung their coats. They made everybody stand up on the bench and face the wall for hours. If some of the little kids cried, we all had to stand there longer. When it was time to get down, everyone was quiet.
When it was time to eat, we had to stand in line and stay perfectly still. Once you got your food and sat down, you couldn’t start eating until everyone else was seated. If you did, someone would come behind you and whack you. When the nun up front shook her little bell, we could start eating, but you only had fifteen minutes to eat.
In the mornings we got mush and a piece of toast with a little butter, which was all the butter we ever got. Some kids would save their butter. The bread was made from wheat the nuns grew themselves. There were husks in the bread, which made it taste like sandpaper, but this was not as bad as the bland tomato soup they gave us for lunch and dinner. We never had traditional Indian foods, meat stews, berries, fry bread. On Sundays, if everyone was good, we got cocoa, the one good thing.
At night, they marched you up three flights of stairs to the dormitory, where there were two rows of bunk beds. In the back, around a corner, was a little section called the wet-the-bed section. Those beds were filled with black rubber. The sheets were cold; there was no heat in the big stone building. No wonder the little kids peed—they were freezing! The rest of us had a sheet and a thin blanket; we were freezing too.
One priest would come in and sit where he could watch us, read the gospel to us. If anyone talked or giggled or did anything wrong, we all had to get down from our beds, line up, pull our pants down, bend over. They used razor strops; everyone got spanked. Another priest had a spooky look that gave me the creeps.
Because I grew up with my grandparents, when I got to Holy Rosary I didn’t speak English, only Lakota, but they forbade us from speaking Lakota. Right from the start they said, “English is your language now. You must learn English.” If you got caught speaking Lakota, you would get whipped good. Us full-bloods would play way back in the playground where there were no swings, so we could speak to each other. We had to stay away from the half-bloods because they would tell on you. I remember getting spanked quite a bit. The nuns would make you hold your hands palm out and whack you hard with a ruler.
We didn’t have to worry about bullies—we had nuns.
After they had spanked you, you had to say, “Thank you, Sister so-and-so, or thank you, Brother so-and-so.”
I was there for three years, lived in numbness the whole time. We only got to shower once, on Wednesday, and only then would they give you a clean set of clothes. All week long you wore the same underwear, same socks, same everything, no matter how dirty they got.
One day I was sitting on the front steps of the building—it must have been a Saturday or Sunday afternoon—when I saw a car coming in the distance. I had a strange feeling about this car. As it got closer, I could see that it was a ’59 red-and-black Ford, and I could see that the driver was my grandmother. She pulled up in front, lowered the window, shouted out to me, “Get in, Grandson.” As I got in, she said, “You never have to be here again.”
I didn’t wave good-bye to nobody. I didn’t look back. I don’t know if my grandmother told them she was going to take me.
“I am so sorry that happened to you. That’s some story.”
Up ahead I can see dozens of small rust-colored objects; too big to be cow carcasses, they appear to be tangled metal sculptures. As we get closer, I see that they are old cars, or, as it turns out, old car bodies—no wheels, no chassis, no engines—and not just any old car bodies, vintage models, late 1930s up to 1942, when car manufacturers in the United States quit making cars so they could turn their factories over to war production.
Vernell points out a 1941 Ford Coupe, says, “That’s my dream car. One of these days, I’m going to haul it out of here.”
I’m not a car buff, but I recognize an old Buick with its signature chrome window framing; the detached hood sits on top of the roof, one door is completely mangled, there are dents here and there. It’s a strange scene. Wine-colored, rusty car bodies are evenly laid out in a sea of tall, rolling green-and-red prairie grass, spaced about fifteen yards apart. As we walk around admiring them, Vernell points out that they form the shape of a target, a large circle with vertical and horizontal crosshairs. There are 250 car bodies in this one target; there are two more targets just like it. The cars were brought here by helicopter, dropped down in exactly the right spots. They have dents from the bombs, and many of the doors and hoods have been blown off, but they are not marred by bullet holes or graffiti—there are no signs of vandalism.
It’s a beautiful sight; it reminds me of Carhenge, only much grander, wonderful except for the story behind it and the reality that there are still unexploded shells and bombs scattered about. The Badlands Bombing Range represents the last major Indian landgrab by the U.S. government: 341,726 acres confiscated from the Oglala tribe by eminent domain, the equivalent of 534 square miles, used throughout the war years for precision bombing exercises as well as air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery ranges. One day in 1942, over a hundred Lakota families living along nearby Redwater Creek received official notice from the U.S. Army that they had thirty days to pack up and move out. There was no appeal, no monetary compensation, no new housing. Everybody had to be gone, or be arrested and forced out.
Most of these people lived in small one- to three-room cabins. Many kept sacred objects from the old days wrapped up in a trunk or just lying under the bed. Quilted shirts, beaded leggings, ceremonial drums, and the small amulet bags in the shape of turtles or lizards in which every man preserved his umbilical cord. In the turmoil of packing up and pulling out, many of these things got lost. Henry Garnett, the grandson of Crazy Horse’s friend Billy Garnett, had a trunk full of precious artifacts that he left behind, thinking it would be safe in the house. After the war, it took his family ten years to get their land back. When the army finally let go, the house was a wreck, the trunk was empty.
“Do you know what was the single most important thing people left behind?” Vernell asks.
“The money they buried in coffee cans out back?”
“No, David. The most important thing was their woodstoves. The shacks families found to move into didn’t have heat; they had to sneak back to get their stoves.”
“Do you really get car parts from here?”
“Sometimes,” Vernell replies, “but mostly I just bring people out because it is part of our history you won’t find on the tourist maps.”
Now Vernell seems to be a hurry; he revs up his supercharged hot rod just enough to fly over the many dirt ruts in our path and still land soft enough to avoid denting his bumpers. Steering with one hand, he takes a call from someone named Sonny, who is apparently waiting for us at the ranch and wanting to know when we’ll be back. “Thirty minutes, sharp,” Vernell answers, which seems highly unrealistic considering that it took an hour to get here. I worry about the absence of a seat belt and am somewhat surprised when Vernell dutifully stops to put the barbed-wire gate back in place; from what I can tell, it doesn’t look as if any cows escaped. Glancing at the speedometer, I see we are now going seventy miles an hour. Vernell slams on the brakes, and as we spin out on Bombing Range Road and back onto BIA Highway 2, we come to a complete stop. Vernell points his arm out the window at what appears to be an old Sun Dance ground sitting on the bluff just across the creek to our left.
“They do Sun Dances here to make money,” he says. “They might have signs saying ‘no cameras, no tourists,’ but if you look around, you see non-Lakotas taking pictures.”
He continues: “We have all these Sun Dances—why aren’t people as healthy as they should be? It is supposed to be about healing, but it is all about money and prestige. South Dakota is the biggest tourism state. Many who come here are wannabe Indians. They wanna go to a powwow, learn how to do a powwow dance, pick up a few Lakota expressions, experience the sweat lodge.
“Making money off tourists is just another form of assimilation; it is not who we are. There’s good assimilation and bad assimilation.”
“What’s good assimilation?” I ask.
“Education is good assimilation; that’s why I’m back in school.”
By now we have driven past Kyle and we’re about to turn onto the road to Vernell’s ranch. I ask him if he would ever run for tribal office. He laughs and laughs.
“David, if I had the money and staff, there are legal things that could be done, but I don’t know yet what I can do. One person cannot do a lot.”
Safely parked with no apparent damage to the ’57 Ford Fairlane or either of us, we are about to walk up the little steps onto the White Thunder patio when Vernell nudges me to turn around. I look back just as a battered old convertible in a blanket of dust appears at the top of his driveway—it rapidly twists and slides in a smoky descent to within feet of where we are standing. Two grinning teenage boys wave at us as they hoist themselves up and out of the car without opening the doors.
“Hu, Vernell,” one says.
“Nineteen-eighty-one Camaro,” Vernell replies. “Looking pretty good.”
One boy wears a stained brown-and-black Chevy Camaro T-shirt that could very well be as old as the car. I notice that he is taller than Vernell, with thick black hair, rounded shoulders, and a serious demeanor; handsome. Vernell says, “This one is Chet.”
The other boy, Sonny, seems more approachable; he is smiling, and even though his eyes are partially hidden behind his tinted horn-rimmed glasses, I can see they are empathetic eyes. His sleeveless black shirt reveals a layer of baby fat and a homemade spiral S tattoo on his left shoulder.
Both shake my hand and seem very comfortable, not at all shy about talking shop with Vernell in my presence. They have come seeking advice—how do they go about repairing rust spots on their new baby? Sonny points to an area just behind the top of one of the front doors. He’s tried sandpapering the rust away but is finding it very stubborn.
“Let me show you,” Vernell says, moving over to the car. “First make sure the area around the spot is clean.” Taking a polishing cloth out of his pocket, Vernell buffs the area, and then takes out a pocketknife, opens up a small blade, and uses it to remove the rust that the sandpaper failed to remove.
“Some of this rust is under the paint,” Vernell points out. “Dig carefully to make sure you get it all. And you only want to remove the rust, not damage the metal. Auto body putty comes in handy if there is a hole or uneven spot.”
The boys look on; they don’t just respect Vernell, they admire him. I choke up at the very thought of Vernell becoming a venerable Lakota elder. Like his father, Guy White Thunder, his great-grandfather Chief White Thunder, respected and wise, the old warrior who teaches you how to get the rust out.
The lesson over, Vernell asks the boys if they want to see the car he’s working on. We follow him to a metal shed about the size of a standard one-car garage that stands to the side of his house. He unlocks the double wooden doors, swings them open, and there sit the makings of a brightly painted yellow 1938 Ford coupe. The hottest pre–World War II street rod now fitted with a new flathead V8 engine with a custom blue, six-bladed Flex fan and a bright orange Fram oil filter. The hood and front end hang at the back of the building waiting for paint.
“Body of this car was a bit dinged up,” Vernell says, giving me a wink, “but I pounded the dents out. It is going to be the fastest car on the rez—from here to Pine Ridge and back in less than an hour.”
Chet laughs for the first time; Sonny joins in.
“Not possible,” Sonny says. “One-way trip takes longer.”
“I know shortcuts,” Vernell answers.
Next we follow Vernell across his dirt driveway to a much bigger metal building, a prefab A-frame structure with a footprint at least ten times that of his house. It has an industrial rolling-steel door, a separate entrance door, large windows, and a dirt floor. Inside, covered with a blue tarp, is the ’31 Ford Phaeton Model A I rode in the last time I was here. And there’s another Ford coupe, this one a 1932 Deuce, the so-called Holy Grail of hot rods. It is painted black with yellowish-orange streaking flames across its sides, and the bright green, hand-painted monogram REZ DOG KRUZER on the hood. At the back of the building, I see a 1960 Ford Galaxie, two-tone, black with a white roof—both the hood and trunk lid are upright; it’s a work in progress. Here and there are stacks of tires and wheels, tools, saddles hanging in the rafters, ladders, a lawn mower, halogen floodlights on a yellow lighting stand, and along one wall, a dozen identical long-handled shovels.
Seems odd. “Vernell, why all the shovels?”
“So when I die, they can bury me quick.”
Sonny and Chet stroll about, eyes wide, envious, in awe.
“How do you have time for all this?” I ask Vernell.
“David, time is the one thing I have plenty of, especially in the winter. Even if you don’t have money, you’d be surprised what you can do with a lot of time.”
Back outside I take a quick survey of the other White Thunder vehicles, the ones parked about his yard: a red dual-cab Ford pickup emblazoned with the more subdued hand-painted monogram WHITE THUNDER RANCH; another newer, steel-gray dual-cab Ford pickup; the vintage Ford Fairlane; two fairly new Kia Forte sedans; a forest-green Honda FourTrax Rancher all-terrain vehicle; an old tractor; another Ford pickup truck, this one equipped with a Boss snowplow and floodlights; an old flatbed truck suitable for hauling large amounts of I don’t know what; and at least three horse trailers, each big enough for six horses. Some of the cars and pickups have license plates; others don’t.
Vernell leans back on the blade of the snowplow, Chet sits on a stack of tires, and Sonny leans against the door of the steel building. They chat about cars, about the upcoming school year, the unseasonably warm weather, about nothing and everything. They chat on until their mini-powwow runs its course, then the boys leap into the Camaro, rev it up, and bust a “u-ey,” peeling out of sight in a thermal cloud of gravel and dust.
“Really nice guys,” I say.
Vernell shrugs. “Yeah, at least they’re not crack
heads.”
YELLOW BEAR CANYON
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN
I’m craving another cup of Suzy’s chewy cowboy coffee. I’m happy that we’ve taken a few steps toward his little ranch house, toward caffeine nirvana, when Vernell abruptly stops, turns, and bumps into me. “Almost forgot,” he says. “I need to check on those crazy wasicu survivalists in Yellow Bear—need to make sure they are still surviving. You might want to meet them.”
“What about coffee?”
“No time. I’ll leave my windows down, and if that doesn’t work, I can always kick you.”
For this trip, we hop into Vernell’s red pickup truck, the one emblazoned with WHITE THUNDER RANCH in bold white letters on the back fenders. This is not one of his carefully restored, souped-up vehicles … it’s mud splattered, the doors are creaky, the key left in the ignition needs to be turned three or four times before the engine starts. There is much clutter in the cab, empty snack food packages and soda cans, flashlight, gloves, snow chains on the floor, a pocketknife, a hacksaw, and old editions of the Lakota Country Times newspaper. The moment the truck sputters to a start, the radio comes on full blast … KILI Radio, Voice of the Lakota. More of the old-time country music, the same laid-back, likely stoned announcer we heard earlier on our way back from the bombing range. We rumble up the gravel driveway, over the cattle guard, and turn left onto the main blacktop, where for the first few miles the view out my side window is very beautiful but oddly motionless. I might as well be looking at a landscape painting, perhaps by the great John Mix Stanley—rolling carpet of pumpkin-orange prairie grass; chartreuse knapweeds, their tiny purple buds pushing out like crowning heads of the about to be born; intertwined tentacles of a snarling oak tree, leafless, as are the tangled sagebrush and chokecherry branches. I see a few abandoned vehicles and machines around one-story frame houses in dire need of general repairs, but no children playing in the dirt. No old people sitting outside, smoking. No dogs, no horses. No motion. The road curves this way and that. It is serene, and with my caffeine tank empty it is no that surprise I doze off, start dreaming that I’m driving a shiny red 1947 Ford coupe that Vernell has restored for me across a flat plain of tall grass on a wonderfully warm breezy day when out of the distant sun I spot a squadron of P51 Mustang dive-bombers screaming down upon me. With a tight grip on the steering wheel, I turn sharply down a steep embankment as my eyes open and I realize I may have been dreaming about dive-bombers but the embankment is all too real. Vernell’s truck violently descends into Yellow Bear Canyon, a stomach-churning near-vertical plunge on a road that should have but doesn’t have switchbacks. Wide awake, I scream for Vernell to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, but instead of hitting the brakes, he stomps on the gas and hollers, “Hoye! Hoye! Time to wake up, Bunka Dude!”
Good Friday on the Rez Page 15
