THE KILLING SPIRIT: A Lost Boy (69)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A LOST BOY



There is a yearning of the soul that can only be answered by those who belong to the circle of the family. Jerico felt that yearning now and abandoned a long neglect of his two-legged brothers and sisters. So long ago he could not remember why, he had turned his back and walked away, but now he longed for their embrace.

The storms of winter had broken but the snow was deep in the Rockies when he began his descent, setting sight on sacred ground, the homeland, the Badlands, the Black Hills, Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations of South Dakota.

It had been a long time and much had happened in the world beyond his view. Strange new diseases with animal names but human origins sprang up and spread like a plague of locusts. Harsh winters and extreme summers brought new hardships around the planet. Ice and snowstorms snapped power lines, triggering brownouts and blackouts along the eastern seaboard. Earthquakes and drought punished the west and southwest. Floods and hurricanes tortured the south and tornados struck the nation’s midsection from the plains to the Mississippi. Elections won and lost amidst corporate and political scandals, mass unemployment and hardship. Many began to wonder if the end times were at hand.

Jerico knew nothing of worldly matters. Life as an animal spirit, apart from the world, made him strong and heightened his senses. He had the eyes of a hawk, the ears and nose of a coyote, and the endurance of a wolf. He understood the language of the land and the creatures that lived within its bounds. He had learned to read the signs, as the ancients must have done, to listen to the stones and the trees, and to taste the wind.

Perhaps because of his heightened senses, he heard the muffled, barely decipherable cry of a child in distress. Even then, if not for the piercing call of a hawk, he might not have recognized the sound for what it was: a boy crying out for help, his voice weak and trembling, calling for his mother and father and for someone named Danny.

Wearing snowshoes the mountain man had helped him to devise, he moved as quickly as he could across fields of snow, aware that the sun was falling from the sky, afraid that he would be too late. The moon was waning and he would not be able to continue long past sundown. A lost boy, hungry, hurt and desperate, would not survive the night.

He had just crossed a clearing, where a column of granite rose like a beacon from a deep gorge in a thicket of pine, when he heard the chopping blades of a helicopter to the west. He tried to signal but it was gone as soon as it appeared. They would not find the boy. A light snow had covered his tracks. They were miles off course without a clue. He glimpsed smoke rising in the same direction and marked it between peeks in the sky.

The boy was silent now. Jerico stood on the precipice and peered into the depths of a rocky gorge. He could not see the bottom for darkness. He tossed a stone and counted seven before it struck the granite wall and bounded still deeper.

The shadows were long in the waning light and Jerico sensed the urgency of time. He felt a strange urge, an urge he felt once before when he first saw Grand Canyon. It was an urge to jump but it was not a death wish. It was founded in a deeply rooted belief that an act of pure faith would enable his spirit to fly like a hawk or float like clouds lingering in still skies.

He dropped to his knees and prayed. He asked the spirit of White Buffalo Calf Woman to guide and protect him that he might save the life of a lost child. When he opened his eyes, he saw a sliver of hope: a crack or crevice in the steep wall of the gorge about the width of a man’s shoulders. He prepared a small pack of things he would need (blanket, dry wood chips, rope, twine, food, water pouch), wrapped his hands in deerskin and lowered himself in the crevice.

He soon found a rhythm of descent and the crack widened enough so that he could drop the length of a man with each bounding stride. He felt protected, as if a cloud surrounded him, and his leaps grew bolder, fifteen, twenty feet, gripping the rocks as if his hands were powerful talons, until the walls lost even their faint silver glow of light and his descent came to an abrupt stop on the floor of the gorge, soft and thick with pine needles and moss.

Before his eyes could adjust, he tuned his ear to his surroundings. He heard a drip of water, a whisper of wind, the shuffling of a small animal and, finally, the shivering breath of a child. He moved to where the boy lay unconscious, covered him with a blanket, and began rubbing his hands and feet until the boy’s eyes struggled open.

“Where am I?”

“You are here and you are safe.”

As their vision cleared, Jerico could see that the boy was in pain. He was not afraid so much as mystified by the sight of a Lakota warrior above him.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Jerico. I am here to take you home.”

“My name is Robby.”

He offered his hand and Jerico shook it. He was a brave boy, strong at heart, and Jerico was determined that his life would not end in this mountain gorge.

“Your spirit is strong,” he said, “but you must rest. I will build a fire to warm you.”

With plenty of dry wood and pine needles, it was not difficult to build a fire and the boy rose up to warm his hands over it. They shared a meal of wasna, dried rabbit meat and water, which the boy consumed in haste. When they had settled, Jerico asked how he came to be at the bottom of a gorge in the high country.

The family was vacationing in an area cabin. Robby and his older brother Danny went off sledding as they had half a dozen times before. They were gone a few hours when they lost control on a steep grade. His brother jumped and yelled for him to do the same but Robby held on, too frightened for his fingers to lose their grip. The last thing he remembered was flying straight into the mountain. When he woke up, he hurt everywhere and could not move for the pain. He called out but no one answer. His brother was gone.

Jerico spotted the sled in a thicket of debris and made out an opening in the wall of the gorge some thirty feet up.

He realized that Robby’s brother had gone for help but could not lead his parents back. He understood that there were two young lives at stake here for if Robby did not survive, Danny would never live at peace. Like a chain of sorrow, this singular event would cast a shadow across generations. Many would suffer for suffering is never alone. Just as Jerico’s remorse touched his circles of friends and family hundreds of miles away, so this boy’s shame and guilt would taint the circles of his life for as long as he walked the earth.

The boy was bruised and his shoulder displaced but his bones were not broken and the organs of his body were intact. He set his shoulder with the hands of a healer and packed his swollen ankle with mud. They talked until they laughed about the predicament they were in, an Indian and a little white boy in the belly of a great stone mountain. Robby asked if he knew the story of Injun Joe. Jerico said that he did but he did not approve. He then brewed a medicinal tea to ease his pain and give him pleasing dreams.

He watched the boy sleep and planned their escape. In the morning, he climbed the granite wall to the opening in the gorge, tied a rope to a tree, and hoisted the sled out. He then told Robby to hang on tight and carried him on his back as he pulled them both to the light of an early morning in the high country.

He tied the rope to the sled, fastened a pack so that Robby could sit comfortably, and they began the hike toward the smoke he had marked the day before. He passed the time telling stories of his people and answering Robby’s questions as honestly as he could. The boy had little knowledge of what had passed between their peoples, no knowledge of the buffalo slaughter, the crooked treaties, the relocations, or the Indian wars that stained the earth with native blood. It was not easy for Jerico to speak of these things with a little boy who had no part in them but it was even harder to realize that the boy knew nothing of them.

“It is good to remember the bad things our people have done,” he explained, “so that we will not do them again.”

Robby seemed satisfied with that explanation though he remained quiet for a long time. He wanted to say he was sorry but he understood that Jerico did not wish him to accept blame. It was not his doing. It was not his parents’ doing. But it was his people and he did feel sorry.

It was a long hike but Jerico kept a good pace and they found the camp well before sundown. As the cabin came into view, he turned to find a little white brother with tears in his eyes and he sensed they were not tears of pain. He knelt beside him and spoke.

“It is good to cry for the sorrows of the world. It is a sign of wisdom.”

Robby nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes. They exchanged a warm hug and the sorrow was replace with joy.

“Goodbye, little one,” said Jerico. “Never forget your Indian brother.”

“I won’t,” said Robby. “I promise.”

Someone spotted them and a handful of people emerged from the cabin, streaking toward them.

“Danny!” yelled Robby.

There were tears, hugs, and expressions of gratitude. Robby’s mother was an emotional being, clinging to her lost son as if the stars were dependent. A mother’s love is like no other. Her tears gave thanks. Her embrace gave thanks. Her words gave thanks. She wanted to give her life and all her worldly possessions to the man who brought back her son.

Jerico declined.

“I have done what anyone would do. I found a lost boy and brought him home.”

The father was solemn and equally grateful. He asked all the questions: How and why? He wore a badge of responsibility to lift it from his elder son.

Danny was an emotional roller coaster. His joy could not be contained. His silence was heavy, palpable, and filled the cabin with shame.

Jerico shared a meal, answered a father’s questions, and pulled Danny aside to simply say, “You did the right thing. You called for help and help came.”

He slept in a bed for the first time in many years. He had returned to the world and it gave him a strange, uneasy feeling. He knew that his journey was only beginning.

He rose before the sun and continued his descent down the mountain.