Ghost Horses (2 page)

W
hen they left the powwow, the sun was still high above the horizon, a pale yellow disk against a flat, washed-out sky. As Jack looked through their car window, the reservation land appeared bleached. All around him, small buildings the color of sand blended into grassless hills that disappeared into nothing. After all the color of the dances, the area beyond the powwow seemed to have dried up and faded.

“Aren't you going the wrong way, Dad?” Jack asked when he realized his father had left the main highway and was now heading north on a dusty ribbon of road.

“We can make it from Wind River to Jackson Hole in”—his father, Steven, glanced at his watch—“two hours, which means we can stop at Sacagawea's grave and still get home with plenty of time to pack for our big trip to Zion.” Looking at Ethan's reflection in the rearview mirror, he said, “You have an advantage on us, Ethan, since your suitcase is already loaded up. We Landons still have to get our act together.”

Silence.

“So, have you ever been on an airplane?”

Ethan pressed his forehead into the glass and said nothing. His long hair covered his face like a waterfall, shutting them out.

“How about you, Summer?” Steven asked, his voice still jovial.

Summer just shook her head no.

Great, Jack told himself. He could see it now—an entire vacation filled with his parents fussing over Ethan and Summer while the two of them sat like stone. Sighing, he read a road sign, a small rectangle that looked as unassuming as a tag at a rummage sale. It pointed to the cemetery. A moment later they pulled into the tiny parking strip.

As Jack got out of their Jeep, he thought how Vivian Swallow had been both right and wrong. She'd been right about the feast: The roast buffalo tasted wonderful. It was a lean, tender meat without a gamey flavor. Even Ashley liked it. Of course, she'd also piled her plate high with sweet corn and ripe watermelon and beans and salad and a dessert that looked like a cherry cobbler. The feast had definitely been worth staying for.

But Vivian had been dead wrong about Ethan. He hadn't said a word—not during the feast, not when they'd said good-bye to Vivian, not when Jack's mother, Olivia, told him how happy she was to be taking the Ingawanup kids to Zion, not even when Jack's father, Steven, tried to draw him out by telling him about the years he'd spent as a foster child himself. No matter what the Landons tried, nothing worked. Ethan answered everything with a stony silence, as if the only thing that would make him and his sister happy would be to have the Landons disappear.

Now Steven and Olivia hung back beside the Jeep, their heads close together as they spoke in low voices—talking about Ethan and Summer, Jack figured. His father kept rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, a sure sign that he was worried.

Jack felt awkward just standing there at the cemetery entrance, so he finally called out, “Come on, Mom and Dad, what are you waiting for? Let's go.”

“Why don't you kids go on ahead?” his mother answered. “Your father and I need to talk for a minute.” Wisps of dark, curly hair escaped from underneath a baseball cap Olivia had pulled low on her forehead. She often wore T-shirts with pictures of animals on them. Today, she had on a green shirt with the footprints of different extinct species scattered across it.

“Go on, son,” Steven told Jack. “Ask Ethan and Summer to show you the Sacagawea monument. We'll join you in a bit.”

Great, just great, Jack fumed. Well, the faster he went, the faster he could get this whole thing over with. “Summer, do you know where the grave is?”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes wide. Jeez, she can't even answer a simple question, Jack thought.

“I'll take you.” Spinning on the tips of his running shoes, Ethan led the way. Now that Ethan was out of his dancing regalia and in a white T-shirt and jeans, Jack could tell how compact yet strong he really was. His arms moved loosely at his sides as he hurried up the hill, so fast Jack and Ashley had to scramble to keep up. As he moved, shoulder-length black hair flew off his face, revealing a strong jaw set in a hard line. Although Summer looked delicate in her yellow-flowered sundress, she had enough energy to follow her brother with no apparent problem.

“Slow down,” Ashley called out, but Ethan kept moving at top speed up the narrow path. Determined not to let them beat him, Jack began to jog up the incline, leaving his sister to tag behind. Gravestones dotted the wild grass like scattered teeth, some of them tipped to one side, others with the surface worn to a smooth polish, the letters rubbed bare. Many of the markers were simple slabs of wood. Although some seemed neglected, most of the graves were adorned with bright plastic flowers in every color of the rainbow, as though someone had scattered a giant bag of candy across the barren ground. It was a wind-blown, dusty place. Hardly what he expected to see as the final resting place of someone as famous as Sacagawea.

Ethan and Summer had stopped in front of the largest tombstone. More plastic flowers adorned the grave, along with nickels, dimes, and quarters that had been pressed into the baked earth. The coins caught the sunlight and threw it back like tiny mirrors.

Casting a wide shadow, the large rectangle of granite showed the probable dates of Sacagawea's birth and death, along with a bronze plaque that detailed her life.

“Thanks for waiting, Jack,” Ashley panted when she joined him.

“Sorry.”

“It's OK. Wow, here it is. I've heard so much about her, how she was the guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition even though she was really young. I can't believe I'm standing right at Sacagawea's grave.” Ashley took a breath and added, “She was a Shoshone too, right?”

“Yes. But she's not buried here,” Summer answered in a small voice. “Sacagawea died in the mountains. No one knows where her body lies. They made this to honor her.”

Ashley shot Jack a triumphant look that seemed to say, “See, she talks!” Placing her hand on Summer's arm, Ashley said eagerly, “I think Sacagawea was a real hero.”

“To you,” Ethan said sharply. “Not to me. Not to my sister.”

Jack and Ashley looked at Ethan in surprise. “Why don't you think she was great?” Ashley asked.

Ethan's thick brows knit together. “She helped the white man, and the white man took all our land. My grandmother said Sacagawea should not have helped anyone but her own people.”

Nodding, Ashley tried to get him to keep talking. “I bet your grandmother taught you a lot of things, didn't she?”

“Yes. She taught us the old ways,” Summer answered for him. “She taught us the traditional way to dress. She taught us how to cook and hunt and even how to dance, like we did today.”

Ashley beamed, triumphant over the fact that Ethan and Summer Ingawanup were finally opening up. “Do you think sometime, maybe later, you could teach Jack and me how to dance like that? I'd really like to learn.”

Ethan snickered loudly. His eyes rolled to the sky as he muttered, “I'm not teaching no white guys.”

That did it. Jack felt irritation surge through him. “Look, Ethan, whether you like it or not, the four of us are stuck together. Do you think it would kill you to stop being a jerk for a couple of weeks?”

“Jack—don't—” Ashley began, but Jack didn't care. He moved right in front of Ethan, staring him down, eye to eye. “You know, we didn't ask for you to stay with us, but you're here with our family. So why don't you give up the attitude, OK? Then maybe we can get through this until your big sister comes back, and then you can go home and forget about us white people.”

Ethan stood with his legs spread apart, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes hard. Wind began to blow over the hill, bending the grass toward the ground like stalks of wheat, moving Summer's hair in dark wisps across her face. Jack wasn't about to back down, and neither, it seemed, was Ethan. Finally, like clouds parting, Ethan's face cleared. With what looked almost like a smile, he said, “OK.”

Nothing Ethan could have said would have taken Jack more by surprise. “OK…what?” he asked, still not believing Ethan's turnaround.

“OK, I'll try to be friends.” Smiling slyly, he said, “So you want to learn how to dance?”

“Sure,” Ashley answered, nodding eagerly.

“Then I'll teach you. I'll teach you and your brother the Ghost Dance.”

Summer pushed the hair off her face, saying, “No, Ethan—”

“Yes. It's a good dance, very old. Gotta be danced around a cedar tree.” Ethan looked completely different when he smiled. His teeth were white and square in his dark face, but the smile didn't make it all the way up to his eyes—they still glittered coldly. “Don't worry,” he told them. “You'll like the Ghost Dance.” Without another word Ethan spun around and began running through the gravestones, higher and higher in the cemetery grounds until he veered off at the top of the hill. Summer followed him, glancing nervously over her shoulder as she went.

“I guess we're supposed to go after them,” Ashley said.

“Except there's no way I'm going to dance. Not here. Not with Ethan.”

Ashley's voice rose half an octave. “What do you mean? We can't tell Ethan ‘no' when he's finally trying to be nice. You've got to.”

“You dance. I'll watch.”

“No way!” Grabbing the edge of his sleeve, Ashley tugged hard. “Please!” she begged. “Maybe it'll make us all friends! Besides, at the powwow you said you wished you could dance like them.”

“That's not the same thing. They had costumes and drums. Out here I feel stupid!”

“No one will see! Besides, our whole trip to Zion will be ruined if we don't get along with them.”

That much was true. He looked around the cemetery. His parents, still talking, were finally making their way up to Sacagawea's marker, but beyond them the grounds were completely empty. Jack heaved a sigh. “OK. But if any stranger shows up, I quit. And let go of my sleeve. You're stretching my shirt.”

As they climbed toward the Ingawanups, Jack noticed that Ethan seemed to be searching for something. After a few minutes he began kicking rocks away from the ground around a small green tree that stood no more than two feet high.

“Hey, watch where you're kicking those things,” Jack yelled. “One of them nearly hit my sister.”

Summer murmured, “Ethan, maybe we shouldn't do the Ghost Dance…”

Her brother ignored her. “I just needed to clear some space around this cedar tree. I told you that's what we're supposed to dance around—a cedar tree.” Impatiently, he gestured for Jack and Ashley to come closer. “Go ahead,” he told Summer, who asked him, “You sure, Ethan?”

When Ethan nodded, Summer said in her soft voice, “Stand around the tree. Boy, girl, boy, girl. Take hands.” Jack grasped Summer's hand as if in a handshake, but she shook her head and said, “No, like this,” and twined thin fingers through his.

Since there were only four of them, the circle was small—Summer, Jack, Ashley, Ethan. His voice low, Ethan began to sing:

Tugging Jack's hand, Summer moved in a circle from right to left, left foot first, followed by the right one, barely lifting her feet above the ground as they moved. Awkwardly, Jack stumbled along; on his other side, Ashley had caught the motion perfectly and danced as though she'd always done it that way. Ethan's voice grew louder, pounding each note like a beat on a tom-tom. Jack guessed he was singing the same song over and over, although the words sounded so strange that Jack couldn't tell whether they were being repeated or not.

He glanced down the hill to the Sacagawea monument, where his mother and father stood looking up at the kids and smiling, probably thinking how sweet it was that the four of them were doing a little circle dance together. Probably figuring that everything was all right now. But was it?

His attention was jerked back to the dance, because Ethan had stopped his chant and Summer began to speak. Her voice soft, her eyes half shut, she murmured, “Grandmother's grandmother saw the big fire on the mountaintop. Our people were dancing the Ghost Dance. They danced. They danced. The fire burned higher.” Summer spoke in a monotone, her voice neither rising nor falling, but for some reason it made Jack's scalp prickle.

“Grandmother's grandmother saw the smoke. It rolled down the mountain. It covered the earth and the people and the animals. No one could see, but they kept dancing. The smoke got thicker. It hid the sky. It hid the earth. It hid the horses, and turned them into ghosts.”

Now Summer spoke in a singsong. “After two days the smoke was gone. After two days the horses were gone. They became ghost horses. But sometimes, when the people danced, the ghost horses returned.”

While she told the tale, Summer's eyelids drooped lower and lower, while Ashley's eyes widened until the whites showed. As for Jack, he caught the smell of—no, that was crazy. He couldn't be smelling smoke—there wasn't a wisp of it showing anywhere, nothing rising into the perfect blue sky, and from that high on the hill he could see all around. Then Ethan began to sing once more, louder than before,

By that time, Steven and Olivia had climbed closer to where the kids danced around the little cedar tree. They were still 20 feet away when Ethan stopped abruptly and pulled his hands away from Ashley's and Summer's.

“Oh, don't stop,” Olivia begged. “That was just—charming.”

Ethan turned into stone man again. He didn't say a word.