Neither Wolf nor Dog (38 page)

When he was finished, he handed it to me.

“Smoke,” he said. “You must pray, too.”

I took the pipe and tried to mimic his actions, holding the stem toward the west.

“No,” he stopped me. “You must clear your heart.” The wind blew hard across me. Sparks jumped from the bowl of the pipe and shot into the darkness.

“I'm trying.”

“You must forget yourself. You are not here for yourself. You are not here for me. This is Wounded Knee. You are standing on the grave.”

At those words the earth seemed to heave under my feet. I looked at the concrete border. Dan saw me. “That's right. This is the grave. The bodies of two hundred murdered Lakota people are buried here. The old ones and women and children. Children like your son. They were killed running from your soldiers. They were dumped here after they were killed. Thrown in on top of each other and covered with dirt. This is their grave.”

I moved further back onto the concrete border, as if standing on that would protect me from the forces rising up from the ground beneath my feet. Dan pointed through the arch back down the hill across the road. A dark mass of trees coursed along a draw. “There,” he said. “They were running. They tried to hide in that creekbed. They huddled together and the soldiers on horses shot them down. They left them dying and freezing in the snow. When our people found them there were little babies all covered with blood and half frozen trying to nurse on their dead mothers' breasts.” He turned and locked me in his gaze. “Little boys like your boy, Nerburn,” he said again. “Their spirit is still crying.”

I gazed off over his shoulder at the shadowy hills. Forms danced wildly in the moonlight. The image of my son, running, rose up before me. It was more than memory. It was like he was there, alive. He was running hard, like a young boy does, full of energy but not making much progress. He was running up the hill to me, yelling to me, reaching toward me, with his crooked smile and his dancing blond hair. His voice was in the wind; I heard it. Then he exploded, covered with blood, and I couldn't reach him.

“The pipe,” I heard Dan say.

I held it up. I started to shake. I didn't want this image. I wanted it to go away. But I didn't have control.

“The pipe,” Dan said again. The wind was like a chorus, a thousand voices blended into one.

I took the pipe and sucked in. The warm heat of the tobacco and
kinnikinic
filled my mouth. The sweet, acrid aroma surrounded me like a cloud, taking me away from the hill, away from the stars, away from the wind and the night. It was like a wall that protected me from the awful image of my son torn apart.

I inhaled again. The warmth comforted me. I cupped my hand and moved the smoke around me, like a protection, a shield, a blanket of peace. I did not want that vision to return.

I held the pipe to the west. The smoke curled out from the stem and rose into the sky.

“Pray,” Dan said. “I know you can. I've seen you.” It was not a request, but something more — an order, an entreaty. “Pray. To the west.” I was shaking hard. The image of my boy was before me again.

“To whom?” I stammered. “I don't know what to . . .”

“The west, Nerburn. Talk to the west,” Dan coaxed.

The image of my son would not leave me. He kept coming toward me, smiling, reaching. I tried to pray as I had seen Dan do. “To you, the west, where dreams take wing and day comes to a rest, hear me, keep this image from me.” I drew in the sweet smoke and inhaled it into the wind.

“Don't ask for things, just pray,” Dan said. “It is not yours to say what comes. Now, the north.”

I turned to the north. The image would not leave. I did not know how to pray to a direction, or even what words to use. All I wanted was to stop this image. “Dear north,” I said, in clumsy invocation, like a child, “You are the direction of my spirit, the direction of caution and great darkness, the giver of winter, of phantoms, of the snow that covers us in oneness, I offer this to you.” I puffed hard on the pipe and smoke billowed out.

“Good,” I heard Dan say.

“The east.”

The rich, heavy aroma of the tobacco mixture surrounded me. I turned my back to the wind and held the stem of the pipe out into the darkness. “To you, the east, the direction of the sunrise, where hope is born and every day begins anew, I offer this.” I puffed again and cupped the billowing smoke around my head with my hand.

“Now the south.”

I turned. The pillars loomed before me with their tracery arch and tiny white cross. Through their opening I could see the draw and the trees, alive with shadows and movement. The smoke and wind burned my eyes, causing them to tear. Through the blur the moving forms became running children and screaming women. I blinked my eyes. The hills were alive with silhouettes of old men hobbling desperately toward the trees, stumbling like Dan on the frozen earth.

Above me the ribbons flapped like gunshots in the wind. Clouds raced before the moon. The little children all ran like my son; the old men, frail, with brittle bones, moved like Dan or my father, while old women, frantic and heavy-legged, huddled together to protect the young women and the babies with their bodies.

The wind wailed around me. I closed my eyes to chase the image away. My son ran toward me, reaching.

“No,” I shouted. “I don't want this.”

“The south,” Dan said. “The south.”

“To the south, from where warmth comes, and rest, and growth and color and life, I offer this pipe.”

I puffed and blew the smoke out. The wind grabbed it and rushed it away. There was a sound of moaning and keening, perhaps from the wind singing in the wires in the chainlink fence. The ribbons snapped and cracked.

“To the sky. To “
Wakan Tanka
,” Dan ordered.

I thrust the stem of the pipe upward. I did not know what
I was doing or why. ‘
Wakan Tanka
,” I blurted. “God. Creator. Father. I do not know what to call you, or if you are my God at all. Hear me. Take this smoke that rises to you.”

I opened my eyes. The smoke was streaming out the mouthpiece of the pipe and twisting sinuously, urgently, toward the moon. I closed my eyes again and turned the pipe back to me and smoked.

“Now the earth,” Dan said.

I held the stem downward. For a moment it felt like something tugged on it. I jumped backward. “To the earth, the mother of us all, from which all life comes and to which it must return, I offer this pipe. Please hear me.” I smoked the last embers and stood silent. The pipe seemed to lighten in my hand. The images still flooded before me, but were quieter and more distant.

I felt Dan's hand upon the pipe. He withdrew it gently from my grasp.

“Now sit,” he said, softly. “Talk. Tell the truth. What is in your heart?”

I slid down to the ground with a sigh, my back rested against the monument to the dead. I was still shaking. “I'm scared,” I said. “There is too much pain, too much fear. I see images of my son, trying to get to me, dying, being shot, exploding; of old people — I don't know if it's my imagination, or guilt — running for that ravine.

“I feel so awful, so guilty, like it's real and I have to do something and there's nothing I can do. And I can't stop it but I don't want it to happen . . . to have happened. I don't want any of this to have happened. I want there to have been a different way.”

“Keep talking,” he said, and started a low chanting. I was like a boy in a confessional, huddled over, with my eyes closed, pouring something out into the darkness while the priest
incanted some distant absolution. I clasped my hands around my knees and rocked back and forth.

“I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know what to believe, if I am making this up or if there are powers I can't even fathom. I want to believe, but I'm afraid, and I don't want to anger anything or disturb anything sacred. I just want to do what's right, and protect my family, and do some good in this world.”

Dan sang louder. I felt his hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked up. He was standing above me, with his left hand on my shoulder, his eyes closed. He was looking toward the moon and singing something in Lakota. He kept his hand there, gently holding me, like Danelle had, while he sang and spoke toward the sky. The pipe was cradled in his right arm, like an infant.

“What hurts the most?” he said quietly, in English, without opening his eyes or looking down.

“The children and the old people. That they were killed. That they had so much faith. That their world was destroyed.”

“What else?”

“That maybe my heart isn't pure. That I might be doing this for the wrong reasons.”

“What else?”

“That there are reasons for this that are too far beyond me, and that maybe I am the thing I fear most, one more white person with good intentions who will end up doing harm.” A gust of wind blew harshly across my face. The strange, keening sound came again. “And that the earth is crying,” I said, “and that nothing can wash away her tears.”

Dan stopped his singing. He slowly lowered himself to the ground across from me. I sat huddled against the monument for the dead. He made a lengthy prayer in Lakota, then changed to English. “I will talk again, now,” he said. He took a small
leather bag from inside his shirt and removed a round stone from it. He held this in his hand and began to speak.

“You have spoken well. Your words could have been my words. I, too, am afraid for what I am doing, and I, too, fear that there are powers that will be angry. But the children are dead. The old ones are dead. It is a hurt too great to bear in silence. We must speak. We must speak together.”

He directed his words at me, but they were formal and precise.

“I see the old ones and the children every night when I lay down. I see them here. I see them at Sand Creek. I see them in a hundred villages that are now forgotten. I, too, will join them soon. I want to know why they had to die running. I want to know why our land was cut and scarred and we were not allowed to stand against you to protect the land and the children and the old ones. I want to know why the Creator let this happen. For my whole life I have wanted to know this.

“But I am just a man, like you. I can see to the edge of my life and no further. I can walk to the edge of my land and no further. I cannot see beyond the horizon. That is how the Creator made us all.

“But now I am old. Different voices speak to me. And here is what they say.

“They say that perhaps it is not by love, but by blood, that land is bought. They say that perhaps my people had to die to nourish this earth with their truth. Your people did not have ears to hear. Perhaps we had to return to the earth, so that we could grow within your hearts. Perhaps we have come back and will fill the hills and valleys with our song. Who is to know?

“There may be greater truths than ours. The Creator hears and sees far over the horizon. I must cry my tears and sing my songs for my people, so that they will always be honored and will never die. But I cannot try to know the Creator's ways.
Perhaps we may someday see; perhaps not. Perhaps there is a new truth, larger even than the Lakota's, larger than all the Indian peoples', larger than the truths your people brought to this land, larger than all our truths combined, and that now we are coming to find it together.

“Here is what I say.

“There is no more time for fighting. Our anger must be buried. If I cannot bury mine, it will be for my children to bury theirs. And if they cannot bury theirs, it will be for their children, or their children's children. We are prisoners of our hearts, and only time will free us.

“Your people must learn to give up their arrogance. They are not the only ones placed on this earth. Theirs is not the only way. People have worshiped the Creator and loved their families in many ways in all places. Your people must learn to honor this.

“It is your gift to have material power. You have much strength not given to other people. Can you share it, or can you use it only to get more? That is your challenge — to find the way to share your gift, because it is a strong and dangerous one.

“It is my people who must stand as the shadow that reminds you of your failures. It is our memory that must keep you on the good road. It does you no good to pretend that we did not exist, and that you did not destroy us. This was our land. We will always be here. You can no more remove our memory than you can hide the sun by putting your hand over your eyes.

“I am sad that the Creator saw fit to destroy us to give you life. But maybe that is not so bad, for is that not what your religion teaches you that he did with Jesus? Maybe it was the power of our spirit that made us able to accept our physical death.

“Maybe it was the power of our spirit that made the Creator see that we, alone, could save you, who cared so much about things that should not matter.

“Maybe it is we who are the true sons and daughters of God, who had to die on the cross of your fears and greed, so that you could be saved from yourselves.

“Is that so strange? I do not think so.
Wakan Tanka
, the Great Mystery, the Creator, He who you call God, knows that our people were always willing to die for each other. It was our greatest honor. Maybe the greatest honor of all is that we as a people were able to die for the whole human race.
Wakan Tanka
alone knows these things.”

He reached his gnarled hand across in the darkness and took my wrist.

“Here,” he said. “Give me your hand. We are brothers. You are my son. I pass to you my vision, even though I cannot pass to you my knowledge. There lies in the ground not far from here one who truly was my son. He could not bear the pain of knowing two truths. And so I give my vision to you who knows only one. Perhaps it will be easier to bear. Perhaps it will be easier to share.