Detachment Delta (20 page)

Pops said, “That sounds like a fine idea. Top, make sure that we have the very best translators. We also need the hearing aids made right away.”

More details were brought up and discussed, and at the end of the day, Pops called Charlie and Fila off to the side and said, “I'm having the new Beemer rigged with all the nice accoutrements that you would find on a 14 Company car in Great Britain. Two of our guys will do the rigging and then we will fly them with the materials to do the exact same thing to the Beemer over there.”

Charlie said, “Awesome, Colonel. That could save our lives. Thank you.”

Fila said, “Yes. Thank you very much.”

Pops shrugged it off and said, “We will have it ready to go when you two get back, but right now, I want you both to pick a place to go and get outside the AO for one full week. Go together somewhere. It won't count against your leave time and you'll get TDY,” he added, referring to temporary duty pay. “Just be sure you stay in the continental United States. We will have the car ready to train in when you get back.”

Charlie said, “Oh gee, Pops, I don't know if we could make ourselves do such an assignment.”

Pops laughed and said, “Can you guys think of a good place to go?”

Fila smiled, looked over at Charlie and back at the CO, and said, “I can.”

FILA
looked all around at the tiny modular-looking homes dotting the small neighborhood. Many of them had old abandoned cars sitting in backyards, weeds growing around them and out the windows in some cases. A couple of the houses had junk piles or rubbish piles in the backyard, and every other house had a propane tank covered with spray-painted gang graffiti.

They pulled up in front of one small house that was much tidier than the rest in the block, and there was a tiny flower garden running along the front of it from both sides of the concrete slab that served as a porch. Charlie approached the front of the house and the screen door flew open and a moderately heavyset woman with a wide smile and tears in her eyes ran out, her arms wide open.

“Charlie!” she shouted with glee. “You're home.”

Charlie bent over and swooped her up in a careful bear hug, saying, “Hi, Mom. I've missed you.”

She was very loving and kissed him on the cheek several times. He set her down, and she looked at the Iranian-American beauty.

“Young lady,” she said, “you are beautiful. What tribe are you?”

Fila laughed and said, “The Persians, ma'am.”

Charlie said, “Mom, this is Sergeant First Class Fila Jannat. She is my partner. Fila, this is my mom. Her name is Betty Walks Fast.”

Betty said, “Fila, I am glad to meet you, but you call me Mom.”

Fila's face reddened, and she said, “Gee, I am . . . I am at a loss for words.”

Charlie said, “Mom! You just met her.”

“Charlie!” Betty said sarcastically and laughing. “How many women have you ever brought here for me to meet?”

Now he felt his own face redden, and Fila looked at him, hands on hips.

She said, “Yeah, Charlie, which number am I?”

Charlie looked down and sheepishly said, “The first.”

Now Fila's breath caught, and she did not know how to respond.

Betty said, “Charlie, your uncle Eddie had a vision.”

Charlie interrupted while he looked in the oven and Betty slapped him with a towel. “Eddie Three Horses. He is what you would call a medicine man.”

Betty continued, “Eddie saw you riding a painted horse with its tail tied.”

Charlie explained, “When a horse's tail is tied, that means the rider is at war.”

Betty said, “But I will tell you about that later. You are from Iran, Fila?”

“I am an American and a Christian, ma'am,” Fila responded, “but I grew up in Iran, in a Muslim family, then moved to Iraq as a young girl, and when I got a little older, I moved to America, and I was adopted by a wonderful family. He was a full bird colonel and was the commanding officer of the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”

“What are you cooking, Mom?”

“Antelope steaks, potatoes, carrots, peas, and salad,” Betty answered. “And for dessert, apple pie a la mode.”

Fila said, “Oh, I don't want to impose.”

Charlie and Betty started laughing. Fila was puzzled.

“Mom did not know we were coming, right?”

Fila said, “Correct.”

“I will bet you that she made enough for four people anyway,” he explained. “Mom always senses when someone is coming and cooks enough for them. I can never surprise her.”

Charlie had never realized that she did that for almost every meal and gave away the excess, with an admonition that they could never tell, to her church or dropped it off for the Tribal Police, who were actually called the Oglala Sioux Tribal Police Department. She wanted Charlie to know he could always come home and have a warm meal waiting. She also had many people who simply loved her and her cooking and often dropped in at dinnertime.

“Pour us some coffee, Charlie,” his mom said, “and let's all go in the living room and talk. Dinner won't be ready for an hour.”

She led the way into the living room, and Fila said, “Is there anything I can do to help, ma'am?”

Betty said, “Yes, Fila, I know you are an army sergeant, but please quit calling me ma'am and start calling me Mom.”

“Okay, Mom,” Fila said, grinning.

Betty said, “I am surprised you have not said anything yet about eating antelope.”

Fila laughed and explained, “Mom, I grew up eating things like goat's eyes or
berryooni
, which is lamb lung, which we ate with kind of a bread called
nan-e-taftton
.”

“Oh, I guess nothing I cook will bother you,” Betty said. “Well, antelope and cougar are the two very best-tasting wild meats, in my opinion.”

Charlie walked in and said, “Mom, whatever you fix tastes great.”

“Wait until you two eat breakfast,” she said.

He smiled. “We already have reservations at the Rapid City Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn, Mom. Sorry, but we have some other places we have to go while we're here.”

“Okay, baby,” Betty said. “I know never to question what you do. You are both welcome to stay here, but anyhow, how long will you be in the area?”

“A week.”

“Good, then I will enjoy whatever time you are here,” his mom said. “You are getting ready to go into battle, aren't you?”

“Yes,” he replied, never lying to his mother.

“I want to tell you about your uncle's dream, or better yet, you should go see him,” Betty said. “We will eat a little late. The food will keep.”

“That important, huh, Ma?”

“Yes.”

They got up just like that, and he kissed his mom's cheek, saying, “See you for dinner in about an hour.”

Fila stuck out her hand, and Betty took it and pulled her into a warm hug. Betty really liked this woman.

“I am so glad I got to meet, you m—uh, Mom,” Fila said.

“We will see each other a lot more, I think,” Betty said. “Don't stay too late. You know Uncle Eddie needs his sleep.”

Eddie lived in a small house trailer with a ramshackle unpainted porch built on and matching carport, which housed Eddie's short, scruffy, gray horse. Fila noticed, though, that his carport-turned-into-stall was clean, the water tank was full of clean water, and the horse was eating green alfalfa that looked like it was in very good shape. Around the house were a half a dozen rusted-out cars, most on cinder blocks, and several goats grazed in the weeds around the treeless property.

Fila, Charlie, and Eddie sat on homemade chairs on the ramshackle porch. Eddie was pretty much what was called a traditionalist. He wore a ribbon shirt and very long shiny gray hair in pigtails, with beaded bands and strips of leather tied around the bottom of each. He also wore a single eagle feather hanging diagonally from the back of his hair.

“I was fasting on a vision quest on the mountain yonder,” he said, assuming Charlie would know which mountain he meant.

“I fell into a deep sleep after a sweat,” he said, which meant he had built a sweat lodge, and probably had smoked some peyote and tobacco both, Charlie thought.

“I saw you, but you were painted for war and rode a mighty painted horse,” Eddie said.

“There was a warrior woman riding beside you and sometimes in front, and she said her name was Buffalo Calf Road Woman,” he went on, making reference to the Cheyenne wife of Black Coyote, a dog soldier who fought alongside the Lakota against Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

“Both you, Wamble Uncha,” he said, using Charlie's Lakota name, meaning “One Eagle,” “and Buffalo Calf Road Woman had bullets in your arms and legs and blood flowed from your wounds.” Eddie went on, “But when I yelled out to you in the battle that you were bleeding, you said your grandfather had given up fifty pieces of flesh.

“The Pawnee lay all around you on the prairie,” he continued, “and the buzzards were eating on their flesh and so were the coyotes. Then an eagle came and sang a song above you, and he flew down and lifted you both up in his mighty talons and carried you towards the mountains.”

Charlie had chills running down his spine and said, “Uncle, in your vision, did I sing my death song?”

“Yes, but the eagle took you away towards the mountains to fight more battles. You sang your death song, but death did not come. You stood before the tribal council and wore many eagle feathers,” Eddie went on, “and Buffalo Calf Road Woman wore many eagle feathers, too, and she was allowed to sit with the council.”

“What happened next?” Fila said, totally intrigued.

“That ended my vision,” Eddie said, “but I must go now to Lakota Heaven.”

He walked off his porch and headed toward his horse. Fila was horrified, almost crying.

She yelled, “Are you sick? Don't go!”

He raised his hand without looking at her and grabbed his saddle blanket.

Charlie started laughing and was holding his sides.

Fila turned, as angry as a bumblebee that had been stepped on.

“What is so damned funny, Charlie Strongheart?” she asked, fuming.

He said, “Honey, Lakota Heaven is reservation slang. It means Wal-Mart.”

She looked at Charlie, then at Eddie, and suddenly started laughing at herself. She and Charlie just sat on the porch and laughed and laughed. They laughed for so long that by the time they finished, Eddie had gotten his horse saddled, mounted up, and ridden down the dirt road without even looking back.

Fila watched the last of him disappear from sight and, now serious, said, “He didn't even say good-bye. I didn't tell him good-bye.”

Charlie said, “It is not his way. He probably did all that to look stoic but was emotional about me being in Delta. The vision was real, and it probably scared him for me.”

“What did it all mean?” she asked.

He said, “Come on. I'll tell you on the way back.”

On the way, he told her about Buffalo Calf Road Woman. “Buffalo Calf Road Woman was the wife of Black Coyote. Before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, General Crook and his men got into it with Crazy Horse. You have heard of him?”

Fila said, “Oh yes. I knew about Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse when I lived in Iraq.”

Charlie said, “I will tell you in the words of my grandfather, since you like when I speak more traditionally.”

“I love it, Charlie,” she interjected.

He went on. “Sitting Bull saw the vision he had seen in his Sun Dance ceremony: the sight of many enemy Indians and earless white soldiers falling into the Lakota camp, bloody and dead. Just a week earlier, Crazy Horse had led some Oglalas against Gray Fox (General Crook) in a big fight on the Rosebud River, and he had soundly defeated the general and his troops. Sitting Bull thought about it and knew that this was not, however, the giant victory he had envisioned. When he did his Sun Dance ceremony, he cut fifty pieces of flesh from his arms, and that was what my uncle was seeing.

“Even so, when Crazy Horse defeated Crook on the Rosebud, a magnificent event took place, which the Cheyenne would recall for years to come. A tall Cheyenne chief, Comes-in-Sight, noted for his courage and fighting ability, charged into the fray to count coup on a group of Crow scouts and Crook. His horse was shot out from under him, and neither Crazy Horse's Oglalas nor their Cheyenne brothers could rush out to save him, such was the volume of gunfire being rained upon him. Then, the Crow scouts decided to charge the lone Cheyenne, ride him down, and count coup on him. He faced them and taunted them as they charged, while the helpless Sioux and Cheyenne watched from a hillside.

“I told you she was married to Black Coyote, but she was also closely related to Comes-in-Sight. She was his sister, and Buffalo Calf Road Woman was not prepared to let her brother die that easily. She jumped on a pony and charged out toward the advancing warriors. She rode right through their midst, swooping down on her brother under a hail of deadly gunfire and arrows. He swung up behind her on the war pony, and they darted out of there under the Crow fire and to the cheers of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, including Crazy Horse, who witnessed this event and could not believe the courage of the woman. The fight on the Rosebud against the Gray Fox was called, from that day forward,
Kse e Sewo Istaniwe Ititane,
meaning ‘Where the Young Girl Saved Her Brother's Life.' ”