by Win Blevins
Curly also heard the words of the other men, mentions of the six grandfathers and the powers of the four directions and of their spirit helpers. But he concentrated on the voice of Spotted Tail.
“Hiye pila maya.
Hiye pila maya.
To my mother I return.
With all my relatives
I go gladly to her.”
The walls of Fort Laramie loomed above them, shadowed. Curly saw soldiers in the blockhouses in the corners. Other soldiers swung the gates wide.
Without hesitating, without looking back, Spotted Tail, Red Leaf, and Long Chin rode through the gates. In the opening they rode into a swatch of sunlight. The colors of their blankets and feathers and beads grew brighter, as from a last pulse of life.
As though by plan, the families stopped outside the gates, sat their horses, watched, listened. At the last moment Sweetwater Woman kicked her horse hard and burst through the gate as it was closing. Evidently she could not bear to be apart from Spotted Tail, or even his suspended body.
Inside, the three men sang their songs, all flowers of the same tree of Lakota teaching. Spotted Tail sang:
“I bear death within me.
It is my old companion.
I have loved life on Mother Earth.
I accept death.”
As the soldiers closed the gates behind the warriors’ horses, rage flash-flooded Curly. Sitting on his pony, he felt as though he were reeling.
“Hiye pila maya.
Hiye pila maya.
To my mother I return.
With all my relatives
I go gladly to her.”
LOVE OVER DEATH
In the village he saw Black Buffalo Woman. His head snapped around and his eyes shot at her.
It was wondrous, like seeing someone you had never seen before. She looked radiant, as White Buffalo Cow Woman must have looked when she came to the Lakota three times seven generations ago, bringing the canupa, sacred pipe, as a gift.
The girl half-turned, as though she knew his eyes were on her. Her eyes flicked up at him and quickly back down to propriety.
He swallowed his astonishment. She was flirting with him, flirting brazenly. Suddenly she turned and went her way.
Curly shuddered with cold.
He shuddered again. It was his uncle’s impending death, he knew. The families were just back from the fort, and the whole village was waiting for the awful news: three bodies dangling from the gallows.
Everyone was acting strange. They would shake their heads and avoid each other’s eyes. The unspoken words were: Only wasicu …
None of them would ever speak the name of any of the dead men again. The ones who threw their lives away, they would say. The one who was your mothers’ brother. The one who rode magnificently against the Two Circle People. Spotted Tail’s actual name, Sinte Gleska, would never be used to designate him again.
Curly took only his blanket onto the hill where he would fast and thirst and pray.
He tried to think about his uncle, but his mind was on Black Buffalo Woman. He sat on the rock on the hill high above the camp. He spoke to the six grandfathers and asked the blessings of the powers that make the world. “You make life,” he said in their honor. “You make the life continually being born into the world, two-legged people, four-legged peoples, rooted people, creatures of the air, all that is, mitakuye oyasin. You bring life onto the earth every day.”
He tried to remember carefully, one by one, the good times he had spent with Spotted Tail. The one who was my mothers’ brother, he corrected himself. Probably Spotted Tail was already dead and his name now forbidden. Curly repeated to himself over and over what his uncle had said to him about dying: “You can fight for life. But you can not fight against death.”
His mind kept lurching back to Black Buffalo Woman.
He knew now what had been different about her. She wore her braids in front like a woman, not in back like a child.
He had known Red Cloud’s niece all his life but hadn’t seen her since spring, when his band and hers, the Bad Faces, were camped together. She must be fifteen winters now.
She was wearing her braids in front. That meant she was ready to take on life within her. It meant she spent time in the hut for women during her isnati, bleeding.
Pictures stampeded through his mind. Black Buffalo Woman walking under the blanket with a man he couldn’t see. Black Buffalo Woman giving suck. Her sitting at the center fire beside a shadowy man. The pictures gave him a feeling like fever.
He pushed his mind back to the matter at hand. He said in his mind to the powers, You make life. In the face of death you offer life, ever birthing into the world.
Spotted Tail’s death crept into his mind like a dark spirit. He could wrestle with it, or he could dream of Black Buffalo Woman.
A touch on the shoulder.
Curly jumped.
Black Buffalo Woman. Her face close to his, eyes alight with mischief.
Quickly she turned her face away from his. But she sat down next to him. Close to him. It was wildly, unbelievably brazen.
He felt his face flush with fear and anger. To get sneaked up on from behind! Even while praying! By a woman!
She smiled at him, proud of herself.
He wondered if she was feeling a fever, as he was.
What did she want? Why was she here?
Ah, she was crazy right now, living in the shadow of the body of Spotted Tail swinging on the end of a rope.
He was crazy, too. The shadow was very black. His mind was blacker than blindness.
They said nothing. They sat.
Curly wondered why Black Buffalo Woman had chanced in his direction at this time. True, she had acted enamored of him, the way girls do before they wear braids in front, smitten by an older boy. That meant nothing. The girls themselves forgot it in a moon or even a quarter-moon. She had watched him and sometimes hung around him at the camp of the two bands on the Running Water last winter. He had pretended not to notice, being polite.
The fever ran through him.
She turned her face into his and looked into his eyes. Astonishing for a Lakota woman anywhere. Alone on a hillside, away from people’s eyes, mad and frightening.
The fever coursed through him.
Her face was alive. It looked to him somehow like the surface of a small stream, still if you weren’t paying any attention, flowing if you were. And sparkling here and there with sun glints. And full of things you couldn’t see, the darting shadows of fish and other living creatures. Sometimes they touched the surface in a flash of color.
She was much amused.
She raised a hand and touched his face.
Fever raged in him.
She held her hand to his face for a long, long time. Curly had never been touched like this.
Time writhed.
His arms goose-pimpled.
They looked into each other’s eyes.
She eased her face close to his. The breaths from their nostrils mingled.
The fever was a runaway horse.
She touched her lips to his, very lightly.
Curly reached up with his right hand and touched her breast, a caress.
She put her hand over his on her breast and slowly lay back on the earth.
In the fever he took her. There on the hill, embraced by the sky that arched over his uncle’s body and their living forms, his mind shadowed by the dark spirit, he took his first woman.
He wanted to do it as he had always dreamed, slowly, tenderly, with gentle explorations.
Instead he erupted like a fire-spewing mountain.
She seemed not to be sorry. She did her best to make him erupt.
When he was finished the first time, they lay spent, silent, soaking up what was happening. Then he took her again.
Later he held her hand and led her farther away from camp, onto the back of the hill in a little clump of trees.
He wanted to take her again and again all afternoon.
It was madness, but it was what he raged for. Hawk was still, at peace. If Hawk could be stroked and truly gentled, it would feel like this.
With all their clothes finally off, they ravished each other. Ravished each other over and over.
When he rolled off her, the picture of the dead Spotted Tail lightninged through him. The dark spirit in his mind shoved him back on top of her. Over and over.
Toward sunset they walked back to camp together. He wondered if he was her first man. Surely so. Surely. He didn’t know for certain.
It was impossible. It was madness. They wouldn’t be able to set up a lodge together for years. At seventeen Curly was much too young to marry. Black Buffalo Woman, fifteen, was barely a woman.
Yet he had to have her. Today, tonight, every day and night he had to have her. That urge cascaded through him.
If she took on life within her, it would be a disaster. She would be disgraced. Probably she would be given as a wife to an older man, one who could take care of her child.
Impossible. Disaster. Impossible to mate with her body and spirit, impossible not to.
He shook with joy. He spasmed with fear.
A short way from camp they separated to walk back to their lodges separately, so people wouldn’t see them. As they parted, she spoke. Curly realized that all during the sex, in a compact they didn’t need to name, neither of them had said a word. Her words of leave-taking were, “My Strange Man.”
A SPY
Hatred clotted in No Water’s throat.
He watched them touch hands one last time, lingeringly, and finally start to the village on separate and deceitful paths. He almost choked on his loathing for the two of them.
He had seen it all. Fools. What fools they were, both of them, thinking they could commit such crimes almost within sight of the village and go unnoticed. And unpunished.
He had been watching Black Buffalo Woman carefully since her Buffalo Woman Ceremony a quarter-moon ago, when the wicasa wakan helped her over the threshold from girl to woman, giving her ritual instructions, singing the traditional songs, giving voice to the prayers. It meant she had had her first flow. She had spent time in the lonely tipi, so that the power of her trickling blood and the dangerous spirits that attended it would hurt no one. She had taken the cloth where that flow dripped, wrapped it in hide, and walked out alone to find a plum tree, because plum trees bore fruit bountifully. She had put the hide into the tree and left it forever, where the coyotes could not eat it and no man would dare touch it for fear of the malicious spirits that hovered nearby.
Then, because she was much prized, her parents sponsored a buffalo ceremony for her. The wicasa wakan asked the blessings of the good spirits on her, gave her defense against spirits that might make her act crazy, instructed her in the virtues of womanhood, and prayed for her fruitfulness. Her mother braided Black Buffalo Woman’s hair, put the braids in front, and made a red line down the part in the center of her head. She was a woman now.
Hah! She had just spent the afternoon acting completely crazy. No Water had witnessed her madness with his own eyes. He snorted at the so-called power of the wicasa wakan. He knew what kind of person Black Buffalo Woman was. He had known for a long time. He knew, and he wanted her for himself.
True, right now he hated her. True, she was wild, like a dog not trained to drag the travois. He would break her to his will. The need to break her, to make her move to the touch of his harness, pumped through him like hot blood and bile.
No Water wouldn’t break Light Curly Hair—he wouldn’t have to. He knew that one’s heart, which was weak. Taking the woman the boy-man wanted would be enough, and more than enough. Light Curly Hair would walk through life feeling like a rag was stuffed down his throat, No Water’s rag.
What a fool. Light Curly Hair had not even known she wanted him. Or known himself well enough to realize he wanted her. The sandy-haired boy knew very little about life. But No Water had known. He had always watched, and had seen the way they looked at each other, like it made them dizzy. Now he would take what Light Curly Hair most desired.
No Water smiled with twisted pleasure.
From his spot on the hill he watched them disappear from view, approaching the village from different paths. He didn’t even like the way Light Curly Hair walked, though it was like Black Buffalo Woman’s way. They were both coltish creatures, a quality attractive in a woman, repugnant in a man. No Water felt alien to these people with sapling bodies. They seemed to him ephemeral, shifting here and there on the breeze. They were flowing liquid, not solid rock—tricky Coyote, not staunch Buffalo Bull. A man ought to be big and solid and immovable, like a boulder, like himself.
The worst was, the sandy-haired boy thought himself better than anyone else. The other youths were always together, having fun, each doing what young men did, following along, participating. Light Curly Hair was always standing off to himself, aloof. Or he was gone away alone, wandering, pretending he was on a mission no one else knew about. Even when he was in the group, his eyes looked far away and his head sometimes seemed half-cocked, listening to a voice no one else could hear.
Because of the airs he took on, some of the old people said he was something special, someone sacred. No Water thought he was flimsy as mist on the river, mysterious at dawn but gone when the sun rose. The sun in this case was No Water.
Oh no, it wasn’t just because the sandy-haired boy was Hunkpatila and not one of the scorned Bad Faces. Or because the wasicu’s blood clearly ran in his veins. Or even because he’d kicked No Water’s friend Pretty Fellow in the nose and broken it. No Water had despised the light-haired boy for a long time, and his enmity was beyond needing reasons.
Today was hard, though. He’d seen how Curly touched Black Buffalo Woman’s breasts delicately, and helped her unwind the hide belt that circled her waist and ran between her legs to protect her innocence and coiled down her thighs. He’d seen her fling that chastity into the bushes. He’d seen his woman topped for the first time, and then many times. He’d watched her make herself a wanton.
He hated Light Curly Hair today. He knew he would hate the son of Tasunke Witko many nights in the future, when lascivious pictures of the two of them invaded his dreams.
But he also saw in his mind Black Buffalo Woman with himself, doing the same things, doing them when she desperately wanted to, and doing them when she wanted not to but was commanded by her husband. He preferred the pictures of her submitting half-willingly. They were delicious.
The two were well out of sight now. He got up from behind the stump. He knew what he had to do. He knew where the power over Black Buffalo Woman lay. He must seize it. He must go to the plum tree where she’d put the bundle of her first flow, lay his hands upon it, and claim it for himself.
This was dangerous. The evil tonwan would be close by. They would attach themselves to any man who touched the bundle and give him boils, or worse. It could be nasty.
But a man who dared nothing gained nothing. No Water would go to Red Rock, the bone keeper. Bone keepers conjured with dangerous medicines. Sometimes they even killed their fellow Lakota with their spells. But Red Rock had the power to chase away the tonwan with his incantations. When he was paid with even more horses, he would take the blood of Black Buffalo Woman’s new womanhood and turn it into a powerful potion and …
Then No Water would possess the soul of the woman he wanted.
He thought of possessing her in every way. He thought of flaunting his possession in the face of the Strange Man. He smiled. He almost laughed out loud.
He set off toward the plum tree.
A SURPRISE
Tasunke Witko came walking across the circle of lodges toward Curly. A-i-i-i, Curly thought, will my father reprimand me for being away from my mothers in their grief, for disappearing on this day of all days?
“Spotted Tail,” Tasunke Witko began, and paused. He was letting the message sink in.
Curly got it. His mothers’ brother was
still alive.
“Spotted Tail and the others who threw their lives away,” Tasunke Witko went on, “have been taken down the river. They will go to a fort far away, the soldiers won’t say where. They will not be hanged. They will be punished by being kept away from us. No one knows how long.”
“Why?”
“No explanation.” Tasunke Witko paused for effect. “Also, the hundred prisoners will be released.”
Curly looked into his father’s eyes. They were bright with happiness. The women and children would come back to their families.
He wanted to throw his arms around Tasunke Witko, to hold his father and be held. He wouldn’t do it. He was no longer a child, to be embraced by his father, and they had never been close. But right now he wanted to.
They turned and walked toward the lodge.
He realized it was not his father’s body he wanted to touch. The memory of Black Buffalo Woman’s body was in his fingertips, his lips, his ce, his skin all over.
He saw the two of them atop one another all afternoon, dancing the dance all creatures make to create life.
He smiled to himself. Maybe they’d loved Spotted Tail from the shadow world back into this world. Maybe this afternoon they’d made life, the two of them. On his way to the land beyond the pines, where spirits live, Spotted Tail had seen them making love and laughed his big, bawdy laugh and come back to earth to enjoy making life some more.
Curly half-believed it.
They’d raised Spotted Tail from the dead by dancing the mating dance.
A miracle, that dancing.
Curly felt grand.
PART TWO
EARNING A NAME
THE WINTER WASP KEPT THEM (1855)
The spirit of His Crazy Horse—
or is it Rider, or are they the same?—
stands where the dance pole once stood.
From a beaded bag
he takes the two pieces of the canupa,
