Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

  As Manny continued west on Route 18, he thought of the truck that rammed him. If he hadn’t stayed motionless, his attacker would have killed him, but the thing that kept invading his thoughts was the vision he’d had as he lay hurt and bleeding inside the car. He had never experienced a vision, despite Unc’s insistence that he participate in the hanbleceyapi. He “cried for a vision” like other Lakota boys did at puberty when they exiled themselves to pray to Wakan Tanka for a dream that would guide them through life. Manny had trudged through deep snow to get to the low butte in back of Unc’s house, where he’d prayed and fasted and wrapped the buffalo robe tightly around him to keep out the cold. He clutched the pipe he had made and prayed for that vision, while frigid air stung his exposed legs and ice clung to his breech clout. After the sacred four days, he was deemed worthy to enter the sweat lodge. His vision had eluded him as a boy, only to come visit him when he was a middle-aged man in a wrecked rental car.

  He’d drifted in and out of consciousness, unsure what the apparition wanted. Among the wails of mothers and sisters and wives, the wanagi had approached, its features obscured. But the pain in its twisted face cried to Manny that it needed his help. He hadn’t been able to keep awake. He had passed out in the crumpled car, certain he would never awake from his dream, certain he could never help the wanagi.

  When he awoke in the hospital, he didn’t understand the meaning of his vision and he desperately needed a holy man’s guidance. But he was about to question the only wicasa wakan he knew about a murder. He couldn’t allow his personal quest for the meaning of his vision to interfere with his duty.

  The FBI had hired him, trained him, and made him one of the nation’s premier investigators. He had given back far more than he had received, however, and had forsaken his heritage for his position. Duty wasn’t one of the four Lakota virtues. Even before he thought of excuses not to maintain his loyalty to the bureau, he had his answer: Uncle Marion. Duty, Unc told him, was as important as the traditional virtues. Duty is what kept a man walking when he should be crawling, crawling when he should be lying on his deathbed. Generosity, fortitude, bravery, and wisdom were the four Lakota virtues. Duty was Manny’s virtue.

  Then Manny’s thoughts turned to Niles the Pile. Niles had always resented Manny’s abilities as an investigator. Assigning Manny to every Indian reservation case that came along was the Pile’s way of making things rough enough that Manny would quit, but Manny wouldn’t quit, and Niles had never had cause to fire him. Until now. If Niles gathered enough evidence that the investigation was stalling because the assigned agent was spending too much time romancing women, Manny would be down the road kicking rocks. And the Pile, and Lumpy, would have won.

  Manny had no doubt Niles had been fed information from Lumpy and the media, outlining the time Manny had spent with Sonja Myers and now Desirée Chasing Hawk. He imagined Niles had some distorted visualization of Manny cavorting with more women than Caligula had. But the Pile didn’t know that Manny hadn’t been with a woman in so long that he forgot what to do if he had been.

  He turned off the blacktop onto the gravel leading to Reuben’s, and the Cadillac floated over the washboard road. Manny was grateful that the car softened the bumps, and he was able to breathe without the pain stabbing his ribs every time he hit a rut. The car filtered the dust and noise and allowed him to focus on how to question Reuben. The last two times he had tried to talk to Reuben, he had been evasive, even cagey. He knew he was the target of Manny’s investigation and told Manny nothing new.

  He drove by Crazy George He Crow’s. Crazy George was not there, and neither was his Buick. The OST evidence tech hadn’t finished processing it yet. Crazy George remained convinced that the tribe had stolen his car, and Manny made a mental note to speed things up.

  He continued past a ramshackle shanty that was missing all the windows on the west side. With winter approaching, Manny hoped that whoever lived there was able to board up the holes against the wind and snow, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. When the snow flew in the fall, the people living there would huddle against a garbage can in the middle of the floor, burning whatever they had gathered during the summer, and pray to Wakan Tanka to see them through until spring. He had been there with Unc many winters, making do with what firewood they could muster before winter set in. For a brief moment, Manny’s heart sank, knowing he was powerless to help those people.

  Past the shanty, four children played with sticks in the dirt. They checked out the passing Cadillac, then returned to their games. They could have been Manny’s children, if he had remained on the reservation. Was it empathy he felt for people here? Certainly any good interrogator could empathize with people to get a confession. He wept when they wept, acted frustrated when they became frustrated. But he wasn’t about to wring any confessions from these people. They didn’t want his sympathy. They didn’t even want his empathy. Pine Ridge was smack in the middle of the poorest county in the nation, yet all its people wanted was respect.

  His thoughts turned back to Desirée. He rubbed his medicine bundle and silently thanked Lumpy for taking her from him. Those kids could have been his, playing in the dirt while the old man made a run to White Clay with the little lady. Desirée had become conniving and manipulative. He admitted that even Lumpy deserved better.

  He turned down Reuben’s driveway and coasted the rest of the way in, feeling the reassurance of Willie’s Glock beneath his light corduroy jacket. He stepped out of the car and eased the door shut, then walked toward the house. Reuben’s pony hung its head in a feed bucket but glanced sideways at Manny before returning to the grain. Manny shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun as he looked through the windows, but Reuben wasn’t inside, and he walked around to the back of the trailer where they’d spoken that first time. When he cleared the corner of the trailer, Reuben called out from somewhere in back.

  “No need to sneak around, kola. I’m down here.”

  Manny looked for a surveillance camera, certain Reuben must have one hidden somewhere. He walked toward the sound of Reuben’s voice, but didn’t see him.

  “Down here.”

  “Down where?”

  “By the creek.”

  Manny walked to the edge of a bank leading down to a shallow stream where Reuben tended a fire ten feet down. He squatted as he fed the fire in front of a heavy bark-and-mud covered dome: an ini kagapi. Past the sweat lodge a trickle of water meandered in a twenty-foot-wide stream that flowed into White Clay Creek.

  “Come down here, brother.” Reuben gestured over his back with a metal poker, then turned and added more cedar branches to the fire. Manny double-checked the position of the pistol before he picked his way down the bank. Reuben wore long shorts that stopped just below his knees. Sweat beaded on his naked chest and trickled down his legs to wet his moccasins, the wornout deerskin contrasting with the one new string. Reuben set the poker by the fire and turned to Manny, and his smile faded as he eyed Manny’s head.

  “I heard you got banged up again, but I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “Drums.”

  Willie had said the same thing about the information highway here on the reservation. “You got no enemies here. Come sit for a bit while I finish preparations.”

  “For what?”

  Reuben laughed. “It has been a long time since you been home. We’re going to sweat.”

  “I don’t have time for that. We need to talk.”

  “About things that happened here on the rez before you came? And things that’s happened since?”

  Manny nodded.

  “Then we’ll have a lot to talk about, but we’ll talk about it after we cleanse ourselves. I insist. If you want your answers.”

  Reuben grabbed a deer hide water bladder and limped to the entrance. He faced east for the sacredness, the source of power and life, and bent low to signify his humility as he disappeared into the lodge, then reemerged. With a small pitchf
ork he scooped rocks the size of softballs from the bottom of the fire pit and started for the entrance. He stopped and reached into his pocket and tossed Manny a half pouch of Bull Durham. Loose tobacco spilled onto the dirt.

  “For an offering when we’re finished,” Reuben said, and once more disappeared inside.

  “Shit,” Manny murmured under his breath. He caressed the white cotton tobacco pouch. What pure pleasure it would be to roll a smoke, to feel the cigarette firm in his fingers, to watch the smoke rings drift skyward.

  Then he was back to his bigger problem: Participating in a sweat was not on his agenda right now. He hurt and his head pounded, and even the minimal exertion of walking from the car to the back of Reuben’s house taxed his muscles. His healing hand from the dog bite made it difficult to hold the tobacco pouch, and he was unsure if he could withstand the heat of the sweat lodge. But if this was the only way to talk with Reuben, he guessed he had no choice.

  He picked his way along a worn path to the inipi. He stripped, and hid the Glock under his jacket on the ground before he draped his trousers over a lawn chair and reluctantly took off his BVDs. Naked, he walked barefoot over sharp rocks to the lodge entrance and bent low to enter.

  Instantly Manny felt twelve years old again, when he had crawled into the sweat lodge following his fasting and crying on the hill in back of Unc’s house. “Enter Mother Earth’s womb with reverence,” he heard the sacred man instructing him. “So you can receive what Wakan Tanka wishes for you.”

  Manny had entered and found himself with four other boys sitting in a semicircle around the wicasa wakan. The holy man had given each boy a buffalo tail to whip himself while he flicked water on the hot rocks with a straw broom.

  “The hot stones will be the coming of life,” the sacred man said. “Feel the creative forces of the universe being activated with the steam.” He flicked more water on the rocks. Soon, all the boys except Manny moaned, wrapped up in the visions that had descended upon them as they sweated in the lodge. Manny envied them, never knowing why his vision had eluded him. Even now it disturbed him.

  Manny parted the canvas door. Reuben sat cross-legged on the far side of the lodge and he directed sage smoke over his body with an eagle feather. Manny shook at the thought of his crazy brother attacking him in the confines of the lodge. But Reuben was his best suspect, and this might be Manny’s only opportunity to question him.

  Manny stooped low and duckwalked into the lodge.

  “Yuhpayo!” Reuben said: Close it.

  Manny threw the heavy canvas door flap closed. The lodge was plunged into darkness, the only light the glow of the rocks, the heat already intense in the enclosed space. Manny patted the ground around him as he tried to recall where he was in relation to Reuben. The bed of sage pricked his bare butt and legs, and he gingerly put all his weight on his bottom.

  Manny’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. He squinted to make out Reuben, momentarily lost in the fog as he sprinkled water on the hot rocks with a buffalo horn. Steam erupted. Heat rose. Manny gasped in shallow, painful breaths.

  “Where do I sit?”

  “Where?” Reuben’s face rose above the steam as he nodded his approval. “At least you have some respect for the old ways, even if you forgot the knowledge. Sit there. Facing east.”

  “East to give one wisdom.”

  “So you do remember some things that Unc taught you.”

  “I remember a lot of things he taught me. Taught both of us. But you forgot the important things he stood for. You tossed what integrity you had away and became—”

  “A murderer, little brother? You don’t have to remind me of that. But I won’t argue with you here, not within the lodge. Maybe you should just sit back and pray, contemplate why we’re here.”

  Reuben ladled more water onto the rocks. Fog engulfed him. His head poked through the steam and looked detached from his body. Manny rubbed his eyes, feeling the injured one open from the steam. He swayed and fell forward. He caught himself and sat up. His chest heaved. His breaths came at great expense.

  “You don’t look so good, kola. I heard you got a nasty concussion last night. Maybe you shouldn’t be in here right now.”

  Manny’s head pounded. He wiped sweat from his eye. “I got questions that need answers, and don’t have a lot of time to find them out.”

  “Ask away.” Reuben took a small pouch beside his feet and tossed the medicine plant into the air. “Peji wacanga.”

  “Sweetgrass.”

  Reuben nodded his approval and trickled more water from the horn onto the rocks nestled in the pit in the center of the lodge. Steam rose. Reuben disappeared in the steam. Manny rubbed his eye, and light-headedness returned. When Reuben reappeared, a single eagle feather jutted from his hair and his head appeared to float above the steam cloud.

  “You really don’t look so good. Maybe you should step outside where it’s cool. You never know with a concussion.”

  “The sweetgrass.” Manny ignored him. “There was sweetgrass found besides Jason’s body where he was killed, and more found in Crazy George’s car. Maybe it came from that pouch.”

  Reuben grinned a jack-o’-lantern smile against the glow of the hot rocks. “Haven’t you heard? I am now a wicasa wakan. I use sweetgrass in ceremonies. But I tell you, there are other people here on the rez that use it. Like your young With Horn. I understand he’s been studying with Margaret Catches. I’m certain she uses it, too.”

  Reuben didn’t wait for a response, but added more water. He set the horn at his feet, and began a soft chant, rocking gently as he closed his eyes. Reuben would soon be entranced, and Manny needed answers quickly. “The night someone attacked me with a hammer: Was it one of your Heritage Kids?”

  Reuben’s expression showed no emotion. His fists clenched. And unclenched. His jaw tightened. And relaxed. In chewinggum fashion. Could Manny reach the gun outside in time before Reuben was upon him? As quickly as Reuben’s rage had surfaced, it was gone, replaced by an equanimity that surprised Manny. “Some of my kids are less saintly than I’d like them to be, but I asked each one about the attack, and they all denied it.”

  “And you believe them?”

  “I got to, until I have a good reason not to. I hurt too many people in my life by not believing them.”

  “Did you drive the truck that hit me?” Manny’s head throbbed, and he wished he could detach it from his body as Reuben seemed to do. Manny wiped sweat from his forehead and his eye, and caught himself from falling forward and leaned back. His shallow breaths came with great labor as sharp pain radiated from his ribs down to his toes. “The truck that rammed me was stolen from your jobsite. Either you or one of your kids stole it and ran me off the road. What say you, kola.”

  “I told you, I don’t drive anymore. Besides, Ben Horsecreek and I went to the Rosebud for a wake last night. He drove. That’ll be easy enough for you to check out.”

  Manny nodded. It would be an easy fact to check.

  Manny drifted. His mind wandered away from the investigation. He held the side of his head, watching Reuben add water to the rocks. The hissing steam consumed him. What had the sacred man said during his hanbleceyapi, that the stones within the lodge represented the coming of life, and the steam was the creative forces of the universe being activated. Reuben mouthed something that Manny couldn’t understand; his voice sounded as if he mumbled through a hollow culvert. Manny fought to stay conscious, but his eyes drooped shut.

  When he opened his eyes, Reuben was gone. Manny no longer sat cross-legged in the sweat lodge, but lay on the prairie grass, tall buffalo and gama grass that cushioned his head. Voices woke him from his deep sleep. Gone was the aching in his head. Gone was the bandage covering his eye. Gone was the throbbing of his ribs that had reminded him of the incident that nearly cost him his life.

  Voices roused him. Those same voices he had heard as he lay fighting for his life in the rental car. Women crying. Children crying. Frightened voices, rising over the d
istant noise of gunfire. He was powerless to move, unable to help.

  A tall white marker jutted out of the ground over the mass grave for the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre victims. Horse soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry rode to the hill overlooking Chief Big Foot’s village, down along the banks of Chankpe Opi Wakpala, Wounded Knee Creek. Manny shouted a warning, but no words came out, and he watched in revulsion as the soldiers opened fire on the villagers.

  Manny blinked and was once again fifteen years old, leading other teen sympathizers past the FBI roadblock at Red Arrow outside the Wounded Knee standoff. They inched their way toward the Catholic church, which American Indian Movement members occupied.

  “Get down!” he ordered the others when an armored personnel carrier loaded with U.S. Marshals approached. They drove past without stopping.

  “Clear,” Manny whispered, and ran bent over, then crawled the last few yards in the gully leading to the church.

  Manny told the others to wait in the gully behind the church while he made certain that the AIM people inside knew they were there to help, and he crawled toward the building. Sagebrush tore his jeans, and his hands bled raw from the rocky ground. He had paused and was listening at the back door when a gun cocked close to his ear, and someone thrust a rifle barrel into his face. Strong, lean, muscular hands grabbed him by one chubby arm, hoisted him, and dragged him inside the church. Twenty or more women sat in different places. Some cared for children. Others sat on the bare wooden floor, stirring tripe on fires made from pews they had chopped up. The odor made Manny retch, but he was too frightened to puke. Men held guns and peered intently out windows. The overpowering stench of urine and feces gagged him, and again he fought down the urge to vomit.

  “What you doing here, kola?” Reuben shouted from across the room. Manny stood as Reuben picked his way through women and children. “Unc will skin you alive if he finds out you’re hanging with me. What’re you doing here?”