RavenShadow

by Win Blevins

  Don’t let your well-educated minds tell you different.

  Chup Tails

  Something else happened that first busy, unemployed month—I met Chup Tails. Saw him first time at a meeting in Hot Springs. It was a First Step meeting, which means you tell how and why you got started in AA. I liked those meetings—I was still working on that First Step—“I admit I am powerless over alcohol, and my life has become unmanageable.” Hearing how other people tell how they bottomed out and washed somehow into an AA meeting felt real good to me.

  “I’m Chup,” he began, “and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.” He was small and mild-looking. His face looked like he’d spent his life in bar fights. A thick scar ripped from one nostril almost to the ear. He was twenty years older than me and ten times as beat up–looking. I felt right at home with him and wanted to hear his story. Hell, in the room there was me, Emile, Chup, and about twenty people looked like insurance-selling Republicans. One curious thing. While he talked, he rolled a cigarette with one hand alone, a trick of old-time cowboys. He kept his eyes on the cigarette while he talked.

  “I gonna tell my story full. I need to do this sometimes.

  “I started drinking in high school. Dropped out, joined the army, went to Korea. Got my Purple Heart, came home to the VA Hospital in Denver. There I got really strung out, morphine, weed, beer, wine, you name it.

  “Got out in six months, came back home to Oglala. Been raised in a traditional way, the old way, the red road. Now, though, no job, nothing to do but get drunk and stoned. Drove up to the Twin Cities with some buddies, all of us drinking all the way, good-timing along. In a bar in the St. Paul we got into big a fight. I hit a biker with the big end of a pool cue. Killed him. Freaky, I guess, fractured his skull, killed him.”

  Chup was real simple, the way he told it.

  Now there was a new kind of silence in the room. A lot of people who’d been looking Chup in the eye lowered their gaze. Usually, confessions in meetings, they don’t go to killing other human beings.

  “They sent me up for manslaughter. What saved my life was some AIM guys came to the prison.”

  Not a lot of times a traditional Lakota gonna tell you AIM guys changed his life. To us they were city Indians.

  “They told us we had a right to our religion, suggested we start sweating. We built a lodge, we done it. I started carrying the Pipe.”

  His voice was steady, but his eyes showed hurt. “When I got out, I started coming to meetings, Pine Ridge and here. Did an honest first step—‘I acknowledge that I am powerless over dope and booze and my life is unmanageable.’ Made myself learn the one-day-at-a-time lesson.”

  He looked around the room, using white-man eye contact. “Twenty-nine years, I’m still doing one day at a time. I’ve fallen off the wagon. I’ve got back on, quick and scared.” He looked down at his knees and seemed to consider. “You know,” he went on, “I’ve thought on what it means, this ‘one day at a time.’ To me it means, We must begin, and hope that after each step, we find enough light to take the next step. No more than that, but it’s everything.

  “I’m powerless over alcohol. Without the Pipe and these meetings, my life would be unmanageable. Without the Pipe and these meetings, I’d be dead. Thanks.”

  “Thanks, Chup,” we chorused. That was the conventional group response, but I meant it. I respected that man. Laying his stuff out for a bunch of white people, I wouldn’t have done it. I felt drawn to him.

  After the meeting I shook his hand and spoke hesitantly. “Every meeting I find some one thing, at least, I need to take away with me. Tonight it was what you said, enough light to take the next step. Thanks.”

  “It’s good to see Indians at this meeting,” he said so quiet I hardly heard him. “Usually I’m the only one.”

  I asked for his phone number, and he gave me a card. “Chup Tails, R.E.,” it said. R.E. meant Recognized Expert. It is the initials faculty people at our colleges get instead of Ph.D. if they don’t have graduate degrees. “Indian Studies Department, Oglala Lakota College.” He took the card back and wrote his home phone on it. In Oglala, I noticed, the closest rez town to Hot Springs, and where Sallee lived.

  Ordinarily, way I am, I’d have a let a week or a month go by without calling Chup Tails, knowing I needed to and feeling quirky about it. Since I was working on my recovery full time, I called him the next day and made an appointment to have coffee with him in Hot Springs after the next AA meeting.

  Chup didn’t deck himself out like any professor. He wore a baseball cap with a fully beaded bill, and where some insignia might be, a beaded thunderbird. I wondered if the combination was a sort of witty way to bring tradition into the present. He was quiet and unassuming. I had the impression that if I didn’t speak, he wouldn’t.

  I soon saw coffee to him meant one cup that he never touched. Instead he rolled those cigarettes with one hand, smoked them, and rolled another.

  Emile waited patiently in a nearby booth and sketched. Emile was doing a world to help my recovery.

  We fiddled for a few minutes, how are ya, who are ya. His who-are-ya was teacher of Lakota Studies at the college. I couldn’t get up my nerve, so I shilly-shallied. “I don’t know why I’m here, really.”

  He said simply, “Tell me your story.”

  I took a deep breath. Is this what I came here for? What I did then felt like jumping off a cliff. “I’m a grandparents’ child. I had … ways I was supposed to walk. Instead I’ve been drunk my whole life.” I breathed in and out to steady my feelings.

  Chup just sat quiet, watching that hand roll that cigarette.

  “I spent twenty-three years drinking, the last half drinking big-time. Twenty-two days ago I tried to kill myself. When I got out of the hospital, my friend took me to a meeting and to a sweat. I have twenty-two days of sobriety.”

  He nodded and smiled. “You ain’t the Lone Ranger, Tonto.”

  He waited. I noodled in my head. I sure do feel drawn to you. I knew it was his Indianness I was drawn to. He had walked more of my road than I had.

  Not knowing what to do, I told the story of the ride on the C&NW tracks with Rosaphine. I made it sound like a wild and funny story, not letting it be black as it was. I could see in his eyes he knew it was black. His eyes made me feel how black it was.

  “Sorry for the way I told that,” I said.

  “That’s the story of a lot of our people, kola. I’m glad you see it for what it is. Once you see, you can do something.”

  The waitress refreshed my cup of caffeine.

  “I got to tell you honest,” said Chup, “I heard the story about the railroad-track ride before. Told different. Rosaphine and Sallee, they are my nieces.”

  I gave him a look, I can’t imagine what it was.

  He grinned and his eyes twinkled. “It’s okay. It is.”

  I fidgeted and fumbled. “What else do I need to say?” Then, embarrassed at my own pretense, I hurried forward. “I need a sponsor.”

  “I’m willing to sponsor you.” Said softly and simply. “I want to sponsor Indian men who want to recover.”

  “How do we start?”

  A sponsor is a crucial part of the AA program, especially when you’re a beginner like me. You need a person who’s further along in the program to guide you. And for the sponsor, going over fundamentals is a help to him.

  “You work the Steps. One by one. As much time as it takes for each one.”

  “Big commitment.”

  “Only way to recovery.” He blew smoke and looked into it. “You willing or not?”

  I knew this was a crossroads. Red road or black road? Lazy way or hard way? Death or life?

  “I’m willing,” I said.

  “Meet you next week, same time, same place.”

  “Okay.”

  We got up to leave. Emile got up too. “One thing,” I said. “Week after next I won’t be at the meeting.”

  One of his eyebrows crept up.

  “I’m going
on the mountain.”

  “Good for you, kola. Meetings and the Pipe.”

  What Blue Crow Saw on the Mountain

  On the thirty-third day of my sobriety I went with Emile to Pete Standing’s place to go into the sweat lodge. I took a buffalo robe, which I borrowed from Emile, and the Pipe inherited from my great-grandpa.

  To my surprise and pleasure, Chup Tails was there.

  I gave Pete sage, pieces of cloth in the colors of the four directions, and bundles of sticks, as required. He asked me if I had been sober for at least thirty days. I said, “Thanks to the power of the Pipe, yes.”

  He made tobacco ties from the cloth. He smeared red paint on the stem of my Pipe, filled it with tobacco and sealed it with tallow. Then he led us into the sweat lodge, purified us, gave me instruction and advice, and prayed fervently for my success. His last instructions felt supportive and frightening at once. “Wakantanka always answers the prayers of those who come to him humbly and sincerely, asking for help. But He does not always appear to answer them right away. Sometimes a man or woman must go on the mountain over and over before he is permitted to see beyond, into the spirit world.”

  So, on my thirty-fourth day without a drink, in company with my supporters Pete and Emile, I headed for the mountain. My mind, heart, and spirit were absorbed with wild fantasies. I imagined having a heart attack or a stroke brought on by hunger and thirst, and dying there on the mountain, alone. I imagined being savaged by bad spirits. I imagined the worst of all, that I would sit on the mountain for four days, and nothing would happen, nothing at all—so I will be exposed as the fraud I am.

  My people have gone to Bear Butte, on the north side of the Hills, since before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men. It is one of our sacred places to cry for a vision. The white people honor it too, for they have set it aside as a state park and reserve it for those of us who follow the way of the Pipe to go on the mountain.

  Just to walk around Bear Butte is inspiring. Seekers usually come with tobacco ties as offerings, tobacco wrapped in small squares of cloth in the colors of the four directions, yellow, white, black, and red. These are strung in the trees, like strings of popcorn at Christmas, but unlike white people we keep foremost in our minds the sacred purpose of our ceremony. Everywhere the seeker is reminded of his many predecessors here, the many prayers sent up to the Grandfathers from this place. The very air feels pure with dedication and purpose.

  Driving up this time we watched the weather—huge, dark clouds, sheets of lightning, big curtains of rain. “Wakinyan,” said Pete, “washtay.”

  I sniffed involuntarily. The presence of the Thunder Beings wasn’t good, not as far as I was concerned. It was scary. First, I didn’t want to get dumped on. Or even snowed on, I thought—yes, it’s sure possible in October. My sacrifice is to go without food and water for four days, and to use no shelter but a robe. I don’t wanna be wet and cold the whole time.

  Lightning crashed down, right where the butte must be on the horizon. Then a great fork slammed the hills to our left, KA-BAM!

  Pete chuckled. “The Wakinyan welcome you. Washtay!”

  There’s nothing washtay about it, my head screamed. As a matter of fact, as we all knew too well, having a vision of thunder, lightning, and rain turns your life upside down. The way the story goes, these storms, the Wakinyan, are the creation of Inyan, Stone, the oldest of the gods. In the same way the moon is the creation of the sun, and the wind the creation of the sky. As the stone is solid and immovable, the thunderstorm is fluid, dynamic, unpredictable. Its power is so great that it must shield itself in clouds, so as not to destroy our eyes.

  To dream of the lightning, thunder, or rain is so powerful it topsy-turvies your life. In the old days … Let’s just say that if you met a man with the word lightning in his name, or thunder, or rain or hail, he was carrying the power and the burden of a great dream. He was so changed, it was like his life was struck by lightning.

  A Thunder Being dream … I am not ready.

  O how strange are we human beings. We cry to Spirit, “Oh, give me what I need—but not that, Spirit, not that.”

  From the upper parking lot Pete and Emile walked onto the mountain, carrying the bundles of sticks and some sage. They would prepare my place, the sacred circle where I would spend the four days. I stayed in the car and watched the weather. The lightning, thunder, and rain had stopped now, and the sky was clearing. Good signs!

  In an hour they were back, and told me how to find the spot on a northeast buttresses near some firs. I stripped to my bathing suit (in the old days we walked in naked!), carried the robe over one arm, my moccasins folded in it. Holding my Pipe in front of me, I stepped forth bare-skinned and barefoot, and threw myself on the mercy of the Powers. As I walked, I uttered the ancient prayer of this way, “Wakantanka onshimala ye oyate wani wachin cha!” Great Mystery, have pity on me that my people may live!

  Pete and Emile had made a circle of the tall sticks, one in the center and one at each of the four directions, each of these about ten steps from the pole. Bundles of short sticks with small bags of tobacco were tied to the tall sticks. A bed of sage had been laid by the pole, running to the east. This was where I was to lie down when I was tired, or when I slept. Here I put the buffalo robe, and I took up my Pipe, the instrument I used to ask this blessing to come to me.

  My job was to Pray, to cry for a vision. I was to do this unceasingly for four days, to beg the powers to take pity on me and grant me power. I stood at the pole, took several deep breaths, which did nothing for my oh-shit feeling, and began.

  Holding the Pipe with its stem pointing before me, I walked to the west, singing out the same prayer. I stepped very slowly—I may have spent an hour taking those ten strides to the west and back. When my voice grew weary, I prayed the words silently in my mind. When I wearied of those particular words, I simply focused my mind on the Great Mystery.

  For a beginner this work is incredibly difficult. Concentrating, not delving into stray thoughts, is nearly impossible.

  I walked crying to each of the four directions. I spent maybe an hour or two stepping toward the pole, all the while praying. When I reached the pole, I returned to the center, for the center of all things is Wakantanka, to whom we must always return. At the center pole I raised my Pipe to Father Sky and asked all the winged creatures to help me, and then pointed the stem to the Earth and asked everything that grows on Mother Earth to come to my aid.

  All this time I watched for any creature that might come to me. A bird would be especially important, because they are nearest to Father Sky. But any creature might be a teacher or a messenger, even a bug. If I was granted a vision, any messenger might bring it, one I might not even recognize at the time.

  The visions my people seek are not like the ones in the Bible. Moses went up the mountain and came down with Ten Commandments, clear and exact—Do this, don’t do that. Saul was struck by a light on the road to Damascus and given instructions to carry the message of Christianity to the gentiles.

  Our visions are not so clear-cut. Maybe an animal will appear in the ordinary way, and maybe there’s a message if you’re willing to listen. If a hawk flies over, that maybe means Spirit is sending messages—look and listen. A hummingbird may signify joy, and its feathers are used to make love charms. Mouse is a scrutinizer, a close-seer. Fox gives the ability to adapt, to blend in, to go unseen. So what you see on the mountain may lead you to learn from nature.

  Or a vision may be a dream, waking or sleeping. You may see two-leggeds, four-leggeds, wingeds, rooteds, you may hear winds or waters or the Stone People. Whatever you see is a gift from Spirit, a showing of the way. That’s why many of my people are named after an animal they saw in a dream.

  Whatever you see, you must receive it not only with the eyes of your head but the single eye of your heart. This is the eye that sees inner reality, and the world of the spirit.

  Understanding what you see on the mountain isn’t easy,
it comes slowly. You ask the counsel of the medicine man who put you on the mountain. You pray, and ask the help of Spirit to understand. You get a reminder, or make one—a feather, a claw, some beadwork—and keep it close to you and listen to what it says. Sometimes it takes a whole lifetime to understand a vision.

  But no vision came to me that first day, not even an animal coming in what seemed a significant way. The wingeds stayed so far off I could not see if they were eagles, hawks, or ravens. I was afraid Raven would come to me. Maybe I will die.

  That night I laid down, exhausted from the mental effort, and slept immediately. Though I hoped to have a portentous dream, either a waking or a sleeping dream, I blinked awake before first light and remembered no dreams at all.

  I looked around and saw the Morning Star. That was good, the morning star was still easy to see. I took up my Pipe, and walked to the east, holding it in front of me. Silently I asked the Morning Star for wisdom. My task was to hold the Pipe toward the east, and Pray to the Morning Star, until the sun rose.

  A Pipe weighs perhaps a pound. It seemed only moments before the weight became almost insupportable. In my mind I cried out for strength to hold the Pipe whatever time was needed.

  Immediately I felt stronger. My mind told me I could not hold the Pipe until sunrise, but my arms felt surer, bearing it up. And something else happened. I began to feel something from the Pipe.

  I cannot say what it was. Energy, perhaps. The essence of the Pipe. The spirit that lived in the Pipe and emerged to help those who called upon it. Something, and the words for it don’t matter. I felt this something come into my arms.

  I wanted to drop the Pipe. I was afraid. I glanced almost sneakily around the sky. No clouds. I felt like the Pipe was vibrating with some kind of energy—I wanted to throw it down and run.

  I will not. One of the few things I will not do, no matter how scared, is to throw down my great-grandfather’s Pipe.

  I wondered if the energy came from my great-grandfather. I do not even know your name! I lifted the Pipe higher, and my arms trembled.