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They sat on the dirt in silence in the dark of the shed with just the road noise of the cars and tractor-trailers in their ears. Occasionally, a tired trucker rubbing the edges of the road with his trailer wheels would punctuate the silence with a brief snapping sound just loud enough to keep Zen awake. He wrapped Trista’s bloody knuckles with his filthy bandanna in a way that her hands resembled a child in prayer. She was sleeping on his shoulder and his eyes were closed but sleep was the farthest thing from his mind.
The sounds of the gas station power breakers shutting down brought him back to reality. How long had they been here? It was dark and getting cold. He looked at his wrist for his watch but it wasn’t there anymore. How do you lose a watch? Just then, the door opened and the Indian appeared. “Come out.”
“Trista, wake up.” Zen whispered, gently shaking her.
“The gas station is closed and we hired a security guard who comes on in a few minutes so follow me.”
Zen’s first impulse was to ask where, but then realized he was too tired to make decisions.
“Follow me through the gate behind the shed and up the hill. Lock it behind you.”
Trista got up and took her left hand out of the bandage, keeping it wrapped around her right knuckles as they were the first ones she put through the glass.
“Can you hold on kid?” Zen asked quietly firing up his Dyna Glide.
“Yeah, I think so. I feel sick.”
The Indian led them up a dusty steep hill behind the gas station that the Dyna climbed with ease in first gear but the rough road was enough to open the bleeding in Trista’s hands. After fifteen minutes or so of riding behind the Indian’s old Chinook car and making a few twist and turns to avoid parts of the road that was washed away in the winter rains, they reached a valley with a few trees and three trailers, one of which was burnt on one side and melted.
Zen was covered in dust. Turning off the bike, the fog of brown seemed forever to settle. The twin cam ticked and popped as it cooled down. He warmed his hands on the engine before dismounting and helping Trista off the back.
“Push your bike behind the second trailer and under that porch. There is a tarp there so cover it up. Watch out for snakes.”
“Come with me girl.” Said the Indian, leading her into the trailer.
The Indian called to another woman in a language Trista had never heard before and by the time they got to the trailer steps, she fainted and fell on her side in the dirt. The Indian tried to catch her but he was too slow.
“Trista!” Zen shouted and regretted doing so immediately as his voice echoed no less than three times in the dense canyon.
“Bring her inside, let my aunt take a look at her.”
The old woman hobbling out of the trailer looked like she was older than God himself. Looking at the girl piled in the dust, she put her hand on her head, “She has a fever. What happened to her hands?”
“Help me put her on the couch.” The old man barked at Zen as he was trying to lift Trista up.
“Her hands are cut pretty bad.”
“I can sew them up” Said the old woman who had a permanent frown of wrinkles on her face.
“Do you know what you are doing?” Zen asked.
The woman just stared at him and sighed.
“Come outside with me.” The Indian asked him as he grabbed a few bottles of water from the fridge that had to have been made in the fifties.
Zen followed him outside and they climbed a few boulders and started walking up a hill in the dark when Zen said, “Listen, I am too tired to hike in the dark right now.”
The Indian kept walking for a few more minutes.
“We’re here.”
The hill overlooked part of the highway as it spiraled down into a fertile valley to the left and on the right about three miles was the biggest casino he had ever seen.
“Jesus.” Zen said aloud to himself.
“Let’s talk plainly young man.”
Zen couldn’t take his eyes off the sea of neon below.
“You want to smoke?” the Indian asked, pulling out a tobacco pouch.
“I’m allergic to tobacco.”
“It’s not tobacco.”
“I don’t smoke drugs.”
“It’s not a drug, it’s a plant.” Said the Indian as he lit the bowl in his brass pipe. Inhaling the acrid smoke deeply, he paused before exhaling slowly.
“Fuck it.” Zen said, taking the pipe and breathing in.
“You’re doing it wrong.” Putting his thumb on the underside of the pipe he told Zen to smoke again.
Zen coughed almost immediately and gave the pipe back to the Indian, but just then a euphoric rush took all the tension out of his neck and he felt twenty pounds lighter. Maybe even thirty he thought.
“That’s why I gave it to you,” said the Indian, “and that is enough. All things in moderation.”
Tapping the ashes out of the bowl against a rock he looked Zen squarely in the eye. “Tell me again what happened.”
Under the stars that could still be seen for all the ambient light from the neon Casino, Zen spilled his guts.
The rooster crowed at 5:40 and and Zen woke up under a blanket that smelled like a dog had been using it to give birth to puppies on. Cracking one eye open, he saw a Bassett hound sleeping next to him on the floor. Trista had wrapped herself in his jacket and hers and sometime in the middle of the night had taken the rest of the covers.
Getting up off the laminated floor, he almost hit his head on the side of a kerosene heater that ran out of fuel before he fell asleep. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and looking through the trailer window, he watched sun rise over a mountain until he couldn’t stare at it anymore.
“You are up.” The old man greeted him.
Zen looked at the old woman and she had a towel in her hand and a cup of coffee. “You need a shower?”
“Yes. I haven’t had one in a while.”
“I can tell.”
He showered in the lime green bathroom until the hot water started to cool off and when he opened the curtain to step out, there were a pair of overalls and a thermal shirt and wool socks where his clothes had been.
“Zen?” Trista said through the door.
“Yeah girl.”
“They are washing our clothes.”
“Okay.”
When he got dressed, he could smell chicken and fry bread. He hadn’t been clean since leaving Dr. Sinclair’s house.
“Hungry? There is food on the table.” Trista said with eyes half closed. She was wearing a flannel robe and side stepped him to get in the shower.
“There isn’t much hot water left.”
“That is okay, I am burning up.”
“Not good.”
The Indian invited him to the table and drank from a ceramic mug that said “Worlds Greatest Indian” on it.
“I talked with my aunt and you can stay until her hands heal.”
“Thank you. We are in…”
“Enough!” Said the woman, cutting him off. “Eat.”
After eating everything on his plate and downing his first of two cups of coffee, he heard Trista cussing in the shower.
“How bad are her hands?” he asked the woman.
“My aunt says she needs at least four or five days, then you can take the stitches out. She is tough; didn’t even flinch when she sewed her up.”
“I can’t thank you enough. We are in real trouble here and I am afraid I am running out of time. It is just matter of when before the authorities find out it was me.”
“I can’t believe the court just let him go.” Zen said looking out the window.
“I can.” The Indian said flatly. “You don’t have to be a Native American to know the United States Government cannot be trusted.”
“He took away my family.” Zen said slamming his fist down on the table causing coffee to spill out of his cup.
“And this bad man is slowly taking away the rest of your life.”
“I don’t want to live after I finish this.” He felt so tired after confessing that.
“What about the woman?” The old woman asked.
“She looks to you.”
“She is not my woman, she left a desperate situation and I let her get involved in this vendetta of mine.”
“Well, let her go or become one with her. You can’t be double-minded. Either you love her and start a new family or you die with her in this.”
The old woman now had some fire in her eyes.
Zen looked at his breakfast for a long time and then spoke. “What good is living in a world where there is no justice?”
Later that day, Zen helped around the place while the Indian went to work at the gas station. He tried to organize junk and burn trash. His bike was out of gas and he was looking for a gas can when the Indian surprised him.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that. You scared the shit outta me!”
“I am an Indian you know.” He said smiling.
“What is your name anyway?” Zen asked the Indian.
“Maybe it is better you don’t know.”
“There has been some news about that gang.”
“What news?”
“Some more of them were found dead in Oregon. There were some Mexicans killed with them too.”
“I need a newspaper.”
“There is nothing in it yet, I just saw it on the television.”
“Did anyone you saw have a red beard?”
“They didn’t show all the faces but some of them looked young and dirty. Why are so many people who ride motorbikes dirty?”
“Most aren’t, just some.”
“There is an event at our Casino next weekend and many bikers come there. The police want to cancel it but they don’t have a say. It is up to our tribal council and it brings too much money to shut it down.”
“Don’t take this the wrong wa,y but you don’t look like you are exactly reaping the benefits of gambling.”
“I am one of the only ones who are too proud or too stupid to take any ill gotten gain from that. Why do you think I am dressed like an idiot all day?”
Zen said nothing and found it hard to look at the Indian.
“There was a time I was an activist for my people. You ever heard of Red Power?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Yes, well it was…Nevermind. I have been watching you and I believe I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.”
While they were talking outside, the old woman spoke to Trista while changing her dressings.
“Why are you with him. What’s your stake in all this? She asked her.
“I believe in what he is doing. Unlike most men, his heart is wide open, laid flat and he is uncompromising.”
“Uncompromising men are easy to admire but more often than not their ways end in death or ruin.”
Trista looked downcast and said, “I know.”
The day before the rally was to kick off, thunder from straight pipes from the highway and real thunder sounded from the valley to the East. The Indian came home early and they shared a crockpot dinner of chicken stew and corn tortillas. Trista was better and having rested a week and a half, they were anxious to leave at first light.
The Indian followed Zen out back when he went out to check on his Dyna and put some food and water in his saddlebags.
“I need some gas.”
The Indian when back to his car and handed him a hose.
Zen looked at him and the Indian said, “What? You don’t know how to use an Arkansas credit card?”
“Yes I know how to use a siphon, I just didn’t know where to get it from.”
The old man pointed to his car. “Take what you need.”
When the tank was full, he saw the old man and woman arguing in their native tongue. The Indian walked over to Zen with a grim face.
“I need to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Meet me at the bottom of the ravine where those trees are and watch for snakes.”
The sun was setting and long shadows drew across the hillside. Zen almost lost his footing as he walked down the hill and half an hour later the Indian appeared with a flashlight that was low on batteries.
“Follow me.” He said as he pushed aside brush and kicked down branches of overgrowth.
“Help me move this junk aside.”
A half hour later they were both sweating from moving old washing machines, car parts, railroad ties and other junk.
“What are we doing here?”
“Follow me.”
They ducked under an overhang between two boulders and entered the mouth of a small cave.
“What’s in here?”
The old man stared at him gravely.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully. My name is Charlie Ironknife and you are going to see something that no white man or Indian woman from my tribe has ever seen. Only two other people alive know about it. Other than me and my cousin who is dying from asbestos poison can do this. And you are going to be the last person in the world to see this. But it is okay, my aunt says you won’t live long.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” Zen countered as they walked deeper into a tunnel of the cave.
“What were you arguing about with your aunt?”
“She wanted to watch but I told her no. Women are so curious. I would like to show it to her but it would spoil your medicine and you need all the help you can get.”
The Indian pointed with the flashlight to a drawing on the cave of a flame.
“Under that inscription, there is some black tar. Bring me some.”
Zen picked up a dusty glob about the size of a pancake.
“My ancestors would trade with the Chumash for oil that would occasionally wash up on the beach far from here. We used it for many things but making quick fires was a use.”
The Indian’s face became more serious with every breath.
“Make a small fire using some of it.” He commanded. Zen made a comment about the smoke filling the cave and the Indian pointed to the ceiling at a small natural opening where some stars were visible.
“I don’t usually wear my false teeth because they hurt my gums. And a couple of the teeth are missing. But I need to sing so I will use them.”
Zen let out a chuckle and the Indian stepped forward towards him with lightning speed and put his left hand on Zen’s throat and drew a knife from under his belt.
“This is NOT a game boy!”
Shocked by the action of this crazy Indian who didn’t seem at all like the bumbling old man he had known for the last week, he replied “Yes sir.”
Walking past Zen to a shelf carved in the rock, he retrieved a small round drum with rattlesnake tails on it.
“You are going to have to play the drum. And so don’t beat it like you are playing rock and roll music, just beat it in time with your heartbeat.” The Indian took it in his hand and held it close to his heart and slowly struck it with his palm.
“Like that. Got it?”
Zen nodded.
“Now I want you to sit you ass down and take off your jacket and shirt and shut your mouth. What you are about to see is holy to our people. We have about a thousand people on this rez and none of them know.” He said shaking his head sadly.
“The white man gave us liquor and took our land, he gave us empty promises of peace. Later, they gave us the “right” to have casinos and the money took our pride. That was the end of us and our culture.”
“Now breathe deeply for the four seasons and then start to beat the drum.”
The Indian started moving and speaking years younger than his age and his eyes danced as he stared at the small fire. He remained hunched over and very quiet for some time. Zen kept beating the drum and it echoed in the dimly lit cave. When he turned around, there were tears running down his face. He mixed the Tears mixed with red dirt and herbs from his pocket and covered Zen’s face with the paste.
A slow song was sung in a beautiful rhythm and although he couldn’t understand it, it seemed to repeat and he could pick out the last syllable of one stanza that was used to begin the next and so on it went.
The Indian pulled out a silver dagger with a deer antler handle, made a slashing motion in the shape of a vertical circle, shouted once and fell silent. He put his hands on Zen’s head for just a moment and then put his palm over Zen’s to stop the drum. Setting the drum aside, he went to a corner of the cave and dug with his hands in the sand and pulled up a hemp rope which promptly snapped. He grasped it again and pulled up a length of it until the attached deerskin pouch was visible.
He cut it loose and put it in Zen’s hand.
“I am giving you all the medicine I have. This was supposed to be for a great leader of my people but none emerged. We thought there was one but he died in the Philippine islands. I thought my son would one day lead us but he passed away before I could give this to him. He was killed by an automobile years ago.”
“May I ask what this is?” He asked, sitting straight as an arrow and projecting the utmost reverence for the ceremony.
“Inside that pouch I have never looked. To do so is to spoil the medicine. But I was told when I was a young boy that inside is the tooth of the shark, the nail of the bear, and the fang of a snake. There is gold dust and some ashes of our enemies. I was told that an eye of a Spaniard is in there. I have never looked and I am afraid to. This pouch was to be carried by the leader of a war tribe who went to make peace or war when he faced terrible adversity.
My great grandfather died retrieving it from the neck of our last true leader who fell in battle. It was worn only once more after that when my uncle went to visit the Department of the Interior. They wouldn’t see him without an appointment and he was arrested for damaging an office and some policemen. We were lucky it wasn’t confiscated when they let him get back on the train. But the police chief took pity on him and gave it back. It symbolizes death with the dangerous parts of the animals from the former area of my people’s land and influence. The gold represents time and freedom. I have danced and prayed to the Great Spirit for your strength and guidance and success in your war.”
“Yes sir, I understand.” Zen stuttered as his chill bumps seemed to run from his arms and legs into his throat.
“I am going to tell you something first in my native tongue and then in English. The English translation doesn’t exactly carry the same meaning but here goes.”
After he spoke in a dying dialect, he paused and shook his head.
“No one who gets revenge is ever ultimately satisfied. Even if you kill your enemy ten times, you cannot completely defeat him. You must absorb and digest this man with your spirit”
“Are you saying that even if I kill this man, I am going to be haunted by his memory?”
“Yes, you will never get him out of your heart. Even if you kill him, you will have his burden. Church people call it the mark of Cain, we called it the voice of the Spirit. It was placed there to keep us from killing each other needlessly.”
“He took away my family and he knows who I am. He probably knows it was me and as long as he lives, my life is in danger for what my retaliation to his gang.”
“I have beseeched the Great Spirit to give you strength to wisely choose life or death. Now take this medicine and keep in around your neck. Do not tell anyone for the rest of your life what you saw me do this night. And if you live through this, promise me you will bring it back to me or see that it is buried with me.”
“You have my word and I am honored with your trust.”
“I hope that you can finish what you started. If you kill this man, I hope you do it without hate in your heart. I pray you can finish with your soul and freedom intact. Who knows? Maybe you can have a second family with the girl.”
“Maybe.” Zen sighed. “Maybe.”
