“Right. Listen,” I say to the guy, bending over him, “I am very sorry. Okay? Not personal. Part of game. Okay?”
He shakes his head, apparently meaning it’s not okay.
And as I trot back to the dugout all the fans are booing me. They’re mostly Jew fans and the guy’s a Negro, but I guess more importantly I’m a white man and he’s an Indian.
The announcer is curiously quiet.
None of my teammates congratulate me for breaking up the double play and in fact don’t even look at me.
The runner makes it to third on a base hit, then scores on a fly ball to center field—which would have been the third out if I hadn’t broken up the double play, but that doesn’t seem to occur to anyone.
We go out for the ninth, ahead 1-0. Ben strikes out the first batter, gets the next one to fly to right, and I have the honor of gloving an easy pop-up for the final out of the game. I figure on lots of shouting and jumping around and I’m all set to—but I’m glad I wait because the other Jews just trot over to Ben and shake his hand on a job well done, then drift off the field in different directions.
I’m standing on the mound still holding the ball. Then I suddenly realize: Here I am, a white man, a wasichu, alone among many braves, on their land, having injured one of them, standing here like Custer …
“Hey, Ben?” I catch up with him.
Riding back between Ben and George, I ask the name of the guy I hurt.
“Randy Kills Plenty,” says Ben.
“That’s his name?” I look at George. “That’s really his name?”
He nods.
I turn to Ben. “These names. I’m curious. How’s that work? I mean, do people earn them?”
“You bet.”
“Okay, but for example, this Kills Plenty guy … I’m just wondering …”
George explains that the names are generally handed down and refer to some incident or achievement involving a relative in the past.
“I see. So in other words the name isn’t necessarily a good description of the person owning it now. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well,” he says, “I have a very shy, polite boy in my algebra class whose name is Robert Respects Nothing.”
I laugh. “That’s funny.”
“Do you think so?”
“No. Actually, it’s kind of sad. Poor kid. But I get your point. These names aren’t very accurate.”
“Sometimes they are,” Ben says.
I make it simple: “Kills Plenty. Accurate name or not?”
George says, “I’m sure he’s never actually killed anyone.”
“Not plenty, anyway,” Ben adds.
Tomorrow is Monday and I want to go see this guy Bob Sage about a job at the tutoring center, so I stay again with George, who feeds me a cheese sandwich and tomato soup and lemonade. Afterwards I flop on his couch with one of his Smithsonian magazines and he goes to the room he calls his office to write some letters. Meanwhile, there’s a powwow going on at the school gym. I think about going over there—how often do you get to see an authentic Indian powwow?—but I’m a little afraid of running into Randy Kills Plenty, so I stay on the couch. The gym’s a good distance down the road but you can clearly hear the drumming and high wild eerie singing.
That night I dream I go to my high school prom with this girl I used to be in love with, Lucille Hanratty. She looks so beautiful with her bare shoulders and corsage, her hair piled up high and sprinkled with tiny stars. The theme this year is “Indian Days,” featuring music performed by actual members of the Sioux tribe. I want to slow-dance to something romantic but we have to hop around like Indians while they drum and shout, “Hey-ah, hey-ah! Wey-ah, wey-ah!” But Lucille enjoys dancing like that, her makeup running, her hair toppling over. Then Randy Kills Plenty is standing in front of me with his arms folded. I immediately back away, all the way off the dance floor, then stand there watching as he turns to Lucille, who steps into his arms, and they begin slow-dancing while the Indians sing “Blue Moon.”
I get a job in the tutoring center, helping kids with their writing assignments. I like it: no lesson plans or grades and the kids aren’t obnoxious at all. I don’t generally like kids, especially teenagers, but these are different. There’s this deep reserve to them—some won’t even make eye contact. It’s like they give me a certain amount of themselves but that’s all. The rest is Indian and I don’t have access to that. Which is fine.
The other tutor’s for math—a woman, Mary Big Bear, who isn’t anything like her name. She’s very slender and beautiful, like the Indian maiden on the label for Land o’ Lakes butter. I try to get friendly with her but she doesn’t like me. She doesn’t think I care enough about the kids. So for a while I pretend that I do, telling her it breaks my heart to see what these children are up against. But I can tell she knows I’m full of shit and I give it up. She already has a boyfriend anyway, Albert Singer, a go-getter on the tribal council, pushing hard to get a John Deere factory out here. He’s very tall and noble-looking, and I have to admit they make a handsome couple.
I live with George, in the room he was using as an office. I bought a mattress and pillow from the school and a beautiful quilted blanket from Delores Many Horses. Under the pillow I keep a long sharp hunting knife, in case of Randy Kills Plenty.
I got the knife off Mark in the next trailer—the history teacher George mistook me for. The guy’s got quite an assorment of blades, along with two rifles, a bow and arrow, and a crossbow. He wears a buckskin jacket with fringe and goes hunting a lot with Ed Two Hats. Last week they brought back a deer, dead of course, and I sat on the steps with Mark’s wife Cindy and watched them cut it up.
“I hate this place,” she goes.
“My father’s a butcher.”
“I really and truly do.”
She chain smokes and watches a lot of television and badgers Mark to take her to Rapid City on weekends.
My weekend spot is Diamond Jack’s, in Valentine. I get reasonably drunk and usually manage to buy the dancer a drink and try talking her into going to bed with me. The only one who said yes to bed also said it would cost me twenty-five dollars. No way was I going to pay for it. And yet I did, and had a great time. Her name is Amy. She’s there every two weeks.
Now and then Randy Kills Plenty appears in my dreams, always standing there with his arms folded while I back away. Otherwise, I’ve never seen him. He lives in Mission.
So all in all, this isn’t too bad a life I have going here. I even have a savings account.
Then one afternoon I get very depressed.
It’s Sunday in mid-November. I’m in my room, sitting at the desk with a piece of fry bread and one of George’s Smithsonian magazines. I happen to look out the window. Shreds of dry-looking snow are darting around and this guy Joe Hollow Horn Bear is walking down the road, hatless, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, hunching against the wind. And that’s all. But for some reason I suddenly feel so miserable I want to lie right down and die.
I lie down. I don’t die though, and the next morning it’s still with me, like the flu. It doesn’t seem to be about anything: I just feel very sorrowful. My heart actually feels heavy, literally. With a heavy heart I go to work, and when I get home I drag my heart back to bed.
This goes on all week.
On Friday night I drive to Diamond Jack’s but I can’t get drunk. Amy is there and after she’s through dancing we go to her room, but I can’t get it up.
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. Got the blues.”
She tells me I still have to pay.
I try talking to George about all this. He quotes from Hamlet: “‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.’”
I tell him that’s pretty much the feeling.
He informs me that the first production of Hamlet, at the Globe Theater, featured Shakespeare in the role of the Ghost.
I tell him I didn’t know that, and go to
bed.
Sunday night Mark walks up to my room with his heavy boots, knocks once, and tells me through the door that he’s arranged for me to do an inipi the following evening and that we’ll be leaving here at seven, and stomps off.
An inipi is a sweat lodge ceremony. It’s supposed to be good for the soul. George must have told him about my condition.
So the next evening I’m in Mark’s pickup truck, my hand braced against the glove box as we bounce along a dark hilly road.
“Now, don’t be alarmed by the incredible intensity of the steam,” he warns.
I don’t care for his condescending tone and assure him I don’t alarm easily.
“And don’t take that attitude,” he says. “This isn’t a test of your manhood. An inipi is designed to purify and realign your spirit. Henry Crow is a genuine authentic shaman, and let me tell you, it’s an extremely rare privilege for a wasicbu to be allowed to sweat with him. I had to do a lot of talking to get you in.”
I thank him.
It’s a clear night with a big bright moon.
He goes on about Henry Crow, who’s very old and blind and has tremendous wochangi. “Do you know what that is? Wochangi? Do you know what that word means?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Wochangi means spiritual power. With a shaman of Henry’s advanced level it’s like an energy field. So don’t ever touch him. It could knock you unconscious. In fact, with a person at your level, it could kill you.”
“Please don’t squeeze the shaman—is that what you’re saying?”
He stops the truck.
“I don’t think you’re ready for this,” he says. “I’m going to take you back.”
“Hey, a little joke. Take it easy. Jesus.”
“Maybe you just need to get laid.”
“I tried that.”
“Because I’ll tell you the truth: I have a hard time imagining you with any kind of crisis of the spirit, you know? Not to be insulting, but do you have any spiritual dimension at all? I’m serious.”
“I used to be an altar boy,” I tell him.
“An altar boy.”
“‘Course, that was long ago,” I add.
He sighs and drives on.
I wasn’t trying to be funny.
The sweat lodge is a dome about ten feet in diameter built out of willow branches, covered with canvas tarps and blankets, sitting on a snow-covered hill overlooking the town. Frank One Star is tending some loaf-sized rocks in a fire pit outside the lodge, moving them around with deer antlers, the rocks glowing pink. He tells us to get undressed and go on in.
We hang our clothes on the branch of a small tree, the moon easily bright enough to see by. Standing there in the snow, in my underpants, I promise myself I will someday lead a more normal life.
Mark crawls into the dome through an open flap and I follow him in. It’s very dark.
“Over here, No-Name.” Ben’s voice.
I’m glad. I crawl over to him. The floor is covered with sage and smells wonderful. Ben pats the ground beside him and I sit there, feeling safe.
But then I have a thought. “Ben,” I whisper, leaning close. “Is Randy Kills Plenty in here?”
He laughs.
“Is he?”
“No.”
Frank One Star begins bringing in the hot rocks, carrying them on the deer antlers and setting them in a pit in the center of the room. They warm the place up nicely.
Then he closes the flap and there’s total darkness. I don’t like that. I feel lost in space, floating through the cosmos in my underpants.
Henry Crow begins singing. He has a voice like you’d expect from his name, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve never heard anyone sing with so much wochangi. I don’t know what he’s singing, what the words mean, but he seems to be speaking directly to the Great Whatever, asking Him to kindly help us out of all this goddam darkness down here.
Afterwards he says, in English: “I’m told there’s a new one here. No-Name? Is that what you’re called?”
“That’s—yes, right,” I tell him across the dark.
“Good name. Good way to start. Maybe a good way to finish, too. I’m going to smoke on that. And the other wasichu, the one who comes a lot—he’s here?”
“Yes, Tunkashila,” Mark answers. “I am here.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your grandfather. That’s from the movies.”
I smile in the dark.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do, No-Name. We’re gonna pass the pipe around now. When it comes to you, say a short prayer before you smoke. Just a little prayer. Something. Pray in your own way, we’ll pray in ours. It’s the same God. You know that.”
The pipe goes around, each man saying a short something in Lakota. When it comes to Mark he says, “Hau Mitakuye Oyasin.” I’ve heard the phrase before. It means, “To all my relations,” which according to the Sioux means, “To all things.”
It’s a good prayer and when the pipe comes to me I say, “To all my relations,” in English to show I’m not a wannabe like Mark, and take a pull. I’m surprised. It tastes like a menthol cigarette. I hand the pipe to Ben and he speaks longer than the rest of us, in Lakota. I hear the name Stanley in there, so he’s praying for his uncle Stanley Dancer, who blew his brains out last month.
When the pipe returns to Henry Crow, he starts singing again. I’m wishing we could just sit here listening to him and to hell with the rest of the ceremony. But I know what’s going to happen next. He’s going to begin ladling water from the bucket beside him and pouring it over the glowing rocks.
Don’t be alarmed by the incredible intensity of the steam.
The song ends.
I want to leave. I feel all better now, completely over my silly depression.
I hear the scrape of the ladle in the bucket. I brace myself. Then I hear the hiss of the water hitting the rocks and the next moment I inhale a flame that goes down my throat and into my lungs and I grab Ben’s arm.
“Go down,” he tells me. “Breathe down there.”
I put my face to the floor. He’s right. There’s air down here. Then another hiss, bigger than the first, and the flames find me down there and when I try to breathe I can’t get any air. I try all around—no air, only fire—and I panic. I start crawling like mad over laps and legs towards the entrance. I don’t give a shit. I have to breathe.
“Wasichu coming through,” Ben announces.
Frank One Star opens the flap and I crawl out into the clear cold breatheable moonlit night.
“All right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer, standing up. “I’m sorry,” I tell him.
He closes the flap.
Henry Crow begins singing again.
I stand very still in the snow, in my underpants, listening.
“Mister No-Name!”
This girl Cheryl Little Elk comes up to me after school one afternoon while I’m walking back to the trailer, hunching against the January wind. She’s with her friend Linda Kills In Water.
This is very unusual, a kid coming up to me. But she wants to show me the “A” on this paper she wrote. I helped her with some of the grammar and punctuation but that’s about it.
“See?” she says, paying me the high compliment of assuming I’ll be happy for her.
I tell her, “That’s great, Cheryl. I’m really happy for you.”
Walking off with her friend she says again, over her shoulder, “See?”
See what?
I’m helping Gary White Hat with an essay for his English class, trying to show him how to put together some kind of an outline. It’s after three and we’re the only ones in the room. Whatever I say to him he nods like he understands, but I only have to look in his eyes to see there isn’t any point in continuing. He’s definitely high on something, and the way he keeps sniffing and wiping his nose with his Nike wristband I think of cocaine, although that seems unlikely out here. Then I realize what that smell is: airplane glue. It’s on his
wrist band. That’s what the sniffing is about.
I tell him we’ll go on with this tomorrow. He starts to get up, but I ask him, “How’s basketball?” He’s a starting guard.
“Okay,” he says.
“Who you playing tomorrow?”
“Not sure,” he says, and gives his wristband a sniff.
“Gary …”
He waits.
“You seem a little … out of it today.”
He shrugs.
“Hard to concentrate?”
He shrugs.
“Y’know, Gary …”
“Hey. I gotta go now.” He gets up.
I tell him to sit down. “We need to talk.”
He tells me I need to mind my own wasicbu business, and walks out.
I sit there for a while. Then I write up a report to the principal Bob Sage and leave it in his box and go home.
The next day Bob leaves a note in my box, thanking me for my report, saying he’ll write up a report. I don’t know who he gives his to, but I have a feeling they’ll write up a report…
Billy Lame Horse’s father, Tom, comes to the trailer one Friday night in early spring, drunk as hell, saying he wants to talk to me and George about Billy, how he’s doing in school:
“I wanna know. Good or bad. You tell me. I’ll sit here. Go ahead. Got a beer?”
“No,” I tell him.
“How’s he doing? I’m listening. You go first,” he says, pointing at George.
George tells him about Billy’s classwork, that it’s not bad, although he could do far better if he applied himself.
“What for? What’s he gonna get? A big star on his head?”
“Well …”
“Hey. He ain’t gonna leave the reservation. He’s a good kid. He ain’t going nowhere. So what’s the difference? Hey. Listen. I was in Vietnam. You got a beer for me?”
I tell him I’m sorry, no.
“Gimme a damn beer. I’m a vet.”
“We don’t have any, Tom.” It’s the truth.
“I killed fourteen them sonofabitches, you know? Hey. Know what I used? No gun.” He makes the motion of shooting a bow and arrow, with the sound: “Ffft.” He looks at me. “You don’t believe it?”
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