by Lia Conklin
The horrifying truth. It had begun as a vague mirage the night Bull had introduced her to his anti-terrorist methods, and now there was no denying it. How would she go on? Now that she saw them not within the moonlit glow of Polaris but as the grotesque remains of melted corpses?
She knew by the sudden appearance of a concerned nurse that her agonized wail had not been internal. As the nurse came forward, Amelia dissolved into desperate sobs. Though the nurse did her best to comfort her, only a sedative was skillful enough to turn her wracking sobs into gentle hiccups and finally into a quiet doze.
She awoke several hours later under Paul’s soft gaze. He smiled, too concerned to even show teeth.
“Amelia. I’ve been so worried about you. I’m so sorry you’re hurt. I wish I could have done something, but you were too far away. And when you fell…well… it happened so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to respond until there you were, bleeding on the ground. I couldn’t believe it. It was just so fast. Are you okay, now? How do you feel?”
Amelia smiled weakly at his apparent concern.
“Paul, it’s not your fault. I just fainted. I guess maybe too much heat and too little water.” And sirens and lights and burnt flesh singeing my lungs, she thought, fighting the urge to scream it out to the world. She closed her eyes to block out the images that seemed to be as immediately present as her own breath.
“Amelia? Are you okay?” Paul said drawing closer.
“Just the headache, Paul. I think it’s time for another painkiller. Then what do you say you get me out of here?”
Within an hour, they were walking out of the hospital. Paul had offered that she stay with his family for a few days until she felt she could make the trip back to the ranch. She had almost forgotten entirely about the ranch and had to make a quick call from the hospital to tell them what had happened and that she wouldn’t be back for a few more days. Pamela had been very concerned and offered to pick her up immediately. Amelia assured her that she was in good hands and preferred to make the trip when her head was a bit steadier. And now here she was walking tentatively down a heated sidewalk towards Paul’s jalopy.
The rest of the day was sufficiently occupied with family introductions and friendly banter so that Amelia was able to successfully stave off her encroaching memories. She dreaded the moment she would be left alone and hoped the painkillers would knock her out quickly. That night she was lucky.
Chapter 22
The next day, a deafening horn blast awakened Amelia at 5:30 a.m. Muffled shouting, presumably in the Crow language and amplified by a bullhorn, followed, gradually fading into muted shouts until it stopped all together some ten minutes later. By that time, Amelia had quickly, yet gingerly, lifted herself from Paul’s bed and made her way to the living room couch where Paul lay still asleep.
“Paul,” Amelia said urgently shaking him, “something’s happening.”
Too tired to even smile, Paul motioned her away. “Go back to bed, Amelia. It’s just the camp crier.”
She returned to bed puzzled and remained so after being awakened yet again the following hour and the hour after that to the din of the same camp crier. Finally, on the crier’s fourth round, Paul was awake enough to explain.
“It’s just a tradition,” he explained. “The camp crier walks through town announcing each hour leading up to the parade.”
“What’s he saying?” Amelia asked.
“Hell if I know,” he grinned, looking up as his dad came into the living room stretching his lean frame. “I leave Crow to the old birds like my dad.”
Said Dad shook his head sadly. “That’s the trouble with youth, nowadays. No respect for the old ways. On that account, I can’t say I’m much better. But pretty sure he’s saying, ‘Get the hell up!’”
“Well, it must only work on white people,” Amelia offered. “You both slept right through it!”
Both Paul and his dad laughed.
“Well, the girls woke up on his third time around,” Paul’s dad replied. “So as long as he’s persistent, at least someone will be in the parade, and at least someone will watch.”
“Are you feeling up to it, Amelia?” Paul asked. “I mean it’s not the world’s greatest or anything, but my sisters prepare for it all year and get pretty excited about it.”
“Absolutely,” she responded in spite of her throbbing temple. Not only was she excited to see the parade she had heard so much about the day before but also realized she didn’t want to be left alone.
Within the hour, Amelia and Paul sat with Paul’s mother at her fairground stand which displayed the beautiful beaded clothing, regalia, accessories, and jewelry she had for sale. Amelia enjoyed her role as a spectator as the parade wound its way past the stand, an endless display of timeless regalia, spirited horses, and proud, elegant people. Paul’s younger sisters rode past on painted horses, each displaying a priceless sample of their family’s legacy: ancestral elk tooth dresses and Crow saddles of wood covered in buckskin with traditional high pommels and cantles displaying beaded bags and cradleboards. Draped across the saddle of his eldest sister lay a spectacular mountain lion skin with an underside of red wool, which Paul’s mother explained symbolized the father’s prowess as a hunter and protector of his family. The other sister displayed across her saddle an elk hide robe, which, according to Paul’s mother, was traditionally a wedding blanket.
“You can barely see the beading from here,” she explained, “but each robe has thirty rows of tiny beads. That one was my grandmother’s.”
As the painted hindquarters of the last horse and the swaying feathers of its rider drifted out of sight, Amelia turned her attention to Paul, who was just taking a turn at managing the stand. She helped him attend to customers until the late afternoon heat and the bustle of the crowd set her head to pounding, and when another dose of codeine did little to lessen it, she took her leave from the stand to head back to Paul’s house.
Chapter 23
As Amelia left the festivities, she kept her head low and her eyes nearly shut in an attempt to alleviate the pounding in her temples. She was just turning from the main road when she nearly collided with the broad chest of an Indian brave in full regalia. Before her eyes drifted up to his, they noticed the intricate beading of his breastplate and beneath it the swell of his smooth adobe skin, its wisps of soft hair tipped with tiny beads of sweat every bit as intricate as the necklace he wore. She was already inhaling the soft scent of sweet grass mingled with hot skin when her eyes made their way up past his bold chin to meet the depths of his eyes.
Her sharp intake of breath was audible as she recognized him. She felt as one must feel realizing she has breathed her last breath. She felt the poignancy of her past within her lungs and the sadness and helplessness of her mortality. And yet, with this last gulp, she felt too, the glimmer of a new life beyond the bounds of her mortal skin. When she breathed again, she knew she had crossed over, and her story would never be the same.
By the time she realized he was speaking to her, she had already missed his first few words.
“…happy you are up and around. I hope you are feeling much better.” He cocked his head and looked at her bandaged forehead. “It looks like it took more than a few stitches.”
She wanted to respond but just as his skin held her mute so too, did his voice.
“So, how are you doing? We were all very worried about you.”
Finally finding her tongue, she managed a shaky reply. “I-I’m, um, fine. Thank you so much for asking. I’m so glad I’ve run into you ... literally, because I was hoping I’d have the opportunity to thank you for helping me out the other night. I don’t know what happened. I guess I was dehydrated or something like that.”
“Yeah, something like that,” he said looking into her eyes with knowing skepticism. “You know, your stereotypical Indian would say you had some sort of vision.” He paused, taking in the surprise of her expression. “I guess that would make me pretty stereotypical.”
Amelia wanted to look away but stood transfixed. Then she found herself responding in a nearly inaudible whisper.
“No. Not a vision, a memory.” She gulped and pulled her eyes from his, sure that they were saying too much.
“A memory within a vision. Some memory, to knock you down like that. In our culture, we’d say you received a gift.”
She shook her head in disgust. “No!” she nearly wailed, backing away from him. “This is not a gift! This is anything but a gift. You don’t know anything about me, anything about this. This is some grotesque celestial joke. That’s what this is.” She paused and closed her eyes. “I…I’m sorry. I’m tired. My head hurts. I’ve got to go.”
She tried to brush past him, but he caught her arm. She was sure it was the same hand she had shaken off two nights before. Again, she could feel herself crumpling, but this time it was not her knees, it was all her insides falling in on themselves, an internal black hole pulling her in.
“Amelia,” he said. “You don’t have to do this alone. I know someone who can help you. “Amelia,” he repeated, this time gently grabbing her chin with his free hand and forcing her to look into his face. His cheeks were flushed with color, and his eyes more intense than ever. “Come with me.”
Chapter 24
Amelia wasn’t sure how she was moving, but somehow, she was floating after him, his hand tugging lightly at her arm. She followed the bouncing feathers of the roach that adorned the top of his head as they traced waves in the blue of the overhead sky. Soon the feathers brushed across a low doorframe, and she found her pupils adjusting to a darkened room. It was a face that came into view first: weathered, wrinkled, and wise. Then the face’s bottomless eyes captured hers in earnest entreaty.
“Uncle Martin, this is Amelia. She had a powerful vision the other night at the powwow. I was hoping you could help her.”
The old man did not smile as he broke his stare to look at his nephew. “Donovan, you did a good thing bringing her here. She is being called. But fear surrounds her, prevents her from answering.”
“Young lady,” he said, turning back towards Amelia, “let them come. Let them take you with them. It will be alright. You will see.”
Donovan helped her sit upon a tattered chair facing the old man who now closed his eyes in concentration. Had she been coherent, she would have laughed at the surreal nature of it all. As it was, all she could do was grip the chair’s arms as if to keep from falling into the gathering abyss. Any moment she would topple. Maybe that was what she wanted.
“Donovan,” the old man called. “Please brew some peppermint tea.”
As Donovan left the room, the old man reached for a braid of sweet grass that lay in a basket within arm’s reach of his chair. With a lighter he produced from his pocket, he lit it, and blowing on it softly, he rose from his chair. Amelia watched him through dilated pupils, seeing him weave in and out of her view as he waved the smoking sweet grass around and mumbled incoherencies. She felt her eyelids growing heavier, and even as she gripped the chair arms harder than ever, she felt the back of the chair fall out from behind her. And following it backwards, she crashed into darkness.
Falling through the darkness, she began to discern streaks of light that flew past her at dizzying speeds. Then she realized it was she who was in motion. The air through which she was falling began to grow heavy, and soon it pressed against her like a gelatinous soup, slowing her down until she came to a complete stop. The streaks of light had become stars, but as she looked closer, she saw that they were within her grasp. She reached up her hands, wanting to catch their brilliance like so many fireflies on a dark summer’s night. As she did so, she heard music. No, it was not music but voices. What were they saying? She had but barely thought the question when she heard them answer,
“Seek the truth, then let us go.”
Amelia looked at her hands and saw she held a speck of light in each. As she looked, the lights grew brighter and brighter until her eyelids popped open from the force of their intensity.
She was lying flat on the sofa, looking into the face of the old man who now was lifting her head and applying a cup of steaming tea to her lips. She slurped it in, not aware of its scalding heat nor minty, bitter taste, only of the cozy nest it formed deep within her that radiated heat from its epicenter.
She began to sit up, and the old man helped her. She was aware for the first time of the dim cluttered room she found herself in. Everything in the room was as gray as the braids of the old man who now crouched before her. Only a few parcels of drying plants that hung from the ceiling had retained something of their original color. Yet it was not a dismal place. It appeared to be a place to rest before the beginning of a long journey.
“You feel better, am I right?” The old man asked her.
“Yes,” Amelia replied, surprised that she was so coherent.
She remembered why she had come. She remembered the desperation she had felt, the memory of their charred bodies that had threatened to swallow her whole. She saw them now with sadness, but the anguish did not come. Instead she saw their light on her palms and felt their warmth within her.
They had called to her. There was a truth they wanted her to learn. How odd to suddenly have such clarity after such profound confusion. For the first time since she began her journey to freedom, she understood that the previous chapters of her story were incomplete. She understood that to go forward in authoring her own chapter, she needed first to discover the ending to the one already authored without her consent. But, she thought as Donovan suddenly appeared in the doorway, maybe she would continue writing a bit more of this one first.
Chapter 25
Donovan showed her to a small bedroom adjacent to the living room. She gratefully lay down upon the bed whose fluffy pillow pricked lightly at her neck with its protruding feathers. Now that she had weathered her internal storm, she felt calm but exhausted. Donovan looked down upon her. She almost laughed at how surreal he looked towering above her—his long, shiny, black braids crowned by a vivid roach—set against the gray background of the room, as if he were a Charles Russell portrait of an Indian brave hung upon the wall. She must have smiled, for Donovan’s stoic face relaxed.
“I see you’re feeling better,” the portrait spoke. “I want you to rest here as long as you like. I need to return to the powwow. I’m sure my drum group is wondering where I am. I’ll let Paul and his family know that you’re here with Martin.”
“Will you come back?” Amelia asked before she could stop herself.
“I’ll have to,” he laughed. “This is my room! Martin is my uncle.”
Amelia laughed too, feeling for the first time the vibrant texture of the wool blanket beneath the length of her body. When she drew the cover up over her as Donovan left the room, it wasn’t a blanket that covered her but Donovan’s warm, sun-seared skin.
She awakened several hours later to stars staring in upon her. After taking a moment to smell the blanket she had gathered around her chin, she got out of bed and went to the window. She remembered the stars in her dream and reached longingly towards the ones that now looked in. She hoped that they would settle again upon her palms. Yet, she knew it could not be. What she had instead was the beautiful memory of them emanating from her outstretched hands.
“I miss you so much,” she whispered softly. “I love you so much.”
She cried silently then, consoled by stars that held her in their luminescent embrace while her mind rolled the film she had refused to watch for so long. She wore black that day, a dress her grandmother had bought. Too big, she remembered now, swallowing her little body in its folds, so like the impersonality of her fate. She watched as her father’s elbow supported that hollow garment into the church. She felt her leaden feet sink with each step forward toward the hundreds of vibrant standing sprays of flowers scattered upon the sanctuary; toward the scent of longiflorum lilies and chrysanthemums that shrouded the altar; and toward the two caskets, on
e large, one small, both shiny as the toes of newly polished boots.
Then she was in the cemetery, watching as the caskets were lowered into the earth. She heard for the first time the echo of grating rocks upon their surface as her father tossed in a shovelful of dirt, first on one, and then on the other. He handed her the shovel. She did not touch it. Her grandmother pried two roses from her hand, and she felt now for the first time their barbs tear her skin. She saw their red plumage soar through the air as her grandmother tossed them one by one into one grave and then the other.
Amelia finally saw the hundreds of mouths that had formed the words “I’m sorry.” Heard the cracking of their voices, their grieving whispers. She witnessed the tearstained faces of strangers who at some level shared her agony: an elderly woman who kissed her forehead with trembling lips; another, who clutching her, sobbed into her shoulder.
She hadn’t noticed until now the man who stood beside her. Her father’s face was pale, corpse-like. Only his eyes were alive, and they screamed for mercy—for some kind of answer to his pain, for some kind of truth in this chaos. He caught her eyes. She would have seen it in his eyes before if hers had been opened. She saw it now: his need to hold her. Then he turned away and wrung his hands. Here, bathed in starlight, Amelia cried silently for that missed embrace.
“Amelia,” she heard the voice in her ear just as she felt the hand upon her shoulder. She turned her startled face towards his, starlit tears tracing paths across her cheeks. She quickly wiped at them, intercepting a hand he raised to do the same.
“You Indians are stealthy after all,” she giggled nervously. “You know, we whites prefer at least some creaking floorboards if you can’t master the heavy-heeled approach.”