Standing Strong Page 2

  They were under the bleachers at a high school baseball game sharing a joint with a couple of other friends. Of course, smoking marijuana on campus was against all the rules. But who cared? Certainly not Rhonda and her friends. They’d heard about all the dangers of pot use in their health class and that about half of all Native kids in the U.S. had tried it or some other drug.

  Anyway, the four of them were pretty wasted by the time they were discovered by a teacher. As the older white man headed for them at a brisk pace, Claudia yelled, “Custer!” That was their prearranged signal to split up and head in four different directions. The teacher was so confused that he didn’t know which way to go or who to follow. So he just stood there with a dazed look, and all four of them got away.

  That memory brought a smile to Rhonda’s face as she turned down the sidewalk that led to the front of the church. She could hear that familiar and depressing organ music spilling out from the open double doors. A few other stragglers like her made their way inside to find seats in the back of the unadorned sanctuary.

  As she scanned the pews, Rhonda’s phone pinged, telling her she had a new text. It was from Nadie, one of her best under-the-bleacher buddies.

  “In the back right corner,” the text read. “Saved you a seat.”

  Rhonda looked in that direction and found her friend in a back row. Sitting next to her was her other favorite rule-breaker, Koko. Nadie patted the empty pew seat beside her as the preacher started the service.

  “Dearly beloved friends,” Reverend Wolftail began as Rhonda took her seat. “It’s another sad day here on the reservation as we gather on another mournful occasion.”

  The rotund Native man was well known on the rez for his hellfire and brimstone preaching style. Rhonda and her friends found it particularly annoying.

  “But I am not going to sugarcoat it,” he bellowed. “I’m going to get right to it. The book of Hebrews tells us it is appointed for a man to die once, and after that comes judgment. Can I get an amen?”

  Several people in the audience complied by shouting, “Amen!”

  The reverend continued.

  “The book of First Corinthians tells us, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.’”

  And so it began. The judgment and condemnation Rhonda had expected was right up front. She immediately tuned the man out and began texting with Nadie and Koko, although the pair sat right beside her.

  The service seemed to go on forever, but when it was finally over, the reverend parked himself just outside the front doors of the church. There he greeted all who passed by, shaking their hands and offering a few words of comfort. Hoping to avoid an encounter with him, Rhonda and her friends tried to slip by while the man was talking to one of his regulars.

  “Excuse me, young lady. Could I have a word with you?” Wolftail asked, looking right at Rhonda.

  The girl looked around to see if maybe he could be referring to someone else.

  “Yes, I’m talking to you, Rhonda,” he said as he stepped closer to the three girls.

  “Okay. I guess so,” Rhonda replied reluctantly.

  “I know you’re not a member of my congregation, but for some reason, God has laid it on my heart to give you a message,” he said.

  “A message?” she asked, fearing it was some kind of evangelical trick. “What kind of message?”

  “Just this,” he answered. “Your best means of escape is to take on a cause bigger than yourself, somewhere beyond this place, where you can channel your energy to protect someone or something that needs your help.”

  Coming out of nowhere, this message took Rhonda completely by surprise. She pondered the preacher’s words for a moment, not knowing what to make of the message. The reverend remained silent, apparently not knowing himself what to make of the unusual message he was delivering.

  “I don’t know exactly what this means or what that cause might be,” he finally said. “But I trust God to know what it is, and I hope you’ll recognize it when you find it.”

  With that, he excused himself and walked back inside the church, leaving a long line of puzzled and disappointed mourners who were still waiting to shake his hand.

  “What was that?” Nadie asked. “What just happened?

  “I don’t know,” Rhonda said, “but it totally creeps me out.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Koko said. “Let’s get out of here. My car’s across the street.”

  Koko drove them westward a few blocks to one of their usual hangouts, the North American Indian Days Campground. During the second weekend in July, the place would be a beehive of activity with hundreds of dancers and their families camped out in countless numbers of tipis and tents pitched for the annual weekend of powwow dances and other events.

  The rest of the year, the place was mostly an empty plot of ground patterned with dirt paths and circles in the grass left by the tipis. In the center of it all was the round powwow dance arbor. The middle of the area was open to the sky, but the circular rows of stadium seating facing the middle were covered with a tin roof.

  Koko drove her car to the edge of the dance arbor and parked it. Nadie and Rhonda got out while Koko searched for the joint she’d stored in the glove compartment earlier. Finding it, she looked around to make sure no one was watching. Carrying the joint and a lighter, she joined the girls on the upper back row of the stadium-style seating.

  “I think that preacher must’ve been smoking something himself,” Rhonda said as she took a hit from the joint. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

  “He was right about one thing,” Nadie said. “We gotta escape one way or another.”

  “What do you think he meant about taking on a cause bigger than yourself or protecting someone?” Koko asked.

  “No clue,” Rhonda replied. “I’m no protector of anything. I can’t even take care of myself, let alone anyone else.”

  They continued chatting and smoking for a while. Then Nadie, who had been a Fancy Shawl Dancer when she was younger, got up and started moving around inside the arena. Stepping to a drumbeat only she could hear, the girl began dancing as if she was wearing a Fancy Shawl outfit. Her arm movements made her look a little like a butterfly.

  Seeing what her friend was doing, Koko began drumming on the aluminum bench seat beside her. The sound echoed across the open space, inspiring Nadie to intensify her dance steps.

  Not wanting to be left out, Rhonda joined in the little pretend scenario by mimicking a powwow announcer.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!” she shouted, pretending her cell phone was a microphone. “Put your hands together to show your appreciation for the dance stylings of Ms. Nadie Buffalo Child!” She clapped her hands and yelled, “And the crowd goes wild!”

  Lost in their little fantasy, none of the girls noticed when a tribal police car pulled into the dance arena. Dressed in blue, a Native female officer stepped out of the vehicle and approached the girls.

  “You know you girls aren’t supposed to be here,” the officer said in a loud voice.

  The girls froze and looked at the cop. Luckily, they had finished smoking their joint.

  Rhonda recognized the Native woman. Using her most innocent voice, Rhonda said, “Sorry, Officer Weatherwax. We aren’t hurting anyone.”

  The cop sniffed the air.

  “Have you been smoking marijuana?” she asked as she stepped closer to Rhonda. “Empty your pockets on the bench over there.”

  Following orders, the girls pulled sticks of gum, cell phones, car keys, a little cash, and other stuff from their various pockets.

  Finding nothing incriminating, the officer said, “Okay, you can return the items to your pockets.”

  The girls quickly did so.

  “Someone has been vandalizing this area during the past few weeks,” Weatherwax said. “So we’re keeping an eye on things to prevent further damage. You girls move alo
ng quick now, or I might have to take you in for questioning.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Koko said in a falsely polite tone. “Right away, ma’am.”

  The girls quickly rushed to Koko’s car as the cop returned to her own vehicle. Koko started the engine and pulled away from the dance arena.

  That night, Rhonda shared some of her thoughts on Facebook. “Said goodbye to Claudia today. I’ll miss her forever. But the funeral was the pits. Reminded me of my father’s funeral a little. My grandmother forced me to go. He deserved to die for what he did to my mother all those years. Physical abuse, mental abuse. Too bad mom had to go to prison for it. She didn’t deserve that. I don’t deserve having to stay with my alcoholic grandmother either. That old lady is a real piece of work. I tried to escape for good before, but it didn’t work. My therapist said I needed to work on standing my ground and facing my fears, but escaping this place is still on my mind. How did that preacher know?”

  CHAPTER

  3

  A Flock of Crows

  Rhonda hitchhiked from her grandmother’s house to the Boarding School Road turnoff the first thing Memorial Day morning. On the rez, somebody would always pick you up when you needed a ride. No Uber needed.

  After getting out of the rusted car and thanking the driver who gave her a lift, Rhonda hiked the short distance to the road that led to her uncle’s house. While walking down the dirt road that led from the gate to Floyd’s place, a faded memory suddenly popped into her mind. Once, a few years ago, when she was riding with her uncle on the same dirt road, he stopped the truck and got out.

  “What are we stopping here for?” she asked him.

  The land in that area was fairly flat, covered with very short grass strewn with small stones randomly scattered about.

  “I want to show you something left here by your ancestors,” he said as he walked a few yards away from the truck.

  She caught up to him and followed as he headed toward a small rise in the ground.

  When he stopped, he said, “Look down at the ground around here and tell me what you see.”

  Puzzled, she scanned the earth but didn’t see anything unusual.

  “If you look really close, you can just make out faint circles on the ground, some lined with small stones,” he explained.

  With added concentration, she tried again, and this time she saw the faint circular patterns. Each circle seemed to be about thirty feet across.

  “I see them!” she exclaimed as she walked from one circle to another. “They’re kind of like the circles in the grass at the powwow grounds.”

  Following the patterns, she discovered these circles were arranged to make one larger circle.

  “The smaller circles are laid out in a big circle,” she said excitedly. “But I never noticed them before. What are they? What made this pattern?”

  “Tipis, just like at the powwow area,” Floyd replied. “This is one of the places our ancestors regularly set up their camps long ago. Though this little rise is not very tall, you can see a long way across the prairie in every direction.”

  Rhonda clearly remembered that day all those years ago when she and her uncle stood on that spot for quite a while, soaking up the sun and listening to the gentle breeze.

  “Close your eyes and imagine yourself two hundred years in the past,” Floyd then said softly. “Feel the sun on your face and the earth beneath your feet. The sounds of our people freely living their traditional lives are all around you. You are at the center of the Blackfeet universe, and all is right with the world.”

  On that day Rhonda had smiled an enormous smile and felt an enormous satisfaction at just being herself.

  Today, however, she felt nothing like that, and she could barely remember what it felt like to just be herself, to just be in a satisfying moment.

  Dismissing the memory, Rhonda hurried along to her uncle’s mobile home. Next to the manufactured dwelling stood an old log cabin with a caved-in roof. Floyd had always talked about “fixing her up and moving in,” but he never did.

  “Uncle Floyd,” she called after opening the trailer’s front door. “Are you here?”

  “In the back, honey,” he answered. “Be out in a minute.”

  While waiting, she helped herself to a cup of coffee from the freshly brewed pot on the kitchen counter.

  “Ready to go?” Floyd asked as he entered the kitchen.

  “What are we doing today?” Rhonda asked after taking a sip.

  “You mean besides your graduation?” he quipped.

  “I’m not going,” Rhonda announced.

  “Sure you are,” her uncle proclaimed, opening a cardboard box that sat on the kitchen counter. He pulled out a black cap-and-gown outfit and held it up for her to see. The edges of the cap’s square top had been beautifully beaded, and an eagle feather hung on a leather strap next to the tassel.

  Rhonda didn’t know what to say.

  “Why don’t you try it on?” Floyd asked.

  He pulled the poncho-like black garment over his niece’s head and let it drape down all around her. Then he placed the cap on her head, admired the outfit for a moment, and took a picture with his cell phone.

  “Why don’t you go to the hall mirror and take a look,” he suggested.

  When she saw herself, a small tear formed in the corner of one eye.

  “I don’t deserve this,” she said and began removing the garment.

  “No one deserves it more,” her uncle said. “We have to celebrate the good moments of our lives to help us remember them during the bad times.”

  Rather than protest any further, Rhonda released her contrary thoughts and relaxed into the moment, just as her therapist had suggested. That made her feel a little better.

  “Okay, I’ll go to the graduation,” she said. “But I don’t really feel like celebrating.”

  “I know you don’t,” Floyd replied. “But you can honor yourself and your friend Claudia by finishing this one thing successfully. And finishing it means following through all the way until you have that diploma in your hand. That’s something to be proud of, now and forever.”

  “Whatever,” Rhonda said impatiently. “Now you’re starting to sound like my therapist, and I don’t need another one of those.”

  “I get it,” her uncle said looking at his watch. “Now let’s get to the high school before you miss the whole thing.”

  The pounding sound of powwow drums greeted Rhonda and Floyd as they approached the Browning High School gym. Parents, family members, and students flooded into the building for the ceremony. Floyd found a seat in the bleachers, and his niece took her assigned seat among the other graduates, who were excitedly chatting and goofing around before the ceremony began.

  Rhonda noticed that several other graduating students wore caps that had been beaded in patterns similar to the one Floyd had given her. But to her, the graduates in their black robes looked like a flock of black birds hopping around on the ground, looking for crumbs of food.

  Soon the drumming ended, and the school principal stepped up to the podium. Almost as soon as he started speaking, Rhonda began tuning out the man’s voice. She was itching to pick up her phone and jump online to keep from being bored. But all devices were banned during the event. So instead, she closed her eyes and traveled in her mind.

  At first, she was able to conjure up a fantasy scene where she was floating above the reservation. The buildings, streets, and cars looked so small below her. People seemed like ants. She felt safe there. For a while.

  Then, from the west, the disturbing sound of squawking reached her ears. Looking in that direction, she saw a flying, swirling mass of dark objects moving toward her. As they came closer, she was able to see the mass was made up of angry crows. Before she could do anything, the crows surrounded her, beating her with their wings and pecking her with their sharp beaks.

  She cried out in fear, but as soon as the sound left her mouth, she woke from the dark vision. That’s when she realized everyo
ne in the gym had heard her cry. It wasn’t just in her mind. Everything in the gym had stopped. All eyes were on her.

  Embarrassed, Rhonda jumped up from her seat and ran from the building. Seeing his niece in distress, Floyd quickly followed her outside. He found her sitting on a bench sobbing, with her head in her hands.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked as he stood beside her.

  Rhonda just shrugged her shoulders and kept on sobbing.

  He put a comforting hand on her shoulder and patted her a couple of times.

  “Can we leave?” she managed to ask between sobs. “I can’t handle going back in there.”

  “Can you handle a cheeseburger and fries?”

  She nodded as her sobbing subsided, and the pair headed for Floyd’s truck.

  Over a satisfying meal of greasy comfort food at the Nation’s Burger Station, Rhonda described the frightful vision she had in the gym.

  “Somehow my mind still changes a perfectly normal event into something dark and threatening,” she said after finishing the story. “At least, with the medication the doctor gave me, that’s not happening as often.”

  “Your therapist said it will take some time,” Floyd reminded her before popping a french fry into his mouth. After a pause, he added, “I’m sure we can get your diploma from the school in a couple of days. It’ll be good to frame it and hang it on your bedroom wall.”

  “Whatever,” the teenager replied with her favorite word. “It’s not that big a deal.”

  Floyd decided not to explain once again exactly why it was a big deal. He let his niece finish her meal in peace.

  CHAPTER

  4

  A New Plan Is Hatched

  “What can we do now?” Rhonda asked as she crumpled up the grease-soaked paper that had been wrapped around her burger. “Doing something physical helps me clear my mind.”

  “Old Mrs. White Swan does need some work done around her place,” Floyd replied. “Her fence is down and her granddaughter’s horse keeps trampling her garden. I think—”

  “Let’s go,” Rhonda said before he could finish. She threw her trash in the nearest can and headed for her uncle’s truck. Floyd gulped down his last bite of burger and ran to catch up to her.