Cedar Woman

by Debra Shiveley Welch

  “Mrs. Catcher,” he said softly. Mary slowly returned her gaze to his. “Mrs. Catcher, please try to remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. It will take time, but during that time, everything that can be done for your husband, will be done.” Dr. Gaffin reluctantly released Mary’s hand, and rising slowly, a look of regret and grief upon his young, tired face, quietly left the room.

  Lena awoke with her head in Dean’s lap. Dean’s head lay back, his mouth open, a light snoring issuing from his throat. Lena straightened and looked around the Intensive Care waiting room. Where was Ina?

  Alarmed, Lena jumped up and looked around. She saw a door with

  Intensive Care printed on it, and moving slowly, pressed the door open.

  A group of nurses sat at desks with monitors, and what appeared to be TVs, scattered around the room. Individual glass-enclosed booths, or cells, lined two sides of the room. Walking slowly, Lena peered into

  each enclosure until she spotted her mother’s shining head.

  Leaning over her husband’s still form, clutching his hand in her’s, Mary’s hair appeared to float upon the air. Surrounding her was a nimbus of white light, but Peter’s form was dark. Lena heard only one heartbeat…or was it two now fused together as one?

  Chapter Five

  May the stars carry your sadness away, May the flowers fill your heart with beauty, May hope forever wipe away your tears,

  And, above all, may silence make you strong.

  Chief Dan George

  Dean Countryman groaned and straightened, stretching his spine and rubbing the back of his neck. Lowering his shovel to the stone-strewn ground, and slowly hunkering to a sitting position on a large rock near the creek bed, he allowed himself a few moments of rest.

  He had been working at the south end of the pasture most of the day, building a sweat lodge and fire pit for Mary Catcher.

  Dean left the hospital in the early morning hours, bringing Lena home to the big, white farmhouse overlooking the Appalachian Highway

  where he and Nellie lived. Mary refused to leave Peter, but turning to

  Dean, her beautiful eyes luminous with unshed tears, asked if she could build a sweat lodge down near the creek.

  “It’s rocky there, and there will be no danger of fire. I need to pray and find guidance. Would you mind, Dean?” He looked at her in surprise. What is a sweat lodge? he wondered to himself, and then

  dismissed it as unimportant. If that is what she needed, then that is what

  she would have. She had explained:

  “The Lodge is where you can be kind of born again. It’s a chance to make a fresh start in life, and learn from your mistakes. You learn from what comes to you in the Lodge, and use it in a good way. It’s kind of a ‘do over.’ We leave all the bad things behind, and take only the good. We Lakotas consider the Lodge to be like a womb, and to leave the Lodge is to be born again, in a good way. So, when we go into the lodge tonight to pray for Peter, not only will we be reborn, but hopefully he will be as well.”

  Dean nodded slowly. He understood what she meant. It was a way of praying for a new start, a new beginning, a way to make Peter whole.

  “Mary,” he pleaded, “let me do it. You can stay here with Peter and get preparations underway for moving to Columbus. Tell me what to do.

  I need to do something!”

  At first, he was worried she would refuse, but always a practical woman, Mary acquiesced readily. She gave him the instructions, and said she would like to have the lodge ready by sundown. In the meantime, she would talk with Peter’s doctors, and arrange for his transportation to the medical center in Columbus.

  Dean was grateful to Mary. My God, Dean thought, I’ve known Peter and Mary since I was a teenager. They’re like my brother and sister! Placing his sweating face in his work-worn hands, he allowed himself a brief mourning. He loved Peter, loved Peter’s family. Hell, Lena calls me Uncle Dean, he grieved. Now he was losing them.

  Next to his wife Nellie, Dean admired Mary more than any woman he knew. He remembered the first time he saw her – a bride, arriving at the farm, she and Peter still freshly in love. Mary had glowed like a

  candle flame in a cozy room, warm, loving and comforting.

  What is the word she used? It was in her first language, the Lakota language. Wouanihan,18 to respect, to honor. That’s how he felt about her, and Peter and Lena as well. He honored them. They were family, and now he was losing them.

  Dipping his red bandana into the cold water of Wolf Run, and bathing his face, neck and chest, Dean stood at the north bank of the meandering creek, admiring its clear water, blue clay walls, and bending willows. A crawdad darted by just below the surface of the bubbling stream. A hawk circled above, and the distant lowing of cattle, the twitter of birds, the smell of sun-warmed earth and clover, surrounded him in a display of life that moved him deeply.

  He felt as if God, or Creator as Peter, Mary and Lena called Him, were touching his shoulder, giving it a small pat of approval and saying, “Good work, my son. You have done well.”

  And he had. Dean knew that the work was good, and that Lena would be pleased with what he had accomplished.

  The snap of a twig caused him to turn. Nellie, a basket on her arm, walked up to her husband. Touching his face lovingly, she placed her

  cheek against his, still cold from the sparkling waters of Wolf Run. “Sweetheart,” she whispered, “I brought us a little something.

  Mary said that she is fasting, but that we should eat. She has no idea how

  long the ceremony will take tonight.” Walking to the large, flat rock, which Dean had rested upon moments earlier, she laid a small cloth and placed the basket in the center of if it.

  “I wasn’t sure what we should have for supper,” Nellie explained. “This is a solemn night,” she continued, “even if we don’t fully understand it. Still, as Mary and Peter are always saying, ‘we are all related’ and I don’t want us to do anything to desecrate what is to be done here tonight. So,” Nellie explained, “I hope you don’t mind. You’ve been working so hard, but I’ve brought us a simple dinner of

  18 Woah-oo-ah-njee-hahnj (nj is a French J sound)

  some beans, cornbread and spring onions with water from the spring.” Dean smiled:

  “Only two of ‘the three sisters19?” he chortled quietly, referring to the combination of beans, corn and squash which Mary had introduced them to.

  “I remembered!” Nellie smiled, pulling a small dish of fried zucchini from the depths of the woven basket.

  Leaning over in silent gratitude for this dear woman, who reached out to those she loved, always in the best way she knew how, Dean placed a reverent kiss upon her smooth, slightly plump cheek.

  “You’re a good woman, Nellie,” he crooned, giving her a swift hug, and almost absent-mindedly, helping himself to the plain yet satisfying meal.

  Yes, the work was good. Early in the morning, Dean dug the fire pit where 16 rocks, each about the size of a cantaloupe, lay heating for most of the day. He had not thought to ask how many he should prepare, and didn’t know how important the numbers were, so he decided to play it safe.

  Dean remembered that four was a sacred number, representing the four seasons, four winds, and four directions of the earth, and he knew that Mary would need enough rocks to produce the sauna-like effect she

  needed for her ceremony. Keeping this in mind, he gathered 16 large

  stones, resulting from multiplying the sacred number by itself, or 4 x 4. Should she need that many, at least they were available. A good thirty feet from the pit was the sweat lodge.

  Facing west, where the great Thunderbird lives and sends rain, and where all things end, the igloo-shaped lodge stood complete. Cutting willow saplings about the thickness of his thumb, Dean lashed them together with baling twine after embedding them in the ground.

  Covering the frame with first tarp and then burlap, the sweat lodge, large enough to seat four people comfortably, appeared to be
tightly insulated and draft free.

  Stepping into the structure, Dean sat down and assured himself that

  the centralized pit, where the heated stones would be placed, would be far enough from the legs and knees of the participants who would be involved in tonight’s ceremony. Dean crawled out of the sweat lodge again surveying his work.

  19 The three sisters of corn, beans and squash, were grown together by Native American farmers, who asserted that they only grow and thrive together. This belief was very sophisticated in its foundation, as each plant replaces to the soil what another one takes.

  Yes, the work was good and true, built, not only with the sweat of his brow, but from the love within his breast, and the crying out of his spirit to help his friends – his adopted family, taken to his heart not long after they arrived in Southern Ohio these many years ago.

  He walked around the lodge one more time, tugging here, securing loose ends, anticipating the event which would take place this night.

  Dean had invited himself and Nellie to the ceremony. He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate, but he didn’t care. He wanted to be here for Mary and Lena, and mostly for Peter. He was sure that his Christian- based prayers would evoke no feelings of disrespect, as he was here to honor his friends – his family, and not to dishonor them.

  It was ready. Mary and Lena would soon arrive with Nellie, who was picking them up from the hospital. Dean was proud of his work, and happy to have been of help to people whom he loved with all of his heart.

  He nodded and murmured to himself, “Not bad for a wasicu,20”

  “Waste! Lila21 waste,” Mary exclaimed as she and Lena approached the sweat lodge constructed for her with such devotion.

  “I could not have done better, Chia,”22 Mary whispered, overcome with gratitude for this dear, strong man who stood beside her in anticipation of her approval.

  “We can begin.”

  Picking up a pitchfork and walking to the fire pit, Dean scooped up four of the stones, and brought them to the sweat lodge. Placing them in the cavity in the middle of the lodge, he turned and exited, returning with four more stones. This he repeated until all 16 were in the circular depression.

  Lena sat upon the large, flat rock which played so much in the day’s events. Some crumbs lay upon the stone. She picked them up and scattered them on the ground, where a small sparrow eagerly bounced forward to devour them. Her mother was preparing to smudge the area, to cleanse it, and prepare it for the important event about to take place.

  She watched solemnly as her mother performed a rite Lena would perform twenty-two years later when she cleansed her new restaurant.

  Lena smelled the cedar needles, wild sage, wild sweet grass, and tobacco. She watched as Mary “bathed” herself with the fragrant fumes,

  20 Wah-see-chew – White person

  21 Lee-luh – Very or much

  22 Chee-aah – Older brother

  as she cupped her hand and captured the floating ribbons of smoke, passed them over her head, shoulders, torso, and under each foot. Observed as she prayed to the Grandfathers of the West, the North, the East, and then the South, and then to Father Sky. Kneeling, she sent her prayer to Mother Earth.

  Finally she again raised the still smoking bowl to the sky and added a personal plea:

  “Creator, this is One Feather, I ask that you keep my feet true and on the Good Red Road. I ask that you guide me on this day, and all days,

  so that I may continue on the path of wisdom. I ask that you send to me the signs to heal my husband, Spotted Eagle. I ask this with all

  humility.”

  “Tunkasila Wakan Tanka,23 please hear me. This is One Feather. I

  ask that you have pity on us, as we are pitiful and small and weak.”

  The heat in the sweat lodge was building. Mary poured water, collected in a bucket which sat to her right, onto the heated stones, causing a burst of steam. Next, she sprinkled lavender to help the occupants relax. Mary then instructed everyone to send a personal appeal.

  Nellie bowed her head and breathed a fervent plea for Peter’s healing. As she prayed, scenes flew through her mind like a nostalgic slide show. Peter, coming up the gravel road to their front gate, his face lit with a smile. He’s always smiling she thought to herself.

  Mary and Peter walking in from the fields, happy, gazing into each other’s eyes. Lena, running up to her father and leaping into his arms. Nellie supressed a sob and continued her prayers.

  Dean’s mind was a whirlwind of thought: Peter, like a brother, working in the fields along side his employer/friend. Mary and Nellie at the sink, laughing, washing dishes after they’d shared a meal in the

  summer kitchen of the old farm-house. Lena, climbing into his lap and

  wrapping her childish arms around his neck. “I love you, Uncle Dean.” Lena rocked upon her buttocks, her prayer repeating over and over: “Please save Ate. Please save Ate.”

  Memories of his sparkling eyes, his lifting her into his arms and swinging her into the air, laughing,

  “You are a bird, my little one.”

  Pictures flew through her mind – Ate teaching her how to fish, walking down the long dirt roads surrounding May Hill, lifting her to the counter of the general store and handing her an orange pop.

  “Ate!”

  23Tdoon-ka-she-la Wah-kah Than-kah – the Grandfathers or spirits

  Mary leaned toward the smoke and prayed fervently for the life of her husband. In her left hand, the one closest to her heart, she held the eagle feather her mother had saved for her.

  “Your prayer feather,” her mother had advised.

  Surprisingly, her mind was blank except for the vision of a blue heron against a dark, turbulent sky.

  Mary stared into the pit where the super-heated rocks seemed to pulse. Beating, beating, like a human heart, the stones began to glow with a new intensity. A mist began to form in the lodge, and the other three participants began to fade. Slowly, slowly, the intensity of the heat built, and the pulsations of the rocks increased.

  “Come, One Feather,” a trumpet-like voice intoned.

  Mary raised her eyes to the roof of the sweat lodge. There, floating above her, was Zitka Mine.24

  “Follow,” he commanded, and Mary felt herself rise through the roof of the lodge, and out into the cool air of the night.

  “Where are we going?” she queried. “To the edge of Wanagi Canku.”25

  “Wait!” Mary turned in answer to a pleading voice. Lena was following her, soaring toward her, one small arm outstretched. Zitka Mine gave his silent assent, and the three of them flew until they arrived at the fifth step from the edge of the world.

  “There,” Zitka Mine said, “is Spotted Eagle.” Mary turned slowly and beheld a flickering light, not unlike a small star.

  “Take him,” Zitka Mine commanded. One Feather drifted to the flickering light of her husband’s soul, and cupping it in her left hand,

  lovingly held it to her breast.

  “One Feather,” Zitka Mine intoned, “You are entrusted with the spirit of Spotted Eagle for the passing of four seasons. You will place it in a medicine bundle and guard the spirit within it. Cedar Woman,” Zitka Mine instructed, turning toward the small soul drifting silently behind her mother, “must make the bundle.”

  Soaring upward, Zitka Mine gave his final instruction.

  “Spotted Eagle must dwell within silence. He will remain silent for the total of four seasons. He will awaken, and he will teach.”

  24 Zhee-tdkah min-eh. Also called Hokagica To – Hoh-kha - (glottal G) - ee chi- ah Td-oh – the Water Bird or Blue Heron. A healer who also symbolizes self- reflection.

  25 Wah-nah-ghee Chan-koo – the place five steps away from the edge of the world. On the fourth step a spirit steps into the spirit world.

  There was the loud whoosh of sound, as if mighty wings were pulling the evening air beneath them to mount to the highest parts of the heavens. Then, silence.

  Lena came to a
wareness with a start. She shook her head and gazed about her. Dean and Nellie appeared to be deep in prayer. Her mother was bathed in a nimbus of light, her hair floating, floating on the super- heated air of the sweat lodge.