St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (31 page)

walls stretched taut across a bare wood frame.

Shaman Quick was already standing outside. A

pair of rucksacks rested over his shoulders, his

bare chest sagging and wrinkled. On the ground at

his feet was a bowl-shaped drum.

"Tso'i," said Shaman Quick to a boy at the

forefront of the group. The boy scrambled forward

and picked up the drum. Whatever was inside of it

made a sloshing, gurgling noise.

"Water drum," Dad whispered to me. "Very

sacred."

I had to wonder how the heck things like this never

came up in conversation between us over the

years. It was like Dad didn't think twice about his

culture unless he was standing in the middle of it.

Or, I reflected soberly, maybe it never came up in

conversation

because

we'd

never

had

a

conversation. It wasn't like I could talk back.

The hide doorway of the shaman's house parted.

Immaculata came outside in pink and white

regalia, rubbing her tired eyes. Was she coming

with us? The sun dance was a men's dance, wasn't

it? I looked to Dad in confusion but he didn't

explain.

"Kimma," the shaman said.

We started off on a second trek. I thought Shaman

Quick might be taking us to the southern oaks,

which were about the only vegetation that thrived

in conditions as extreme as the badlands'.

He wasn't. We steered clear of them and headed

west--right underneath a bridge of tent rocks.

If you've ever seen a tent rock before, then you

already know why I was starting to freak out. Tent

rocks sort of resemble tipis, which is where they

get their name from. But they're huge--taller than

the tallest trees, taller than the canyons--and

topheavy. They always look like they're about to

spill over; and in fact, when the monsoon rolls in,

and lightning strikes, sometimes they do. Coyotes

have died that way in the past.

I could hear the coyotes yipping and yowling to

one another from the tops of the tent rocks. A

coyote leapt down from his position and sprinted

across the underpass. Rocks and clay came

spilling after him down the side of the tent rock in

a cloud of dust. It's going to fall, I told myself

wildly, and we're going to be crushed to death.

And then I thought: Stop it. You sound like Holly

At Dawn.

I breathed a sigh of relief when at last the tent

rocks were behind us. But then I started. The

ground here was a dead white scorched with

black. Standing just in front of us was a barren

gray tree, stripped clean of leaves. Hanging off of

one of the tree's sharp branches was a buffalo

skull. The ground surrounding the trunk was

littered with animal bones; and off to the side were

a flowering barrel cactus and a large pile of

milkweed and eiderdown.

The

shaman

plopped

to

the

ground

unceremoniously. Everyone else followed suit.

My mind wandered, and with it, my eyes. I looked

through the crowd. There had to be about a

hundred men gathered in one place. I spotted a

sleepy-looking Rafael sitting with Aubrey and his

brothers. I didn't see Gabriel anywhere. Maybe

he had stayed home with Rosa and Charity.

The shaman began talking. I didn't know enough

Shoshone to figure out the gist of his speech.

"Wait for the sunrise," Dad whispered to me, his

head bent. "That's when we'll sing."

I looked over my shoulder, east, at encroaching

dawn. Gold sparked above the horizon and bled

blue into the black night. Cool white light, pale

and promising, swam through the sky. At the first

sight of the sun, strong and new, the men began to

sing.

It was the Song of the Golden Eagle, one of my

favorite pieces to play on the plains flute. Eagles

were always venerated in Shoshone society; the

Shoshone believed they carried prayers to the

Great Spirit.

Voices echoed on the still air long after the song

had ended. The men began to stand up. Dad

nudged me and I stood, too.

All around me, the men started taking off their

deerhide shirts. I had known this part was

inevitable, but somehow I had thought I wouldn't

have to do the same. The men laid their shirts on

the ground, or else tied them around their waists.

My hands faltered at the drawstrings on my

overcoat. I really didn't want anyone looking at

me. But I realized: Who was going to look at

me? This was about honoring our traditions, not

pointing and goggling at one another.

I pulled my overcoat off hastily and set it on the

ground with Dad's. I tucked my feeding tube inside

my trousers to keep it out of my way.

The shaman opened his rucksacks and took out

strips of wood, packages of herbs, and a

foreboding looking knife. Immaculata sat sleepy at

his side. The shaman said something more in

Shoshone, but I didn't catch it.

"That's you, Cubby," Dad told me.

My stomach felt filled with icy dread. Calm

down, I told myself.

I felt like an idiot when I made my way through the

crowd and over to the shaman. Luckily I wasn't

the only one. About ten other boys had answered

his summons, Allen Calling Owl and Rafael among

them. Rafael caught my eye and came over to

stand next to me. I gave him a nervous little grin.

I thought the shaman might begin bellowing

instructions at us. He didn't. He took sage out of

his herb pack and started crushing it into the

ground. Allen Calling Owl's right eye twitched.

"He's purifying the grounds," Rafael whispered to

me.

I smiled to myself. I had kind of figured that part

out.

Damn, I thought, glancing at the sky. The sun was

going to be strong today. I hadn't brought any

salve.

Rafael tapped me on the wrist and whispered

again. "Most of the original ceremony is missing,"

he informed me. "There's stuff the Christians made

us stop doing when they invaded. The sun dance

always used to start with a two-spirit ceremony.

A two-spirit couple imitated the buffalo mating

rites." Well, I was kind of glad I didn't have to see

that. "Buffalo are like us. Sometimes the males

mate with males, and the females mate with

females. Respecting nature means you respect

that."

"I am going to die out here," Allen said

hysterically.

"Kee so'o nangkawi!" the shaman shouted.

Everyone fell silent. I felt sweaty, and gross. I

cast a quick look at the barren tree. Four men had

started to dance around it. Immaculata knelt and

struck the water drum with her hands. I thought the

sun dance had begun. But as it turns out, the men

were only demonstrating for our benefit. They

stopped dancing very soon after they had begun.

The shaman gave the rest of us a shrewd,

reproachful look. Resigned, because I didn't know

what else to do, I followed Rafael and the others

to the gray tree, unsettled by the hanging buffalo

skull. We began to dance.

It's kind of hard to feel like a moron when

everyone else looks like a moron, too. I started to

relax. We moved in a circle counter-clockwise

around the tree, our moccasins scattering the

animal bones on the ground.

I felt a knife at my back, my skin tearing open.

Blood is always a part of the sun dance. You're

honoring the sacrifice of the plants and animals

that died to give you sustenance; so you bleed to

return sustenance to the planet. It's not really as

scary as it sounds. The wound is very light, barely

just slicing through the top layer of skin. Usually

you'll get two on your back and two on your chest.

My back was wet and stinging and prickly and the

men started cheering, and I didn't need to look on

my left or right to know the other boys had been cut

the same way. Immaculata pounded harder on the

water drum, a song I didn't recognize. One by one

more men joined the dance, offering their blood to

the gracious universe.

The dancing went on for hours. The shaman

walked among us with his knife and his herbs,

picking which of the dancers should go and rest

and which of the inactive participants should take

his place. He pressed cloth and arnica to the

wounds on our back and I was grateful when it

was my turn to sit, the cloth a relief to my stinging

skin, Rafael breathless at my side. Soon I started

to feel thirsty. When you're thirsty, you've already

begun to dehydrate. I knew we weren't allowed to

eat during the sun dance, but what about water? I

looked around and saw Mr. Red Clay kneeling by

the barrel cactus. He punctured its fleshy body

with the tip of a stone knife and water trickled out.

Men who had already exerted themselves knelt

down and drank.

On and off we dance, well into midday and into the

night. We slept in turns to make sure there was

always someone dancing, always someone

thanking the planet. When Immaculata slept, we

danced without music. When the shaman slept--

though he slept very little--we danced without

bleeding. It was frenzied and chaotic. I danced

for five hours, dry blood caked on my chest and

back. I lay down on the bedding of down and

milkweed and slept for four hours until someone

came along and shook me awake. I danced again;

drank from the barrel cactus, pumping water into

my stomach; slept again; danced again, the shaman

cutting open my closed wounds, cleaning the knife

with strong-smelling alcohol; and it was so all-

encompassing that the sun dance invaded my

dreams, and one day very much resembled the

next, and the days all blurred together and I

couldn't tell which was which.

We danced for a week.

It might have been a little less. It might have been

a little more. I don't know for certain. I know my

stomach was burning with hunger and my back and

my chest were burning with old blood and

alcohol. I know Immaculata stopped playing the

water drum and I know the men were exhausted,

lying on the ground. I wanted to lie on the ground,

too, but I thought the cuts on my skin might get

infected. Dad sat next to me, his chest heaving

with exertion, his slight paunch less prominent than

usual. He tried to say something to me, but lost his

breath halfway.

I tipped my head back, vision swimming, eyes

watering. I watched a distant eagle circling in the

sky.

"You poor kid," Dad panted. "You need a bath."

I tried to remember where I had placed my shirt.

Finding it was no easy task. I felt like crawling on

my hands and my knees; my body, drained,

protested when I stood. I was too hot to put the

shirt on. I decided against it.

"Come on," Dad said, and put his arm around me.

We both smelled pretty bad.

We walked through the badlands on weak and

rubbery legs. The skin on my shoulders and the

back of my neck was peeling with sunburn. Dad's

hair swung and hit him in the face.

I think there's something cleansing about exhausting

your body like that. It's humbling. You realize just

how human you are: your limitations, your

capabilities. You feel finite--and you are. You

feel strong--and you're that, too.

Dad and I went home and he drew a bath in the tub

outside the outhouse. I let him use it first. I

scoured the front room until I found what I was

looking for: my plains flute, hanging off the back of

the smooth pine chair. And I lifted it to my lips,

and I started to play, the Song of the Golden Eagle

echoing softly off the timber walls.

Dr. Stout took out my feeding tube the next day.

She taped up my stomach and sent me home and I

ate three bowls of blue corn mush. And then I

threw it all up. Yeah, I probably should've taken it