Dakota Dream (11 page)

“I think she's real nice, Charly Black Crow.”

“Of course she's nice,” I said. She
was
nice, but I'd decided it wasn't a safe subject to dwell on. “I'm not talking about nice, I'm talking about experience.”

He just said she was nice again. I said let's drop it.

CHAPTER SIX

The second day of the
hanblecheya
turned out to be a wholesale bummer. Actually, it was Friday, so it might have been the third day, depending on how you look at it.

Thursday went pretty well. I just mellowed out on all the Dakota history represented by my surroundings, and made notes about the time I spent at Gates House. But Friday morning after I got up, I went out of the cave and climbed up to the high ground overlook. I left my journal behind.

Up on the peak of Mount Black Elk, which was my name for this place, there was that view in front of me. As far as the eye could see, the Black Hills, and the vibes of glorious Sioux history.

But all of a sudden, I didn't feel good. I felt hungry and dizzy. I drank some of the water, but it didn't help; I just kept feeling more and more light-headed until I was real woozy.

I laid down on my back to try and make it pass. It didn't altogether pass, but I must have slept through some of it, because it wasn't until the afternoon that the bad thoughts and the bad vibes began to come.

I tried to fight it off. Here came this picture of Mrs. Bluefish: “You can't
become
an Indian, Floyd, you have to be
born
an Indian.” I rolled over on the ground. Not only was I woozy, but she pissed me off. What right did she have to intrude on my
hanblecheya
?

Then I saw my conversation with Chief Bear-in-cave, in his trailer. He was telling me the story of Two-Claw and the bear that became like a pet. I rolled over again, but there was Donny Thunderbird. “A writer can do a lot of good for Indians, Floyd. A reservation is a thing of the past.”

I kept trying to fight off these bad thoughts; I wanted to drive them out. But even though I was dozing in and out, sort of floating on the edge of being delirious, there was a warning in a corner of my brain:
You don't manipulate the
hanblecheya.
You take what comes.

The chief summed up the meaning of the Two-Claw story: “It's a lot like that when you're an Indian on a reservation.”

Donny Thunderbird: “A reservation is a thing of the past.”

Mrs. Bluefish: “You can't
become
an Indian, Floyd, you have to be
born
an Indian.”

I kept rolling over, right and left. It was like a conspiracy, the way these same words and pictures kept busting into my brain. I saw myself the first day I got to the reservation; I was walking around the campground picking up Pepsi cans and Styrofoam cups. What did I think I was going to do, live on the reservation and pick up litter for the rest of my life?

I don't know how long the bad vibes package lasted. Over and over, the same pictures and the same words. I was semiconscious part of the time, half asleep. When I was conscious, I was like partly delirious. There wasn't any sense of time to it.

By the time I came out of it, more or less, it was close to dusk. I was like a person who breaks a long fever; I was shaky and clammy, but I wasn't woozy anymore, and I had my faculties.

I only wished I didn't. I sat up against the base of this shaggy pine tree, and the meaning of things was real clear to me. A lot clearer than I wanted.

The truth was, there wasn't any destiny. There never had been. What I had, instead of a destiny, was a colorful fantasy, the kind that crazies create in their peculiar little minds when they can't deal with the world the way it really is.

It was real bitter, but it was a conclusion I didn't try to fight off. In their kind and gentle way, that was the point that Donny and the chief had tried to make to me. Way back when, when I was just a kid, I felt real close to the Indians because their situation seemed just like mine. They kept getting jerked around all the time, from their lands and places, when all they wanted was to be left alone to live their lives in peace. That's all they wanted, that's all I wanted.

I felt so clammy, I started to get the shakes. Since I wasn't dizzy or anything like that, I climbed down to the cave and got my denim jacket. Then back up to the tree trunk.

I was cold and naked and alone. The only company I had was the awful truth, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. My destiny had been manufactured by my brain to make up for all those years of being bounced around from one placement to another. In the looney bin they call it compensation, or if you're really off-the-wall, a delusion. Maybe I was just as looney as Mrs. Bluefish thought I was.

I was so lonely all of a sudden. There were even tears running down my face. I didn't want to stay anymore; I wanted to go back to the reservation. I had my vision, the truth was revealed to me, and now I was all hollow inside. What would be the point in staying any longer?

I think I would have gone back, only it was after dark and I was too shaky. I didn't like my chances of making it without falling off a cliff or something. The blessing was sleep. I was so exhausted, I fell asleep right there on the clearing.

When I woke up the next morning, I was resigned; it was a different head, a sort of neutral zone, like a return to numb-out. I decided to go ahead and stick out the rest of the vision quest. Or to tell the truth, I decided not to do anything. I drank some water and went back to my journal.

At Gates House, the situation was about to get worse. Not that I could see it coming. Nicky's Kawasaki got moved to Barb's garage. I don't know how, but somehow Nicky got his brother Earl sobered up and the two of them got their asses in gear long enough to transport it.

It was not a situation I was keen on, because it just gave Nicky all the more reason to cling. He was such a pest about it that after a couple of days, I finally agreed to go over there with him to see if we could get it running.

We had to use the sign-out sheet because we had to walk, and it's over a mile to Barb's house. Nicky said to me, “You took the X off again, didn't you?”

“I plead the Fifth Amendment.”

“Don't bullshit me, you took it off. You're gonna get your ass in a sling.”

“It's my ass.”

“How'd you get it off?”

I had to laugh. “She's making it tougher, now she uses strapping tape. I had to use a putty knife.”

“It's pretty risky, how come you keep doing it?”

“It's the principle of the thing.”

“I don't get it.”

I said, “You take a slimeball like Mrs. Grice. Her power trip is dumping on poor slobs like Kinderhook. It's too easy. You see what I mean, it's the principle of the thing.”

“You got balls, Charly Black Crow, but you're gonna get your ass in a sling.”

When we got to Barb's house, she was on the phone; she motioned us to get some pop from the fridge. After Nicky got us both a Pepsi, we went out to the garage.

We looked over the filthy bike. “The first thing that's obvious,” I said, “is that everything will have to be cleaned.”

“I'm with you, Charly Black Crow.”

“I really doubt if you are. I'm not just talking about the dirt you can see, I'm talking about really cleaning this machine up. It needs everything pulled apart and cleaned with gasoline, and I mean everything—plugs, points, and carburetors, filters, even the fuel line.”

“Let's do it, partner.”

We were in good shape for tools, thanks to Barb's dead husband. I took the air filter off of the bike and we set it on the workbench. “This'll show you why it's going to be such a big job,” I said. “All we can do with this is brush it out. It ought to be blown out with a compressor, but we don't have one. Even that would be just a temporary solution. What it really needs is a new air filter, which means money.”

“I can get a new one later,” said Nicky.

“Just remember, there's no way to get this bike running good without spending some money.” I didn't want to be stiff with him, but there wasn't any point in hiding from the truth.

We took the gas tank off, which wasn't too tricky. I gave Nicky some gas and a stiff old paintbrush. “Why don't you see if you can get that grease and crud off the gas tank,” I said. “I'll work on this filter for a while.”

After he worked on it for about two minutes, he told me he was done. I looked at it, but all he'd done was smear off some of the crud from the top of the tank. I got pissed and jumped on his case. I told him if he didn't care enough to do a good job, why should I care?

He said okay, but first he had to go to the bathroom.

Just after he went out, Barb came in. She hung a key on a nail next to the workbench. “This is in case you need to get in the house,” she said. “I'm going out to Nolan's house for a while.”

“Have a good time.”

“Speaking of Nolan,” she said, “have you been working on your curveball?”

“Night and day,” I lied. “If we ever get this bike running, I'll probably be working out even more.”

“How did you get roped in?” she asked.

“A certain lady we know made her garage and her tools available.”

“Aha. Are you mad at me?”

“Not really. It's just that Nicky's such a clinging vine. If you show him any encouragement, he'll wrap himself around you. He doesn't have enough know-how to work on the bike himself; as long as it's in this garage, he's going to want me to help him work on it, and that'll turn out to be me doing most of the work.”

“I never thought of that. I just felt sorry for him because he doesn't seem to have much going for himself.”

“He doesn't know how to get anything going. He's very pathetic, as you'll find out in due time.”

Then I thought I sounded like a big whining baby.

“I never thought how it might affect you,” she repeated. “I can understand your point.”

I could tell how sincere she was, which made it worse. I felt like a jerk. “Never mind. It would be worse feeling guilty and self-centered than having him clinging around.”

We dropped the subject and she took off in the station wagon. After Nicky came out back, we worked on the bike for maybe two hours. We cleaned the plugs and sprayed out the inside of both carburetors with gum-out.

The net result was, we got it running, for about twenty minutes. It was running real rough and burning oil, but we drove it to the orchard on the other side of Birkelbaw's garden market. We both got to drive a little bit.

On the way back, it conked out several blocks from Barb's house. We tried for quite a while, but we couldn't get it started again. Nicky pushed it over on its side and started kicking it.

I was completely disgusted with him. “I tried to tell you how much work it would be to get it running right. There's a lot more to it than we did today.”

He just kept kicking the bike. I couldn't see any reason to be polite to him. I didn't lift a finger to help him, I let him walk it back by himself.

After that, he was in a heavy-duty sulk all the way home.

One day during the last few weeks of school, I had my story finished for the competition, so I turned it in to Mrs. Bluefish. The idea was, you were supposed to turn your story in to your English teacher and then the teachers would send the stories on to the contest judges. Probably the plan was to have the teachers weed out some of the stories that were real losers. The actual judging was going to be done during summer vacation.

The name of my story was “Mask.” I worked pretty hard on it, and typed it all up with no typos. It was a quality piece of work, if I do say so myself. The story line went like this: There's this guy named Glenn Carbon who wears this mask all the time, everywhere he goes. He's a computer programmer in a big company. The mask is one of those rubbery types that fits very snug over your whole head and even covers part of your neck. When Glenn Carbon was in high school, he only wore the mask part of the time, but now he wears it all the time. He wears it to work, he wears it when he goes shopping, and he even wears it to bed, because if he gets a phone call, he wants to have the mask on when he's talking on the phone.

Even though he has this one weird trait, he is very excellent at his job.

One day the company has an office party, and Glenn Carbon gets drunk. He gets so drunk, he passes out. Well, everyone else is drunk, too, so while he's passed out, the other people decide they will take off his mask to see what his face looks like. They discover that his real face looks exactly like the mask. In fact, you have to look real close to be certain that he's not still wearing it. Well, this seems close enough to the edge that it sobers everybody up. When Glenn Carbon comes to, he discovers that his mask is gone. He freaks out and starts throwing computers out the window. Nobody can quite understand the freak-out, because his face actually looks the same, with or without the mask. But he can't handle it, so the authorities come and take him away to a mental institution, where he lives out the rest of his days in a catatonic condition.

When I handed in the story to Mrs. Bluefish, she kept this stern expression on her face and said, “Thank you, Floyd. I hope you've written a nice story.” She seemed her usual edgy self, as you could see her jaw muscles working.

What she meant by a
nice story
is the kind Annette Belfoglio always turns in, where this Red Cross nurse takes care of a wounded soldier, they fall in love in the hospital, and after the war is over they get married. Sometimes Annette changes the details a little bit; instead of a Red Cross nurse, it is a nurse in a city hospital, and instead of a wounded soldier, the man is a policeman or a fireman injured in the line of duty.

After school, Nicky wanted to know if we could go back to the garage and try to get the bike running again. With my story finished and handed in, I was feeling altogether mellow, so I said yes.