“I will act as the boy’s father during this time of mourning.”
Carlos had lost his parents when he was a child. He had grown up with relatives, and left home at the age of 16, when his family realized he was gay. He had never returned to Cuerna Vaca since that day.
In the other room we heard the sound of a new life being born. Felicia came out smiling. Her face dropped as soon as she saw Carlos’ body wrapped in a cloth. Grandfather Jim spoke in a serious tone:
“We must remove the body from this place at once. It is not good for the wanagi ghost of Carlos to stay close to the child.” Grandpa Jim went into mourning as if he were his own father.
“As the father during wašigla, the period of mourning, I may not hold a child, I may not touch a weapon, I may not run or make any violent gestures,” Grandpa Jim explained to me.
He had gone into a period of mourning and nothing should disturb it.
I remembered the Calf Woman in the lodge handing me the rites. Now I knew that the ghost keeping ceremony she had mentioned had finally come. I wondered when the other rites would be realized. We held a brief ghost keeping ceremony called wakicagapi for Carlos the next day. Usually, the ceremony would have lasted days to allow the spirit to be released. Normally, Grandpa Jim or Carlos’ real father would have carried out rituals for four days before inviting everyone to have a feast. At that ritual, Carlos’ family would have given away all of their belongings and asked people from the village to bring them new ones. But Carlos had no blood relatives and we were at war. We feasted on beans warmed on a sterno and released his šicun spirit east in the wind.
Chapter 28 – Owl
After Carlos was killed, Felicia and I retreated into a cocoon. I don’t know if she wanted to be away from the others as much as I did. But I felt that if we could just disappear into our own world everything would be OK. We hid ourselves into the museum where the camp stored some of our dwindling supplies.
We walked into the tiny museum in search of ourselves. We were searching for our past, searching for our present, searching for our future in the walls of the building I’d come to know so well. I must have stepped in here a hundred times and never once did I look at the artifacts or pictures around us. I tried not to see them. Tried to push ‘em out of my mind. This wasn’t something I thought about clearly. It was something I lived.
I held Felicia’s hand in mine. I could feel the softness of her skin. We didn’t have to talk. We didn’t have to use words. I remembered the night we’d shared in the car facing the massacre site. That was the night when we had first made love, the night when I’d first seen a piece of myself in that massacre site.
Back hundreds and thousands of years ago—back when we were free—our people traveled our land without being bound by one place. All the men were warriors then. We would take our women and our children to the open plains of the black hills in the spring and we’d come back to the foot of the hills in winter. Whitetail Deer was right about the strangeness of time. About the way time in the prairie doesn’t walk in a straight line. The wind moves through the reeds in the middle of summer carrying seeds hundreds of miles to the place where they will grow. Time does not walk in a straight line. When Tunkašila watched over us, he watched over the dead and the living. We were all together in one place, one time without fences.
Outside, I heard shots being fired. I wasn’t afraid. I could smell the brush fire of the flares being tossed to encircle us. Here we were again, being pushed into a shrinking circle of land.
Felicia and I walked along the edges of the wall looking at the pictures. A white man with his hand on his hip was standing in a ditch filled with our bodies. Dozens of bodies piled outside the ditch waiting to be thrown on top of the others. The man looked young, he looked calm and determined, like he had a job to do and nothing was going to stop him. The job of piling the bodies of women and children, some still holding each other by the hand. Babies in their mother’s arms. Young boys, who tried to outrun their enemies. The man was wearing a hat and no coat despite the obvious cold with remnants of snow on the frozen ground. Tossing bodies into a ditch could keep a man warm.
I didn’t want to look no more, but we were here. This was why we were here. Another picture showed frozen bodies scattered along the flat ground of the massacre site. White men in horses making their way around the bodies examining the result of their work.
Sammy was right about the museum. It had been owned by two white families for decades. Here it was, this decrepit museum calling us to see the desecration of our people. The place was run down. Artifacts were dusty in dirty cases. Clothing worn by our killed ancestors were tossed any old way in a pile in a dusty case. They were trying to make a buck off the misery of our people. But Grey was right about the balance of life being thrown off every time one of us killed or got killed. Couldn’t the Gildersleeves, the Jones and the others feel their own balance coming undone?
“Look!” Felicia called out to me from the far corner of the museum. She was standing by a large framed picture of a man, a white general wearing his finest suit. He must have represented some kind of standards of beauty, a handsome man with his elegance and the force in his eyes. He looked no more than 25 years old. In his arms, he was carrying a little girl, an Indian infant girl with her hair sticking straight up like it was trying to find the sky. She was dressed in the finest white dress a baby could ever have. Felicia and I stood frozen in front of the picture. We couldn’t speak. She held my hand in hers. This time, I heard her reading aloud the caption under the man’s picture:
“General Colby and his daughter Clara, also known as “Lost Bird.” “
Lost Bird, Lost Bird. I thought about this baby girl raised by whites. Felicia continued to read the caption:
Lost bird was an infant child found on December 29, 1890 by General Leonard Wright Colby from the United States Seventh Cavalry. She was rescued from the hands of her dead mother after the Wounded Knee battle and raised by the General Colby and his wife Clara.
A strange feeling came over me. I wanted to puke. And then I thought of my gun and the number of bullets I had left to shoot when I’d go back to the firing line.
That night, Felicia took our bedrolls and we slept behind a case of dried bean cans. I held Felicia tightly that night. So tightly she said she couldn’t feel herself breathing. When I drifted off to sleep, I had a dream.
I was standing by the side of a creek, more like a lake, a large reflective pool of water. I saw myself standing there, at first alone, inches from the water’s edge, only I couldn’t see my own reflection. I walked closer and closer and closer until my feet were in the water. I looked down and saw myself. Behind me were many people, children, men my father’s age, grandmothers and grandfathers. Women holding infants. I thought I saw Felicia and turned to find her standing behind me, alone. The people were gone. Felicia was holding a newborn in her arms, a tiny infant with a little red hat. I tried to go to her, but I couldn’t reach her so I retreated into the water’s edge. When I looked at her again, blood trickled from between her legs onto the earth. And each time a drop fell I heard the sound of a baby crying in the distance.
I looked up into the sky to find my way and saw the spotted eagle flying above me in a circle. I called to him. He came and landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “Tunkašila. Tunkašila is here for you.” Now the sky was full of birds. Magpies, swallows, meadowlarks, and sparrows. The meadowlark spoke to me.
“I’m your messenger.”
I searched for Felicia but she had gone. I saw a young man standing on the other side of the lake. He was alone and crying. I walked away, leaving him alone in tears. I walked to the edge of the forest and saw many eagle feathers scattered on the ground and trampled like there had been a stampede of horses. Night fell and the wind from the west rose. I heard thunder and I knew that it had come from the great eagle flapping his wings and that lighting was the flash in his eyes.
In the distance, blue light lit u
p the sky. I searched for the company of others but I knew they were on the other side of the forest. I walked into the thickest bend among trees and saw that many creatures were living there. I heard the howling of wolves in the distance and when I did, it gave me great strength and I leapt through the forest and came out on the other side.
When I arrived, the sun had risen again and I came upon a clearing with many butterflies. I could see the residues of their cocoons scattered on the ground as I walked towards the sun. I came upon a tree. The largest tree of the black hills; its roots pushing deeply into the ground. I sat at the foot and when my feet touched its roots I heard it whispering to me:
“We’re all here. We’re here inside the tree with you.” There were many voices in the tree. Voices of children and the cries of babies. Voices of men talking and women singing. The tree sang me a song in its many voices and it went something like this:
The red man lives in the branches
The white man sings in the branches
The black man sees in the branches
The yellow man dreams in the branches
And their hearts live in the roots
When I woke, I saw that I had tears on my cheeks and gladness in my heart.
**
Our camp was running low on supplies and there was no way we’d make it through if some of us didn’t go out and get what we needed. On the sixtieth day, I volunteered with Jerry to leave camp and pick up a load of supplies left for us by our many supporters outside the camp.
“I’ll be back,” I promised Felicia.
“You better, she said rubbing her belly in a circular motion,” she leaned forward and placed her lips on mine one last time. “I’m proud of you,” she said before I turned around was off in the night.
We left the camp at night when the firing was heaviest. It was the only way. Leaving in daylight only meant being seen and running the chance of getting shot point blank or get stopped by the Feds. The first line of fire was covered by goons. It was harder to make our way through that line because we were up against guys like us. Guys who knew the land as well as we did. The Feds had better weapons and toys but we outsmart them when it came to the land. The problem with goons is that they had the weapons of the Feds but the mind of an Indian. If you made it through the line of goons, and then the Feds, there were still the ranchers in the hills ready to shoot us like coyotes.
We walked the four miles and made it past the first government roadblock next to the Cluster housing. The same roadblock manned by the guys who had shot Carlos. It took us hours to get from one point to another, because we were working real hard not to be seen. Jerry was good at turning himself into a snake. He’d crawl in the smoldering grass and hide for hours, not moving an inch. Jerry was fearless and the truth is he had nothing to lose but that wasn’t true for me. My mind would get in the way. I’d think of Felicia in her blue dress and the fear would come again. We’d have to stay still for hours motionless in the grass, or behind a boulder or in the gully or a ditch and wait for the positions of a single Fed to change. Sometimes, they’d turn to light a cigarette or they’d switch posts. It was in those few moments of change that we found ways to move forward.
By morning, we reached the hills right outside of Porcupine, eight or nine miles away from camp. We knew we weren’t free to get around. Having the face of an Indian gave you rights to an automatic criminal record. On the outskirts of the city, we walked through the hills to get to the other side of town without having to cross it. We came upon a ranch in the hills, home of vigilantes. I saw a meadowlark circling a nearby tree. I remembered the phrase in my dream:
“I am your messenger.” I knew something was wrong.
Jerry was ahead. He turned to me.
“Get down,” he said. Just a few feet away, two ranchers came right out of the house carrying rifles on their way somewhere. I heard one of them say to the other:
“There’re no Indians at Wounded Knee, just a pack of niggers, spics and Cherokees.” They both laughed.
We made it into town scot-free where we met a man named Jack, a Brulé who had stashed a load of supplies for us in an abandonned shack on the edge of town.
“Hey man, thanks for helping out the movement.” Jerry told Jack when he saw us. I took one look at the massive 80 pound load of supplies and started laughing.
“How the heck are we going to carry this back to camp?” I said looking at Jerry.
“Beats me but we better start figuring it out.”
The load was divided into large military packs we each strapped to our backs. With each step forward, I felt like I was about to topple back and lose my balance. Jerry and I had a good laugh about how stupid we must have looked with that much crap on our back. We left town through the hills again. This time it was a lot harder to hide when we came upon the enemy. Jerry was always ahead. And to this day, I wonder what would have happened if I’d been a little faster, if I’d been born a little smaller like Jerry.
“Freeze! Put your arms up in the air!” I heard the cop yell in my back. I was done. I looked ahead to see if I could see Jerry but he’d managed to hide before the cops could see him.
They took me to the station. The whole time I thought about Felicia and the promise I’d made to her.
“I promise I’ll be back soon. I promise I’ll be back.”
Chapter 29 – Owl
I’d been in jail 90 days when the sky opened up in a raging storm. The less you see the sky, the more you think about it. Hadn’t seen a whole stretch of sky since that night with Felicia when we lay down under a blanket on my last night on the res. I heard the thunder, thunder and lightning and I moved over to the window.
Sammy, the Jamaican, said, “What ya doin’ man?” He always finished his sentences with man which made us name him the Jamaican. Sam was no Jamaican. Born and raised—as much as the system can raise a boy—in Rapid City, 110 miles north of Pine Ridge.
His mother died on the day he was born and his father never knew him. He was raised in foster homes. Twenty-two to be exact. He liked to say, after a while, man, all those cracker families sure looked the same to me. All those crackers look alike.
We liked to have a good laugh over this one. The way we’d heard all our lives: “a nigger’s a nigger’s a nigger. Niggers and Indians, all the same.”
I could see a tiny stretch of sky from the place where I stood by the window. If I pressed my cheek against the rough surface of the wall and looked up, I could almost see a triangle of sky cut out by the sides of the window and the angle of the building. The sky lit up and raged. Streaks of light tore up the clouds opening up like vaults from a bank. That’s when I saw it. I saw the bird come to my window.
It came to me, came straight to me and landed on the side of my cell. I could feel the presence of Tunkašila watching over me. The bird just sat on the side of the window without a song. She looked at me, her tiny eye blinking every once in a while like she was trying to get a real good look at me. I didn’t move. Didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to speak and tell Jamaican not to come over. But if he came, she would be gone. I just sat there waiting. I waited for a long time. We sat there together she and I listening to the rumbling of the sky. And then she hopped, hopped once to the middle of the window ledge and stood there. I saw that her wing was hanging loosely, the feathers pulled out of line, touching the edge of the window. Her wing was broken. We looked at each other one last time, she blinked then she was gone.
I knew something was wrong. Something was wrong with the babies but there was nothing I could do except sit in this cell and talk to Tunkanšila.
**
First day I came to Grand Mal Penitentiary, I overheard one of the guards say to another:
“Only two Indians killed over there? What’s the matter with those guys? Give me an automatic and 71 days to do it and I kill every last one of ‘em.” I heard their laughter echoing from all around our cell and I was grateful I couldn’t see either of them. Later I found
out the guard who said that was Custer. We named him Custer, cause of the way he liked to think we Indians were weak and could be broken. Some of us had been killed in jail, some of us had been beaten and bruised but none of us, not a one had been broken.
The trick to surviving in jail was not to make eye contact with the pigs. The smarter ones would notice and they’d push you to look at them. Some of ‘em didn’t know why they were mad but they were mad ‘cause you weren’t looking at them and they’d try to make you do it. Never look at a rabid dog. Never look ‘em in the eye ‘cause they’ll lock right in there with you and never let go.
After 90 days in that shit hole, they let me go, which never happens.
“The Jamaican said: the jails are full man, they’re making room for better criminals than you.”
They let me out on a Monday without a dime in my pocket. I looked into every cell as they escorted me out to the exit. I looked at every face in there and committed them to memory. If freedom is what I was going to find out there on the other side of these walls, I was going to live it for our whole band of brothers locked up inside.
“Walk nigger, walk!” The guard said to me on my way out. It was the same pig who’d spat at me on my way in. Those pigs had made us all niggers and them crackers. In the last cell on the last cell block on my way out, I recognized Marty, Crazy fucking Jimmy’s little cousin.
“Hey, Marty,” I yelled. “Hey,” before the guard whopped me upside the head. I saw Marty look around to see how on earth someone making his way out of that god-forsaken hole could possibly know his name. But before he had a chance to see my face, we’d already turned the corner.
I walked for two hours south in the direction of Colonia Pine Hills until I hit a stretch of highway that would take me straight into Pine Ridge. When the sun hit the highest point, a truck stopped and picked me up.
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