THE KILLING SPIRIT: Ishnati Alowanpi (16)

CHAPTER FOUR
ISHNATI ALOWANPI


The Natchez Trace is a scenic highway that runs from Nashville to New Orleans. The swath of land bordering the trace is largely untouched, undeveloped, preserved as much by poverty as by social conscience. Like the sandy desert or the Black Hills before gold was discovered, it was not worth destroying, so it was allowed to remain much as it had been for a centuries.

Driving north on the trace, guided by an unseen hand of ancient and timeless forces, Jerico pulled off the highway and walked the trail that for a thousand years before the Europeans arrived was the trading route of the Mound Builders, ancestors of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Natchez. It was a chance for Jerico to gather his powers, to walk in harmony with the ancients, and to tap the forces that united all native peoples. He could hear them in the wind, see them in the old growth trees, and feel them in the soil beneath the soles of his moccasins.

He came to a clearing in the forest, where three of the giant mounds, now covered with tall grass, had survived the destruction of treasure seekers. He climbed the tallest mound and looked out over the vast field where an army of ancient warriors had danced in celebration and he remembered their faces. He removed a pouch from his vest and gave an offering of tobacco to the seven directions. He cleared a small circle and sat facing the south. He unwrapped a red clay pipe, given to him by his grandfather, packed it, smoked and waited. He watched the creatures of the forest, deer, raccoon, rabbit and fox, wander in and out of the clearing. He watched the sun rise in clear blue skies. He closed his eyes and took in the sounds and smells of forest life, animal remains and sweet grass, a snake over dry twigs and leaves, songbirds and a distant hawk. He watched vulture hawks circle overhead, lose interest and drift to the west. He chanted in the old tongue the songs grandfather taught him, and still he waited.

He waited until finally a crow landed on the mound before him. It cocked its head and appeared to study the strange creature that walked softly and chose this sacred place for silent meditation and prayer. To Jerico it seemed a recognition had passed between them before the crow hopped in a jagged circle around him and took flight up the trace.

Jerico rose to his feet and returned to his pony to follow the flight of the crow. He understood the futility of waiting for his destiny when his destiny awaited him.

Somewhere past Tupelo, Mississippi, in the sweltering heat of late afternoon, he pulled off the highway and drove down a country road in search of gas and liquid refreshment. He found both at a combination restaurant, bar and convenience store with a blue neon invitation: Ice Cold Beer. He accepted, settling on a corner barstool and ordering a cold one over the soft twang of country music. The bar man checked his braided hair, red bandana, dark skin and cleaned two ash trays before tapping his brew. It was a friendly way of saying this was not his kind of place. Taking the hint, Jerico planted his eyes dead ahead and sipped his not quite ice-cold beer.

The lighting suddenly went even dimmer and a strange whistling sound filled the room. Jerico scanned the half dozen patrons through the mirror behind the bar. There was no reaction. The room began to sway like a boat on calm waters and still, none reacted. He heard the soft whispering of a couple across the room. He heard cockroaches scrambling beneath the sink, flies in the kitchen, water in pipes, a hum of electrical appliances and, beneath it all, he heard voices.

The voices were chanting, singing in words he could not understand, and with it there was a thrumming, a beat, a pounding. It came in waves, pounding and subsiding. He looked in the mirror and saw faces like portraits of the damned, contorted faces, young and innocent, faces marked with age and disease, wise and naïve faces, faces that had known only sorrow and faces that knew only the warmth of family and friends.

What tied them together was that they were all native faces.

He saw their tears and heard their screams. He crawled inside their skin and felt their helplessness as the thrumming pounded and the room swayed until it pulled him from his barstool and pushed him outside where he fell to the earth gasping, choking, drenched in cold sweat.

The bar man and patrons followed him out as the pounding wave of sound receded into the woods. “I’m alright,” he said. “Something I ate.”

He righted himself, holding his head between his knees. The gawking crowd waited to be sure he was not dying before they went back inside with a round of uncomfortable laughter and derisive comments: “Crazy fucking Indian.”

He steadied his hold upon the earth. He felt abused, raped and beaten, and fear swelled in his still pounding head. He wanted to take hold of Lala’s reins and ride into tomorrow but this was an enemy he had to face. He remembered the vow he took at the ceremony that marked his passing from childhood to the community of warriors. The warrior must choose his battles wisely. He must not lead his people into certain death, but when the battle is chosen then the warrior’s duty is his honor. “You will not turn from your enemy,” Grandfather said, “but face him, even if he is a thousand strong and you are but one. The warrior plants his staff where he will not be moved by anyone but death.” Crazy Horse did not run from Custer at the Greasy Grass. He rode his pony straight into the heart of battle. He laughed at them, taunted them and planted the staff.

Jerico would not run now. He grabbed his hunting knife and followed the sound into a thicket of magnolia, poplar and southern pine. He found a trail and held to it, slicing through overgrowth, kudzu, bristles and creeping vine as the thrumming, whistling, and pounding intensified. He covered his ears but the sound was both within and without him. He hiked until the sun fell from the sky, until the green of the forest turned dusk gray and slivers of light shot through the trees like lasers.

The thrumming softened and he slowed his pace. He was in a gorge, a holler, with limestone bluffs pressing in. It was a place ripe for ambush. He backtracked, climbed the northern bluff, and crept forward until he came to a place where the waters of an underground spring trickled through cracks in the earth to form a pond surrounded by wild flowers.

He gazed down upon a beautiful girl, a young woman, a woman child, dressed in white with beaded white buckskin moccasins and matching vest, her long dark hair in a single braid, sitting cross legged on the rocks, teasing the water with a stick. He recognized the beadwork as Cherokee and understood that she was dressed for ceremony. In Lakota, it is known as Ishnati Alowanpi: Making a Girl into a Woman.

She did not notice his presence above and he did not wish to disturb her, but when the thrumming returned, the skies darkened and a blanket of dark clouds moved overhead, blocking what remained of sunlight, he called out to her. He called out but she did not hear. She did not see the darkness or hear the thrumming, though it was now so loud it bent him to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the earth and held his ears but the thrumming only grew stronger, shaking his bones, rattling his brain, boiling his blood with rage. He struggled to raise his head, to curse the darkness, to challenge this spirit that hid in shadows and would not face his enemy but the darkness vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The pounding ceased, the clouds lifted and the forest breathed again.

Jerico looked to the girl, the beautiful Cherokee woman child, and froze to the place where he stood. A man with hunched shoulders, flash of metal, arms flailing, fists pounding, scratching, clawing, kicking, flash, blood, screaming, moaning, a knife in her chest, her body writhing in a pool of red, her eyes open, his face in her eyes, and he could not move. The girl screamed and he could not move. He could only listen to the fading beat of her heart and the twisted laughter of the wasichu killer.

He understood the spirit had guided him to this place. It wanted him to witness this horror. The killer expected him but did it know that he had backtracked? It expected him on the trail below, not on the bluff above where now he crouched, breathless, crippled by the darkness, frozen with fear like Big Foot at Wounded Knee.

He prayed to the Great Spirit. He called on the ancient ones, the spirit of the Cherokee and Choctaw, the fallen of Ash Hollow, Sand Creek and Medicine Bow, the dead of Wounded Knee, the spirit of the crow, the buffalo and the great thunderbird. He summoned the spirits of Sitting Bull and Black Kettle and all who had felt the white man’s wrath. He called on Crazy Horse and his body awakened with a crash of thunder. He sprang from his perch and soared like the night owl silently to his prey. He lowered his talons into the predator’s shoulders, gripping him with vice like fear, breaking his spirit like a severed spine. The killer crumpled to the earth, a limp body of useless flesh.

He spun the killer around to face the moment of his last breath, as the eyes of the ancestors, Red Cloud and Little Big Man, Crow Dog and Two Feathers, Young Man Afraid and Spotted Tail, Black Elk and No Water, glared over his shoulder and cried out for revenge.

But the shining silver blade of his knife clung to the sky freezing time to a crystalline moment. The eyes of the killer held shame and fear and his face reflected a thousand faces: Yellow Hair and General Miles, the unknown coward who plunged his bayonet into Crazy Horse as Little Big Man held his arms, the Colorado volunteers who cut from Lakota women their most private parts and fixed them to their saddle horns, the railroad men and their buffalo killers, the Appaloosa killers, thunderbird killers, crow killers, river and earth killers.

The wasichu killer wore so many faces, an endless sea, wave after wave, more than the stars, and each one carried the darkness beneath his pale skin, each afraid and filled with hate. Two thousand years of hatred and slaughter, two thousand years of death and poverty, two thousand years of genocide and white man rule yet still they feared and hated.

The killer pleaded for mercy. “Kill me.” Like the soldiers of the Seventh Calvary who killed themselves rather than face the savage avengers, “Kill me,” he pleaded.

Jerico understood that this man was not his enemy. He was only a man, a white man, a brutal and savage killer, but he was not the enemy. The enemy was the darkness that filled his soul. The enemy was the fear, the hatred, the need to avenge some unknown wrong. Killing was all the white man knew.

He remembered the first time he was told of the white man’s religion. They have killed their own God, he thought. Now they kill everything and pray that their God will return to have his revenge. They wanted to be tortured, beaten and whipped as they had tortured, beaten and crucified their God. They lack the courage to take their own lives so they pray that their God will take them. But their God will not return. He is dead. They have killed him. So the killing goes on and on.

He released the killer and watched him disappear into the woods. He heard a cough and turned to the bloodied body beside him. She was alive. As he had spared the killer, so the killing spirit had spared the girl.

She would live. She was badly wounded, bleeding and mercifully unconscious, but she would live. She had earned her womanhood. She fought back with every ounce of strength she possessed. She became a woman just as Jerico became a man. Together, they planted the staff and faced the enemy.

He thanked the Great Spirit, Mother Earth and Father Sky that the girl who became a woman would live.

Jerico bound her wounds, cradled her in his arms, and carried her out of the woods.