Dedication
Dedicated to the Sicangu Lakota people, and to my sons, David (Tatanka Ohitika) and Sasha (Tatanka Ta Oyate)
Epigraph
It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
—Tatanka Iyotake/Sitting Bull
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
I leaned back in the seat of my old Ford Pinto, listening to the sounds coming from the Depot, the reservation’s only tavern. There was a stream of Indians and white ranchers going inside. I knew Guv Yellowhawk was there with his buddies, pounding beers and drinking shots. Guv taught gym at the local school—football, basketball, soccer. But, word was, he sometimes got a little too involved with his students, both boys and girls. I was going to let him get good and drunk, then the real party would start. I had brass knuckles and a baseball bat stowed in my trunk, but those wouldn’t be necessary. Guv was a fat-ass piece of shit, with a frybread gut as big as a buffalo’s ass.
I’d been hired to beat the hell out of Guv by the father of a little girl at the school. Guv had sneaked up on the girl in the bathroom, held her down, and raped her. The girl’s parents had confronted the school’s principal, but Guv came from one of the most powerful families on the rez, and the school refused to take any action. The principal had even threatened a lawsuit against the parents for making a false accusation. The tribal police couldn’t do anything. The feds prosecuted all felony crimes on the rez, and they didn’t mess with any crime short of murder. Now the little girl was too scared to go back to her class, and he was free to molest other kids.
I’d waived my fee for this job. Usually I charged a hundred bucks for each tooth I knocked out and each bone I broke, but I decided to kick Guv’s ass for free. I’d hated him for years—even as a teenager, he was a mean asshole who’d terrorized other kids, especially iyeskas like me. Of course, Guv had always been accompanied by his gang; I couldn’t remember him ever fighting solo. But tonight was his time.
The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” drifted through the door of the bar to the parking lot, leaving little melodic ripples like ghosts in my head. I lit a cigarette and waited for Guv. He’d come out, sooner or later.
An hour later, I spotted him walking out of the bar. He was singing an off-key tune and stumbling. I slipped out of the Pinto and crouched behind his shiny new pickup. He’d parked at the far end of the lot so that no one would ding his expensive ride. That suited me just fine—I could enact some Indian justice away from any of Guv’s drinking buddies.
I moved out from the shadows. He wore faded jeans and a T- shirt with a Fighting Sioux mascot. His eyes were foggy and he stank of beer. I could see the birthmark on his forehead that looked like a little tomahawk.
“Hey, Guv.”
“The fuck?” He squinted into the darkness, unable to pinpoint who was speaking to him.
“It’s Virgil.”
“Who?”
“Virgil Wounded Horse.”
“Oh. Are you drinking, or what? The bar just closed.”
“Yeah, I know. I was waiting for you.”
“What for?”
“Grace Little Thunder.”
Guv’s face darkened. “Ain’t seen her.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“I take care of the wakanheja. Show ’em how to be Lakota. Sometimes the parents don’t appreciate it.”
“The way of the world, huh?” I moved between Guv and the truck.
“I teach the kids, help their families. Sometimes they want more than I can give.”
“Saint Guv.”
“Just a guy.”
“A guy who likes to cornhole the boys and finger the girls.”
“You know how kids are, they want attention. They make shit up, people make a fuss over them.”
“The other kids making shit up too? I heard about you and little Joey Dupree.”
Guv tried to move past me. “I don’t need this bullshit. I ain’t seen you out there, helping the oyate. From what I hear, you don’t do nothing. You got shit to say, take it up with Principal Smith. I’m getting outta here.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Look, asshole, Grace Little Thunder’s family is nothing but trash. Her mom’s a drunk, and her dad ain’t worked in ten years.”
“That girl is only nine years old.”
“Eat shit. What business is it of yours—”
I landed a hard body shot to Guv’s midsection. The punch would have knocked most men over, but his massive stomach absorbed most of the blow.
“Iyeska motherfucker!” Guv snarled, and lunged at me.
I saw the move coming, sidestepped it, and smashed him in the jaw.
Guv shook his head like a wet dog. How the fuck was he still standing up? I thought about grabbing the baseball bat, then felt a blinding pain in my side. A blow to the kidney, then another, this one worse than the first. Waves of electricity. Neural impulses. Gotta stay up, don’t go down, or it’s finished. Reeling, dizzy, I tried to puzzle out a strategy, but my mind was like an iceberg, slowly bobbing in the waters.
“You half-breed bastard!” he roared.
I felt Guv’s spittle on my face, and then I was on the ground. Shit. He kicked me in the back, over and over, each blow a jackhammer. I tried to maneuver through the cloud in my brain. Guv panted, out of breath, running out of gas. Grab his feet, I thought.
I snaked out my arm and yanked his legs. He went down with a thud, and I saw my opening. I stood up, grabbed his right arm, and twisted it behind his back until I met some resistance. Then I twisted some more.
“How you like that, you son of a bitch?” I said.
Guv looked up at me and hissed, “Fuck you, halfie.”
I had to hand it to him, he had some balls. I flashed back to high school when I’d been much smaller, not the big guy I was now. I remembered all the times I’d been held down and beaten by Guv and the other full-bloods, my angry tears, the humiliation still with me.
I wondered if I should let Guv go, show him the mercy I’d never been given. That was the Lakota way, wasn’t it? Wacantognaka, one of the seven Lakota values—it meant compassion, generosity, kindness, forgiveness. I remembered the lessons from my teachers back at school. They’d taught that the greatest honor, the greatest bravery, came when a warrior chose to let his enemy go free and touched him with the coup stick. Legend was that even Crazy Horse had shown his courage by counting coup on a Pawnee warrior once, chasing him across the river, but deciding not to kill him, to honor his bravery and grant him his freedom. I knew that the honorable thing to do—the Lakota way—was to set Guv free without any more punishment.
Fuck that.
I twisted his arm until it came loose fr
om the socket with a sickening crunch. Then I stepped back and kicked him in the cheek with all my force, snapping his head back violently. I took my boot heel and smashed it down on his face, teeth snapping like stale potato chips. I kneeled down and grabbed Guv’s hair.
“Listen to me, you goddamn scumbag. You ever touch another kid at that school, I’ll cut your dick off and shove it down your throat. Hear me, skin?”
He didn’t say anything. His left eye was swollen and bloody, and his nose seemingly gone, pounded back into his face. Blood streamed from the black hole of his former nose and mouth.
“How’s that for counting coup, asshole?”
I leaned over to see if he was still breathing. A few faint breaths. I saw some teeth lying on the concrete. They looked like little yellow tombstones. I scooped them up and stuck them in my pocket.
2
I opened the door to the shack that the government calls a house. Rap music was pounding, and the smell of frying meat had stunk up the place. My nephew, Nathan, had cooked up some cheap hamburger and was dipping a piece of old bread in the grease. His short black hair stuck straight up, a dark contrast to his light brown skin and hazel eyes. He was wearing his favorite hoodie, a grimy blue sweatshirt with the high school’s mascot—the Falcons—on the front. The music was so loud, he didn’t even hear me come in until I poked him in the ribs.
He’d been living with me for the last three years, ever since his mom—my sister, Sybil—died in a car accident. His dad was long gone, and there was no way I’d let him go to one of those foster homes or boarding schools. Sybil had been driving to work when someone hit her head-on. I was the one who had to tell Nathan that his mom had gone to the spirit world. The look on his face that day had stayed with me.
Nathan was fourteen now and had finally settled down some. Right after his mom died, he’d started skipping school and breaking car windows with his friends. He’d said he didn’t need school because he was going to be a famous Indian rapper—the red Tupac. I told him that was fine, but if I got stuck paying for another smashed window, I’d sell his video game console. Lately he’d changed his tune and was talking about college. Somebody from the local university had talked at his school and lit a fire under his ass. I didn’t know if that fire was going to stay lit, but I’d been hiding half of the money I’d earned from my last few jobs in a Red Wing shoebox at the back of the closet. I’d drunk up most of my cash back in the day, but that wouldn’t happen again. I’d quit drinking for good. The money I saved would pay for Nathan’s college. He’d be the first in our family to go.
“Hey old man,” he said. As he lifted his bread out of the grease, some of the hot oil landed on my arm. It felt like the tip of a switchblade.
“Can you turn that shit down?” I pointed to the boom box on the counter.
“That ain’t shit, skin!” He smirked. “That’s some old-school Biggie.”
“Yeah, whatever, just turn it off.” I grabbed some of the old bread and looked around for more food. “We got any of that cheese left?”
“Nah, but you can have some of this.” The pound of fatty hamburger I’d bought last week had cooked down to almost nothing. I scooped some up with the bread, the grease leaving trails on the plate like an oil spill.
“What happened to you?” he asked. From the look on his face, I knew it was bad. I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror.
“I wiped out on the bike.”
“Uh, okay.” He returned to his bread.
“We got any aspirin?” I could feel the pain in my back and sides starting to come in. Tomorrow would be rough.
“Don’t think so,” he said. We barely had money for toilet paper sometimes, much less luxuries like painkillers.
“So, what happened at school today?”
“Nothing.”
I hadn’t expected to get any news. He’d always been quiet, but he’d cut off most real communication in the last year or so. To learn anything, I had to ask his best friend, Jimmy, when he came around. For some reason, Jimmy loved to talk to me, but I couldn’t get shit out of Nathan. Maybe he opened up to Jimmy’s ina when he went over there. Still, I tried to pry information out of him whenever I could.
“You still reading that Zuma book in class?”
“Zuya,” he said. “No, we’re done.”
“Oh right, Zuya.” The school had assigned a book about Lakota traditions—one of the few books on the topic written by an actual Lakota, not a white man. Nathan had hated it, said it was corny and stupid. But I’d seen him reading it on his bed at night, when he’d usually be playing video games or watching some horror movie for the twentieth time.
“What’re you reading now?”
“Some Shakespeare stuff. I can’t understand it.”
I hadn’t been able to understand it either, back in the day, but I knew he needed to keep trying.
“Maybe you can get the movie or something? Help you follow the story?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I gave up and went looking for some Tylenols.
“Hey, I want to ask you,” Nathan said. “Can I use the car tomorrow night? Please?”
I could tell he really wanted my old Pinto; usually he’d call it the “rez bomb.” Not to mention asking nicely, which was rare. I’d taught him to drive a few years back, but still wouldn’t let him ride my battered Kawasaki motorcycle. South Dakota allowed kids to drive at age fourteen, but the tribal cops didn’t care much about enforcing the law. Plenty of younger kids drove around the rez.
“You snagging with Jimmy now? Chasin’ high school girls?”
He looked down, embarrassed. “Naw, there’s supposed to be a party at the center tomorrow. Some dudes I met are gonna be there.”
“All right, but you might need to put some gas in the tank. Barely enough to get to town and back.”
His face lit up like a slot machine paying out a jackpot.
“And no drinking beers, or I’ll kick your ass,” I said.
He started to go back to his little bedroom, but stopped and turned to me. “Hey, I forgot. Your friend Tommy came by, said he needs to talk to you. Said you’re not answering your phone. Told me to tell you he’ll be at the center till late, said you should go there if you can.”
Shit, what now?
I looked at my phone and saw that Tommy had called three times. I called back, but there was no answer. Not surprising. Cell phone service on the rez was hit-and-miss. I was tempted to let this wait, but I needed a smoke pretty bad, so I decided to run to town. Maybe someone would have an Excedrin they could spot me.
I took the motorcycle to save the gas in the Pinto for Nathan. As I rode, my mind kept drifting to my sister, Sybil. She’d had a hard life. Her scumbag husband had left her when Nathan was born and taken off for California. She’d worked for the tribe as an office assistant, barely bringing home enough money to buy food, but she’d made beaded necklaces and earrings to sell for extra cash. She’d even taken some classes to finish her high school degree. I hadn’t helped out as much as I should have, but I had my own problems. After a particularly bad night, I used to go over and hang out with Sybil and Nathan. She’d tell me I needed to eat, then make some hamburger soup and brew some coffee. I’d play with the baby while she studied and did her reading for school. On those nights, it was easy to imagine that I had a real family. I thought about a conversation we’d had, right before she died.
Brother, you remember when we were kids, and we used to draw winter counts, like they did in the old days?
Yeah, I guess so.
Winter counts were the calendar system used by the Lakota, but they weren’t like modern ones. I’d loved the little pictures in the calendars, each image showing the most significant event from the past year. Sybil and I used to make our own with paper and crayons when we were kids.
Do you remember what symbol we used for the year Mom died?
Why do you ask?
Because it’s important to remember.
It
’s no big deal.
Yes, it is! I feel like I’m forgetting Mom.
You’re just getting older. It’s hard to remember stuff from back then.
I used to be able to remember everything. Now it seems like it’s all going away, getting fuzzy in my head. You know, I had a dream last week that I left the rez and never came back.
Yeah, where’d you go? Paris, France?
I don’t know, smart-ass, can’t remember . . . But this dream, it was so real. An eagle flew in the house and started to talk, and I knew what it was saying, even though its beak didn’t move. The eagle told me to get ready, that I had to leave soon, I was going on a journey. I asked how long I’d be gone, but it wouldn’t tell me, just looked at me with these strange eyes. I asked if Nathan was coming with me, but it flew away.
Hey, you know that weird shit will mess up your head.
I’d laughed then and tried to cheer her up, but she’d just looked away.
I PARKED MY BIKE by the entrance and stuck the keys in my pocket. The community center was a squat gray bunker, with cheap vinyl windows that were clouded up like an old man’s cataracts. The center served as the informal gathering spot for the rez. There was a pool table for the teens, and tables and chairs for the elders. During the day there were usually at least a dozen teenagers hanging around, gossiping and flirting with each other. The elders would be complaining about the youngsters and talking about the old days.
I headed to the basketball court, where I saw about twenty teens and ten adults. I made my way through the people, who were gathered in clusters and talking. Two of the younger kids were trying to freestyle rap, but their attempts sounded pretty lame, even to my rock-and-roll ears. I kept an eye out for anyone I might have had a conflict with in the past, anybody who might still hold a grudge. Didn’t need more problems tonight.
I spotted Tommy, who sometimes went by the nickname “Ik-Tommy,” after the trickster spider in Lakota children’s tales. He and I had been friends since high school, but had been out of contact while he did a two-year stint at the state prison in Sioux Falls for aggravated assault. Four years ago in Rapid City, a group of three college boys spotted Tommy drinking a beer in a park and thought they’d have some fun with a drunk Indian, but he wasn’t drunk and wouldn’t put up with any shit. He was a joker, but you didn’t want to mess with him. The college boys started pushing him around, but Tommy grabbed a can of Axe body spray from one of the guys’ pockets and smashed the kid in the face with it. Even though he pleaded self-defense, the prosecutor argued that the can of body spray was a dangerous weapon and Tommy got two years at the state max. In prison, he’d hooked up with some radical Native prisoners and started reading books by Vine Deloria and other Indian writers. He’d gotten out a year ago, and had been trying to convince me to join some activist groups, but I wanted no part of that.
Winter Counts Page 1