by Win Blevins
The boys crashed down with the lodge and capered off laughing.
Now Flat Club began to reenact their great moment. Up the side of his own lodge he ran. And slipped back. And backed up and ran harder. And slipped back. On the third or fourth try Spotted Tail grabbed the cooking tripod, applied it to Flat Club’s bottom, and boosted him up.
The man clawed the lodge poles desperately and hauled himself to the top. He looked over the gathered crowd impudently and shook a fist in triumph. Some of the women trilled mockingly.
Spotted Tail hollered at him to take off his breechcloth. “Show us your ce is up to it!” he yelled. Flat Club took off his breechcloth and waggled his erect penis at everyone.
Some laughed, some made sounds of disapproval.
His wives had had enough. “Get down here!” they shouted. “You’re making a fool of yourself!”
Flat Club looked at them insolently and ceremoniously sat down, bare-bottomed, in the crotch of the poles.
Spotted Tail darted into the lodge.
The wives harangued Flat Club—“Come down, get off there, you fool; get back down here….”
Inside the lodge Curly had the dry grasses and sedges ready, in a big pile next to the center fire. He’d built it up to a small flame.
Spotted Tail’s eyes rolled wildly.
He tossed the grass on the fire.
Furious flames shot up—and up—straight up the tie-down rope, straight up toward the center hole and out, in a wonderful, whipping rush.
Spotted Tail burst out of the lodge, Curly right behind.
A wail to remember—“Ye-e-o-o-w!—a once-in-a-lifetime shriek, a truly inspired scream, a bellow to touch the clouds.
Flat Club jumped up. He grabbed his scrotum and penis with one hand and tried to cover both buttocks with the other. He did a dance. With the divine agility of the drunk, he did another dance, right on the tips of the lodge poles, a tribute to the muse of drunkenness.
Then, still holding his tender parts, he leapt. Perhaps only a drunk could have leapt so high. His legs kicked furiously, and he seemed to swim up through the air. Sadly but inevitably, he descended. He hit the lodge cover about a third of the way down. He rolled, he tumbled like a buffalo bull to earth. Roaring, he catapulted down the lodge cover, cartwheeled across the hard earth, and at last came to rest in a pile of fresh dog droppings.
Everyone was laughing, especially the two wives. But no one enjoyed the spectacle as much as Spotted Tail.
The big man laughed. He held his belly and laughed. He sat, shook, and laughed. He lay back full-length, beat his heels into the ground, flailed his arms, and laughed and laughed and crooned his delight. Tears of joy flooded down his face.
Curly’s belly twisted and squeezed.
On the way back to the lodge, Curly blurted his question to Sweetwater Woman. After all, she’d broached the subject. “He has decided to dare the soldier chiefs to find him?”
His own blood burned his face. It was a wildly intrusive question. Curly’s stomach wriggled with self-disgust. But he still waited to hear the answer.
Sweetwater Woman’s face ran with feelings. “After one half-moon,” she said softly, “he will throw his life at the feet of the wasicu.”
She walked away, her back rigid.
Curly looked hard at his uncle, walking behind.
Spotted Tail was holding his face in both hands, shaking, relishing, basking in, wallowing in the fun of his own joke.
THE MOOSE BIRD
The entire village went to Laramie to watch Spotted Tail turn himself over to the soldiers—up the Running Water River and down the familiar trail toward the Shell River and the fort. Spotted Tail must have told Little Thunder of his decision privately, but he never mentioned it otherwise, not even within the lodge.
In the way that village people have, everyone knew, and whispered about it. Some of the men muttered disputatiously. “I wouldn’t do that,” said one.
“Let the Wasp buzz all he wants,” agreed his friend. “We will fight.”
Other men bragged the same way under their breath. “Lakota men do not give up their lives because a wasicu says so.” They cast at each other dark looks that meant, “Lakota die as warriors—we do not submit to being hanged by the neck.”
“Let’s go kill Harney,” several grumbled.
But everyone remembered what White Wing had said in the council lodge. The Wasp had promised to sting any village of Lakota he could find, hostile or peaceful, sting them anywhere, anytime, sting women and children as well as men. Everyone would suffer until the five men who attacked the mail coach surrendered themselves. And the Wasp had said that if the Lakota killed him, The One They Used for Father, the President of the United States, would send ten more armies, or a hundred more armies, until the Lakota obeyed and gave up the five offenders.
Some men muttered, but the people knew that Spotted Tail was showing greatness in this decision. He was acting like a man who belonged not to himself or even to his family, but to the entire tribe. Spotted Tail was showing himself truly a shirt wearer.
The sandy-haired youth wondered about this. He wanted to be a warrior, a guardian of the people, and as a warrior to make sacrifices. But to become a leader and be owned by the people … He thought he needed to find his own good, red road, the road purely of a warrior, and hold resolutely to it. He wished he could talk to Hump about this, but his hunka was gone north to visit his Mniconjou relatives.
A-i-i-i, would Harney really hang Spotted Tail? For stealing the mail and the paper money and flinging it all over the prairie and shooting the men who fought back?
And what about the other two warriors who had gone on that raid, Red Leaf and Long Chin? They were living with all the relatives of the dead chief Bear-Scattering among the Oglala now, since the Sicangu had kicked them out. Would they give themselves up? Spotted Tail was a big-spirited man, but the people weren’t so sure about the other two. And what about the two boys who had gone along? They didn’t have anything to do with it, really. Surely Little Thunder wouldn’t tell the soldiers who the boys were.
If Spotted Tail threw his life away and the others didn’t, would the Wasp be satisfied? Or would he murder all the Lakota women and children? What if only Spotted Tail surrendered? What if the three warriors gave themselves up and the boys didn’t?
When you were dealing with a wasicu you never knew.
“You take the shot,” whispered Spotted Tail.
Curly held his point on the deer, but the arrow missed. He was missing too many shots. He had no inner stillness. All day long every day he squirmed with one thought: Spotted Tail was throwing his life away—what were Spotted Tail’s thoughts about that? It was anguish for Curly not to know.
On the way in to Laramie they’d gone hunting every day. They rode out ahead of the village or far to one side, pushing their ponies pretty hard, trying to jump deer out of the cedar breaks.
Maybe Spotted Tail was making a last stab at feeding the people, self-sacrificial to the end. Curly didn’t know. The big man seemed focused on hunting but not on making meat.
Curly’s uncle stopped his big American horse and looked over the country intently. He studied sign with a deep concentration. Was he distracted by fears of his approaching death? By thoughts of his family and their survival?
Spotted Tail seemed absorbed simply in the things of the hunt, game trails, the lie of the land, water here and none there, rimrock that way, what grasses spread this way and that, the wind, the sun, the myriad creatures of the earth. He insisted that Curly take all the shots and didn’t mind when the youth missed.
Maybe the one concession Spotted Tail made to his imminent death was that they went back to camp every sunset. Spotted Tail spent the evenings and nights in his own lodge. He saw no one but his family, talked with no one but his family. He seemed relaxed and didn’t seem to notice their anxiety. Before dawn each morning he and Curly headed out again to hunt.
Curly cramped with wanting to know.
&nbs
p; Toward evening they were walking their horses gently back to camp. It was their last hunt. Tomorrow the band would reach Fort Laramie. The people would greet their Oglala cousins already camped there. Curly would see his father and mothers. The three men who were throwing their lives away would spend a last night with their families.
Spotted Tail seemed to want silence. He rode looking around at the rolling plains, here and there broken by rimrock, sometimes marked by the dark lines that were wet or dry watercourses. Curly had the impression that Spotted Tail was breathing deeply, heartily. His uncle seemed content.
Suddenly Spotted Tail broke the silence.
“Nephew, do you know what it means when we say it is a good day to die?”
Curly took a long look at the one he called uncle, and Hawk stirred. Finally he shook his head no.
“Here is something we have over the wasicu.” Spotted Tail grinned. “Their minds are clever, they can make guns and knives and little round things that tell the time of day or the four directions.” This last was a half-joke. With sun and moon in the wide sky, who could need to tell the time? Who would not know what direction west was, or north or east or south? “Yes, their minds are very clever.”
Spotted Tail rode in silence for a moment, smiling broadly.
“But they are afraid to die. They understand how to make a far-seeing glass and how to make the powder that explodes, but life and death they do not understand.
“Dying is natural. To the rooted people, the grazers, the fliers, the crawlers, the swimmers, to us and mitakuye oyasin”—all our relations—“dying is natural.” He paused.
“We like to live, and dying is part of living. We enjoy Mother Earth—birthing and dying are part of her way. As we love her, we love them.
“A Lakota likes living and is not afraid of death. He accepts it.” He looked sideways at Curly. “That is what a death song says. I love the earth and am ready for death. On an evening like this,” he said, “you feel it strongly. I love the earth and am ready for death. They are part of the same feeling.”
Spotted Tail tossed off the next thought idly. “Wasicu are afraid to die. It makes their sweat bead out, their guts clench, their bowels go loose.” He flashed a grin at Curly. “I would hate to be a wasicu.”
The horses clopped along for long moments. Spotted Tail lifted a finger to make a last point. “Remember always, Nephew, you can fight for life. But you cannot fight against death.”
Curly had a small thrill of comprehension and then a blanch of uncertainty. You can fight for life. But you cannot fight against death. He looked sideways at his uncle, not quite sure.
The next evening Curly sat in front of his mothers’ lodge with his father and brother. He was glad to see Little Hawk, who was a husky fellow for eight years old. Since Curly and Tasunke Witko were slight men, it would be nice to have a big fellow in the family.
Their sister, Kettle, was at her own lodge. Earlier this summer she had married Club Man. Already she was making life within her. It was hard for Curly to think of her as a wife and mother. To him she would always be the friend who helped him through the terrible months after she-who-gave-them-birth died.
When he scratched at the door flap of the lodge this afternoon, like a stranger, no voice had invited him in. Later he had discovered that the family was at the fort, trading. But at the time he had felt a pang. Homelessness …
He sat and thought. He was aware of his father’s glance at him and Little Hawk’s wondering at his older brother’s silence. They thought he was broody, probably. He couldn’t help it. His mind was on Spotted Tail. Tomorrow his uncle and two other men would ride to the gate of the fort singing their death songs.
When it came out, it felt blurted, even to Curly: “Ate, what does it mean, ‘You can fight for life, but you can’t fight against death’?” He fell silent a moment. “The words say something to me, but…”
Tasunke Witko was quiet for a while, thinking. Curly waited nervously, respectful but impatient. Finally Tasunke Witko got up, went out to the tripod holding the pot, and dipped his fingers into the stew for a fatty piece of meat. He walked away, nodding for his sons to follow.
They went to a boulder on the edge of camp, a high one you had to climb with your hands. Curly helped Little Hawk up. Tasunke Witko motioned for his sons to sit at the other end of the rock from him.
Tasunke Witko tore the fatty meat into several pieces and put them on his legs. Curly knew what he had in mind. Often Tasunke Witko would feed the moose birds that gathered around camp. He’d start with fat near himself, get the birds avid, and then put it on his body. After he’d fed birds in one camp for several days, as now, they would peck at meat on his hands, his head, his shoulders, even his bare toes. Curly had seen his father get a moose bird to light on his upturned chin and feed off the tip of his nose.
Once Curly had seen Tasunke Witko get up and walk around the camp, singing an honor song to these birds as they flitted from his head to his hands to lodge poles and back to his hands. It was a memory of his father that Curly loved.
Now Tasunke Witko held a piece of meat up with one hand, high over his head. Immediately one moose bird fluttered up from his leg, landed on the heel of his hand, and pecked greedily.
Tasunke Witko’s eyes lit up. He waggled his arm in the air, he made his hand dance, yet the bird stayed on and ate. When it knocked the meat off the hand, Tasunke Witko picked the morsel up and raised the hand once more. He grinned at the bird as it returned to eat.
When it finished, it cocked its head at Tasunke Witko. Mockingly he cocked his head back. He made a bird-chirping sound. Then, suddenly, but gently, he closed his hand on the bird.
It squawked. It bellowed. It pecked. It clawed.
Tasunke Witko opened his hand, and the moose bird flew away. It nattered at him from a nearby branch.
“You can dance with life,” he said. “You can play with it. But you must always hold it lightly. If you squeeze, it rebels. If you get scared, it will hurt you. If you squeeze desperately hard, you’ll kill it.”
He smiled, and his eyes flashed light at Curly.
DEATH SONGS
Sweetwater Woman helped Spotted Tail dress. Since she was the youngest of the four sisters and the newest wife, she was pleased that he had asked her to be his helper. She found it hard now, the way he expected her to hand him his clothes and fix his hair and act calm and steady. He smiled at her, and she knew he expected a smile back. It was hard to give one, but she did.
She set the fully beaded moccasins at his feet. He would be riding, not walking, to the fort, and then he wouldn’t walk anymore, not on this earth. His feet would swing in the air. She felt that she would gag on the thought.
He already had his war shirt on, the one fringed on the underside of the arms with scalps he’d taken. He was wearing his full-length breechcloth, the one of red strouding, and the long leggings over it. He had not accumulated many possessions, not yet. He would have, for he was a leader. But he was also a generous man. Since he thought of others first, he didn’t have much.
He was painting his face. She began tying eagle feathers into his hair. Spotted Tail could do this perfectly well, but she knew it pleased him on his last morning to feel her fingers pulling against his scalp. When she had tied the feathers, she would wrap his braids in ermine tails. As a last gesture she would wrap them.
A tear ran, and she brushed it away.
Her two sisters busied themselves. They would all ride to the fort with their husband. Sweetwater Woman wondered if his thoughts were with his sits-beside-him wife, their daughter, and his mother, all three captured and taken to the soldier house far down the river. He would never see those three again.
At last she held the piece of polished wood with the shining glass in front of his face so he could see. “You look splendid,” she said.
“Splendid,” echoed her older sisters.
Spotted Tail smiled at them tenderly.
It was a cool autumn morning, ha
lf-sunny, half-clouded. Curly saw his uncle a long way off. He knew that big American horse. Curly was riding from the Oglala camp behind Red Leaf and Long Chin, who were also throwing their lives away. They would join Spotted Tail in a procession, their wives riding close behind and then the rest of their families. They would leave the river and the three would go through the gates of the fort and that would be all.
Curly intended to be far away tomorrow, probably fasting and thirsting, alone for sure. He refused to look at the body of his uncle swinging from the wasicu’s rope by the neck. He wondered how long the soldiers would make it swing. Sometimes they kept a body hanging for days, people said, maybe wanting to flaunt this obscenity in everyone’s face.
When they rode close, the three warriors looked at each other, and their eyes held. Curly found the faces unreadable. The only one who seemed at ease to Curly was Spotted Tail. For a moment he turned his face upward, as if he was enjoying the sun on his flesh.
They turned three abreast and started toward the fort. Spotted Tail’s voice lifted in song first:
“Hiye, haya!
Hiye, haya!
Hiye, haya!
Hiye, haya!”
Red Leaf and Long Chin joined in chanting this preparatory phrase, their voices strong. Then each man began his own death song, perhaps a traditional one of his warrior society, perhaps something he had composed himself over the years, perhaps a spontaneous response to the moment.
Spotted Tail sang:
“Hiye pila maya.
Hiye pila maya.”
“Thanks,” it meant, in words saved for ceremonies.
“I rose from the earth.
I return to the earth.”
His voice soared high in the first line, fell on the second, plaintive and quavering.
“To my mother I return.
With all my relatives
I go gladly to her.”
He repeated this simple song over and over, mesmerically. Curly wondered if his mothers’ brother had come to that place where the face of this world meets the face of the other, the one Curly knew only in the waking dream. He looked at his uncle, so solid, so corporeal. Yes, surely Spotted Tail had arrived at that place. Otherwise what he was doing was impossible.
