RavenShadow

by Win Blevins

  Finally he went on. “You better go see a man, Tyler Red Crow. From Yellow Bear Canyon, works at Allen, alcoholism counselor.” He scribbled something on a scrap of paper. “Here’s his office phone number.”

  How strange. What am I—a detective? What are my clues—scraps of paper, wisps of smoke?

  “Can you tell me anything else?”

  He stared at his own hands for a minute. “I can tell you why I’m riding,” he said. “My great-grandfather was killed at Wounded Knee.” He didn’t say any more for a minute. “How well you know the story?”

  I shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Maybe you better find out,” he said. “You told me you had relatives there?”

  “I guess. My grandmother’s family, Big Foot people. Her father was killed at Wounded Knee.”

  At the mention of Unchee his thick eyebrows went up. “Your grandmother’s … ?” he said in an odd voice. He took the time to finish rolling one. “That’s all you know?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re not a member of the Wounded Knee Survivors’ Association?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  He looked up into the cigarette haze. “Friend,” he said, “I suggest you find out what your ancestors did at Wounded Knee, and what was done to them.” His lips got hard, and I thought he was done. “I mean it,” he said. “I got a feeling of bad things.”

  He brought his eyes back to me. “And you better go see Tyler.” He got up, dropped a buck for coffee, buck for a tip, plus one fat, hand-rolled cigarette.

  I felt antsy. Didn’t wanna go home to Emile. Didn’t want to be anywhere, really. So in a couple of hours I was back in Kyle, old stomping grounds. Old haunting grounds.

  Still antsy. Didn’t wanna go see Grandpa and Aunt Adeline (it was too late anyway). Didn’t wanna do anything.

  Too damn late for anything, I told myself.

  I went and stood in front of the boarding school and looked at it. The night was dark and the building poorly lit. I reflected, Twenty-three years since I stood there for the first time with Grandpa and Unchee. That day I knew I had to go in and hated it worse than anything. Twenty-three years since the principal, Mr. King, told me everything would be fine, meaning it would be fine now that I’d decided to be a white man. Twenty-three years since this biggest lie of my life. Twenty-three years since this place, this institution intended as benevolent, had put my feet on a long and alien road.

  Was it, looking back, all the way a black road? Now I was standing at a crossroads, one road more Indian, one more white. The Indian looked more like a good red road, and I was going to take it. Yet I didn’t feel ready, running my mind over the years, to add them up and say the road that started here was a black, black road.

  What I saw, standing there, a man not a boy, was that the building wasn’t the same. Or it didn’t feel the same. To the outer eye it had hardly changed. Big old brick building, tired, shabby. Maybe it was ominous-looking. For sure I could remember the demons, the men or devils who punished me, imprisoned me, who made me do exactly what they said. Exactly what I say, and do it now. The moment was defined by their imposing their will on me, and both of us being changed by that.

  I hadn’t forgotten a bit. I heard a song recently, even aired it on KKAT when I shouldn’t have, that summed up my experience at the Kyle Boarding School. It’s a take-off on the old Sinatra tune, “My Way.” It’s intended to be all about going to college, but for me it was Kyle. Called “Their Way”—can’t quote it for you, can’t even find it. What it says is, I went there and got along by doing things their way. I remember some of the rhymes: “They gave me grades, not in a fair way.” “I learned to walk the doctrinaire way.” “I learned to climb life’s golden stairway—and do it their way.”

  A mockery, but that’s what Kyle School was.

  I still felt some of the old dislike of Mr. King and Mr. Banks and the truant officer. Somehow, though, standing in front of the building for the first time the demons didn’t seem properly black. Somehow the building didn’t glower and loom. It looked older and grimmer but not particularly haunted.

  And I found that vaguely unsatisfying.

  I went to the convenience store (like the two general stores but less satisfying) and was vaguely pleased to find a dreamsicle, my favorite ice cream of my teenage years. Standing outside, leaning against the storefront, I ate through the orange and savored the creamy ice cream inside. (If an apple is an Indian who’s red outside and white inside, what’s a dreamsicle?)

  I remembered Mr. Plebus, the bootlegger, and wondered where my beaded turtle pouch went. Couldn’t say I’d missed it much, emotionally, that sign of the physical connection to my mother. Maybe that was too bad, but I didn’t feel the loss, not anymore.

  Still, if it was in a museum and we could get a repatriation going, it would be fun to tweak the white tail.

  What in hell am I gonna do now? Not Grandpa and Aunt Adeline, no, but …

  I then took thought, and something in me said, Yeah!

  I got a blanket out of the trunk of the Lincoln, the Pendleton I always kept there. Then, gingerly, I got out the beaded bag that held my Pipe. I’d taken it on the mountain, and to the sweat, and hadn’t been home to store it away. Why do I want it now? What am I going to do with it? Didn’t know, felt the need.

  I left the car parked at the convenience store and walked down the Allen highway in the dark. About a quarter mile down I thought I spotted the place and turned into the sagebrush. I walked no more than a hundred yards west, in the dark with no moon to see by, and honestly thought I found the spot. For sure there was no sign of the doe, not after all these years. And it’s true, if sagebrush looks like a sea with no landmarks during the day, it’s worse at night. But the place felt the same to me.

  The cold shadow of the raven’s wing was here.

  I laid the blanket down, laid down, and folded it over me. I held the Pipe in its bag on my chest with one hand and put the other behind my head, elbow cocked, and looked up. I didn’t see the stars, though. My inner eye flicked away the picture of the dead doe and brought up the ravens, six or eight of them on the doe’s body, hopping and pecking, hopping and pecking.

  I played the scene over and over in my mind. Suddenly one raven—Raven—flapped into the air and flew straight toward me. It hovered a foot away, and I felt like it was looking me in the eye, and its eye was …

  Raven’s eyes bugged out. They stood in air at the sides of his head. They grew to the size of black suns. They gleamed at me. They made little circles against the dark sky. They turned red-hot and glowed….

  But I clasped the Pipe to my breast and I did not fall topsy-turvy into them. It was different.

  I ran the scene back and forth in my head like a video tape. I elaborated it. I made it more horrific. But it was different, I was different. Yes, I felt the shadow again, and, yes, it was dark and cold. But not as dark. Not as cold. Not as frightening. It didn’t paralyze me anymore.

  Great-grandfather, what was your name?

  Suddenly my outer eye brought me the stars. They nearly flashed at me, they were such a shock. I saw millions and millions of them. Here in a high country with little electric light, there were many times what you see in a city, or at the seashore. Seattle was deprived of stars, compared to this. They peopled a vast darkness, a greater darkness than I or anyone could imagine. But they were light. And in their light I could rest a little. Later the moon would rise, the light would be more, I would be able to see this earth better, much better. But for now I had the light of the infinite stars. It was not enough to bask in, but it was comforting. For my people the stars are a mirror for life on Earth, and a guide to the sacred walk.

  After a while, as though to test myself, I deliberately entered the dramatic scene with the raven again. I replayed the scene a dozen times or more. I created terrifying pictures. Sometimes I frightened myself. And I thought a couple of times, Oh, yes, this is my home, I belong here, this is my natural place, in
the shadow of the raven’s wing.

  My outer eye rescued me once more, which outer eyes seldom do. It brought me a shooting star. This was a brilliant one, with a long fall from the upper left center of my vision to the lower left corner. Instead of just blinking out, as they do, it seemed to pulse brighter at the last instant and then douse utterly. It felt good, that shooting star.

  I stretched my outer eyes all over the sky then, watching for more, and saw a half dozen, then a dozen, a score, and then what seemed like hundreds. It must have been a night of meteor showers, but I don’t read the newspapers. I watched them, and I watched the streaks of light against the infinite blackness, and in some way my heart was at ease.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, never intended to. I woke when the Morning Star rose, and there were no more meteors.

  The sky lightened gradually, in the smallest gestures. It was pearly. Tiny clouds dotted the crests of the western hills like beads of my favorite color, Cheyenne rose. I saw the overhead sky was gentling into blue, a very, very pale blue. To the east, beyond the vast plains, the horizon grew yellow and orange. I had seen this so many times that I thought, Who cares? At that moment I blinked, and the horizon glowed in rainbow colors. I blinked again, and the rainbow disappeared, but now the sunrise had a touch of magic.

  As the time approached, I got the Pipe out and loaded it with tobacco. I sat up in my blanket, arranged it around my shoulders, and turned my face to Wi, the sun. The low hills were black, and their shoulders radiated yellow-gold, like breath easing out.

  Soon Father Sun made his entrance, a fiery glob. He was simple, declarative, and all-powerful. I lit the Pipe.

  I rose to my feet in one movement. As I raised my arms, the blanket fell away. I held the Pipe high, then puffed and began my prayer. “I offer this smoke, my breath and my prayers, to the Powers of the East, home of the Sun, powers of beginning things, of initiation. O powers, run strong in my blood.”

  As tears started down my face, I turned clockwise, sunwise, Pipe held high. Then I put it to my lips, drew the smoke into my mouth, and blew it out. “O powers of the South, home of the flowing waters, source of growing things, father and mother of coming to fruition, may your waters flow in me.”

  I raised prayers of smoke to the other directions, to the West and the Thunderbirds and the powers of fecundity, to the North and its cleansing winds.

  I prayed to Father Sun, bringer of light, to Earth, and to the seventh grandfather, the mysterious one, the center of self and of the universe.

  I asked the strength of the powers in my new venture, the Big Foot Memorial Rides, the journey back to Wounded Knee, where Unchee’s father and three hundred other Mniconjou died. I asked to be shown the path one step at a time. I asked for faith to follow that path one step each day, without knowing the future, or asking. And last I prayed the most difficult prayer of all for me. “Tunkashila,” I cried, “bring me what I need for my growth into a good human being. Bring it whether I feel ready for it or not, whether I want it not. I declare that I want to change. I give myself to your power.”

  I sat in silence a while, and smoked until all the tobacco was turned to ash.

  Then I said the final words of all Lakota prayers, “Mitakuye oyasin”—We are all one—and felt that oneness bountifully. That blessing, the deep sense of oneness with all things, a sense that seemed like the longest lost of all my blessings, brought me the deepest gratitude I can remember, and brought once more the tears.

  Mitakuye oyasin.

  An Experience at Wounded Knee

  The next morning, after a night in the Lincoln, I felt different. My mood (or would you call it the state of my spirit?) was up, my mind was clear, things felt simple, and I felt like doing things simply. I was pleased by the change—so many years I’d felt grumpy, out of sorts, wry, cynical, all that stuff, I thought that was normal. This morning I went about normal things, gassing up the car, having breakfast at the Wild Horse Cafe. I enjoyed noticing what I was doing, just being aware.

  After breakfast, I thought. No, don’t want to drive down to see Grandpa and Aunt Adeline. So I called Tyler Red Crow, and fifteen minutes later he pulled into the parking lot at Little Wound School and I jumped in. We shook. He was driving over to Pine Ridge today, something about his job, and invited me to ride with him.

  Tyler is a tall Oglala about my age, hint of a belly, genial, articulate, a likable guy with a lot of bubbly energy, and he likes to put that energy into talking.

  “I am traditional,” he says right off. “I grew up, one foot in the traditional Lakota way, one in the Christian way. One hunska [grandpa] traditional, the other, Episcopal priest. I chose the Lakota way of praying.”

  He eyed me sideways and scooted the truck around a corner too fast. I fidgeted.

  “We’ll go by the massacre site, okay? I stop there to pray when I can.”

  I nodded and fidgeted some more.

  He looked at me long, until he ran the front right tire onto the gravel—that road is a twisty one. He corrected easily and looked at me again. “I’m not easy in that place,” I said. I began to get a dark feeling.

  “Hey, Lakota people, we ain’t gonna be easy, that place. ’Less you pray a lot there, make peace.”

  “Never.”

  “Your relatives died there?”

  “Yeah.” The feeling was dark and heavy both. “My grandmother’s father.”

  He eyed me long again. His face turned sober and he studied the road hard. “You need to go,” he says, fingers drumming on steering wheel. “You need to go. Well, we’re going.”

  Then his energy burst into talking again. He hopped from subject to subject like a jackrabbit. My mind was half somewhere else—already at Wounded Knee—but I can tell you some of the things he said.

  “For twenty years, me, no praying. Back from army, 1976, I renewed my Lakota spiritual life. Chose the Lakota way of praying, best thing I ever did.”

  I didn’t feel like talking—I was dreading seeing the massacre site again. But I managed to get out some words that said, “In a way I’m the opposite. Raised traditional, pushed onto the white road, then chose it, now maybe choosing to come back to traditional.”

  “I’m so happy now,” puts in Tyler. “I’m rich.”

  I was quiet, thinking on Wounded Knee.

  Later—“You go Christian when you went the white way?”

  “No.”

  “I consider all Christian churches my enemies. I don’t associate with them whatsoever.”

  Later—“Hope what’s coming, strong revival of traditional life on the rez. Hope these rides bring back those values. To me, that’s what they’re all about.”

  Later—“I want the rez to be traditional. I invite Lakota who want to be modern to leave us by the year two thousand. We want to be traditional.”

  Later—“Chup tell you how these rides got started?”

  “He told me to ask you.”

  “Birgil Kills Straight, Alex White Plume, Jim Garrett, coupla others.” (Kills Straight and White Plume were old Pine Ridge rez names everybody knew.) We say, ourselves, “It is now seven generations since Big Foot’s people died at Wounded Knee. Black Elk said the hoop would be mended and the tree would flower in the seventh generation. We need to do something to help the people heal.”

  Now a different feeling came, a sense of rising in my heart. It mixed peculiar with the dark feeling from before.

  “We decided, wanted do something, start mending the hoop, didn’t know what. So we went to Curtis Kills Ree and asked for guidance.” He looked sidelong at me. “You know Curtis?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Medicine man, good one. Curtis, he says, ‘Make a pilgrimage, repeat Big Foot’s ride to Wounded Knee four times, plus a fifth ride on the hundredth anniversary of the massacre. Pilgrimages to release the spirits of those who were murdered, finally, and wipe away the tears of the people.’”

  My feeling was big now, the rising, but really my heart was a
ll up and down, like a stick tossed on the waves of the ocean.

  “So we did a Makes-Vow ceremony. We promised to do that thing.”

  After a little bit Tyler went on. “On the day of the hundredth anniversary, perform the ceremony Releasing of the Spirits.” He fixed me hard with his eyes. “You know this ceremony?”

  I shook my head no again.

  “It can be done once every seven generations, that’s all. Release the spirits from that place.”

  With these heavy words we both fell silent. Though I didn’t know the story well, I knew the spirits of the people who died in the valley of Wounded Creek a hundred years before were still there, still suffering. In fact, the massacre itself was still going on, on and on, time without end. Time, we Lakotas know, does not truly divide itself into past, present, and future—this is one of the great illusions. All time is happening forever in the eternal moment. And some darknesses must be … exposed to the air for healing. Darknesses like mass murder.

  The truck nosed down a hill. Porcupine Butte was off to the right. “This is where it started,” says Tyler. “The people fled from Cheyenne River, heading south toward the Badlands, escaping from the soldiers and heading for Pine Ridge. Right off the army got real excited—find those Indians, they’re gonna join the Ghost Dancers, Badlands, big trouble. Army units ran all over the place, Cheyenne River to Pine Ridge—find Big Foot!

  “But the people traveled way faster than the whites thought they could. Every place the soldiers looked for them, the people were already gone. Even with Big Foot getting sicker all the time.

  “Then Big Foot, he sent some men ahead to tell the chiefs at Pine Ridge, I’m coming. I’ll be at Porcupine Butte tomorrow and Pine Ridge the next day.

  “The Seventh Cavalry was camped at Wounded Knee, looking for Big Foot.” Tyler nodded three or four times. “That Seventh Cavalry,” he repeated grimly, and shook his head bitterly.