Black Hills

by Simmons, Dan

  Paha Sapa pans across the rest of the arriving crowd, and when he comes back to Borglum, the Boss has turned away, the fresh and ever-present red kerchief around his neck easy enough to see amid the crowd of mostly white shirts and dark jackets. Borglum himself is all in white—or a rich cream-colored long-sleeved shirt and slacks, Paha Sapa sees—except for the large kerchief and black binoculars strung around his neck.

  Paha Sapa lowers his own glasses and leans back, his sweat-soaked shirt against the strangely cool curved granite of Lincoln’s emerging cheek. He’s angry that his hand is shaking slightly as he removes his watch from his pocket. Another two hours, at the most, before FDR arrives and the ceremony commences.

  THE MORNING AFTER their dance in the aspen grove across the lake from the new hotel, Rain announced that she wanted to climb Harney Peak, which was looming over them to the northeast.

  Paha Sapa crossed his arms like one of the cigar store Indians that all Indians hate.

  —Absolutely not. There’ll be no discussion of this.

  Rain smiled that peculiar smile that Paha Sapa always thought of as her “Ferris Wheel smile.”

  —Why on earth not? You yourself said that it was a short walk—two miles or less?—and that there was no climbing involved. A toddler could do it, you said.

  —Maybe. But you’re not going to do it. We’re not. You’re… with child.

  Rain’s laugh seemed as much in delight at the fact he’d just announced as it was making fun of his concern.

  —We’re going to go on lots of walks on this camping trip, my darling. And I’ll be walking a lot at home during the six months left. This is just a little more uphill.

  —Rain… it’s a mountain. And the tallest one in the Black Hills.

  —Its summit is still only a little more than seven thousand feet, my dear. I’ve summered in Swiss towns that sit at higher altitudes.

  In rebuttal, Paha Sapa shook his head.

  She moved closer and her hazel eyes looked almost blue that perfect morning. After their dancing in the aspens, they’d returned to their little campsite and Rain had gone to the back of the buckboard and started removing both the mattresses that Paha Sapa had insisted on bringing in case she “needed to lie down.” Seeing her lifting them, Paha Sapa had run to grab the mattresses from her and to carry them back to the big army tent. Why do we need these? he’d asked innocently. At times, he had discovered, his wife could literally purr like one of the cats that stayed around the mission school and church. Because, my dearest love, our army cots, while wonderfully comfortable, are not adequate for long periods of lovemaking.

  But still… in the clear May morning light, Paha Sapa was shaking his head, arms still crossed, the frown seemingly etched into his bronzed face.

  Rain set her finger to her cheek as if struck by a thought.

  —What if I rode Cyrus up?

  Paha Sapa blinked and looked at the old mule, who, hearing his name, twitched one notched ear in recognition but did not look up from his grazing.

  —Well, maybe, but… No, I don’t think…

  Rain laughed again and this time it was totally a laughing at him.

  —Paha Sapa, my dearest and honored anungkison and hi and itancan and wicayuhe… I am not going to ride poor Cyrus up that hill… or anyplace else. First of all, he wouldn’t leave Daisy. And second of all, I’d look like the Virgin Mary being led into Bethlehem, minus the big belly. No, I’ll walk, thank you.

  —Rain… your condition… I don’t think… If something were to…

  She held up her forefinger, silencing him. From less than a quarter of a mile away, just over the low ridge, came laughter and a woman’s shout. Paha Sapa imagined the Sunday-dressed wasichus playing croquet or badminton on the long green lawn that sloped down to the mirror-still lake.

  He also understood what his silent wife was saying. They were almost certainly much closer here to medical help should there be a problem with her pregnancy than they would be in all the months to come at Pine Ridge.

  Her voice now was low, soft, and serious.

  —I want to see the Six Grandfathers mountain you’ve talked about, my darling. There’s no easy way in to it, is there?

  —No.

  The presence of the hotel and new man-made lake and white gravel path here in the heart of his Black Hills made Paha Sapa dizzy, as if he were living in someone else’s reality or on a new and only vaguely similar planet. The very idea of there someday being roads to the Six Grandfathers made him ill.

  —I want to see it, Paha Sapa—it and a view of all the Black Hills. I’m putting the luncheon things in this old army map case you brought. Why don’t you make sure that the tent is secure and that Daisy and Cyrus will be all right for the few hours we’re gone?

  The view from the summit of Harney Peak (or Evil Spirit Hill, as Paha Sapa still thought of it) was incredible.

  The last half mile or so of the very visible trail was across the top of one rounded granite outcropping after the other. Having no interest in scrambling up the scree- and boulder-tumbled spire to any technical high-point “summit,” the two strolled out onto the north-facing rock terraces of the high shoulder of the mountain.

  Yes, the view was incredible in all directions.

  Back the way they had come were the Needles formations, forests, and receding grass-and-pine hills all the way to Wind Cave and beyond. To the northwest was the dark-pined and gray-rocked heart of the majority of the Black Hills. Far to the east the Badlands were like a scabbed white scar against the plains; farther north the distant marker of Bear Butte rose against the horizon. Everywhere beyond the Hills stretched the Great Plains which were—for these very few weeks in late May into early June and only then after a rainy spring such as this had been—as green as Rain had once described Ireland.

  There were gray granite summits and needles and ridgelines poking up and out of the so-dark-green-they-were-black pine forests in all directions, but the Six Grandfathers was the only rising gray mass to challenge Harney Peak itself. The long summit ridge was almost literally at their feet. The last time Paha Sapa had seen the Black Hills—and especially the Six Grandfathers mountain—like this, he had been floating high in the air with the spirits of those six grandfathers.

  —Oh, Paha Sapa, it’s so beautiful.

  And then, after they sat for a while on the blanket Paha Sapa had spread on the stone summit ridge—

  —All you’ve ever said, my darling, is that you attempted your hanblecˇeya there when you were a boy of eleven summers.

  She took his hand in both of hers.

  —Tell me about it, Paha Sapa. Tell me everything.

  And, to his great surprise, he did.

  When he was finished telling her the entire tale, the entire experience, everything he had seen and heard from the Six Grandfathers, he fell silent, astounded and somewhat appalled that he had said all he had.

  Rain was looking at him strangely.

  —Who else did you describe this Vision to? Your beloved tunkašila?

  —No. By the time I found Limps-a-Lot in Grandmother’s Country, he was old and ill and alone. I did not want to burden him with so terrible a Vision.

  Rain nodded and looked thoughtful. After a long moment in which the only sound was the light breeze moving through the rocks and low plants there at the summit, she said—

  —Let’s eat lunch.

  They ate in silence, with Paha Sapa feeling more foreboding with each minute the silence stretched on. Why had he told his beloved—but mostly wasichu—wife this tale, when he had told no one else? Not Limps-a-Lot when he had the chance. Not Sitting Bull. Nor any of the other Ikcˇe Wicˇaśa when he had had the chance over the past dozen years.

  Both were watching something that Paha Sapa had never seen before, not even when he had flown with the Six Grandfathers. The high grass of the endless plains, at its absolute greenest this May morning, moved to the caress of strong breezes that were strangely absent there on the summit ridge
of Harney Peak. Paha Sapa thought of invisible fingers stroking the fur of a cat. Whatever it reminded him of, he and Rain watched as the strong but distant breezes moved mile upon mile of grass, flowing ribbons of air made visible, the underside of the grass so light it looked almost silver as ripple moved on to ripple. Waves, he realized. Having never seen an ocean in real life, he realized he was looking at one now. Most of the plains and prairie there had, he knew, been parceled up into rich men’s ranches and poor men’s homesteaded parcels—the former destined to grow larger, all the latter doomed to fail—but from this summit on this day, those buildings and barbed-wire fences were as invisible as the absent buffalo and the root-chewing destructive cattle that had taken the buffalo’s place.

  Now, from this height, there was only the wind playing on wavetops across that perfect illusion of a returned inland sea. Then came the stately cloud shadows moving across that sea of dark grass interspersed with brilliant ovals of sunlight. “When the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea… ” Pools in the sea. Where had he read that startling phrase? Oh, yes, last year in Dickens’s Bleak House, which Rain had so enjoyed and had recommended he read, although his hours for reading, between returning from the ranch long after dark and leaving for the ranch while it was still dark, were few enough. But he loved reading books on her recommendation so that they could talk about them on Sundays and sometimes she returned the favor by reading some of his old favorites. The Iliad had been one such. Rain admitted that she’d had a tutor who had attempted to get her to read the Iliad in Greek but that the spears and blood and boasting and violent death had caused her to turn away. (But this spring, reading the same Chapman translation that had so moved young Paha Sapa in Father Pierre Marie’s school amid the almost carnal scent of sunbaked tent canvas, she told her husband that she had learned, from him, how to love Homer’s tale of courage and destiny.)

  The picnic food was good. Rain had actually baked a pie using a campfire oven. She had also brought lemons and although there was no ice, the lemonade in carefully wrapped glasses was sweet and light to the tongue. Paha Sapa tasted none of it.

  Finally, when they were packing away the plates, he said—

  —Look, Rain… I know the so-called Vision was all a hallucination… brought on by many days of fasting and the heat and fumes in the sweat lodge and by my own expectations that…

  —Don’t! Paha Sapa… don’t!

  Paha Sapa had never heard her use that tone of voice with him before. He was never to hear her use it again. It silenced him at once.

  When she spoke again, her voice was so soft that he had to lean toward her there on the rocky summit ridge of Harney Peak.

  —My dearest… my husband and darling boy… that Vision you were granted is terrible. It makes my heart ill. But there is no doubt that God—whatever power rules the universe—chose you to receive that Vision. Sooner or later in your life, you will have to do something about it. You have been chosen to do something about it.

  Paha Sapa shook his head, not understanding.

  —Rain, you’re a Christian. You lead the choir. You teach Sunday school. Your father… well… You can’t possibly believe in my gods, my Six Grandfathers, my Vision. How could…

  Again she silenced him, this time with the palm of her hand on the back of his hand.

  —Paha Sapa, is not another name for Wakan Tanka, besides “the All,” also “Mystery”?

  —Yes.

  —That is at the heart of all our faith, my darling. Of everyone’s faith, for those who can find and hold faith in their hearts. Unlike my father, I know so very little for certain. I understand little. My faith is fragile. But I do know—and, yes, I have faith—that at the heart of the heart of the universe there is Mystery with a capital M. It has to be the same Mystery that allowed us to find our love and to find each other. The same love that has allowed the miracle of this child growing in me. Whatever you decide to do because of this Vision, Paha Sapa, my darling, you must never deny the reality of the Vision itself. You have been chosen, my dearest. Someday, you will have to decide. What you will have to decide, I have no idea and I doubt if you do either. I only pray… pray to the mystery within that Mystery itself… that by the time you do have to decide, your life will have given you the answer as to which way to proceed. It will, I fear, be the hardest of choices.

  Paha Sapa was stunned. He kissed her hand, touched her cheek, then rubbed his own cheek roughly.

  —Wovoke, the crazy old Paiute prophet I told you about, must have thought that he was chosen as well. But in the end, he was just crazy. The Ghost Dance shirts did not stop bullets. I saw that Limps-a-Lot had been wearing one, under his ratty old wool jacket.

  Rain winced, but her voice was just as strong as before.

  —That old man thought he had been chosen, my darling. You have been chosen. You know that and now I do as well.

  The wind suddenly arrived from the plains below and arose around them, whistling through crevices in the rocks.

  Paha Sapa looked into his wife’s eyes.

  —But chosen to do what? One man can’t stop the Wasicun Stone Giants or bring the buffalo back or return the Wakan—the sacred Mystery—to his people who have lost it. So… chosen to do what?

  —You’ll know when the time comes, my dearest. I know you will.

  They did not speak again on the slow walk down Harney Peak, but they held hands much of the way.

  THE IMPORTANT GUESTS are arriving in the front-row stands far below.

  Through the melded twin Zeiss circles, Paha Sapa can see the gleaming bald head of his old mentor Doane Robinson. He knows that Doane will be eighty years old this coming October, but the poet and historian would never miss a ceremony like this, a celebration of the next visible part of a shared reality that was once just Doane Robinson’s solitary dream (however much that dream has changed).

  Near Robinson in the front row is an older man who looks as if he has a bulky towel wrapped around his chin and left cheek and neck. This is US senator Peter Norbeck and Paha Sapa knows that Norbeck—along with the dreamer Doane Robinson and pragmatic congressman William Williamson—is part of the troika who actually had argued for, pushed ahead, presented to the Senate and House, found funding for, begged for, and tirelessly defended the Mount Rushmore project (often from the excesses of Gutzon Borglum himself) all the way to its current three-heads-almost-finished reality. But Senator Peter Norbeck, who had taken more verbal abuse from Borglum over the years than most men would permit from their wives, is now dying of recurring cancer of the jaw and tongue. The cancer and repeated surgeries for it have finally robbed him of his speech and turned the lower half of his face into a nightmare guaranteed to frighten children and some constituents, but Norbeck has grown a beard to hide some of these ravages and has draped this towel-scarf around the lower part of his face as if it were a normal part of his wardrobe—a second tie, perhaps, or a flashy cravat.

  As Paha Sapa watches through the binoculars he’s steadying with his elbow on his left knee, he sees Norbeck leaning back to say something to three men in the row behind him. Pointing toward the gang of straining reporters held back by their rope, the dying senator makes quick pantomine motions that end with an upward spiral of his fingers. All three of the politicians—plus Doane Robinson sitting three chairs to Norbeck’s right—throw back their heads and laugh heartily.

  William Williamson is not laughing. The congressman chosen to lead the welcoming delegation for FDR is pacing nervously back and forth in front of the stand of tall microphones.

  Paha Sapa glances at his own watch—2:28. He can see that Gutzon Borglum is far too busy down there now, talking to important people, to have time to run up and stop Paha Sapa even if he were to see something out of the ordinary through his binoculars. But Borglum does have a telephone connection to his son, Lincoln, who’s in charge of the eight men at the crane and boom atop the Jefferson head, and the official program for the dedication says that it
will be Lincoln who will, with a touch of a button, detonate the demonstration blast at the drop of his father’s red flag—but in reality it’s always the chief powderman who sets off the shot. Paha Sapa is sitting far enough forward along Lincoln’s cheek—also covered with a sort of towel, he realizes now, looking down at the granite he’s sitting on—that he’ll be able to see Lincoln Borglum’s waved flag, half red, half white, when his father’s second-in-command down there phones up the order to blast as a sort of backup command.

  But the detonator boxes are with Paha Sapa.

  For the hundredth time, he looks at the twenty sites where he’s planted the dynamite crates with their detonators. His worry is the same one he’s always had: that the power of the explosions will send large rocks or small boulders all the way to the crowd and reviewing stands. It shouldn’t, the way he’s half buried the dynamite in the spots he’s chosen. Big Bill Slovak, who had briefly worked with an urban demolition crew in Denver after leaving a Cripple Creek gold mine where unsafe practices by the owners had resulted in the deaths of twenty-three miners in one collapse, always liked to point out to the younger Paha Sapa that gravity was the real force involved when one was trying to collapse large structures, not the dynamite blast itself. Imploding rather than exploding had been the demolition crew’s motto. Give me one stick of dynamite, Big Bill used to say on their lunch breaks down there in the Holy Terror amid the glow of carbide helmet lamps and the taste of rock dust, and I’ll bring down Notre Dame. Just take out the right parts of the right buttresses, and gravity will do all the rest.

  Paha Sapa hopes that will be true on this blast, but there is always the threat of flying debris. He’s calculated for the safety of the men atop the cliff and is almost sure that the president and all the guests and visitors at the viewing area on Doane Mountain are safe from small flying rocks, much less the inevitable rolling boulder debris from the blast, but he still worries.