Roughnecks

by James J. Patterson

  OK dropped a heavy arm about Zak’s shoulder. And he gave him a friendly jerk to his massive body, hugging him close for a moment. It was an oddly familial gesture.

  “So what we call the Great Spirit is really a Christian translation, because Christians have to turn their gods into people, rich feudal lords and such. But a more accurate translation of what these folks call Wakan Tanka isn’t Great Spirit, but Great Mystery. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

  “Certainly. If you let it, you can get this territory in your blood, I’m sure of that.”

  “Well a lot of blood ran hot and spilled freely here. There’s no way you couldn’t sense it one way or another.” OK’s arm returned to Zak’s shoulder as he pointed with the other. “Okay, do you see that little bald mound at the top of that little hill about fifty yards off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s a famous place called Teaching Hill. It’s where Crazy Horse and many other wise men stood and spoke to the many nations that would gather here for prayer and for council. You could say that to the Indians, it’s kinda like seeing where Jesus gave his sermon on the mount. The ancestors of the Kiowas, Mandan, Erikara, Sioux, Cheyenne, and who knows how many others, came here seeking visions and to pray. It’s where they all decided that the White Man’s incursion into their territory would stop at the Black Hills, live or die. Little Big Horn wasn’t long after.

  “So anyway Zak, I’m going to climb this mountain and I’m going to tie Grandma’s pouch up at the top. It might take a while. You can roll back into town for a spell and come get me later, if you prefer, but I’d be honored if you’d join me.”

  And Zachary Harper looked into OK Wellman’s dark black eyes and said, “The honor would be mine.”

  “You’re cool, Zak, I see now why Archer picked you. Okay, let’s grab some stuff from the Jeep. The Park Service rangers don’t come up here much, they let the worshippers be, but just in case,” with a thick long finger OK wrote the word “Tatonka” in big letters in the dirt on the hood of the Jeep.

  “I christen this Jeep Tatonka! Zak’s mighty buffalo spirit! That’s the word I was looking for, man!” OK Wellman laughed. “That’s what it was, in the dreams we were callin’ your rig Tatonka! Hot damn!”

  OK grabbed the bag of sandwiches and his leather bag, Zak grabbed the water jug, and OK unrolled his new sleeping bag and draped it over his shoulders saying, “It can get cold up there.” Zak grabbed his and did the same.

  It took more than an hour for the two men to follow the narrow winding path up the mountain, but when they reached the top, it was easy to see why such a place might be described in mystical terms. The view was astonishing, in that the land below was flat as a table top extending out in all directions.

  “How far can the human eye see? A hundred miles before the natural curve of the earth creates a true horizon?”

  “From up here I’d say two or three hundred miles,” OK guessed. “But think about this, there was a time, not terribly long ago, where a buffalo herd might fill that entire space you see before you.”

  “That is hard to picture, and bloody frightening.”

  “So after thousands of years of roaming gigantic herds, imagine how deep in buffalo shit this whole country is? Now, some believe it was the policy of the United States to kill off the buffalo to make way for cattle, and also to rob the Indians of their major source of sustenance.”

  “Look,” Zachary pointed east, “you can already see night approaching.” It was as though very far off a heavy black line was drawn precisely across the land, and behind it a blackness that was all encompassing.

  They stood and watched for several minutes.

  OK then set about picking up rocks and strolling about the top of the mountain, placing them here and there.

  “We must keep facing east as we pray,” Wellman said, while placing one rock, then another, and it appeared he was making a rather loosely defined circle around them both.

  “And what type of prayers are we into here?”

  “For me, prayers are always of thanks. Thanks for the gifts of air, water, land and sky, food, drink, companionship. Here we have six stones, one for each direction. We will face east, where the light comes from. We’ll feel the wind from the west, the cold from the north, the warmth from the south.” Wellman sat down and draped his sleeping bag around him. Zak did the same.

  From his leather bag OK pulled a jug of wine, a tobacco pouch, and what looked like a hand-knitted child’s sock, bright red, green, and yellow, with blue threads interlaced throughout. He took a peek inside, then tied it shut with one of several ribbons he had.

  “In there are a few strands of Granny’s hair, my own, maybe some of her grandmother’s, a tiny picture, I’m not sure of who. Old tobacco, beads, a broken crayon, personal things.”

  He set the little pouch aside and then fetched a stone from his bag. “Granny says this stone is actually from a fossilized buffalo bone, made into a pipe. I don’t know if it’s true, but then again, I don’t think it matters, it’s a good pipe.”

  He dipped his giant fingers down into the leather tobacco pouch and took out a pinch of something and placed it in the bowl.

  “Kinnikinnick, that’s the name the Indians gave their ritual smoke. The breath of life,” OK smiled and lit up, handing the pipe, the blue musky smoke swirling about, to Zak, who took a deep long toke, then coughed loud and hard. His face turned bright red and his eyes watered.

  “A ritual tobacco, some sacred tree bark, herbs, and a little extra,” OK took it back and smoked a little more. “Smoke this and you can never lie, because the breath of life can never be false.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “It goes better with this,” OK took a long pull on the wine and handed that over as well. The wine had a crisp spicy blackberry flavor, and yes, complemented the smoke very well.

  The wall of night fast approached, much as Zak had observed from the hill above Stitch Cronan’s shack, except here it was much more fantastic, pronounced, leaving a deep blue sky blanket besparkled with flickering stars as it passed overhead.

  “Some say that the Milky Way is the Spirit Path the souls of the dead take south when they are released into the heavens. Somewhere at the end is a little old woman who decides which way the spirit is to go, and gives them a nudge in that direction.”

  “I hope she’s not anyone I know,” said Zak. “You know what I always think when I see the Milky Way…I feel like a lone wolf, or some wise old elk, sitting in a forest, on the other side of the Hudson River, say, and looking at all those lights, at Manhattan, and I don’t know what it is. That I would never guess it was twelve million people, going about their lives.”

  “Wow, so you think the Milky Way is like a big teeming city,” Wellman considered the idea, “and we’re just dumb fuckin’ animals who can’t tell that’s what it is. You know you mayn’t be too far off there. I like that a lot. Damn…I like the old version too. I imagine those I’ve known who died, swimming down that highway of light. And that old woman, shoving the assholes one way, everybody else going the other.”

  “I like that version too,” said Zachary Harper.

  OK refilled the pipe. Then he held it up to the sky, “To Wakan Tanka, The Great Mystery.”

  “The Great Mystery,” repeated Zachary Harper and took another slug of wine, then traded the jug for the pipe. The thick blue smoke swirled about them both.

  OK held up his granny’s knitted pouch and blew the smoke from the pipe through it.

  “I always felt that we become manifest, corporeal, I mean, from spirithood to personhood, that is, for a reason. On purpose I mean,” Zak said as he sat back, feeling very whimsical.

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, it could only be, to my way of thinking, that we can do things here that we can’t do there. As corporeal entities, flesh and blood an
d bone, we can make decisions of consequence. Decisions that define us. Decisions that inform our spirit self as to who we really are. Our actions then becoming evidence as to how much we’ve learned, or evolved.”

  “Like give me an example.”

  “Well, like deciding to come up here with you this evening rather than just find a bar in town for a steak and a beer while you got your chore accomplished. Maybe in that other world, where we come from, where we aren’t necessarily physical beings, perhaps we can’t make those decisions of consequence. But here, because we’re flesh and bone in the here and now, those decisions, perhaps all decisions, are in one way or another irrevocable.”

  “Hmm, and the decisions we make in the other world?”

  “Perhaps there you just are what you are.”

  “Yeah, I think I get it, like decisions that also involve life and death maybe.”

  “Any decisions about anything. How late to sleep, what to eat.”

  “Some tribes believed they needed to pray to the goddess of the hunt to allow the animals that would sustain them to offer themselves for sacrifice, that’s where prayers of thanks come in. It would be a decision of consequence to go against a code like that, wouldn’t it, it would define you differently.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it in a context like that one, but yes, that fits for me.” They sat in silence and exchanged the wine and the pipe some more.

  OK gathered himself up and strolled over to a low bush and fixed Grandma’s pouch to an inner branch, muttering and speaking and humming and praying. He took other ribbons and affixed them to branches near and far.

  Zak leaned back against a rock, pulled his sleeping bag about his shoulders, and watched as a fog crept up the mountain. He could hear his own voice humming, and groaning, and singing the medicine song he had made night after night by Coster’s Creek. As the mist enveloped them, the air turned very cold, and snowflakes whirled and danced.

  In the distance down the mountain, he thought he saw something move. It disappeared, then reappeared, first behind a short tree, then behind a cluster of rocks. He got up and moved toward it. OK was with him, talking and muttering and praying all the while.

  “The sacred tobacco is the Totality, the fire we light it with, the Great Spirit, and we are smoke, without identity, without ego…”

  The figure in the smoke was a small animal. No, it was just a form moving in fog and falling snow. They moved closer.

  “The smoke is the life breath of Wakan Tanka, it is the life within you and the spirit and the breath of your Wakan being. The rocks, the plants, the stars, the beings with feathers, the beings with four legs, the beings with two, all are Wakan Tanka.” OK’s face was long, his eyes big, he blew smoke from the pipe into Zak’s face. He put his mouth over the burning bowl and blew the smoke directly into Zak’s mouth. Zak sucked it in, it was refreshing, fulfilling, and he exhaled a plume that swirled and fell and rose all about them.

  The form moved again in the fog. It caught Zak’s eye, now here, now over there. It was a woman, so young, so beautiful. She stepped out from behind a rock. She wanted to speak, she was reaching, holding something out to Zak, her sacred smoke dissipating. The snow and the fog reformed into many shapes.

  “Purification, expansion, union…” Wellman was muttering.

  Zachary turned to the sound of OK’s voice. He handed Zak the pipe, he smoked, blew the smoke into Wellman’s face. They were sitting side by side wrapped in their sleeping bags. The fog swirled, the snow fell, she appeared in front of Zak once more and stepped close, and he handed her OK’s pipe, he wanted it back, she was gone.

  He wandered the fog-draped mountaintop in search of her. Coming up the lonely path toward him, he saw a large animal. A buffalo? It stopped and sat back on his haunches the way a large dog might, blocking his way. The snow and fog turned it slowly white, until all was white, until it was covered over, until it too was gone.

  When Zak awoke, he was laying on his side wrapped in his sleeping bag. OK Wellman was sleeping behind him, wrapped in his sleeping bag, huddled together for warmth, and protection. Zak was small in Wellman’s powerful arms.

  I lost his pipe, Zak thought in a panic. He pulled free and reached about looking for it, looking for her.

  “Hey partner! What are you doing?” Wellman said into his ear.

  “I lost your pipe, I’m so sorry!”

  The air was clear. The night was cold. There was no fog, no snow.

  Wellman dug around and found the pipe. “It’s right here.”

  They picked up their gear and made it down the mountain path. They took a long, circuitous route that came to many endings, overlooking a cliff, or a stony precipice, each with its own new perspective on the surrounding scene, a different position beneath the stars. Zak thought he saw her again but no, it was just another wisp of smoke. They sat and watched and breathed in and out. Eventually they found themselves looking once again at Teaching Hill, everything painted a dark brilliant silver and blue under the late-rising moon.

  “Okay, so, there was ‘a little something extra’ in that pipe?” Zak said, as he realized he was drenched in sweat. “I could swear I’m tripping right now.”

  “You are.”

  Their boots rang loud on the gravel leading back to the Jeep.

  “Just a little gift from the southern tribes…a little peyote…in the smoke, in the wine, good for cleansing the soul and freeing the mind, don’t you think?”

  They popped a couple of beers as they drove down the mountain. The night was electric and singing; the Jeep, Tatonka, was singing too.

  “She was beautiful, I know I’ve seen her before, but I don’t know who or where. I think I’m in love with her.”

  “You’ve met the Wakan Maiden,” OK laughed. “Of course you’re in love with her. And you always will be. Did she bring you anything? Did she bring you a pipe?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, she wanted yours, and I gave it to her. She wouldn’t give it back.”

  “I hate to think what might have happened had you refused! Man, a decision of consequence, wouldn’t you say? Yes sir, all that and a white buffalo too!”

  “Well, it was covered with snow.”

  “Was it now?”Wellman laughed.

  THEY REACHED BELLE FOURCHE BEFORE dawn. Wellman’s dad had left a light on.

  XVII

  They slept late.

  It was early afternoon when they found sausages, scrambled eggs, and chopped-up potatoes, tomatoes, and onions, all in the same skillet down in OK’s dad’s kitchen. They just needed a little flame under them and some bread in the toaster. Some Old Bay seasoning would be too much to ask for, Zak thought, but he did find a bottle of Tabasco in the fridge to give the whole concoction a little jump. A note informed them that the coffee maker was good to go as well. Just push the button. They were starving.

  Arthur Wellman, or Arty, was a quiet man, slow, thoughtful. He didn’t wear jeans, he wore dungarees with suspenders, a small pipe constantly between his teeth, a straw hat shaped like a small fedora, all coming apart here and there. He was tall and lanky, a little stooped at the shoulders, and walked with a pronounced limp. His big hands were soft leather, marked by plenty of scars, gouges, and gashes, with long crooked fingers that looked like each one of them had been broken at one time or another. He had one squashed old yellow thumbnail.

  Zak could smell his flannel shirt.

  When he entered the kitchen, OK got to his feet so father and son could have a quick embrace, an old-fashioned hug, some kind of hey-howdy-hello just under their breaths.

  “Now I know you boys are in a terrific hurry,” Dad said as he got himself a cup of coffee.

  “As a matter of fact we are,” OK replied.

  “Well, c’mon out here, I’ve got something to show you.”

  They followed him out the kitchen door into the crisp a
ir and afternoon sunshine. They passed the open garage where a coral green 1971 Buick Electra with a half-vinyl roof was sitting in a state of deconstruction. Big as a boat, it looked like an old mare, sway-backed and rusting badly. The vinyl roof was peeling. Parts of the body had been sanded down and patched. The engine was in many pieces large and small. The tranny was missing. So much for OK’s new ride, Zak thought, but he said nothing, wait and see, and followed the others around back.

  “Well, whaddya think?” OK’s dad made a grand gesture with a long arm, pointing to a fat red trailer, big and round at both ends. It had what looked like new tires and was all spiffed up.

  “It’s a 1957 Flying Cloud, Airstream, whaddya think, boys?”

  Both roughnecks scratched their heads and approached it with caution, trying the door, peeping inside. It was clean and tidy, big and roomy, with lots of heavy-duty modifications. Around back, a bank of propane tanks were stacked neatly behind a thick steel cage with a big nasty lock on it.

  “I thought Airstreams were silver,” Zak said.

  “They are, and this here’s a classic. But its last owner was nervous someone might want to steal her, so he painted it red and removed all the identifying brand names and the like. But she’s a good old girl, eh?”

  OK was awestruck. “This is fuckin’ genius! Where did you get it?”

  “You remember old Jim Brand down at the Harley dealership? Well, he’s had it a long time. I think he used to sell’m even, back when, I mean. Jim and his wife used to take it on vacations every year up into the Rockies and out to the Pacific Northwest. They’ve been letting his boys use it for road trips, hunting and the like, but they don’t need it anymore. Well, I told him you were goin’ roughneckin’ again, and knowing what housing is like out in the patch, we thought it might come in handy, if I could fix ’er up, that is. It needed a lot of TLC, new flooring, all new waterworks, winterizing insulation top to bottom’n such. If nothing else, it’ll make a good guest house.”

  “No shit?”