Winter Counts(20)

My first impulse was to mock the crazy man who’d created this weird folk art and make cynical comments about the ways of the wasicus. After all, what sort of cracked person spends their free time building giant sculptures at an abandoned farmstead in Nebraska? It must have taken years to create this odd mélange of old autos in the middle of nowhere.

We stood there for a while in the shadow of the statues, and walked around the circle together. As we strolled between the buried vehicles, I began to appreciate the scale of what the artist had attempted. These were full-size American automobiles, buried, welded together, and painted gray, bottom to top. The artist clearly had a vision, a dream of what he wanted to express. A cynical statement about American consumerism? I didn’t think so. For some reason, I had the feeling that the creator of this monument was guided by some deeper philosophy. There were no fees for admission, no chain-link fences keeping out gawkers. It seemed to me that the artist had been driven by a goal to convey some deeply held conviction, expressed through the medium of 1970s automobiles.

I wandered off by myself to the edge of the circle. It was quiet at the site, no one there except for Marie and me. I positioned myself at one end of the circle so that I could see the entire thing. In the silence, I began to appreciate the weird majesty of the buried cars. I thought about what it must have felt like, four thousand years ago, to stand before the real monoliths in England and feel connected, truly connected, to the earth, the stars, and the spirits.

I stared at the cars so long that my head began to spin, and it felt like I was drifting off into space, floating in the heavens. Time seemed to stop, and the Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin—we are all related—came to me, and in that moment I understood what those words meant. I inhabited them, as images, thoughts, and memories arose amidst the old vehicles.

I saw my mother, gone but still with me, my father, who’d died too soon, and my sister, who I’d loved like my own life. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends. They appeared before me, all of my relations, my ancestors, Native and white, who’d loved and struggled, hunted and gathered, worked and played; they’d stood on this continent, looking up at these stars and these planets. It was daylight, but I could see the stars now, all of them, surrounding me, lighting the air, their brilliance shining and radiating off the monoliths. And then it was dark, a black-hole sky. But I looked down and saw that the stars—every one of them—were now in my hands, lighting up my veins, my muscles, my bones.

I stood there, alone with my ancestors, and listened to them. Finally I turned away. As I walked back to my life, the words my mother used to say finally came to me.

Wakan Tanka nici un. May the Creator guide you.





10


Marie and I were both quiet after our visit to Carhenge. We rode in silence for a while, then she turned her music back on, the mournful sound of Johnny Cash’s version of the song “Hurt” filling the car’s cabin. In a few hours, we’d hit the big highway, Interstate 76, which would take us straight down to Denver.

After a few songs, she turned down the stereo and glanced over at me. “So, I’ve been waiting to talk about this. Seems like now’s a good time.”

I came out of my trance instantly. “Yeah?”

“Well, I want to know more about the plan.”

“The plan?”

“When we find Rick. What are you going to do—”

“I’m going to kick his ass and make him stop selling drugs on the rez.”

“Come on, you can’t be serious,” she said. “Are you going to kick all their asses? I told you, he’s with the Aztec Kingz. Don’t know how many of them there are, but you can’t take them all on. Not by yourself.”

“I’ll figure that out when we get there. Not worried about them—they sound like a bunch of kids.”

She stared straight ahead. “You don’t understand. This is a real gang, not like the wannabes we have on the rez.” She paused for a second and looked outside the window. “I remember Rick didn’t like going to their place, he wouldn’t tell me why. He said they were scary guys.”

I’d taken care of plenty of scary people. I wasn’t worried about some Denver gangbangers. But my beef was with Rick Crow, not them. “Like I said, I’ll handle Rick. Don’t know anything about the gang, but I’ll teach him a lesson. Catch him alone if I need to. He won’t sell dope on the rez anymore, not when I’m done with him.”

Marie looked over at me. “Is this revenge for what happened to Nathan, or something else? Maybe this is payback. For how Rick treated you in school.”

I thought about what she’d said. I’d been telling myself I wanted to find Rick because of Nathan’s overdose. But maybe that wasn’t the whole story. It was true, Rick had tormented me in school. He’d been the ringleader of all the bullies who had made life a living hell for me and the other sad sacks at the bottom of the ladder. Maybe it was about vengeance. And what was wrong with that? I wasn’t the goddamn savior of the Lakota people, but I could make Rick Crow pay for what he’d done to me and the other half-breeds.

Marie continued, “The goal here is to make sure there are no more hard drugs on the rez. That’s the purpose, right? You can save the vengeance for another time.”

I didn’t understand why she was trying to convince me not to kick the shit out of Rick. “One way or the other, I need to stop that asshole,” I said. “Got to be honest, I don’t see why you’re so concerned about him.”