Stone Song

by Win Blevins

  He had an idea. He would say he wanted to leave on a hunt before sunrise. He smiled. Bad Heart Bull had a pistol. Perfect.

  He walked gently toward the lodge. He would speak sweetly. Then he would walk softly to whatever lodge Crazy Horse was in. He could be delicate when he needed to.

  And he could slaughter when he needed to. Which was now.

  Little Big Man was surprised at how good the feeling among the warriors was. When he’d seen Crazy Horse bringing the woman, he’d been afraid. The warriors would be worried about what the No Water and Red Cloud families might do. But everyone rode cheerfully and talked with good humor. He guessed the feeling was that these two should have been together years ago.

  The second day out from camp they came on some other Oglala camped on a little creek. Friends invited the new couple, Little Big Man, and others to a feast. Lots of food, coffee with plenty of sugar, good talk, comradeship—it was a fine time. Their host told a wild hunting story to the men around the center fire. In the back the women were speaking softly and laughing often. Crazy Horse started a story about a grizzly he had seen fall off a boulder. It was a funny story, and Little Big Man had never heard the leader act so silly—

  The lodge flap ripped open. No warning, no sound, no scratch for permission to come in.

  No Water bounded toward the center fire. His shout crashed at them, and Little Big Man didn’t understand the words.

  Crazy Horse reached for his knife. He started to jump to his feet, but Little Big Man held him back by one arm. Crazy Horse pulled at the arm.

  “No, no!” shouted Little Big Man.

  No Water’s hand jabbed at Crazy Horse’s face with a revolver. Little Big Man saw the flash of powder, heard the roar, and caught his leader’s limp body in his arms.

  REVENGE

  Blood everywhere. Crazy Horse’s clothes soaked, Little Big Man soaked.

  Little Big Man got his friend and leader stretched out and tried to check the wound. Crazy Horse wasn’t dead yet. He was jerking his head from side to side violently. His pain must be terrible. His silence was terrible.

  The rip in Crazy Horse’s flesh was directly under the left nostril. Little Shield sent someone for a healer. Blood washed all over Crazy Horse’s face, so Little Big Man couldn’t see whether the bullet had come out or was in his brain.

  Black Buffalo Woman ran. She ran blindly, she ran frantically. She couldn’t get the picture out of her head—her Strange Man with his face shot off, the gun smoking in her husband’s hand.

  She was next.

  Her mind was in a thousand pieces. She had some memory of ducking under the lodge skirt, wondering if No Water saw her, running crookedly among the twilit lodges, falling headlong over some earflap poles, dodging a dog, and skidding to the ground, sobbing. And running again.

  Then she remembered her cousin. The picture of her cousin’s lodge and the center fire and the family came to her like a rope to a drowning woman. She held onto it desperately, and somehow she found herself at the lodge flap. She scratched frantically and went in before they said a word.

  The family looked at her gape-mouthed, dinner bowls in their hands.

  She blurted out all run together, “NoWater haskilled HisCrazyHorse and he’llkill me next!”

  “A pony!” No Water shouted to the men, any of them, all of them. “Give me a pony!” He was frantic. He wanted to bellow, to roar, to command, but his voice sounded like a shriek, even to himself.

  “What’s the matter?” said Left Hand. “Come sit down and smoke.”

  No Water could see Left Hand’s friends weren’t so eager to offer hospitality. His face scared them.

  Yes, I’m crazy, he thought. He did roar now. “Cousin,” he shouted at Left Hand, “give me a pony! I’ve killed His Crazy Horse.” The words shocked even No Water, so he threw each one again, like rocks. “I’ve killed His Crazy Horse. Give me a pony!”

  Everyone got right up.

  Babble: “His Crazy Horse, killed in an Oglala camp?”

  “His Crazy Horse, killed over a woman?”

  “Our Strange Man murdered by another Oglala?”

  “Two of our best men destroyed? So suddenly?”

  “Yes, you idiots, it’s terrible!” No Water screamed in their faces. “Now get me out of here!”

  He waved the pistol in the air. Nervous, Left Hand took it from him.

  Left Hand heard someone rumble low, “Let’s turn him over to the His Crazy Horse family.” So he grabbed his cousin’s elbow and hurried him away. “Isn’t this Bad Heart Bull’s pistol?” said Left Hand. “Don’t tell me anything. Just go.” They sprinted to the pony herd and No Water went.

  Bad Heart Bull put the pistol away. It was warm from No Water’s hands, and from what it had done. He walked slowly to the lodge where the dead man lay. He thought he might vomit. He had helped kill his cousin. Worse, he had helped bring tragedy on the Oglala. Again one Oglala leader had killed another. Again the hoop of the people was broken by one of their own.

  The healer was blowing his eagle-bone whistle, so Bad Heart Bull knew Crazy Horse wasn’t dead yet. Spotted Crow, one of Worm’s brothers, squatted near the downed man. A healer mixed a medicine and put it on Crazy Horse’s face. The healer sang. He implored the grandfathers. He shook his rattle and sang again.

  Crazy Horse was pale as buffalo fat, and his eyelids didn’t even flutter.

  After a while Spotted Crow slipped away. Bad Heart Bull caught up with him. “It was my pistol,” he said.

  Spotted Crow looked at him, his expression unreadable. “He told me he was going hunting early in the morning,” Bad Heart Bull added.

  Spotted Crow studied his eyes for the truth. Finally, he said, “I want to avoid a feud. Do you?”

  Bad Heart Bull said simply, “Yes.”

  “Then come with me.”

  Spotted Crow and Bad Heart Bull could do nothing but watch. The young men had a lead rope on No Water’s mule, the fast one he had worn out getting here. They were beating it with clubs, stabbing it with their knives, destroying the poor animal. Finally one young man stepped up and cut its throat. Blood gushed all over him, the mule pitched to the earth, and he shouted vengeance at the sky. Spotted Crow saw with disgust that the fellow wasn’t even a relative of Crazy Horse. He was a fort loafer come north for the summer, probably wanting to go on a lark of war with the man everyone talked about.

  None of the youths could think of what to do next. They looked at each other, stumped, their lust for revenge momentarily slack.

  In that instant Spotted Crow said, “He’s alive. So far he’s alive.”

  “The healer is singing for him,” Bad Heart Bull added.

  The warriors looked at each other and broke into some foolish babble.

  “Let’s wait,” said Spotted Crow. “There’s plenty of time to settle this.”

  They started arguing among themselves.

  Spotted Crow turned on his heel and went back to the wounded man. “They won’t follow No Water tonight,” he said to Bad Heart Bull.

  Black Twin led his brother No Water toward Horn Chips’ lodge. No Water seemed undone by what had happened. Black Twin thought that was strange. If you were going to kill a man, why turn fool hen about it later?

  Like other Bad Faces, Black Twin thought maybe Crazy Horse did need killing. The man pretended simplicity, humility, and devotion to the sacred. But he wanted glory and power as much as any of them. These so-called virtues were just a way of making himself into a hero, of playing to the crowd, and a remarkably devious way. Black Twin despised him.

  Horn Chips was sitting in front of his lodge waiting for them.

  “You turned Black Buffalo Woman’s head with a love potion,” Black Twin accused Chips bluntly. He said it loud enough for the whole camp to hear.

  The wicasa wakan just shook his head no.

  Warriors started gathering, and women behind them. Everyone had heard.

  “You made Black Buffalo Woman crazy with some medic
ine!” Black Twin boomed even louder. “You made her leave her husband and follow that other man, like she was drunk,” Black Twin said.

  Chips shook his head again, but people babbled Black Twin’s words. Black Twin didn’t let himself look pleased. His brother needed a defense, no question. Chips’ contempt was visible on his face.

  “Answer me!” Black Twin shouted. “How do you expect me to keep my relatives away from you if you don’t answer?”

  Chips looked up at Black Twin in surprise. Subtle, he thought, to put a thought in their minds that way. To pretend to want to stop them from doing something while you’re egging them on. He supposed he would have to say something.

  “I saw you make that medicine!” bellowed Black Twin.

  Chips wasn’t afraid of this rabble. Black Twin was only making a show, trying to put a defense of his brother in people’s minds. If Chips had been afraid, he wouldn’t have let them see it. Right now he felt contempt for them.

  “You saw me make two medicines for him,” Chips said. “A pebble to tie into his warhorse’s tail.” Everyone knew Crazy Horse kept having ponies shot out from under him. “And a bundle for protection against enemies’ bullets.” Everyone knew he had that kind of medicine.

  People nodded. “I saw him wear the bundle at the fight When They Chased the Psatoka Back to Camp,” someone said.

  Black Twin nodded gravely.

  “It’s the truth,” said Chips. He didn’t add, “And you know it.” Black Twin had also seen Crazy Horse with these two medicines.

  Chips looked hard at Black Twin. What was interesting here was something else: The twin was putting himself in charge, taking over in place of his own brother, No Water. Maneuvering for position, always.

  Black Twin said, “Get gone, you and your family. I don’t want to see you in this circle again.”

  Chips nearly jumped in surprise. He controlled himself and looked up at Black Twin flatly. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. He would have to go, for he had been Crazy Horse’s teacher.

  He felt a pang. Today he had lost a man he cared for, and the people he lived with.

  Chips shrugged. He much preferred his Inyan creatures, even when they were silent, to a world like this.

  The relatives of Crazy Horse said it was the old Bad Face jealousy. The Hunkpatila got to camp at the horns, they got a martyr in Bull Bear, they had a great warrior like Crazy Horse, their men got to be shirt wearers, grumble, grumble, grumble.

  Well, some of these relatives intended to shed blood, No Water’s blood, the blood of both his brothers, and the blood of anyone who defended the killer. They would have left already except that their Strange Man had asked them not to.

  Crazy Horse came back from a bizarre and ugly land. He knew where he was. He remembered the healer’s songs. He remembered No Water’s hand and the gun. He remembered a hand on his arm, holding him back. He didn’t remember the shot, but his face told him. He would never be able to move his face again. He wanted to cry out, “Let go of my arm! Let go of my arm!”

  He also had moments that were nearly lucid. Then he wanted to tell everyone, “No trouble, no trouble. No more Lakota blood on the ground. Especially no punishment for Black Buffalo Woman, who has done no wrong.”

  Guilt washed him up like huge waves and dropped him into the troughs between. He had betrayed his vision. He had abandoned the difficult road for the comfortable one. The Powers had punished him hard. As he deserved.

  Sometimes when the healer tended to him or his relatives visited, he said this much with his fingers—no trouble. They said they understood. Some of them acted resentful, but his uncle Spotted Crow came and said he understood the signs.

  One day—it might have been the third or the tenth—Worm came. With his brothers Long Face, Spotted Crow, Bull Head, and Ashes. Maybe they had visited before, he wasn’t sure.

  “Someone held my arm,” he signed to his father.

  “Yes, the people know,” Worm said. “I told Little Big Man never to hold you back again.”

  Crazy Horse rested a little. Over and over in his dreams he felt the hand on his arm. Little Big Man’s hand, he knew now, a friend’s hand. Terrible.

  He made more signs. Worm said out loud, “You are right. I favor peace.”

  Crazy Horse signed that Black Buffalo Woman should go back to No Water if he promised not to punish her. She had done nothing wrong.

  Worm said, “Yes, I will tell everyone.”

  Crazy Horse signed: “No one else hurt yet?”

  “No,” said Worm, “just a lot of nasty words. People are divided three ways. Your young men want to kill No Water. Black Twin, White Twin, and the rest of that family are ready to fight, expecting to fight. And we here, my brothers and I, we are working for peace. So are He Dog and Bad Heart Bull,” two men with relatives on both sides, men of high reputation. “We will persuade them, maybe.”

  Crazy Horse rolled over to sleep and to ride the big waves of guilt and sorrow and loss. He had not signed to his father the worst. Hawk felt dead in his heart. Since he was shot, she had not stirred. His chest was just a scaffold for a corpse.

  Worm stayed and kept watch. Looking at his son hurt his heart. The face was very swollen, like a melon. Just imagining the pain hurt. A ragged red wound, like a sword cut, slashed the upper lip. Powder burns rimmed the wound, like a kiss of black lips. A red crater opened in front of the ear and below it. Worm could hardly think his son would ever look normal again.

  As Crazy Horse slept, he shook one elbow over and over and moaned, “Let go-o-o, let go-o-o.”

  This morning Crazy Horse was willing to try it. He mumbled aloud for the first time since he had been shot. It felt awful and sounded worse. “Where’s Little Hawk?” he asked. His brother should have been here all along.

  “Gone raiding,” said Worm.

  Crazy Horse remembered. Little Hawk hadn’t wanted to go on the old-time war party against the Psatoka. He’d wanted to go along the front of the Shining Mountains, where white men were hunting for gold and stirring up trouble. Stirring it up deliberately, some said, when they knew the soldiers had given that country to the Lakota.

  “News,” he prompted. His voice sounded very nasal, and his tongue was thick as a frog in his mouth.

  “No Water brought me three horses,” said Worm evenly, “very good horses. I didn’t send them back.”

  Crazy Horse would have nodded if he’d felt up to moving his head. This was a world of news. The No Water faction was willing to take the route of conciliation instead of killing, thus the offer. So were Worm and his brothers—thus the acceptance.

  He saw his father studying his face. “Good,” he said.

  “Bad Heart Bull took the woman to No Water,” Worm went on. It hurt Crazy Horse to hear that even now his father wouldn’t speak the name of the woman he loved. “She was willing.” He let that sit. “No Water gave the promise and accepted her.”

  So it was done. He felt a little quivery.

  “Good,” he said softly. He turned away from his father’s eyes. He wanted to be alone.

  He wondered why Hawk lay like a dead thing within him. Yes, yes, he thought bitterly, it feels good to be healing when you’re already dead.

  LOSSES

  He couldn’t get up for the gazing-at-the-sun-pole dance. His head reeled when he tried to stand. But when he could ride a little, the Long Face band followed the other villages from the big ceremony to the mouth of the Big Horn River, where they were hunting buffalo brazenly in the country of the Psatoka.

  That was when Little Hawk’s raiding party came in, without Little Hawk.

  Crazy Horse knew the moment the two young warriors stepped into the lodge at night with mud streaked on their faces. Their story was simple enough. They were coming back from raiding in the Snake country, where the party had been too small to do much. At the southern end of the Shining Mountains some whites had fired on them without any reason, the miners who were always going in there looking for gold. Cra
zy Horse said nothing, but he thought, In the country promised us forever by the peace paper.

  Since they were few, the Lakota broke and ran, laughing at the way the whites were wasting their bullets with long shots. Later the Lakota saw that Little Hawk wasn’t with them. These two went back to see what had happened to him. The tracks showed that Little Hawk, always sure of his medicine, always reckless, had charged the whites alone. Now his body lay too close for the warriors even to bring it away. Little Hawk lay on the ground, where the scavengers would get him.

  Crazy Horse felt his guts writhing. They wanted to pitch themselves out.

  Worm listened patiently to the story and then got up from his fire and went out into the night. Crazy Horse thought how much the two of them were alike, always wanting to be alone with any strong feelings, not sharing, not grieving together or rejoicing together, but far apart, like icy stars. Crazy Horse hated that about himself, and about Worm.

  When the warriors left, Crazy Horse sat quietly in front of the fire with Grandmother Plum. He thought. He remembered. He listened to a sad music in his heart.

  He wondered what his grandmother was thinking. She had lost a grandchild. He looked at her face, red and brown, seamed, still as a rock. Inyan, he thought, the oldest of creatures.

  He studied her face in the faint light from the embers. She did not look up at him, or acknowledge his gaze in any way, but simply sat, unmoving.

  He edged close to her and took her old hand in his. It was bony, like a claw. Yet it was warm, and her blood, which was his blood, pumped through it.

  He sat, heavy in his grief, but not quite so heavy, for he was holding her hand. In the motion of her arm he felt her chest rise and fall. Soon, perhaps with the single eye of his heart, he became aware of the life, the spirit, within her. He breathed it in, and breathed his spirit out to her.

  Before long he sensed the dance of emotions within her. He felt them and their natures as the body feels sunshine and rain. Loss, now, because of Little Hawk. Loneliness, the loneliness of more than twenty-five winters of silence. These were the strong emotions, those that gave shape to the dance. And he sensed something deeper, further down, a rightness, a wellness. Was his grandmother healed in her way? Loneliness, though, that was the strongest.