RavenShadow

by Win Blevins

  Into the Sweat Lodge

  In the late afternoon we packed sandwiches and put coffee in a thermos and headed around the long road to Pete’s place near Chimney Butte.

  Pete Standing was fixing his woven-wire fence. He wore an old-fashioned white shirt, tiny, rimless glasses, and a belly big enough to honor a man of maybe sixty. He is a good medicine man—I know Grandpa respects him. Pete waited for what we had to say.

  Not being a Pipe carrier, I couldn’t ask formally in the proper way, offering my Pipe four times. I gave him the tobacco. “Will you put me on the mountain?”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  “I’m not sure of much of anything.” I tried to think how not to say it, but couldn’t. “I’ve drunk myself into a dead end.”

  “You got a row to hoe, then.” Pete looked at me bluntly. “I don’t put no one on the mountain is drinking.” He waited. “You bottomed out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, here’s what you hold in your mind. You’ve tried running things your way. It didn’t work. Tomorrow, we sweat, you ask Spirit how to run things, and you listen.” His eyes were no-nonsense. “We go in maybe six tomorrow.” In other words, be here.

  We showed up two hours before six, to help out. Build the fire, get thirty-six rocks hot—there’s a whole list of jobs and it takes time.

  You don’t need to know much about the sweat lodge, inipi, we call it. It is one of the seven sacred rituals of our people. Heat rocks (preferably lava rocks) in a big fire and put them in a low, dark hut. Go in naked, pour water on the rocks, get it hot-hot, pray, sing, beat the drum. Take a break and cool off. Repeat three more times.

  I’d done it plenty as a kid, and assisted Grandpa when he poured, which means when he ran the ceremony. After twenty-three years, just the thought gave me the heebie-jeebies. The sweat was the old, old way.

  To calm myself down, to bolster myself my resolve, I went to the car and got out the blanket, tobacco, red cloth, and sack of groceries I’d brought. I handed them to Pete formally. These were the traditional gifts when you ask someone to put you on the mountain.

  O, am I really going on the mountain? I was afraid. I was afraid of the hunger and thirst for four days. I was afraid of not being able to bear it and walking off the mountain early. I was afraid I would stand there and lie there all that time and all I would see was hills, trees, and the empty air. I was afraid of being a fool.

  I murmured the watchwords Emile had given me. Act of faith.

  My people use the sweat lodge to purify themselves, to pray and bring themselves closer to Spirit. There’s power in a sweat, when the person pouring it knows how to bring it in. Grandpa used to tell me he’d seen amazing sights in a sweat lodge. Sometimes blue lights would flash around in the pitch dark. Sometimes pebbles flew around and hit people—this was one of the Stone People coming to you. Grandpa got hit by a pebble once, and still wore it by a thong around his neck. At my last sweat, I was still a kid, and never had any such power.

  First we got the fire started. The three of us formed a tripod over the fire pit with cottonwood limbs and stacked on others until we had a tipi. Pete offered tobacco to the four directions, and especially to Salamander, the Fire Spirit, and threw it on the rocks. Then he got the fire going with kindling.

  Then we got the lodge ready. It was a low framework of willows tied together with red cloth, looked like a bowl turned upside down. We covered it with visqueen, Salvation Army blankets, scraps of rug, and pieces of canvas. The idea was to get it completely dark inside. When we got it covered, and the edges held down with rocks and dirt, the lodge became a living entity, representing the womb of Mother Earth.

  While the rocks were heating, Pete prepared the lodge ceremonially. I didn’t know exactly what he did in there, but he entered alone, and took a while. I smelled the cedar and sweetgrass he burned, purifying the lodge and inviting the spirits to enter. I heard him blow the whistle made from an eagle wing bone, and sing a song invoking the presence and power of the four directions.

  I will not go over all that he did to prepare his Pipe to be smoked, and place it on the altar in front of the lodge. When the Pipe was ready, the road from the fire pit to the lodge was a living entity, and no one was allowed to walk between it and the lodge.

  We were almost ready. “Emile, will you bring in the rocks?” asked Pete.

  While Emile pitchforked rocks into the lodge, Pete and I stripped and took towels. We walked once around the outside of the lodge, sunwise, what you call clockwise. Then Pete led the way into the lodge, circled sunwise, and sat by the door. I sat in the back, Emile would sit by the entrance opposite Pete.

  Some of the rocks actually glowed red. Pete used deer antlers to arrange them in the pit. Emile brought in the bucket of water and dipper, and Pete said some things.

  I said silent thanks to the rocks. They absorb the energy of the fire and came to the pit to give this spirit up for us. When the water hits the rocks, they transform it magically into steam, which is the breath of Mother Earth, and our breath, our prayers, and our spirits, all of them rising to Father Sky.

  Sweats are simple. We would sweat for four rounds, Pete pouring water on those rocks keeping it hot. In each round one of us would pray, and Pete might sing a song. Between rounds we open would the door and take a break. We would drink water out of the dipper, crying “mitakuye oyasin” as we did. We would smoke Pete’s Pipe.

  “Close the door.”

  Emile did.

  It was dark-dark. I couldn’t see anything—it was dark as my mother’s womb must have been.

  O-o-o-h! I got goose-bumply. The willies ran up and down me, like mice. O, what am I doing here?

  “How you doing, Blue?” Pete’s heavy voice.

  “I’m nervous.”

  “You got anything will help him, Emile?”

  Out of the dark came Emile’s soft, firm voice. “That’s why we call it an act of faith.”

  Silence. Then Pete welcomed us there, asked forgiveness from the spirits if we didn’t do anything the right way, said we were just human beings come looking for help. “Emile, you wanna pray first?”

  I am not going to tell you exactly the words that were spoken and sung in the lodge that day.

  Prayers were said for our children, including unborn children. For our women. For our elders. For the Sun Dancers. For the keepers of Pipes and Bundles. For our spiritual leaders. For all our people.

  Prayers were said for our families, especially for the sick.

  Prayers were said particularly for me, that I might find the strength to stop drinking. That I get something on the mountain that would help me and the people.

  The spirits were called upon in the songs Pete sang, the Four Directions, Mother Earth, Father Sky, and the Mystery. Eagle and other animal spirits were called upon.

  As he raised his voice in song in our Lakota language, Pete poured the water upon the rocks. The heat slapped me in the face. I wanted to put my head down, on the cool earth, beneath the blistering steam. But I refused. I am willing to suffer and offer the spirits my suffering. I slapped my back with the sage switch, I prayed fiercely, anything to push my mind beyond the heat, to put my consciousness and my spirit into Pete’s words, to experience this sweat fully and get whatever was there for me today.

  Before the last round started, I declared my intention to go on the mountain and asked for Pete’s help. Now I made my request formally, ceremonially, in a manner that honored my strength and his. I felt like I was stammering.

  When we finished the fourth round, Pete asked Emile to bring the Pipe in. Holding it, he gave me a talking to. “You want to go on the mountain, no drinking, no using for at least thirty days. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  I blinked, uncertain.

  “You ever promised to quit drinking?”

  “Sure.”

  “You ever prayed for the strength to do it?”

  “No.”

  “You ever asked for the strength
in an AA meeting?”

  “No.” I glanced guiltily at Emile.

  “You go to an AA meeting every day, thirty days.”

  I fidgeted.

  “You willing to do that?”

  I fidgeted.

  “Your feet aren’t on the path, you don’t do that.”

  I grimaced. “Okay.”

  “You ever asked the Pipe to help you quit drinking?”

  “No.”

  Pete’s eyes felt like they were jabbing at me. “You smoke this Pipe today. You smoke a Pipe every day thirty days. You ask it to help you quit drinking. You ask it for help. Maybe YOU can’t quit. The Pipe, it got strength you don’t.”

  He lit the Pipe in the normal ceremonial way and passed it to me.

  “Pipe and AA, every day thirty days.”

  My college-trained mind said NO, but I took the Pipe and puffed. They call it an ACT of faith.

  I Am Powerless over Alcohol

  “Pete didn’t waste any words or cut me any slack, did he?”

  Emile’s eyes danced over at me merrily, then back at the road. The drive home from Pete’s, circling a big roadless area of the Badlands, is long and dreary. “You were hoping for SOME drinking?”

  I held my tongue. Part of me was complaining, This is too hard. I can’t do it. Abstinence was a requirement. If I didn’t bring it, Pete wouldn’t put me on. If I drank and lied to him, a payback might come from Spirit, and I wouldn’t like that.

  Emile says, “Talk to me about it.”

  I blurted, “I don’t think I can.”

  Right then I realized—That’s what I truly believe. Saying “okay” to Pete, that was purely a shuck. I knew I couldn’t do it. I stared into the darkness beyond the windshield. Hopeless.

  “The Keystone meeting is tomorrow night at seven o’clock. To go every day, you must go around to different meetings, different places.” He looked at me with … what can I call it?…. brotherly love. That’s the truth. “I will go with you,” he said. “It will be good for me.”

  Well, toodlely winks. I didn’t want to go to no meeting. AA, that’s white people’s stuff. So I’d been telling Emile for years. White people’s stuff means, It works for them but it doesn’t work for us. Like hospitals and Christianity, good for them, bad for us.

  He’s willing to go with me every day. “Well, shit.”

  Emile looked sideways at me. “Do you have any power over drink? Can you stop?”

  I shook my head no, feeling bitter about it, and nasty.

  “Then it’s time to make a first step. ‘I admit I am powerless over alcohol, and my life is unmanageable.’”

  I made a snorting sound. “AA isn’t going to save me.”

  Compassion was in his eyes. “Try just one notion. ‘I admit I am powerless over alcohol, and my life is unmanageable.’”

  I stared out at the night. I am hopeless, I am pathetic. I couldn’t keep a tear or two from dribbling down. He’s willing to go with me every day. I was deeply ashamed. I said, “Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it. Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Emile said quietly, “How much longer you do you have in the Rockerville house?”

  “Closes in a month.”

  “Move out now. Stay with me. Every day for a month we go to a meeting. You give Pete the thirty days of sobriety.”

  “Aw …”

  “Every day for one month. You don’t have a job, you don’t have anything you have to do. Give yourself a chance. Every day for one month. I, your hunka, I am asking you.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t know how in the HELL I felt.

  The next day I took one big step. I filled the Lincoln with my stuff and drove to Emile’s. He gave me the bedroom, said he slept on the studio sofa most of the time anyway.

  We went to meetings every day for a month. Hated the meetings for a week, began to like some, finally settled on a noon meeting in Rapid I liked. I never took along anything but what Emile said, “I admit I am powerless over alcohol, and my life is unmanageable.” Nothing I said in meetings, really, was anything but that, how I’d been living and how powerless it showed I was. What I like most about the meetings was that I hadn’t taken a drink yet. What I liked least about them was that they were nothing but white people.

  I spent a lot of that month blaming white people. For bringing firewater to Indian people. For fixing things so brothers killed brothers and fathers raped daughters. For going on and on trading booze when they knew what it was doing to us, going on even when their own traders hollered that it was morally wrong. And for all the crimes that didn’t relate to booze. I ain’t gonna list them, you can do that near as good as me.

  I was so mad and sad and outraged and vengeful it’s a wonder I didn’t get drunk. Long John Silver is DAMN lucky we didn’t run into each other that month.

  You may gather that something hadn’t yet occurred to me. No matter how we got here, no matter how I got here, I had to get myself out.

  I also spent that month, well, fighting with the station and with the government about my unemployment and severance pay. And repairing relationships. I told Mom, Angelee, and Mayana how sorry I was. They said I had nothing to make amends for. I think they were just glad to see me sober enough to know I’d messed up. Couldn’t find Dad in Mission, word was he’d gone to California. Sure wasn’t keeping in touch with us anymore. Tried to make amends to Sallee, but she wouldn’t get together with me. Went to Rosaphine’s but she wouldn’t even open the door. Saved going to Grandpa’s for last, because it would be hardest.

  Grandpa acted very glad to see me. (Aunt Adeline fussed around us both, and acted like I was taxing Grandpa too much—he’s ninety now.) I told Grandpa I was sorry, sorry I’d gone away from the people, sorry I’d been drunk, sorry I’d wasted my life, sorry I hadn’t walked the special road they held me apart for.

  Grandpa waved it away with a wavery hand. “Maybe you needed to do that. Maybe you learned from it. Maybe you have something extra to give. Bud,” he says, “maybe you just done took a long time to bloom.” And he giggled at his pun.

  He paused. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees—it seemed like the gesture of a man twenty-five years younger. He smiled sweetly, almost flirtatiously. “Dreamer,” he said, “what are your dreams?”

  I didn’t answer—couldn’t think of any answer.

  After a bit he nodded to himself and said, “Bud, you ever smoke that Pipe, the one Unchee gave you from her father?”

  “I been smoking Emile’s Pipe with him. I am not a Pipe carrier.” Should have been these last twenty years, but …

  “Emile’s Pipe, that’s good, good start. Now you go home, smoke your great-grandfather’s Pipe. You ask to see things.”

  I hesitated. Then I thought, This is the story of my life, hesitation. Then I thought, Even thinking that is a hesitation.

  Grandpa repeated himself. “You smoke that Pipe tonight. You don’t need no ceremony, that Pipe, get started.”

  “Yes.”

  “Washtay.”

  He sat back, looking fatigued from the effort.

  “Grandpa, I’m going on the mountain.”

  He brightened at that. “Washtay! Washtay! You go on that mountain, have a big dream. Then you follow that dream. Also, smoke the Pipe. Start tonight. That Pipe, it has things for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What else you want from an old man today?”

  “I want to learn the old stories, the really old stories.” I’d been thinking about Ron Sternberg and what he said about creation stories and that book I’d cribbed from, the one of Lakota myths, written by a white man.

  Grandpa was good with that, he gave me names. “This man over at Porcupine, Thomas Tall Elk, he knows about Wakinyan, you ask him. A man works at Little Wound, Robert Kills Enemy, he knows about the trickster, Iktomi, you talk to him about that.” A couple more names, too, and advice—“Those old people, they can tell you who else knows something.”

  I’d thought it out. Talk to the
old people who know the ancient ways of the Lakota, and how these ways began, and the reasons for them. Sit and hear the stories. That’s a better way than any books.

  I couldn’t finish without telling Grandpa the rest of it. “I’d like to get the stories on tape.”

  His eyes flashed up at me and then down and it was like he withdrew, visited some place within. Our people have rules about sacred things—no photos, no video tape, no audio, nothing. After a good while he came back. “Maybe that’s the right way. Maybe we don’t get ’em down, lose ’em.” He paused again. “You ask that Pipe, you ask the Pipe, tell you about that.”

  That night I smoked the Pipe Unchee gave me. Every evening after that Emile and I went to a meeting and smoked Unchee’s father’s Pipe together. This was the true beginning of my life as a Lakota man.

  Baloney, you’re thinking. Didn’t your old doubts come back? Didn’t you feel foolish? Didn’t you take a drink?

  Yes, yes, and no.

  The doubts came back a lot. Sometimes they felt like mice nibbling me to death. I felt foolish a lot. Sometimes I’d look around to make sure none of my sophisticated white friends could see me.

  My faith was a step forward and a step backward.

  But I clung to two thoughts. I’ve given the white way a lot of years, and it hasn’t worked.

  And, I’m not drinking.

  I had as a guide also one feeling. My heart told me this was right.

  Here was a classic division. We Lakota distinguish between the two eyes of the head and what we call the chante ishta, the single of the heart. The two eyes analyze and think. The single eye sees whole, entire, and being the eye of the heart, knows. Now the two eyes of the head told me the Pipe had no power. The eye of my heart told me it did.

  I’m not drinking.

  By following my head, I had nothing to lose but my life.

  This is a story, so I have said enough about AA. But I have never stopped going to meetings. Nor will I. “I admit I am powerless over alcohol.”

  Here’s the kicker. I didn’t believe in a higher power. My well-educated mind knew better.

  For a dozen years I drank more and more. I asked a higher power for help—I asked the Pipe—and I stopped.