Quiet Until the Thaw

by Alexandra Fuller

  “We’re okay with kidnapping?” Squanto asked.

  “And State of South Dakota Child Protection Services isn’t? What do you think is going to happen to these babies if you don’t take them?”

  “What if her family comes for them?”

  “Well, we both know about that,” the nurse said. “Holy shit, Squanto, whose side are you on?”

  “Le-a will kill me.”

  “She’ll kill you if you don’t. I’m dialing Tray Tor Two Bulls right now.”

  “No, Chaytan. I need time to think,” Squanto said.

  “About what?” the nurse said. “About the fact you’re happy to let these babies die with total strangers. Not on my watch, you don’t.” Then she turned her attention to the phone, “Tray, that you? It’s Chaytan Cedar Face up at the hospital. Listen, húnka, we need help. O ma key ya nah.”

  Tray Tor and Squanto Are in Charge of Two Very Small Babies for Less Than Three Hours

  Tray Tor shut down KILI 90.1 for the night. “All My Relations,” he said, “this is your friendly broadcaster closing the Red Sound down for the night. I’ll be back when I’m back. Until then, you tune in to you.” He drove down from the hill in his 1974 Ford Ranger with its two hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock. Chaytan Cedar Face piled Squanto and the twins in the passenger seat and Tray Tor turned the heat on as high as it would go, which was blowtorch hot.

  “Roads are very quiet,” Tray Tor said. “So we got that going for us.”

  He eased the Ranger out into the road. “Can you see any damn thing?” he asked. “Any trees? Anything at all?” Tray Tor wound down his window a crack. “Also, you’re breathing like a fuckin’ hunting dog,” he told Squanto. “Stop damn breathing. I can’t see for damn shit.” He rubbed the windscreen vigorously and the Ranger slid, gripping the thicker piles of snow that had accumulated on the leeward side of the road.

  Squanto said, “Could you drive properly? I’m holding babies.”

  “This ain’t so easy.”

  Squanto prayed the Ranger wouldn’t get stuck with its bald tires and loose steering and intermittent clutch. He prayed the babies wouldn’t freeze to death right there in his arms. He prayed there wouldn’t be cops of any sort out in this weather.

  What a fucking Rezzed-out way to die.

  Tray Tor groped in his shirt pocket then lit a cigarette.

  “Now what are you doing?” Squanto said. “Holy shit, don’t smoke in the car. These are very sick babies! Stay on the road!”

  “Fuck,” Tray Tor said and flicked his cigarette out the crack in his window. The pickup fishtailed. “Fuck,” Tray Tor said again.

  Then the twins started crying and Squanto said, “Now look what you did. You scared the babies.”

  “It ain’t me,” Tray Tor said. “It’s you that’s holding them. Probably you’re holding them all wrong.”

  “I ain’t holding them all wrong.”

  “Then why’re they hollering like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Squanto said.

  “I do,” Tray Tor said. “They don’t like the way you’re holding them.”

  “They’re scared shitless of your driving,” Squanto said. “Fuck Tray Tor, they’re nearly dead already.”

  The 1974 Ranger fishtailed again.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Tray Tor said, the steering wheel whipping through his hands.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Squanto said.

  Part

  THREE

  The Ugly Red Stud, at Last

  The same winter storm that blew Mona onto the Rez to deliver her sickly boys also blew the Ugly Red Stud to the far edge of Rick Overlooking Horse’s meadow. Away from his herd, the Ugly Red Stud turned his back to the wind and let his head hang. His red tail streaked between his legs. The blood stilled in his haunches.

  If Rick Overlooking Horse had seen fifty winters, the Ugly Red Stud must have seen thirty at least, most of them hard and long. By January it was clear he didn’t have the rest of the freezing season’s worth of fight left in him. His ribs hung off his spine like coat hangers. His knees buckled when he walked, especially on cold, hard ground. He avoided the steep trail that led from the meadow up to the exposed grazing along the bluffs.

  The Ugly Red Stud fell during the third night of the big storm.

  By morning his carcass was hopping with scavengers.

  Vigil

  Through the obscuring veils of snow swirling from both sky and ground, Rick Overlooking Horse saw the shadowy dance of magpies and ravens at the end of the meadow, and realized what must have happened. He ran out of the teepee, the ground tipping away from him in the dizzying ground blizzard, shouting and waving his arms. “Hey choon sh nee yo! Hee ya! Hee ya!”

  Magpies and ravens clattered into the meadow, and hopped about on the snow awkwardly. A coyote trotted off to within what she calculated to be a stone’s throw, and then lay on her belly, her chin on her paws, observing the man. Rick Overlooking Horse laid both his hands on the Ugly Red Stud’s side. Then he sank slowly into the snow, his face buried in the creature’s salt-smelling coat.

  There is no word for “good-bye” in Lakota, only, “Doksa ake waunkte.” Meaning “I will see you again, later.” Since all things are connected, always and for all time, there is no avoiding reunion.

  Tray Tor Two Bulls Seeks Refuge

  In Rick Overlooking Horse’s dream, there were tunnels everywhere, and inside everything.

  He looked up, and saw the sky was a warren of white tunnels, made of clouds.

  There were also blond tunnels in the meadow, knitted from dead grass.

  There were chalk tunnels underground, carved from clay.

  There were yellow and brown wooden tunnels in trees.

  Rick Overlooking Horse looked down at his body and saw that it too was riddled with red tunnels, carved from his own flesh.

  It was as if all nations were preparing for war.

  The air was humming with urgency, and violence.

  Rick Overlooking Horse sat up.

  There was shouting. It was getting closer. “Oh ma key yo!”

  “Huh!” Rick Overlooking Horse replied, standing up.

  “Omakiya po!” a man shouted.

  Rick Overlooking Horse pulled on a shirt and jacket. “Huh!” he shouted again.

  “Rick Overlooking Horse!” Tray Tor Two Bull’s head appeared between the flaps of the teepee’s entrance. “Ee nah x nee yo!” Tray Tor was breathless. “We have two babies. Weak as kittens.”

  Ready to Move

  It’s good and bad, and it says a lot if you, and most of the people you know, are prepared at any moment to leave where you are, with nothing more than what you might be able to carry, and to never look back.

  It says a lot if loss is something you’re born knowing how to do; and something you’ve honed with years of practice.

  You can’t have dark without light.

  You can’t know wisdom without suffering.

  You can’t insist on a life. A life insists on you.

  The Lakota know this: Let go of everything that was not meant for you.

  Le-a didn’t look back.

  She didn’t even shut the door to Squanto’s HUD unit.

  When the kid from next door came over with a message via Chaytan Cedar Face that orphaned twin Indian baby boys had been delivered to the teepee in Rick Overlooking Horse’s meadow, there wasn’t a weapon in the arsenal of any army in the world that could stop Le-a from getting to them. “My babies,” she said, blundering out into the snow.

  The kid stood on the step and watched Le-a disappear. “Shit,” he said.

  It was a blizzard like you hear tell people die in, and there was Le-a wading through the snow in nothing more than the clothes she’d been in when the kid from next door had burst into the HUD unit with the news.
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br />   Exactly as Squanto had told Tray Tor she’d be.

  “She’ll be north of the junction by now,” Squanto said. “And she won’t be dressed for this weather. You got to get back out there, Tray. She’s gonna be near outta her mind.”

  So for the second time that night, Tray Tor took the 1974 Ford Ranger out onto the black ice, blown white roads. He thought about how when you were an Indian it was always this way. Nothing happened for days on end, just a slow drip of moments of no particular note, and then suddenly everything started to happen at once, like it had gotten tired of all the waiting.

  Staying Babies

  No one could say what induced the boys to stay, not even Rick Overlooking Horse who watched over them day and night for that first week; dropping warm mare’s milk in their mouths; breathing thin tendrils of Wahupta and sage smoke over them; sleeping with them on his body, their skin touching his.

  When it was her turn to hold them, Le-a sang to the babies softly, as if trying to incubate them with her voice, “Cante waste hoksila, ake istima. Hankepi ki waste.” It was song that soothed anyone who heard it; the old Lakota words so gentle, so optimistic, so peaceful. Go back to sleep, good-hearted boy. The night is good. Go back to sleep.

  Out in the meadow, the storm continued unabated for days and days. The wind howled through the emerging bones of the Ugly Red Stud. Coyotes padded through the thick snow from their dens, their eyes partially battened against the storm, yipping and trilling. The snow around the Ugly Red Stud’s body turned pink with the stain of blood. But finally, even the hunger of the scavengers could not keep up with the storm, and everything was white, and waiting and silent.

  The Moon of Fattening

  The earth turned, and the sun grew stronger.

  Snow around the teepee became like mashed sweet potatoes, then like kernels of corn, then granular sugar, and finally it melted completely and puddled up in the tufts of last year’s old grass. In early April, shoots of grass, fluorescent with youth, emerged from the yellow thatch. The Ugly Red Stud’s bones sheltered a crop of fat maggots and on the first really hot morning of the season metallic-sheened bluebottles erupted from the carcass.

  Life returns furiously fast when it can.

  Before month’s end, spiderlike harvestmen appeared, leggy emissaries from winter’s dark soil. After that, small clouds of blue butterflies showed up, coagulating from the sky in fragments. Robins returned and sheltered from spring storms in tangles of cottonwood branches. Then bluebirds descended, flashing iridescent in the meadow; and the tiny wrens with their big songs. Tree swallows postured and dallied in the cottonwoods. Chickadees held noisy counsel, and within days they were gone from their winter meadow to their summer mountains.

  Then the mares started to drop their foals, and by the time the little creek was running ice free, all but three of the Ugly Red Stud’s mares had colts at their flanks. Rick Overlooking Horse roped the barren mares and brought them down to graze closer to the teepee, where they’d have an easier time of it; elderly matrons, swaybacked, with faraway eyes, and attitudes of resigned patience.

  In another two weeks, the cottonwoods were glittering with lime green shiny leaves. The ravens began courting and chuckling along the creek. Redwing blackbirds shrilled from the willows, where their nests held clutches of eggs. Snakes sunbathed on the dark south-facing rocks.

  The sun warmed the canvas of the teepee, and lit its interior a warm yellow. Le-a held the babies’ tiny faces toward the sun so that they’d always and in all ways be able to find their ways back to this place, and to her.

  Rez-Famous Babies

  On the Rez, there are two kinds of famous.

  There’s world famous, like Michael Jackson.

  Then there’s Rez famous, like Le-a Brings Plenty, famous for her DWIs. Or, Somebody Overlooking Horse, famous for not dying. And Billy Mills, famous for having the community hall in Pine Ridge named after him.

  In this way, Jerusalem and Daniel became Rez famous, not only for being born in that winter storm, but also because of their dramatic rescue from the hospital, and their current status as children of Rick Overlooking Horse’s meadow.

  It seemed everyone on the Rez needed the twins to make it to dry land. Chief Oliver Red Cloud himself took a Monday noon slot on KILI 90.1 to address the Oglala Lakota Oyate about the Miracle of the Twins, first in Lakota and then, translating himself as usual, in English.

  “Mitakuye Oyasin,” he started. “We are long past the day when we can think, speak, and act as if our ways will be understood, or respected, by anyone but ourselves.”

  His speech spilled over into the one o’clock show. “We cannot allow our children to be stolen from us any more. We’ll have no more Split Feathers from our sacred fire; no more will we allow our children to be raised as Red Shadows in a White Man’s world.”

  Chief Red Cloud probably would have filled the two o’clock show too if Tray Tor hadn’t shut the old man down. “Thank you to our esteemed chief, Oliver Red Cloud,” he said, sliding his fingers over the controls, “for those words of wisdom. You’re chillin’ on KILI 90.1,” he said. “Here’s some tracks to ease the state of your mind. Kick it! Ladies and Rezidents. Keep it Red, keep it real, and keep it on the Ridge.”

  An Origin Story

  Le-a Brings Plenty talks and talks while she rubs oil into the babies’ skin and hair. She tells them windblown spore, the kind that make up whole glorious cottonwood forests, are no less deliberate than they are. She says everyone else on Turtle Island has come from somewhere else. But not Jerusalem and Daniel and everyone like them. She says Indians have no real beginning and no real end because their people have been infinitely here.

  “Wakan Tanka has never not been. And you never won’t be,” Le-a Brings Plenty tells the tiny, sickly babies. “You are C’anupa Oyate. You are the deliberate, conscious choice of all your ancestors and you are the ancestors of those who will come behind you. You are meant to be exactly now, exactly as you are.”

  The babies unfurl a little. Le-a stretches their fingers open, and holds out both of her thumbs so they can grip one each. “See?” she tells them. “It’s not all bad. And you are such good babies. Such important babies. Stay here with us for a while.”

  Preschool for Indian Babies

  In late summer, when the air was easy on young lungs, Le-a puts the babies on a blanket in the meadow among the herd of grazing Indian ponies. “Wanji, núnpa, yámi, tópa,” she says, counting the horses. “Wanji, núnpa, yámi, tópa,” she sings. The twins stare at the horses’ legs and faces. They pull on fat blades of grass, and put leaves into their mouths. “Wanji, núnpa, yámi, tópa,” Le-a croons over and over.

  Their second summer, the boys hold onto the legs of the barren old mares and learn to walk. Their third summer, the boys are able to scramble onto the mares, and persuade them, by holding onto their manes and flapping their legs like windmills at their sides, to trot reluctantly around the meadow.

  Squanto takes them swimming in the water hole where the creek joins the river. The boys circle the eddy line, and surprise snapping turtles and bellowing bullfrogs. The deep pool burbles, oily, black, old mud stirs up. There’s life and decomposing life in everything.

  Squanto throws the boys skyward, over and over.

  They soar for a few seconds, then come splashing back down into his waiting arms.

  Splash!

  He takes them berry picking, root gathering, and wood chopping. He shows them how to walk in the shadows to conserve energy in the summer, and to walk in the sun for the same reason in the winter. He shows them how to quench their dry mouths by biting into an aspen-sheltered rosehip, preferably one that has been through a frost.

  He shows them how to sleep under a horse for shelter, and how to use a horse as windbreaker, weapon, or shield. He shows them how to make rope from horsehair, and leather from hide. He shows them how to find honey, and
collect it. He shows them how to make a fire, and also how to douse one.

  Children’s Questions, Answered

  What happens at the end of the world, Tunkashila?” Jerusalem asks.

  Rick Overlooking Horse prods the fire. Sparks spiral up into the teepee’s smoke hole. “No one knows.”

  “Why?”

  “No one who has come back from there has told about it,” Rick Overlooking Horse says.

  “Shhh,” Le-a says.

  Another few minutes pass.

  Jerusalem thinks and thinks. “Why does the moon stay up?” he asks.

  “To remind us how little we know,” Rick Overlooking Horse says.

  There is more silence, except for the pop of the fire.

  Finally Daniel asks, “Are you old?”

  “Yes.”

  The wind picks up, and the teepee sways.

  The boys nestle under the blanket.

  Rick Overlooking Horse lights his pipe. He smokes a little. Then he starts to talk very softly. The boys settle. Le-a turns toward Squanto, and puts her hands around his chest. She closes her eyes.

  Rick Overlooking Horse taps out his pipe, refills it, puffs some more.

  How Turtle Island Got Its Name

  In the beginning before this beginning,” Rick Overlooking Horse says. “There was another world. But the people in that other world were greedy and violent. Wakan Tanka was unhappy. So he made rain and rain. The earth split apart. Water gushed up through the cracks. Everything was flooded. All of the people and nearly all of the animals were drowned. Only Crow survived.”

  The fire smolders. Rick Overlooking Horse nudges a fresh chunk of wood onto it. Outside, the old barren mares crop the grass, and from time to time, one of them blows contentedly. A great horned owl hoots his territorial call, and somewhere a distance away, perhaps in the bluffs, another male hoots in reply.