“Albert.”
I patted some more. “Albert.”
Others smiled as I glanced toward the three very old, very solemn men, all of them seated behind the fire and in front of a slight, crescent-shaped berm that half-circled the perimeter. “I guess not everyone is happy to have me here?”
Black Horse shook his head. “No, it isn’t that they are unhappy to see you, but they have important sacred duties. The first is the Road Man; he is responsible for making sure that nothing interferes with the ceremony and that you are well taken care of—lives are in his hands, so he must take all of this very seriously.” He gestured toward the men seated next to the Road Man, one of whom held a #6 or #7 Dutch oven with a skin stretched across the top. “This is the Drum Carrier; he is the advisor to the Road Man. The other is the Cedar Man, and it is his job to keep the air purified during the ceremony.”
Someone spoke from behind me, and there was a palpable pause and a sudden silence. I turned to see who it was that had spoken and could see another man seated by the opening who was pointing toward my back and talking rather quickly in an animated fashion. I turned to look for Artie Small Song’s mother, but she had already made herself comfortable across the perimeter.
All of a sudden, there was a great deal of discussion, and this time I was pretty sure it wasn’t pleasant. Albert’s grip tightened on my arm. “Are you wearing a weapon?”
I’d forgotten about my sidearm and was now aware of the cause of the fuss. “I am.”
“You will have to take it off; it is strictly against the rules of the church.”
“What should I do with it?”
He gestured toward the opening. “You will have to leave it outside.”
I nodded, not so pleased with the idea of just leaving the Colt out there unguarded, but not wanting to be insulting by insisting that it would be dangerous if left unprotected.
Excusing myself with a strong nod to the assembly, I stepped outside, ejected the clip and piped round and placed them in my shirt pocket, and then unbuckled my belt, slipped it through the loops, wound it around the pancake holster, and carefully put the bundle in my hat. I put the lot of it a step away from the door against the canvas and then pulled a folded handkerchief from my shirt pocket and placed it over the Walt Longmire Collection. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to cover the whole thing with what looked like a shroud, but the idea of leaving the .45 laying there in plain sight just didn’t sit well.
When I reentered, things had calmed down.
The man who had started the discussion nodded a tight-lipped response as Albert took my arm again. “He is the Fire Chief; he and the young man next to him will tend the fire all night, keeping it strong.” He gestured toward an open spot along the wall and invited me to sit beside him. I did as instructed and watched as the conversation died away. After a few moments, the Road Man spoke to the Fire Chief, who closed the flaps.
As I sat there, the features of the old men became more recognizable to me.
I knew the man with the drum; he had been a friend of my father’s—of course much younger at the time—and the reason I remembered him was that every time he saw me as a child he had given me a shiny wheat penny. James Woodenlegs.
The Cedar Man also began looking familiar, and I recognized him as Willis Weist, who had disappointed my mother; she had observed him going to as many as four white-person church services each Sunday. A confirmed Methodist, she’d finally asked him which one he liked the best, to which he had responded, “Pentecostal.” My heartbroken mother asked why. He’d shrugged, “Because they have the best potluck dinners.”
There were four big chiefs in the Cheyenne nation and three of them were here. The Old Man Chiefs were a kind of loose Council of Elders, of which I knew Lonnie Little Bird to be a member (Lonnie most likely purposefully avoiding the ceremony because of his close association with me). Like Lonnie, when asked if they were chiefs, they would deny being such; they must exemplify modesty, and you could bet that if a Cheyenne told you he was one, he was pulling your leg.
It was a life of service, which few could live up to and from which many resigned. The old joke was that if you wanted to know who was the real chief of the Northern Cheyenne, look for the guy with the empty wallet on the road standing beside a car that was out of gas. That would be the chief: broke from giving all his money away and broken down from running food from home to home and providing a sounding board to the people’s miseries.
This is not to say that the Old Man Chiefs had no power—their word was final on any subject of contention because they had proven beyond question that they had the people’s best interests at heart. Big Medicine.
A few more words passed among the three men, at which point the Fire Chief approached the Road Man and received a number of bundles that included sage, tobacco, and corn husks, and a dried, powdery substance of which I could only guess.
The Fire Chief passed the sage around the circle first, and I watched as the members drew the bundles across their limbs, the trunks of their bodies, and then their heads in an initial purification ceremony.
I did as I’d seen the others do and watched as Albert smiled a nod of approval, did the same, and then passed it on. When everyone had smudged themselves, the Fire Chief took out papers and a simple tobacco pouch which he passed to the others, who in turn scattered a little of the tobacco into one of the small sheets and rolled themselves a makeshift cigarette.
It had been a while since I’d tried to roll with fixings and attempted to remember how Hershel, the old cowboy back on the Powder River, had rolled his. I fumbled with the paper. Albert’s patient hands took the assembly from me, deftly rolled the thing up, and licked the edge with spit that was like Super Glue.
“Thanks.”
He nodded and handed it back to me as the Fire Chief stoked the flames and pulled a short log, about four inches in diameter, from the fire. He handed the smoldering stump off to the participant to his right, who lit his home-rolled cigarette and passed the “lighter” on to the next.
I was able to light my ceremonial smoke without assistance and carefully handed the glowing log to Albert.
The others were now talking in subdued voices, and I could make out from the tone that they were praying. The older man curved his shoulder into me and quietly spoke. “These are the prayers of smoke and are a way of clearing your intentions for the ceremony.”
I nodded. “What if I’m not sure what my intentions are?”
He smiled, the wrinkles in his eyes joining with the ones around his mouth like the ripples in a pond. “Then you need to think about why it is you are here.”
“I guess I’m concerned for my family.”
Albert’s eyes played around the circle. “A lot of people are here because they have concerns for their families, including the woman who brought you.” He studied me. “You don’t have to lend voice to these prayers; you may keep them to yourself if it’s more comfortable for you.”
I nodded and focused on the fire, trying to remember when I’d last prayed for anything. My mind went back to the spring before last, and a time in Philadelphia when I’d sat in a hospital at my daughter’s side. I’d prayed then—like a theological car salesman, I’d made deals, counterdeals, and threatened the very heavens themselves if they didn’t release my daughter from the swollen solitary confinement to which a terrible accident had sentenced her.
Thinking about my daughter and her daughter, I found my lips moving. The words weren’t important, but the thoughts were of hope that their lives might be spared the kind of trials that mine had held; that somehow the prices that I had paid in losing my wife and numerous others would balance the bill in their favor. Just keep them safe was all I finally asked, just keep them safe from all the things out there that would do them harm, and if that was not possible, at least give me a crack at those things before they had to deal with them.
When I became aware of the teepee again, I realized that I was the only on
e in the circle speaking.
The Road Man raised an eyebrow at the Drum Carrier and they both nodded. “Haho.”
The entire group chanted the one word back, me included.
The Fire Chief collected the butts from around the circle and carefully placed them alongside each other at one end of the crescent-shaped berm. It was then that I noticed a groove along the ridge of the altar and remembered Henry’s remarks about “sitting behind the moon” and “traveling around the moon.” I assumed the ridge was meant to represent the road itself.
The Fire Chief stoked the flames, and I watched as the sparks rose and ascended through the opening at the top of the teepee like lightning bugs attempting to escape into the cool dark of night.
When I looked down, there was a bowl being held under my nose that contained a powdered substance with clumps. I’d seen pictures of the stuff, but never seen it live and up close. I took the bowl and watched as the person next to me placed a spoonful of the powdered substance into his mouth and then handed me the ornate spoon with a carved bird on the handle.
I sat there, an individual whose experience with drugs had so far mostly been limited to those in pill form—aspirin, Benadryl, and the occasional Vicodin.
Staring at the powder, I took the spoon in my hand.
It wasn’t so much that I was intimidated by the thought of taking a psychoactive drug that held me still; I’d known Henry my entire life and knew he wouldn’t allow me to be involved with anything that might harm me in any way.
It was me.
The dried cactus is said to set the user on a reflective road for eight to ten hours, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to meet me there. It was all a question of letting go, of allowing myself the freedom to see who and what lay on the other side. My experiences on the mountain had prepared me, and in some ways superseded anything the peyote might provide, but—
There was no pressure from the faces surrounding me, just smiles and looks of reassurance. Even the Old Man Chiefs who sat on the back of the altar were specifically there for my protection.
Henry’s words kept thrumming in the back of my head, “It is a great honor.”
I looked around at the faces again. Taking a small amount of the powder onto the spoon, I slipped it into my mouth.
It tasted horrible, bitter and dry, and my first response was to spit it out, but I figured that would’ve been worse than not ingesting the stuff at all. The saliva in my mouth began reconstituting the powder and, if possible, it started tasting even worse. A moment later, the man to my right handed me a small cup and filled it with a dark liquid, steam rolling from the opening of an earthenware jug.
I studied the small cup with a blue and white stripe near the lip and especially the brewed contents, and figured it had to taste better than what was in my mouth.
I was wrong. It was worse.
Swallowing the contents, I fought back the urge to gag and quickly handed the jug and cup to Albert. If I was going to throw up, I preferred not to throw up on the sacred items. Taking a few deep breaths, I felt a little better.
I found myself looking at the people in the circle and thought about the honor that had been bestowed on me. I felt an odd familiarity with the light; the glow from the fire filled the teepee like the golden one that sets off the sunset on a high plains summer evening. We were well past that time of day, but I basked in its warmth as I looked at the Cheyenne circling the teepee, with their heads bobbing and their mouths uttering the sing-song rhythm of prayer.
Other than a mild sensation of nausea, I really wasn’t feeling anything, but I’d heard that that wasn’t an unusual response to the stuff I’d ingested. Just a slight stomach upset. I was beginning to think that my size and possibly a natural tolerance to the stuff were going to make the whole experience a bust. The nausea kicked in a little harder, and I belched; when I glanced at Albert, he was watching me and laughing.
I was thankful I’d had the elk dinner, in that it was probably dampening the effects of the peyote. On the other hand, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed; it was about then that I became aware of the grain in the knotholes in the teepee poles.
The tempo of the singing had quickened and was reinforced by the beat of the Drum Carrier, who had joined the chant. I listened to the music and allowed my eyes to rest on the Fire Chief as he stoked the coals of the central fire again, the flurry of sparks flying up and away as before in an attempt to join the stars.
The warmth of the fire reached out until I could feel the ends of my fingers and toes glowing of their own accord. It wasn’t a bad feeling, and certainly not the kind of thing I’d expected from a form of mescaline, but my knowledge was limited to what I had read, not what I had experienced. It was a good feeling but certainly not earthshaking. Once again, I was a little disappointed.
At this point, I think I was trying to make something happen, hoping for anything.
I studied the patterns in the spire-like poles that supported the teepee, willing some faces to appear in the wood, but they stubbornly remained knotholes.
My thoughts circled around to my daughter, who would be arriving in less than fourteen hours, and I hoped that Henry was making more progress in the wedding preparations than I. It was possible that I was going to have to leave Chief Long to her own devices in attempting to solve the puzzle surrounding Audrey’s death. I didn’t like the thought of leaving the case unsolved but maybe it was all for the best.
It was about then that I lowered my face to look around.
And everyone was gone.
7
I blinked my eyes and stared around the interior of the teepee just to make sure what I was seeing was what I was seeing—nothing.
The dirt altar that had made up the center of the ceremony floor was still there, even the indented road of the moon, the cigarette butts, the drum. The peyote bowl, spoon, and jug of tea were all there, all of it untouched, as if the participants had suddenly been called from the teepee and had left me behind.
The fire was blazing away as if it had very recently been stoked, but everyone was gone.
I continued to breathe deeply and sat there waiting for I’m not sure what. I blinked a couple of times and started to get the feeling that I was being made the butt of a joke. I found it hard to believe that the Old Man Chiefs would just get up and head out, but evidently they had, leaving the white guy in here to think about things.
I started to think about standing up when I noticed something on the ground leading to where I sat. Leaning forward, I poked a thumb and forefinger into the dirt and picked up a piece of rough twine, the kind that merchants used to use to tie up brown paper packages. I remembered the stuff from my youth on spools in dry-goods stores but hadn’t seen it in years. Where had that come from?
I picked up the end of the twine and watched as it traced its way across the floor, underneath the teepee flap, and out.
Leveraging myself into a standing position, I lumbered toward the center of the circle and stood there beside the fire with the piece of twine in my hand. It was strange, because the fire didn’t appear to be putting out any heat. I did a half-circle in both directions just to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything or anybody, but I was definitely alone.
I stood there for a moment and then noticed more strings lying on the ground, each one leading to where someone had been sitting, all of them disappearing under the flap.
I moved toward the door, kneeled down, and put the twine between my teeth—I could swear I could taste the peyote in the jute—so that I could have both hands free to open the flap. The job was made easier because the tips of my fingers were glowing. I pushed the flap away.
It was daylight outside, which explained everything—I must’ve fallen asleep, and the others had left me there in the relative safety of the teepee. I lowered myself into a three-point position and pushed my way through the opening.
I was no longer in the land of the Northern Cheyenne.
Sand dunes, str
angely red, furled into the distance like rollers in an ocean. The sky was a pale blue, and there was moisture in the air as if the sun had just risen even though it stood at midday.
I took the twine out of my mouth and looked to the horizon, but I couldn’t see anything except the wind-drifted sand. I turned back—the teepee was exactly as it had appeared last night, my hat with the sidearm inside still next to the door with the handkerchief draped over the top.
I was just about to reach over and pick up my things when the forgotten string in my hand gave a tug. Startled, I almost dropped it but then saw that it made a beeline over the nearest dune and disappeared. I glanced around and could see the other strings that had come from the teepee—they traced off in all directions, but none of them appeared to be moving.
The string yanked at me again, so I started following it, the sand potholing under my boots as I wound the twine around the flat of my palm.
The going was surprisingly easy, and I could see the perfect outline of the Bighorn Mountains with the brutish hump of Cloud Peak and the jagged molar of Black Tooth in the distance; but there was nothing else except the red desert and the frosted sky.
The twine tugged at me again, this time strong enough to pull my arm away from my body. I stood there looking at it and noticed that the line appeared to be heading toward the dominating marker of the mountains.
I set off again, the roll of twine getting larger around my palm as I walked up and down the gentle slope of the dunes, developing a rhythm not unlike that of the drums I’d heard last night. I’d even started to hum the chant in the back of my throat as I continued on.
I wasn’t sure what was really happening but figured it had to have something to do with the peyote. I guessed this was what happened when you took the stuff. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I felt disassociated, as if I were outside myself and watching my actions from far away.
I stopped singing, but the song continued. I listened to make sure it wasn’t some sort of echo, but the tune persisted without mine. Standing there at the point of one of the dunes, this one knife-edged by what must have been a powerful wind, I turned my head and could see what looked like a swale that curved like the crescent of a moon; at the top, an enormous black bear was hunched over and striking at something.
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