by Simmons, Dan
—Gimme my fifty now. In, you know, advance.
Paha Sapa gave him only five one-dollar bills, knowing that Mune would spend it on booze in the first two days and be relatively sober by the time he, Paha Sapa, needed him the next weekend.
MUNE DRINKS FROM THE BOTTLE of the fifth, not offering to clean a glass to give Paha Sapa any. Seeing the state of the two glasses in the sink, Paha Sapa is glad there is no offer to share.
—I need another ten bucks.
Paha Sapa shakes his head.
—Look, Mune. You know Mr. Borglum won’t pay you the rest until the job’s done tomorrow night. I’m working with Jack Payne all day tomorrow on the drilling in preparation for this surprise… and since Jack already knows that something’s up, I might as well give the night work to him and pay him the fifty bucks… or I should say the forty-five that’s left. I know he’ll show up sober tomorrow night.
—Palooka? Fuck him. You and the old man offered this job to me, you fucking sack of half-breed shit. Try to Jew me out of it and…
Mune tries to raise his bulk out of the chair but Paha Sapa stands and easily pushes him back down. The moonshine is powerful stuff and Mune has probably been hitting it since Tuesday.
—Then sober up tomorrow—I’m serious about that. If you’re drunk or even seriously hungover when I come to fetch you tomorrow night, Mr. Borglum has ordered me to go get Payne or someone else. I mean it, Mune. Be stone sober tomorrow night or this fifty bucks goes to someone else.
Mune sticks out his lower lip like a scolded, sulking child. Paha Sapa thinks that if the drunken dimwit starts crying, he—Paha Sapa—will kill him. For not the first time in his life, he feels the terrible Crazy Horse joy rising in him at the thought of sinking a hatchet deep into the prescalped skull under that stupid derby.
—What time you comin’ for me tomorrow night, Billy?
Paha Sapa lets out a breath in relief.
—A little before eleven p.m., Mune.
—Do I get paid then?
Paha Sapa doesn’t even bother shaking his head at a question that stupid.
—In the morning. Before dawn. When we’re done. Mr. Borglum may show up to check the work and pay you himself.
—Hey, you already got the money! I saw it last week!
—That was for another job, Mune. Look, I talked Mr. Borglum into giving you this last job just as my favor to you. Don’t screw it up.
Mune tries to squint harder but his squint is as tight and narrow as it can go.
—Which winch will I be usin’?
—All four of them, I think. I’ll check with Mr. Borglum tomorrow, but I think we’ll be using all four.
—Four? There are only three winches on the face now, you stupid half-breed. I come by now and then, y’know. There’re only three on the heads.
—Only three working above the heads right now, it’s true. But there’s the one on the backside from last year. I guess we’ll be lifting some stuff from the Hall of Records canyon. Oh, and Mune?
—What?
Paha Sapa lifts his loose shirt. The long Colt revolver given to him by Curly the cavalry scout sixty years ago next week is tucked into his waistband. In the intervening years, Paha Sapa has found cartridges for it and was test firing as recently as yesterday. The nice thing about well-built weapons, he thinks, is that they’re never really obsolete.
—Just this, Mune. You call me half-breed or Tonto once again, and I don’t care how drunk you are, I’ll blow your fucking dim-witted head clean off your fucking fat carcass. Is that clear, you big, stupid sack of shit?
Mune nods docilely.
Paha Sapa goes out to the motorcycle. It starts on the first kick. The long-barreled revolver is absurdly uncomfortable in his waistband so Paha Sapa tosses it onto the leather seat of the sidecar.
A LITTLE BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Paha Sapa drives the donkeys up to the mountain first, just as he planned. Even as he shifts the gears of the screeching hulk of a truck, he knows it is a stupid plan. He should have just put the donkeys in with the dynamite and blasting caps and made one trip out of it. If the dynamite were to go up, so would most of the town of Keystone—what are two damned, lazy old donkeys one way or the other? Paha Sapa has never had much use for anything—man or beast—that doesn’t work to earn its keep in the world, and these donkeys haven’t done any labor harder than hauling Father Pierre Marie’s mail or groceries up the hill from Deadwood to the church and priest’s cabin once a week or so.
Well, that will change tonight. The asses—and the ass of the old man currently driving them up the hill—will do some serious work for a change this night.
Advocatus and Diaboli are quiet back there during the ride. They were very unhappy when Paha Sapa lashed the clumsy slippers made out of burlap over their hooves before loading them onto the truck, but apparently the two donkeys think that they are being driven back to their real life with the priest above Deadwood—or maybe they are just sleepy, unused to being rousted from their beauty sleep once the sun goes down—and perhaps they are also pleased at all the heaps of straw and bales of hay strategically placed in the back of the slat-sided truck for their riding and dining pleasure.
Paha Sapa doesn’t break it to the donkeys that the hay and straw are for the dynamite to come later.
The highway is empty. The small complex of shacks and larger buildings visible on Doane Mountain through the pines—the hoist house, blacksmith shop, compressor house—are all dark. Paha Sapa catches a glimpse of lights still gleaming from Mr. Borglum’s studio, but that home is safely away from the large dirt-and-gravel parking lot where he drives the Dodge to the far end, parks in the shadows of large trees, and unloads Devil’s and Advocate.
The trees now have shadows because the moon—two days away from being full—has risen above the peaks and hills to the east. The August night air is warmer than usual for this altitude and hour and the dried grasses underfoot are alive with leaping ’hoppers and other insects as Paha Sapa leads the confused donkeys thirty yards from the parking lot. The actual steep path to the Hall of Records canyon begins another hundred and fifty yards or so up the hill, but Paha Sapa is going to have to leave the donkeys here and he wants them to be quiet while he goes back for the dynamite. To that end, he not only ties them firmly to ponderosa pines with their tethers, but also hobbles them and ties on blindfolds.
Advocatus and Diaboli both kick out blindly in their irritation at this final insult to their dignity.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, thinks Paha Sapa as he hauls the two animal pack frames from the truck and cinches one onto each of the astonished animals. He also brings up the folded tarps and stacks them in the dappled moonlight.
All his life, Paha Sapa has loved the scent of pine needles underfoot at night, the aroma they release while cooling after a hot day in the sun, and this night is no different. He realizes that the pain that has been growing in his bowels and lower back the past weeks is dissipating, as is the terrible fatigue he’s carried with him day and night for months now.
This is it. I’m committed. I’m actually doing this at last.
There is a freedom—almost a lightness—in this thought, and he has to remind himself, sardonically, that all he’s done so far is transport two donkeys uphill for immoral purposes. There’s a Mann Act, Paha Sapa knows… is there a Donkey Act?
There will be if you don’t sober up, Black Hills, he snaps at himself. He knows that he has not touched a drop of whiskey or any other sort of liquor or wine or beer in more than forty years—so where is this almost drunken levity coming from?
From finally doing what you’ve only thought about doing for sixty years, you tiresome moron, he tells himself as he puts the Dodge in neutral and lets it coast out of the parking lot and downhill away from the monument before finally starting the engine.
The twenty-one crates of the best dynamite he has in storage have been set aside from the rejects and are ready to load. Paha Sapa’s back has been hurting so much recentl
y that he worried about the simple act of loading the crates—afraid his back would give way hauling the heavy crates up the ramp to the truck bed—but he has no problems at all. Each of the crates fits perfectly into the high cradle of hay bales just as he planned, and the tarps and straw set between each crate in each stack further cushion them.
Still, he lets out a breath when he’s beyond the so-called city limits of Keystone. Because so many of the town’s residents work for Mr. Borglum, and because tomorrow—no, today now—this Saturday, is a workday for most of them, the three backroom bars in town aren’t as busy as they usually are on a Friday night, but Paha Sapa would still feel bad if a bump in this potholed, unpaved-to-begin-with road were to blow him, the truck, those bars, and twenty other structures with their cargo of sleeping wives and children to atoms.
If the nitro or dynamite goes now, he realizes as he crawls up the mountain road in low gear, it will be only him and a stretch of highway and a few dozen trees vaporized. But Paha Sapa frowns as he realizes that it’s been so terribly dry this entire summer that such a blast on this part of the road will almost certainly start a forest fire that could still destroy all of Keystone, and the Doane Mountain and Mount Rushmore structures as well.
The twenty-one crates of dynamite and single, smaller crate of detonators don’t blow during the bouncing, jolting ride up the hill.
Paha Sapa is amazed to discover not only that he expected them to, but—in some strange, inexplicable, sick way—he is a little disappointed that they haven’t.
Parked in moon shadows again, he unloads all twenty-one crates and the single, much smaller box of detonators. Then he drives the Dodge quietly out of the parking lot, pulls it into an abandoned fire road three-quarters of a mile down the hill, and walks back, cutting through the woods. The almost-full moon is above the closer hills and rocky ridgelines now and keeps tangling itself in pine branches above Paha Sapa before working itself free. Its brilliance blots out the stars as it climbs higher and makes the granite cliff face and shoulders of Mount Rushmore, glimpsed to his left through the tall trees, glow a purer white in the moonlight than they do in daylight. George Washington’s eyes, the oldest up there, present the perfect illusion of following Paha Sapa.
Before bringing the blindfolded and now silent donkeys back to the dynamite to load up, Paha Sapa lifts the box of detonators—supporting it against his chest with a leather strap he’s rigged—and carries it up the Hall of Records canyon first.
The moonlight high on the canyon walls here looks like bold-edged bands of white paint. The shadows are very black, though, and both the approaches to the canyon and the floor of the canyon itself are littered with tree roots and then loose stones and fissures. Paha Sapa wishes that Borglum had already built that broad curving staircase he was talking about earlier in the day—yesterday now. He tries to keep to the moonlit areas, but the shadows are broad enough and black enough that once in the canyon itself, occasionally he has to use the flashlight he brought.
Once, trusting to moonlight, Paha Sapa trips and starts to fall forward onto the slightly clanking box of detonators. He stops his fall with his right arm outthrust, finding a low boulder there in the darkness.
As he carefully straightens and moves forward more slowly, he can feel the blood from his scraped and gouged palm dripping down his fingers. He can only smile and shake his head.
The rectangular test bore for the Hall of Records is invisible in the ink-black shadows thrown down that wall, but Paha Sapa can see the end of the canyon wall ahead and knows when to stop. He uses the flashlight to find the opening and, crouching in it, moves forward slowly to the end of the blind shaft. He’ll be stacking the dynamite itself closer to the opening and wants to be sure that no misstep or dropped crate in the darkness could trigger these touchy detonators.
Walking back to the donkeys and waiting dynamite beyond the mouth of the narrow canyon, Paha Sapa resists the ridiculous urge to whistle. He takes a clean kerchief from his pocket, wipes the blood from his palm and fingers, and wonders at the strange sense of exhilaration rising in him.
Is this what it feels like to be a warrior going into battle?
—Did you ever want to be a warrior?
This was Robert asking his father an unexpected yet strangely overdue question. It was summer 1912, during their annual summer camping trip, and Robert was fourteen years old. They’d camped in the Black Hills many times before this, but this was the first time Paha Sapa had brought his son to the top of the Six Grandfathers. The two were sitting at the edge of the cliff, their legs dangling over, very close to where Paha Sapa had dug his Vision Pit thirty-six years earlier.
—What I mean is… weren’t most of the young men in your tribe expected to become warriors in those days, Father?
Paha Sapa smiled.
—Most. Not all. I’ve told you about the winkte. And the wičasa wakan.
—And you wanted to become a wičasa wakan, like your adoptive grandfather, Limps-a-Lot. But tell the truth, Father… weren’t you ever tempted to become a warrior like most of the other young men?
Paha Sapa thinks about the one silly raid on the Pawnee on which he’d been allowed to accompany the older boys—and where he hadn’t even been able to hold the horses and keep them silent well enough to avoid ridicule from the others, who themselves had retreated fast enough when they saw the size of the Pawnee camp of warriors—and then he thought about how he’d rushed into the huge fight at the Greasy Grass without bringing a weapon. He realized he hadn’t even wanted to hurt the wasichus then, on the day Long Hair and the others had attacked the huge village there, but had simply ridden with the other men and boys because he didn’t want to be left behind.
—Actually, Robert, I don’t think I ever did want to be a warrior. Not really. There must have been something lacking in me. Perhaps it was just a matter of canl pe.
Fourteen-year-old Robert shook his head.
—You were no canl waka, Father. You know as well as I that it’s never been a question of cowardice.
Paha Sapa looked at the few clouds moving across the sky. In 1903, after Big Bill Slovak died in the Holy Terror Mine, Paha Sapa had taken his five-year-old son away from Keystone and Deadwood and out onto the plains, where the two had camped for seven days at Matho Paha, Bear Butte. On the sixth day, Paha Sapa awoke to find his son gone. The wagon he’d brought was still hidden in the secret place below, the horses still tethered where he’d left them, but Robert was gone.
For three hours Paha Sapa had searched up and down and along all sides of the fourteen-hundred-foot-tall hill rising out of the prairie while filling his mind with images: rattlesnake, rock fall, the boy falling, strangers. Then, just as Paha Sapa had decided that he must ride one of the horses to the nearest town to get help with the search, little Robert had walked into camp. He was hungry and dirty, but otherwise fine. When Paha Sapa had demanded his son tell him where he’d gone, why he’d been hiding, Robert had said, “I found a cave, Father. I was talking to the man with white hair who lives in the cave. His first name is the same as mine.”
After breakfast, he’d asked Robert to show him the cave. Robert could not find it. When Paha Sapa asked Robert to tell him what the old man had talked to him about, the boy said only, “He said that what he told me and the dreams he showed me were our secret—only his and only mine. He said you would understand, Father.”
Robert never revealed what Robert Sweet Medicine had said to him that day in 1903, or what visions he had shared. But every summer since then, Paha Sapa and his son had gone camping for a week.
Robert was dangling his long legs over the edge of the Six Grandfathers and looking at his father when he said softly—
—Ate, khoyákiphela he?
Paha Sapa did not know how to answer. What did he fear, other than for his son’s life and well-being? What had he feared, other than for his wife’s life and happiness when she was ill or for his people’s future? And had that been fear or just… knowledge
?
And perhaps he feared the violence of other men’s memories that lay in his mind and soul like dark nodes: Crazy Horse’s depressions and explosions into fury; even Long Hair’s memories of joyous murders in the low light of winter sunrise with the regimental band playing on the hill behind them.
Paha Sapa just shook his head that day, not knowing how to answer the question but knowing that his son was right—he, Paha Sapa, had never been a coward, not in the usual sense—but also knowing the depths of his own failure as a father, as a husband, as a Natural Free Human Being. Paha Sapa had thought, before this summer’s trip in 1912, that he might tell Robert some of the details of his hanblečeya on this mountain thirty-six years earlier—perhaps even specifics of the Vision the Grandfathers had given him—but he realized now that he would never do that. Beyond telling Robert that he’d gone on vision quest here, he mentioned nothing of the vision itself during this week of camping around the mountain and—interestingly—Robert did not ask.
Robert Slow Horse had inherited his mother’s light skin color, hazel eyes, thin physique, and even her long eyelashes. The lashes did not make Robert look effeminate. Perhaps unlike his father, Robert was a born warrior, but a quiet one. There was none of the Crazy Horse rage and bluster in him. He allowed the bigger, older boys at his boarding school in Denver to tease him about his name or about being a “half-breed” for a while, then warned them softly, and then—when the bullies inevitably continued bullying—Robert would knock them on their asses. And he continued knocking them on their asses until they altered their behavior.
At fourteen, Robert was already four inches taller than his father. Where the height came from, Paha Sapa did not know, for Rain had been small, as had her father, the missionary minister and theologian, who had moved away from the Pine Ridge Reservation the year after his daughter’s death in 1899 and died himself before the actual new century arrived in 1901. Perhaps, Paha Sapa thought, his own father, the teenager Short Elk, had been tall despite his name. (Even a short elk, Paha Sapa realized, was relatively tall.) He had never thought to ask Limps-a-Lot or Angry Badger or Three Buffalo Woman or any of the others around him how tall his young father had been before he’d staked himself down to die fighting Pawnee.
