RavenShadow Read online

  So I had a problem. I was determined to drink until the sun went down and then meet Sallee Walks Straight in Hot Springs, at the south end of the Hills. I had been pursuing Sallee for a month, no luck. Had a hot date tonight to celebrate something special, I told her. Didn’t tell her I hoped to get lucky in a meadow, pass out with a blanket wrapped around us, and wake up a free man—no white-man job! Free in the center of Black Hills, Paha Sapa, our sacred lands.

  You white people don’t understand how special the Black Hills are to us. Since before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, my people have sought their visions in Paha Sapa. Our ancestors, since before the memories of the grandfathers of the oldest men, have been buried there. The Hills give us all things good—poles for our tipis, meat, berries, grass for the ponies, clean water. Most important, and seldom told, is that the Hills mirror the stars, and by traveling in a sacred spirit through the Hills on a certain route, we align ourselves with the heavens themselves. The Hills mirror what we call the Racetrack Constellation, which you call Capella, Pleiades, Rigel, Sirius, Procyon, Castor, and Pollux.

  A hundred years ago Yellow Hair, George Armstrong Custer, came along and hollered in print, “Them thar Hills are full of gold.” Prospectors flooded in, followed by miners, followed by bartenders, whores and gamblers, followed by preachers, teachers, and the whole gamut of your so-called civilization, which has about killed us. The final insult was for you to name a town after Custer in our Hills.

  But my date with Sallee was for about dark, Indian time, which means any time in the evening. I had all day to tipple and not pass out.

  I remember puttering along south through the Hills. I had a few in Rockerville and went over to Keystone to find Emile and thank him for the help, but he wasn’t at home. I checked out the taste of beer in Hill City, and in Custer, where I stood in the parking lot, pretended a handicapped parking sign was Custer’s grave, and pissed up at it. I think I remember taking a nap—you might call it an involuntary nap—in the state park named after the bastard along the way. The whole time I watched for Raven in the corner of my vision, but I never saw him. He was there, but I never saw him.

  At twilight, one way or another, I was whooping it up in Hot Springs with Sallee, who unfortunately was flanked, or chaperoned, or something like that, by her cousin Rosaphine.

  Sallee never drank, in fact maybe wasn’t old enough to drink. She didn’t say why and I didn’t ask, knowing that any young, eligible red woman with good sense would rather find a red man who’s both sober and straight, which is near impossible. Nobody loves a drunken Indian, and I wondered whether that might be why I hadn’t gotten lucky with Sallee, but I didn’t care. Getting laid was dicey, getting drunk a sure thing.

  Trouble was, she had me a little entranced. She was tall, slender, willowy, quiet, mysterious. From the first look she seemed to me somehow mythic, bearing a spirit larger than life. Later I realized what she reminded me of. Emile did a painting, back when he was doing canvases and not just hides, of White Buffalo Woman. She is, well, you would call her one of our great mythological heroes. She first appeared to two young men, walking in a sacred manner. One of them lusted after her. She held her arms out, he embraced her, and a cloud enveloped them. When the cloud disappeared, the lustful young man had turned into a pile of bones. To the other young man she said, “Take me to your village.” He did, and the gift she bore proved to be the greatest of all boons to the Lakota people, the sacred Pipe.

  In painting her, Emile was once more performing the sacred deed, taking White Buffalo Woman to the people. The figure was slender, pure-looking, sheathed in a beautifully quilled buckskin dress, walking in a modest way but bearing invisibly the gift of the sacred.

  Sallee reminded me of Emile’s White Buffalo Woman. Later I found out why—she’d been the model. Her face wasn’t shown, but it was her carriage I responded to, and her aura of being special.

  Like the ill-advised young man, I lusted after her. I told myself I wanted to … get lucky with her.

  I knew Sallee wanted much more from life. She wasn’t likely to find it in a bar in Hot Springs, but if you live with your uncle near the hamlet of Oglala on the Pine Ridge rez, a bar in Hot Springs is only five bucks of gas round trip, and a date with an alcoholic red man with a forty-grand-a-year job, hey, that’s a step up.

  “Hoka hey!” says I, and lifted my glass. Sallee gave me her special smile and slid onto the bar stool. Rosaphine the bulldog barked “Hoka hey!” and slid right onto my lap. Her talk always sounded like barking, and she had a jutting lower jaw, which is what reminded me of the dog. Rosaphine wasn’t pretty, but she was a party girl, and sexy. This time the play in her eyes said she’d knocked back a six-pack on the drive over, which was par for the course with Rosaphine. Just like me.

  I slid from underneath Rosaphine and stationed myself between them, touching on both sides. I needed the stability of touching, and the illusion it lent. I motioned to the bartender to give them whatever they wanted. “A Virgin Mary,” says Sallee. It was all she ever drank, and she acted interested mostly in the celery. “Bud Light!” roars Rosaphine, like it was the answer to a quiz-show question. She waggled her ass like she just won a case of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—it wasn’t in Rosaphine’s fantasy world to win the sixty-four thousand dollars. The waggle made me want to lean against her more. Yeah, she was started toward blimpdom, which Lakota women seem to achieve early, but she was warm and pliant.

  “You get it done?” I says to Sallee.

  She scrunched her shoulders up and shook her head no. “Frustrating. I’m ruining my third piece of the silk.”

  Sallee was working on a big fabric painting—that was what she wanted to do, paint on cloth. I met her at Emile’s one day. She was showing him a big piece, a horseback warrior on a periwinkle blue banner shaped like a guidon.

  “Good idea,” he said. “Indian warrior, U.S. Army symbol, I like that.”

  You can hear what people are not saying, too.

  She raised her arms and eyebrows like, That’s all?

  He finally grabbed a big sketch pad and re-drew the horseman three or four times on different pages, really fast. The last sketch—it’s hard to find words for this—had a sort of flow in the lines that made the paper almost pulse, like it had electrical energy.

  “Mine just lays there,” she said, looking back and forth.

  Emile nodded.

  She looked like she wanted to cry.

  I got her to have coffee with me before she drove home.

  Now she was working on a truly big piece, the size of a banner like you hang in front of a store to make a statement. For it she needed white silk, and had no bucks to buy it.

  One day at the Sioux Nations Shopping Center, where she clerked for minimum wage, she took me out in the parking lot and showed me what looked like a backpack. “My Eureka,” she said.

  She started unstuffing some white cloth out of the pack. Silk. “My uncle’s World War II parachute.” Silk.

  “Wonderful idea,” I said. I also thought, Typical Indian artist, broke, and creative as hell.

  “Donan says he’ll hang it from a pole in front of the gallery for the fall show. If I can get it finished.” Donan was a Hill City gallery owner.

  The barman brought the Virgin Mary and the beers.

  I said, “You know, I’m celebrating. Here’s my Freed from Labor Day promise. If you ruin all of it, I’ll buy you another parachute.”

  She grinned, but her eyes showed this hurt. “If I ruin it all,” she said, “I’ll get another Eureka.”

  Sallee had the affliction of artists—they’re unhappy unless they do the one thing that turns them on. I’d learned that real good from Emile.

  “What you celebrating?” says Rosaphine.

  “My freedom,” says I.

  I looked around the bar. I reached down into the lungs of the biggest chest in the room, found my biggest radio voice, and hollered, “Ten—n-n-n HUT!”

  T
he white drinkers, a mix of fifteen or twenty tourists and Hills folks, looked over at the drunken Indian. (One more time, lads and lasses: Nobody loves a drunken Indian.) I laid the words out like thunder. “Today I took my freedom. I told that white employer, that boss, that overseer, I sang in my best Johnny Paycheck imitation, ‘TAKE THIS JOB AND AND SHOVE IT!’”

  One of the rednecks softly seconded, “Right on!”

  “So, LET’S CELEBRATE! Bartender, this round’s on me. SET ’EM UP!”

  I lifted my glass, listening for the roar of approval. Instead there were a lot of funny looks, and from the back came a comment in a redneck accent, “Once in a lifetime! An Injun’s buying!”

  The bartender set to work.

  I looked happily into Sallee’s eyes and saw hurt. I didn’t get that. Then I thought, Generosity means more when it isn’t boozy. I felt ashamed. I said, “I did quit my job.”

  She nodded and noshed on her celery. I found it sexy. She was looking White Buffalo Woman-like again.

  The bartender filled our glasses, including more veggie juice and celery for Sallee. I gave him some twenties. Rosaphine and I drained our beers.

  Rosaphine slipped an arm around my waist. “So tell us.”

  I did, the whole story—Long John Silver’s corruption, his grave offense via Sybil, my setup, the beauty of my deception off the air, and the crowning glory of Long John shouting RIGHT ON THE AIR vileness I never dreamed to get out of him.

  Rosaphine haw-hawed, slapped her thigh, slapped my thigh, squeezed my thigh, and haw-hawed a lot more. Sallee looked worried.

  Suddenly I thought, I could tell her more of the truth. I could say, “Sallee, I wasted a huge piece of my life working at a job that paid the rent but did nothing else for a soul, either red or white.” I could say, “I got stale spinning the top forty fads of the month, many of which I never bothered to listen to. I became the master of razzmatazz phrases that said nothing,” and similar truths. But all that seemed … I was too drunk, and probably too cowardly.

  “Don’t worry!” I cried. “I’ve got money! I could buy rounds from here to Christmas!” I started on about the bucks I would get from the sale of the house, the severance pay, the unemployment checks, but then I saw I’d lost Sallee’s attention.

  “Let’s dance!” I said to her, holding out my hand.

  She looked at me appraisingly, took the hand, and we walked to the juke box. “Into the Mystic,” she punched, Van Morrison, and off we juked. The dance floor was the size of a bathroom stall.

  Rosaphine put some quarters in the juke box. Up comes Bonnie Raitt all fast and funky. Rosaphine hands me another beer, chugalugs her own, and joins us. Sallee is an elegant dancer, using the whole body without emphasizing sex, almost in a virginal way, but very sexy to me. Rosaphine looks like she’d have done well in burlesque—make them tits spin, grind that bottom, bump your partner’s ass, and with a sultry look bump your pelvis.

  I am just drunk, only half dancing, half lurching, on the edge of stumbling.

  Rosaphine bumps toward me with a provocative look on her face. She spins and backs up to me, her big bottom jutting out. I bump her butt with mine, we sidle around each other, and bump two or three more times.

  I whirl away and look at Sallee’s face. She’s dancing, but her eyes look strained. Oh, what the hell, nothing wrong with a little fun. I spin back toward Rosaphine, and she goes into her shimmy.

  A shimmy on a roly-poly, five-foot body is hard to describe. Her head tilted slowly from side to side, her smile stayed fixed like a beacon, her eyes gleamed wild, and her tits begun to move. I mean shake. I mean wiggle and wobble. Flip and flop. Dive and soar. At the same time her belly began to quiver, just quiver. Her hips began to rock. And roll. Sometimes one went up and the other down. Sometimes one went back and the other front. Sometimes both of them humped back and then BANGED front. And all at the same time her big thighs quivered. It was somethin’. I mean, it was SOMETHIN’. I guess my eyes about jiggle-jangled out of their sockets beholding Rosaphine’s shimmy. Maybe the room was dark, but I was seeing fireworks.

  I glimpsed Sallee watching us from the bar. Well, that was good. I wanted to give my own show, the Blue Crow Crawl, or the Blue Crow Sound and Light Show. I prayed, O God of Booze, flow in me!

  Rosaphine was sailing, and I sailed my six-and-a-half-foot body into its performance. I couldn’t rightly say what my body did. I strutted. I pranced. I spun. I did freeze-frame. I stilted. I pretended there were strobe lights and jerked from posture to posture. I did a dizzy, drunken, dizzied, drunken, dizzying, drunken dance.

  Near the end I caught Rosaphine’s eyes. We segued into the grand finale. We bopped, we banged butts, we flopped, we flipped, and wrapped it up in an orgy of boozy woozing.

  At the end I fell flat on my back. Thinking to save the moment, I raised one leg straight up, and then let it slowly, slowly droop down, like a wilting cock.

  From the back came three claps of mocking applause.

  Rosaphine helped me up, snuggled against me and held my hand. I said, “Where’s Sallee?”

  She wasn’t on the bar stool. Up close we saw her purse was gone. Her glass was empty. She’d even taken her celery.

  The car was gone from the parking lot.

  Rosaphine turned into me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me full, with plenty of tongue. She pulled back, grinned, said, “Looks like I’m stuck for a place to sleep,” and kissed me again.

  Not only did I kiss her back, giving as good as I got, but pushed hard against her down below, so she could feel what was up.

  Since my divorce in January I had spent a lot of evenings in bars and ended a lot of them in the back seat of the Lincoln. I preferred the moans of orgasm to the cries of a-a-w-w-k! a-a-w-wk!

  On this day of my triumph over Long John, and celebrating my subsequent independence, however, a large gesture was required. And I had a really juicy idea, one I’d been saving. It was inspired by Grandpa and Unchee, my grandma. They told a story about driving the C&NW tracks up to Rapid City one winter in the sixties. Highway 79 was drifted over, but my sister Angelee was bad sick, and they had to get her to the hospital. Trains traveled when cars couldn’t, so the tracks were clear. Drove those railroad tracks all the way to Rapid, and made it. What they’d have done if a train came … they didn’t have a clue.

  Unfortunately, my juicy idea was not based on honoring that memory. I wanted to add some kick to a quickie in the back seat, in fact a lollapalooza of a kick. Imagine me cruising the C&NW tracks, topping Rosaphine in the back seat, head down, my mind on hurling myself into her hole, and maybe hurling us into the black maw of death.

  C&NW freight trains don’t run on any schedule.

  Doesn’t that make it delicious?

  You never know when.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling her by one hand to the Lincoln. “I got an idea you ain’t never seen the like.”

  She didn’t catch on right at first, it was too crazy. I lined the tires up square on the tracks. I let some air out, so the tires would stay, the way Grandpa said he did it. Rosaphine was looking bamboozled. I pulled her to me and fondled one breast. She ground against my leg. “We’ll ride them tracks right into Rapid City, exit at the first street we see, and find a bar will serve a red man a drink.” Pause for kiss and fondle. “We’ll ride in the back seat.”

  Her eyes got queen-sized.

  I positioned the car right, engine running, in neutral. Turned the lights out—wanted to run in the beautiful darkness. Set the cruise control, hopped into the back seat with Rosaphine, who wore no underwear under her bluejean skirt. I got my Wranglers down, reached forward and popped the gear lever into drive, and started to turn and pop me into Rosaphine when … I got beguiled by the sound and feel of the car on the tracks, like a silk stocking easing up a leg.

  It was an utterly delicious, smooth ride, rubber to rail, seamless, eerily quiet, a world as undisturbed …

  Raven, fold me in your wings.


  My face up in the air, my eyes on the velvet darkness ahead, Rosaphine behind me, I slowly took my clothes all the way off. I turned my face down and regarded my risen cock with relish. And I rolled on top of Rosaphine.

  Then I saw, or maybe felt. She’d passed out. Lay down, pass out. Well, hell, I’ve done it myself.

  I stood up, found my balance on the spongy seat between Rosaphine’s sleeping legs, bared my chest to the warm wind, lifted my face to the sky, and looked at the moon. It was a half-moon—yin-yang moon going toward new moon. I said a traditional prayer—Grandmother Moon waning, take from me the things I do not need!

  Not far ahead I saw a curiosity. A trestle was coming up. Enough booze, you don’t see the problems. I figured if we met a train, I would wrench the steering wheel and we’d plunge off into the sagebrush, bouncing and laughing. Plunging head first through the air into a ravine, though … Raven, bear me up into the night sky.

  Did you know everything sounds different going over a ravine? Real spacy, kind of echoey. Downright eerie.

  Back onto solid earth, more or less. Something woke Rosaphine. She sat up and looked up at her fool date, erect in two different ways.

  Curve. Another trestle. Deeper ravine. Cooler air. I fell silent. My ears crawled all around the edges of the swishing sound of the tires, listening for the approach of my own death.

  Rosaphine passed out again. She laid there fully clothed but her legs up and knees spread, dark shadow between, a mockery of sexual invitation.

  Doesn’t Raven feel seductive?

  O Raven, you have been doing your dance before my eyes for years, waiting for me!

  No, it is me who’s been waiting, bride of one true suitor, a lover cooing and inviting and subtle and knowing, knowing, knowing.