Authors: C. M. Wendelboe

Death Along the Spirit Road (27 page)

BOOK: Death Along the Spirit Road

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“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.

BOOK: Death Along the Spirit Road

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