Marc Zicree - Ghostlands

“I thought it was your father who was Lakota, not your mother,” Colleen noted. “I mean, that’s what Goldman said.”

“Yeah, well, ol’ Goldie didn’t always listen too good,” Enid replied. “Depending on the occasion.”

True enough, Cal thought.

“I left here when I was a baby,” Enid continued, standing to stretch. “My mama married a real estate guy, and we moved to Decatur. Cancer got ’em both, way before the Storm.”

“Just as well you didn’t grow up in these parts, son,” Papa Sky said. “Folks round here sometimes got a bone in their craw ’bout black folks. Comes from the buffalo soldiers and all, in the Indian Wars.”

“Well geez, that’s hardly a week ago Wednesday,” Colleen observed. “Maybe it’s time to get over it.”

“First thing you learn about this land,” Papa Sky said evenly, “is history ain’t history. It’s pretty much the same thing as right now. Everything’s all mixed up together.”

“What about your real father?” Doc asked Enid.

Enid’s face grew stony. “Mama never talked about him. She figured what’s gone is gone.”

Like Inigo’s father, Cal thought, and his own, and Tina’s. Orphans, the lot of them; foundlings and scatterlings, abandoned to wind and storm.

Papa Sky said nothing, looking off at the horizon with empty dead eyes.

They moved on.

As morning eased toward afternoon, the fractious cloud cover broke, and a high, brilliant sun cast a clean, hard light over the land. Traveling along the path of what had once been Highway 40 skirting Custer, they passed Red Shirt along the 41 and transferred onto the narrow, rutted path of Route 2 stretching toward the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The Black Hills gobbling down the last of the daylight, Cal and his companions crested a plateau from which they could spy seventy miles in all directions under a fiery sunset, the soaring formations of the Mauvaises Terres striated with bands of red and brown and yellow, an ancient land of erosion and fossil bones in the crumbled, weathered earth. From far off came the cries of western meadowlarks and cowbirds, rugged survivors of this scourged, enduring land.

And like a brilliant, long nail pounded into the cross of the earth, the beacon of power bursting into the heavens, pinwheeling endlessly from the Source.

He had gotten Christina back, Cal thought ruefully, but beyond that they hadn’t changed anything.

With night descending and the last remnants of their strength waning, they staggered across the flat expanse of tableland-which Papa Sky informed them was about halfway between Buffalo Gap and Porcupine, and was called Cuny Table by the locals. Finally, Papa Sky brought them to a halt before a rickety, paint-peeled wooden stand, with the whitewashed words ICE-COLD POP AND MORE.

There was nothing and no one else in sight, as far as the eye could see in the wash of moonlight.

“This is the Stronghold,” Papa Sky informed them.

“ This is the Stronghold?” Colleen asked incredulously. “Gee, and I coulda had a V8.” Cal was glad Colleen at least had the diplomacy not to add, This is what happens when you let a blind guy lead you.

“Sir, are you sure-?” Cal began.

Then the land ahead of them rippled and shook and turned over.

The ground opened up, revealing a cavernous space beneath. Cal could discern torches burning within, and a multiplicity of passages branching off, and countless people gathered together.

“Hua kola!” Papa Sky called out.

A lone figure backlit by torches stepped up the slope toward them, boots crunching on gravel and snow, emerging into the light cast by Christina’s glow.

Cal drew in a sharp breath. The figure was a woman clad in leather and furs against the cold, wearing more sheathed knives than he had ever seen on any human being. Her eyes were green and wary, her hair long and black and platted down the back.

Beside him, Inigo gasped as he saw the woman, and took off at run toward her.

“No!” Cal cried, but the boy paid him no heed.

Seeing him come on, the woman dropped into a defensive stance and pulled a long, deadly blade from its scabbard.

Drawing near, the grunter boy cried out, “It’s me! It’s Inigo !”

The woman’s mouth opened in soundless surprise, her eyes astonished. She threw the knife aside into the snow as he leapt for her, and she enclosed him rocking in her arms. They sobbed, the two of them, for all the time lost, for this meeting.

Inigo’s words were muffled in her embrace, but Cal caught them as they drifted on the night wind to him.

“Mom…Mom…”

In time, she rose, and with her boy’s hand in hers, walked up to Cal. She extended her free hand, and Cal took it.

“I’m Cal Griffin,” he said.

Her eyes reacted with surprise; something raw and primal flared there, and was quickly suppressed.

“May Catches the Enemy,” the Lakota woman replied by way of introduction, and led them into the waiting earth.

It’s like descending into a grave, Cal thought, and knew it was not the first time he’d had such a thought in the journal of his adventures. In truth, more than anything, his life had become a collection of experiences and exploits he never dreamed he would have, and more often than not would have preferred forgoing.

His body anchored with weariness, muscles singing with the ache and bruise of the long trek and its travails, he staggered into the heart of the earth. Christina drifted shining beside him, Colleen and Doc half supporting each other, Howie limping along while Shango and Enid helped guide Papa Sky down the sloping terrain. Inigo and his mother, still holding hands, followed close upon.

The gateway of soil sealed up behind them, entombing them in the massive space beneath. Cal tensed as it closed, then detecting a like anxiety in his companions, forced himself to relax.

The air underground was fresh and moved with a cool breeze from several pathways. The pungent, pleasant smell of burning sweetgrass and sage wafted on the air. May Catches the Enemy led them to low tables with soft cushions, where buffalo stew and flatbread and strong, hot coffee were served up. Cal ate greedily, for the first time aware of how hungry he’d been, and felt considerably better.

Inigo’s mother came and crouched nearby, studying him keenly, as if trying to weigh who he might be by the way he chewed his food, how he sipped his coffee.

In time, she said, “We were told you were coming, but not who you’d be.”

“Yes?” Cal replied. “By whom?”

She hesitated, and her eyes darted to Papa Sky, who sat across the table, nodding his head in time to a beat only he could hear.

As if he’d caught her glance, the old blind man said, “By my special friend…”

A shudder ran through Cal. He thought of the first time he’d heard Papa Sky use that phrase, back in Buddy Guy’s club when he’d given them the dragon scale that had come from his mysterious, unseen traveling companion.

“That the same friend who sent you to us in Chicago?” Cal asked.

A smile spread across Papa Sky’s face, like honey on good dark bread. “That’s mighty sharp of you, Mr. Cal…. But then, my friend always said you were bright.”

Colleen started to speak, but May cut her off with a raised hand. “The white people joke about Indian time…but we like to wait till everyone’s here who’s s’posed to be. We still got one or two coming. There’ll be time for talk. But right now, y’all need some rest. You come a long, hard way.”

Colleen looked questioningly at Cal.

Yawning, he rose. “Show us to our suites.”