RavenShadow

by Win Blevins

  It was done. I put Grandpa in one car and walked back and slid into Emile’s truck. I looked into his eyes, and we exchanged something. I survived.

  Everyone went to Angelee’s house to feed. On the ride I was thinking about the tears we shed, the wails we uttered. My thought was, I am Indian. I had funny feelings about it.

  My older sister lived in one of those HUD houses at Pine Ridge. They’re depressing, being all the same. I guess they’re better than trailers, but I’ll be damned if I don’t prefer the sort of house I grew up in, patched together from a railroad car and other found stuff, a odd house, but real.

  We all fell in together somehow around the house, the grown-ups seated and the kids running in and out and letting the cold in. Angelee and Mayana made pot after pot of coffee and served what my mother called “funeral chicken,” Kentucky Fried. (She would never eat Kentucky Fried—it was so common at funerals it had come to mean death to her.) From time to time someone would let some tears flow, but now things were changed. After a while Grandpa looked out the window and said, “It’s almost sundown.” Or Mom reminded people of the same. In our belief you’re not supposed to cry after sundown—it’s asking for more death. By sundown you wipe your tears away.

  I kept my silence. These people who didn’t know about Delphine, who didn’t know that the woman I lived with died—no, she killed herself—hey, they didn’t know me.

  And my belly is full of foulness.

  I am an outsider here, therefore only an observer. So I looked around and looked around. (O, yes, from a distance the Great White Doubter observes the people who believe in spirits.)

  My family. Tiyospaye, we call it, which has a lot bigger meaning—extended family. My family and my ways, the ones I was born to. (Now an outsider.)

  They talked jobs, those they had, and mainly those they wanted and wouldn’t get. (Shannon County, which means the Pine Ridge rez, according to government statistics, is the poorest county in the United States—lowest income per capita, high unemployment, etc.) They talked relatives who weren’t there. They talked relatives who weren’t with us anymore (not using their names—we don’t say the names of the dead.) They talked times past, better times, it felt like.

  I stayed out of the conversations. Maybe needed to talk to Grandpa, Senior, and Mom, or my sisters, but wasn’t ready and might never be. Just peered around im-peer-ially. So I was irritated when Aunt Adeline plopped herself down next to me.

  She was Grandpa’s oldest daughter, from Unchee’s first marriage to a man named James Horn. I’d never liked her—to me she was just crabby all the time. I noticed at the church and the cemetery, though, she was hanging close to Grandpa, almost crowding in on him. Now she acted determined to get her say, which is not usually our way.

  “Bud, I’m gonna watch after your Grandpa,” she said.

  “Call me Blue,” I said. I’m not a kid anymore.

  She went on like I hadn’t spoken. “He’s getting on, you know.” Grandpa was eighty—Unchee had just turned eighty-nine—Aunt Adeline herself was sixty-nine. She spoke English, as she’d done around me all her life. Her Lakota was probably pretty rusty, but I guessed she could talk to Grandpa okay—you don’t forget the tongue you grew up with.

  “He needs caring for, Bud, and I’m the only one.” For all she was born into a traditional family, Aunt Adeline was white-man pushy. She’d worked most of her life in a cafeteria at the VA hospital in Denver, and was married to a white man, maybe that’s why.

  I just nodded and said politely I thought Grandpa would appreciate it. I wondered what was really on her mind. Maybe she was thinking that combining her Social Security with Grandpa’s, paying no rent ’cause Grandpa owned his place outright, she’d make out better than on her own in Pine Ridge. Maybe she wanted Grandpa’s place. That made no difference to me—I didn’t want anything to do with the rez—but it was irritating.

  “Sure you wanna live out there in the Badlands, few neighbors and no electricity?”

  She looked at me sharp and kind of mean. “How come you never want to know nothing about your own grandmother? Your own family?” Then she chugged off, apparently having accomplished her purpose, acting prickly.

  I looked around at my extended family, my tiyospaye, which Adeline said I didn’t know anything about. These people, in the old way, would have been my center, and we would have lived our lives in the same meadows. What was my extended family a hundred years ago? No, a hundred and fifty? Because one century ago we were already on the reservation, and the tiyospaye was weakening.

  Way back, we were a kind of small council fire within the bigger council fire of the band—one group within Big Foot’s people. Big Foot’s band was one circle within the bigger circle of the Mniconjou tribe, and the Mniconjou were one of the seven council fires of the Lakota people.

  As one small council fire, in those days we stuck together—we were the one unit that could not be broken down smaller. Occasionally we traveled and camped by ourselves, separately. Or when we didn’t want to do what the band was doing, like when Big Foot decided to lead everyone to Pine Ridge, we might have gone to visit relatives in another band. Most of the time, though, we were part of the Big Foot people. We did the big buffalo hunt as one people, made winter camp as one people, traveled as one people.

  Sometimes we came together with all the Mniconjou—for the Sun Dance, for instance, and other great occasions. Once in a great while, for a truly big issue, all seven council fires of the Lakota came together for one big talk.

  As a whole family now, a hundred fifty years later, how was our tiyospaye, what was the state of the union?

  Lousy. We were spread to hell and gone, me in Seattle, a bunch of my male cousins in L.A. Mom and Senior split up, only Grandpa on the family place on Medicine Root Creek. Both my paternal uncles were dead, one in World War II, the other in a one-car accident (that’s code talk for the drunken Injun flip). Most of those left on the rez weren’t really there, preferring the kingdom of booze. Hell, Senior himself would probably have missed his own mother’s funeral if he’d been on a bender.

  The women of my generation were doing about half bad. My two sisters had husbands, children; they were making homes. Of my cousins on my dad’s side, one woman lived at Manderson alone, raising her kids. Another married a white man and lived in Pensacola, Florida, lost to the family.

  (The cousins on my mom’s side, naturally, were over at Wambli.)

  Of the men of my generation, I was the only one left. My cousin Rob died in Vietnam. Left Hand was in prison in Minneapolis. Rodney was making a living on the powwow circuit and managing to stay drunk. And I was not, in fact, left. I’d been gone for years, and now lived in Seattle.

  Suddenly I had a pang, a feeling of real loss, loss of all the things the world takes away. In a flash I saw Unchee’s ancient face up close to my ear, and she was laughing about something, whether a good-hearted or mean-hearted laugh I couldn’t tell. All at once I felt what a big part of my life Unchee had been, and how I missed her.

  The tear that didn’t come at the funeral came now, one tear, all I could manage. More than I used to.

  Mom plopped down on the arm of my chair. I looked up at her face, feeling grateful. “How’s my big boy?”

  I blinked tearily at this woman who had worked so hard to hold the family together, and failed. I’d seen something I admired today. She walked around Senior neither paying attention to him nor ignoring him. He was just another member of the family. And I remembered that now over at Wambli she was volunteering to help battered women and children. “I love you, Mom.”

  “Music to a mother’s ears.” She grinned lop-sided. “Someone wants to talk to you.” She nodded at him.

  “Grandpa?”

  “He’s embarrassed to start.”

  “Mo-om,” whined Angelee. “Can you give me a hand?”

  “I’m here,” Mom said merrily to me, and jumped up and ran off to change the baby or make coffee or whatever.

&nb
sp; I looked across at Grandpa—he was smiling at me. What could it be? If Mom prompted me, it must be important.

  He was halfway back in the recliner that probably came from the Salvation Army and facing the TV. Grandpa didn’t have a TV (or even electricity) and didn’t care for it, but people always put him in the biggest, most comfortable chair, which was always square in front of the set. I pushed a kitchen chair alongside him and said, “We haven’t talked in a long time.”

  He didn’t tread soft around it. He spoke right up in a firm voice, in our people’s language. “That Pipe you got, the one Unchee saved for you? Her father’s?”

  I nodded. Why bring up that Pipe now?

  “Unchee saved it for the right person.”

  Oh, shit.

  “She never gave it to any of her own children. They weren’t right for it. When you were in your mother’s womb, Unchee knew you were the one.”

  GodDAMN it.

  “You always wondered how you were picked out? Unchee did it. She knew what you would be, who you would be. That Pipe, it was all she had of her father’s. She saved it for you.”

  He closed his eyes, and for a moment I thought he was going to doze off. When he spoke, his voice was clear and strong.

  “That’s why you were kept away from white people and white things. Unchee did it. She saw into your heart.”

  He was silent for a long moment. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Things change. You’re different. Maybe you think so different the Pipe has nothing for you.” He opened his eyes unnaturally wide at me, and they seemed to grow bright. “It has gifts. Count on it. That Pipe has very special gifts for you. From your great-grandfather straight to you.”

  I hesitated, then decided to go along. “Well, what?”

  He shook his head. “Only you can find that out.”

  “How?”

  “Pray with that Pipe. It’s up to you, whole thing’s up to you.” He looked down, and I wondered what he was thinking. “The road is red, yes. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

  “It’s been plenty hard, Grandpa.”

  “Things will be better for you soon.”

  I thought. You don’t know. I ventured forth, I failed out there, and I have nothing to come back to.

  My stomach lurched. Delphine is dead, my life is lost.

  I shook my head. How can I forget, even for a moment?

  “Hey, we need more pop, let’s go get some pop.”

  Senior’s voice. He was looking at me.

  “Okay. More pop.”

  I followed Senior toward the front door. “Emile, may I use your car?” My friend came across the room in his fluid way and put the keys in my hand. It wouldn’t be his style to toss anything.

  Senior and I drove in silence down to Big Bat’s, the filling station and everything store. He waited while I bought a couple giant bottles of Pepsi and came back out. I wondered whether he’d stayed in the car to sneak a drink. I could see he had a bottle in his inside jacket pocket. I knew he liked his whiskey in Pepsi.

  I wheeled out of the parking lot but didn’t head for the house. He didn’t say anything. I found myself on the highway headed east, for no reason.

  Shit, it’s a day for talks.

  I didn’t know how to begin. I didn’t want to call him Senior, which always had an edge on it, and I couldn’t call him Dad. I didn’t want to speak angrily, but anger kept sticking its head up.

  Finally, I said, “I hear you got a new woman.”

  He jerked his head sideways. “Is that what you want to talk about, Bud?”

  No, it wasn’t. What do I want to say? What do I need to say?

  I drove on in silence. When I came to the road that ran north toward Wounded Knee, I automatically turned. Then I realized what I was doing. Hell, no.

  I stopped the truck under the big sign on the right side of the road, the one that tells all about Crazy Horse.

  I didn’t know where to start.

  “I hope things are going well for you.”

  Though he kept staring straight out the windshield, I could see the softening in his eyes. “Things are okay,” he said. So he didn’t want to talk about who he was living with, what his life was like.

  “For me too. I guess.” I breathed in and out. “Not really. Things are not okay, haven’t been okay.”

  The silence sat between us, years of silence.

  “I wrote you about a woman I went to Seattle with.”

  He nodded. Actually I didn’t write him, I wrote Mom, but I knew she told him, or passed the letter on.

  I turned and looked at him. “She died. Her funeral was yesterday. I’ve gone to two funerals in two days, Dad.”

  I stopped myself. That word. “Dad,” I’d said. Now it was out and I couldn’t take it back.

  I looked at him to see if it had caused any catastrophes. None I could see. But I felt different inside. Maybe I liked that, and maybe I didn’t.

  “We were living together. We were doing good.” Three beats went by. “She killed herself.”

  I could feel his eyes, though they didn’t turn toward me. I could feel all of his senses rolling around me like fog, touching me, checking me out, adding up what he found, trying to know my feelings.

  I hated it.

  I liked it and I hated it.

  “She killed herself. I don’t know why. No one knows why. We all thought she was doing good.” Pause. “I thought we were doing good.”

  I’d left the journals behind—wasn’t ready to read them yet.

  He reached into a shirt pocket, got out his pack, offered me one. I shook my head. He lit his own.

  Tell him about Delphine. Tell him … I slammed the dashboard with my hand. It felt so good I did it again. You could feel the vibrations for long seconds.

  Then, like an eruption I slung Delphine out for him to see, for me to see. I hurled pathetic words about my woman in front of us, the evidence of my guilt. Delphine, what she was like. Her blackness, and her family’s whiteness. My comrade in the shadow of Raven’s wing. How I identified with her. How good she felt to me, her body, how much I loved it. Her political ambitions. Her family’s prominence. How odd I felt around her, like I never fit, but I wanted to fit among the white people. I wanted another world, Christ, I wanted another world, Christ, I couldn’t stand the rez, the cramped life…. I wanted to be …

  “O God,” I wailed, “why’d she do it? Why’d she do it?”

  I began to cry then, big tears, big sobs. I let it come for maybe a minute and by God I cut it off hard, just cut it off. It was too much, I couldn’t let it take me over. We sat for a while, neither saying anything. Finally he lit up again, and when he flicked the cover back on the lighter, he said, “I’m here for you, Bud, you need me.”

  That felt good, but it wasn’t enough, not half enough. “Dad, I’m a traitor. I took our ways and tossed them out the window. I thought they were dead and gone and I threw them away. The white people were winning so I … went over to their side. I became a white man.” I looked at his face in the midwinter darkness. “I’m not … one of us anymore.”

  He did the oddest thing. He reached out with a hand and cupped it against my cheek. After a moment, maybe uncomfortable, he drew it back. He said gently, “I’m your father, Bud. I always will be.”

  Those words felt good, very good. Hell, you’re my dad.

  I started up the car and drove back in silence. We went up to the house in silence. At the front door I looked at him and said, “Thanks.”

  He nodded his acceptance, and that felt like something, something real.

  I sidled over to Emile and let it out, breathing the words, “I want to move back.”

  He looked up at me with his sympathetic eyes. “Good for you.”

  “Can we share for a while?”

  No thoughts ran through his eyes first, like, How will you pay the rent without a job? “Sure.” That’s what brother-friends say.

  I brought it up. “How am I gonna live here
and have a career?”

  He smiled lightly. “Welcome to the club.”

  I said the rest to myself. How can I be anywhere else and have a life?

  I went to Grandpa first, squatted by his big chair again. “Grandpa, I’ve decided to move back.”

  He nodded three or four times. “That’s good,” he said. “When you’re around your family, things will get better. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do for a job.”

  “A person never knows. You put your feet on the red road and good things come. You can’t see them before you start walking.”

  I squeezed his arm and went to Mom. “Mom, I’m coming back. I’m moving in with Emile.”

  “Oh, Bud,” she cried, and gave me a big hug.

  “We’ll still be spread out,” I said. “Rapid, Wambli, Pine Ridge, Rosebud.”

  “Lot closer than Seattle,” she said.

  Angelee and Mayana were cleaning up the kitchen. I told them, and felt surprised to see real gladness in their eyes, pleasure to have their brother back. That made me think what I’d been missing.

  “Will you stay with us?” said Angelee.

  “Or us?” said Mayana.

  Neither one of them had a nickel’s worth of room, and I’d be living in the margins of someone else’s life. “Emile,” I said. Their faces registered what that meant, Rapid City, sort of close but not really. “I have to find a job,” I said.

  Suddenly I remembered. I would have some money, whatever I could sell Delphine’s Z car for. Money meant time. I would have a little time to find my place here, my place to live, my place in the family, my place among the people.

  “We’d be glad to have you,” said Angelee, kind of singsong. And they would. With Indians there is always room for family. But I couldn’t do that, not anymore.

  Senior—Dad—was last. His eyes were on the evening news. I wondered how often he followed the national and international soap operas as presented by Dan Rather. “I’m moving back,” I said.