In The Company of Wolves_Follow The Raven

by James Michael Larranaga

  “Steak and beans all right?” Jimmy asked. “You’re not a vegan, are you?”

  “Steak and beans sound great,” she said, trying not to come off as defensive.

  “Tonight you’re a guest on sacred land,” Hawk said. “What would you like to drink? Water, beer, or wine?”

  “Glass of wine,” she said, surprised that they’d brought it along.

  “Red or white?”

  The smoky aroma and the sound of steaks sizzling above the fire triggered her response. “Red.”

  Hawk opened a bottle and poured a single glass for her to taste, as if they were in some posh restaurant. She sniffed the fruity bouquet and sipped the cherry and vanilla overtones. “It’s perfect, Hawk.”

  He poured two more glasses, handing one to Jimmy, and they sat with her on the log, Hawk to her left and Jimmy to her right. “This is Joe’s land?” she asked.

  “For thousands of years it was everyone’s land,” Hawk said. “But the Europeans arrived and asked us who owned it. Nobody owned it.”

  “But Joe owns it now?”

  “He’s buying back the land from ranchers and farmers,” Hawk said. “Tribal members who have money sometimes do that.”

  “What will he do with the land?”

  “He’s not doing anything with it. He’s setting the prairie free again,” Jimmy said, sipping wine.

  “Preserving it,” she said. “Like the land the government purchased for national parks?”

  “The government stole the land from the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa, who all consider it sacred.” Hawk recounted the numerous treaties broken by the US government since 1850. When the Europeans asked to pass through this territory on their way to California gold, the Indians allowed it. When the government asked if the railroad could pass through, the Indians agreed, but then settlers began encroaching on the land, ignoring treaties to find gold in the Black Hills. “And they just kept coming like waves of a great ocean, one generation after another,” Hawk said. “And our people fled to our small islands in the ocean, reservations that kept shrinking.”

  She knew some of this from her US History classes, but only as dates to memorize for tests. It was all part of the birth of a nation, a melting pot that would one day make America better than any other country the world had ever known. Now here she sat among indigenous people, feeling the sorrow in Hawk’s voice to her left and Jimmy’s quiet frustration to her right—two generations cheated out of their freedom like their ancestors before them.

  “Isn’t there a way to get your land back?” she asked.

  “Some tribal members sued the government in the 1980s,” said Hawk, “and the Sioux were awarded $105 million. Largest sum ever awarded to Indians for illegally seized property.”

  “We refused to accept the money. Lots of different opinions among tribal members about that,” Jimmy said.

  “Money for land isn’t the answer,” Hawk said.

  “Then why do you want the land back?” she asked.

  “To protect it,” Jimmy said.

  “And set it free again,” Hawk added. “The Wasicu thirst for gold and other minerals has never been our way.”

  This was a refreshing outlook given the recent mortgage crisis, a modern-day land grab where too many people were sold mortgages they couldn’t afford. Hawk and Jimmy didn’t want land they could sell to somebody; they wanted to return the land to its natural state.

  “The t-shirts you bought in the gift shop…” she said. “Do you still think of us as terrorists?”

  “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” Jimmy shrugged.

  “But Indians from many tribes have fought for this land,” Hawk said. “You know the Iroquois also declared war on Germany and Japan, right?”

  “No.”

  “And Navajo soldiers used their native tongue to defeat Japanese code breakers in the South Pacific,” Hawk said.

  Candace was aware of that fact, but it wasn’t until now that she saw the great irony and the gift the Navajo nation had given the United States. After years of losing their language and culture, they used it to help the government defend the homeland.

  “Terrorism is different today. We’re in this together,” Hawk assured her. “That’s what the shirt means to me.”

  After dinner she crawled into the tent alone, Hawk insisting that he and Jimmy sleep outside by the fire, under the stars. She watched the flicker of fire on the nylon tent, a guest on Sioux land, and felt remorse for what had happened to them and all the other tribes that had been marginalized. The remorse wasn’t something Hawk or Jimmy had forced on her; it was self-imposed, an awakening that left her anxious. She turned to her phone; she had a good enough connection to go online. She learned from her online research that more than 40,000 Indians had fought in Vietnam, some to protect their sovereign nations, and others because it was the only career they could find off the reservation. Either way, they were always protecting their motherland, and for that she was thankful.

  By eight o’clock the next morning, they had refilled the truck’s tank with fuel and the cooler with ice at Al’s Oasis and were on the road again. Candace sat in the back seat, eating a granola bar and watching Hawk page through his travel diary, talking with his grandson about possible stops along the way. At times they would chatter and joke in Lakota and she’d stare out the window, wondering what they were talking about.

  The landscape west of the Missouri River was made up of soft, rolling hillsides of green prairie grass speckled with yellow wildflowers. As they drove further into South Dakota, weathered billboards hailed to them from the roadside with messages like: “Free Ice,” “Wild West Show,” “WALL DRUG.”

  Candace thought about what Hawk had said, how early settlers passing through the Dakota territories with dreams of finding gold in California eventually settled there instead. And they sold supplies, lodging, and entertainment to the next wave of travelers hoping to make it to the West Coast. For some traveling by horse, this journey must’ve been the proverbial road to hell, paved with the good intentions of prosperity.

  “Where are the towns, Hawk?” she asked, looking out at the hillsides and slopes.

  “Closer to the train tracks. We’re going there now.”

  “Where?”

  “Badlands,” Hawk said. “Homesteaders tried to settle there but they failed.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s not fertile like this,” Jimmy said, nodding to the prairie.

  Hawk turned a page in his travel log. “Indians thrived in that area and could hunt and find water, but homesteaders couldn’t. Too bad,” he joked.

  Less than two hours later they arrived at the entrance of Badlands National Park, stopping at a ranger’s station. Jimmy bought a day pass and set it on the dashboard as they drove into the park.

  “The Oglala Lakota live near here,” Hawk said. “The tribe my wife was from.”

  “You want to stop and say hello to anybody?” Jimmy asked.

  “No.”

  “You sure? Joe thought you should.”

  Hawk waved his hand. “Keep driving.”

  They drove across the flat grassland toward outcrops of rock and towers of gray clay that reminded Candace of the moon’s dry, white surface. Jimmy parked the truck at the first lot and they stepped out into arid, 90-degree heat as tourists in the distance climbed their way up and around rock formations.

  “Are they allowed to crawl around on it?” she asked.

  “Only in a few places,” Hawk said.

  “Let’s climb it,” Jimmy said.

  She followed them up a narrow trail to an incline, where Jimmy helped his grandfather and Candace up. Candace followed them higher up along a ridge and rocks of dry, hardened mud. “What created this?”

  “Erosion, wind, and water,” Hawk said.

  “And ice,” Jimmy added. “Took millions of years to form this.”

  She looked between two spires of mud at a valley of rock towers as if she we
re looking down onto an ancient city. “It’s like a desert, so lonely.”

  “That’s why it’s sacred,” Hawk said. “Barren places are where you find yourself.”

  “I see why the homesteaders couldn’t make it here,” she said.

  “Oh, this isn’t the place where they tried to settle,” Hawk said. “That’s a few miles away. Let’s go.”

  They climbed back down the rock, sweating in the day’s blinding sun, then Jimmy drove them through the park, winding down into the valley between rock formations wrapped in colored stripes of sediment before they climbed higher again and reached another small parking lot.

  “Pull in there,” Hawk said.

  They got out of the truck and walked to a grassy, windy cliff that looked down onto flat land.

  Hawk pointed. “That’s where the homesteaders tried to live.”

  “Farming down there?” she said.

  “Yep, they sold them small parcels of land,” Hawk said. “In good seasons they could’ve made it, but the dust bowl drove them out of here.”

  “I suppose there was some relief that they had left your sacred land?”

  Hawk shrugged. “By then we were already on reservations…” he said, his voice dropping off as he gazed out into the Badlands, the wind blowing through his silvered hair.

  Jimmy rested a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to stop at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation?”

  Hawk ignored Jimmy’s question, still gazing out on the horizon, and Candace felt an undercurrent of tension. Whatever it was they weren’t saying, it made her uncomfortable. “Am I the reason you won’t stop there?”

  “It’s not only you, Candace,” Hawk said. “It’s Quin.”

  “Quin?”

  “We stopped by Joe’s last night out of respect for Joe,” Hawk said. “But he’s got a big mouth, and he’s probably already told everybody he knows at Pine Ridge that we’re passing through.”

  “What does Joe have against Quin?”

  “He suspects he’s a fed,” Hawk said.

  “Well that was pretty obvious,” she said. “What did Joe mean when he said the FBI recruits tribal members?”

  Hawk sighed into the wind. “The FBI works with tribal police, but the bureau’s track record hasn’t been a good one.”

  “And the bureau recruits tribal members to be informants, to spy on other tribal members,” Jimmy said.

  “But not Quin,” Hawk insisted. “They haven’t gotten to him yet.”

  “How do you know?” Jimmy said. “Quin’s official title is informant, yeah?”

  “Quin wouldn’t spy on us,” Hawk said.

  “Even if they’re fighting terrorism? What happened at Pine Ridge could happen again on a bigger scale,” Jimmy warned.

  “What happened at Pine Ridge?” Candace asked.

  “Goes back to a long time ago,” Hawk said. “Some tribes began to unite because of the Prophet Wovoka’s vision. God showed him how to live peacefully among other tribes along with white settlers. In his vision, he learned the Ghost Dance that he taught to the people, and we began to unite and celebrate together. But US soldiers got nervous and misunderstood our celebrations and they chased the Miniconjou Lakota and Hunkpapa Sioux, who sought refuge near Pine Ridge. That was the Wounded Knee Massacre in the winter of 1890. More than 150 Indians died that day.”

  “I’m sorry, Hawk.”

  “And they carved up the reservation land into smaller reservations, dividing us,” Jimmy said.

  “What does that have to do with the feds today?” she asked. “It was so long ago.”

  “Was it?” Hawk said. “In ‘73, members of the American Indian Movement protested with the Oglala at Pine Ridge. Government had us surrounded. Both sides exchanged gunfire; they killed a tribal member barely older than either of you.”

  Hawk described to her the Wounded Knee Incident: a stand-off that lasted seventy-one days. An FBI agent was mortally wounded and a US Marshall paralyzed by a bullet. The Oglala Lakota man who was killed was Buddy Lamont, a thirty-one-year-old who had served his country in Vietnam. He was shot by a government sniper and buried on site by tribal members. It was his tragic death that eventually brought an end to the occupation.

  “You were there, Hawk?” she asked.

  “Me and Joe were with AIM. After that, we went our separate ways. Now you understand why I can’t parade you around Pine Ridge? Why Joe is so suspicious of Quin?”

  “But you trust Quin,” she noted. “Why?”

  “I’ve lived with him and I know his spirit. He’s the raven.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “They had him locked in a hospital for a while. Quin’s kind of crazy.”

  “What do you mean, Jimmy?”

  “Sees things, hears things,” he said, pointing to his head.

  “Jimmy!” Hawk said, grabbing his grandson by the arm. “He has his demons just like anybody else.”

  “Why would the FBI work with somebody who has a condition like schizophrenia?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t have a condition,” Hawk said. “He has a gift. Quin is a Windwalker.”

  “That’s why the bureau wants him,” Jimmy said. “And what Joe meant is they’ve been recruiting tribal members for many years, searching for those who have the gift.”

  Quin had instructions from Agent Kruse to check in with the bureau’s office within twenty-four hours of landing in Phoenix. They would provide transportation to his home; but Kruse never mentioned that the bureau would also provide a support person, who was really a chaperone. Agent Maria Lopez was a short, talkative, fifteen-year veteran agent who treated Quin as if they were life-long partners. On the drive from Phoenix to Tucson, she complained about her life in too much detail, which included her divorce and two sons living with her ex-husband in a golf community with his new wife. Her story wasn’t unique among the bureau’s 15,000 special agents who served their country, sometimes at the expense of their own personal lives. Job stress and the need to keep everything confidential and bottled up eventually tore families apart.

  Quin steered the black Suburban off the highway onto a dirt road and changed the subject. “Why are you really here, Agent Lopez? I know where my family home is.”

  “It’s not yours anymore. It went into foreclosure after the murders. And guess who bought it. The bureau,” she said.

  “Why would the bureau want it?”

  “For forensic training purposes. And, it’s conveniently located near the border. DEA camp out there once in a while.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “It’s practically my second home,” she said. “All the nights I spent there gave my ex plenty of time to find a new honey.”

  He steered around a pothole on a road covered in sand drifts. “You’ve spent nights there?”

  “They don’t got a Ritz Carlton in Santa Cruz county. And if they did, the government wouldn’t pay for it. I got a friend who works for the service. They stay in places like that, but not us,” she said, shaking her head. “Take a left at that tall cactus and follow the dry creek bed and you’ll save us a good ten minutes.”

  She knew the area as well as he did, even better, and he followed the creek bed, the truck bobbing over rocks as he reacquainted himself with the red outcrops in the distance. The desert, with its orange haze and rocky hills, was familiar terrain to him, like déjà vu. Above him in the distance, two ravens soared along updrafts higher and higher, like kites that he and Autumn would fly in the late afternoon sun on days when they knew their father would return from his travels.

  Quin’s boyhood home looked the same as he remembered it—a small cracker box house with a swing set in the front and no neighbors in sight. The nearest town, ten miles away, was Nogales, Arizona’s largest international border town, which borders Sonora, Mexico. The highways meeting there comprised a major intersection in the CANAMEX Corridor, connecting Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Quin’s father, a long-haul trucker, made his livin
g on that highway, crossing back and forth from the US to Mexico and sometimes up to the Canadian border.

  “What do you think of it?” Lopez asked.

  “Looks the same,” Quin said, parking the truck on the dirt driveway.

  “I’ll unlock it.” She stepped out of the truck. She and Quin walked to the front door. “Welcome home! I’ll give you a few minutes,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

  He stepped onto the sand, a wave of heat engulfing him as he walked up the stone path for the first time in a dozen years. He’d left as a frightened boy and now returned as a man on a journey that had come full circle. There was a dream catcher twisting in the wind above the door, just like in his truck. Stepping through the doorway was like going back in time. The family room looked the same; thick brown carpet, a threadbare couch, a coffee table, and a TV that were all too big for the room. The kitchen was the same, too, except the bureau had replaced the round table with a rectangular one and bench seats. He crossed into the back hallway to his parents’ bedroom and it was empty except for a single chair and lights on tripods. The floor was hardwood, with no carpet. This room had been made into a makeshift interrogation room, something the DEA and the bureau used when they needed more information before dragging thugs off to jail. He turned and walked to the room he had once shared with Autumn. Turning the knob on the closed door, he heard the hinge creak as he entered and he saw their two beds in the exact same position as he had left them, his near the door, and Autumn’s near the window. He wondered if Agent Lopez slept here in his old room.

  It was like slipping into a dream world, with some memories that were happy, like dinners with his family, and others that were dark, like the alcohol-inspired arguments his parents would start after he and his sister went to bed. He walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. The white light of day filled the room and he squinted toward the desert, searching for her. If Dillan and Susan could spot this place with their remote viewing, could they also spot Autumn somewhere out there?