The Water Museum

Thirteen. Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses

The Indians weren’t talking to me. At Gabe’s food store, they looked away when I bought a soda. There were three of them in there, plus Gabe’s wife. Just to tweak them, I popped the lid right there and chugged it. Obviously, word had gotten around the res. They knew why I’d come, but they didn’t know what to think of it. I felt bad enough. Their anger only made it worse.

Out in the light, I felt eyes watching me. The perfect smell of South Dakota was all over the street — I could fly in that air, fat with miles of prairie and storm clouds rushing from Nebraska to Iowa. I hunched up my shoulders. White boys visiting Pine Ridge can’t help but remember all those cowboy movies. You listen for a whistling arrow, prepare for the mortal thwack when the shaft nails you between the shoulder blades. Well, at least this white boy does. I probably had it coming.

I’d married one of the local girls. Her family didn’t want her to marry me. They didn’t want her to marry a white guy, but we were wild for each other. We ran off to Deadwood, to a small chapel near the casinos. The minister was a Brulé Sioux. She was Oglala. We took our honeymoon in the Black Hills — Paha Sapa, she told me, the center of the world. We stayed in a small hotel below Mount Rushmore. We bought those T-shirts that show four huge bare asses and say: Rear View Mt. Rushmore. We laughed. Everything was funny.

Then the usual tough years. We went to California, both of us trying college. She tried writing to her family, but they were fighting mad. Our few visits back to the reservation were grim. I thought I was lonesome, but what happened to her heart out in California was a terror to see. I’d catch her staring up at the rattling palm trees sometimes, this look of sorrow on her face that almost seemed like rapture.

And she couldn’t get out of the bottle. They blamed me. I started to believe it, too. I’d fooled her away from people, her world. Empty bottles, hidden at first beneath the sink, behind the apartment, clanked in the trash basket. She was quiet, as old-time Indian women are, and she wore a long braid in the old way. When she crashed the car, they say the braid was caught in the glass of the window. I don’t know — I couldn’t bear to look at the body. I sent her home on a train. It took me two days to drive out after her, and now I was burying my wife in the little graveyard near Our Lady of the Sioux. The headstone was already made. It said: JONI HER MANY HORSES. DAUGHTER, SISTER. WE WILL MISS YOU. 1960–1990. They left my name off entirely.

* * *

Don Her Many Horses was Joni’s oldest brother. Back in high school, when our teams played the Indians from Red Cloud, Don was a monster on the basketball courts. The way things were in those days, though, Indian boys didn’t get too many victories. Even when they won. It was easy — the refs called them foul, or ejected them from the games for the least infraction. If they did win, they’d get their asses kicked after the game if we could find them … if there were more of us than them.

I made the mistake once of cracking wise to Don on the court. After one spectacular drive to the basket — when Don seemed to be floating over our heads for an impossible distance, then drove the ball down through the hoop so it caught no net, just streaked and hit the floor like a rock — I sidled up to him. I did what all us whites did in those days, dreaming of ourselves in Technicolor cowboy hats, our ideas as fixed as Mount Rushmore, made sick in our hearts whenever we saw an Indian smile, certain somehow his smile took something away from our own souls.

“Hey, Chief,” I said. “You got-um heap good medicine, huh? Y—”

Bang.

I was gone from the world.

When I came to in the shower room, it was like drifting out of deep purple water flecked with chips of fire. They brushed my skin as I surfaced. A million sweaty and hysterical dudes were glaring down at me. “Bobby!” they were shouting. “Bobby!” Don Her Many Horses was in jail, charged with aggravated assault. There had been trouble with the Indian kids, both teams slugging it out on the court. Cops had come in, sticks swinging. I listened to them babbling all about it as I stood in the shower, letting the water claw into my back and scalp. My left eye was tender as cube steak, and I could tell it was turning black.

“Shit,” I said to no one in particular, “that brave sure can pack a punch!”

We all laughed and said the standard anti-Indian things you say. But I knew I was wrong. Here Don had made a spectacular play and I had gone and opened my big ignorant mouth. I don’t know that it changed my life. Maybe a little bit. I didn’t turn all religious or anything over it.

* * *

Don Her Many Horses wasn’t much interested in me at that point. He was slumped on the cot in his cell, nursing a collection of welts and eggs coming up all over his forehead. He had a rusty-bloody old rag soaked from the tin sink and held over one eye. I watched the water drops fall and hit the knee of his jeans. They shone bright for a second, then sank in, spreading a color like grape juice as the denim darkened.

“Hi,” I said.

“Fuck you, Bobby.”

I ducked my head.

“Listen,” I said. “I want to apologize for what happened.”

He looked up at me. That eye was about swollen shut.

“Apologize, huh?” he said. He smiled a little. “All right. Go ahead.”

“Sorry.”

He stared at me with his one black eye. He didn’t talk. That’s one thing that drives you crazy with the Indians. Sometimes they just don’t say anything. You don’t know if they are thinking or laughing at you or what.

“I’m …,” I said, “sorry. You know. About that wisecrack. And now you’re in jail.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said.

Another pause.

“You got any chew?” he said.

I dug my tin of Copenhagen out of my back pocket and tossed it to him. Those boys, when they’re not smoking, they’re chewing. The women, too. Joni always had a little plug of peppermint tobacco pinched into her lip. I gave it up after high school. Don does it to this day.

I was thinking about leaving when he spoke. “You know what?” he said. “Next time I see you, I might have to take me a scalp. I might skin you, too. Brain-tan your hide and have me a new pelt to paint my winter count on. Hang your balls from my war lance. ’Course, everybody’d have to get up real close to see ’em.”

There was nothing to say to that, so I left. I could hear his back-of-the-throat little laugh skittering around behind me as I walked down the hall. Damned Indians.

* * *

The reservation medical examiner was taking care of Joni. I couldn’t even look at the building as I drove by. I hooked south, out of Pine Ridge village, heading toward White Clay, Nebraska. A couple of the guys driving around recognized me. Yellowhorse waved, one of the Red Clouds nodded imperiously at me, raising one hand as he coasted by in his old Ford pickup. They were burning a small pile of tires outside of town; the smoke rose like a mourning veil torn by wind. It angled away, fading to a haze that reached all the way out to the edge of the Badlands. The grass looked like Marilyn Monroe’s hair. Horses swept through it like combs.

I was listening to KILI, “The Voice of the Lakota Nation.” They were playing a twenty-megaton dirge by Metallica. It was followed by some Sioux music — The Porcupine Singers. If I listened long enough, they’d probably toss in some jazz and three Johnny Cash songs. There were supposed to be announcements of Joni’s burial on there, but I never did hear any. I pulled up at the gate of the Her Many Horses spread. Don was walking a mottled gray horse in slow circles in front of their house. He ran his hand along the horse’s flank; its skin jumped at his touch. It was limping. He glanced up at me and turned back to the horse.

I dropped the section of barbed wire fence that served as a gate and drove through.

“Close the gate!” Don hollered.

“I know, I know,” I muttered to myself. Six dogs and four young horses headed for the opening, but I beat them to it. The horses veered away, suddenly innocent and fascinated by the sage plants beside the drive. The dogs charged me, then collapsed in the dirt, wagging their tails.

I drove up to Don, shut off the engine, and got out.

“She’s sick,” he said.

The old horse looked like rain clouds. I recognized her. They called her Stormy. “That’s Joni’s old horse,” I said.

Stormy put her giant old face next to Don’s. He rubbed her long white upper lip. “That’s okay,” he murmured. “That’s okay now.”

“I’m sorry, Don,” I said. “I did my best.”

“Stormy’s dyin’,” he said. He had this disconcerting way of ignoring what I said. “I’ve been feeding her this medicine they give me down in Rapid. But them vets don’t know shit about horses. You know it? She’s got these tumors.”

He stroked Stormy’s side. I saw that she was bloated, her abdomen distended like a barrel behind her ribs. “Now we got to kill her.”

Stormy snorted.

“Go on now,” he said to her. “Go ahead.” She limped away.

“Them mother-effers.”

“Don?” I said. “I’m sorry about Joni. I mean, I’m sorry about Stormy, too. But what I mean…”

One of the dogs nosed my crotch.

“Stop it,” said Don. “I got a trailer pulled around back. You sleep there. Got food if you’re hungry.”

He lit a cigarette and walked away.

* * *

Night on the reservation is like night nowhere else. They say flying saucers visit the Sioux lands. Flying saucers and ghosts. When you’re out there, there’s a blackness that’s deeper than black. The stars look like spilled sugar. You can hear the grass sometimes like water. Like somebody whispering. And the weird sounds of the night animals. Anything could happen. You get scared, and it’s for a reason that hides behind the other reasons — behind the silence, and the coyotes, and the dogs barking, and the eerie voice of the owl. It’s that this is not your land. This is their land. And you don’t belong. A thousand slaughtered warriors ride around your camp, and you think it’s the breeze. And they wonder why you’re there.

I had the sleeping bag pulled over my head. It smelled like dust. My wife was lying five miles away, her breasts already dense as leather in death, her eyelashes intertwined, the perfect brown tunnels of her eyes sealed, the path within already forgotten. “Joni,” I said. “Joni. Joni.”

* * *

I met her at night. Off the reservation, there are small joints scattered all along the roads. You can go in there for ice cream or burgers or beer. Lots of them sell Indian art and beads to the tourists, and a bunch of them still won’t let an Indian in the door. The reservation folks knew which stores wanted them and which didn’t.

We were in one that didn’t. Six of the footballers from our school were in there with me. It was one of those dull nights. Red Cloud School had won the football game. They’d all been going down to see that Little Big Man movie, and they were all turned on. They were crazy-wild. Nobody could catch them.

Franklin Standing Bear’s car broke down. He came walking up to the place from the road to Hot Springs. I watched him through the window, materializing out of the blackness. He paused in the parking lot, looking at us. His glasses glittered in the lights. I nudged one of the boys and pointed with my chin.

“Gaw-damn,” he said.

We left our spoons sinking into our sundaes and gawked.

Franklin came in the door and ducked his head.

“More balls ’n brains,” one of the football boys said.

Franklin went to the register and asked to use the phone. Sonny, the owner, had served in Korea with Franklin’s dad, so he let him on the phone. But he told him he’d best get moving as soon as he was through.

We hustled out to the lot and waited for him, all jittery with crazy heat.

Franklin came out and our quarterback called, “Hey, boy!”

He put his hands up in front of him and said, “Not looking for trouble.”

“You calling me a troublemaker?” the footballer asked.

“Look,” Franklin said, “My car’s busted down. That’s all.”

“You Indian boys did pretty good tonight,” said the tight end. He looked like a chimp in the half light. All beady glittery eyes, stupid with lust. Jeez, this is how it begins, I thought.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” said Franklin, “I was over to Rosebud.” He was drifting away.

“Rosebud,” the first footballer said. “What kind of a faggot name is that, Standing Bear? You Indians all faggots or what? That why you got them ponytails?”

Franklin had a frozen smile on his face. He could see a freight train coming and he couldn’t get out of its way.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. I tugged on the tight end’s sleeve. “C’mon,” I said.

Franklin Standing Bear spit on the ground.

“You know what?” he said. “You’re just a bunch of lowlife shit-lipped pud-pulling cow fuckers. I’m about fed up with your bullshit, so come on cowboys! Fuck it! Hoka hey!”

Oh man, I thought, he’s doing his war cry. It was a good day to die. Franklin was in full-on warrior mode now.

The footballer grunted and charged at him. Franklin leaped about three feet high and kicked him precisely in the mouth. Franklin’s glasses flew one way; blood and teeth flew the other. The footballer fell back, squealing, rolling on the blacktop with his fingers in his mouth. They closed in on Franklin, but he broke for the road. All our boot heels sounded like three horses crossing a highway. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just running.

Two sets of headlights rounded the curve, and Franklin dodged between them. Indians poured out at us, like they were flying out of the light. One of them was Joni. She cornered me, waving a tire iron in my face. God, she was beautiful. She looked like a wolf — her small perfect teeth were bared, the muscles in her arms tight with rage. She was wearing a small choker. The cold had made her nipples stand up. She hissed and cussed at me. In her cowboy boots, she was taller than I was. I was sure she was going to knock my head loose. The sound of massacre was all around us. Don appeared beside Joni, grinning. He was panting from the fighting, flushed and sweaty.

“Well, well,” he said. “It’s the Indian lover.” He turned to Joni. “This here is a big Indian lover. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

Joni stopped waving the iron at me.

“Hey,” said Don. “You come out here to apologize?”

There was a scattered rubble of white boys all over the road.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know,” Joni taunted.

“I don’t know.” I was looking around.

“Looks like you picked the wrong place to be,” she said. “That’s for damn sure.”

But they didn’t do anything about it. We walked over to Don’s car — a ferocious orange Chevy Impala — and Don drove us back to the side of the lot and put me out. “Forgive us,” he said in the phoniest arch-sounding accent, “if we shan’t stop in for tea.” They burned rubber. They were doing those manic yip-yip war cries as they sped away. I thought Joni waved good-bye, but I couldn’t be sure.

We met again at a movie theater, by accident. I finally got down to see Little Big Man, and damned if I didn’t wish I was a Sioux warrior. Somebody in the balcony kept pelting me with popcorn, though, but every time I turned around, there was nobody there. I finally jumped out of my seat and glared up there. Joni was laughing down at me. I blushed. After that, I kept thinking of that massacre at the Indian village — I kept thinking of a soldier shooting Joni in the back as she ran. It made me sick inside. I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind. I was Dustin Hoffman, and I watched Joni run and die, run and die, in slow motion, extreme close-up. The next time we saw each other, we were on.

* * *

Morning. Horses. They walked in patient circles around the trailer, snorting as they went past the screened window, trying to get a whiff of me without letting me know they were inspecting. Today was the burial. I got up, dragged on my jeans and a T-shirt, and stepped out. They trotted away with their ears bent back and their tails lifted. I went in the house quietly, but Don was already up, sitting at the table drinking coffee. He gestured to a skillet with three eggs and some bacon fried up. “Toast,” he said, nodding to a stack of bread slices on a saucer before him. Silent, I got my breakfast and sat across from him. We stared at each other as I ate. Don’s boy, Snake, was asleep on the couch, facedown. Elinore Her Many Horses could be heard taking a shower. I was through eating. “Thanks,” I said. “Put them dishes in the sink, hey?” he said. I did it. Then I waited my turn for the shower. Then it was time to go. I drove in my truck alone.

* * *

Between breakfast and packing to leave, I can’t remember the day. As soon as I saw the coffin, it hit me in the ribs, like a shovel swung by a batter. I kept focusing on breathing, dragging in air and letting it out slowly. My memory of everything else is a vague gray hum. I know that one of the Catholic Brothers from Red Cloud School led the service, and somebody played piano. I can’t remember anybody’s face, just the thought: breathe-breathe-breathe. Then we were standing on the steps of the church like a real family, and I shook hands with a faceless crowd. I didn’t cry.

At the graveyard, I stood behind Don, about three paces, and watched the grass waver in the breeze. And afterward, I stopped at Red Cloud’s grave to pay my respects to the old chief. Some Oglalas had left him tobacco ties, little sacred bundles in all the colors of the four directions. I asked him to take care of my woman out there, where she was new and maybe lost. I asked him to take her into his lodge and protect her until I could come for her. That’s all I remember.

* * *

I rolled Don’s sleeping bag carefully, taking pains to leave the little trailer neat. It was already late afternoon. We’d sat around inside, sipping coffee, murmuring. The television was on, turned down low. Snake stared at MTV, never looking up. Elinore sat beside me on the couch, and she periodically got up and fed me cookies or more coffee, though I didn’t ask for any. After tending to the sleeping bag, I stuffed my jeans into a small duffel, and stepped outside and headed across Don’s pasture, away from the trailers to the dark hump of the sweat lodge he’d built near a small stand of cottonwoods. I walked down to the stream that cuts through Don’s eighty acres. There was one spot, one small white gravel pool where Joni and I made love.

It was perfectly matched to my memory, like a photo pinned inside my skull. I remembered every detail, even the giggling terror that Don, or their old man, Wilmer, would catch us at it. I stood there watching the wasps sip water at the edge of the pool, where the gravel gave way to mud. I half-expected to see the double-seashell imprint of her bottom on the shore. Dragonflies tapped the water. I’d moved in her, minnows between our legs, tickling us. Bubbles came out of her body and ran over my sides.

There were tiny smears of black hair in her armpits. Her nipples were small and dark as nuts. She hardly had any hair on her body. Afterwards, as we lounged in the water, chewing leaves of spearmint that grew on the banks, she played with the hair on my chest. She scratched it; I could hear her nails scraping. I leaned up on one elbow, watching my seed rise from her and drift. It looked like a pearl column of smoke.

“Bobby.”

I jumped. I looked around, feeling caught.

It was Don. He had a rifle on one shoulder. He was leading Stormy. They were dark against the sky. Huge.

“I …,” I said. “I guess I saw a ghost.”

Don nodded.

Stormy brushed flies away from her sides with lazy smacks of her tail.

“Wanna come?” he said, gesturing to the horse with his head.

I clambered up the bank and followed him. You could hear bees working the alfalfa and the sweetgrass. Stormy’s limping gait played on the ground like a drumbeat. Don stared at the ground as we walked. She wheezed, the sound pitifully hollow and weak.

“Stormy thinks we’re having fun,” he said.

Her ears still turned to each sound. She watched a dove burst out of a small bush and fly away. She dipped her head at tall grasses, though she couldn’t eat anymore. I noticed her legs trembling.

We took her over a small hillock, out of sight of the house and the other horses. “All right now,” Don murmured. He eased the bit out of her mouth and pulled off the bridle. She worked her long yellow-brown teeth. She stared off.

Don cranked a round into the chamber. The lever sounded cool and final as it slid home.

“I tried,” I said. He didn’t look at me. “Whatever I did wrong, I loved your sister.”

Don petted Stormy.

“I know it,” he said. “Shit. I guess we all know it.”

He raised the gun and fired into her head, behind her left ear. It was a sharp little crack, like a dry branch snapping. I jumped. She jerked her head straight up and fell. Her legs just vanished. Don had to dance out of her way when she dropped. The whole thing was unbelievable, some kind of trick. One of her hooves twitched, she groaned; then it was done. The silence was like a curtain in a play. You couldn’t even see any blood. Don was standing there, the smoking rifle loose in his grip. I looked up at him — his eyes were closed, his head went back, and he began to sing.

He began to sing, quietly at first, but it grew louder as he went. Long, mysterious Sioux sounds, Indian words that could have been going out to God, or to Stormy, or to Joni, there was no way of knowing. But his voice rose, became a haunted sound, a cry from someplace else. I wanted to join him. I wanted to sing, to cry my pain and loss to Him — to the Grandfather, to the one she’d called Wakan Tanka. But I had no song, I had no prayer. I felt so small beside the voice of Don Her Many Horses.

I closed my eyes and stood with him. The good horse smell still rose from Stormy. And he sang. I started to sob, it just tore out of me. I thought I might fall down, but his hand gripped my upper arm to steady me. The wind sighed around us, and there were crows. Don kept singing, but he had slowed, enunciating carefully, and I realized he wanted me to follow. My voice was weak at first, tentative, but I repeated the sounds. He waited until I grew strong in my song.

We sang for a long time, together. We sang until dark. We sang until I thought we would never find our way home.