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.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
THE KILLING SPIRIT: The Omen (4)
CHAPTER ONE
THE OMEN
Where the great river makes its way to the endless forest, it begins to wind like a snake climbing and the road following its path winds with it. Jerico walked Lala on this path. They were in no hurry. Though the river runs swiftly, it remains in the same place.
They watched the metal of the white man’s discarded industry, tractors, sheds, motorized vehicles, ploughs, stoves and dishwashers, rust in the places they were discarded. Jerico camped in near darkness down river from St. Louis. He climbed a fence with barbed wire to find his way to the riverbank. He labored for hours clearing a campground littered with plastic bags, aluminum cans, old radios, the shells of cigarette cartons, milk cartons, detergent boxes, plastic wrap and containers of every size and description. He reflected that the white man lives as if his is the last generation to walk the earth, as if his children and grandchildren did not exist, and maybe he was right. Maybe there is no future, there is only today. It was anathema to everything he believed. He reflected that the white man is the only creature on earth that spoils its own habitat.
He avoided shards of glass and jagged concrete to sit where he could wade his feet in the muddy waters of the great river, where he sat motionless, releasing the smell of oil and gasoline, releasing the sight of floating fish and the skeletons of poisoned wildlife, egrets and gulls, possums and raccoons that relied on these waters for survival. He sat for hours, legs folded, eyes shut to the world, hands open to Father Sky, releasing his rage at the white man’s ignorance and mendacity, discarding his toxic waste into the waters that gave him birth, releasing his poisons where it will do most harm.
When at length he found a quiet space within, he dove into the muddy waters and allowed its powers to cleanse his body, mind and spirit. He let the current take him, watching the stars float by in a sky of darkness above. His mind traveled back to the sweat lodge back home. He remembered the waves of white heat, the smell of sweet grass, the passing of the pipe. He remembered ancient faces emerging from pitch darkness, the glowing stones, the explosions of steam as sacred waters were poured on them, and the waves of sweat flowing from his body. He remembered the deep, solemn satisfaction that entered his soul upon completing the four cycles.
“If you are going to do Inipi,” Grandfather said, “do it right.”
Together they walked into the hills, far from the village of shantytown cabins and shacks where most of his people lived. For two days, they fasted. “When you are older,” Grandfather said, “you will fast four days.” Jerico protested that he would fast four days now but Grandfather only smiled. They gathered willows, logs, sticks and smooth, round stones. They built the lodge, the fire pit, and lined the sacred path, working in the old ways, side by side, in the ways that were handed down by the ancestors.
“If you are going to do Inipi, do it right.”
On the hike back to camp, the river came alive with creatures shuffling in the brush, bright eyes in the black forest, with the haunting hoot of an owl and the yip of coyotes far from their native land, with fish jumping and wild dogs scavenging, howling and yapping, with cicada and tree frogs in their nocturnal serenade. Even the bright lights of a floating casino, a paddleboat steamer with its Dixieland jazz and costumed revelers seemed natural and right.
Jerico’s thoughts turned to his ancestors and the one all Lakota remember first. Crazy Horse cast aside tradition and the ritual of Inipi when he first went to the mountain to cry for a vision. His father, who was Crazy Horse before him, was displeased. Together they would relive the spiritual journey in the sacred and prescribed manner but the vision would remain the same. He would not be killed in battle. Neither bullet nor knife nor arrow would harm him as long as his people remained true. He would be humble, he would take nothing from his many victories, and he would always help his people, yet he would live with the knowledge that one day a trusted brother would hold his arms and mark his passing to the other world.
Crazy Horse kept his promise to the people and Jerico swore that he would keep his own. He would remember the old ways. He would wear plain clothes. He would seek no rewards for his victories. He would always hold the people in his heart.
Only once did Crazy Horse betray his vision. Only once did he allow pride to bend his judgment, accepting the honor of becoming a shirt bearer and desiring a woman forbidden to him. He paid for that transgression with a bullet to his face. That he survived was nothing less than a miracle.
Jerico was only beginning to recognize the greater truth of Crazy Horse: that the liquid world of dreams was as real, as rich and palpable as the world we call life, a world ironically dominated by death.
He built a fire and let his eyes join the dance of flames before he settled into a deep sleep where he dreamed the dream of the old ways, the dream of hunting and counting coup, the dream of raiding enemy camps and migrating with the seasons, the dream of the buffalo and the greasy grass, the dream of freedom before the white man came.
He had this dream many times before but this time there was a darkness, a heavy shadow, just beyond his senses. He awoke to the caw of the crow but did not stir until certain he was alone.
In the light of day, he could see he had been guided to this place for a reason. His camp could not be seen from the road and the view from the river was obscured by overgrowth and a weeping willow. It was a good place for Inipi. He cut reeds of willow, gathered logs and sticks, hunted down Inipi stones, dug the pit, laid the sacred path, and built a sweat lodge in the way of the ancestors, the way Grandfather had taught him.
Despite his sacred manner and countenance, he was only one man and could not perform all the roles of Inipi: Fire keeper, Drummer, Water Man and Spirit Guide. In a world less than perfect, it was the best he could do and for three cycles of the sweat, he prayed that the Great Spirit would take pity on him and hear his cry. On the fourth cycle, he heard the chant of ancient voices. He saw their ancient faces, marked with worry and wisdom, and looked into their eyes. He perceived something beyond the ancient sorrow and sensed that the darkness of his dreams was here as well, in the folds of steam, in the sacred lodge, in the glowing stones, and in the eyes of the ancient ones. He burned sage and prayed until the darkness seemed to fade.
Jerico was relieved to get back on the road. Coasting along the banks of the Mississippi, it felt good to be back at Lala’s reins. He allowed the waters of the great river to once again wash over him, to cleanse his spirit and give him new birth. He let go his ghosts, his nightmares, his dark thoughts and heavy shadows. He let the past recede in the rear view mirror as he watched the vines, kudzu and brush of an eternal forest creep over the ruins of the white man’s waste. He watched the awesome power of Mother Earth in constant motion, reclaiming the land from the discards of industry. He felt the air, itself, grow heavy and alive as sweat layered his skin and tall trees of magnolia, oak and dogwood, threw shadows on the blue pavement.
A woman with wild red hair in a blue convertible passed him on the narrow road in a blaze of glory. A chill crawled up his spine as three doves flew over the tree line to the west – west where the flame is extinguished, west where the spirit is swallowed, and west where the soul of all beings is laid to rest. A raven’s cry and dead silence.
He saw Marie in the mirror of his mind. He watched her smile turn to lifeless form. He saw her body dancing turn to unformed clay. He saw blood on the pavement of a lost highway. He saw her tears run dry as he tasted his own. He saw Marie behind and Marie ahead as he rounded a curve where an old pickup lay overturned in the brush alongside the road. A man knelt in the scattered debris, coughing blood and bleeding from his forehead. He pulled off his shirt and held it to the man’s head, guiding him away from the smell of spilt gas in the dry brush, coaxing him to lie down at the roadside.
“Screw me!” the man choked through the blurred vision of his blood-soaked eyes. “Help her!” He pointed to where the wild woman in a blue convertible went over the edge into the river. There was a trail of burnt rubber, a splintered guardrail, and a path of fresh destruction. Jerico followed the trail, skidding down a steep embankment, where he dove into the waters just as the overturned car went under.
There was life in her eyes when he pulled her from the car and carried her to the riverbank. There was life in her body when he pushed the water from her lungs and pressed his mouth to hers to refill them with air. Her lips were cold, her body numb, and he knew as he gazed once more into her eyes that her struggle had passed. He saw Marie.
The woman was dead. Nothing he did could save her or bring her back. He heard a distant and wicked laughter in the river running, laughter in the wind through the trees, laughter beneath the wail of sirens and the whirl of lights and emergency personnel barking orders and asking questions.
“What happened? What did you see?”
A woman died. He watched her spirit leave her body behind her. He saw Marie. He sat down in the shade of magnolia, oak and dogwood, and wiped the water from his face.
“Just an accident,” someone said. “Nothing you could do.”
Jerico did not believe in accidents. It was an omen, a clear and powerful warning meant to move him away from his chosen path. In a few hours, he would move on but a part of him would always remain here, at the side of a winding road, desperate, alone and afraid.
He drove on in a mindless haze, winding along the great river, until he feared he would follow the ghost of his past to a muddy grave. He pulled off the road, found a cheap motel, ate, showered and slept, praying that a new day would breathe new life into his weary bones.
THE OMEN
Where the great river makes its way to the endless forest, it begins to wind like a snake climbing and the road following its path winds with it. Jerico walked Lala on this path. They were in no hurry. Though the river runs swiftly, it remains in the same place.
They watched the metal of the white man’s discarded industry, tractors, sheds, motorized vehicles, ploughs, stoves and dishwashers, rust in the places they were discarded. Jerico camped in near darkness down river from St. Louis. He climbed a fence with barbed wire to find his way to the riverbank. He labored for hours clearing a campground littered with plastic bags, aluminum cans, old radios, the shells of cigarette cartons, milk cartons, detergent boxes, plastic wrap and containers of every size and description. He reflected that the white man lives as if his is the last generation to walk the earth, as if his children and grandchildren did not exist, and maybe he was right. Maybe there is no future, there is only today. It was anathema to everything he believed. He reflected that the white man is the only creature on earth that spoils its own habitat.
He avoided shards of glass and jagged concrete to sit where he could wade his feet in the muddy waters of the great river, where he sat motionless, releasing the smell of oil and gasoline, releasing the sight of floating fish and the skeletons of poisoned wildlife, egrets and gulls, possums and raccoons that relied on these waters for survival. He sat for hours, legs folded, eyes shut to the world, hands open to Father Sky, releasing his rage at the white man’s ignorance and mendacity, discarding his toxic waste into the waters that gave him birth, releasing his poisons where it will do most harm.
When at length he found a quiet space within, he dove into the muddy waters and allowed its powers to cleanse his body, mind and spirit. He let the current take him, watching the stars float by in a sky of darkness above. His mind traveled back to the sweat lodge back home. He remembered the waves of white heat, the smell of sweet grass, the passing of the pipe. He remembered ancient faces emerging from pitch darkness, the glowing stones, the explosions of steam as sacred waters were poured on them, and the waves of sweat flowing from his body. He remembered the deep, solemn satisfaction that entered his soul upon completing the four cycles.
“If you are going to do Inipi,” Grandfather said, “do it right.”
Together they walked into the hills, far from the village of shantytown cabins and shacks where most of his people lived. For two days, they fasted. “When you are older,” Grandfather said, “you will fast four days.” Jerico protested that he would fast four days now but Grandfather only smiled. They gathered willows, logs, sticks and smooth, round stones. They built the lodge, the fire pit, and lined the sacred path, working in the old ways, side by side, in the ways that were handed down by the ancestors.
“If you are going to do Inipi, do it right.”
On the hike back to camp, the river came alive with creatures shuffling in the brush, bright eyes in the black forest, with the haunting hoot of an owl and the yip of coyotes far from their native land, with fish jumping and wild dogs scavenging, howling and yapping, with cicada and tree frogs in their nocturnal serenade. Even the bright lights of a floating casino, a paddleboat steamer with its Dixieland jazz and costumed revelers seemed natural and right.
Jerico’s thoughts turned to his ancestors and the one all Lakota remember first. Crazy Horse cast aside tradition and the ritual of Inipi when he first went to the mountain to cry for a vision. His father, who was Crazy Horse before him, was displeased. Together they would relive the spiritual journey in the sacred and prescribed manner but the vision would remain the same. He would not be killed in battle. Neither bullet nor knife nor arrow would harm him as long as his people remained true. He would be humble, he would take nothing from his many victories, and he would always help his people, yet he would live with the knowledge that one day a trusted brother would hold his arms and mark his passing to the other world.
Crazy Horse kept his promise to the people and Jerico swore that he would keep his own. He would remember the old ways. He would wear plain clothes. He would seek no rewards for his victories. He would always hold the people in his heart.
Only once did Crazy Horse betray his vision. Only once did he allow pride to bend his judgment, accepting the honor of becoming a shirt bearer and desiring a woman forbidden to him. He paid for that transgression with a bullet to his face. That he survived was nothing less than a miracle.
Jerico was only beginning to recognize the greater truth of Crazy Horse: that the liquid world of dreams was as real, as rich and palpable as the world we call life, a world ironically dominated by death.
He built a fire and let his eyes join the dance of flames before he settled into a deep sleep where he dreamed the dream of the old ways, the dream of hunting and counting coup, the dream of raiding enemy camps and migrating with the seasons, the dream of the buffalo and the greasy grass, the dream of freedom before the white man came.
He had this dream many times before but this time there was a darkness, a heavy shadow, just beyond his senses. He awoke to the caw of the crow but did not stir until certain he was alone.
In the light of day, he could see he had been guided to this place for a reason. His camp could not be seen from the road and the view from the river was obscured by overgrowth and a weeping willow. It was a good place for Inipi. He cut reeds of willow, gathered logs and sticks, hunted down Inipi stones, dug the pit, laid the sacred path, and built a sweat lodge in the way of the ancestors, the way Grandfather had taught him.
Despite his sacred manner and countenance, he was only one man and could not perform all the roles of Inipi: Fire keeper, Drummer, Water Man and Spirit Guide. In a world less than perfect, it was the best he could do and for three cycles of the sweat, he prayed that the Great Spirit would take pity on him and hear his cry. On the fourth cycle, he heard the chant of ancient voices. He saw their ancient faces, marked with worry and wisdom, and looked into their eyes. He perceived something beyond the ancient sorrow and sensed that the darkness of his dreams was here as well, in the folds of steam, in the sacred lodge, in the glowing stones, and in the eyes of the ancient ones. He burned sage and prayed until the darkness seemed to fade.
Jerico was relieved to get back on the road. Coasting along the banks of the Mississippi, it felt good to be back at Lala’s reins. He allowed the waters of the great river to once again wash over him, to cleanse his spirit and give him new birth. He let go his ghosts, his nightmares, his dark thoughts and heavy shadows. He let the past recede in the rear view mirror as he watched the vines, kudzu and brush of an eternal forest creep over the ruins of the white man’s waste. He watched the awesome power of Mother Earth in constant motion, reclaiming the land from the discards of industry. He felt the air, itself, grow heavy and alive as sweat layered his skin and tall trees of magnolia, oak and dogwood, threw shadows on the blue pavement.
A woman with wild red hair in a blue convertible passed him on the narrow road in a blaze of glory. A chill crawled up his spine as three doves flew over the tree line to the west – west where the flame is extinguished, west where the spirit is swallowed, and west where the soul of all beings is laid to rest. A raven’s cry and dead silence.
He saw Marie in the mirror of his mind. He watched her smile turn to lifeless form. He saw her body dancing turn to unformed clay. He saw blood on the pavement of a lost highway. He saw her tears run dry as he tasted his own. He saw Marie behind and Marie ahead as he rounded a curve where an old pickup lay overturned in the brush alongside the road. A man knelt in the scattered debris, coughing blood and bleeding from his forehead. He pulled off his shirt and held it to the man’s head, guiding him away from the smell of spilt gas in the dry brush, coaxing him to lie down at the roadside.
“Screw me!” the man choked through the blurred vision of his blood-soaked eyes. “Help her!” He pointed to where the wild woman in a blue convertible went over the edge into the river. There was a trail of burnt rubber, a splintered guardrail, and a path of fresh destruction. Jerico followed the trail, skidding down a steep embankment, where he dove into the waters just as the overturned car went under.
There was life in her eyes when he pulled her from the car and carried her to the riverbank. There was life in her body when he pushed the water from her lungs and pressed his mouth to hers to refill them with air. Her lips were cold, her body numb, and he knew as he gazed once more into her eyes that her struggle had passed. He saw Marie.
The woman was dead. Nothing he did could save her or bring her back. He heard a distant and wicked laughter in the river running, laughter in the wind through the trees, laughter beneath the wail of sirens and the whirl of lights and emergency personnel barking orders and asking questions.
“What happened? What did you see?”
A woman died. He watched her spirit leave her body behind her. He saw Marie. He sat down in the shade of magnolia, oak and dogwood, and wiped the water from his face.
“Just an accident,” someone said. “Nothing you could do.”
Jerico did not believe in accidents. It was an omen, a clear and powerful warning meant to move him away from his chosen path. In a few hours, he would move on but a part of him would always remain here, at the side of a winding road, desperate, alone and afraid.
He drove on in a mindless haze, winding along the great river, until he feared he would follow the ghost of his past to a muddy grave. He pulled off the road, found a cheap motel, ate, showered and slept, praying that a new day would breathe new life into his weary bones.
THE KILLING SPIRIT: The Head of De Soto (8)
CHAPTER TWO
THE HEAD OF DE SOTO
Tohocua burned with a fire that would never cease. He hated the invaders from across the great waters with a passion that refused to abate in time. Even now that the conquistadors had been driven from their lands, now that their heads rested on stakes, eyes open to the celebration of their defeat. Even now, the memory of Umpiqua, a massacre of old men, women and children, burned in his soul. Even now, he remembered the horror in his daughter’s eyes when he rescued her from De Soto’s camp in the stealth of night.
For seven moons before this day, he carried the death of his wife from the black robe disease, the killing of his sons in battle, the abduction and rape of his daughter in a heart too heavy with grief. It was not enough to kill these men, not enough to cut off their heads, not enough to burn them at the stake or dismember their bodies. No torture yet invented could satisfy his need or the need of his people for revenge.
Tohocua had himself witnessed the conquistadors’ excess on the battlefield. Sword against spear, steel against carved wood and stone, they pressed their advantage with a brutality unknown to the people of the mounds. They enslaved the men, raped the women, killed the children and humiliated the chiefs.
All of the conquistadors – Cortez, De Leon and De Soto – had scorched the land from Florida to Mississippi, leaving behind a vast trail of destruction and disease. They were a plague upon the earth and now, at long last, the plague was vanquished.
As leader of the seven tribes, Tohocua sat on his throne atop the tallest of seven earthen mounds in a forest clearing beneath a sky of a million stars, his body still aching for Spanish blood, his heart pulsating with righteous indignation, crying out for still more vengeance. With a wave of his hand, he acknowledged the people below and they roared their approval at a shooting star, a sign of the gods, as a thousand drums pounded in unison, sending forth a reverberation that shook the trees, boiled blood and raised hot spirits in the victorious night. Five hundred warriors, their golden skin still glistening with the sweat of battle, danced around blazing fires, flames reaching to the heavens.
Tohocua gave them what they longed to see with their own eyes, thrusting before them the head of De Soto, himself, still encased in the silver crown of the Spanish cock, the headdress of the conquistador. It was a sickening sight, almost unrecognizable for the disease that marked it with sores and stole what little color it once possessed, yet the people were satisfied and rose as one in a deafening roar. This was the proof they required that the evil ones, the fearless warriors with coats of steel no arrow could pierce, the white eyes with fire sticks and strange dark magic, the shameless ones who killed everyone and everything they could not use or possess, the monsters were finally dead.
He held the trophy out to the warriors who had joined together to track and fight this powerful foe, who defeated and pushed him from the continent. He heaved it into their midst where the strongest battled for the prize, for the honor of being the one to stake it and light the fire that would burn the darkness from the mind, the heart and the memory of the people.
Surely, the enemy would never return. Surely, when the survivors told what happened here, how the tribes united against them, they would no longer venture into the land of the Mound Builders. Surely, the Great Spirit would deny them passage. Surely, they would recognize that the balance had tipped against them. Surely, they were not so bold, so full of themselves that they would march again into the cauldron of destruction.
On the one occasion when Tohocua spoke to the Conquistadors directly, he told them that the only way to defeat the people that belonged to the land was to kill them all.
He felt the presence of his daughter at his side, her body warm and her eyes aglow in firelight. He brushed her silken hair from her golden cheek and remembered the girl she had been. She was a woman now. The Spaniards made her a woman before her time but they could not take from her the spark that was her own. They could not kill her spirit.
She had her mother’s eyes and, like her mother, she was groomed to one day take a seat in the counsel of elders. Perhaps she would fulfill her destiny after all. It warmed his heart to see her come alive. In her eyes resided the hope of all her people. In her eyes, as the head of De Soto was engulfed in flames below, the future revealed itself in slow moving, flowing, changing pictures. As the celebration erupted, drums pounding, fire and dance, singing, feasting and laughter, Tohocua saw the truth and it changed his heart to stone.
He saw the white man’s boats with towering white sails emerge on the eastern horizon in hundreds, then thousands, then too many to count. He saw them transformed into titans of steel with smoke billowing from chambers of fire. He saw the invaders swarming over the land like a cloud of locusts, blocking the sun and choking the earth. He saw the forests reduced to barren landscapes. He saw rivers of fire and skies thick with poisons. He saw his brethren spirits of the forest – deer, elk, mountain lion, bear, beaver, hawk and eagle – hunted for their skins, for feathers and for sport. He saw the people walk the western trail into the dying sun, heads bowed, ravaged with hunger and disease, their spirits broken. He saw them captured and held like the white man’s spotted cows, whipped, chained, beaten and forced to march the long path to the land where death awaited. He saw once proud warriors and women with white painted faces and others hiding in the shadows of the sacred mountains. He saw himself alone on this same earthen mound, only now it was covered in tall grass and he was chief to no one.
The earth rumbled and the vision was shaken from his view. He looked to the skies where dark clouds swallowed the moon and blocked the stars. The people stopped dancing, singing, celebrating, the drums stopped pounding, owls halted in their silent flight, cicada stopped chirping, and even the fireflies stopped flying as a fresh new wave of dark silence washed over them. The people turned to their chief, expecting some reassurance, a show of defiance and strength, but the chief had nothing more to give. He had seen tomorrow and it left him dumb.
A clap of thunder and rain buckled from the clouds and the people broke for shelter. Tohocua reached for his daughter’s shoulder but found no one in her place. The earth crumbled beneath his feet and blood red clay swallowed him to the waist. Through his daughter’s eyes he saw her running through the trees in endless circles of fright, chasing echoes, following shadows and reflections, her fear building with every step, with every bog and hollow, searching for the way out, searching for a tunnel of light, searching for her father, her fearless chief, searching for her people and a way of life that no longer existed.
The people cowered behind boulders, in caverns and caves, beneath rotting wood and fallen leaves, hiding like corpses in shallow graves. Everywhere the black robes, the twisted shamans of the conquistadors, wandered the earth and wherever they walked, death followed.
He heard his daughter scream but he could not answer. His heart in his throat, he could not cry out. He heard her torment but the earth gripped his legs, swallowed his body and he could not move. He heard her struggle followed by silence, followed by dead cold empty silence, and still he could not move.
[Note: To date, the only successful occupation of a foreign land is that of the Europeans in North America. That it was achieved by genocide is undeniable fact.]
THE HEAD OF DE SOTO
Tohocua burned with a fire that would never cease. He hated the invaders from across the great waters with a passion that refused to abate in time. Even now that the conquistadors had been driven from their lands, now that their heads rested on stakes, eyes open to the celebration of their defeat. Even now, the memory of Umpiqua, a massacre of old men, women and children, burned in his soul. Even now, he remembered the horror in his daughter’s eyes when he rescued her from De Soto’s camp in the stealth of night.
For seven moons before this day, he carried the death of his wife from the black robe disease, the killing of his sons in battle, the abduction and rape of his daughter in a heart too heavy with grief. It was not enough to kill these men, not enough to cut off their heads, not enough to burn them at the stake or dismember their bodies. No torture yet invented could satisfy his need or the need of his people for revenge.
Tohocua had himself witnessed the conquistadors’ excess on the battlefield. Sword against spear, steel against carved wood and stone, they pressed their advantage with a brutality unknown to the people of the mounds. They enslaved the men, raped the women, killed the children and humiliated the chiefs.
All of the conquistadors – Cortez, De Leon and De Soto – had scorched the land from Florida to Mississippi, leaving behind a vast trail of destruction and disease. They were a plague upon the earth and now, at long last, the plague was vanquished.
As leader of the seven tribes, Tohocua sat on his throne atop the tallest of seven earthen mounds in a forest clearing beneath a sky of a million stars, his body still aching for Spanish blood, his heart pulsating with righteous indignation, crying out for still more vengeance. With a wave of his hand, he acknowledged the people below and they roared their approval at a shooting star, a sign of the gods, as a thousand drums pounded in unison, sending forth a reverberation that shook the trees, boiled blood and raised hot spirits in the victorious night. Five hundred warriors, their golden skin still glistening with the sweat of battle, danced around blazing fires, flames reaching to the heavens.
Tohocua gave them what they longed to see with their own eyes, thrusting before them the head of De Soto, himself, still encased in the silver crown of the Spanish cock, the headdress of the conquistador. It was a sickening sight, almost unrecognizable for the disease that marked it with sores and stole what little color it once possessed, yet the people were satisfied and rose as one in a deafening roar. This was the proof they required that the evil ones, the fearless warriors with coats of steel no arrow could pierce, the white eyes with fire sticks and strange dark magic, the shameless ones who killed everyone and everything they could not use or possess, the monsters were finally dead.
He held the trophy out to the warriors who had joined together to track and fight this powerful foe, who defeated and pushed him from the continent. He heaved it into their midst where the strongest battled for the prize, for the honor of being the one to stake it and light the fire that would burn the darkness from the mind, the heart and the memory of the people.
Surely, the enemy would never return. Surely, when the survivors told what happened here, how the tribes united against them, they would no longer venture into the land of the Mound Builders. Surely, the Great Spirit would deny them passage. Surely, they would recognize that the balance had tipped against them. Surely, they were not so bold, so full of themselves that they would march again into the cauldron of destruction.
On the one occasion when Tohocua spoke to the Conquistadors directly, he told them that the only way to defeat the people that belonged to the land was to kill them all.
He felt the presence of his daughter at his side, her body warm and her eyes aglow in firelight. He brushed her silken hair from her golden cheek and remembered the girl she had been. She was a woman now. The Spaniards made her a woman before her time but they could not take from her the spark that was her own. They could not kill her spirit.
She had her mother’s eyes and, like her mother, she was groomed to one day take a seat in the counsel of elders. Perhaps she would fulfill her destiny after all. It warmed his heart to see her come alive. In her eyes resided the hope of all her people. In her eyes, as the head of De Soto was engulfed in flames below, the future revealed itself in slow moving, flowing, changing pictures. As the celebration erupted, drums pounding, fire and dance, singing, feasting and laughter, Tohocua saw the truth and it changed his heart to stone.
He saw the white man’s boats with towering white sails emerge on the eastern horizon in hundreds, then thousands, then too many to count. He saw them transformed into titans of steel with smoke billowing from chambers of fire. He saw the invaders swarming over the land like a cloud of locusts, blocking the sun and choking the earth. He saw the forests reduced to barren landscapes. He saw rivers of fire and skies thick with poisons. He saw his brethren spirits of the forest – deer, elk, mountain lion, bear, beaver, hawk and eagle – hunted for their skins, for feathers and for sport. He saw the people walk the western trail into the dying sun, heads bowed, ravaged with hunger and disease, their spirits broken. He saw them captured and held like the white man’s spotted cows, whipped, chained, beaten and forced to march the long path to the land where death awaited. He saw once proud warriors and women with white painted faces and others hiding in the shadows of the sacred mountains. He saw himself alone on this same earthen mound, only now it was covered in tall grass and he was chief to no one.
The earth rumbled and the vision was shaken from his view. He looked to the skies where dark clouds swallowed the moon and blocked the stars. The people stopped dancing, singing, celebrating, the drums stopped pounding, owls halted in their silent flight, cicada stopped chirping, and even the fireflies stopped flying as a fresh new wave of dark silence washed over them. The people turned to their chief, expecting some reassurance, a show of defiance and strength, but the chief had nothing more to give. He had seen tomorrow and it left him dumb.
A clap of thunder and rain buckled from the clouds and the people broke for shelter. Tohocua reached for his daughter’s shoulder but found no one in her place. The earth crumbled beneath his feet and blood red clay swallowed him to the waist. Through his daughter’s eyes he saw her running through the trees in endless circles of fright, chasing echoes, following shadows and reflections, her fear building with every step, with every bog and hollow, searching for the way out, searching for a tunnel of light, searching for her father, her fearless chief, searching for her people and a way of life that no longer existed.
The people cowered behind boulders, in caverns and caves, beneath rotting wood and fallen leaves, hiding like corpses in shallow graves. Everywhere the black robes, the twisted shamans of the conquistadors, wandered the earth and wherever they walked, death followed.
He heard his daughter scream but he could not answer. His heart in his throat, he could not cry out. He heard her torment but the earth gripped his legs, swallowed his body and he could not move. He heard her struggle followed by silence, followed by dead cold empty silence, and still he could not move.
[Note: To date, the only successful occupation of a foreign land is that of the Europeans in North America. That it was achieved by genocide is undeniable fact.]
THE KILLING SPIRIT: Dream Reader (11)
CHAPTER THREE
DREAM READER
He dreamed of Marie every night.
Every night he called her name and she came to him. She came to him on a floating red stallion, hair glowing in sunlight, eyes shining in moonlight, her smile radiating a vast horizon, her warmth melding to his.
Every night he tried to speak of his unending sorrow, the guilt and shame he thrust into his own heart, his yearning to live those few days, hours and minutes over again, to undo what had been done, and every night she placed her finger across his lips, silencing his mourning cry and easing his suffering.
Every night they let their bodies speak for them, finding words they could not find in life, finding oneness with the wind and sun, finding solace with all creatures of the earth, allowing themselves to be swept away in waves of liquid warmth.
Every night he bathed in her beauty. He received the gift of her lips, her breasts, the nape of her neck, her abdomen and thighs. He gave himself away and yielded to the relentless pull of her womb. Every night he lost his name, his sense of standing, his identity and shame. Every night he forgave himself in the soft comfort of her eyes.
Every night he held her as if he could stop the day from coming, as if the sun, the moon and the stars were tied to the beating of his heart. Every night he felt the rhythm of Marie’s heart become his own or his become hers and every night he believed she would never leave. He felt her breath, the calm of her embrace, and listened to her peaceful sigh and believed it would never end.
Every morning he awoke. Alone.
This night, as he lay by her side, holding back the cruel awakening, he sensed another presence. How can one describe a thing that has no substance yet it invades consciousness, shadowing all thoughts, obscuring all desires, until it alone is dominant?
Jerico’s anger began as a seed of discomfort and grew like weeds in an untended garden. How can you fight something that will not show itself? How can you answer that which does not speak? This darkness (for that is the only word that invites description) had found its way to his most sacred and private place.
His greatest fear was that he would never again be alone with his love.
The dream of the Mound Builders was unique. Jerico was unsettled by it but he was profoundly disturbed by his dream of Marie, a dream he had dreamed with only slight variation for a fortnight.
Some dreams come from deep within the psyche. They speak to fundamental needs within the soul. They arise out of basic desires. They are deeply personal and address wounds, chasms of the soul, which can only be healed in the great expanse of time.
Other dreams, like the dream of the Mound Builders, spring from a deeper well. They are manifestations of ancient memories, the collective consciousness of an entire people, the instinctive knowledge that is given voice in the stories and testimonials handed down from generation to generation.
Jerico had often dreamed of his ancestors, so often that he felt a direct link, a blood bond that connected him to Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Big Foot and others, but never had these dreams crossed over to other tribes and other native peoples. His were the people of the plains, of the buffalo and open skies. The seven tribes of the Lakota-Nakota-Dakota came from the north and migrated westward in a futile attempt to escape the white man’s advance. Only Tecumseh of the Shawnee had ventured from the north to the tribal kingdom of the mounds. Born under the sky of a great comet, Tecumseh tried to unite the tribes for a final assault on the European invaders. The enemies of the Lakota were not the Spanish conquistadors but the armies of the English, the French and the bluecoats who called themselves Americans. The people of the south did not answer Tecumseh’s call for they still believed they could make peace with the Great White Father. It would be many moons before the truth of Tecumseh’s vision was known and all tribes would unite in their common hatred of the invaders. It was a hatred that came from a very deep place, from the soil of the earth and the blood of her chosen.
Now it seemed the dream of the Lakota was the dream of all native peoples and the darkness had invaded both realms, the dream of the people and the dream of the self.
When Jerico was a small child he would hide in the tall grass, behind trees and rusty cars, where he watched Grandfather burning sweet grass, drawing lines in the dirt, as he read the dreams of others. He watched their faces as they struggled with Grandfather’s reading. When he was older, he would pound the drum or the keep the fire burning. He would do the same for his father before the white man’s sickness poisoned his spirit and stole his gift.
Dreams were everything to the Lakota. They were gateways to the overworld, windows to the soul, doors to a hidden universe of spirits, and bridges to ancestral gardens. Crazy Horse, who lived in two worlds, was one of the greatest dreamers and visionaries of all the Lakota but he was also a reader of dreams. His father taught him the wisdom and importance of interpreting a dream properly, in the tradition of the old ways.
As Jerico followed the winding road at a snail’s pace, the forest growing richer, smells more pungent, the air ever thicker, he contemplated his dreams and he knew where he must go. He had heard stories from travelers about the voodoo priestesses of New Orleans. As the black robes condemned them as practitioners of the dark arts, blood sacrifice and devil worship, Jerico considered them brethren spirits. He remembered how the priests and ministers tried to convert him to their church with the promise of heavenly paradise. Their voices were soft and gentle and he listened until he realized that their god would condemn his grandfather to eternal damnation. He understood then that the white man’s heaven is for white men alone.
Grandfather said: Keep your eyes wide open. Look to Father Sky but keep your feet planted on Mother Earth. The red road is revealed only to those who walk in a sacred manner.
He saw to his pony’s needs, fuel, water and rest, and then he let her find her stride on the open highway. They rode with the ghosts and shadows of a moonlit night, hitting the long bridge where the waters of the Mississippi scatter into the marshlands of Lake Pontchartrain at sunrise. He had never been so far south where the six and eight legs flourished and rabid plant life covered every inch of space. He had never breathed air so thick it covered the body with the sweat of the land. He had never felt the heartbeat of the earth slow to near stillness.
It began to rain and it rained so hard the wipers could not clear the way. Slapping back and forth at a furious pace, as if Lala sensed the danger, Jerico let go and allowed her to carry him to safety. She rode into the heart of the great city, the source, womb and birthplace of the continent, pulled to the side of the road and waited for the rains to ease.
New Orleans: Even the name suggested promise. New Orleans, city of jazz and vampire lore, was a dream of endless night where women bared their breasts on the streets, where swarms of masked and bearded people celebrated and danced, making love in store fronts, drinking until they passed out where they stood. It was a fantasy of sex, hustle and grime but it was a long way from Mardi Gras and the city that greeted them now was fresh and clean, washed by the torrent of rain.
He parked on the embarcadero, not far from the cathedral where a man in white with long brown hair, drenched from head to foot, summoned the ancestors with his magic flute. He walked through the courtyard down to Bourbon Street, gazing in windows crowded with trinkets like those the white man used to buy Manhattan, ignoring barkers pimping strippers, watching Bourbon Street irregulars perched on bar stools with chicory scented coffee, catching their breath and gearing up for the next wave of tourists.
A raven called from atop a wrought iron balcony and Jerico knew he had arrived. He stepped into Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo and there, amidst a cornucopia of charms, potions, fetishes, crystal balls and misshapen dolls, he asked to see the dream reader. The man at the counter sized him up and asked for twenty dollars, a discount for their native brothers. He was escorted through a wall of beads and a delicate jingle of bells announced his presence. A dark skinned woman dressed in layers of orange, yellow and black, matching bandana wrapping her head, sat behind a round table, draped in blue velvet, and gestured to the chair opposite her. She introduced herself as Madam Vouland, psychic, master of spirits, palmistry, tarot, voodoo and reader of dreams.
She spoke in a thick Caribbean accent and moved in the slow, deliberate manner of ritual or dance. The scent of jasmine permeated and the sound of distant waves caressed the senses. Jerico observed her in silence as she examined the space surrounding him, gazing into the air as if seeing what could not be seen.
“Bad juju,” she said. “Tell me your dream.”
He told her the dream of Marie as she played a deck of Tarot, hardly raising her head, hardly appearing to listen.
“This is not difficult,” she said. “You have lost a loved one, your soul mate, very likely. She is gone to the other side but she is here with you. She is with you now.”
“And the darkness?” said Jerico.
“It is your guilt,” she replied. “If Marie could speak to you now, she would tell you, you are not to blame. The earth spins, the spirit lives on, and the living must go on living.”
Jerico knew that she was not what she appeared and the reading she had given was no different than what any dime store gypsy would have offered, yet he remained where he was for he sensed that she possessed the gift.
Madam Vouland looked up, a little surprised that he was neither impressed by the generic reading nor departed. Time is money.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
Slowly, he began telling the dream of the Mound Builders. Slowly, he carved the image and placed it in the crystal ball of her memories. Slowly, he pulled tears from her eyes and drew at the gift she carried deep within her.
Madam Vouland knew this dream. She had dreamed it this very night. She had placed herself in the role of the chief’s daughter and her tears were real. She dropped the accent and folded her hand to his, speaking now as sister to brother.
“I know you,” she whispered. “I was there.”
He looked into her dark eyes and saw her truth.
“I was your child and you were my chief. The darkness that follows you is strong, more powerful than any I have known. You cannot win. There are centuries of history behind it. It cannot be defeated. Like the chief and people of the mounds, you can only run. You can only hide.”
She bowed her head and told him the story of her people, the Indio of the Caribbean, the people of God. The Europeans took them from their islands and made them slaves on the mainland. They took the people of the mainland, the tribes of the Natchez, to make them slaves on the islands but the mainland Indians revolted. They died rather than become slaves. “That is what ties us together,” she said, “and splits us apart: the slave trade.”
He asked if she knew the place of the seven mounds. She did but she did not wish to reveal it. “As sure as my tears are warm, it’s a trap,” she said. “This darkness is an evil spirit and it has chosen you for a reason. It wishes to own you as a man may own a woman or a woman may own a man. It knocks on your door at night. It crawls into your bed. It enters your dreams. It will find your weaknesses and exploit them. Run away. Or better yet, find an exorcist.”
She looked into his eyes and knew that he would do neither.
“Follow the Natchez Trace,” she said. “It’s about a hundred miles north.”
She pulled a charm from her neck and held it firmly in his hand. “You’ll need it,” she said.
She gave him back his twenty dollars and refused to hear his protest. Jerico understood. She wanted no part of the battle that was his and his alone.
DREAM READER
He dreamed of Marie every night.
Every night he called her name and she came to him. She came to him on a floating red stallion, hair glowing in sunlight, eyes shining in moonlight, her smile radiating a vast horizon, her warmth melding to his.
Every night he tried to speak of his unending sorrow, the guilt and shame he thrust into his own heart, his yearning to live those few days, hours and minutes over again, to undo what had been done, and every night she placed her finger across his lips, silencing his mourning cry and easing his suffering.
Every night they let their bodies speak for them, finding words they could not find in life, finding oneness with the wind and sun, finding solace with all creatures of the earth, allowing themselves to be swept away in waves of liquid warmth.
Every night he bathed in her beauty. He received the gift of her lips, her breasts, the nape of her neck, her abdomen and thighs. He gave himself away and yielded to the relentless pull of her womb. Every night he lost his name, his sense of standing, his identity and shame. Every night he forgave himself in the soft comfort of her eyes.
Every night he held her as if he could stop the day from coming, as if the sun, the moon and the stars were tied to the beating of his heart. Every night he felt the rhythm of Marie’s heart become his own or his become hers and every night he believed she would never leave. He felt her breath, the calm of her embrace, and listened to her peaceful sigh and believed it would never end.
Every morning he awoke. Alone.
This night, as he lay by her side, holding back the cruel awakening, he sensed another presence. How can one describe a thing that has no substance yet it invades consciousness, shadowing all thoughts, obscuring all desires, until it alone is dominant?
Jerico’s anger began as a seed of discomfort and grew like weeds in an untended garden. How can you fight something that will not show itself? How can you answer that which does not speak? This darkness (for that is the only word that invites description) had found its way to his most sacred and private place.
His greatest fear was that he would never again be alone with his love.
The dream of the Mound Builders was unique. Jerico was unsettled by it but he was profoundly disturbed by his dream of Marie, a dream he had dreamed with only slight variation for a fortnight.
Some dreams come from deep within the psyche. They speak to fundamental needs within the soul. They arise out of basic desires. They are deeply personal and address wounds, chasms of the soul, which can only be healed in the great expanse of time.
Other dreams, like the dream of the Mound Builders, spring from a deeper well. They are manifestations of ancient memories, the collective consciousness of an entire people, the instinctive knowledge that is given voice in the stories and testimonials handed down from generation to generation.
Jerico had often dreamed of his ancestors, so often that he felt a direct link, a blood bond that connected him to Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Big Foot and others, but never had these dreams crossed over to other tribes and other native peoples. His were the people of the plains, of the buffalo and open skies. The seven tribes of the Lakota-Nakota-Dakota came from the north and migrated westward in a futile attempt to escape the white man’s advance. Only Tecumseh of the Shawnee had ventured from the north to the tribal kingdom of the mounds. Born under the sky of a great comet, Tecumseh tried to unite the tribes for a final assault on the European invaders. The enemies of the Lakota were not the Spanish conquistadors but the armies of the English, the French and the bluecoats who called themselves Americans. The people of the south did not answer Tecumseh’s call for they still believed they could make peace with the Great White Father. It would be many moons before the truth of Tecumseh’s vision was known and all tribes would unite in their common hatred of the invaders. It was a hatred that came from a very deep place, from the soil of the earth and the blood of her chosen.
Now it seemed the dream of the Lakota was the dream of all native peoples and the darkness had invaded both realms, the dream of the people and the dream of the self.
When Jerico was a small child he would hide in the tall grass, behind trees and rusty cars, where he watched Grandfather burning sweet grass, drawing lines in the dirt, as he read the dreams of others. He watched their faces as they struggled with Grandfather’s reading. When he was older, he would pound the drum or the keep the fire burning. He would do the same for his father before the white man’s sickness poisoned his spirit and stole his gift.
Dreams were everything to the Lakota. They were gateways to the overworld, windows to the soul, doors to a hidden universe of spirits, and bridges to ancestral gardens. Crazy Horse, who lived in two worlds, was one of the greatest dreamers and visionaries of all the Lakota but he was also a reader of dreams. His father taught him the wisdom and importance of interpreting a dream properly, in the tradition of the old ways.
As Jerico followed the winding road at a snail’s pace, the forest growing richer, smells more pungent, the air ever thicker, he contemplated his dreams and he knew where he must go. He had heard stories from travelers about the voodoo priestesses of New Orleans. As the black robes condemned them as practitioners of the dark arts, blood sacrifice and devil worship, Jerico considered them brethren spirits. He remembered how the priests and ministers tried to convert him to their church with the promise of heavenly paradise. Their voices were soft and gentle and he listened until he realized that their god would condemn his grandfather to eternal damnation. He understood then that the white man’s heaven is for white men alone.
Grandfather said: Keep your eyes wide open. Look to Father Sky but keep your feet planted on Mother Earth. The red road is revealed only to those who walk in a sacred manner.
He saw to his pony’s needs, fuel, water and rest, and then he let her find her stride on the open highway. They rode with the ghosts and shadows of a moonlit night, hitting the long bridge where the waters of the Mississippi scatter into the marshlands of Lake Pontchartrain at sunrise. He had never been so far south where the six and eight legs flourished and rabid plant life covered every inch of space. He had never breathed air so thick it covered the body with the sweat of the land. He had never felt the heartbeat of the earth slow to near stillness.
It began to rain and it rained so hard the wipers could not clear the way. Slapping back and forth at a furious pace, as if Lala sensed the danger, Jerico let go and allowed her to carry him to safety. She rode into the heart of the great city, the source, womb and birthplace of the continent, pulled to the side of the road and waited for the rains to ease.
New Orleans: Even the name suggested promise. New Orleans, city of jazz and vampire lore, was a dream of endless night where women bared their breasts on the streets, where swarms of masked and bearded people celebrated and danced, making love in store fronts, drinking until they passed out where they stood. It was a fantasy of sex, hustle and grime but it was a long way from Mardi Gras and the city that greeted them now was fresh and clean, washed by the torrent of rain.
He parked on the embarcadero, not far from the cathedral where a man in white with long brown hair, drenched from head to foot, summoned the ancestors with his magic flute. He walked through the courtyard down to Bourbon Street, gazing in windows crowded with trinkets like those the white man used to buy Manhattan, ignoring barkers pimping strippers, watching Bourbon Street irregulars perched on bar stools with chicory scented coffee, catching their breath and gearing up for the next wave of tourists.
A raven called from atop a wrought iron balcony and Jerico knew he had arrived. He stepped into Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo and there, amidst a cornucopia of charms, potions, fetishes, crystal balls and misshapen dolls, he asked to see the dream reader. The man at the counter sized him up and asked for twenty dollars, a discount for their native brothers. He was escorted through a wall of beads and a delicate jingle of bells announced his presence. A dark skinned woman dressed in layers of orange, yellow and black, matching bandana wrapping her head, sat behind a round table, draped in blue velvet, and gestured to the chair opposite her. She introduced herself as Madam Vouland, psychic, master of spirits, palmistry, tarot, voodoo and reader of dreams.
She spoke in a thick Caribbean accent and moved in the slow, deliberate manner of ritual or dance. The scent of jasmine permeated and the sound of distant waves caressed the senses. Jerico observed her in silence as she examined the space surrounding him, gazing into the air as if seeing what could not be seen.
“Bad juju,” she said. “Tell me your dream.”
He told her the dream of Marie as she played a deck of Tarot, hardly raising her head, hardly appearing to listen.
“This is not difficult,” she said. “You have lost a loved one, your soul mate, very likely. She is gone to the other side but she is here with you. She is with you now.”
“And the darkness?” said Jerico.
“It is your guilt,” she replied. “If Marie could speak to you now, she would tell you, you are not to blame. The earth spins, the spirit lives on, and the living must go on living.”
Jerico knew that she was not what she appeared and the reading she had given was no different than what any dime store gypsy would have offered, yet he remained where he was for he sensed that she possessed the gift.
Madam Vouland looked up, a little surprised that he was neither impressed by the generic reading nor departed. Time is money.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
Slowly, he began telling the dream of the Mound Builders. Slowly, he carved the image and placed it in the crystal ball of her memories. Slowly, he pulled tears from her eyes and drew at the gift she carried deep within her.
Madam Vouland knew this dream. She had dreamed it this very night. She had placed herself in the role of the chief’s daughter and her tears were real. She dropped the accent and folded her hand to his, speaking now as sister to brother.
“I know you,” she whispered. “I was there.”
He looked into her dark eyes and saw her truth.
“I was your child and you were my chief. The darkness that follows you is strong, more powerful than any I have known. You cannot win. There are centuries of history behind it. It cannot be defeated. Like the chief and people of the mounds, you can only run. You can only hide.”
She bowed her head and told him the story of her people, the Indio of the Caribbean, the people of God. The Europeans took them from their islands and made them slaves on the mainland. They took the people of the mainland, the tribes of the Natchez, to make them slaves on the islands but the mainland Indians revolted. They died rather than become slaves. “That is what ties us together,” she said, “and splits us apart: the slave trade.”
He asked if she knew the place of the seven mounds. She did but she did not wish to reveal it. “As sure as my tears are warm, it’s a trap,” she said. “This darkness is an evil spirit and it has chosen you for a reason. It wishes to own you as a man may own a woman or a woman may own a man. It knocks on your door at night. It crawls into your bed. It enters your dreams. It will find your weaknesses and exploit them. Run away. Or better yet, find an exorcist.”
She looked into his eyes and knew that he would do neither.
“Follow the Natchez Trace,” she said. “It’s about a hundred miles north.”
She pulled a charm from her neck and held it firmly in his hand. “You’ll need it,” she said.
She gave him back his twenty dollars and refused to hear his protest. Jerico understood. She wanted no part of the battle that was his and his alone.
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.
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.
THE KILLING SPIRIT: All My Relations (21)
CHAPTER FIVE
ALL MY RELATIONS
To the Cherokee west is where souls go to die. To the Lakota it is home to the terrible thunderbird. Perched atop the tallest mountain, it has no form yet its wings span the horizon. It has no head, no legs, yet its talons are the size of Grizzlies and its beak is fanged and lined with the teeth of wolves. Its voice is thunder and its glance is lightning. It is only one yet it is many. It devours its own young and all who come before it. It is the great avenger, the Dragon of Deganawidah (whose name must never be spoken); it is the one who cleanses the earth to make way for the coming world.
West is where the crow flies at dusk and west is where Jerico Whitehorse resumed his journey, riding into a rust red sunset. He left behind the Mississippi Valley and the dark clouds that shrouded his vision. He prayed they would not visit him again. He left with the blessings of the people. He had discovered once again the central truth in Lakota philosophy: that all creatures that walk the earth are one; that the Lakota, the Cherokee, the Choctaw and Chickasaw are all one people, one tribe.
He watched the sun melt into the distant trees of the great forest as if for the last time. By morning the forest would give way to the rolling hills of Indian Territory, modern day Oklahoma. By tomorrow, he would reach the open desert of the southwest, land of the Apache and the Navaho. For now, he followed the path the Cherokee walked in a time no longer remembered. He pulled off the road and listened to the haunting night song of hoot owls, cicada and the nightingale. This was the Trail of Tears where the lost souls of the civilized tribe still walked the long summer nights.
The Cherokee are the only tribe ever to be granted the status of a nation in their native lands. The Great White Father, whom the Cherokee once called a brother when they fought side by side in a white man’s war, defied the highest court of the land and showed his former brothers the long trail from Tennessee to Oklahoma that would define their existence for posterity. This night, Jerico walked with them.
He shared their sorrow, felt their suffering, and welcomed to his soul their defiance, strength and courage. He watched men carrying women, women carrying children, and the strong carrying the dead. He saw their eyes, filled with memories, but their expressions wiped clean. This was no funeral procession. It was a march of destiny. They would betray no pain, no fear, no pride. They would give the white man nothing for their suffering, nothing for their betrayal, nothing that they could hold in their hearts and minds for vengeance.
What was their crime but to perceive themselves as human beings, equal and worthy? Even the children were too tired to fear. They marched blankly in a line, eyes dead ahead, following the sun to where souls go to die.
Jerico heard the muffled cries and witnessed the tears of strangers alongside the trail, poor white people, brown and black, choked by their own impotence and guilt at not suffering enough, at not having the courage to march with them, at not belonging to the land as the Cherokee did.
He saw the march of generations, mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, children and grandchildren. He saw a child in the arms of her mother. He saw the ones that fell off the trail, some of whom would die or be killed, others who would find their way back to their own land in the mountain forest of copperheads and red tails.
He saw and understood: Mitakuye Oyasin. All my relations.
[Note: The Cherokee Nation is today a thriving economic community in modern day Oklahoma. A model of social adaptation, they have prospered while retaining their cultural pride and heritage.]
ALL MY RELATIONS
To the Cherokee west is where souls go to die. To the Lakota it is home to the terrible thunderbird. Perched atop the tallest mountain, it has no form yet its wings span the horizon. It has no head, no legs, yet its talons are the size of Grizzlies and its beak is fanged and lined with the teeth of wolves. Its voice is thunder and its glance is lightning. It is only one yet it is many. It devours its own young and all who come before it. It is the great avenger, the Dragon of Deganawidah (whose name must never be spoken); it is the one who cleanses the earth to make way for the coming world.
West is where the crow flies at dusk and west is where Jerico Whitehorse resumed his journey, riding into a rust red sunset. He left behind the Mississippi Valley and the dark clouds that shrouded his vision. He prayed they would not visit him again. He left with the blessings of the people. He had discovered once again the central truth in Lakota philosophy: that all creatures that walk the earth are one; that the Lakota, the Cherokee, the Choctaw and Chickasaw are all one people, one tribe.
He watched the sun melt into the distant trees of the great forest as if for the last time. By morning the forest would give way to the rolling hills of Indian Territory, modern day Oklahoma. By tomorrow, he would reach the open desert of the southwest, land of the Apache and the Navaho. For now, he followed the path the Cherokee walked in a time no longer remembered. He pulled off the road and listened to the haunting night song of hoot owls, cicada and the nightingale. This was the Trail of Tears where the lost souls of the civilized tribe still walked the long summer nights.
The Cherokee are the only tribe ever to be granted the status of a nation in their native lands. The Great White Father, whom the Cherokee once called a brother when they fought side by side in a white man’s war, defied the highest court of the land and showed his former brothers the long trail from Tennessee to Oklahoma that would define their existence for posterity. This night, Jerico walked with them.
He shared their sorrow, felt their suffering, and welcomed to his soul their defiance, strength and courage. He watched men carrying women, women carrying children, and the strong carrying the dead. He saw their eyes, filled with memories, but their expressions wiped clean. This was no funeral procession. It was a march of destiny. They would betray no pain, no fear, no pride. They would give the white man nothing for their suffering, nothing for their betrayal, nothing that they could hold in their hearts and minds for vengeance.
What was their crime but to perceive themselves as human beings, equal and worthy? Even the children were too tired to fear. They marched blankly in a line, eyes dead ahead, following the sun to where souls go to die.
Jerico heard the muffled cries and witnessed the tears of strangers alongside the trail, poor white people, brown and black, choked by their own impotence and guilt at not suffering enough, at not having the courage to march with them, at not belonging to the land as the Cherokee did.
He saw the march of generations, mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, children and grandchildren. He saw a child in the arms of her mother. He saw the ones that fell off the trail, some of whom would die or be killed, others who would find their way back to their own land in the mountain forest of copperheads and red tails.
He saw and understood: Mitakuye Oyasin. All my relations.
[Note: The Cherokee Nation is today a thriving economic community in modern day Oklahoma. A model of social adaptation, they have prospered while retaining their cultural pride and heritage.]
THE KILLING SPIRIT: Indian Territory (23)
CHAPTER SIX
INDIAN TERRITORY
According to legend, Crazy Horse went to the mountain and cried for a vision seven times; he received seven visions. He cried for a vision and he became the mountain. He cried for a vision and became the shadow. He cried for a vision and became the sun, the badger, the spotted eagle and the wolf. He cried for a vision and became Crazy Horse.
Jerico needed the powers of the spirit world. He needed to cry for a vision in the old way. He needed to cleanse himself in the sacred sweat lodge, to fast and chant in the ancient tongue, to open his mind, heart and body, to lament with all his senses in calling to the spirit world. He wanted to invoke the spirit of Crazy Horse.
He knew the spirits would not enter where fear and darkness had taken root. He needed Inipi, the cleansing ritual that precedes all others. He needed redemption and redemption could only come through the cleansing of Inipi.
He drove through the night, one eye on the rearview mirror, haunted by a sense of running and the feeling that he was being followed. He focused his thoughts on the road ahead where friends and relations awaited. He thought of his cousin, Ina Black Feather, a cherished childhood friend who moved to Indian Territory when she met and married Billy Little Sky.
Before the seven tribes of the Lakota Nation were confined to reservations, many intermarried with other tribes of the northern plains. When these tribes were relocated to Indian Territory, families were divided and tribal relations broken. Billy was a product of the great migration. His mother was Cheyenne and his father Lakota. Ina was twice married before she met Billy, first to a Lakota who pretended he was white and then to a white man who pretended he was Indian.
Jerico smiled at the memory of Billy when he danced the Sun Dance at Wounded Knee. He pretended there was no pain. It seemed there was a lot of pretending in Indian land. He was proud of Billy then and proud of Ina for making him a warrior.
Lala found her stride in the Oklahoma hills where a warm and comfortable feeling allowed him to look back. The brave young Cherokee woman child was named Mary. Her bright eyes cut through the pain and filled his heart with joy. When he confessed to the child’s mother that he hesitated, that he might have saved her great suffering, she embraced him and they comforted one another.
“Our suffering is our history and our strength,” she said. “If you had not been strong enough, my daughter would be dead.”
There was wisdom in her words but there was also a shadow of guilt and Jerico prayed that shadow and not the killing spirit itself, was trailing him on a lonely highway in the Oklahoma hills.
√√√√
Lying on her back in the dark hours of morning, Ina struggled to hold back her tears. She was good at holding back. She was four months pregnant and the desperation had settled into a dull ache.
Light filtered through the trees outside, casting shadows on her bedroom wall, dancing like lost souls, like ghosts without a home. Her soul danced with them. She was past wondering where Billy was or what he was doing. She knew. He was begging drinks at the local bar, playing the fool to his cowboy friends, drinking cheap whiskey until he was too drunk to stand and they threw him out.
It no longer mattered. She no longer had a heart to care. Still, she could not help wondering, in the long hours of the night, how he became the man who would stumble through her bedroom door all too soon. Was it after he lost his job at the white man’s ranch or did he lose his job because he had changed? Was it the booze or was the bottle his refuge? Was it the baby or did it only seem to happen at the moment of conception? Was it her disapproval that made him a lesser man as he claimed, or did her disapproval follow as she believed?
It was only a mental exercise. Still, some part of her held on to the belief that if she found the cause she could find a cure. Like the white man’s medicine, she would take a knife to the wound and cut out the disease that poisoned his spirit.
Ina bit her lip hard and assumed a pantomime of sleep as Billy, the man she loved as deeply as the deepest cave in the sacred mountains, tripped over the gate and cursed the darkness for his drunkenness. His next steps were as predictable as a child’s story: He fumbled with his keys, pushed the door open, turned on the light, kicked the door closed, tiptoed to the kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator, cursed and slammed it shut. Then he walked to the bedroom and cast his shadow on the still body of his wife. Ina heard his labored breathing and wondered if he could hear the beating of her heart.
Sometimes he would wake her, other times he would not. This time he sat on the bed, draped an arm over her side, and began blubbering through drunken tears: “I need you baby. I need you to to to understand to to be with me.”
Ina knew better than to take the bait. What began as self-pity would soon turn bitter until it exploded in rage.
“Damn it,” he yelled, yanking the covers from the bed with a flurry of obscenities.
The pantomime was over and Ina braced herself for the storm. It was going to be one of those days.
√√√√
Jerico pretended he was shooting holes in the roadside signs that seemed to chronicle the genocide and forced migration of all native peoples: Tahlequah, Muskogee, Checotah, Seminole, Shawnee, Tecumseh, Pottawatomie, Kiowa, Chickasha and Comanche. All had made the long walk; all could trace their own trail of tears. They were compelled to give up their tribal lands for lands no white man wanted, only to have those lands stolen in the great Oklahoma land rush at the turn of the century. If any land symbolized the white man’s mendacity and injustice, it was the land of rolling hills and scattered oil wells.
He turned down the road to Anadarko where four crows waited on a telephone line. Three lifted and scattered, leaving one to guide Jerico on his path to becoming. He slowed on the gravel driveway to Ina and Billy’s house and stopped at the sounds of marital discord, cracking through the dust, shattering the peace of a new day. As the dust settled, he saw Ina through the kitchen window, hurling a plate and yelling as a woman does only to her man, with a passion that both loves and hates. The house was a whirlwind of crashing emotions, overturned lamps, dishes, pans and banging doors.
They did not notice the arrival of their Lakota brother from the North Country where the four winds blow cold logic on the flames of rage. They did not notice the crackling gravel, the trail of dust or the hum of Lala’s engine. Jerico considered turning around and moving on but the crow had landed on the gate before him, reminding him that he was here for a reason, that he could not turn his back on destiny.
He waited until the explosion of rage subsided, then he eased Lala in reverse, back down the driveway and few miles down the road. He waited a while longer, then kicked her into gear, kicking up dust with a war cry and horn blaring, announcing his arrival Lakota warrior style.
Ina and Billy stepped from the house with expressions of fear and loathing until they recognized the wild man from the north. They greeted him with warm embrace, Ina wiping away tears as if they were cobwebs of sleep, Billy throwing off his drunkenness for as long as he could stand it. Jerico looked at Ina and he saw Marie. He let the image of her smile wash over him, the morning dew becoming teardrops and the sun on his back her body holding him. In that instant, he understood why he was here. Ina was Marie’s closest friend. Like family members, sharing expressions and mannerisms, Ina still held the spirit of his lost love close to her heart. Marie still lived within them both and this they could share like the grief of a mourning tribe.
Jerico ran from the reservation to escape the ghost of his love but now he sought her comfort and magic to help him escape the ghost that haunted him like a plague of the soul. He was seeking Marie in those she loved. He was seeking her compassion, her warmth, and her forgiveness.
They went inside for morning coffee as Billy’s spirit sagged from the weight of what he had done. He was always sorry in daylight. He excused himself and went to bed. Jerico could not help but empathize. He had walked the path himself, as had so many of his people, and only recovered with the kindness of friends and family.
“Too bad you didn’t get in last night,” said Ina. “You could have slept in a nice warm bed.”
“He didn’t hit you,” replied Jerico. They had known each other too long to continue a charade.
“No,” said Ina. “He’s not that kind of man. He pushes me around but he only beats himself up. He has his reasons.”
Jerico did not ask. He knew the reasons. They belonged to all the Lakota. They belonged to all native peoples. They belonged to him. Like a cancer, they started as one and grew into many. He drank because the red road was lost to him. He drank because he had no vision. He drank because Marie drank. He drank because his love died in a blaze of highway glory. He drank because he did not believe in accidents. He drank because he wanted to kill. He drank because he wanted to die. He drank because he did not have the courage to take his own life.
They were all good reasons but they were not real. The truth was he drank because he wanted to get drunk and he continued drinking because he wanted to stay drunk. He wanted the reasons for being the way he was to belong to the bottle instead of himself.
It was Grandfather who helped him to cleanse his body and purify his spirit so that he could see with clear eyes the unforgiving truth.
“When I saw you drive up,” said Ina, “I thought you came to rescue us.”
Jerico’s eyes fell inward where he found sorrow in knowing that it was not true.
“I came here to ask for help.”
Ina placed her hand on his in kindness. “Maybe we can help each other.”
She apologized as she rose to ready herself for work. With Billy unemployed, she was lucky to have a job as a waitress and she had already missed too many days. She could not afford to take a day off even for a visitor from home. She asked him to stay.
“Billy will be up in a few hours. Make yourself at home.”
Billy was a walking shadow with dark circles around his eyes, false pride in his step and an edge beneath his words. Bravado was a cover for his shame and Billy was not very good at it. Drinking was the answer to his pain. Many reasons. His old truck was broken down. He had no money. His back ached with every step and every movement. He could not work. In a drunken rage, he had run over the sweat lodge and not bothered to rebuild it. He could not heal. He could not work. Ina no longer needed him, no longer trusted him, no longer welcomed him in bed. He was half a man. He could not work.
He offered Jerico a drink. Jerico declined. He understood. It was the only way to ease his suffering but the suffering was not in his back, but in his soul.
Jerico told him what had happened since the day that he left the reservation, the day after Marie was placed in the earth. If he stayed, he would return to the way of the bottle and he knew where that path led. He chose the road. He chose to seek the vision that he believed was the birthright of all Lakota. The road was a harsh master for though it taught many lessons it always exacted a price. He told him about the dark spirit that invaded his dreams and, then, crossed over into his life. Finally, he told him there were things he could not do alone and among them was Inipi. He feared the darkness had entered his being and he could not be rid of it without the sacred rite of cleansing.
Jerico offered to help Billy repair his truck, to clear the land and plant a garden, to do odd jobs and run errands. In exchange, he asked that they rebuild the sweat lodge together so that they both could be cleansed in sweat.
For Jerico, Inipi would be sufficient. For Ina and Billy, it was not enough. The bond between them was weakened, poisoned by cruelty and jealous pride. He told Billy about the Lakota ritual known as Hunka Lowanpi. One of the seven sacred rites given the Lakota people by White Buffalo Woman, it was the ancient means of healing relations. For centuries, it was invoked to rebuild relations between warring tribes as well as individuals. Jerico was familiar with the rite but he knew it as a man who only hears the words. The Hunka rituals were rarely practiced in the days that Jerico walked the earth, even in the land of the Lakota. He was not old enough or wise enough to lead the ceremony. For that, they would need a Spirit Guide. Though he knew of no Spirit Guide in Indian Territory, he was certain there was one. Why else would the spirit of the crow guide him here?
“Looks like a storm,” said Billy as he looked out the window at a wall of dark clouds moving in from the east.
Jerico felt ill and fear clutched at his throat. He stumbled outside, fell to the earth and struggled for air.
“What is it?” asked Billy.
“This darkness,” replied Jerico, still gasping for breath, “belongs to me. I’ve brought evil to your house.”
“It was here before you came,” said Billy.
He helped Jerico to his feet and walked him back inside where they talked, man-to-man, brother-to-brother, with nothing but truth to guide their words. Jerico wanted to get in his car and drive a thousand miles. He wanted to lead the darkness away from a home that already bore too great a burden. Billy was worried. Ina held his child within her and, for all his faults; his first instinct was to protect the unborn child. Still, he knew right from wrong and a brother did not turn from a brother in pain.
“No one can own the darkness of a people,” he said. “If you lead it away, it will fall on someone else.”
Jerico’s heart divided against itself. He remembered the Cherokee girl who became a woman and he recoiled. He knew that he was caught in a trap the wasichu spirit laid for him. He could not run and he could not stay.
The storm unleashed a torrent of rain and thunderbolts that toppled old growth trees, crushed homes and smashed cars. Jerico and Billy waited and wondered but it passed before noon, leaving behind a cover of benevolent clouds, replacing the darkness with shades of gray.
They spent the afternoon working on the truck, enjoying the solitude of hard work, and managed to get it running by the time Ina arrived with a bag of groceries. She spoke little but her bright, radiant eyes conveyed her approval. She was pleased that her Lakota brother had stayed and pleased that Billy, for the first time in memory, had a clear mind.
They shared a meal of chicken, corn and sweet bread, trading stories of old times when they were young and their fathers worked the ranches near the Rez. Most were stories of laughter and joy, riding horses through fields of tall grass, hiking in the sacred mountains, swimming naked and playing tricks, wild parties and first loves. Many were stories that pulled at their memories of Marie.
When the evening grew quiet with fireflies and coyote calls, they smoked a round from Ina’s ceremonial pipe, and Jerico spoke plainly about his hopes and fears.
“If I stay,” he said, “I don’t know what will happen. If we have the sweat, there may be danger. If we have the ceremony…”
He could not finish the thought nor did he need to. Ina filled the pipe and passed it for another round. Billy’s silence was heavy, torn between his own needs and the needs of a brother, between the needs of the one and the needs of a people.
Their thoughts turned to the killing spirit, the spirit that lived within the white man when they tried to exterminate all Indian peoples, to erase forever the memory of their existence. When the white man failed, he killed the buffalo to extinguish a way of life. He rounded them up like spotted cattle and put them on reservations. He commanded them to abandon the old ways and punished them for speaking the old tongue. He warned them never to practice the sacred ceremonies and crushed those who defied him. When the Ghost Dance swept through Indian Nation, he warned them not to dance. Wounded Knee was the legacy of the wasichu killing spirit. He took their children and put them in Indian schools where they learned not to be Indians, where they were whipped for summoning the Great Spirit, for praying to Mother Earth and Father Sky, for wearing moccasins or buffalo skins. Still, the people did not stop believing. The people did not forget who they were. They did not allow the Lakota spirit to die. Even when they turned the Hotchkiss guns on the Ghost Dancers of Wounded Knee, they did not stop dancing in their hearts. They waited until the white man turned his back, until the people were so beaten down by poverty, hunger and disease they were no longer considered a threat, and then they went back to the old ways.
Now the struggle remained, poverty and disease remained, the white man’s poisons remained, but the buffalo had returned and the sacred ceremonies survived to be practiced under open skies. Even the Ghost Dance rose from the ashes of Wounded Knee and the image of Crazy Horse rose above the Great White Fathers in the Black Hills. The Lakota were never defeated in battle and the Lakota spirit was never broken. The ties that bound the people to the earth and the earth to the heavens were never cut.
They would not be severed now. Before the smoke of Ina’s sacred pipe lifted, Jerico knew he would run no further. He had run long enough.
“Remember Indian School?” asked Ina. “Remember when Marie spit in the white father’s face?”
He remembered. Marie had worn the moccasins her grandmother had given her for her birthday. The Holy Father called her to the front of the class and demanded that she place her hand on the desk for punishment. Marie did as she was told. She took the blows until blood was drawn. Her eyes held back tears of fire but she refused to cry. She bit down on her lip so hard it bled. Then she had her revenge.
Jerico remembered. It was the moment he fell in love. He swore then to the savage God, to Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Great Spirit, that he would never give in.
Never.
INDIAN TERRITORY
According to legend, Crazy Horse went to the mountain and cried for a vision seven times; he received seven visions. He cried for a vision and he became the mountain. He cried for a vision and became the shadow. He cried for a vision and became the sun, the badger, the spotted eagle and the wolf. He cried for a vision and became Crazy Horse.
Jerico needed the powers of the spirit world. He needed to cry for a vision in the old way. He needed to cleanse himself in the sacred sweat lodge, to fast and chant in the ancient tongue, to open his mind, heart and body, to lament with all his senses in calling to the spirit world. He wanted to invoke the spirit of Crazy Horse.
He knew the spirits would not enter where fear and darkness had taken root. He needed Inipi, the cleansing ritual that precedes all others. He needed redemption and redemption could only come through the cleansing of Inipi.
He drove through the night, one eye on the rearview mirror, haunted by a sense of running and the feeling that he was being followed. He focused his thoughts on the road ahead where friends and relations awaited. He thought of his cousin, Ina Black Feather, a cherished childhood friend who moved to Indian Territory when she met and married Billy Little Sky.
Before the seven tribes of the Lakota Nation were confined to reservations, many intermarried with other tribes of the northern plains. When these tribes were relocated to Indian Territory, families were divided and tribal relations broken. Billy was a product of the great migration. His mother was Cheyenne and his father Lakota. Ina was twice married before she met Billy, first to a Lakota who pretended he was white and then to a white man who pretended he was Indian.
Jerico smiled at the memory of Billy when he danced the Sun Dance at Wounded Knee. He pretended there was no pain. It seemed there was a lot of pretending in Indian land. He was proud of Billy then and proud of Ina for making him a warrior.
Lala found her stride in the Oklahoma hills where a warm and comfortable feeling allowed him to look back. The brave young Cherokee woman child was named Mary. Her bright eyes cut through the pain and filled his heart with joy. When he confessed to the child’s mother that he hesitated, that he might have saved her great suffering, she embraced him and they comforted one another.
“Our suffering is our history and our strength,” she said. “If you had not been strong enough, my daughter would be dead.”
There was wisdom in her words but there was also a shadow of guilt and Jerico prayed that shadow and not the killing spirit itself, was trailing him on a lonely highway in the Oklahoma hills.
√√√√
Lying on her back in the dark hours of morning, Ina struggled to hold back her tears. She was good at holding back. She was four months pregnant and the desperation had settled into a dull ache.
Light filtered through the trees outside, casting shadows on her bedroom wall, dancing like lost souls, like ghosts without a home. Her soul danced with them. She was past wondering where Billy was or what he was doing. She knew. He was begging drinks at the local bar, playing the fool to his cowboy friends, drinking cheap whiskey until he was too drunk to stand and they threw him out.
It no longer mattered. She no longer had a heart to care. Still, she could not help wondering, in the long hours of the night, how he became the man who would stumble through her bedroom door all too soon. Was it after he lost his job at the white man’s ranch or did he lose his job because he had changed? Was it the booze or was the bottle his refuge? Was it the baby or did it only seem to happen at the moment of conception? Was it her disapproval that made him a lesser man as he claimed, or did her disapproval follow as she believed?
It was only a mental exercise. Still, some part of her held on to the belief that if she found the cause she could find a cure. Like the white man’s medicine, she would take a knife to the wound and cut out the disease that poisoned his spirit.
Ina bit her lip hard and assumed a pantomime of sleep as Billy, the man she loved as deeply as the deepest cave in the sacred mountains, tripped over the gate and cursed the darkness for his drunkenness. His next steps were as predictable as a child’s story: He fumbled with his keys, pushed the door open, turned on the light, kicked the door closed, tiptoed to the kitchen, where he opened the refrigerator, cursed and slammed it shut. Then he walked to the bedroom and cast his shadow on the still body of his wife. Ina heard his labored breathing and wondered if he could hear the beating of her heart.
Sometimes he would wake her, other times he would not. This time he sat on the bed, draped an arm over her side, and began blubbering through drunken tears: “I need you baby. I need you to to to understand to to be with me.”
Ina knew better than to take the bait. What began as self-pity would soon turn bitter until it exploded in rage.
“Damn it,” he yelled, yanking the covers from the bed with a flurry of obscenities.
The pantomime was over and Ina braced herself for the storm. It was going to be one of those days.
√√√√
Jerico pretended he was shooting holes in the roadside signs that seemed to chronicle the genocide and forced migration of all native peoples: Tahlequah, Muskogee, Checotah, Seminole, Shawnee, Tecumseh, Pottawatomie, Kiowa, Chickasha and Comanche. All had made the long walk; all could trace their own trail of tears. They were compelled to give up their tribal lands for lands no white man wanted, only to have those lands stolen in the great Oklahoma land rush at the turn of the century. If any land symbolized the white man’s mendacity and injustice, it was the land of rolling hills and scattered oil wells.
He turned down the road to Anadarko where four crows waited on a telephone line. Three lifted and scattered, leaving one to guide Jerico on his path to becoming. He slowed on the gravel driveway to Ina and Billy’s house and stopped at the sounds of marital discord, cracking through the dust, shattering the peace of a new day. As the dust settled, he saw Ina through the kitchen window, hurling a plate and yelling as a woman does only to her man, with a passion that both loves and hates. The house was a whirlwind of crashing emotions, overturned lamps, dishes, pans and banging doors.
They did not notice the arrival of their Lakota brother from the North Country where the four winds blow cold logic on the flames of rage. They did not notice the crackling gravel, the trail of dust or the hum of Lala’s engine. Jerico considered turning around and moving on but the crow had landed on the gate before him, reminding him that he was here for a reason, that he could not turn his back on destiny.
He waited until the explosion of rage subsided, then he eased Lala in reverse, back down the driveway and few miles down the road. He waited a while longer, then kicked her into gear, kicking up dust with a war cry and horn blaring, announcing his arrival Lakota warrior style.
Ina and Billy stepped from the house with expressions of fear and loathing until they recognized the wild man from the north. They greeted him with warm embrace, Ina wiping away tears as if they were cobwebs of sleep, Billy throwing off his drunkenness for as long as he could stand it. Jerico looked at Ina and he saw Marie. He let the image of her smile wash over him, the morning dew becoming teardrops and the sun on his back her body holding him. In that instant, he understood why he was here. Ina was Marie’s closest friend. Like family members, sharing expressions and mannerisms, Ina still held the spirit of his lost love close to her heart. Marie still lived within them both and this they could share like the grief of a mourning tribe.
Jerico ran from the reservation to escape the ghost of his love but now he sought her comfort and magic to help him escape the ghost that haunted him like a plague of the soul. He was seeking Marie in those she loved. He was seeking her compassion, her warmth, and her forgiveness.
They went inside for morning coffee as Billy’s spirit sagged from the weight of what he had done. He was always sorry in daylight. He excused himself and went to bed. Jerico could not help but empathize. He had walked the path himself, as had so many of his people, and only recovered with the kindness of friends and family.
“Too bad you didn’t get in last night,” said Ina. “You could have slept in a nice warm bed.”
“He didn’t hit you,” replied Jerico. They had known each other too long to continue a charade.
“No,” said Ina. “He’s not that kind of man. He pushes me around but he only beats himself up. He has his reasons.”
Jerico did not ask. He knew the reasons. They belonged to all the Lakota. They belonged to all native peoples. They belonged to him. Like a cancer, they started as one and grew into many. He drank because the red road was lost to him. He drank because he had no vision. He drank because Marie drank. He drank because his love died in a blaze of highway glory. He drank because he did not believe in accidents. He drank because he wanted to kill. He drank because he wanted to die. He drank because he did not have the courage to take his own life.
They were all good reasons but they were not real. The truth was he drank because he wanted to get drunk and he continued drinking because he wanted to stay drunk. He wanted the reasons for being the way he was to belong to the bottle instead of himself.
It was Grandfather who helped him to cleanse his body and purify his spirit so that he could see with clear eyes the unforgiving truth.
“When I saw you drive up,” said Ina, “I thought you came to rescue us.”
Jerico’s eyes fell inward where he found sorrow in knowing that it was not true.
“I came here to ask for help.”
Ina placed her hand on his in kindness. “Maybe we can help each other.”
She apologized as she rose to ready herself for work. With Billy unemployed, she was lucky to have a job as a waitress and she had already missed too many days. She could not afford to take a day off even for a visitor from home. She asked him to stay.
“Billy will be up in a few hours. Make yourself at home.”
Billy was a walking shadow with dark circles around his eyes, false pride in his step and an edge beneath his words. Bravado was a cover for his shame and Billy was not very good at it. Drinking was the answer to his pain. Many reasons. His old truck was broken down. He had no money. His back ached with every step and every movement. He could not work. In a drunken rage, he had run over the sweat lodge and not bothered to rebuild it. He could not heal. He could not work. Ina no longer needed him, no longer trusted him, no longer welcomed him in bed. He was half a man. He could not work.
He offered Jerico a drink. Jerico declined. He understood. It was the only way to ease his suffering but the suffering was not in his back, but in his soul.
Jerico told him what had happened since the day that he left the reservation, the day after Marie was placed in the earth. If he stayed, he would return to the way of the bottle and he knew where that path led. He chose the road. He chose to seek the vision that he believed was the birthright of all Lakota. The road was a harsh master for though it taught many lessons it always exacted a price. He told him about the dark spirit that invaded his dreams and, then, crossed over into his life. Finally, he told him there were things he could not do alone and among them was Inipi. He feared the darkness had entered his being and he could not be rid of it without the sacred rite of cleansing.
Jerico offered to help Billy repair his truck, to clear the land and plant a garden, to do odd jobs and run errands. In exchange, he asked that they rebuild the sweat lodge together so that they both could be cleansed in sweat.
For Jerico, Inipi would be sufficient. For Ina and Billy, it was not enough. The bond between them was weakened, poisoned by cruelty and jealous pride. He told Billy about the Lakota ritual known as Hunka Lowanpi. One of the seven sacred rites given the Lakota people by White Buffalo Woman, it was the ancient means of healing relations. For centuries, it was invoked to rebuild relations between warring tribes as well as individuals. Jerico was familiar with the rite but he knew it as a man who only hears the words. The Hunka rituals were rarely practiced in the days that Jerico walked the earth, even in the land of the Lakota. He was not old enough or wise enough to lead the ceremony. For that, they would need a Spirit Guide. Though he knew of no Spirit Guide in Indian Territory, he was certain there was one. Why else would the spirit of the crow guide him here?
“Looks like a storm,” said Billy as he looked out the window at a wall of dark clouds moving in from the east.
Jerico felt ill and fear clutched at his throat. He stumbled outside, fell to the earth and struggled for air.
“What is it?” asked Billy.
“This darkness,” replied Jerico, still gasping for breath, “belongs to me. I’ve brought evil to your house.”
“It was here before you came,” said Billy.
He helped Jerico to his feet and walked him back inside where they talked, man-to-man, brother-to-brother, with nothing but truth to guide their words. Jerico wanted to get in his car and drive a thousand miles. He wanted to lead the darkness away from a home that already bore too great a burden. Billy was worried. Ina held his child within her and, for all his faults; his first instinct was to protect the unborn child. Still, he knew right from wrong and a brother did not turn from a brother in pain.
“No one can own the darkness of a people,” he said. “If you lead it away, it will fall on someone else.”
Jerico’s heart divided against itself. He remembered the Cherokee girl who became a woman and he recoiled. He knew that he was caught in a trap the wasichu spirit laid for him. He could not run and he could not stay.
The storm unleashed a torrent of rain and thunderbolts that toppled old growth trees, crushed homes and smashed cars. Jerico and Billy waited and wondered but it passed before noon, leaving behind a cover of benevolent clouds, replacing the darkness with shades of gray.
They spent the afternoon working on the truck, enjoying the solitude of hard work, and managed to get it running by the time Ina arrived with a bag of groceries. She spoke little but her bright, radiant eyes conveyed her approval. She was pleased that her Lakota brother had stayed and pleased that Billy, for the first time in memory, had a clear mind.
They shared a meal of chicken, corn and sweet bread, trading stories of old times when they were young and their fathers worked the ranches near the Rez. Most were stories of laughter and joy, riding horses through fields of tall grass, hiking in the sacred mountains, swimming naked and playing tricks, wild parties and first loves. Many were stories that pulled at their memories of Marie.
When the evening grew quiet with fireflies and coyote calls, they smoked a round from Ina’s ceremonial pipe, and Jerico spoke plainly about his hopes and fears.
“If I stay,” he said, “I don’t know what will happen. If we have the sweat, there may be danger. If we have the ceremony…”
He could not finish the thought nor did he need to. Ina filled the pipe and passed it for another round. Billy’s silence was heavy, torn between his own needs and the needs of a brother, between the needs of the one and the needs of a people.
Their thoughts turned to the killing spirit, the spirit that lived within the white man when they tried to exterminate all Indian peoples, to erase forever the memory of their existence. When the white man failed, he killed the buffalo to extinguish a way of life. He rounded them up like spotted cattle and put them on reservations. He commanded them to abandon the old ways and punished them for speaking the old tongue. He warned them never to practice the sacred ceremonies and crushed those who defied him. When the Ghost Dance swept through Indian Nation, he warned them not to dance. Wounded Knee was the legacy of the wasichu killing spirit. He took their children and put them in Indian schools where they learned not to be Indians, where they were whipped for summoning the Great Spirit, for praying to Mother Earth and Father Sky, for wearing moccasins or buffalo skins. Still, the people did not stop believing. The people did not forget who they were. They did not allow the Lakota spirit to die. Even when they turned the Hotchkiss guns on the Ghost Dancers of Wounded Knee, they did not stop dancing in their hearts. They waited until the white man turned his back, until the people were so beaten down by poverty, hunger and disease they were no longer considered a threat, and then they went back to the old ways.
Now the struggle remained, poverty and disease remained, the white man’s poisons remained, but the buffalo had returned and the sacred ceremonies survived to be practiced under open skies. Even the Ghost Dance rose from the ashes of Wounded Knee and the image of Crazy Horse rose above the Great White Fathers in the Black Hills. The Lakota were never defeated in battle and the Lakota spirit was never broken. The ties that bound the people to the earth and the earth to the heavens were never cut.
They would not be severed now. Before the smoke of Ina’s sacred pipe lifted, Jerico knew he would run no further. He had run long enough.
“Remember Indian School?” asked Ina. “Remember when Marie spit in the white father’s face?”
He remembered. Marie had worn the moccasins her grandmother had given her for her birthday. The Holy Father called her to the front of the class and demanded that she place her hand on the desk for punishment. Marie did as she was told. She took the blows until blood was drawn. Her eyes held back tears of fire but she refused to cry. She bit down on her lip so hard it bled. Then she had her revenge.
Jerico remembered. It was the moment he fell in love. He swore then to the savage God, to Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Great Spirit, that he would never give in.
Never.
THE KILLING SPIRIT: Hunka Lowanpi (30)
CHAPTER SEVEN
HUNKA LOWANPI
Ina went to her spirit guide, an elder of the Cheyenne known as Red Tail. He was a friend to the Lakota and a scholar of the sacred rites. She told him the danger before she made an offering and he accepted, as she knew he would.
They spent three days building the sweat lodge, setting up the ceremonial tipi, gathering supplies and organizing the participants. On the evening of the third night, they would cleanse themselves in Inipi. All was well. All was ready. At sunrise on the fourth day, the healing ceremony, the ancient ritual of Hunka Lowanpi, would begin.
Grandfather said: If you do something every day, it will become a part of you. If a man drinks the wasichu firewater every day, the bottle will own him. If a man prays to the Great Spirit every day, he will find spiritual guidance. Jerico prayed:
“Give me the vision that the red road may unfold before me. Surround me and my relations with the light of protection and guidance, in the infinite wisdom of Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Great Spirit. Mitakuye oyasin.”
This day the words seemed heavy and foreboding. They stuck in his throat as if an invisible hand choked him. It was the day of Hunka Lowanpi. It was the day he faced his enemy once again: The wasichu killing spirit.
A fire rose to the height of a tall man before calming to glowing embers. The fire keeper tended the large, round white-hot Inipi stones and Red Tail chanted as he smoked the participants with sage. He was a small man, stern but thin, the lines of his face deep and knowing. A sense of kindness surrounded him, in his manner and movements. He regarded his fellow beings with respect and compassion so that trust flowed easily to him.
They entered the sweat lodge as Red Tail invoked the powers of the six directions. His words floated in the still of the evening and each time a direction was summoned, the people called out in the Lakota way, “How!”
At the moment of sunset, a red-orange glow flooded the eastern horizon and the ceremony began with the passing of the sacred pipe. The stones were brought in and placed in the pit, radiating in darkness like planets in the emptiness of space. Water was poured over the stones, unleashing an explosion of steam. Waves of heat rose from the earth, saturating the skin, penetrating the flesh, the blood, the organs of the body, breaking through to the bone and marrow, flooding the darkness that creeps into all, as it had Billy and Ina, Jerico and Marie, the old one and the drummers, the fire keeper, the water keeper, and all their relations. The darkness that is evil was released through the same passage, burning as it passed, until it was expelled and banished to the heavens, scattering amongst the stars.
The heat that was unbearable became a mother’s warmth as faces appeared in the stones, in the steam, in the darkness itself. Faces of the ancestors, chanting and singing, drums pounding, and with those faces ancient memories appeared in visions, spilling into the lodge: Visions of great victories and horrible massacres, visions of Sand Creek, the Greasy Grass, of counting coup, of sickness and disease, visions of buffalo hunts and buffalo slaughters, visions of wonder before the white man came, visions of blood flowing into the Washita, visions of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, of Yellow Hair and General Crook, of Spotted Tail and Crazy Horse, of Little Big Man and the frozen dance of death, Big Foot at Wounded Knee.
Red Tail said that all must be held in the heart, joy and sorrow, darkness and light, virtue and evil, for it is all a part of our being, our heritage, and our spirit as a people. The whole of the past will make us strong in remembering.
When the vision faded and the faces returned to steam, stone and darkness, Jerico felt his body was cleansed and his spirit renewed. He silently wished that this was only an Inipi, only another sweat on a summer night. He would sleep but lightly.
Ina’s heart was full with gratitude, Billy’s with relief, and all was forgiven in the still cool air of night. Red Tail was uneasy for he had seen the spirit beneath the vision, a malevolence lurking. He had heard the voice beneath voices and he knew this spirit well. It was an ancient spirit and familiar to all who had lived through the days of the white man’s wrath, the genocide that was never spoken, never recorded in the white man’s histories, and never settled in the soul. His father had spoken of this spirit and his grandfather before him. It was there in the before times, foreshadowing the arrival of the wasichu, the onset of disease, the slaughter of the buffalo, famine and bloodshed. Elders of the spirit world spoke of its shadowed presence at Sand Creek, the Washita and Wounded Knee. It attended the killing of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
He knew that this was a powerful spirit that could not be defeated without the spilling of blood but he held his tongue. He was an old man but still strong and he determined to fight this battle alone, even if it was to be his last. The others would sleep in peace and dream of the Great Spirit’s blessing. For him, there would be no peace.
Jerico ran. In the cold dark of sleepless night, while the house succumbed to pleasant dreams, he slipped out like a wisp of air, slid into Lala and crept down the gravel driveway to the open road. He ran though he was ashamed of running. He ran though everything he knew and cherished told him to stand and fight. He ran because he was afraid, because he could not shake the belief that the killing spirit was within him, tied to him, connected, clinging like an invisible leach.
He chose to run, praying that the spirit would follow as he followed the pools of white light piercing the night, following the dotted line on black asphalt, the streaking road signs, and the yellow glow of industry that never rests alongside the endless highway.
He rolled the windows down and let the chill wind dry his tears. He would run through the night until the rolling hills gave way to barren landscape, until the earth dried and the desert surrounded him with a promise of death. He would make his stand where the four winds howled, where the blinding heat would lift his spirit off the earth, and there he would cry for a vision. He would stand alone, one man against an ancient darkness. He would challenge the great evil, killer of men, destroyer of civilizations, and he would kill or be killed.
Lala reared and charged down the highway, nostrils flared, eyes wide and roaring thunder. A surge rushed through Jerico, gripping his muscles, pushing him on, faster and faster. He would not be broken. He would not back down. He would face the enemy here and now, beneath the stars of a summer sky, and he would wreak his revenge.
An explosion of steam lifted him from his ranting, raving, maniacal thoughts, pulling him back to the earth. There was no rain but Lala’s windshield was spotted with drops. He lifted his foot from the gas and drifted to a stop. The water hose had given way, releasing a torrent of water and coolant with a hiss that slowly faded to silence, black and cold as the starlit night.
The ceremony could not wait for a lost Lakota brother. A circle of warriors was posted around the sacred tipi and none would be allowed to enter until the ceremony was complete. Red Tail assembled the gathering, Billy’s relations to his left and Ina’s to his right. He accepted their offerings of corn, tobacco and dried buffalo. With a wave of the ceremonial wands, he told them in the tongue of the ancients that the ceremony would bind them together as the earth is bound to the sky. He summoned the powers of the four directions and all spirit beings that walk or crawl upon the earth. He instructed them to share in all things: If one was hungry, the other should take the food from her mouth; if one was cold, the other should shelter her with his robe.
He gave a signal and the air was filled with the sound of drums pounding and rattles shaking. He began his song of the Hunka, inviting the spirits in. He summoned the spirit of Sitting Bull and his adopted brother Jumping Bull, once a fierce enemy whom the great chief saved from death by the Hunka ceremony. Red Tail sang of Jumping Bull’s bravery in fighting at his brother’s side. He sang of his death when he fought to protect the great chief when the turncoat Agency Indians came to arrest him. He sang of how they died together, a proud and good death, a death of two brothers bound by the sacred bond of the spirit world.
Red Tail waved the wands and an ear of corn over all the participants and painted their faces with red stripes from forehead to chin. “By this marking the spirits will know you.” He approached the sacred buffalo skull, howling like a wolf, and the spirit of the buffalo rose from the earth. There was a whirlwind of smoke, choking the weak hearted.
He ordered Ina and Billy to stand before him. Beneath the waving wands, drums and rattles, smoke and dust, he instructed them that they were now one being, of one mind and heart. “If one is killed, the other must avenge. If one is threatened, the other must offer protection.”
He draped their bodies in a buffalo robe and tied them together with thongs of rawhide. “You are now bound together forever. You are one, inseparable.”
Freed from the robe, Ina was given buffalo meat, which she placed in her mouth.
“I am hungry,” said Red Tail.
Ina removed the meat from her mouth and gave it to him.
“I am cold and have no robe,” said Red Tail.
Billy stepped forward, placing the robe around his shoulders.
“As you care for each other,” said Red Tail, “so must you care for all the people.”
The ceremony complete, they filed out of the lodge, with Red Tail the last to emerge. He presented sacred bundles to Billy, Ina, the Ate Hunka and the Mihunka, and then he suddenly seemed frail and old. He would not join them for the feast. He asked for Jerico but Jerico had not returned.
“I must go home to rest,” he said. “When you find him, tell him to come.”
They asked if there was anything they could do for him but Red Tail declined. They understood. A man of the spirit world does not ask for the white man’s medicine in the last hours of his life. He had already made his peace.
“Find Jerico,” he repeated. “Tell him to come.”
They found him alongside the road with his thumb out, having no luck. They told what had happened and took him to the old man’s bedside as quickly as they could.
“You wanted to see me?” asked Jerico.
Red Tail waved him closer and asked him to sit. His voice was soft and quivering, more air than sound.
“I am an old man,” he said. “In my life I have seen both good and evil. I know the spirit that visits your dreams and I know your spirit as well. You have been at war for a very long time, longer than I have walked the earth. It is the black robe, Yellow Hair, the blue coat, and more. It is the fascist, the Nazi, the emperors and the Inquisition. It has raised the flag of nations and the staff of the church. Where it walks, death follows. It is not always the death of men; it is sometimes the death of spirit. It wants to destroy us by removing us from our past, by killing off the old ways, by taking from us our culture, our language, our beliefs and sacred rites. You were born to fight this spirit for the spirit that lives within you has fought back for a thousand years.”
“It follows me,” said Jerico.
“It follows no man,” replied Red Tail. “It was here before you and it will remain when you have gone. You have the gift to see it, to sense its presence and its purpose. Others are powerless against it. It is for this reason, it chooses you.”
“If I choose to fight,” said Jerico, “someone is harmed. If I choose not to fight, it is the same.”
“You have saved one who would have died by its hands. You have given another a good death. I planted my staff knowing the price. My brothers and sisters are already gone. My companions on the red road await me in the overworld. I welcomed this last battle. I have played my part. Your relations will find peace. The evil one will do no more harm here. I am pleased. It is a good day to die.”
Jerico held the old one’s hand, strong and full of life.
“I must tell you,” said Red Tail, “what you already know. You cannot run from this battle. If you remain strong, it will never defeat you. You alone must not surrender.”
Jerico felt the old one’s power leaving his body and finding its home within. It was the last gift of a dying man.
“Use it wisely,” the old one said.
With that the old man died and Jerico began his mourning song. It would cloud his vision, make heavy his heart, and remain with him all the days of his life.
HUNKA LOWANPI
Ina went to her spirit guide, an elder of the Cheyenne known as Red Tail. He was a friend to the Lakota and a scholar of the sacred rites. She told him the danger before she made an offering and he accepted, as she knew he would.
They spent three days building the sweat lodge, setting up the ceremonial tipi, gathering supplies and organizing the participants. On the evening of the third night, they would cleanse themselves in Inipi. All was well. All was ready. At sunrise on the fourth day, the healing ceremony, the ancient ritual of Hunka Lowanpi, would begin.
Grandfather said: If you do something every day, it will become a part of you. If a man drinks the wasichu firewater every day, the bottle will own him. If a man prays to the Great Spirit every day, he will find spiritual guidance. Jerico prayed:
“Give me the vision that the red road may unfold before me. Surround me and my relations with the light of protection and guidance, in the infinite wisdom of Mother Earth, Father Sky and the Great Spirit. Mitakuye oyasin.”
This day the words seemed heavy and foreboding. They stuck in his throat as if an invisible hand choked him. It was the day of Hunka Lowanpi. It was the day he faced his enemy once again: The wasichu killing spirit.
A fire rose to the height of a tall man before calming to glowing embers. The fire keeper tended the large, round white-hot Inipi stones and Red Tail chanted as he smoked the participants with sage. He was a small man, stern but thin, the lines of his face deep and knowing. A sense of kindness surrounded him, in his manner and movements. He regarded his fellow beings with respect and compassion so that trust flowed easily to him.
They entered the sweat lodge as Red Tail invoked the powers of the six directions. His words floated in the still of the evening and each time a direction was summoned, the people called out in the Lakota way, “How!”
At the moment of sunset, a red-orange glow flooded the eastern horizon and the ceremony began with the passing of the sacred pipe. The stones were brought in and placed in the pit, radiating in darkness like planets in the emptiness of space. Water was poured over the stones, unleashing an explosion of steam. Waves of heat rose from the earth, saturating the skin, penetrating the flesh, the blood, the organs of the body, breaking through to the bone and marrow, flooding the darkness that creeps into all, as it had Billy and Ina, Jerico and Marie, the old one and the drummers, the fire keeper, the water keeper, and all their relations. The darkness that is evil was released through the same passage, burning as it passed, until it was expelled and banished to the heavens, scattering amongst the stars.
The heat that was unbearable became a mother’s warmth as faces appeared in the stones, in the steam, in the darkness itself. Faces of the ancestors, chanting and singing, drums pounding, and with those faces ancient memories appeared in visions, spilling into the lodge: Visions of great victories and horrible massacres, visions of Sand Creek, the Greasy Grass, of counting coup, of sickness and disease, visions of buffalo hunts and buffalo slaughters, visions of wonder before the white man came, visions of blood flowing into the Washita, visions of Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, of Yellow Hair and General Crook, of Spotted Tail and Crazy Horse, of Little Big Man and the frozen dance of death, Big Foot at Wounded Knee.
Red Tail said that all must be held in the heart, joy and sorrow, darkness and light, virtue and evil, for it is all a part of our being, our heritage, and our spirit as a people. The whole of the past will make us strong in remembering.
When the vision faded and the faces returned to steam, stone and darkness, Jerico felt his body was cleansed and his spirit renewed. He silently wished that this was only an Inipi, only another sweat on a summer night. He would sleep but lightly.
Ina’s heart was full with gratitude, Billy’s with relief, and all was forgiven in the still cool air of night. Red Tail was uneasy for he had seen the spirit beneath the vision, a malevolence lurking. He had heard the voice beneath voices and he knew this spirit well. It was an ancient spirit and familiar to all who had lived through the days of the white man’s wrath, the genocide that was never spoken, never recorded in the white man’s histories, and never settled in the soul. His father had spoken of this spirit and his grandfather before him. It was there in the before times, foreshadowing the arrival of the wasichu, the onset of disease, the slaughter of the buffalo, famine and bloodshed. Elders of the spirit world spoke of its shadowed presence at Sand Creek, the Washita and Wounded Knee. It attended the killing of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
He knew that this was a powerful spirit that could not be defeated without the spilling of blood but he held his tongue. He was an old man but still strong and he determined to fight this battle alone, even if it was to be his last. The others would sleep in peace and dream of the Great Spirit’s blessing. For him, there would be no peace.
Jerico ran. In the cold dark of sleepless night, while the house succumbed to pleasant dreams, he slipped out like a wisp of air, slid into Lala and crept down the gravel driveway to the open road. He ran though he was ashamed of running. He ran though everything he knew and cherished told him to stand and fight. He ran because he was afraid, because he could not shake the belief that the killing spirit was within him, tied to him, connected, clinging like an invisible leach.
He chose to run, praying that the spirit would follow as he followed the pools of white light piercing the night, following the dotted line on black asphalt, the streaking road signs, and the yellow glow of industry that never rests alongside the endless highway.
He rolled the windows down and let the chill wind dry his tears. He would run through the night until the rolling hills gave way to barren landscape, until the earth dried and the desert surrounded him with a promise of death. He would make his stand where the four winds howled, where the blinding heat would lift his spirit off the earth, and there he would cry for a vision. He would stand alone, one man against an ancient darkness. He would challenge the great evil, killer of men, destroyer of civilizations, and he would kill or be killed.
Lala reared and charged down the highway, nostrils flared, eyes wide and roaring thunder. A surge rushed through Jerico, gripping his muscles, pushing him on, faster and faster. He would not be broken. He would not back down. He would face the enemy here and now, beneath the stars of a summer sky, and he would wreak his revenge.
An explosion of steam lifted him from his ranting, raving, maniacal thoughts, pulling him back to the earth. There was no rain but Lala’s windshield was spotted with drops. He lifted his foot from the gas and drifted to a stop. The water hose had given way, releasing a torrent of water and coolant with a hiss that slowly faded to silence, black and cold as the starlit night.
The ceremony could not wait for a lost Lakota brother. A circle of warriors was posted around the sacred tipi and none would be allowed to enter until the ceremony was complete. Red Tail assembled the gathering, Billy’s relations to his left and Ina’s to his right. He accepted their offerings of corn, tobacco and dried buffalo. With a wave of the ceremonial wands, he told them in the tongue of the ancients that the ceremony would bind them together as the earth is bound to the sky. He summoned the powers of the four directions and all spirit beings that walk or crawl upon the earth. He instructed them to share in all things: If one was hungry, the other should take the food from her mouth; if one was cold, the other should shelter her with his robe.
He gave a signal and the air was filled with the sound of drums pounding and rattles shaking. He began his song of the Hunka, inviting the spirits in. He summoned the spirit of Sitting Bull and his adopted brother Jumping Bull, once a fierce enemy whom the great chief saved from death by the Hunka ceremony. Red Tail sang of Jumping Bull’s bravery in fighting at his brother’s side. He sang of his death when he fought to protect the great chief when the turncoat Agency Indians came to arrest him. He sang of how they died together, a proud and good death, a death of two brothers bound by the sacred bond of the spirit world.
Red Tail waved the wands and an ear of corn over all the participants and painted their faces with red stripes from forehead to chin. “By this marking the spirits will know you.” He approached the sacred buffalo skull, howling like a wolf, and the spirit of the buffalo rose from the earth. There was a whirlwind of smoke, choking the weak hearted.
He ordered Ina and Billy to stand before him. Beneath the waving wands, drums and rattles, smoke and dust, he instructed them that they were now one being, of one mind and heart. “If one is killed, the other must avenge. If one is threatened, the other must offer protection.”
He draped their bodies in a buffalo robe and tied them together with thongs of rawhide. “You are now bound together forever. You are one, inseparable.”
Freed from the robe, Ina was given buffalo meat, which she placed in her mouth.
“I am hungry,” said Red Tail.
Ina removed the meat from her mouth and gave it to him.
“I am cold and have no robe,” said Red Tail.
Billy stepped forward, placing the robe around his shoulders.
“As you care for each other,” said Red Tail, “so must you care for all the people.”
The ceremony complete, they filed out of the lodge, with Red Tail the last to emerge. He presented sacred bundles to Billy, Ina, the Ate Hunka and the Mihunka, and then he suddenly seemed frail and old. He would not join them for the feast. He asked for Jerico but Jerico had not returned.
“I must go home to rest,” he said. “When you find him, tell him to come.”
They asked if there was anything they could do for him but Red Tail declined. They understood. A man of the spirit world does not ask for the white man’s medicine in the last hours of his life. He had already made his peace.
“Find Jerico,” he repeated. “Tell him to come.”
They found him alongside the road with his thumb out, having no luck. They told what had happened and took him to the old man’s bedside as quickly as they could.
“You wanted to see me?” asked Jerico.
Red Tail waved him closer and asked him to sit. His voice was soft and quivering, more air than sound.
“I am an old man,” he said. “In my life I have seen both good and evil. I know the spirit that visits your dreams and I know your spirit as well. You have been at war for a very long time, longer than I have walked the earth. It is the black robe, Yellow Hair, the blue coat, and more. It is the fascist, the Nazi, the emperors and the Inquisition. It has raised the flag of nations and the staff of the church. Where it walks, death follows. It is not always the death of men; it is sometimes the death of spirit. It wants to destroy us by removing us from our past, by killing off the old ways, by taking from us our culture, our language, our beliefs and sacred rites. You were born to fight this spirit for the spirit that lives within you has fought back for a thousand years.”
“It follows me,” said Jerico.
“It follows no man,” replied Red Tail. “It was here before you and it will remain when you have gone. You have the gift to see it, to sense its presence and its purpose. Others are powerless against it. It is for this reason, it chooses you.”
“If I choose to fight,” said Jerico, “someone is harmed. If I choose not to fight, it is the same.”
“You have saved one who would have died by its hands. You have given another a good death. I planted my staff knowing the price. My brothers and sisters are already gone. My companions on the red road await me in the overworld. I welcomed this last battle. I have played my part. Your relations will find peace. The evil one will do no more harm here. I am pleased. It is a good day to die.”
Jerico held the old one’s hand, strong and full of life.
“I must tell you,” said Red Tail, “what you already know. You cannot run from this battle. If you remain strong, it will never defeat you. You alone must not surrender.”
Jerico felt the old one’s power leaving his body and finding its home within. It was the last gift of a dying man.
“Use it wisely,” the old one said.
With that the old man died and Jerico began his mourning song. It would cloud his vision, make heavy his heart, and remain with him all the days of his life.
THE KILLING SPIRIT: The Buffalo Stone (35)
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BUFFALO STONE
Driving through the desert night, stars so bright they looked like candles in a dark room, Jerico never felt so alone. Cornered like a desperate animal, the universe was pressing in, bearing down, holding his arms so that it could leave its mark on his forehead. His foot fell heavy on the gas and stars fluttered by like mystic butterflies, as he let the warm night air wash over him and the smell of sage run through him with a sobering effect.
He wanted to disappear. He wanted his place upon the earth wiped clean, as if he had never been born, as if everything that had happened since the day he left the reservation could be wished away, as if it was only a dream or an illusion, a memory best forgotten.
The effect of Red Tail’s dying words was not what the old man intended. It did not free him of a sense of responsibility. Even if those words were the true message of the divine, carried on the backs of the ancestors, there was no absolution. The killing spirit had chosen him. Whatever the reasons, it desired his eyes to witness its wrath. Jerico could not let go of the irrational belief that if he were not there to observe the deed, it would not be consummated. He did not wish to die but if his death would end the killing, he would die gladly.
He had given his word to a dying man, a man whose spirit soared above his brothers and sisters of the earth, a man whose wisdom could not be questioned. His word was his honor and he would not discard it lightly.
Lala took wing and soared along the highway, flying in a desert dream, eyes of the hawk gazing at the Chiricahua mountains, where the Apache war chiefs, Victorio, Mangas Coloradas and Geronimo once roamed, where Cochise still lay in an undiscovered cave and where his spirit still wandered on summer nights such as this. Jerico felt a desire to find that sacred gravesite. He wanted to lose himself on sacred grounds, bury himself in mystery, and wander the nights in the revered mountains the white man still feared.
He had given his word and his word was his honor.
His thoughts came crashing down, returning to a desert highway where a coyote sat dead center in the middle of the road, still and unafraid. He swerved and skidded to a stop off the road, kicking up a cloud of dust. When he regained his bearings, he turned back to see the coyote, still in the middle of the road, gazing back at him.
The coyote is sacred among four legs. Closer to the earth, it possesses knowledge that humans cannot gather, wisdom that only dreamers can approach. Jerico stepped out of Lala and stood before this animal as he would stand before a spirit guide, with humility and wonder. The coyote smiled as coyotes do and scampered into the desert about fifteen or twenty paces, where it stopped and turned back.
Jerico pondered. It would not be unusual for the trickster to lead a two leg into the desert with no cause or reason other than to laugh at the gullibility of humans. Even then, he considered, a lesson in humility is not to be discounted.
In the blue light of a quarter moon, Jerico followed the coyote into a surreal environment of sand, sage, and silent hidden creatures whose presence was carved in the earth and could be felt in every step. The coyote quickened its pace and Jerico began to jog in the Indian way, the Apache way, on the balls of his feet, hands down and swaying to the rhythm of his body’s movement. It was said the Apache could travel fifty miles in a single day, men, women and children. Those who had witnessed their graceful movement across the land swore that their feet never touched the ground. Jerico found that rhythm now, following the coyote through a barren land of rock, brush, skeletal remains and petrified wood, following through a land of strange blue illumination into the great mystery of the unspoiled earth.
He could not tell how far he had gone when the coyote came to a rest at the top of an outcropping of stone, overlooking an expansive swath of land below. Jerico was drawn forward to the precipice, an uneasy feeling gripping his gut, a strange familiarity that circled him in sorrow. A crow took flight from below and Jerico realized that he was alone. The coyote was nowhere in sight, as if melted into the landscape or transformed into another form.
He knelt in the place where he stood and realized that he was on top of a mountain of stone, a mountain that reached into the womb of the earth, whose crown was smooth and flat, as if shaped by centuries of solemn prayer.
He remembered the story of the stone dreamers, who gathered the wisdom and power of the stone. He remembered that Crazy Horse was one of them. They believed, as Jerico believed, that the stone always remembers. From the beginning time to the end time, the memories of the planet are captured in wood, soil, the air and water, but they are stored deep within the stone and those with stone medicine can tap those memories like a well taps a spring.
Jerico gazed out across the mystic desert and felt the power of the stone. He saw the land as it was before the great change, when the desert was a forest teeming with life. He saw the coming of the spirit beings, among them White Buffalo Woman who bestowed the Lakota with the sacred pipe, the seven rituals and the Buffalo Stone. He saw the coming of the Sky Dogs with the first wasichus, the ones that saw only gold. He saw the railroads and barbed wire fences, cutting the land into pieces, and he refused to see any more.
When he opened his eyes, he was riding a white Appaloosa alongside three warriors, leaders of their tribes. He recognized one as Apache by the way he rode. He was a mestizo, mixed blood, part Spaniard and part Indio, like the great Apache warrior, Victorio. As they settled on a ridge, the mestizo pointed below, where a party of blue coats and armed militiamen approached a sleeping camp of tipis. They were led by a man with brash gold stripes and dark, flaring eyes filled with hate. At his side rode a man with long, waving yellow hair and eyes that held no light.
It was dawn and the camp roused to the sound of beating hooves from the west and from the east. An elder walked toward the soldiers carrying a staff with the American flag and the white flag of peace.
“His name is Black Kettle,” said the mestizo. “He leads the Cheyenne in the cause of peace. The blue coat is Colonel Chivington with Custer by his side.”
“This is the place,” said another, “that is known as Sand Creek.”
Jerico knew the story as it unfolded before his eyes. Under orders to take no prisoners, they shot Black Kettle in the chest. They were good soldiers, dog soldiers, soldiers of Dachau and MyLai and Fallujah, and they followed orders well. Men, women and children fell before their thunder, before the lightning of their bayonets, before the torrent of their bullets. “Nits make fleas,” so the Colonel said, and babies grow up to be brave Cheyenne warriors.
The nearly dry creek beside the camp formed a crevice that blocked the Cheyenne from escape. The few warriors might have escaped but they could not sacrifice their defenseless people. They chose certain death and watched the creek become a river of native blood to scar the earth with a memory that would survive the generations. They chose to fight for the honor of the people and their fallen chief. They chose to fight a battle they could not win.
Chivington was a man of the cloth, the Indian’s worst nightmare: Black Robes with guns. The Cheyenne came from peace talks and were told where to camp so that the soldiers had no trouble finding them. The soldiers knew they were peaceful. They did not care.
Jerico pulled at his horse but the others stopped him.
“We have only eyes and ears in this place,” the mestizo said. “We cannot fight the past.”
An old man sang his death song before the soldiers shot him down, removed his scalp, cut off his nose, his ears and testicles. The babes of pregnant women were cut from their wombs. Bodies were carved, mutilated and left on the open ground to rot in the sun. Everywhere was grief. Everywhere was horror.
As the dust settled, they rode down to the battle scene, where Jerico dismounted and went to Black Kettle’s side. He was still alive.
“Remember this,” said Black Kettle. “The white man does not want peace. He wants to take our land – all of it. The wasichu wants our death. He does not want the land until it is made rich with Indian blood.”
Black Kettle pulled a stone from his neck and pressed it into Jerico’s hand.
“It is yours now,” he said. “I have carried it too long.”
Jerico returned to his time upon the earth and found the stone before him in the place where he knelt. It was round and smooth, the size of a silver dollar, and on its face it had an imprint of a buffalo hoof. It was the Buffalo Stone, the sacred gift of White Buffalo Woman.
He held it to his heart and prayed for his people without words.
THE BUFFALO STONE
Driving through the desert night, stars so bright they looked like candles in a dark room, Jerico never felt so alone. Cornered like a desperate animal, the universe was pressing in, bearing down, holding his arms so that it could leave its mark on his forehead. His foot fell heavy on the gas and stars fluttered by like mystic butterflies, as he let the warm night air wash over him and the smell of sage run through him with a sobering effect.
He wanted to disappear. He wanted his place upon the earth wiped clean, as if he had never been born, as if everything that had happened since the day he left the reservation could be wished away, as if it was only a dream or an illusion, a memory best forgotten.
The effect of Red Tail’s dying words was not what the old man intended. It did not free him of a sense of responsibility. Even if those words were the true message of the divine, carried on the backs of the ancestors, there was no absolution. The killing spirit had chosen him. Whatever the reasons, it desired his eyes to witness its wrath. Jerico could not let go of the irrational belief that if he were not there to observe the deed, it would not be consummated. He did not wish to die but if his death would end the killing, he would die gladly.
He had given his word to a dying man, a man whose spirit soared above his brothers and sisters of the earth, a man whose wisdom could not be questioned. His word was his honor and he would not discard it lightly.
Lala took wing and soared along the highway, flying in a desert dream, eyes of the hawk gazing at the Chiricahua mountains, where the Apache war chiefs, Victorio, Mangas Coloradas and Geronimo once roamed, where Cochise still lay in an undiscovered cave and where his spirit still wandered on summer nights such as this. Jerico felt a desire to find that sacred gravesite. He wanted to lose himself on sacred grounds, bury himself in mystery, and wander the nights in the revered mountains the white man still feared.
He had given his word and his word was his honor.
His thoughts came crashing down, returning to a desert highway where a coyote sat dead center in the middle of the road, still and unafraid. He swerved and skidded to a stop off the road, kicking up a cloud of dust. When he regained his bearings, he turned back to see the coyote, still in the middle of the road, gazing back at him.
The coyote is sacred among four legs. Closer to the earth, it possesses knowledge that humans cannot gather, wisdom that only dreamers can approach. Jerico stepped out of Lala and stood before this animal as he would stand before a spirit guide, with humility and wonder. The coyote smiled as coyotes do and scampered into the desert about fifteen or twenty paces, where it stopped and turned back.
Jerico pondered. It would not be unusual for the trickster to lead a two leg into the desert with no cause or reason other than to laugh at the gullibility of humans. Even then, he considered, a lesson in humility is not to be discounted.
In the blue light of a quarter moon, Jerico followed the coyote into a surreal environment of sand, sage, and silent hidden creatures whose presence was carved in the earth and could be felt in every step. The coyote quickened its pace and Jerico began to jog in the Indian way, the Apache way, on the balls of his feet, hands down and swaying to the rhythm of his body’s movement. It was said the Apache could travel fifty miles in a single day, men, women and children. Those who had witnessed their graceful movement across the land swore that their feet never touched the ground. Jerico found that rhythm now, following the coyote through a barren land of rock, brush, skeletal remains and petrified wood, following through a land of strange blue illumination into the great mystery of the unspoiled earth.
He could not tell how far he had gone when the coyote came to a rest at the top of an outcropping of stone, overlooking an expansive swath of land below. Jerico was drawn forward to the precipice, an uneasy feeling gripping his gut, a strange familiarity that circled him in sorrow. A crow took flight from below and Jerico realized that he was alone. The coyote was nowhere in sight, as if melted into the landscape or transformed into another form.
He knelt in the place where he stood and realized that he was on top of a mountain of stone, a mountain that reached into the womb of the earth, whose crown was smooth and flat, as if shaped by centuries of solemn prayer.
He remembered the story of the stone dreamers, who gathered the wisdom and power of the stone. He remembered that Crazy Horse was one of them. They believed, as Jerico believed, that the stone always remembers. From the beginning time to the end time, the memories of the planet are captured in wood, soil, the air and water, but they are stored deep within the stone and those with stone medicine can tap those memories like a well taps a spring.
Jerico gazed out across the mystic desert and felt the power of the stone. He saw the land as it was before the great change, when the desert was a forest teeming with life. He saw the coming of the spirit beings, among them White Buffalo Woman who bestowed the Lakota with the sacred pipe, the seven rituals and the Buffalo Stone. He saw the coming of the Sky Dogs with the first wasichus, the ones that saw only gold. He saw the railroads and barbed wire fences, cutting the land into pieces, and he refused to see any more.
When he opened his eyes, he was riding a white Appaloosa alongside three warriors, leaders of their tribes. He recognized one as Apache by the way he rode. He was a mestizo, mixed blood, part Spaniard and part Indio, like the great Apache warrior, Victorio. As they settled on a ridge, the mestizo pointed below, where a party of blue coats and armed militiamen approached a sleeping camp of tipis. They were led by a man with brash gold stripes and dark, flaring eyes filled with hate. At his side rode a man with long, waving yellow hair and eyes that held no light.
It was dawn and the camp roused to the sound of beating hooves from the west and from the east. An elder walked toward the soldiers carrying a staff with the American flag and the white flag of peace.
“His name is Black Kettle,” said the mestizo. “He leads the Cheyenne in the cause of peace. The blue coat is Colonel Chivington with Custer by his side.”
“This is the place,” said another, “that is known as Sand Creek.”
Jerico knew the story as it unfolded before his eyes. Under orders to take no prisoners, they shot Black Kettle in the chest. They were good soldiers, dog soldiers, soldiers of Dachau and MyLai and Fallujah, and they followed orders well. Men, women and children fell before their thunder, before the lightning of their bayonets, before the torrent of their bullets. “Nits make fleas,” so the Colonel said, and babies grow up to be brave Cheyenne warriors.
The nearly dry creek beside the camp formed a crevice that blocked the Cheyenne from escape. The few warriors might have escaped but they could not sacrifice their defenseless people. They chose certain death and watched the creek become a river of native blood to scar the earth with a memory that would survive the generations. They chose to fight for the honor of the people and their fallen chief. They chose to fight a battle they could not win.
Chivington was a man of the cloth, the Indian’s worst nightmare: Black Robes with guns. The Cheyenne came from peace talks and were told where to camp so that the soldiers had no trouble finding them. The soldiers knew they were peaceful. They did not care.
Jerico pulled at his horse but the others stopped him.
“We have only eyes and ears in this place,” the mestizo said. “We cannot fight the past.”
An old man sang his death song before the soldiers shot him down, removed his scalp, cut off his nose, his ears and testicles. The babes of pregnant women were cut from their wombs. Bodies were carved, mutilated and left on the open ground to rot in the sun. Everywhere was grief. Everywhere was horror.
As the dust settled, they rode down to the battle scene, where Jerico dismounted and went to Black Kettle’s side. He was still alive.
“Remember this,” said Black Kettle. “The white man does not want peace. He wants to take our land – all of it. The wasichu wants our death. He does not want the land until it is made rich with Indian blood.”
Black Kettle pulled a stone from his neck and pressed it into Jerico’s hand.
“It is yours now,” he said. “I have carried it too long.”
Jerico returned to his time upon the earth and found the stone before him in the place where he knelt. It was round and smooth, the size of a silver dollar, and on its face it had an imprint of a buffalo hoof. It was the Buffalo Stone, the sacred gift of White Buffalo Woman.
He held it to his heart and prayed for his people without words.
THE KILLING SPIRIT: The Stone Dreamers (39)
CHAPTER NINE
THE STONE DREAMERS
A man on the road, even a vision seeker, needs money for food and fuel and Jerico was broke. He faced a choice. He could sell what was saleable of his modest possessions but the best he could expect would be another hundred miles or two. He could sell Lala and stick out his thumb, but Lala was more than a machine. She was a spirit being and it would not go well with the spirit world to sell her for anything less than desperate necessity.
HELP WANTED! the sign said. So Jerico Whitehorse, descended of Crazy Horse, became a dishwasher-slash-busboy at a roadside café called Apache Jack’s.
“Mind your own business,” said the chiseled, pot-bellied old timer who ran the place for an absent owner, “and you’ll be alright.”
For five days of ten-hour shifts, sleeping in Lala and taking long walks in the desert, Jerico spoke to no one but the crow, the coyote and the stone. He soon realized that he did not need a cave to hide from the world. He discovered the secret of writers and other peculiar beings, the ability to separate himself from those around him. He could be alone on a crowded street, in a bar, at a concert, anywhere.
The manager, the waitresses, the cooks, the customers and his fellow workers at the bottom end of the café hierarchy all assumed he was a dumb Indian. They liked it that way and Jerico needed nothing more than he needed peace and quiet. For five days, his ghosts let him be and the darkness was no longer his adversary. He found a place within himself that was like a pool of still water and he was content to remain there until he had enough money to travel on.
Johnny Raven had another idea. The first thing Jerico noticed about him was his wild dark eyes. Like the eyes of a crow, they darted here and there as if observing events that were not visible to lesser beings. The second thing he noticed was the gap in Johnny’s smile. He was missing a front tooth but he was always smiling a smile as broad as the South Dakota sky. It reminded some people of Chief Yahoo, the Cleveland Indians mascot, and he was known to the locals by that name. He pretended to wave it off like a persistent insect but it bothered him and Jerico knew it.
Johnny worked with Jerico every other day and drew him out gradually. He was a mestizo, half Mexican and half Chiricahua Apache. “That’s why I’m so confused,” he said. “I’m always at war with myself.” He laughed like a jackal. There was something strange about Johnny Raven, something not of this world, something that made people take a second look. Jerico did not mind his company. He made no demands. He was happy to do all the talking. Born with the name Juan Martinez, he embraced his Apache side and legally changed it.
He told Jerico the story of Geronimo’s baseball game. Geronimo was at Warm Springs when a team of wasichu ball players came west to show off their new game. The Apaches were playing stickball for a thousand years before Columbus arrived, so Geronimo and his ragtag team of warriors kicked their asses good. They never played Indians again.
“That’s why they name their teams after us,” said Johnny.
He told Jerico about the baseball team the local Indians had organized in honor of Geronimo’s victory. They called themselves the Stone Dreamers and played against the soldiers at White Sands every year. They held their own but this year they were in a bind. The game was approaching and their third baseman was injured in an accident. They needed a player and they needed him now. Jerico gave it a moment’s thought and accepted.
“I like your stone,” said Johnny.
“It was a gift,” said Jerico.
“I know,” said Johnny, smiling.
It was a long ride on game day, Jerico and eight Apache Stone Dreamers in an old Dodge van that cruised along at a comfortable 45 miles per hour. Jerico listened quietly as they argued over who was the greatest of the Apache warriors. Johnny was for Victorio, the mestizo. The largest of them, who went by the call of Little Big Man, argued for Mangas Coloradas, himself a beast of a man. One suggested Old Nana and the others were split between Geronimo, Cochise, Marcos and Gomez. The Mescalero Chief Gomez never surrendered and when the territorial governor of Texas offered a thousand pesos for his scalp, Gomez offered a thousand for the governor’s head – ten pesos more if it came with a hat.
It was a spirited discussion and one that they had had many times, probably on this same journey. Like a ritual, they worked out all the kinks until they found the essential words, the archetypal arguments in favor of each of the legendary leaders. This time they were performing for him.
“What do you think, Lakota?” asked Johnny. “Who is the greatest of your people?”
Jerico did not hesitate. “Crazy Horse.”
They all nodded in ascent as if Jerico had affirmed a fundamental truth. Crazy Horse, given to the world a blonde, curly haired, light skinned baby from pure Lakota blood, was transformed in time from a lone vision seeker to a fierce warrior, from a spirit guide to a leader of his people. To all Indian peoples, he would always be the epitome of the untamed spirit, the one who never compromised, who never sold his soul, who remained true to the old ways though it cost him his life.
The spirit of Crazy Horse transcended all separations of tribe, philosophy and culture. Even the Apache, fierce defenders of a proud heritage of warriors, yielded to the near mystical greatness of the Black Hills dreamer, the strange man of the Lakota.
For the first time Jerico realized that this more than a baseball game. It was a battle of the old against the new, the red man against the white, the dominant race and society against those who still held the faith. To the Stone Dreamers, Jerico was not just a drifter. He wore the Buffalo Stone. He was a living symbol of the spirit of Crazy Horse.
After a period of solemnity, the dreamers resumed the ritual of chatter, recalling plays, hits, victories and defeats, moments of glory and humility. Everyone but Jerico had a story and every story ended with relief, satisfaction or humor. By the time they reached the White Sands playing field, they were relaxed, loose and ready to play.
The soldiers were a good ball team, led by a pitcher who threw hard enough to attract major league attention. The Stone Dreamers were also a good team. They took pride in the way they played the game and Johnny Raven, with a package of junk to back up a sneaky fastball, was as hard to hit as a country song in Seattle.
Like all good ball games, this one came down to the bottom of the ninth, two down and a man on third, with Jerico at the plate. He put down a drag bunt and hustled it out, hitting the bag a split second before the throw, while the winning run scored.
Jerico was an instant hero who would forever be remembered in the chronicle of the Stone Dreamers. They awarded him the game ball, shook his hand, slapped his back, and told him he had earned the name Geronimo for one year.
As a part of their bargain, the losing team offered up two cases of beer and the use of a bunkhouse in a remote corner of the White Sands reserve.
Johnny pulled Jerico aside and leveled with him. They intended to hold a Stone Ceremony and they wanted him to serve as spirit guide. Jerico protested. It took years of training to become a spirit guide. It was not a game. It was dangerous to perform a sacred ritual without a true spirit guide. The spirits danced in a stone ceremony, good spirits and evil spirits. If they invited the spirits in, they could not know which spirits would take hold.
“I can’t do it, Johnny.”
“You wear the Buffalo Stone,” Johnny replied.
Jerico pulled it from his neck. “You want it, it’s yours.”
Johnny refused to take it and his smile dissolved.
“Johnny,” said Jerico. “There is a killing spirit on my trail. An old man, wiser and stronger than you or I will ever be, is already dead. I can’t do it.”
Johnny’s smile returned. “It is a good day to die,” he said. He spoke for all the Stone Dreamers in this. They were Apache warriors and this was their moment. The door that opened would never be open again. They shared the dream of the Buffalo Stone. They had been at Sand Creek. They had seen Jerico receive the stone. When he arrived at the café, they recognized him. They had studied and prepared for years and now was their time.
“We will do this with you or without you, brother, but we believe the Great Spirit meant for you to lead us.”
Jerico was cornered, tied and bound to a fate he could neither accept nor escape. When Johnny gripped his shoulders and told him that all that could be said had already been, he believed him. Their decision was made. They were warriors of the sacred mountains, warriors of the desert and the plains, warriors of Warm Springs and Pinos Altos, and survivors of San Carlos, a place where Geronimo said only scorpions and snakes could survive. They were not afraid of any man, any spirit, or any fate beyond their reckoning. They were the descendants of Cochise, Geronimo, Victorio and Mangas Coloradas and they would not be denied.
They prepared a special tea over a small fire in the snow-white sand and asked Jerico to give his blessing before the drinking. He lit a bundle of sage, smoked the tea and the dreamers, and joined them in a circle as each drank in turn.
Soon they were sitting motionless, watching an ocean of pure white sand, its waves flowing in endless cycles, washing over and through everything on earth, cleansing and purifying. The sky became a revolving wheel of blue and white with swimming thunderbirds and screaming ravens. Crow dogs chased the moon and the white buffalo appeared on a purple mountain.
When Johnny shook his arm and announced that it was time, Jerico had fully accepted his role as Yuwipi Wichasa. They went inside where candles were lit and all sources of light were covered with blankets and sealed with tape in the way of the Stone Ceremony. Jerico sang a ceremonial song pulled from the distant past, from the memory of the stone, and the dreamers pounded drums and shook stone rattles.
At the moment of christening, they bound his hands behind his back, tied his fingers, wrapped him in a blanket adorned with stars, and tied him from head to toes with rawhide thongs in seven knots.
Wrapped like an Egyptian mummy, with barely an opening to breathe, Jerico continued singing and chanting, summoning the spirits, praying for protective guidance, saluting the father of all beings, the mother of all life, and the spirit surrounding us all. He felt the Buffalo Stone glowing with warmth and rising over his heart. He heard the mounting rhythm of the rattles and drums, felt the motion of the dreamers, and saw the spirits dancing between this world and the world beyond.
The dreamers were witnessing an explosion of sight and sound like a whirlwind or tornado, sparks of light and incomprehensible sounds flushed by the fevered pitch of rattles.
In a flash, they were no longer confined to the dark space of the barracks. They were riding glorious mounts in a place that was neither here nor there. They met in a circle, horses snorting and tapping hooves, exchanging smiles and knowing glances, as each in turn departed for a predetermined destiny, leaving Jerico alone.
It was then that Jerico understood. He had returned to the ridge overlooking Sand Creek, where the massacre had not yet occurred. He rode down to camp and approached the tipi of Black Kettle, where the American flag was tied to a staff. The old man was waiting for him.
“Are you a ghost?” he asked.
“No,” replied Jerico. “I am a vision seeker. I have traveled far to deliver a warning.”
He relayed the story of massacre as he had seen it with his own eyes. He told of Chivington’s betrayal, how the soldiers would ignore the white flag of peace, how they would divide into two parties and attack from the east and west. He said that they would shoot to kill and they would kill everything that moved. He told how they would have no mercy, that they would cut open the bodies of the dead, that they would sever scalps, ears, noses and the private parts of both men and women. He said that they would cut from the bodies of pregnant women their unborn children and hang them on posts.
He held forth the Buffalo Stone as proof of his vision.
Black Kettle nodded with such sorrow that tears flowed from Jerico’s eyes.
“There are few warriors among us,” Black Kettle said. “We have camped in the open where the white chiefs instructed us. We cannot run. We cannot hide.”
He held the stone in his hands, pressed it to his head and heart, and examined Jerico with eyes of dark wonder.
“I will tell you what my grandfather told me,” he said. “The past is powerful. It can reach out to the future but the future cannot reach back. It can be seen in visions but it has no power over the past.”
They emerged from the tipi where the sun was just rising. To the north, they could make out a feint trail of dust as it split in two directions. Black Kettle roused a handful of warriors and instructed them to take up positions on both sides of the camp. They awakened the women, the old and the young, and told them to hide along the creek or take flight.
An old man, whom Black Kettle called White Antelope, came to confer. It was decided that they would stay. White Antelope would sing his death song and Black Kettle would carry his flag of peace. “It is written,’ he told Jerico. “It is the story we wish to be told.”
“Tell them what happened here,” he continued. “Maybe there are white people who can still feel shame. Maybe they will tell the chiefs in Washington that this killing must stop.”
He turned to Jerico with eyes of steel. “I knew you would come but it is not for you to die with my people. You must live to fight another battle. Go!”
He spoke with such certainty and conviction that Jerico could not challenge him. He mounted his horse and rode away to the south, as the sounds of gunfire, of deadly massacre, rose like a thunderclap behind him.
The soldiers of White Sands found him the next day, still wrapped and bound from head to toe inside the barracks. The Stone Dreamers were nowhere to be found though the van was still there. Jerico told them exactly what had happened. The soldiers did not believe him but they believed his sincerity and, in the end, wrote it off as an Indian prank.
Jerico drove back to the café, quit his job and drove on to Albuquerque, where he found the public library and read everything he could find about Sand Creek and Black Kettle. All accounts agreed on the basic facts: The Cheyenne camp was peaceful. Black Kettle had negotiated a peace agreement with the governor of the Colorado Territory only days before the massacre. They were told where to camp.
On the morning of November 29, 1864, a militia of 700 Colorado volunteers, led by the minister turned Indian killer, Colonel John Chivington, attacked without provocation and with no other intent but to kill as many Indians as they could find. White Antelope sang his death song before he was shot down and mutilated. Black Kettle carried a staff with the American flag given to him by Abraham Lincoln. He was shot but survived. Four years later, while camped by the Washita River in Indian Territory, he was killed in a massacre led by Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
Jerico could not bring himself to read further. It was as if history had sought its own revenge. Those who cheated death at Sand Creek were destined to relive the nightmare at the Washita. It was a cruel fate, the fate of an uncaring god, made crueler by having to suffer it twice.
Having learned all he cared to about Sand Creek and Black Kettle, he began mindlessly leafing through a photographic history of the North American Indians when he came upon a startling image in the background of a picture depicting General Crook’s counsel with Geronimo in the Sierra Madres. He was older but his smile was still there. It was the man Jerico knew as Johnny Raven, the Stone Dreamer.
It seemed his Apache brothers had found what they were looking for. They wanted to bring back the old ways and, in a way, they succeeded. They became a part of the past they revered. Had they changed the course of events by their actions? No human would ever know. Jerico only knew that the big picture had not been altered. The wasichu came and conquered his people. They killed many and confined those who survived to the most undesirable pieces of land they could find.
Still, the people had survived and through the generations, some held on to their ancient knowledge, culture and beliefs. Jerico reflected that the white man would not be pleased until the last of their kind was buried. He would not be satisfied until none remembered that there was a race of people here long before the Europeans came.
Jerico drove out to the desert and walked until he was sure no one could follow. He lit sage and gave his blessings to the seven directions. He built a fire and sang in the old tongue until the stars fell from the sky. He then laid down the Buffalo Stone on the sandy soil and covered it with earth.
His was the lesson of Black Kettle. The past was to be honored but it could not be altered. The Stone Dreamers chose the past. Jerico chose the future.
THE STONE DREAMERS
A man on the road, even a vision seeker, needs money for food and fuel and Jerico was broke. He faced a choice. He could sell what was saleable of his modest possessions but the best he could expect would be another hundred miles or two. He could sell Lala and stick out his thumb, but Lala was more than a machine. She was a spirit being and it would not go well with the spirit world to sell her for anything less than desperate necessity.
HELP WANTED! the sign said. So Jerico Whitehorse, descended of Crazy Horse, became a dishwasher-slash-busboy at a roadside café called Apache Jack’s.
“Mind your own business,” said the chiseled, pot-bellied old timer who ran the place for an absent owner, “and you’ll be alright.”
For five days of ten-hour shifts, sleeping in Lala and taking long walks in the desert, Jerico spoke to no one but the crow, the coyote and the stone. He soon realized that he did not need a cave to hide from the world. He discovered the secret of writers and other peculiar beings, the ability to separate himself from those around him. He could be alone on a crowded street, in a bar, at a concert, anywhere.
The manager, the waitresses, the cooks, the customers and his fellow workers at the bottom end of the café hierarchy all assumed he was a dumb Indian. They liked it that way and Jerico needed nothing more than he needed peace and quiet. For five days, his ghosts let him be and the darkness was no longer his adversary. He found a place within himself that was like a pool of still water and he was content to remain there until he had enough money to travel on.
Johnny Raven had another idea. The first thing Jerico noticed about him was his wild dark eyes. Like the eyes of a crow, they darted here and there as if observing events that were not visible to lesser beings. The second thing he noticed was the gap in Johnny’s smile. He was missing a front tooth but he was always smiling a smile as broad as the South Dakota sky. It reminded some people of Chief Yahoo, the Cleveland Indians mascot, and he was known to the locals by that name. He pretended to wave it off like a persistent insect but it bothered him and Jerico knew it.
Johnny worked with Jerico every other day and drew him out gradually. He was a mestizo, half Mexican and half Chiricahua Apache. “That’s why I’m so confused,” he said. “I’m always at war with myself.” He laughed like a jackal. There was something strange about Johnny Raven, something not of this world, something that made people take a second look. Jerico did not mind his company. He made no demands. He was happy to do all the talking. Born with the name Juan Martinez, he embraced his Apache side and legally changed it.
He told Jerico the story of Geronimo’s baseball game. Geronimo was at Warm Springs when a team of wasichu ball players came west to show off their new game. The Apaches were playing stickball for a thousand years before Columbus arrived, so Geronimo and his ragtag team of warriors kicked their asses good. They never played Indians again.
“That’s why they name their teams after us,” said Johnny.
He told Jerico about the baseball team the local Indians had organized in honor of Geronimo’s victory. They called themselves the Stone Dreamers and played against the soldiers at White Sands every year. They held their own but this year they were in a bind. The game was approaching and their third baseman was injured in an accident. They needed a player and they needed him now. Jerico gave it a moment’s thought and accepted.
“I like your stone,” said Johnny.
“It was a gift,” said Jerico.
“I know,” said Johnny, smiling.
It was a long ride on game day, Jerico and eight Apache Stone Dreamers in an old Dodge van that cruised along at a comfortable 45 miles per hour. Jerico listened quietly as they argued over who was the greatest of the Apache warriors. Johnny was for Victorio, the mestizo. The largest of them, who went by the call of Little Big Man, argued for Mangas Coloradas, himself a beast of a man. One suggested Old Nana and the others were split between Geronimo, Cochise, Marcos and Gomez. The Mescalero Chief Gomez never surrendered and when the territorial governor of Texas offered a thousand pesos for his scalp, Gomez offered a thousand for the governor’s head – ten pesos more if it came with a hat.
It was a spirited discussion and one that they had had many times, probably on this same journey. Like a ritual, they worked out all the kinks until they found the essential words, the archetypal arguments in favor of each of the legendary leaders. This time they were performing for him.
“What do you think, Lakota?” asked Johnny. “Who is the greatest of your people?”
Jerico did not hesitate. “Crazy Horse.”
They all nodded in ascent as if Jerico had affirmed a fundamental truth. Crazy Horse, given to the world a blonde, curly haired, light skinned baby from pure Lakota blood, was transformed in time from a lone vision seeker to a fierce warrior, from a spirit guide to a leader of his people. To all Indian peoples, he would always be the epitome of the untamed spirit, the one who never compromised, who never sold his soul, who remained true to the old ways though it cost him his life.
The spirit of Crazy Horse transcended all separations of tribe, philosophy and culture. Even the Apache, fierce defenders of a proud heritage of warriors, yielded to the near mystical greatness of the Black Hills dreamer, the strange man of the Lakota.
For the first time Jerico realized that this more than a baseball game. It was a battle of the old against the new, the red man against the white, the dominant race and society against those who still held the faith. To the Stone Dreamers, Jerico was not just a drifter. He wore the Buffalo Stone. He was a living symbol of the spirit of Crazy Horse.
After a period of solemnity, the dreamers resumed the ritual of chatter, recalling plays, hits, victories and defeats, moments of glory and humility. Everyone but Jerico had a story and every story ended with relief, satisfaction or humor. By the time they reached the White Sands playing field, they were relaxed, loose and ready to play.
The soldiers were a good ball team, led by a pitcher who threw hard enough to attract major league attention. The Stone Dreamers were also a good team. They took pride in the way they played the game and Johnny Raven, with a package of junk to back up a sneaky fastball, was as hard to hit as a country song in Seattle.
Like all good ball games, this one came down to the bottom of the ninth, two down and a man on third, with Jerico at the plate. He put down a drag bunt and hustled it out, hitting the bag a split second before the throw, while the winning run scored.
Jerico was an instant hero who would forever be remembered in the chronicle of the Stone Dreamers. They awarded him the game ball, shook his hand, slapped his back, and told him he had earned the name Geronimo for one year.
As a part of their bargain, the losing team offered up two cases of beer and the use of a bunkhouse in a remote corner of the White Sands reserve.
Johnny pulled Jerico aside and leveled with him. They intended to hold a Stone Ceremony and they wanted him to serve as spirit guide. Jerico protested. It took years of training to become a spirit guide. It was not a game. It was dangerous to perform a sacred ritual without a true spirit guide. The spirits danced in a stone ceremony, good spirits and evil spirits. If they invited the spirits in, they could not know which spirits would take hold.
“I can’t do it, Johnny.”
“You wear the Buffalo Stone,” Johnny replied.
Jerico pulled it from his neck. “You want it, it’s yours.”
Johnny refused to take it and his smile dissolved.
“Johnny,” said Jerico. “There is a killing spirit on my trail. An old man, wiser and stronger than you or I will ever be, is already dead. I can’t do it.”
Johnny’s smile returned. “It is a good day to die,” he said. He spoke for all the Stone Dreamers in this. They were Apache warriors and this was their moment. The door that opened would never be open again. They shared the dream of the Buffalo Stone. They had been at Sand Creek. They had seen Jerico receive the stone. When he arrived at the café, they recognized him. They had studied and prepared for years and now was their time.
“We will do this with you or without you, brother, but we believe the Great Spirit meant for you to lead us.”
Jerico was cornered, tied and bound to a fate he could neither accept nor escape. When Johnny gripped his shoulders and told him that all that could be said had already been, he believed him. Their decision was made. They were warriors of the sacred mountains, warriors of the desert and the plains, warriors of Warm Springs and Pinos Altos, and survivors of San Carlos, a place where Geronimo said only scorpions and snakes could survive. They were not afraid of any man, any spirit, or any fate beyond their reckoning. They were the descendants of Cochise, Geronimo, Victorio and Mangas Coloradas and they would not be denied.
They prepared a special tea over a small fire in the snow-white sand and asked Jerico to give his blessing before the drinking. He lit a bundle of sage, smoked the tea and the dreamers, and joined them in a circle as each drank in turn.
Soon they were sitting motionless, watching an ocean of pure white sand, its waves flowing in endless cycles, washing over and through everything on earth, cleansing and purifying. The sky became a revolving wheel of blue and white with swimming thunderbirds and screaming ravens. Crow dogs chased the moon and the white buffalo appeared on a purple mountain.
When Johnny shook his arm and announced that it was time, Jerico had fully accepted his role as Yuwipi Wichasa. They went inside where candles were lit and all sources of light were covered with blankets and sealed with tape in the way of the Stone Ceremony. Jerico sang a ceremonial song pulled from the distant past, from the memory of the stone, and the dreamers pounded drums and shook stone rattles.
At the moment of christening, they bound his hands behind his back, tied his fingers, wrapped him in a blanket adorned with stars, and tied him from head to toes with rawhide thongs in seven knots.
Wrapped like an Egyptian mummy, with barely an opening to breathe, Jerico continued singing and chanting, summoning the spirits, praying for protective guidance, saluting the father of all beings, the mother of all life, and the spirit surrounding us all. He felt the Buffalo Stone glowing with warmth and rising over his heart. He heard the mounting rhythm of the rattles and drums, felt the motion of the dreamers, and saw the spirits dancing between this world and the world beyond.
The dreamers were witnessing an explosion of sight and sound like a whirlwind or tornado, sparks of light and incomprehensible sounds flushed by the fevered pitch of rattles.
In a flash, they were no longer confined to the dark space of the barracks. They were riding glorious mounts in a place that was neither here nor there. They met in a circle, horses snorting and tapping hooves, exchanging smiles and knowing glances, as each in turn departed for a predetermined destiny, leaving Jerico alone.
It was then that Jerico understood. He had returned to the ridge overlooking Sand Creek, where the massacre had not yet occurred. He rode down to camp and approached the tipi of Black Kettle, where the American flag was tied to a staff. The old man was waiting for him.
“Are you a ghost?” he asked.
“No,” replied Jerico. “I am a vision seeker. I have traveled far to deliver a warning.”
He relayed the story of massacre as he had seen it with his own eyes. He told of Chivington’s betrayal, how the soldiers would ignore the white flag of peace, how they would divide into two parties and attack from the east and west. He said that they would shoot to kill and they would kill everything that moved. He told how they would have no mercy, that they would cut open the bodies of the dead, that they would sever scalps, ears, noses and the private parts of both men and women. He said that they would cut from the bodies of pregnant women their unborn children and hang them on posts.
He held forth the Buffalo Stone as proof of his vision.
Black Kettle nodded with such sorrow that tears flowed from Jerico’s eyes.
“There are few warriors among us,” Black Kettle said. “We have camped in the open where the white chiefs instructed us. We cannot run. We cannot hide.”
He held the stone in his hands, pressed it to his head and heart, and examined Jerico with eyes of dark wonder.
“I will tell you what my grandfather told me,” he said. “The past is powerful. It can reach out to the future but the future cannot reach back. It can be seen in visions but it has no power over the past.”
They emerged from the tipi where the sun was just rising. To the north, they could make out a feint trail of dust as it split in two directions. Black Kettle roused a handful of warriors and instructed them to take up positions on both sides of the camp. They awakened the women, the old and the young, and told them to hide along the creek or take flight.
An old man, whom Black Kettle called White Antelope, came to confer. It was decided that they would stay. White Antelope would sing his death song and Black Kettle would carry his flag of peace. “It is written,’ he told Jerico. “It is the story we wish to be told.”
“Tell them what happened here,” he continued. “Maybe there are white people who can still feel shame. Maybe they will tell the chiefs in Washington that this killing must stop.”
He turned to Jerico with eyes of steel. “I knew you would come but it is not for you to die with my people. You must live to fight another battle. Go!”
He spoke with such certainty and conviction that Jerico could not challenge him. He mounted his horse and rode away to the south, as the sounds of gunfire, of deadly massacre, rose like a thunderclap behind him.
The soldiers of White Sands found him the next day, still wrapped and bound from head to toe inside the barracks. The Stone Dreamers were nowhere to be found though the van was still there. Jerico told them exactly what had happened. The soldiers did not believe him but they believed his sincerity and, in the end, wrote it off as an Indian prank.
Jerico drove back to the café, quit his job and drove on to Albuquerque, where he found the public library and read everything he could find about Sand Creek and Black Kettle. All accounts agreed on the basic facts: The Cheyenne camp was peaceful. Black Kettle had negotiated a peace agreement with the governor of the Colorado Territory only days before the massacre. They were told where to camp.
On the morning of November 29, 1864, a militia of 700 Colorado volunteers, led by the minister turned Indian killer, Colonel John Chivington, attacked without provocation and with no other intent but to kill as many Indians as they could find. White Antelope sang his death song before he was shot down and mutilated. Black Kettle carried a staff with the American flag given to him by Abraham Lincoln. He was shot but survived. Four years later, while camped by the Washita River in Indian Territory, he was killed in a massacre led by Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
Jerico could not bring himself to read further. It was as if history had sought its own revenge. Those who cheated death at Sand Creek were destined to relive the nightmare at the Washita. It was a cruel fate, the fate of an uncaring god, made crueler by having to suffer it twice.
Having learned all he cared to about Sand Creek and Black Kettle, he began mindlessly leafing through a photographic history of the North American Indians when he came upon a startling image in the background of a picture depicting General Crook’s counsel with Geronimo in the Sierra Madres. He was older but his smile was still there. It was the man Jerico knew as Johnny Raven, the Stone Dreamer.
It seemed his Apache brothers had found what they were looking for. They wanted to bring back the old ways and, in a way, they succeeded. They became a part of the past they revered. Had they changed the course of events by their actions? No human would ever know. Jerico only knew that the big picture had not been altered. The wasichu came and conquered his people. They killed many and confined those who survived to the most undesirable pieces of land they could find.
Still, the people had survived and through the generations, some held on to their ancient knowledge, culture and beliefs. Jerico reflected that the white man would not be pleased until the last of their kind was buried. He would not be satisfied until none remembered that there was a race of people here long before the Europeans came.
Jerico drove out to the desert and walked until he was sure no one could follow. He lit sage and gave his blessings to the seven directions. He built a fire and sang in the old tongue until the stars fell from the sky. He then laid down the Buffalo Stone on the sandy soil and covered it with earth.
His was the lesson of Black Kettle. The past was to be honored but it could not be altered. The Stone Dreamers chose the past. Jerico chose the future.
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