37
“Wake up Zipline, we’re almost there.”
Camp had been nuts. The helicopter was extra low as it swept through the overgrown population, there were four kitchens now, and neighborhoods, and some kinda unmarked gray plane circling the frontline. And lots of drones.
But who could they even be looking for? Hopefully they had no idea, for now at least, probably just gathering evidence as they tried to intimidate the witnesses. There had already been a single lane roadblock on the one route into camp, just keeping out the riffraff, but now they’d be scrutinizing every suspect. Forty cars left in the first hour, they were still being examined when Jordan pulled out after two. They wanted to give them enough time to get bored of the obstructed justice, but not enough to realize they’d lost him, at which point they would distribute copies of Treeguy’s recording device for vocal recognition.
Infiltrators were still a concern, Ambrose had secreted Miles away in a tarpee with a goodie bag from Becca, but someone could have seen an undocumented face in tow and now be documenting the getaway plan. They knew Bill was being monitored, Ambrose had been mainly undercover, and Jordan had kept it lower than low, but those honky tonk cops think all Indians look alike anyway.
As they pulled into the search station, Miles realized that his Treeguy had been transplanted to the exit poll, they didn’t have a recording, they had an earwitness. The trunk was popped as the vehicle was exited, Miles had undergone a long overdue wardrobe change, but his body type had remained the same.
In an unrelated coincidence, an even longer line of scene fleers had by chance decided to leave at the same time, this was going to take all night, so much traffic that a horn could be heard from the back, and then another.
Treeguy walks over, the front cars start to join in with a parade of celebrating honky tonks, the cops are about to lose it. Treeguy asks Miles a question, but unfortunately Miles can’t hear a thing over all that ruckus. The cops are pissed, and tell Jordan to get the fuck out of the way, just move it along, so Miles turns to Treeguy and says, “Toksa brother,” hops in the car, and watches Treeguy stand bewildered in the rearview.
“Wake up Zipline, we’re almost there.”
“Where’s there?”
“My Grandma’s house. Welcome to the rez, son.”
“This is the rez?”
“Yeah, what’d you expect, tipis and arrows and shit? You been watching too much Dr. Quinn, HonkyTonk.”
“Hey, it’s Goose now. And Mister Goose to you.”
“Was. Your Goose got burned up in the trees though. I like Zipline, but that’s even more suspicious. I think HonkyTonk will have to do.”
“How about Miles?”
“Whatever you say, buddy”
Jordan’s Grandma, his Unci, she was as much a sweet little old lady as Miles’ Grandma, and wore just as many color coordinated accessories. She wasted no time showing off her shoeboxes of intricate beadwork, and showing Miles what frybread was really about, and showing Jordan the list of chores to be done. Miles knew that Jordan had returned to the rez with only a last name, it was possible he’d tracked down his roots, but Miles imagined it more likely that she was his Grandma regardless of blood type.
That’s how native communities seemed to work, everybody had a handful of grandmas and grandpas, elders that held the community together, and there were more uncles and aunties than frybread recipes. That’s how a healthy society raises their kids, not bottled up in single serving solitude, mom and dad have stuff to do sometimes, and they don’t know everything anyway. It takes a village.
“I got this thing over here if you wanna set it up,” Unci motioned to a rolled up pile of canvas in the corner.
“Poles?” inventoried Jordan.
“Nope. I let the neighbors cut them up for firewood when it got way down there.”
“Dang Unci. That’s good you did that I guess, got cold, huh?”
“Jeez did it, d’ya see the ceiling?” She pointed up to the popcorn panels of her five year old FEMA trailer, a temporary emergency shelter so janky that the fridge is the immovable support for the cabinets. And probably meant for tropical hurricane relief, not forty below snow dust blizzards, with winds strong enough to flood the attic vents as the rafters fill with thousands of pounds of snow.
“It was crazy,” she recalled. “I was sitting right over there having my coffee, and all of a sudden that whole side collapsed, snow was piled up everywhere. That’s something, itn’t?”
Half the ceiling was missing, the entire length of the trailer on the south wind side, clear plastic had been stapled up as a temporary fix.
“Ronnie came over here and did that for me, sweet kid, stuffed a bunch of his old t-shirts where it was coming in, and he had to get so much snow out of here, oh my gosh.”
“Jeez Grandma, looks like we showed up just in time.”
“Always do. I saw a bunch of pines down by the creek if you boys wanna make some new poles. I figure your kola would like staying in a tipi, it’d be good for you too, Takoja.”
“Good news HonkyTonk, you might get to see a real life Indian tipi after all.”
“Don’t call him that,” she turned to Miles. “You know, for the first two months Jordan was out here, everybody called him Buttercup, and he hated it, so just keep that one in your pocket and he shouldn’t be giving you anymore trouble.”
“Thanks a lot Grandma. C’mon Miles, we got some bark to bite.”
Lodge Pole Pines followed the straight and narrow as they wound around the bent creek, Jordan found his first recruit and offered a gift of tobacco. Tipi poles are a sacred part of a traditional way of life, a living piece of the Earth, meant to be honored as they provide shelter for the thin skinned two-leggeds, and in turn, it is our responsibility to look after the rest of their family.
We’re not in charge of the forest. Just because we developed a tool that could take another’s life, it doesn’t give us the right to indiscriminately mow down an entire population, it gives us a duty to protect the natural cycles of a world that we are an embedded participant in, Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related.
Jordan brought down the house one leg at a time, he sang a gratitude song in one of the least foreign languages still in existence, once he was a dozen deep, it was time to start the actual work. There are many ways to skin a tipi pole, Miles found it hypnotically therapeutic as he methodically scraped away the flesh with an eight inch fixed blade, each swipe offering an opportunity to think of his loved ones and to pray for their well-being. He was still figuring out the whole prayer thing, but thinking happy thoughts for those he cared about came as natural as climbing a tree.
Each pole was charged with positive intention. When you hold something in a sacred way, an exchange of energy is facilitated, like with tobacco, and fire, and even food. The trees are transformed into a power structure designed to funnel the warmth of intention to the heavens. They offer protection from outside forces, while those inside bask in the feng shui of spiraling resonance. Earthly energies are amplified through the conical megaphone, while no corners are capable of trapping the flow of life. Plus tipis are cool.
Miles had a lot to be grateful for, and that wasn’t even counting his Ninja Warrior audition tape. He’d gotten so close to so many people, he’d learned so much about the world he was growing into, he’d met himself. And he prayed for Paul, hopefully still swinging free in the treetops, but destined to pipe up to the lords of the land below. The month alone with Paul forged a brotherhood as it solidified Miles’ connection with his own spirit, then the last two days rattled that cage. It had been severe, he needed to recover a bit from the stress of trauma, the cathartic repetition of peeling prayers was good medicine.
They unwrapped up by the creek and carried the poles to the top of the hill, the plains rolled in every direction, the wide open sky was on fire with the dust of dusk. Jordan lashed three poles together and stood the tripod, eight more locked into place with some sort of sacred geometry, hemp jute wrapped their union four times, clockwise. They tied the top of the rolled up canvas to the twelfth pole and leaned it up on the west side of the skeleton, each uncurled a side and met above the east facing doorway, wooden pegs fastened the seam. There were still stakes to drive and a couple more poles to control the smoke flaps, but before he knew it, Miles was closed in with the first open fire he’d seen in a month.
Tobacco fueled the flame, the flame fueled the prayer, the prayer rolled a cigarette. He still didn’t really understand the whole tobacco deal, he’d been offering it to the fire and to the Earth before camp, and then to the wind when he wasn’t near the other two, he knew it made him feel good to be focusing his attention on intention, but he was pretty sure there was something to it of which he wasn’t yet aware.
“Sage is the same way,” explained Jordan. “Spirit medicine. It’s like they can exist in both this material plane and the spirit world at the same time. A plant based portal to your ancestors. To the stars. To God.
You know, we pray to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, the creator of it all and the infinite embodiment of its own creation, but it’s the same God anyone else prays to. There’s a million ways to get there, as diverse as fingerprints on a snowflake, but they all end up at the same place, the creative energy of the cosmos is more than capable of merging lanes.
And prayers come true. When you put your heart into the fire, it’s heard on the other side, it may take some time, and might not work out exactly how you imagined, but there’s some real power inside there. And it takes some work on yourself. When you pray for things, they’re not just handed out like candy, they’re lessons you’ll be given to grow through as you build that power within. So be careful what you ask for, share gratitude over desire, and remember to pray for the cooks, hey. Now c’mon, let’s go see what kinda trouble Unci’s stirring up for us.”