Stone Song (42 page)

Finally he answered.

“Yes, life changes, sometimes changes in big ways. There was once a time when only Inyan was, Stone, and then a time when Inyan helped make Earth and the waters and Sky. There was the time when the
pte
, two-legged creatures, were created and multiplied. There was the time when the four directions were created, and the thirteen moons. I am sure that other great ages will exist, but I don’t know whether two-legged people will be part of them. It is not my place to think about the great ages, but to live within this time of
pte
.

“It is our spirits that must live,” he said. He paused awhile. “Live in awareness of mystery. Live according to what knowledge of Spirit we have, through our visions, by the guidance of our spirit animals, and in time with the pulse of the earth, which is the pulse of our blood.”

He set the pipe down, cut a chunk of sweetgrass off a braid, set it on the fire, and watched the smoke rise to the spirits. “I cannot go against my vision, or what I see with the
cante ista
. The only life is the path they open.”

He paused a long moment. “Even if life at the agencies looked good to me, I would only walk the path revealed to me. But everyone sees that the agency life is bad. People become lazy, inept, dependent, helpless. Instead of hunting they beg. They demean themselves. The women become pay women for the whites. Men and women alike become drunkards.

“Worst, the people get so greedy for handouts, a little more beef, a little more cloth, a bit of flour, whiskey, sure, even coffee, so greedy they are willing to sell Paha Sapa. The people’s best hunting grounds, where the bones of our ancestors lay, where we receive visions from Spirit.

“It doesn’t take sharp eyes to see that this is no life at all.”

He made no big rhetorical climax. The words themselves were
enough. The two friends sat and smoked in silence for a long time. Both knew there was nothing more to say, nothing more to do. Two Lakota had truly looked, and what they saw was different. Young Man-Whose-Enemies would work to get the best terms possible with the whites for the people’s new life. Crazy Horse would fight against that life, which was really death.

So they gave each other the handshake of respect, with arms crossed, and went their separate ways forever.

To open the council the white treaty talkers asked not only for Paha Sapa, but for the Shifting Sands River country and the Shining Mountains, too.

Riders immediately went to Crazy Horse, Touch-the-Sky, He Dog, Big Road, and their hostile warriors.

The agency Indians were split. Some people said, “The land is lost anyway—let’s get what we can for it.” The young warriors said they would fight first.

For four days there was no talking. The people were split by the new request like a tree cleaved by lightning.

On the fifth day the Lakota came to the council place, but they were still divided.

At noon 200 warriors charged the council tent, painted, feathered, and carrying their rifles. They circled the tent at a gallop, singing their war songs.

At a signal hundreds more galloped down from the hills. At another signal, hundreds more. The men willing to bargain for Paha Sapa and Shifting Sands River country and the Shining Mountains were surrounded by perhaps a thousand angry warriors.

The agency chiefs knew that these warriors came from both the friendly and the hostile camps. The rumor was that they would kill the first chief to speak up for selling the land. The chiefs talked among themselves, uncertain.

Finally, the warriors opened a way and Little Big Man charged through. Dressed and painted for war, holding his rifle high, his chest bleeding from scarifying, he galloped right into the council tent.

He roared out what he had to say: “I have come to kill the white people who want to steal our land!”

Finally the whites saw it. They were surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned. The treaty talkers were nervous, their women were nervous, the writers and photographers from the newspapers were nervous—even the soldiers were afraid. Even the traders’ sons, some of them half Lakota, wished they were somewhere else.

Everyone thought the first person to speak would be shot and the massacre would start.

Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting, hoping, wondering.

It was Young Man-Whose-Enemies who stood up. He fixed Little Big Man with his eyes and stared him down for a long time. Everyone waited for the shot that would end his life and start the slaughter. It didn’t come.

At last Young Man-Whose-Enemies said quietly but clearly, “Go to your lodges, my foolish young friends. Come back when your heads have cooled.”

Little Big Man stared back. Maybe he would strike at Young Man-Whose-Enemies. Maybe—no one knew.

Maybe the shot would come from outside. Maybe no one would even know who fired it.

Young Man-Whose-Enemies stood, waiting.

Little Big Man stood, thinking.

Finally, he thought of what Crazy Horse would say. Lakota must never raise a hand against Lakota. That way is death.

And he thought: Crazy Horse respected Young Man-Whose-Enemies-Are-Afraid-of-His-Horses.

Little Big Man turned his pony and walked off.

The ring of warriors outside backed away.

The agency chiefs picked up their pipes and blankets and left.

The treaty talkers got up and started breathing again. The soldiers sighed in relief.

Red Cloud announced a price. So did Spotted Tail. So did others. But most of the Lakota went back to their villages. No one signed anything.

The Oglala decided they would make a big winter camp on the Buffalo Tongue River. Crazy Horse, Black Twin, Big Road, and the others thought there would be elk in the bottoms along the river all winter and the bark of the sweet sunpole tree to feed the horses. Last winter they had killed horses to eat. This winter they needed to keep every pony possible alive. Maybe for food. Maybe for fighting soldiers.

They didn’t find out Plum was missing until they stopped for the night.

When they got to the Buffalo Tongue River camping place, Black Shawl discovered that the old woman had rolled up some blankets to make it look as if she were under the robe on the travois. Then she had walked off. Black Shawl had seen the old woman walk away but thought she was just going to relieve herself. Now they knew better.

Crazy Horse started on the back trail fast, leading an extra pony. He had a panicky feeling. Hawk was restless on her perch.

The very old people did this sometimes. Grandmother Plum knew that food would be short this winter. She had little flesh anymore and didn’t look forward to shivering in her robes. She didn’t expect to live much longer anyway. The last two nights had been bitingly cold. Today was clear again, and would be bitter. Everyone had heard that freezing was a pleasantly dreamy way to die.

But she had no idea how important she was to him. He had lost his daughter. He had lost Little Hawk. He had lost Hump. For a while he had lost Hawk. He had lost his mother. He couldn’t stand to lose Grandmother Plum.

And … And … He wanted to hear her speak aloud. He was sure she could, and now he was in a rage to hear her talk. He would ask her directly, “Please, speak.”

He pushed his pony hard along the lodge trail. The last place Black Shawl remembered seeing Plum was almost back at the start of the day’s travel. He would get there after dark.

In his imagination Grandmother Plum did speak to him for the first time in twenty-five winters. What would she say?

“Grandson,” he imagined.

“I love you,” he imagined.

The people often had not loved him. Our Strange Man, they called him. Even his father had not always loved him.

In his imagination the one person who had never failed him with her love was Grandmother Plum. She had listened to him. They had understood each other without words, which was a deeper way to understand.

Now he wanted to hear her words. He would ask. What would she say?

Crazy Horse spent a while looking for her tracks. No luck. She must have been careful to walk away from the trail on rock. So, as one more chance, he decided to walk where he would have gone, had he wanted to leave no tracks. He led his pony and put one foot in front of the other carefully. It was dark, and the rocks had fissures.

Then he found himself looking at a dark blob. It was a bush. No, it had the shape of a person. It was a bush. No …

“Unci Plum?” he tried tentatively.

Her first words after twenty-five winters were English: “Goddamn it.”

Crazy Horse jumped off his pony and ran to her. She was crouched on an outcropping, huddled in one thin blanket against the whipping wind. He put his arms around her shoulders. “Unci Plum,” he said gratefully.

“I don’t suppose you’ll leave me alone,” she said. “I want to die.” She looked into his face challengingly.

“Unci Plum,” he murmured.

“Oh, all right, build us a fire.” She sounded half-friendly and half-crabby. “It’s goddamn cold out here.”

He half picked her up and got her in the lee of the rock. He cracked flint against his steel, got sparks on his little bit of tinder, and blew on them. Even here the wind snuffed them out. He repeated the process. This time the wind scattered them everywhere, and they went out again. “This is goddamn good,” said Grandmother Plum. “We’ll both freeze to death.”

After the third failure he had to gather more tinder. His hands were shaking. He got a little blaze started.

“Son of a bitch,” Plum said in English, squatting close.

Crazy Horse gathered sagebrush to feed the fire and said nothing. He was surprised his grandmother was so quick with words after all these years and so casual with what the white people said were disrespectful words. Had she been voluble when he was young? He didn’t remember. He supposed she had picked up all these white-man words when the people hung around Fort Laramie. Normal then, probably, but they seemed like sand in his food now.

He broke sticks off a dead twisty tree and built up the fire. Finally he broke off most of the trunk of the cedar itself, and they had a fine blaze.

He squatted beside her and offered her a little pemmican. She grabbed it hungrily.

“This is a miserable business, killing yourself,” she said. “I don’t know why I tried it.” She looked sideways at him. “I guess I’m grateful to you,” she said. “When I’m not pissed off at you for not letting an old woman die when she wants to.”

He felt a chill. Rattling Blanket Woman was hovering near the fire like a specter, maybe beckoning them both into the darkness and to death.

“Unci, after twenty-five winters why are you suddenly talking? And … disrespectful words?”

She bit off another piece of the pemmican and made big chewing motions while she stared into space. He saw her face deepen and soften.

“You don’t know about me,” she said. “Your father and the others never talked about it.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she began a story. When Curly was a small boy, she said, she lived near Fort Laramie with the loafers for two years. Curly’s band was around there most of the time then, not like now. That was before the troubles. Well, her husband was dead, and she stayed around the fort. To tell the truth, she was drunk most of the time. To tell the rest of the truth, she belonged to any man who wanted her, if he had the price
of a cup of whiskey. Since she managed to stay drunk the whole time, she must have had a lot of cups.

“That was when I picked up the white-man words,” she said. “Many of us loafers did. The soldiers thought it was funny.” She ruminated for a moment. “I walked under the blanket with a lot of soldiers, drunk, drunk, drunk.” She looked sideways at her grandson. “Maybe I was forty winters old, but I was still beautiful. Or that’s what people said.”

She gave him a look that meant, “You were too young to notice.”

This must be one of the reasons Worm was so set against whiskey
, he thought.

Grandmother Plum rambled on: Rattling Blanket Woman had asked her to come live with her and Worm, who was known as Tasunke Witko then. It would be inconvenient—a husband and his mother-in-law could never speak to each other—but it was necessary. “I had no husband, my parents were gone beyond the pines, Rattling Blanket Woman was my only living child, and I had to live with someone and get away from the fort, get away from whiskey long enough to get my spirit back. Besides, Worm was away all the time that summer, gone against the Psatoka.”

He knew that summer was when his father stayed away for months taking revenge against the Psatoka. The time when …

“You always blamed your father for what your mother did,” she said. He felt the death of his mother in his chest, like a sack around his heart, a sack full of tears. In his mind she was always hanging by her neck from his lodge pole, a memory he could never look at directly, but one always in the margin of his vision. “But it was not his fault,” she said.

She looked at him oddly, her eyes flashing in the light of the fire. “I wonder whether you’re ready even now to hear it.” She nodded as though to herself and plunged on. “You decided she was distraught because Worm was always gone. But you made that up. She didn’t dread his absence. She dreaded his return. Because she had lifted the lodge skirt to a young Sicangu.”

Plum barely hesitated and marched forth again. “She didn’t want to marry this man. He had seduced her and then told ail his friends about how he sneaked into the lodge and what he did inside. And how he would do it night after night—she lacked the will to stop him. She was humiliated.”

Crazy Horse was dizzy. Unsteady. He put out both hands to support himself where he sat.

“Humiliated,” Plum repeated. “That’s why she hanged herself. She couldn’t face Worm.”

He bit his lower lip hard, and she read his thoughts. “Yes,” she said, “you have a lot to apologize to your father for.”

She stared off into space for a little. “Me too. I encouraged her. I had
had many men. I thought your father was mistreating her by being gone all the time. I teased her about not having the heart to take what she wanted. Another man if she wanted.” The old woman snorted. “I didn’t care about myself anymore. Drunken fool. I was still sneaking the whiskey when I could.