Burning Ground

by D. A. Galloway

  Graham nudged his passenger as he eased the Datsun next to a gas pump.

  “Pit stop!” he announced.

  The second-year Syracuse law student pushed up the brim of his hat and rubbed his eyes.

  “Okay. I’ll go fill up the thermos while you gas up,” he said while climbing out of the bucket seat and heading to the convenience store.

  Ten minutes later, they were back on the interstate with Trevor at the wheel.

  “It’s a long way across Nebraska and Iowa,” Trevor commented. “We should be in Illinois by dawn if we keep our stops for gas and grub quick. This stretch of highway is boring as hell, so I’m gonna need help to stay awake. If you’re sleeping, I’ll wake you every hour to pour a cup of coffee for me.”

  “Got it,” Graham replied.

  He stayed awake for a while, listening to the various AM stations Trevor tuned into as they hurtled across the flat Nebraska landscape. By ten o’clock Graham had fallen asleep. He stirred only when Trevor prompted him for coffee, or when they stopped for gas and a bathroom break. They switched drivers in Davenport, Iowa. Trevor snored loudly as Graham guided the Datsun across northern Illinois and Indiana, being careful to stay no more than ten mph above the posted speed limit. Trevor took the wheel again when they crossed the Ohio-Pennsylvania line.

  It was almost nine o’clock when they pulled onto the Penn State campus. Graham removed a paper from his wallet with an address and directions to an apartment building on North Atherton Street. He had called his friend Rob before leaving Yellowstone and asked to crash on his couch until he could check into a residence hall the next day.

  “This is it,” Graham announced as Trevor eased the Datsun into the parking area for the apartment complex. Graham slid the bucket seat forward and extracted his framed backpack and L.L. Bean day pack from the cargo area. He shook Trevor’s hand and thanked him for the ride.

  As the sports car pulled out of the parking lot on its way to Syracuse, Graham trudged to the lobby of the apartment building. He spied a pay phone mounted on the wall near the elevator and made a collect call home. His parents were overjoyed to hear his voice. They agreed to bring his clothes and room furnishings and meet at his assigned residence hall the next morning at ten o’clock.

  The two friends stayed up late that night catching up with stories of their summer months. Rob was extremely talkative. He related tales of his time working for a construction company and the many pranks the workers played on one another. Graham reciprocated by sharing some of his adventures in the park he experienced during this century. Of course, he never breathed a word about time travel. Only Redfield would believe his saga.

  Shortly after midnight, Graham lay on the couch in the dark and stared at the white acoustic ceiling tiles. He was looking forward to seeing his mother and father tomorrow, but he was also anxious. Would they believe his fabricated abduction story? How would they react? After all, they thought they had lost their lone surviving child only to have him suddenly turn up alive weeks later.

  The couch was lumpy and narrow, but he didn’t mind. It felt luxurious compared with sleeping in a bucket seat with his head resting against the window and his knees wedged into the dashboard. He quickly fell asleep.

  * * *

  Graham sat on a bench outside Holmes Hall and waited for his parents to show up. There weren’t many students on campus because it was Labor Day. It would be a much busier scene tomorrow when classes began. He was glad he had registered for the fall semester before leaving for the summer. He smiled as he considered the luxuries of modern life compared with his time with the Hayden Expedition hunting for food, riding a mule, and sleeping in a leaky canvas tent.

  When he spotted his parents walking toward the dorm, he stood and walked to greet them.

  “Oh, Graham! Graham! Graham!” his mother exclaimed repeatedly while hugging her son.

  When Helen pulled away, he could see tears streaming down her cheeks.

  He almost didn’t recognize his father. Leroy was clean-shaven and wore a pressed dress shirt and slacks.

  “It’s so good to see you, son,” he said. Graham was caught off guard when his father stepped forward and gave him a big bear hug.

  “Thanks for bringing my things,” Graham said. “Where are you parked? I can show you the closest place to unload my stuff.”

  “We have all day to unload the car,” Helen replied quickly. “Let’s sit and talk first. You have so much to tell us. And we have a lot of questions. We’re just so happy to have you back!”

  “Okay. Sure. Let’s go sit at one of those picnic tables.”

  Graham shouldered his framed backpack and grabbed his day pack. They walked over to a table situated under an enormous ginkgo tree. The non-native tree species was one of the first he had learned to identify in his dendrology course last year.

  The Davidsons spent the next hour getting reacquainted. Graham retold his mythical abduction tale, being careful to keep the narrative identical to the one he had shared with Superintendent Driscoll. His mother was horrified when she heard the details, grabbing his arm and squeezing it as he spoke about the hippies who forced him to serve as their guide for weeks before eventually releasing him.

  When Leroy insisted his son press charges against the two miscreants, Graham patiently explained it was up to law-enforcement authorities to locate and charge them with any crimes. He simply wanted to move on with his life and focus on his senior year at Penn State.

  “We have a surprise for you,” Leroy suddenly announced. “Wait here while I get it.”

  “Your father is so excited about this,” Helen whispered as her husband marched across the street and disappeared down a quiet side street.

  Ten minutes later, the Studebaker pulled up along the curb. Leroy stepped out of the car and walked up to Graham with keys dangling in his hand.

  “Here you go! She runs great!”

  “What?! You had it repaired?” Graham was flabbergasted.

  “Sure did. Your mother drove our Ford, and I drove the Studebaker up here today. I figured a car would come in handy your last year of school. You can drive home any weekend you’re not working or don’t have too much schoolwork.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I don’t know what to say.” This time it was Graham who gave his father a big hug. Leroy reciprocated by holding onto his son for a minute before letting go. It felt good to express his love for his father. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done so.

  * * *

  It was after seven o’clock when his parents left campus. Graham sat on his bed and studied the other half of the shared room. His roommate had unpacked and organized his desk and closet but had not yet returned to campus. Although they had never met, he could see his roomie was neat and organized. From the textbooks on his desk, it looked as if he were a civil engineering major.

  Graham stood and slid open the window, admitting the sounds of students laughing and music blaring in the quad. He felt as if this were a new beginning. He had a life-changing experience in Yellowstone that altered his perspective, and now he had a chance to mend the relationship with his father.

  He reached under his shirt and felt the eagle–bear claw necklace, fondling the three glass chevron beads given to him by Makawee. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, recalling her face in the moonlight the evening he departed. Graham resolved to drive home at his first opportunity to share the story of his amazing vision-quest journey with Redfield.

  Chapter 32

  October 1971

  It was a perfect afternoon to go to the library. Thousands of fans had streamed to Beaver Stadium, where the football team was scheduled to play the cadets from the US Military Academy. By noon, the walkways that crisscrossed the campus were mostly deserted.

  As Graham entered the main library, he observed there was an extra measure of quiet. The sparse number of patrons in the building were here only because they were serious about academics. Why else would a student choose to cloister among stacks of b
ooks on a crisp, sunny fall afternoon?

  While Graham was conscientious about his studies, his library visit had another purpose. He wanted to do research related to his time travel.

  The middle-aged woman at the information desk directed him to the room where the microfilm was cataloged. An assistant greeted him in an interior room on the second floor, where eight box-shaped microfilm readers sat atop long wooden tables. The genial woman offered to help him locate documents. When Graham requested a list of Pennsylvania newspapers archived on film, the clerk pulled out a large reference book. They discovered the current Gettysburg Times was once a weekly publication named the Adams Star and Sentinel in 1871. Fortunately, copies of the paper were available on microfilm.

  The librarian helpfully located the film and showed Graham how to spool it onto the reader and operate the machine to view the magnified images on the screen. He quickly learned how to scroll the pages and located copies of the paper published in August 1871. Soon he was lost reading local news and gossip of the day and had to force himself to focus only on notices about travel. After acquiring a headache from scanning hundreds of densely printed articles on blurry pages, his diligence was rewarded. He gasped when he saw the single paragraph in the “Miscellaneous” section of the August 21 edition just above an advertisement by a local merchant for “Fashionable Hats, Caps, and Bonnets.”

  Adventure in the West: Mr. David Graham of Adams County writes he is traveling with a large team led by Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, principal geologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The group is exploring the Yellowstone region of northwestern Wyoming. Mr. Graham reports the area has an abundance of hot water geysers, bubbling hot springs, and majestic waterfalls.

  Graham leaned back in his chair and stared at the words he had written one hundred years earlier under the pseudonym David Graham. In a strange way, this tiny article tucked into an obscure local newspaper validated his sanity. There were times since his return when he had questioned if his experience had been real. This was tangible proof.

  He had other valuable artifacts from his time travel that verified his journey. The chevron beads on the eagle–bear claw necklace he wore around his neck were among his most prized possessions. But he also cherished something even more. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a photograph of a beautiful young Indian woman sitting on a rock outcropping with Yellowstone Lake in the background. He studied Makawee’s diamond-shaped face, her thick, braided hair, and the dark-green obsidian turtle pendant suspended on her necklace. The woman in the photograph was not some imaginary lover from a young man’s dream. She was real. They had walked together, talked over a campfire, and made love on a buffalo hide. And now she was part of his past.

  The photo reminded him of his second research mission. He tucked it back in his shirt pocket, unspooled the microfilm, and approached the information desk. He inquired if they had copies of census records for American Indians in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The librarian’s eyes brightened.

  “Why, yes we do! We recently received some film from the US Census Bureau. I remember cataloging them. Let’s go have a look.”

  Twenty minutes later, Graham was again seated at the microfilm reader, scanning images from a handwritten journal with the heading “Census of the Crow Indians of Crow Agency, Montana, taken by Henry J. Armstrong, August, 1885.”

  The journal entries were grouped by family units. Each entry listed the person’s Indian name, English name, sex, relation, and age. Because the thousands of entries were entered randomly, Graham soon became discouraged with his effort to find Makawee’s name.

  Just when he was about to give up, an image appeared on the viewer that made him bolt upright in his chair. He double-checked the entry before frenziedly grabbing a pencil and jotting down the information in a notebook:

  Indian Name: Makawee

  English Name: Earth Maiden

  Sex: F

  Relation: Mother

  Age: 35

  There was only one other entry in Makawee’s family unit.

  Indian Name: Nahkash

  English Name: Turtle

  Sex: F

  Relation: Daughter

  Age: 13

  His hands trembled with excitement as he gazed at the information on the screen. He had found her! The name and her age were consistent with the young woman he had met in 1871. It indicated she had given birth to a daughter named Nahkash in 1872. Yet something was notably different with this entry. All other family groupings listed the husband first. Any single entries were designated as “widow” or “widower” if the spouse was deceased. But there was no entry for a husband’s name. Did this mean she never married?

  Graham discounted the anomaly. These were handwritten entries, after all. Perhaps the Indian agent made a mistake when he recorded the information for Makawee’s family. He was pleased to know she had started a family of her own but surprised she had become a mother so quickly.

  He closed his notebook, returned the film to the librarian, and exited the library. Graham held up his hand to shield his eyes from the bright late-afternoon sun as he walked down the steps toward his dorm.

  As he pushed his way through the throngs of football fans flooding the pathways in the opposite direction from the stadium, he thought about next weekend. He planned to drive home and visit Redfield, the one person with whom he could truly confide about his vision-quest experience.

  * * *

  It was just past three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon when Graham eased the Studebaker next to the end unit of Big Hill Camp. He walked up to Redfield’s room and rapped on the door. After waiting a minute, he knocked again, only harder. When there was no response, he turned to walk away but stopped when he heard a shuffling noise on the other side of the door. A bedraggled man cracked open the door and shielded his eyes from the bright daylight.

  “Who is it?”

  “Graham.”

  Redfield seemed confused for a second, then smiled broadly. He opened the door and waved his visitor inside.

  Graham stepped into the darkened room and could see he had awakened his friend. The bed was unkempt, with a brown wool blanket gathered into a pile on one end. An empty bottle of Wild Turkey lay on the floor beside a coffee can half-full of cigarette butts.

  “Gra’am, it’s great to see ya’! Sorry ’bout the mess. Got paid last night and had a private party. Catchin’ up on my sleep.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Redfield. I wrote and indicated I would be coming home from school this weekend. Is this a bad time to visit?” It was clear the Crow was hungover, but Graham desperately wanted to share his story.

  “Just let me wash up quick and make some coffee. I wanna hear about Yellowstone. Have a seat.”

  Graham removed a dirty plate and a newspaper from one of the vinyl chairs and sat at the small table while Redfield went to the bathroom. When he returned, he put a heaping teaspoon of Taster’s Choice freeze-dried coffee into two coffee mugs and filled them with boiling water.

  “Hope you like it black,” he said, handing a mug to Graham. “Don’t have any milk.”

  “Black is fine.”

  “Well, now, tell me all about your adventure.”

  Graham drew in a deep breath and exhaled before speaking. He described the night at the Dragon’s Mouth in detail and paused his story at the moment he had awakened in the previous century.

  “Do you believe me?” Graham asked, looking for affirmation from his friend about his otherworldly experience.

  “I heard stories about those who traveled back to see their ancestors during a vision quest. But I never knew if these claims were true or simply legends passed down through the generations. How can you be sure this wasn’t just a dream?”

  Graham was disappointed his mentor did not accept his word immediately.

  “Let me tell you what happened while I was in the park a hundred years ago.”

  Redfield slid his chair away from the table,
crossed his legs, and gulped some coffee.

  “Go ahead.”

  Graham spoke almost nonstop for nearly an hour. He recounted being found by the Hayden group, rowing the Annie to Stevenson Island, meeting Makawee and Rides Alone, assisting William Henry Jackson, barely avoiding disaster at the hot spring, sparring with Lt. Doane, nearly drowning on the lake, surviving a close encounter with a sow grizzly, and being abducted by renegade Blackfeet. He finished by describing the night he summoned the spirits to take him back to the present time.

  Redfield remained stoic, sipping his coffee and listening intently to the young man’s story.

  “That’s quite a tale,” Redfield acknowledged as he stood and stretched his legs. “It’s certainly more than anyone could have dreamed.”

  “So, you believe me?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Graham was relieved. Redfield was the only person who could understand how his experience was possible.

  “Gra’am, this is important. Did you find healing and a direction for your life?”

  “Healing?”

  “Yes. Recall in my vision you were a wounded eagle with red breast feathers. If you had a successful vision quest, you should have been healed.”

  “Actually, no,” Graham said despondently. “While I was in the world of the previous century, I had perfect hearing. And it was wonderful! But upon returning to my own time, I discovered I am still one-sided deaf.”