Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (13 page)

“What do you hope to accomplish?” Reuben asked. “You’re able to get four-wheel drives down the other way to Marshal’s cabin.”

“I got to go down that other trail, just to get an idea who might have walked it. By the looks of our maps, that trail you showed me is the one alternate route down to the bottom.”

Manny folded his map and slid it carefully back in the envelope. He started to sit, but pain shot up his leg, centering on the places where the cat had dug its claws in. Instead, he walked a tiny circle, working the stiffness out.

“At least Willie had enough sense to haul you to the ER.”

“I felt bad calling him so early. He looked like he didn’t get a wink of sleep. He certainly hadn’t showered and changed clothes since yesterday.”
Why am I telling Reuben this, he’s not my priest.

“Lizzy again?” Reuben asked while he dug for his cell phone. “Willie’s still guilt-tripping himself over that?”

Manny nodded. “Wouldn’t you if you betrayed your only aunt? He won’t talk with anyone about it. Just seems to slide deeper into himself.”

“I’ll pray for him my next sweat.”

“There’s something else.” Manny hesitated, tossing over in his mind how much he should tell an ex-felon. But Reuben was his brother. And his
kola
. “I got other troubles in this
investigation—Judge High Elk’s personal friend and protector, Joe Dozi. He’s a genuine bad one.”

“Problems with this guy?”

Manny nodded, the hair on his neck standing. He was worried—and serious—about Dozi.

“Your FBI have anything on this Dozi?”

“Just that he was drafted in the army in ’69. I had him checked out, but the army wasn’t helpful at all. Said they had no record of a Joe Dozi being in Vietnam, though I learned he spent three tours in country.”

“So much for interagency cooperation.”

“Tell me about it.”

Reuben leaned over and grabbed another Coke and sat back on the lawn chair. “My guess he was SF.”

“Special Forces?”

Reuben nodded. “They were often hidden from rosters. We had some operating up by Con Thien. Nasty bastards. They did the same thing we did in CAG.” Reuben explained that the Marines Combined Action Group operated much like the SF A-Teams, living and fighting among the Vietnamese natives. “We’d go out on two- and three-man killer teams, always with a couple indigs. If this Dozi was doing that—and survived three tours with SF—he’s very good. And DOD may have buried his records so deep you’ll never find them. You want me to pay this Dozi a visit?”

Manny shook his head. “I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he spooked me.”

“How about I tag along when you make your hike into the Stronghold.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Give me an excuse to pick herbs.”

“No.”

“Well, I got to look out for my only brother.”

Manny sighed, put his hands at the small of his back, and stretched, the pain increasing in his leg as he sat back on the stump to wait for Willie. “We’ve had this discussion before, too. You don’t have to look out for me.”

“You need spiritual guidance. Besides, dealing with someone like this Dozi that sounds a little out of your league, no offense to you or the bureau. Now if you walked with the Great Mysterious…”

Manny held his head in his hands, the headache now a raging migraine. “I chose to leave the reservation, and what I remember of the culture here. If I get back to Unc’s teachings, it’ll be because I want to.”

“You want to.”

Manny laughed.

But Reuben didn’t smile. He used the lawn chair to pull himself up. His soda disappeared in his enormous hand. “You’ve been dreaming again.”

“No.”

“Sure you have. The headaches are coming back. Driving you nuts figuring out what they mean.”

Manny leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees as he pressed the cold can to his temple. “I thought Jason’s
wanagi
was done with me when we solved his case this summer.” Manny shook his head as if warding off the thought. “But dreams are coming back. I thought I dreamed of Moses Ten Bears even before we suspected it was him in that car. At least I think it was him. I just don’t know.”

Reuben stood and motioned to the creek bank where Manny knew he kept a sweat lodge erected permanently. “Perhaps it’s time to get right with
Wakan Tanka
again,
misun
. Perhaps we should sweat once more.”

“I don’t want to sweat.”

“Still afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Of those visions you experience when you get right with the
Wakan Tanka
.”

Manny wanted to tell Reuben that he had visions even when he wasn’t right with the Great Mystery. But Reuben was right. He needed to sweat, to get right with himself even if he wasn’t sure there was any Great Mysterious to get right with.

Manny followed Reuben over the bank to the creek running in back of his house, and slid on his butt to get the ten feet down to Reuben’s
Initipi
. Reuben had started a fire and stood in front of the sweat lodge and began praying to the four winds while Manny began stripping off his clothes.

Manny remained silent until Reuben finished praying to the earth and sky. “You expected me?” Manny pointed to a hot fire in front of the lodge where stones heated, awaiting the coming of life.

Reuben smiled. “Just say I figured you’d need cleansing by now.”

Reuben grabbed a wicker pitchfork and scooped hot rocks from the fire, then ducked low and disappeared through the lodge entrance. He repeated this three more times until all the rocks had been placed inside, in a dug out hollow of the ground in the center of the lodge to awaited sacred
mni
, water that brought life where none was before.

“It’s time again to confront your fears, little brother.” Reuben dropped his shorts and entered the lodge naked.

Manny felt in his jacket pocket for the pouch of Bull Durham. Why had he brought it? Because he wanted a smoke so bad he would even roll his own? Or because he knew he would be purified inside the lodge this day and would need something for offering when finished?

He palmed the pouch and bent low—for humility—and entered the canvas-covered dome structure with just enough room inside for him and Reuben. Reuben trickled water on
the hot rocks with a buffalo horn. Steam erupted, activating the creative forces of the universe.

“
Yahapo!
” Reuben said, and Manny closed the flap door, plunging them into darkness except for the glow of the rocks in the center pit.

Reuben handed Manny an eagle feather and together the two passed burning sage smoke over their bodies.

More water.

More steam, hissing, angrily at first, but mellowing out as the two men grew purified by the smoke.

The heat from the rocks and the steam rising with nowhere to go but around the lodge intensified. Every pore in Manny’s body opened, the impurities leaving him, the aches he’d felt the last few days subsiding. But he suspected this wasn’t the work of anything the Great Mysterious did, for he had felt these same things when he went inside the sauna at the FBI gym back in Virginia. There was nothing mysterious about this.

“Feel Him enter you,” Reuben said as he squatted cross-legged on a bed of sage. “Feel what He can do for your spirit,
misun
.” From a small pouch at his feet Reuben pinched
peji wacanga
and tossed it into the darkness.

Manny sat back, sage poking his butt, yet he continued passing the eagle feather through the smoke and the steam, over his body, wishing the feather were a giant fan he could flap to make the heat go away. The intense heat, burning his nose. Manny tried breathing through his mouth, but that burnt as well.

Reuben dribbled more water on the rocks, the heat as stifling as anything the Badlands had to offer on its hottest day. How had Moses Ten Bears ever survived living there all his life?

“Because I had
Wakan Tanka
guiding me along the way.”

Manny rubbed sweat from his eyes. He strained to make
out Reuben in the darkness, the rocks illuminating his face, eyes closed, rocking back and forth as he chanted softly. It hadn’t been Reuben talking to him, but a voice so soft he knew he imagined it.

“The Great Mystery is always there for us. He can help us in our journey.”

Through the steam, a figure rose in his mind’s eye, a figure as solid as anything within the lodge, a figure that towered over Reuben, a figure that had to stoop so as not to rub his head on the lodge. Manny had never met him, yet he knew he faced Moses Ten Bears sitting cross-legged opposite him, naked, smudging himself with his own eagle feather. “You have to cleanse yourself for the journey ahead.”

More steam, more heat, the sweat stinging Manny’s eyes. “I’m here to find out what happened to you and Ellis Lawler and Gunnar Janssen.”

Moses looked confused for a moment.

“The other body found in the car.”

After a long pause, Moses nodded.

“What can you tell me about them?”

Moses shrugged. “I cannot tell you anything about them.”

“But you said you’re here to help me with my journey. And finding Gunnar’s killer and what happened to you and Ellis is my journey.”

Moses smiled. “You got a bigger journey than that, little brother. You got that journey of your own that you struggle to walk. You got that journey within you that you keep denying.”

“I won’t ever find it.”

“You will,” Moses said, his form fading away, riding with the steam, his voice fading over the hissing of the rocks and Reuben’s faint chants. “Trust me.”

JULY 7, 1920

“We going to sit here all afternoon or are we going to hunt? The old man wants me to kill something bad, so let’s get it over with. I got better things to do back at the ranch.”

“Like what, bossing your father’s hands around?” Moses peeked around the easel at Clayton pacing the cabin like a chained wolf. “If you want to go out in this weather, help yourself.” He nodded to Clayton’s boots sitting just inside the door. Gumbo had caked the boots as high up as the mule ears. When they had rushed inside to escape the storm, Clayton had complained his boots weighed forty pounds apiece. “We are lucky we made it inside when we did.”

“Bullshit.” Clayton cracked the door and hard raindrops pelted his face and neck. He slammed the door just as a clap of thunder, near and high and bouncing around the Badlands’ steep crags and pinnacles, shook the cabin walls.

“You better keep the door shut unless you want to wind up a Wakinyan.”

“A what?”

“Thunderslave.”

“More of that superstitious crap? What the hell’s a Thunderslave?”

Moses ground brown earth pigment between the steel muller and the thick piece of plate glass. He dribbled water on the glass, grinding and working the thick paste into the center of the glass, mixing until he got a consistency he could use in his painting.

“I said, what the hell’s a Thunderslave?”

Moses mixed the brown with the gray already on his palette before he spoke. “Men and horses that get struck by lightning become Thunderslaves. From then on, you must obey the Thunder Beings.”

“Now you’re talking a foreign language.”

Moses smiled. “The lightning is the flashes from the eyes of the Wakinyan Wakaya, the thunder is the beatings of their wings.”

Clayton laughed and cracked the door, looking out for a moment before being driven back by the hard rain. “So just where the hell are they?”

“We cannot see them.” Moses added more subdued tans to the sky. “They hide themselves in the thick, dark clouds. It is dangerous to look upon them.”

“Superstitions.” Clayton snickered and chanced a last look out the door. “Just tell me this storm’ll be over soon.”

“What do I look like, a fortune-teller?”

“You claim to tell the future in those visions you have.”

“You do not sound convinced.”

Clayton laughed. “If they’re anything like the visions I get when I have too much rotgut, they’re scary.”

“I cannot say—I have never drank.”

“Then conjure me up a vision and tell me how long this storm’s going to last.”

Moses stopped painting. He set the badger hair brush on the palette and closed his eyes.
Ignorant
wasicu
who knows so little of the scope and powers of Wakan Kin. If Clayton were not so in need of an education, I would have left him in one of those fast flooding gullies.
Moses opened his eyes. “Perhaps one day you will ask me for a vision.”

“And you’d paint something like that, wouldn’t you?” Clayton walked around and bent to the crème colored muslin encased in a hasty wood frame propped against the easel. Clayton cocked his head to both sides, moving so as to study every inch of the yet unfinished painting. “This what they call an abstract? Don’t look like anything we have hanging back at the house.”

Moses covered the palette with a damp cloth and draped a wet burlap sack over the painting. He stepped back and filled his pipe from a stone urn on the table. He studied the bone skewer he tamped his tobacco with. How could this wealthy
wasicu
ever understand the ways of the Lakota? If he told Clayton the skewer he tamped tobacco with once pierced his chest muscles until it tore loose the first time he had danced to the sun at twelve, Clayton would not understand.