THE KILLING SPIRIT

A Novel By Jack Random

Crow Dog Press
Turlock, California
Copyright 2009 Ray Miller


PROLOGUE
CRIES FOR A VISON



He had to get out.

When every breath was her voice singing, when every song was her rhythm talking, when every step was her spirit walking, when every thought was a memory of Marie: driving, laughing, praying, crying, screaming, sighing, dying, when every mountain was the shape of her dance, the shape of her kiss, the shape of her breast, the arch of her back, the line of her hips, the taste of her love, her tongue in his ear, her tongue, her taste, her breath.

He had to get out before he became a dead woman’s memory. He had to get out before her ghost swallowed him whole and his spirit left him for a corpse.

So he took to the road.

Crying for a Vision, Grandfather said. What the White Man called a Vision Quest. “When you have had your vision, you will come home.”

He leaned his head outside and took in the smell of cows, the smell of hay, the smell of manure, the smell of horses, pigs and farms, the smell of crew cuts, cheerleaders, redwood barns and white picket fences. Kansas, he smiled.

The sign read: St. Louis 234 miles.

Lala did a little shimmy and Jerico shot her some gas. She lurched and galloped down the open plains, chasing the White Buffalo, seeking the Red Road, following the ancestors to the mountain top where he would cry for a vision. For three days he had ridden the blue highways and already he knew his pony better than in the twelve moons since she came to him.

The radio sputtered static so he gave the dial a spin with a rap on the dash. A mourning wail of fiddles emerged in high fidelity. Neil Young & Crazy Horse. The white man with a red man’s spirit. He had overcome his many advantages and learned to speak in the language of his native brethren. So now Crazy Horse, the great Lakota war chief who led his warriors into battle on a white Appaloosa, delivered a message to his descendent and one of his blood.

Jerico Whitehorse pulled over to the side of the road and allowed the dust to settle. He turned off the engine and tuned his ear to the hum of cicada. He walked a slow circle from east to south to west to north, surveying the surroundings, scattered farms, patches of green grass, rows of corn, groves of maple and Kansas oak, looking for a sign. On the fourth circle, a crow sounded from the east and flew to the south.

Jerico knew what he must do.

He would cleanse himself in the waters of the great river to the east, then he would follow her south to the source, south to the beginning, south where the great winged one protects those on the sacred path, and south where all the generations emerge and where they return in the fullness of time.

There, at the womb of mother earth, he would cry for a vision.