Stone Song (21 page)

Curly could think of nothing but Black Buffalo Woman, and she was not a thought but a light, prickly touch against his chest. Would he lose Black Buffalo Woman?

Then what do I care about this vision?
he thought angrily.
It costs too much
.

A long silence passed. Sometimes Curly thought he wasn’t breathing. Finally he said, “It will be hard.”

Tasunke Witko now gave the advice he had given many times, but this time each word clanged in his mind. “Living by what you see is always difficult, and your vision is especially difficult, yes.” The father refused to let his own sadness affect his counsel. “Remember this,” he went on. “Sometimes your vision will seem intolerable. Not only dangerous, but miserable. Too much privation, too much responsibility, too much solitude, too much danger.” He hesitated. “It is true that other paths might avoid hardships, might even let you live longer. For you they would be spiritual death. Your vision may or may not be the road of physical death. It is spiritual triumph.”

Tasunke Witko waited and watched his son’s face. It was impassive. Then he went on with the familiar concluding words. “Only from the end, from the pinnacle of death, will you be able to see how the river of your vision led in the true way to the salt sea.”

They took a final sweat. The father prayed for his son to have the strength to live his vision.

Tasunke Witko tried to keep his personal feelings out of his voice. His fear, his sorrow, his excitement should not become obstacles for Curly. He did for his son what a
wicasa wakan
did, not a father.

He thought what he would tell his wives later. Something like: “Our son has seen something. Something big. It is a cup of goodness and a cup of sorrow at once.”

They would rejoice. Any full measure of life was a cup of goodness and a cup of sorrow at once.

When father and son woke in the morning, they bundled up the hides, left the willow framework of the hut, and set out after the band. They were one day behind.

“How do you feel?” the father asked the son.

Curly noticed his heart. It was rocking from awe to eagerness to panic. The dream gonged in his mind, the memory of Rider larger and more vivid than anything merely real.

What will I do with my vision
?

Heroic pictures ran pell-mell in his head. The sounds of hooves, the
war cries—“It is a good day to die!”—the yells of effort, of surprise, of death or triumph.

“You can fight to live,” his uncle Spotted Tail had said. “You cannot fight against death—you fight to live.”

Curly forced his mind away from his uncle, the relative who now seemed a weakling. He summoned up the smell of dust and blood. He imagined the feel of the ceremonial entry into camp and the joyous trilling of the women in tribute to his courage, to his spirit, to the power of his dream.

In his mind he led the way, riding headlong into arrows and bullets.

His flesh puckered at the thought.

“I feel every which way,” he answered. “Every emotion I can imagine.”

Tasunke Witko smiled at him. “Fine,” said the
wicasa wakan
. “You should.”

“I saw Rider gallop through the velvety blue-gray of these shadows,” Curly said. Porcupine, the
heyoka
man, listened somberly. Many times criers for visions had come to him to tell about the
wakinyan
they saw in their waking dreams. The thunderbirds were always a power demanding the most careful treatment.

“Enemy fire streaked toward the rider, maybe arrows, maybe bullets. They flashed toward him, ominous in the air. But before touching his flesh, they disappeared. Like raindrops from a high thundercloud over desert, they evaporated before striking the earth’s flesh. None tore his skin, none broke his bones, none shed his blood.”

Curly made no comment on Rider seeming bullet-proof or on this lack of adornment. He was here to learn to cope with the destructive power of the
wakinyan
.

He also left out the part about the people’s hands pulling at him from behind. “Behind Rider a thunderstorm erupted. Dark clouds roiled, lightning flashed and gave birth to sound. A zigzag of lightning marred Rider’s cheek like a wound. Hail spots welted his body.” This was what mattered.

“Into clouds and shadows rode the rider, forever and forever into clouds and shadows.

“The storm cleared, the hail spots faded, the day shone bright as polished metal. Horse and man flew forward.” He omitted the appearance of Hawk above his head.

When Porcupine was satisfied that the young man had finished, he
raised a mirror to Curly’s nose. There, Curly knew, the
heyoka
would see the entire dream in his breath, and perhaps other medicine that might belong to the young warrior. Curly waited patiently, breath in and out, pulse beating, the earth beating.

At length Porcupine nodded two or three times. “We will have a
heyoka
ceremony for you,” he said simply.

The people acted joyful—they welcomed
heyoka
ceremonies enthusiastically. The children found these ceremonies a lot of fun, with the sacred clowns acting silly, and the adults acted like it was all in fun, nothing but fun.

Porcupine took Curly into the
heyoka
tipi, shaved his head, and suggested some meanings of the pictures he had seen in the misted mirror. He added that he had seen the gopher and described the medicine of that creature.

Then the two went out into the village. The ceremony was serious play, a joking spirit thrown into the teeth of the west wind, the lightning, and lightning-gives-birth-to-sound.

Helpers killed a dog quickly and singed the hair off. When the dog was boiled, everyone would have a piece. Holy flesh—thunder dreamers would put medicine paste on their hands and arms and pluck meat out of the boiling water without burning themselves.

Porcupine sang the words of the traditional
heyoka
song over and over:

“
These are sacred
.

They have spoken
.”

Curly sang these words to the four quarters while the dog was boiling:

“
In a sacred manner I send a voice to you
.

In a sacred manner I send a voice to you
.

To half of the sky I send my voice in a sacred manner
.

In a sacred manner I send a voice to you
.”

Porcupine painted Curly’s entire body red and drew black lightning flashes and daubed on blue spots of hail on top of the red.

Finally the clowning got started, and the people loved that. Two of the
heyoka
pretended that a small mud puddle was a big lake and they had to cross it. They mimed building a boat and paddled to the middle and got overturned by a wave—the two
heyoka
dived into the puddle, which was thumb-deep, and got all muddy. Then one of them became a muskrat and dived to the bottom and brought up some mud. The other turned into a goose and chased the muskrat, squawking. Everyone thought they were very funny.

It was lunatic humor, of course. Nothing was as unpredictable or as dangerous or as overwhelming as lightning. Crazily, this destruction brought the rain and made Earth green.

After the clowning and dancing, Porcupine and Curly went again to the sacred tipi. There Porcupine explained about dreamers of
wakinyan
far more deeply than Curly had understood them before.

“There is no dream more powerful, more to be feared, more to be obeyed, or one that consecrates the dreamer more earnestly,” began Porcupine. “If you dream of
wakinyan
, you are
heyoka
all your life, before anything else, before guardian, scout, holy man, healer, leader, husband, or father.”

He let this challenge sit in Curly’s mind a moment.

“
Heyoka
walk one of two paths. Some become clowns and do things backward.” At the ceremonies they walked in reverse, said “yes” when they meant “no,” and vice versa, and sat on their backs or their heads instead of their bottoms.

“The form of
heyoka
for others is more spiritual,” said Porcupine, “and so it will be for you. You may be seen as eccentric, but you will not be a clown. You will be attentive to the spirit of the west, Yata, and his powers the
wakinyan
. You will watch for all winged creatures that may fly to you, especially the animal aides of Yata, hawks and bats.”

Curly said nothing to Porcupine about Hawk.

“You will pattern yourself after Rider in appearance,” said Porcupine, “for Rider was a
wakinyan
dreamer. You will wear the buffalo beard as a fringe on the heels of your moccasins. You will paint your face with streaks of lightning, and your body and your horse with spots of hail. You will wear plain clothing, nothing that makes a show, just as Rider did.”

Porcupine said the next words in a matter-of-fact way, but with subtle stress. “You will keep to yourself, separated by your devotion to your dream. You will not marry until later in life, or not at all. You will live in a lodge at the end of the circle. Though you may be sociable in your own lodge, outside it you will say what is necessary briefly and with dignity and return to your solitude.”

Tumult churned in Curly. He felt the rightness of all the interpretation—it was he. But to marry late or never!

“You will ride into battle ahead of everyone else. Even riding a trail, you will keep your horse to the side of others, not directly in front or in back of them.”

Now Porcupine emphasized the conclusion. “If you keep your vision of the
wakinyan
in your mind ceaselessly, and regard them always with
the
cante ista
, more will be revealed to you in time. New paths will open.”

Porcupine sent him off on this path with a half-shaven head and streak of black lightning on his left cheek.

Curly walked nervously through the camp circle of the Bad Faces. He bore their ambivalent eyes upon him in silence. He wondered for the thousandth time why Bad Face Oglala must resent Hunkpatila Oglala. Hawk perched uneasily.

The young men were lounging and talking on this fine autumn evening. Curly half-smiled at He Dog and his brothers, who smiled back. With a nod Curly acknowledged his rivals: Pretty Fellow and his brother, Standing Bear, No Water nearby with his brothers the twins. They regarded Curly without expression. He deliberately kept the left side of his head to them, the side with hair. He was sure they noticed the streak of black lightning painted on that side of his face.

They would mark carefully everything that he did in the village. But they would not have to mark what he did with Black Buffalo Woman. He was on a mission more important even than seeing her.

He was here on instruction from his father to consult Horn Chips. Two winters had passed since the
wicasa wakan
had instructed the boy to tell his father what he had seen beyond. For two winters Curly had ignored this advice. He was embarrassed. He wondered if Horn Chips would talk to him.

He was also uneasy about the shaven right side of his head. His scalp gleamed in the sun. On the other side his light hair still hung to his hips. He was wearing it loose, in the manner of a supplicant.

He could imagine the jokes his rivals would make about his half-shaved head—now he was trying to hide his telltale hair, they would say, but was too dumb to hide all of it. But they would know now that he had dreamed of
wakinyan
, and somewhere in their hearts they would be respectful, or intimidated, or envious.

Envy. Was that the meaning of the hands of his own people grasping at him from behind?

Curly hated his bare scalp. His hair would take years to grow to full length. He wanted to wear it long and loose into battle, a brassy flag leading the way.

Curly saw by the expression on Chips’ face that the old man was not surprised to see him and that he understood the meaning of Curly’s shaven head.

After the proper amenities and a smoke, Curly described to Chips the Inyan creatures he saw Rider wearing under his left arm and behind his ear in his vision. He didn’t tell the rest of what he saw beyond. He had an uncanny feeling, though, that the
wicasa wakan
knew, or knew the gist of it.

Curly suspected this man knew too much. Not that he was old—Chips was still in his twenties. But he had the air of an ancient, silent, withdrawn, enigmatic, not open to fun. He spent his time conjuring with Inyan and saw things no one else saw. Old in spirit. Which was why Curly was reluctant to be here.

He made himself sit still. He noticed that Hawk was easy enough.
So you belong here
, he told himself. He wondered whether the hide-wrapped bundle in front of Chips held the Inyan the
wicasa wakan
used for seeing beyond.

The
wicasa wakan
nodded. All the
wicasa wakan
’s manners seemed a little abrupt. He was impatient of mere politeness and of behavior not rooted in reality, meaning spiritual reality, the only reality. He acted as though there wasn’t time enough under the sun to spend with people who were unwilling to be rooted. “Tell me everything about your
heyoka
ceremony,” said Chips.

Curly told it all without comment or expression. He said nothing about his sadness. He had decided his vision truly meant he couldn’t marry for years, or be sociable, or have much of the satisfaction of companionship.

When Curly finished, Chips was silent for a while. Then he said simply, “Tomorrow we will go to the Maka Sica.” The badlands, the place where the earth itself was misshapen, where the gods had destroyed the ancient animals and hurled their bones into the earth. A place all the Lakota were afraid of.

Curly rode behind and to one side. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Horn Chips. The
wicasa wakan
was incommunicative. He acted like his mind was on other things or in another world, and Curly should know what world and be paying attention to that. He hoped cultivating solitude, keeping to yourself, didn’t mean becoming a Chips. Curly thought everyone should be calling Chips “Our Strange Man,” not Light Curly Hair, son of Tasunke Witko. He didn’t want to become like this
wicasa wakan
. He wondered if communicating with Inyan, which he’d heard was always done in secret, would make him clandestine, cryptic, and enigmatic, like Chips.