Winter Counts(81)

I was at Wounded Knee, the massacre unfolding before me.

The remaining Natives were running at top speed, racing up the hill and into the museum for shelter. I got knocked down in the rush and covered my head with my hands. Then I looked up and saw a rifleman in the distance drawing a bead on me. I tried to stand up and dash away, but something was wrong with my legs and I stayed, vulnerable, there on the hillside, helpless. I waited for the sound of the shot.

Then somebody grabbed me and pulled me up onto my feet. Still unsteady, I looked at who’d helped me.

It was Nathan.

“Come on!” he shouted, and he led me up the hill amid the crowd of people. Nathan ran inside the building, and I made my way to the door. I opened it and looked into the pitch-black darkness, then slammed the door shut behind me.

All of a sudden a dim light came on, and I could see people crouching around a fallen man, trying to help him. I peered over somebody’s shoulder and saw that it was Jerome, flat on his back, freed from the ropes, but his face gray and ashen. His grandson Rocky was bent over him, saying something I couldn’t hear.

“Did the soldiers shoot him?” I said to the woman next to me.

“What?” Marie said. “What soldiers?”

My mind whirled as I struggled to orient myself. I looked at the tobacco ties, the altar, and the darkened windows; I smelled the sweetgrass and the sage. Marie’s face was an anchor, bringing me back to the yuwipi house.

“He collapsed during the ceremony,” she told me. “I hope he just fainted, but I’m worried this could be a heart attack. It doesn’t look good.”

I was trying to focus on Jerome, but couldn’t shake what I’d just experienced at Wounded Knee. The terror of the people, the unspeakable cruelty of the soldiers.

Then I knew what I needed to do.

“Come on,” I said to Marie. “We have to leave right now. I know where Nathan is.”





27


What are you talking about?” she said, as we walked outside. “Did Dennis call you?”

“I’ll explain later. But I have to go. Nathan’s in danger.”

She stopped and turned to me. “No, you can’t just leave me in the dark. I need to know what’s happening. Where is he?”

“He’s at Pine Ridge. The abandoned museum at Wounded Knee. The one on top of the hill.”

Her mouth opened in amazement. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. But I need to get out there, right now. Tell you more later.”

“Wait. I’ll go with you. I know that place well.”

There was no way I’d let Marie come along, given what I’d just experienced.

“You’re staying here,” I said. “Don’t know what I’ll be up against.”

She planted her legs like a football lineman. “Not a chance in hell. I’ve been in this from the beginning, and I’m in it now. I’m coming along.”

I knew better than to argue. “All right. But you stay in my car while I check it out. Bottom line.”

She nodded grudgingly.

“Hold on,” I said. “I need to get something first.”

I opened the glove box in my car, grabbed the Glock, and pulled the clip. Loaded. But I didn’t have any extra ammo, so I popped the trunk and got my backup, the little Smith & Wesson revolver that held only five rounds. I stuck it in the inside pocket of my denim jacket. It made a crunching noise, and I realized I still had the old items from my medicine bag in there—the sage, feather, and rocks. The items I’d carried with me as a kid.

Marie’s eyes widened. “Why do you need two guns?”

“I might not need any, but I got to be ready.”

“Maybe we should call Dennis?”

I considered this. “Okay, I’ll call him. But I’m not waiting. I’ve got a feeling this is something I’m supposed to do by myself.”

I phoned Dennis, but there was no answer. I left a message telling him to call and where to find me. While we drove, I told her about what I’d seen at the yuwipi. I was worried she might doubt my vision or tease me, but she just asked questions about what I’d witnessed. I told her it was no dream; it was real.

I gunned the accelerator all the way to Pine Ridge, and we got to Wounded Knee in record time. I hadn’t been to the site for years. When I’d visited in the past, I always paid my respects to the Lakotas buried in the mass grave. Right after the massacre in 1890, the army simply dug a pit in the ground and just tossed in the corpses—men, women, children, and babies. It’s a sad place, not only because of the innocent victims but also because it represents the end of the Indian era, when Natives lived freely on our traditional lands. After the so-called battle, soldiers rounded up the last few hostile bands and shipped them all off to reservations. The end of the dream, and, as Black Elk said, it was a beautiful dream.

But there was no time to pay my respects tonight. I pulled up to the makeshift museum next to the grave site. Not really a museum; the round building had only a couple rooms and a few crude paintings of Lakota leaders—Red Cloud, Sitting Bull—hanging on the walls and a little bit of Native history scrawled underneath. There was no electricity and not much furniture inside; it was just a run-down structure that had been taken over by the locals. After complaints from tourists who’d wandered in and gotten scared by panhandlers, the building had been closed, and the doors were usually chained shut.