Stone Song

by Win Blevins

  “A warrior especially,” Tasunke Witko agreed. He barely felt his disappointment that his son was not called to be a wicasa wakan, at least not yet. “But the dream hints of other ways, ways that might be revealed now or later.”

  His son fell silent for a moment. He was evidently seeing again, fully seeing, far from this sweat lodge, far from his father and from the ordinary earth.

  “We’ll talk about dreaming of wakinyan after a while,” Tasunke Witko said gently. In the tone of a quotation, he went on, “Beneath his left shoulder, slung over a thong from the opposite shoulder, one eagle feather adorned an Inyan creature. Also Inyan was tied behind the ear.”

  “Inyan medicine,” said Curly.

  “Yes.” This was a delicate point. Inyan represented a power that might change everything Curly had seen. It might lead to new visions later, to a completely different path. Not everything was revealed at the beginning.

  “You must tell Horn Chips about Inyan,” Tasunke Witko said.

  Curly nodded soberly. Tasunke Witko wondered how much he had heard about Inyan medicine. It was very ancient, very strange—most Lakota were leery of it.

  Tasunke Witko made a little humph to himself. The blessing and hazard of a vision was, when you started walking its path, you could sense its promise but not see its further course or its end. If you could, you might not start.

  Tasunke Witko went on quietly. “From the obscuring, velvety blue-gray of these shadows came the enemy fire, streaks flashing toward the rider, fast and dangerous, maybe arrows, maybe bullets. They flashed toward you, ominous in the air. But before touching your flesh they disappeared. Like raindrops from a high thundercloud over desert, they evaporated coming to the earth’s flesh. None tore your skin, none broke your bones, none shed your blood.”

  Tasunke Witko stopped. This was where he sensed that Curly had left something out. That was good—a dreamer must always keep something for himself alone.

  Curly felt his silence like a clot in his throat. He didn’t want to talk about the hands of his own people grasping at him from behind, clutching, holding him back. Or his sense that he could be hurt only by the hands of his own or when the hands were holding him.

  He swallowed hard. He would trust himself. His impulse was to keep silent, and he would. There was no need to bring grief before its time. Hawk was still quiet.

  “I am promised invulnerability,” said the boy. His tone struck even him as queer. “But the Sahiyela were promised that at the Creek of Turkeys.” He looked at his father pleadingly.

  “Power is always mysterious,” Tasunke Witko said.

  Curly contemplated. Goose bumps rose on his skin. What if invulnerability was an illusion? He shook his head. Maybe later he would understand and in understanding find his courage. Hawk stirred.

  Tasunke Witko took a deep breath. This part of the dream frightened both of them. “Do you understand? You must go first, in front. You must overcome fear. So you must keep your life and your medicine in such order that you will always feel the power of your dream within you.”

  Curly looked his father straight in the eye. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. Even this was a good start.

  “It will be hard to go always in front, always feel bold. You have to.” The father eyed his son hard. “Always lead the charge, as Rider did, knowing that the enemy arrows and bullets cannot hurt you.

  “I must tell you this next part carefully, and you must listen well.” The father’s chest wanted to expand with pride, but his bowels were trying to turn watery. This was difficult advice to give a beloved son, whose bumps and bruises you’d kissed. “When you are riding forth dangerously, as in your dream, you are protected. If you try to hang back for safety, not only will you be vulnerable, Spirit may paint you a lesson in your own blood.”

  Curly felt his father’s fear, felt him quail as he emphasized the words. Then Tasunke Witko took a deep breath and went on. “Now Rider was stripped to nothing but a breechcloth, and rode harder, faster, in a martial vigor. Behind him a thunderstorm erupted. Dark clouds roiled, lightning flashed and gave birth to sound. A zigzag of lightning rose on Rider’s cheek like a wound. Hail spots welted his body.”

  Curly felt his own power in his father’s telling and thrilled to it. He intoned the words himself:

  “Into clouds and shadows rode the rider, forever and forever into clouds and shadows.” The rhythmic energy was softening now. “The storm cleared, the hail spots faded, the day shone bright as polished metal. Horse and Rider flew forward.” He hesitated, thinking of the Lakota hands pulling at him, the picture he was passing over. “Over his head flew a red-tailed hawk.”

  The father looked at the son. Curly said meekly, “I have dreamed of wakinyan.” He was thinking of the three years of danger because he’d kept silent.

  “You will talk to Porcupine,” said Tasunke Witko evenly. His father seemed unperturbed by Curly’s failure.

  “Do you think I will have to do things backward?” blurted Curly. A clown, even if a sacred clown.

  Tasunke Witko shook his head. “Rider is a warrior.”

  The boy felt a warm gush of relief.

  Tasunke Witko went back to the telling. “On you flew, Horse and Rider, into the shadows, hooves floating above the earth, forever and ever on.”

  Curly took over again, his voice singing. “Hawk rode the wind over my head, and I knew Hawk. She has lived my whole life imprisoned in here.” Looking his father in the eye, he put a flat hand to his chest. “Her flight, her soaring through the air, liberated my heart.”

  Curly fell silent.

  Tasunke Witko spoke softly. “In your dream you received a spirit guide. That is a blessing. You must keep Hawk in your mind at all times, and seek her guidance.”

  “Father,” Curly burst out, “Hawk has always been with me. She’s trapped….” His throat constricted. “I have lived my whole life like a prisoner. I love my family, I love my people, but… I’m never comfortable.” He hesitated, then looked into his father’s eye. “Not around anyone.” Black Buffalo Woman might be an exception, but he wasn’t sure yet. “Hawk beats in my chest, wanting out. She is only calm when I’m alone. I believe that when I fight as I am instructed, riding in front, she will fly. She will soar. I will be liberated.”

  Tasunke Witko looked at him fondly. He said softly, “My warrior son.”

  They talked briefly about the medicine bundle Curly would make. Tasunke Witko would ask Curly’s mothers to tan a deer hide to special softness and whiteness for it. Inside Curly would wrap the skin of a hawk and … He should not discuss the exact contents, not even with his father. As more power was revealed to him, he would add items that came to him as power.

  Tasunke Witko had something more to say about seeing beyond. “The hard part,” explained the father, “is acting by your vision when it seems wrong. Sometimes it will seem to you that your vision will get you killed. Then you must picture Rider vividly in your mind and act like him. What would be suicide for another man is safety for you.”

  Tasunke Witko. This next part was hard, partly because it involved him. In thinking about his son’s vision he had understood why the youth held himself apart from everyone. “I must warn you,” he said, “this is a great vision, and a difficult one. I think you will have to be alone much of the time. People will think you strange, but you will have to go your own way.”

  “I like it that way,” put in Curly. “Already.”

  Tasunke Witko thought, You do it, my son, but you are lonely. “It seems to be your nature,” he agreed. “I think you will be lonely. I think that women, family, and children will not keep you warm, as they keep most of us.”

  Like a cold hand on Curly’s guts came the thought of Black Buffalo Woman. Would he never have her, then?

  Curly looked his father full in the face. Yes, that was what his father meant. Yes, he saw that his father also meant that he himself might not have lots of grandchildren, and that was a sorrow. That his son would not be a close c
ompanion, amiable by the lodge fire.

  Curly could think of nothing but Black Buffalo Woman, and she was not a thought but a light, prickly touch against his chest. Would he lose Black Buffalo Woman?

  Then what do I care about this vision? he thought angrily. It costs too much.

  A long silence passed. Sometimes Curly thought he wasn’t breathing. Finally he said, “It will be hard.”

  Tasunke Witko now gave the advice he had given many times, but this time each word clanged in his mind. “Living by what you see is always difficult, and your vision is especially difficult, yes.” The father refused to let his own sadness affect his counsel. “Remember this,” he went on. “Sometimes your vision will seem intolerable. Not only dangerous, but miserable. Too much privation, too much responsibility, too much solitude, too much danger.” He hesitated. “It is true that other paths might avoid hardships, might even let you live longer. For you they would be spiritual death. Your vision may or may not be the road of physical death. It is spiritual triumph.”

  Tasunke Witko waited and watched his son’s face. It was impassive. Then he went on with the familiar concluding words. “Only from the end, from the pinnacle of death, will you be able to see how the river of your vision led in the true way to the salt sea.”

  They took a final sweat. The father prayed for his son to have the strength to live his vision.

  Tasunke Witko tried to keep his personal feelings out of his voice. His fear, his sorrow, his excitement should not become obstacles for Curly. He did for his son what a wicasa wakan did, not a father.

  He thought what he would tell his wives later. Something like: “Our son has seen something. Something big. It is a cup of goodness and a cup of sorrow at once.”

  They would rejoice. Any full measure of life was a cup of goodness and a cup of sorrow at once.

  When father and son woke in the morning, they bundled up the hides, left the willow framework of the hut, and set out after the band. They were one day behind.

  “How do you feel?” the father asked the son.

  Curly noticed his heart. It was rocking from awe to eagerness to panic. The dream gonged in his mind, the memory of Rider larger and more vivid than anything merely real.

  What will I do with my vision?

  Heroic pictures ran pell-mell in his head. The sounds of hooves, the war cries—“It is a good day to die!”—the yells of effort, of surprise, of death or triumph.

  “You can fight to live,” his uncle Spotted Tail had said. “You cannot fight against death—you fight to live.”

  Curly forced his mind away from his uncle, the relative who now seemed a weakling. He summoned up the smell of dust and blood. He imagined the feel of the ceremonial entry into camp and the joyous trilling of the women in tribute to his courage, to his spirit, to the power of his dream.

  In his mind he led the way, riding headlong into arrows and bullets.

  His flesh puckered at the thought.

  “I feel every which way,” he answered. “Every emotion I can imagine.”

  Tasunke Witko smiled at him. “Fine,” said the wicasa wakan. “You should.”

  HEYOKA

  “I saw Rider gallop through the velvety blue-gray of these shadows,” Curly said. Porcupine, the heyoka man, listened somberly. Many times criers for visions had come to him to tell about the wakinyan they saw in their waking dreams. The thunderbirds were always a power demanding the most careful treatment.

  “Enemy fire streaked toward the rider, maybe arrows, maybe bullets. They flashed toward him, ominous in the air. But before touching his flesh, they disappeared. Like raindrops from a high thundercloud over desert, they evaporated before striking the earth’s flesh. None tore his skin, none broke his bones, none shed his blood.”

  Curly made no comment on Rider seeming bullet-proof or on this lack of adornment. He was here to learn to cope with the destructive power of the wakinyan.

  He also left out the part about the people’s hands pulling at him from behind. “Behind Rider a thunderstorm erupted. Dark clouds roiled, lightning flashed and gave birth to sound. A zigzag of lightning marred Rider’s cheek like a wound. Hail spots welted his body.” This was what mattered.

  “Into clouds and shadows rode the rider, forever and forever into clouds and shadows.

  “The storm cleared, the hail spots faded, the day shone bright as polished metal. Horse and man flew forward.” He omitted the appearance of Hawk above his head.

  When Porcupine was satisfied that the young man had finished, he raised a mirror to Curly’s nose. There, Curly knew, the heyoka would see the entire dream in his breath, and perhaps other medicine that might belong to the young warrior. Curly waited patiently, breath in and out, pulse beating, the earth beating.

  At length Porcupine nodded two or three times. “We will have a heyoka ceremony for you,” he said simply.

  The people acted joyful—they welcomed heyoka ceremonies enthusiastically. The children found these ceremonies a lot of fun, with the sacred clowns acting silly, and the adults acted like it was all in fun, nothing but fun.

  Porcupine took Curly into the heyoka tipi, shaved his head, and suggested some meanings of the pictures he had seen in the misted mirror. He added that he had seen the gopher and described the medicine of that creature.

  Then the two went out into the village. The ceremony was serious play, a joking spirit thrown into the teeth of the west wind, the lightning, and lightning-gives-birth-to-sound.

  Helpers killed a dog quickly and singed the hair off. When the dog was boiled, everyone would have a piece. Holy flesh—thunder dreamers would put medicine paste on their hands and arms and pluck meat out of the boiling water without burning themselves.

  Porcupine sang the words of the traditional heyoka song over and over:

  “These are sacred.

  They have spoken.”

  Curly sang these words to the four quarters while the dog was boiling:

  “In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.

  In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.

  To half of the sky I send my voice in a sacred manner.

  In a sacred manner I send a voice to you.”

  Porcupine painted Curly’s entire body red and drew black lightning flashes and daubed on blue spots of hail on top of the red.

  Finally the clowning got started, and the people loved that. Two of the heyoka pretended that a small mud puddle was a big lake and they had to cross it. They mimed building a boat and paddled to the middle and got overturned by a wave—the two heyoka dived into the puddle, which was thumb-deep, and got all muddy. Then one of them became a muskrat and dived to the bottom and brought up some mud. The other turned into a goose and chased the muskrat, squawking. Everyone thought they were very funny.

  It was lunatic humor, of course. Nothing was as unpredictable or as dangerous or as overwhelming as lightning. Crazily, this destruction brought the rain and made Earth green.

  After the clowning and dancing, Porcupine and Curly went again to the sacred tipi. There Porcupine explained about dreamers of wakinyan far more deeply than Curly had understood them before.

  “There is no dream more powerful, more to be feared, more to be obeyed, or one that consecrates the dreamer more earnestly,” began Porcupine. “If you dream of wakinyan, you are heyoka all your life, before anything else, before guardian, scout, holy man, healer, leader, husband, or father.”

  He let this challenge sit in Curly’s mind a moment.

  “Heyoka walk one of two paths. Some become clowns and do things backward.” At the ceremonies they walked in reverse, said “yes” when they meant “no,” and vice versa, and sat on their backs or their heads instead of their bottoms.

  “The form of heyoka for others is more spiritual,” said Porcupine, “and so it will be for you. You may be seen as eccentric, but you will not be a clown. You will be attentive to the spirit of the west, Yata, and his powers the wakinyan. You will watch for all winged creatures that m
ay fly to you, especially the animal aides of Yata, hawks and bats.”

  Curly said nothing to Porcupine about Hawk.

  “You will pattern yourself after Rider in appearance,” said Porcupine, “for Rider was a wakinyan dreamer. You will wear the buffalo beard as a fringe on the heels of your moccasins. You will paint your face with streaks of lightning, and your body and your horse with spots of hail. You will wear plain clothing, nothing that makes a show, just as Rider did.”

  Porcupine said the next words in a matter-of-fact way, but with subtle stress. “You will keep to yourself, separated by your devotion to your dream. You will not marry until later in life, or not at all. You will live in a lodge at the end of the circle. Though you may be sociable in your own lodge, outside it you will say what is necessary briefly and with dignity and return to your solitude.”

  Tumult churned in Curly. He felt the rightness of all the interpretation—it was he. But to marry late or never!

  “You will ride into battle ahead of everyone else. Even riding a trail, you will keep your horse to the side of others, not directly in front or in back of them.”

  Now Porcupine emphasized the conclusion. “If you keep your vision of the wakinyan in your mind ceaselessly, and regard them always with the cante ista, more will be revealed to you in time. New paths will open.”

  Porcupine sent him off on this path with a half-shaven head and streak of black lightning on his left cheek.

  MAKA SICA

  Curly walked nervously through the camp circle of the Bad Faces. He bore their ambivalent eyes upon him in silence. He wondered for the thousandth time why Bad Face Oglala must resent Hunkpatila Oglala. Hawk perched uneasily.

  The young men were lounging and talking on this fine autumn evening. Curly half-smiled at He Dog and his brothers, who smiled back. With a nod Curly acknowledged his rivals: Pretty Fellow and his brother, Standing Bear, No Water nearby with his brothers the twins. They regarded Curly without expression. He deliberately kept the left side of his head to them, the side with hair. He was sure they noticed the streak of black lightning painted on that side of his face.