Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Reuben licked the side of the soda can. “These bodies—anyone we know?”

  Manny shrugged. “We think one is a Spearfish college student who went missing in 1969.”

  Reuben whistled between teeth that shone bright and unblemished, remarkable considering what he had been through in life. “How you going to solve a case that old?”

  “Oh, it gets better. There were two others that we unearthed buried in dirt underneath the student. We think they died in that car during a bombing practice run as most of the windows were blown out, and it appears as if one of the victims died by a piece of windshield sticking into his chest. He may have been Moses Ten Bears.”

  Reuben became silent and his head dropped onto his chest. Manny remained quiet, unsure if Reuben prayed to God of the Christians or to Wakan Tanka of the Lakota. “That would shoot down that old theory of Moses falling off some steep cliff as he prayed,” Reuben said at last. “You certain it was Moses Ten Bears?”

  “Reasonably.” Manny wiped the sweat from his face and neck and pocketed his handkerchief. “We’ll know for certain when we get a DNA sample from his grandson.”

  “If that was Moses Ten Bears in that car, I’ve got to send him off to the Spirit World properly.”

  “Willie already did that.”

  Reuben nodded his approval. “I appreciate you coming here to tell me. Being a wicasa wakan I’ve always felt a strong connection to other sacred men, particularly Moses.”

  “That’s why I came here, to ask your help.”

  Reuben smiled. “I knew it, little brother. But shoot—what you need help with?”

  Manny stood and stretched his leg, as he massaged his hand. “That part of the bombing range they were found at is pretty inaccessible. It takes a four-wheel drive or a car a person doesn’t care if they beat to hell to get down there, but a person can get there. Is there another way down to the Stronghold?”

  Reuben stood and reached inside a leather portfolio. He came out with a Bureau of Land Management map and spread it on the ground, weighting the corners with rocks.

  “You always have maps handy.”

  Reuben knelt beside the map. “This shows where Old Ones gathered herbs.”

  “For what?”

  Reuben shook his head. “Maybe if I hadn’t driven you away from tradition you would have remembered.”

  “You didn’t drive me away from anything.”

  “Didn’t I?” Reuben’s eyes softened as he sat on the ground in front of the map and looked up at Manny. “If I hadn’t been such an outlaw back in the day, you wouldn’t have felt you had to leave. I know you were ashamed of me and…”

  “Nonsense.” But Reuben was right. When Manny was growing up on Pine Ridge, the turmoil between the American Indian Movement militants and Chairman Dick Wilson’s Guardians of the Oglala Nation was bolstered by the people’s mistrust of federal law enforcement, particularly the FBI. Reuben had been on the forefront of AIM violence, enforcing their strict code of adhering to traditional ways, of keeping one’s mouth closed to any lawman asking questions.

  Uncle Marion had discouraged Manny from idolizing his older brother, discouraged him from even seeing him. But Manny always managed to sneak out and meet with Reuben, sitting for hours outside Billy Mills Hall with other schoolkids, listening to Reuben regale them with AIM’s interpretation of the Good Red Road. The Red Road, where a man took back, with violence if necessary, that which the government has taken. At least that’s what Reuben espoused. And that’s what Manny thought until Reuben was sentenced for the Billy Two Moons murder. Then the Red Road became the Black Road and Manny had to find another way to travel his own Red Road of truth and honesty and courage in his life.

  Manny felt his temples pounding and he put the cold can of soda against his head to fight the rising headache. Manny always felt he left the reservation for the FBI in Washington, D.C., because it offered so many more opportunities for a Lakota. Since he’d returned to working Pine Ridge cases, and talking with the brother who had walked his own Red Road on the other side of the line, doubts had crept into Manny’s logic. He had come to realize those opportunities weren’t for the Lakota but for Manny Tanno himself. “Do we always need to have this conversation every time I come here?”

  Reuben held up his hand. “You’re right. Just pointing out that many Lakota gather herbs for ceremonies there. But let’s get back to that other route you wanted to know about.” He pointed to the south end of the Stronghold Unit. “Take Route 2 out of the White River Visitor’s Center about twelve miles, past the Cuny Café about a mile.” Reuben ran his finger over the route. Manny put on his reading glasses and squinted against the bright sun.

  “If you park on top of Battle Creek Canyon you can look to the northeast and see the Stronghold Table. Down the south side of the table is a trail that will get you to Cottonwood Creek. It’s easy to find Moses’s cabin from there.”

  Manny brought the map closer and studied the route. “Looks like it would be a pretty healthy walk.”

  “It is. Believe me.” Reuben patted his stomach, which, Manny noticed, had not grown much over the years, and his brother had remained a trim 240 with just a hint of the Lakota paunch. “It takes a damned mountain goat to get down there even with horses. Why?”

  Manny opened a manila envelope and took out a map hand drawn on stained parchment. “On loan from the Heritage Committee. Shows how things looked back during the time the government seized the Stronghold for the bombing range.” Manny laid the map next to Reuben’s. “See how things have changed there since that time. If this were the 1940s, it would be near impossible to get to those cars the way we went.”

  Reuben turned the map a quarter turn and nodded. “A person would have had to take the Battle Creek Canyon trail. That’d take someone who knew the area well.”

  Manny agreed. “Then it looks like I have to take a hike down that way.” He dreaded the hike ahead. He could still walk down a deer in winter, but Manny knew it would be hard descending that trail. But it might give him a better understanding of who might have trekked into the Stronghold during the time the bombing range was in operation. And right now, he had little else to go on.

  “What do you hope to accomplish?” Reuben asked. “You’re able to get four-wheel drives down the other way to Marshal’s cabin.”

  “I got to go down that other trail, just to get an idea who might have walked it. By the looks of our maps, that trail you showed me is the one alternate route down to the bottom.”

  Manny folded his map and slid it carefully back in the envelope. He started to sit, but pain shot up his leg, centering on the places where the cat had dug its claws in. Instead, he walked a tiny circle, working the stiffness out.

  “At least Willie had enough sense to haul you to the ER.”

  “I felt bad calling him so early. He looked like he didn’t get a wink of sleep. He certainly hadn’t showered and changed clothes since yesterday.” Why am I telling Reuben this, he’s not my priest.

  “Lizzy again?” Reuben asked while he dug for his cell phone. “Willie’s still guilt-tripping himself over that?”

  Manny nodded. “Wouldn’t you if you betrayed your only aunt? He won’t talk with anyone about it. Just seems to slide deeper into himself.”

  “I’ll pray for him my next sweat.”

  “There’s something else.” Manny hesitated, tossing over in his mind how much he should tell an ex-felon. But Reuben was his brother. And his kola. “I got other troubles in this investigation—Judge High Elk’s personal friend and protector, Joe Dozi. He’s a genuine bad one.”

  “Problems with this guy?”

  Manny nodded, the hair on his neck standing. He was worried—and serious—about Dozi.

  “Your FBI have anything on this Dozi?”

  “Just that he was drafted in the army in ’69. I had him checked out, but the army wasn’t helpful at all. Said they had no record of a Joe Dozi being in Vietnam, though I learned he spent three tours i
n country.”

  “So much for interagency cooperation.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Reuben leaned over and grabbed another Coke and sat back on the lawn chair. “My guess he was SF.”

  “Special Forces?”

  Reuben nodded. “They were often hidden from rosters. We had some operating up by Con Thien. Nasty bastards. They did the same thing we did in CAG.” Reuben explained that the Marines Combined Action Group operated much like the SF A-Teams, living and fighting among the Vietnamese natives. “We’d go out on two- and three-man killer teams, always with a couple indigs. If this Dozi was doing that—and survived three tours with SF—he’s very good. And DOD may have buried his records so deep you’ll never find them. You want me to pay this Dozi a visit?”

  Manny shook his head. “I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he spooked me.”

  “How about I tag along when you make your hike into the Stronghold.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Give me an excuse to pick herbs.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I got to look out for my only brother.”

  Manny sighed, put his hands at the small of his back, and stretched, the pain increasing in his leg as he sat back on the stump to wait for Willie. “We’ve had this discussion before, too. You don’t have to look out for me.”

  “You need spiritual guidance. Besides, dealing with someone like this Dozi that sounds a little out of your league, no offense to you or the bureau. Now if you walked with the Great Mysterious…”

  Manny held his head in his hands, the headache now a raging migraine. “I chose to leave the reservation, and what I remember of the culture here. If I get back to Unc’s teachings, it’ll be because I want to.”

  “You want to.”

  Manny laughed.

  But Reuben didn’t smile. He used the lawn chair to pull himself up. His soda disappeared in his enormous hand. “You’ve been dreaming again.”

  “No.”

  “Sure you have. The headaches are coming back. Driving you nuts figuring out what they mean.”

  Manny leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees as he pressed the cold can to his temple. “I thought Jason’s wanagi was done with me when we solved his case this summer.” Manny shook his head as if warding off the thought. “But dreams are coming back. I thought I dreamed of Moses Ten Bears even before we suspected it was him in that car. At least I think it was him. I just don’t know.”

  Reuben stood and motioned to the creek bank where Manny knew he kept a sweat lodge erected permanently. “Perhaps it’s time to get right with Wakan Tanka again, misun. Perhaps we should sweat once more.”

  “I don’t want to sweat.”

  “Still afraid?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of those visions you experience when you get right with the Wakan Tanka.”

  Manny wanted to tell Reuben that he had visions even when he wasn’t right with the Great Mystery. But Reuben was right. He needed to sweat, to get right with himself even if he wasn’t sure there was any Great Mysterious to get right with.

  Manny followed Reuben over the bank to the creek running in back of his house, and slid on his butt to get the ten feet down to Reuben’s Initipi. Reuben had started a fire and stood in front of the sweat lodge and began praying to the four winds while Manny began stripping off his clothes.

  Manny remained silent until Reuben finished praying to the earth and sky. “You expected me?” Manny pointed to a hot fire in front of the lodge where stones heated, awaiting the coming of life.

  Reuben smiled. “Just say I figured you’d need cleansing by now.”

  Reuben grabbed a wicker pitchfork and scooped hot rocks from the fire, then ducked low and disappeared through the lodge entrance. He repeated this three more times until all the rocks had been placed inside, in a dug out hollow of the ground in the center of the lodge to awaited sacred mni, water that brought life where none was before.

  “It’s time again to confront your fears, little brother.” Reuben dropped his shorts and entered the lodge naked.

  Manny felt in his jacket pocket for the pouch of Bull Durham. Why had he brought it? Because he wanted a smoke so bad he would even roll his own? Or because he knew he would be purified inside the lodge this day and would need something for offering when finished?

  He palmed the pouch and bent low—for humility—and entered the canvas-covered dome structure with just enough room inside for him and Reuben. Reuben trickled water on the hot rocks with a buffalo horn. Steam erupted, activating the creative forces of the universe.

  “Yahapo!” Reuben said, and Manny closed the flap door, plunging them into darkness except for the glow of the rocks in the center pit.

  Reuben handed Manny an eagle feather and together the two passed burning sage smoke over their bodies.

  More water.

  More steam, hissing, angrily at first, but mellowing out as the two men grew purified by the smoke.

  The heat from the rocks and the steam rising with nowhere to go but around the lodge intensified. Every pore in Manny’s body opened, the impurities leaving him, the aches he’d felt the last few days subsiding. But he suspected this wasn’t the work of anything the Great Mysterious did, for he had felt these same things when he went inside the sauna at the FBI gym back in Virginia. There was nothing mysterious about this.

  “Feel Him enter you,” Reuben said as he squatted cross-legged on a bed of sage. “Feel what He can do for your spirit, misun.” From a small pouch at his feet Reuben pinched peji wacanga and tossed it into the darkness.

  Manny sat back, sage poking his butt, yet he continued passing the eagle feather through the smoke and the steam, over his body, wishing the feather were a giant fan he could flap to make the heat go away. The intense heat, burning his nose. Manny tried breathing through his mouth, but that burnt as well.

  Reuben dribbled more water on the rocks, the heat as stifling as anything the Badlands had to offer on its hottest day. How had Moses Ten Bears ever survived living there all his life?

  “Because I had Wakan Tanka guiding me along the way.”

  Manny rubbed sweat from his eyes. He strained to make out Reuben in the darkness, the rocks illuminating his face, eyes closed, rocking back and forth as he chanted softly. It hadn’t been Reuben talking to him, but a voice so soft he knew he imagined it.

  “The Great Mystery is always there for us. He can help us in our journey.”

  Through the steam, a figure rose in his mind’s eye, a figure as solid as anything within the lodge, a figure that towered over Reuben, a figure that had to stoop so as not to rub his head on the lodge. Manny had never met him, yet he knew he faced Moses Ten Bears sitting cross-legged opposite him, naked, smudging himself with his own eagle feather. “You have to cleanse yourself for the journey ahead.”

  More steam, more heat, the sweat stinging Manny’s eyes. “I’m here to find out what happened to you and Ellis Lawler and Gunnar Janssen.”

  Moses looked confused for a moment.

  “The other body found in the car.”

  After a long pause, Moses nodded.

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  Moses shrugged. “I cannot tell you anything about them.”

  “But you said you’re here to help me with my journey. And finding Gunnar’s killer and what happened to you and Ellis is my journey.”

  Moses smiled. “You got a bigger journey than that, little brother. You got that journey of your own that you struggle to walk. You got that journey within you that you keep denying.”

  “I won’t ever find it.”

  “You will,” Moses said, his form fading away, riding with the steam, his voice fading over the hissing of the rocks and Reuben’s faint chants. “Trust me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  JULY 7, 1920

  “We going to sit here all afternoon or are we going to hunt? The old man wants me to kill something bad, so let’s get it ov
er with. I got better things to do back at the ranch.”

  “Like what, bossing your father’s hands around?” Moses peeked around the easel at Clayton pacing the cabin like a chained wolf. “If you want to go out in this weather, help yourself.” He nodded to Clayton’s boots sitting just inside the door. Gumbo had caked the boots as high up as the mule ears. When they had rushed inside to escape the storm, Clayton had complained his boots weighed forty pounds apiece. “We are lucky we made it inside when we did.”

  “Bullshit.” Clayton cracked the door and hard raindrops pelted his face and neck. He slammed the door just as a clap of thunder, near and high and bouncing around the Badlands’ steep crags and pinnacles, shook the cabin walls.

  “You better keep the door shut unless you want to wind up a Wakinyan.”

  “A what?”

  “Thunderslave.”

  “More of that superstitious crap? What the hell’s a Thunderslave?”

  Moses ground brown earth pigment between the steel muller and the thick piece of plate glass. He dribbled water on the glass, grinding and working the thick paste into the center of the glass, mixing until he got a consistency he could use in his painting.

  “I said, what the hell’s a Thunderslave?”

  Moses mixed the brown with the gray already on his palette before he spoke. “Men and horses that get struck by lightning become Thunderslaves. From then on, you must obey the Thunder Beings.”

  “Now you’re talking a foreign language.”

  Moses smiled. “The lightning is the flashes from the eyes of the Wakinyan Wakaya, the thunder is the beatings of their wings.”

  Clayton laughed and cracked the door, looking out for a moment before being driven back by the hard rain. “So just where the hell are they?”

  “We cannot see them.” Moses added more subdued tans to the sky. “They hide themselves in the thick, dark clouds. It is dangerous to look upon them.”

  “Superstitions.” Clayton snickered and chanced a last look out the door. “Just tell me this storm’ll be over soon.”

  “What do I look like, a fortune-teller?”