THE KILLING SPIRIT: Tales of Jerico (74)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TALES OF JERICO



During his years of isolation, Jerico did not spend a breath worrying about the world’s problems. He was not apart from the world; he was a part of the world. He knew nothing of what had transpired in his absence but the world knew a great deal about a man named Jerico Whitehorse.

He had a profound influence on the little white boy he rescued from the bowels of a great mountain. The boy spoke of little else. His family was wealthy and prominent in the state of Wyoming and they were unwilling to let their child’s hero go unrecognized. They contacted the local news and soon found themselves before national cameras.

It was a slow news week and there was an acute shortage of American heroes so the story caught on and spread like wildfire, like the Ghost Dance at the turn of the previous century. Here was a man who risked his life for a child he did not know, a child not of his people, and refused to accept recognition of his heroism.

What could be wrong with him? What was he hiding?

There is something morbid about the media. They cannot leave a good story alone. Heroes and villains alike are to be dissected, shredded and examined until they find the hidden flaws. If they can find none, they speculate. There is always something to be found.

America wonders why she has no heroes. She has none because she exploits them without mercy and discards them without a trace of remorse.

Before long, many came forward to claim their fifteen minutes with stories about the strange man of the Lakota. Some were pure fabrications; others were true. They told the story of a man in search of his vision. Some said he was the direct descendent of Crazy Horse. Others claimed he was the reincarnation of the great warrior. None within the Lakota nation would deny it.

Like Crazy Horse, his skin was almost as pale as a white man’s skin. Like Crazy Horse, he sought truth in visions, believed that this world was a dream and the dream was real, and he thirsted for solitude, always moving away from his two legged brothers until the vision beckoned his return. Like Crazy Horse, he had lost the only woman he would ever love and his heart was forever wounded. Like Crazy Horse, he was a man of few words yet those he spoke rumbled like thunder and pierced the soul of all who listened. Like Crazy Horse, it was prophesied that his deeds would live long past his days upon the earth, for as long as the grass still grows, the water flows and the Black Hills remain sacred ground.

A mountain man the size of a bear spoke of a night in the high country with Jerico. He swore that only an angel or a spirit could survive the harshest winter in a hundred years. He spoke of the Mormon prophecy and wondered if Jerico was the chosen one.

Relatives in Oklahoma spoke of his assistance in a family crisis and a young woman from Mississippi, the shadow of a scar across her cheek, thanked him for saving her life from a crazed killer. An Apache elder from the Warm Springs reservation in Arizona told the strange tale of a century-old prophecy that a man would rise from the Lakota nation, that he would have great powers, that he would hold the key to time, and that his name would be Jerico Whitehorse.

It was only a matter of time before the media uncovered the story of the Sangre de Cristo massacre. A detective from the Santa Fe Police Department said that Jerico was the leading suspect though no evidence was ever found. He was certain, however, that he was the killer and the lost boy of the Rockies was lucky to be alive.

Not knowing that he was America’s latest celebrity, Jerico walked down a lonely highway on the high plains of northern Wyoming, where once the Cheyenne made summer camp and counted coup with their neighbors, the Arapaho, Shoshone and Lakota, when buffalo herds were thousands strong and the people were free.

An old Chevy pulled up alongside him to ask if he wanted a ride. He had not held out his thumb. He neither wanted nor expected a ride in this country where hatred for the red man was a badge of honor. They hated him for his claim on the land stolen from his ancestors. He had walked many miles and he would finish the journey on his own.

He leaned over to decline when he saw that one of the three men inside was Indian. He was hungry for news of the homeland. Was his mother well? Was grandfather alive? Were there jobs? Were the people still living in hopeless poverty?

“How’s the Rez?” he asked.

“The same,” the man replied with a wide grin.

Jerico climbed in the back, next to the Indian. He was Lakota, younger than Jerico though he appeared older. He was thin, gaunt, and his skin had a jaundiced, wrinkled quality that belied his age. He had grown up on the Rosebud Reservation and recently moved to Laramie for a job in construction.

The three of them had lost their jobs and were searching for work. They were headed for Indian country in North Dakota where they breaking ground for a new casino.

The Indian introduced himself as Jimmy Wilson. “No relation to Jack,” he chortled.

Jack Wilson was the notorious tribal chief, whose reign of corruption and terror was responsible for bringing the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge, triggering a chain of events that culminated with the modern day siege of Wounded Knee. Many good Lakota men and women had lost their lives to the goon squad of Jack Wilson. Leonard Peltier was in prison for Jack Wilson.

Jerico wondered if the people had chosen the wrong path. He did not oppose gambling. People had a right to do whatever they wanted with their money but he feared the new wave of casinos did little for the people. It gave them minimum wage jobs while the lion’s share of the profits went to greedy white people in golden castles and their corrupted allies in the Indian community. It was an old wasichu game: land use agreements, mining rights, marketing agreements. Were these papers, drawn in a language the Indians did not understand, any different than the Fort Laramie treaty, promising that the Black Hills would remain Lakota as long as the grass grows and water flows? The wasichus were doing there best to fulfill treaty terms by pumping the earth with so much toxic sludge and waste that grass no longer grows and water does not flow. In the end, when the whites grew tired of driving to remote Indian casinos and opened their own, the Indians would be worse off than before.

Jerico realized it was a mistake to take this ride. There was shame in Jimmy Wilson’s evasive fidgeting, nervous grins, and he could feel the white men’s eyes crawl over him like vermin or vultures.

They pulled into a gas station with a little café. He thanked them for the ride and went inside. He had money left over from the dishwashing job so many years ago. Where he had walked, money was of no use yet he held onto it in anticipation of this day.

As he turned his back and walked away, he could feel their eyes still glued to him. He could hear one of them whisper, “That’s him, Jerico Whitehorse.”

He had not told them his name.

He sat on one of three bar stools. There were only two tables and the far one was inhabited by a family of three, a young boy and his parents. He had a vague sense of unease when he heard, beneath the hum of electrical current, beneath the zoom of travelers outside and a quiet breeze, hiding in the shadows of white noise, a ringing sound, a high pitched whistling, a sound he had heard so long ago it seemed another life.

It was the sound of the killing spirit.

Jerico bowed his head in silent prayer. He could not believe that it could find him so soon after leaving the path of a lone pilgrim. He lifted his head and surveyed his surroundings, trying to decipher the code. The killing spirit had changed. It had always directed him, showing its hand in bold strokes. Now it deceived and hid like an enemy afraid. It had only appeared at the site of a sacred rite but there was no ritual here: no seeking of visions, no stone ceremony, no Hunka Kagapi, no Inipi.

He wondered if, beneath the façade of commercial American life, this was a sacred place. He looked around once more and saw that it was so. It was a place where the people once gathered for the Sun Dance. He saw their suffering faces, their blood-stained bodies, the young ghost warriors Sitting Bull, He Dog and Gall, blood dripping from their wounds, thongs of buffalo hide connecting them to the Sun Dance pole, stretched taut until it seemed they would snap. They danced in the high sun, skin shining with sweat, streaked with blood, until the flesh gave way and they fell to mother earth with reborn strength and a message from the spirit world.

He wondered if this was the very spot where Sitting Bull had his vision of soldiers falling into camp, the vision that became the death of Yellow Hair at Little Big Horn. Jerico wanted to join his brethren spirits, to make his own offering of flesh, blood and sweat but he knew it was not time for dreaming. It was a time for caution and awareness, a time to put his heightened senses to good use. He wondered if the killing spirit had sent this vision to distract him, to negate the advantage he had gained over these last many moons.

The waitress, a stout white woman, greeted him with eyes of mistrust before she asked, “You with them?” She gestured to the three men still outside.

“No,” he answered. “I was but I have left their company.”

“Looks like they haven’t left yours,” she replied.

Jimmy Wilson and one of his white friends walked in while the other parked the car. Jimmy went to where Jerico was seated, slapped his shoulder and said, “Thought we might join you, chief.”

His hand still resting on Jerico’s shoulder, he said to the waitress, “Do you know who this is?”

“Can’t say that I do,” she replied.

The white man lingered by the cash register. Jerico noted the bulge beneath his shirt and placed his hand on his hunting knife.

“This is Jerico Whitehorse,” Jimmy said. “The Indian who saved the little white boy.”

“Is that so?”

She leaned into the counter, trying to trigger a hidden alarm. The white man pulled his gun and aimed it at her chest, supporting it with his left hand as a soldier does.

“Back off, bitch!”

Jerico pulled his knife but before he could deliver it, Jimmy Wilson grabbed his arms and the white man pulled the trigger.

The waitress screamed, the white man popped open the cash register, Jimmy bolted, and Jerico slumped over before falling, like a slab of meat, to the cold, tile floor.