Tantric Coconuts (2 page)

After they had told their stories and gone home, Ted leaned against an old tree and looked out over the freshly turned topsoil. He felt tears on his face. Now it was just him and Argo.

Soon Ted’s back hurt from standing so long. He knew, too, that he needed to go to work. Calls were piling up. He walked to the old Cadillac, which he had been driving the last few days, and gripped the handle. As he pulled open the door, he paused and whispered, “Good-bye, Wild Bill. Your life mattered, and thank you for sharing it with me.”

When he returned to the cemetery five months later, his gratitude had extended further. Much further.

Near the Lakota Sioux Reservation, South Dakota

In early June, Angel Two Sparrow sat outside in the shade of the porch and played the old Gibson her mother had given her just before she died. Larsen sat down beside his young, tall daughter and did his best to sing along in his crackling, cigarette-roughened baritone. As usual, Angel was wearing her hippie clothes. Her long black hair was pulled behind her head and clumsily tied with a piece of hemp rope left over from some half-finished art project.

When they finished playing Stevie Wonder’s “A Place in the Sun,” she leaned her guitar against the trailer and said, “Let’s talk,
Age
?” Angel used the Lakota word for “father” at special moments like this when she was hoping to cajole Larsen.

To white ears, Larsen’s speech seemed unadorned. Almost flat. “Yes, let’s talk.”

“I would like to take a trip.”

“Where?” he asked.

“I’d like to take Bertha on the road to start my business. I’d be gone for a while. Maybe a year.”

“Business?”

“I’m a spiritual consultant.”

Larsen gave her a very troubled look. A stare, really. He appreciated that souls often need healing, but he doubted that his aunt’s retrofitted bookmobile, nicknamed Bertha, was the proper vehicle for Angel’s quest. “Why is this a good idea?”

“I had a vision.”

Larsen knew that Angel and her mother both believed that visions, more than DNA, were what made them real Lakota. He also suspected that they played the vision card when they wanted to manipulate him into doing something that he was not inclined to do. “Did this vision also tell you how you would pay for this journey?”

“No vision on that one, but I do have a business plan.”

“Explain, please.” Suspecting that Angel would need plenty of space to provide a rational explanation for this harebrained request, Larsen leaned far away from his daughter and waited for her response.

Angel was prepared. “Here is my plan,
Age
. I’ll take Bertha down to the shop and paint my logo on one side. On the other side I’ll paint my business card. I can make Bertha look catchy. You’ll see.” Angel held her hands up, middle fingers and thumbs touching. “Angel Two Sparrow, Native American spiritual consultant.” She returned her hands to her lap and continued, “Under that, I’ll put my phone number and say, ‘first ten minutes free.’ When she was finished, she looked at her father and asked, “What do you think?”

“I am not sure you want to know what I think.” Larsen
operated under the theory that the females of the Two Sparrow family had something far more serious than visions to deal with. He believed their genomes were burdened by some loco gene. In his Aunt Lilly the gene expressed itself in reclusive, antisocial, and more recently even violent behaviors. For his wife, Angel’s mother, it was the alcoholism that had finally taken her life while Angel was still a teen. For Angel he was not yet sure, but he was suspicious of her restless need for adventure, obsessive soul-searching, and inability to remain employed. Angel seemed poorly equipped to walk in a concrete world where men and women show up at work on time.

“What is this logo thing you want to paint?” Larsen patiently inquired.

Angel rolled up her sleeve and proudly displayed the tattoo on her arm, which she had designed. It was a monkey swinging from a coconut tree. At the foot of the tree, a female swami meditated. “This one,
Age
.” She rolled her sleeve back down and explained, “I’ll put the Black Hills in the background.” Her still-youthful brown eyes shone excitedly from her fresh, makeup-free face.

Out of principle, Larsen tried to avoid looking at Angel’s tattoo. Lakota women should not have tattoos of monkeys in coconut trees. It was not a proper Indian tattoo. Angel’s mother had had a tattoo of a thunder buffalo on her right breast. That was a proper tattoo. Before the crazy gene had changed their lives, he had enjoyed resting his head on his wife’s chest while Angel suckled her. He could imagine the buffalo’s energy passing in this way to his daughter’s spirit. He was suspicious of the energy of monkeys in coconut trees.

Larsen sighed again. Perhaps the tattoo did not matter. He raised his eyebrows and probed further. “What is ‘spiritual consultant’ and ‘road trip’?”

Angel thought it should have been obvious to him, but she explained anyway. “
Age
, most men’s souls are as broken as the trucks in your shop.” She swept her eyes in a panorama. “Everywhere, people need help. This is what I will do as a spiritual consultant.” Without any pretense of sincerity, she added, “You could go with me. There is room in Bertha for you and No Barks.”

Larsen did not ponder long before responding. “I’m not a pilgrim. I don’t like to travel with dogs—particularly not your Aunt Lilly’s wolf dog that growls at men. I have a job. Repairing old cars and trucks is how I pay our bills.”

“I’ll be back in a year or so. I promise.”

“May I comment on your business plan?”

“Sure,
Age
.”

“I offer a service. Repairing cars and trucks. It sounds like you are offering a service, too. Fixing souls. My service works because people know where to find me. I’ve been here for many years. I cannot operate a service out of an old bookmobile driving across America. People would not know where to find me.”

Angel was not only nimble with her fingers but also quick on her feet. “My service will be like a tow truck. I will come to them.”

Larsen was unconvinced. As much as he loved his daughter, he had no confidence in her ability to implement this plan. “Angel, when a car breaks down on the road, people
know they must call a tow truck. When a man has a sick or broken soul, how will he know to call Angel Two Sparrow, Native American spiritual consultant?”

“I am still working on that part, but I think the friends in my study group will help me.”

“Those coconuts?” Larsen asked, wondering whether the crazy gene was dominant or recessive.

Aunt Lilly had been very proud of Bertha—the bookmobile she had converted to her personal residence. When Angel was a young teenager, she spent a week with Aunt Lilly on the reservation living in the bookmobile. Lilly convinced her that it had magical qualities. It was not a hard argument to make, for every night Angel experienced vivid and unusual dreams. Aunt Lilly told her that Bertha was a dream catcher on wheels: a sacred place where the spirit world can enter our lives. Lilly assured Angel that someday the bookmobile would pass to her. It was the right and proper thing for an aunt to give her niece.

It was not, however, Aunt Lilly’s passing that brought about the untimely transfer of Bertha the Bookmobile. It was the crazy gene. Larsen felt very guilty for not paying more attention. He should have known from his last visit two years ago that her condition was deteriorating. Larsen had driven a long way on the virtually abandoned road before he reached Lilly’s secluded driveway—not much more than a path of flattened grass cleared of large boulders. She was sitting proudly
in a lawn chair near Bertha, holstering twin .45 caliber pistols while chanting some old Lakota song about White Buffalo Woman. There were man-sized wrinkles in the old woman’s face. Her brown eyes seemed unconcerned about focusing on anything in particular. She was wearing a strange vest of her own invention. She called it a harness. When Larsen asked her about it, she said, “My energy is low. I need the power of Mother Earth to revitalize my spirit.”

Larsen looked down at his bandolier-sporting aunt. She smiled and it was apparent that she had eschewed the reservation dentist along with most everything else from the white world.

It was unclear what was going on with her harness. A ripped and stained orange fluorescent hunting vest seemed to anchor the apparatus. There was a can of Skoal chewing tobacco peeking out of the front pocket like some shy marsupial. Duct-taped to the front and sides of the vest were various bones, wires, shotgun shells, fishing lures, and hawk feathers. Out of the back of her collaged jacket she had used a bolt to attach a green garden hose that snaked across the yard until it disappeared under a large boulder. Larsen did not believe that the earth’s energy could be so conveniently harnessed, but he respected that he did not know everything. “Have you tried coffee for your low energy, Aunt Lilly?”

When she shook her head no, he inquired further. “Is your diet lacking?”

“I don’t like coffee. Never did. My diet is fine.”

Larsen rested his hand on his aunt’s shoulder. She held it
softly and said, “Mother Earth has much healing energy. She gives her energy freely to those that can accept it. We are welcome to take what we need from her.”

When Larsen tried to pull his fingers away, she squeezed his hand. “Would you like to charge? It’ll relieve your gas and perhaps you can also learn to be less uptight.” She patted his hand. “You seem tense.” She caught him with her steel-gray eyes. “The harness makes your heart chant.”

Larsen had never “charged” before and, though he doubted its efficacy, he was not sure when he would have another opportunity. Besides, there was no one around to ridicule him for indulging his aunt’s crazy gene. “Yes, Lilly, I would like to wear your harness and charge.”

The old woman rose. “Good. I’ll make us tea while you charge.”

Larsen’s uncle Harry, who had been divorced from Aunt Lilly for several years, had counseled Larsen against the visit. “She’s packing heat, crazier than a rabid skunk, and twice as mean. Be careful of that she-wolf, No Barks. It does not like men.”

When Lilly slipped off her harness and handed it to Larsen, he noticed bruises on her arm. When he asked her about the marks, she said, “Man trouble.”

Later that afternoon, after he finished his visit with Lilly, he called his uncle, whom he barely knew, and they discussed whether it was safe for Lilly to live by herself, isolated in the remotest corner of the already remote, desolate, heartbreaking, and poverty-stricken reservation. Like most of the others
in the rural part of the reservation, she had neither electricity nor adequate water. “I bring her food once a week,” Uncle Harry said. “She won’t spend her Social Security checks. She’s crazy, but what can I do?”

Larsen hesitated but decided to confront his uncle. “She had bruises on her arm. Do you know where she got them?”

“She probably fell. She drinks. Too much.”

When Aunt Lilly had called him three months ago, it had surprised and embarrassed him. To the best of his knowledge, his aunt had never owned a phone. He had ignored the poor woman for too long.

“Larsen,” Aunt Lilly began, “you have not come to see me in a very long time and I’m afraid that I am going to have to move. I want to give you my land, Bertha the Bookmobile, my dog, No Barks, and my new address at the women’s home in Pierre.”

A gentle breeze blew open the gauze curtains, and Larsen wondered, as he peered out at the fields of wheat ripening under the summer sun, whether Aunt Lilly was thinking clearly. “Why do you have to move to Pierre, Aunt Lilly? Are you sick?”

“No. The rez police came from Pine Ridge and took me away.”

Larsen Two Sparrow became worried. “Why?”

“I had a dream vision. My bear told me that your uncle Harry would come and try to take my home, my money, No Barks, and my land from me. So when I next saw him, I shot him. It was him or me.”

Larsen wanted to believe that his aunt had slipped into some state of delusion, a natural by-product of the crazy gene, but still he asked, “Whom did you shoot, Lilly?”

Her voice grew louder, like she thought Larsen was growing deaf. “Your uncle Harry. I shot him dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“He didn’t move for two weeks. I’m sure.”

“I see.”

“Larsen,” Aunt Lilly continued, “will you take care of Bertha and No Barks? They’ve been good to me. No Barks is part wolf, but so am I. So is that daughter of yours. What do you call her?”

“Angel.”

“Yes, that’s what you call her. You’re a good human, Larsen. I want you to have these things. Now find a pencil.”

She gave him the address for the South Dakota Women’s Prison in Pierre, and then the line went as dead as Uncle Harry.

Now his only daughter was ready to leave in Lilly’s bookmobile to start this rather dubious enterprise as a spiritual consultant journeying across America. In the old days, his ancestors had hunted buffalo and families had stayed together, kept warm by the fire, and told stories. Now it had come to this: fixing old trucks, murders, runaway daughters, and crazy genes.