THE KILLING SPIRIT: White Skin, Red Soul (46)

CHAPTER TEN
WHITE SKIN, RED SOUL



She reminded him of Marie. Marie. Marie, who conquered his heart with her indomitable spirit, whose passion and courage mystified him, whose recklessness frightened him, whose fearlessness gave him courage, whose warmth comforted, whose betrayal devastated and whose death embittered his soul. Marie.

“Hi,” she said across the stack of books wherein Jerico searched for signs from the past. “My name is Ramona.”

She reminded him of Marie but it was not her appearance. Marie was a striking Lakota woman, sleek and long limbed like a deer loping through tall grass in the piney woods. Ramona was of stockier build, hair like Medusa, wild and reaching, a fullness of breast and wide, sturdy hips. Marie was the heart of Lakota and Ramona was white, yet her eyes were hard and soft at once and her soul was fire and ice.

She reminded him of Marie and he decided, from the moment he looked into her eyes, he would follow where she led.

“Jerico,” he replied.

She reminded him of Marie and it brought tears to his soul. He recalled in an instant every detail of their lives together, how it began in careless pleasure, how it endured in constant sorrow, and how it ended in sympathy and profound understanding. Marie understood. When she looked at him, she saw him. She saw the history of the Lakota in his eyes. She saw him and she cried. She saw him and she witnessed a thousand years of genocide. She saw him and she saw endless sorrow by his side.

“Would it surprise you if I said we were brethren spirits?” Ramona asked.

Marie asked him if he knew who he was. He did not know how to answer. It frightened him to think that he was not who he appeared to be. It frightened him to see an unknown fear in her eyes. Who was he if not himself?

Ramona asked him if he was traveling and offered her home as shelter from the storm. He smiled, remembering Johnny Raven’s offhand suggestion that they visit the city where white women who loved Indians would take them in, feed them, bed them, and care for their needs just for the chance to unlock the secrets of the native soul. He did not wonder what this woman wanted. He knew that she would give more than she received.

She was an alluring woman. He wondered why he did not feel the rush of desire that a man should feel after so long on the road. His heart still mourned and his loins still yearned for a woman no longer in the flesh. Still, he was a man and he knew he could no more refuse the gift of this woman than a child could refuse the dying request of a beloved elder.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Ramona asked.

“Who is to say?” grandfather had answered. “Who is to say that Sitting Bull is not walking the earth today as a white man in Mississippi or a black woman in Zaire?”

Ramona believed she was the reincarnation of a Lakota warrior. She believed that she and Jerico fought side by side in the wars against the white man. She died at the Greasy Grass where Yellow Hair fought his last battle, where her arrow was planted in his heart.

They were greeted at the door by a white man who wore his hair in a single braid and spoke of Leonard Peltier as if he was Abraham Lincoln, a name in a book rather than a man unjustly imprisoned in a Kansas penitentiary. His name was Jason and Jerico felt a strange kinship though he sensed behind his gentle manner a familiar shadow.

Jason and Ramona had an understanding – the kind of understanding that was purely intellectual, that neglected the nature of humanity, a cauldron of emotions that could not be calmed by reason. They were not bound to one another. They were together for as long as they chose to be and they were free to express their desires without restraint. It was the same kind of relationship Jerico had with Marie.

He was a good man but Jerico saw at once that he did not share Ramona’s faith. He gave the words that allowed the freedom she required but he did not hold them in his heart. Crazy Horse faced a similar dilemma when he rose to a position of prestige within the Lakota tribe. Against his vision, he accepted the honor of being a shirt bearer. Against his honor, he accepted the love of Black Buffalo Woman though she did not reject her husband. He paid for his betrayal very nearly with his life.

The sting of jealousy was implanted in Jerico’s soul. The poison seed took root while he was still in his mother’s womb and cast its shadow throughout his life. His father was also a good man but the poison led him to the bottle and the bottle gradually consumed him. Jerico’s mother forgave him but Jerico held on to his sense of betrayal, afraid that the sins of the father were bequeathed to the son, a fear that was fulfilled when Marie chose to love another.

Ramona pulled Jason aside and the white man soon excused himself for the evening with a forced yawn. Jerico was relieved he no longer had to endure the two faces of a jealous man. The tension in his body, his shoulders and spine, began to leave him as Ramona lit candles, incense and smoked the room with sage. He sat on a large floor pillow and realized that he was surrounded by native art and culture, photographs, paintings, medicine wheels, sculpted animal spirits, feathers and pipes. He shared her pipe and began to fill the sacred space of silence with words.

He found it easy to speak to this woman. He saw beyond her pale skin and spoke to her Indian soul. He related his childhood on the reservation and his days in Indian school where he failed to absorb the white man’s ways, the way of the Black Robes, the religion of death. He spoke of his mother, a strong and kind woman who taught him to love the earth and all living things, who protected him from his drunken father. He recalled the Wounded Knee uprising of 1973, when he was only a child. He remembered Leonard Peltier, Dennis Banks and Leonard Crow Dog and wanted nothing more than to join their sacred cause but he was too young and his mother was afraid of Dick Wilson, the crooked tribal chief, and the goons who controlled tribal life with an iron fist. He told her about his grandfather who became his mentor and guide when his father abandoned their home. He told her about Marie and the fire that still burned within his soul.

Ramona listened in heavy silence though it went against her nature. When he was finished and there was no more to be said, she took his hands and looked into his eyes. She told him that there were the spirits of many tribes around him, that he was at the center of a great battle and that his friends were many but his enemy was only one. She spoke the words he most feared: “You are chosen.” Tears sprang from her eyes as she sensed the darkness and realized the death it promised.

“Hanblecheya,” she said. It was the Lakota word for vision quest. “This is why you are here. This is what I am here to tell you. You cannot do what must be done without lamenting, without a vision. It is your destiny. It is what will connect you to your people and your people to the Great Spirit.”

Jerico was shaken. He had witnessed the death of an elder, an attack on a young Cherokee woman, and the strange disappearance of his Apache brothers and every event was clearly connected to a sacred ceremony. Like a warrior who has lost his senses in battle, he was afraid. He had no desire to risk another disaster and he was determined not to risk the lives of those who placed in him their trust.

“Do you know who you are?” she asked.

It was the same question Marie had asked in the same tone and it stirred in him a secret knowledge, a guarded mystery, an unspoken truth that he had never revealed to anyone and that he had not admitted to himself.

“I know,” he said finally.

“Then you will cry for a vision.”

He nodded and she melted into his arms. He let go of all resistance and allowed the waves of passion to sweep them both away into the land of touch and taste and desire. He dove into her private space and swam beneath the sea of moaning pleasure. “Believe,” she said, as she pulled him in and held him in her thighs. Believe in the universe of nature and instinct where every motion is guided by the hand of divine being, where there are no doubts and all is as it must be. Believe in the here and now where there is no judgment and no reflection. Believe in the softness of skin, the hardness of desire, the shape of her kiss, the hold of her breast, the arch of her back, the line of her hips, the taste of her love, his tongue in her ear, her tongue, her taste, her breath.

He looked into her eyes and he saw Marie.



It was summer when Jerico moved into a guest room of Ramona’s home. It was fall when Jason moved out. It all happened as if in a dream, moving slowly through jumps in time. Jason was here and Jason was gone. The long goodbye happened in a day. Sirens and bells and Jason was packed and gone. Jerico received his strange and stuttered blessing as if the words were borrowed and spewed like a foreign object.

Sex became a part of the rhythm of living. Breakfast in the garden, yoga, drums, chanting, meditation, sex. They studied the eastern mystics, explored philosophies, exchanged ideas in an expanding circle of friends, friends who shared an ideology of peace, freedom and enlightenment, friends who desired a higher consciousness, a better world, an image of paradise and a sense that Jerico was the answer to an unknown question.

Jerico consumed their knowledge as if it was manna, as if Crazy Horse himself had blessed them in a sacred rite, as if he was sent here to gather knowledge, to connect with a world beyond his circle of life.

He made love to many women, often without affection, often with no connection but the body in its primitive state. He learned that sex was never shameful but it was a colossal waste of time and energy when it did not engender love. It swallowed the soul.

He made love as well that engendered love, that grew and would have flourished had it not been for Ramona’s love, had it not been for her mother-sister-brother love, had it not been for her confused love that nourished and floundered at stops and starts, had it not been for Marie.

It was all in preparation for Hanblecheya. When he expressed doubt, when he said he needed a spirit guide, Ramona shook her head. When he was ready, he would know.

Finally, he knew. He knew as a man knows when he has conquered fear. He knew and when he told her so, she replied that preparations had already begun.