CHAPTER 14
Clara stopped the car
beside the curb outside Manny’s apartment.
“Pull up a little
farther.”
“Why?”
“There,” Manny
pointed. “I don’t want her to see me.” Desirée stood framed by the
window. She hadn’t seen them yet, and Manny hoped she would
continue looking the other way until he drove off.
“An
admirer?”
“More like an old
nightmare.”
Clara pulled the car
a hundred feet ahead and stopped. She turned in the seat and faced
him. “I’m not so sure about this.”
“It’ll be fine. I
still got one good eye I can drive with.” He winked it, bringing
sympathetic pain to the bandaged one. “I can still drive good
enough,” he insisted.
“But my car. My baby.
Willie said you’re not the best of drivers with both eyes working,
and cracked ribs that double you over in pain every time you hit a
bump won’t help any.”
“Is that all you’re
worried about? Your car?”
“I’m worried about
you, too.” Clara looked at Manny and leaned over the seat. Her lips
brushed his cheek.
Manny felt the blood
rush to his face and blurted, “What can I hit just driving the few
miles to Reuben’s?”
She sighed and ran
her hand over the Cadillac’s leather seats. “I guess it isn’t that
far. Besides, you need someone here to sign for your new rental car
when Hertz delivers it.”
Clara had put the key
in the lock before Desirée realized someone was next door, and
Manny drove away before she saw him.
He turned onto the
highway and digested the happenings of the last few days. He needed
to do some road work, to run, to get into that zone where he sorted
things out. But with his injuries, all he would be able to manage
was a pained shuffle, and he’d have to think without the runner’s
high. He had uncovered some facts about Jason’s murder, which
caused someone to run him off the road and bury a hammer in his
head. Then someone, presumably the same person who failed with the
hammer, struck him with the stolen truck and left him for dead. And
even though there would be many people on the reservation who
wanted him out of the way, all roads led to Reuben.
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 pitchfork 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 distant 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?”
“We’re here to
help.”
“Who’s ‘we?’
”
“Friends. Hiding in
the gully out back.”
Reuben sat on a pew
in front of Manny, and rested his hand lightly on the boy’s back.
“I appreciate your heart, misun, but
this here’s a journey you gotta sit out. I don’t know where this is
going, but it’s not going to get any easier. We’ve already been
here nearly two months with no end in sight. Go. Take your friends
out of here.”
Buddy Lamont, one of
Reuben’s AIM friends, who would eventually die from a gunshot at
the occupation, led Manny from the church that night. As he skirted
FBI and Marshal roadblocks, a voice called out to him. The same
voice he heard the night he was rammed. The voice that moaned for
help.
He was back at the
church, but this time there was no church, just the hill
overlooking the village where the Seventh Cavalry waited. Hotchkiss
guns pointed toward tipis, and troopers stood poised with
Springfields as other soldiers searched lodges for
weapons.
Manny shouted a
warning, but no sound came out. He waved his arms wildly, but no
one noticed. A young Lakota pulled a .36 Navy Colt from under his
Ghost Shirt and began firing into the air. Hotchkiss guns opened
up, cutting down half the village in the first rapid-fire barrage.
Women, children, old men fled, and soldiers shot them in the backs
as they ran. Survivors dropped into a ravine in back of the
village. The soldiers re-aimed their Hotchkiss guns and fired
another volley.
Manny turned away.
His stomach heaved while he forced a look back at the massacre. A
young mother caught his eye as she ran clutching a baby in her
arms. Looked over her shoulder. Fell. Picked herself up. Bloodied.
Then the guns ripped her deerskin skirt apart. More blood. Screams,
and she fell again. Her baby flew through the air and landed on
corpses already melting the snow with their cooling bodies. The
baby cried, and a single shot stopped it.
Manny was beside the
burial party days later. He cried as civilians, hired by the
soldiers at two dollars a body, pried corpses from the frozen
ground, then used the same shovels to lever them into the mass
grave.
Manny cried, and
another voice cried with him. The figure that had guided him to
Wounded Knee approached and Manny couldn’t see his face, couldn’t
see through the cloud that covered his mind. The specter held out
his hand and Manny reached for it. The apparition withdrew it and
walked away, wailing with each burdened step.
Still, Manny couldn’t
look away from the genocide as burial crews performed their grisly
task.
“Wait!” Manny
shouted. He ran after the apparition. “I’m here to
help.”
It kept just beyond
his grasp.
“Wait!”
It remained just a
step ahead. “Wait!” Manny cried again. And again. And
again.
“Kola!” Reuben shook him. “Kola!”
The scene, and the
apparition, faded. Manny looked up at Reuben, shirtless over him,
sweat dripping from every pore of his body, a concerned look across
his glistening face. “Come out of it.”
Reuben had thrown
back the covering of the door, and cool air dimpled his body with
goose bumps. Reuben trickled water over Manny’s face and shoulders,
then carried him outside. Reuben propped him against a cedar log,
and handed him a folded towel. Groggy, Manny had to concentrate to
unfold the edges that were tucked into each other.
“You’re all right
now,” Reuben said. He held a pot of water and Manny dipped the
towel into it and wiped his face.
“It was horrible,”
Manny breathed, toweling his nude body. “Is this what a vision is
supposed to be? A nightmare?”
Reuben dried himself
and slipped on a T-shirt that proclaimed HOMELAND SECURITY. It
depicted the faded images of four Apaches posing together as they
eyed the camera with a dour look. “Part of the journey you just
took involves having someone help interpret your dream. You need a
wicasa wakan.”
Manny laughed. Reuben
didn’t. “My brother, the holy man I came here to question about a
murder? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
“One that needs help
with his vision before it drives him mad. Besides, you got any
other sacred man to talk to?”
Reuben crouched
beside him, genuine concern etched across his face. Was this a true
holy man kneeling beside him? Manny thirsted for answers, and he
slipped on his trousers. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Now?”
“I think better when
I’m moving.” Manny used the cedar log for support and stood,
stretching his legs, getting the circulation going. Reuben draped a
towel over his shoulder and started walking beside him. Although
Manny was still light-headed from the sweat, and the pain caused
him to wince with every step, he thought he might just be able to
outrun Reuben even now. Reuben limped to keep up, rubbing his
leg.
“Bursitis,” he said
when he caught Manny eyeing him.
“I thought it was
arthritis?”
“It’s one of those
-itis brothers.” And they both laughed together for the first time
in so many years.
When the heat
overcame Manny and the stress of his vision wore on him and
weakened him, Reuben had called Willie to give Manny a ride. Willie
left his patrol car at Reuben’s house, and proudly sat behind the
wheel of Clara’s dusty Cadillac. “So what was it like?” Willie
asked when Manny dropped onto the seat beside him.
He wanted to tell
Willie that his brother, sacred man and chief suspect in Jason Red
Cloud’s murder, had guided him through the meanings of his vision
and helped him understand things afterward. He wanted to tell
Willie that the specter in his vision was a wandering soul,
destined to roam eternity, destined never to find the Spirit Road
without Manny’s help. Manny was this wanagi’s savior and the instrument by which this
lost wanagi would find the road home.
Most important, Manny had no idea who the spirit had been in life.
But he couldn’t tell Willie, or anyone, about this most personal of
experiences, so he changed the subject.
“I found out some
things. I don’t think Reuben stole that truck and ran me off the
road. His story that he and Ben Horsecreek attended a wake can be
easily verified. He said he doesn’t think any of his Heritage Kids
are involved, though his reaction told me he was less than certain
of that. But Reuben did say something, when both of us were lost in
our visions. Something he denied later. But I distinctly heard
it.”
“What was
that?”
“Reuben screamed out
something about Jason Red Cloud’s folks having their car tampered
with. I swear he accused Billy Two Moons of killing
them.”