Stone Song Read online

  This place was not exceptional. It was anywhere and everywhere. Yet Curly sensed something.

  He looked around. He had a queer strangled feeling. In his chest Hawk fluttered her wings.

  The four first spirits were here too: Wi, Skan, Maka, and Inyan—Sun, Sky, Earth, and Rock. Their companions Moon, Wind, Contention, and Thunder were here. The four winds were here. This place was nothing special, but it was every place, and the powers were as much here as anywhere.

  “Mitakuye oyasin,” Curly murmured, acknowledging his kinship to all living things.

  A peculiar avidity clutched him. It was a voracity, a lust, and it had him by the throat.

  He looked up the hill. He hadn’t seen it at first. Off to the left, more than halfway up, a rocky projection with a flat top jutted out from the hill, like an altar. The kind of place where Lakota …

  He saw, suddenly. Saw himself on the prayer mound walking back and forth, arms lifted to the sky. Heard himself crying out to the universe. The picture and the cries danced in his mind, entrancing him. In this dream he was crying for a vision, trying to see beyond.

  His mind railed at him. Hanbleceyapi was a most serious step. If you saw beyond, it would determine everything about your life. Normally, it would give you an animal guide. It would tell you how to paint yourself, how to make connection with medicine. In it you saw how to conduct your life, whether your nature was to be a warrior, a councillor, a leader, a father, a holy man, a healer.

  You would spend the years of your life discovering how to live this vision. It would be the defining experience of your existence.

  In his mind Curly yelled at himself: You do not take this ritual on yourself lightly, fool!

  When you asked for help, a wicasa wakan, holy man, took you into the sweat lodge, prayed with you, gave you a canupa, a pipe, dedicated to this ritual, and helped you prepare your mind to go four days without food, water, or sleep. He took you onto the mountain, made sacred gestures, and left you there. When you came down, he took you back to the sweat lodge and helped you understand what you had seen.

  To cry for a vision was high seriousness. For a mere youth to try it without preparation would be foolish and arrogant.

  Yet Curly had a feeling that was so strong, so violent. If he did it, Hawk would be truly peaceful within his heart. Hawk wanted him to cry for a vision.

  He dismounted, tied the pony, and stripped himself naked.

  By sunset he was thoroughly muddled.

  He had hobbled the pinto by a sunpole tree close to water. He had stripped and left his clothing and gear by the tree. He went up the mountain naked, unprepared, uncertain, vulnerable.

  He acted as he thought he should. He had no cansasa, tobacco, as an offering, no canupa to send breath to Spirit, no sweetgrass to burn as a sacred gesture, no white sage for a bed. He wasn’t so sure exactly what criers for a vision did anyway.

  He felt agitated. You couldn’t see beyond the evident, the apparent, world on your own, without guidance. Surely he was being ignorant and disrespectful. If the Wakinyan Tanka, thunderbirds, flew to him here, they would probably hurl lightning and kill him.

  He blamed himself. He was always that way. He couldn’t accept what others said but had to try everything for himself. He cursed himself for always having to be different, for being a stranger among the people.

  So he had made this choice and he would live with it. He thought back. He would follow through, regardless of what came, and he would accept all consequences.

  “You can do anything, be anything,” his father often said, “if you’re willing to accept what comes with it.”

  All day Curly had done what he’d heard about and what made sense to him. He set stones at the four directions and drew one line from the north to the south, another from the east to the west. His father had explained these signs to him: The east-west line was the black road, the path of warfare and destruction for human beings. The north-south line was the red road, the path of harmony and fruitfulness. The circle was the wholeness of life itself, unifying the red and black roads. This was the meaning of the most common of all the icons, the four-winds wheel.

  Now Curly stood where the red and black roads crossed, at the center of this circle, the center of himself and of the universe. One by one, he walked to each of the four directions and back, his feet naked against the earth, his body naked to the wind, and he prayed.

  He walked first to the west, the home of the thunder powers, the Wakinyan Tanka. As he prayed, he kept in his mind the spirit of the west, Yata, and the powers he sends—the swollen clouds, the mind-dazzling lightning, which is harbinger of the rain, and its thunder, which in Curly’s language was called lightning-gives-birth-to-sound.

  “Hiye haya!

  Hiye haya!

  Hiye haya!

  Hiye haya!

  Grandfather, I am sending a voice.

  Grandfather, I am sending a voice.

  Grandfather, I am sending a voice.

  Grandfather, I am sending a voice.

  Hear me.

  Hear me.

  Hear me.

  Hear me.”

  Ceremonially, he repeated each line four times, a sacred number.

  As he cried for a vision, he watched especially for winged creatures that might fly to him. Of all animal messengers they were the closest to the powers Wi and Skan, Sun and Sky, and so the most powerful. The animal aides of Yata would be hawks or bats. But the skies looked empty.

  Curly walked to the north, the home of the white giant and the north wind. Whenever the white giant breathes hard, things freeze. Whatever this god touches withers and dies. If the white owl, the raven, or the wolf appeared to Curly, that would be a message from the white giant.

  He walked to the east, where Yanpa lives on an island whose shining yellow sands are the home of the sun. The east is the path of insight and may send a nighthawk with wisdom.

  Curly walked to the south, the home of Okaga, the giver of life and the maker of flowers and other beautiful things. His breath is warm, he is kind, and he always brings goodness. His messengers are waterbirds, meadowlarks, and cranes.

  Curly called out to these powers and to Tunkasila, Grandfather. He lifted his voice in a thin, wavering cry, respectfully, mindful of his boyish weakness, and he asked for help.

  He saw nothing, he heard nothing.

  It was like an upside-down miracle, not seeing but blindness. Any bird might have spoken to him, any one at all. The sky was miraculously empty. A squirrel, a chipmunk, a coyote, a deer might have appeared. A spider, an ant, any insect might have crawled by. He saw nothing—Mother Earth acted unnatural, dead.

  He knew he might not be blessed enough to get a song or a dance or even thoughts or words. Still, just by what it did, or its presence alone, any messenger would give him something. He had heard wise men say that any appearance of any creature whatever mattered, no matter how seemingly insignificant. If you cried for a vision, you had to remember everything and report it to your guide.

  Since this was an ordinary piece of plain, rolling, jumbled, indistinguishable from a thousand others, it should have been as abundant and various with life as all the others.

  He was half-angry, half-shattered by its emptiness. Life itself seemed taken from him, Spirit taken from him, as though part of the world could be perfectly empty of skan, the force that moved the world, the force that made all the peoples alive, two-legged, four-legged, rooted, crawling, swimming, and winged, that made water flow, that made everything vital.

  It was a sign, a miracle. He was answered. Answered in emptiness, blackness, a void.

  He snorted.

  He cried for a vision and the answer was his blindness.

  He cried for a vision and the answer was his deafness.

  Wild self-accusations stampeded in his head.

  Worse, far worse than no answer.

  Here was an answer, and it was death.

  He made a deliberate effort to control his trembling. C
arefully, he lay down with his head where the black road met the red road. The ground was rough and uncomfortable. It was almost dark. He would not sleep—he refused to sleep—he would follow the rules. But the darkness was a blessing. In the darkness he would not have to face the awful answer Spirit was giving to his plea. The nothingness.

  He woke in the blackest part of night. He shook himself with shame. His mind accused him: You slept. Only the cold woke you up.

  The Seven Sisters said it was halfway between midnight and dawn.

  He sat and thought a little. What was in his spirit? Determination, tenacity. He would persevere, persevere doggedly. He would not accept this pretense at an answer, this silence of the universe. He would bull onward until he got a glimmer of insight, a hint of power.

  His grandfathers, his father, the uncles he called ate (his father’s brothers), the uncles he called leksi (his mothers’ brothers), his friends all came back from the mountain with something. It was usually a waking dream, they said. Your eyes were open, but what you saw was not the ordinary world. It was the world within this apparent world, the real one. A creature might appear to you, not an ordinary creature, maybe a meadowlark, but the true meadowlark, the one the earth’s meadowlarks imitate. If you were fortunate, the bird might give you a word or a song or a dance. Or you might see it do something. Whatever it was, you were to hold that gift in your mind for the rest of your life, a sign, perhaps difficult to interpret or to follow, but a sign.

  Sometimes one seeker would wear an eagle-bone whistle in his hair because of what he saw. Another would dangle the paw of a kit fox around his neck to help him remember that animal’s ways. Another would put the skin of a raven in his medicine bag as a revered object.

  Something, you would be given something.

  Occasionally a seeker came back with nothing. Empty-handed. Empty-minded, Curly guessed. Or was it full-minded, too full for the powers to add anything new? Then you simply went again. The universe was a place that gave men guidance. It always spoke. You had only to open your mind and wait.

  Except him, maybe, except Curly. Right now its answer was a thunderclap of silence. The universe refused Curly.

  He would show the powers. He would seek in a rage, he would claw and scrape and rip, he would demand of the universe until he tore from its heart a response.

  I am lost! his mind screamed at the powers. Show me the way!

  He began his prayers again, his solicitations to the west, home of the Wakinyan Tanka, north, home of the bald-headed eagle, the east, Huntka, the path of the rising sun, and the south, where we are always facing, home of the white swan.

  When the sky began to grow light, he walked toward the stone at the east slowly and prayed in that direction until the sun was well up, beginning:

  “Hiye haya!

  Grandfather, I am sending a voice.

  Hear me,”

  repeating each line the sacred four times.

  When he had finished praying aloud, Curly sat at the center of the sacred circle and turned his thoughts to matters of reverence. He pondered the four ages of life on this earth, which are also the four ages of the life of a single man—rock, bow, fire, and canupa. He dwelled on the buffalo that stands at the west, holding back the waters that will flood the world and end this age of mortal life on earth. He knew the buffalo was almost bald now and stood on only one leg, as the last days approached. He shaped a buffalo with his right hand, his thumb and outer fingers the legs, his middle finger the hump and head. He made it stand on one leg, like the buffalo that holds back the waters of the final destruction. He looked at his own buffalo flesh and reflected.

  When the sun was well above the horizon, he turned his prayers again to the four winds. He spoke to each of them, one by one, addressing each with a plea, ending his prayer with the words, “Unse la ma yelo.” Take pity on me.

  As he walked to each of the directions, he kept his restless eyes down. He tried not to notice that the world was still empty of life, the sky empty, the earth empty.

  His hunger did not bother him. His thirst did not bother him. His weakness did not bother him. Even the way his tongue was swelling up in his mouth did not bother him.

  This answer to his prayers—nullity and void—was driving him into a blackness beyond despair.

  All day he prayed. “Take pity on me.”

  All day the answer never changed. Nothingness.

  As darkness fell, he wondered if the red and blue days were coming, the time when the moon would turn red and the sun blue and the world would come to an end.

  He rejected this notion. Earth and Sky refused to answer one pleading boy—so what? That didn’t mean Earth and Sky were mute forever. They were just giving the one boy, a contrary, mule-headed boy, what he deserved.

  The second night Curly didn’t fight sleep. It silenced the accusing voices in his head. Instead his dreams became galloping accusations.

  Nothing changed on the third day. Sunup to midafternoon of eloquent praying. Sunup to midafternoon of eloquent silence.

  He waited most of the day. Sometime between midafternoon and sundown he sat down and blew his breath out. He breathed in deeply, and out. Once more.

  Then he surrendered.

  He quit.

  He had failed.

  Walking, stumbling down the hill toward his pony, he seemed almost to be hearing two voices, both of them his own. As he fingered his light hair, one voice told him being different had nothing to do with it. He was not part wasicu, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t so strange. True, he didn’t like paint, he didn’t like beads, he didn’t like dancing. He didn’t want to trick himself up in fine clothes, the way most Lakota men did. That didn’t matter. The loneliness he felt, the need always to be alone, didn’t mean he was alien.

  Even having Hawk in his breast did not mean he was a monster. Didn’t other men feel the yearning to be out hunting, out raiding, free?

  So he stumbled down the hill telling himself that he wasn’t an alien, he was a Lakota.

  The other voice didn’t answer directly. It only whispered: Failure, humiliation. This voice would tell everyone, instantly, it would blurt out his shame, he knew it would, he could not imagine it doing otherwise. He would be unmasked, exposed as a fraud. Powerless, spiritless, a nothing, a void.

  Which was what he deserved.

  When they heard his tale of nothingness and silence, they would mock him, they would throw spears of laughter.

  He had been foolish to go unprepared, to try without the guidance of his elders.

  Unprepared? His mind threw the word back at him in echoes. What arrogance! To assume preparation would make a difference. It’s not preparation. It’s just you.

  As he neared the river, he limped toward his hobbled horse. He was aching all over and dizzy. After three days without food or water, he felt giddy and weak. He took the pony by the bridle, but he felt too woozy to mount. Besides, his belly hurt. He sat against the sunpole tree. He would be stronger in a moment, clearer-headed in a moment.

  He leaned back. He let his body flop against the tree and on the ground. He gave up. He shuddered with surrender. He had hurled himself into the maw, and he had failed. He gave up.

  His eyes fluttered.

  Gently, he felt a release of some kind, a loosening of grip, a lightening of heart.

  Suddenly he … was it dreaming? Or seeing? He was wide awake. His eyes were open, and he felt intensely aware, and he saw …

  SEEING

  The horse trotted lightly, appearing to float, seeming not to touch the earth.

  Now Curly saw it was his hobbled pony running free, trotting toward him, legs prancing, neck held high.

  On its back a rider sat leaning forward, perfectly motionless on the moving mount, except that the fringe on the heels of his moccasins trembled.

  What Curly saw seemed more real than real. The colors were brighter, edges sharper, motions more vivid, sounds clearer, the air somehow brilliant, the world radiant. Sight, hearing,
and touch were keener, consciousness itself more vibrant.

  Curly knew: This earth, this horse and rider, these grasses and trees, this sky and clouds were not the ordinary ones of every day, but the ones that live …

  He was seeing beyond, seeing in a sacred way.

  As though to offer proof, the pony changed from his pinto, the one hobbled by the sunpole tree, into a bay. And then into an appaloosa, a slate-blue grulla, a strawberry roan, and other colors in succession. Like a statement: “I am not a horse, but Horse. And luminous—aglow—for you who have eyes to see.”

  Curly looked closely at the rider, bright as a shining stone you held in your hand, one you turned to study its every facet. His hair was the color of light sand, and he wore it long and loose far below his waist. His hair was ornamented by a few beads and only one eagle feather, a feather hung upside down, in the position of the war eagle when it is about to kill. The rider’s face and body bore no paint. He had on a shirt of pale deerskin and blue leggings, both unadorned. Yes, unadorned, though he seemed to be a man in the fullness of maturity.

  He did have medicine. Behind his left ear was tied a small stone, Inyan. Beneath his left shoulder, slung over a thong from the opposite shoulder, one eagle feather adorned another stone creature, Inyan.

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

  From the velvety blue-gray of these shadows came enemy fire, streaks flashing toward the rider, fast and dangerous, 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.

  A man of great power, bullet-proof. Then why unadorned?

  Now the rider—Rider—was stripped to nothing but a breechcloth and rode harder, faster, in a martial vigor. But hands flailed at him, clutched at him from behind, slowed him down. He tossed his arms backward like a man slinging off a tangling shirt. The hands kept pulling at him, holding him back, the hands of his own people. He felt threat in them. He shook them off and shook them off and rode on and rode on, but the hands did not relent. Rider shook and shook and shook at them. He feared the hands behind more than the bullets before.