Luis Alberto Urrea - The Water Museum

I dropped the section of barbed wire fence that served as a gate and drove through.

“Close the gate!” Don hollered.

“I know, I know,” I muttered to myself. Six dogs and four young horses headed for the opening, but I beat them to it. The horses veered away, suddenly innocent and fascinated by the sage plants beside the drive. The dogs charged me, then collapsed in the dirt, wagging their tails.

I drove up to Don, shut off the engine, and got out.

“She’s sick,” he said.

The old horse looked like rain clouds. I recognized her. They called her Stormy. “That’s Joni’s old horse,” I said.

Stormy put her giant old face next to Don’s. He rubbed her long white upper lip. “That’s okay,” he murmured. “That’s okay now.”

“I’m sorry, Don,” I said. “I did my best.”

“Stormy’s dyin’,” he said. He had this disconcerting way of ignoring what I said. “I’ve been feeding her this medicine they give me down in Rapid. But them vets don’t know shit about horses. You know it? She’s got these tumors.”

He stroked Stormy’s side. I saw that she was bloated, her abdomen distended like a barrel behind her ribs. “Now we got to kill her.”

Stormy snorted.

“Go on now,” he said to her. “Go ahead.” She limped away.

“Them mother-effers.”

“Don?” I said. “I’m sorry about Joni. I mean, I’m sorry about Stormy, too. But what I mean…”

One of the dogs nosed my crotch.

“Stop it,” said Don. “I got a trailer pulled around back. You sleep there. Got food if you’re hungry.”

He lit a cigarette and walked away.

* * *

Night on the reservation is like night nowhere else. They say flying saucers visit the Sioux lands. Flying saucers and ghosts. When you’re out there, there’s a blackness that’s deeper than black. The stars look like spilled sugar. You can hear the grass sometimes like water. Like somebody whispering. And the weird sounds of the night animals. Anything could happen. You get scared, and it’s for a reason that hides behind the other reasons — behind the silence, and the coyotes, and the dogs barking, and the eerie voice of the owl. It’s that this is not your land. This is their land. And you don’t belong. A thousand slaughtered warriors ride around your camp, and you think it’s the breeze. And they wonder why you’re there.

I had the sleeping bag pulled over my head. It smelled like dust. My wife was lying five miles away, her breasts already dense as leather in death, her eyelashes intertwined, the perfect brown tunnels of her eyes sealed, the path within already forgotten. “Joni,” I said. “Joni. Joni.”

* * *

I met her at night. Off the reservation, there are small joints scattered all along the roads. You can go in there for ice cream or burgers or beer. Lots of them sell Indian art and beads to the tourists, and a bunch of them still won’t let an Indian in the door. The reservation folks knew which stores wanted them and which didn’t.

We were in one that didn’t. Six of the footballers from our school were in there with me. It was one of those dull nights. Red Cloud School had won the football game. They’d all been going down to see that Little Big Man movie, and they were all turned on. They were crazy-wild. Nobody could catch them.

Franklin Standing Bear’s car broke down. He came walking up to the place from the road to Hot Springs. I watched him through the window, materializing out of the blackness. He paused in the parking lot, looking at us. His glasses glittered in the lights. I nudged one of the boys and pointed with my chin.

“Gaw-damn,” he said.

We left our spoons sinking into our sundaes and gawked.

Franklin came in the door and ducked his head.

“More balls ’n brains,” one of the football boys said.

Franklin went to the register and asked to use the phone. Sonny, the owner, had served in Korea with Franklin’s dad, so he let him on the phone. But he told him he’d best get moving as soon as he was through.

We hustled out to the lot and waited for him, all jittery with crazy heat.

Franklin came out and our quarterback called, “Hey, boy!”

He put his hands up in front of him and said, “Not looking for trouble.”

“You calling me a troublemaker?” the footballer asked.

“Look,” Franklin said, “My car’s busted down. That’s all.”

“You Indian boys did pretty good tonight,” said the tight end. He looked like a chimp in the half light. All beady glittery eyes, stupid with lust. Jeez, this is how it begins, I thought.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” said Franklin, “I was over to Rosebud.” He was drifting away.

“Rosebud,” the first footballer said. “What kind of a faggot name is that, Standing Bear? You Indians all faggots or what? That why you got them ponytails?”

Franklin had a frozen smile on his face. He could see a freight train coming and he couldn’t get out of its way.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. I tugged on the tight end’s sleeve. “C’mon,” I said.

Franklin Standing Bear spit on the ground.

“You know what?” he said. “You’re just a bunch of lowlife shit-lipped pud-pulling cow fuckers. I’m about fed up with your bullshit, so come on cowboys! Fuck it! Hoka hey! ”

Oh man, I thought, he’s doing his war cry. It was a good day to die. Franklin was in full-on warrior mode now.

The footballer grunted and charged at him. Franklin leaped about three feet high and kicked him precisely in the mouth. Franklin’s glasses flew one way; blood and teeth flew the other. The footballer fell back, squealing, rolling on the blacktop with his fingers in his mouth. They closed in on Franklin, but he broke for the road. All our boot heels sounded like three horses crossing a highway. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just running.

Two sets of headlights rounded the curve, and Franklin dodged between them. Indians poured out at us, like they were flying out of the light. One of them was Joni. She cornered me, waving a tire iron in my face. God, she was beautiful. She looked like a wolf — her small perfect teeth were bared, the muscles in her arms tight with rage. She was wearing a small choker. The cold had made her nipples stand up. She hissed and cussed at me. In her cowboy boots, she was taller than I was. I was sure she was going to knock my head loose. The sound of massacre was all around us. Don appeared beside Joni, grinning. He was panting from the fighting, flushed and sweaty.

“Well, well,” he said. “It’s the Indian lover.” He turned to Joni. “This here is a big Indian lover. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

Joni stopped waving the iron at me.

“Hey,” said Don. “You come out here to apologize? ”

There was a scattered rubble of white boys all over the road.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know,” Joni taunted.

“I don’t know.” I was looking around.

“Looks like you picked the wrong place to be,” she said. “That’s for damn sure.”

But they didn’t do anything about it. We walked over to Don’s car — a ferocious orange Chevy Impala — and Don drove us back to the side of the lot and put me out. “Forgive us,” he said in the phoniest arch-sounding accent, “if we shan’t stop in for tea.” They burned rubber. They were doing those manic yip-yip war cries as they sped away. I thought Joni waved good-bye, but I couldn’t be sure.

We met again at a movie theater, by accident. I finally got down to see Little Big Man, and damned if I didn’t wish I was a Sioux warrior. Somebody in the balcony kept pelting me with popcorn, though, but every time I turned around, there was nobody there. I finally jumped out of my seat and glared up there. Joni was laughing down at me. I blushed. After that, I kept thinking of that massacre at the Indian village — I kept thinking of a soldier shooting Joni in the back as she ran. It made me sick inside. I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind. I was Dustin Hoffman, and I watched Joni run and die, run and die, in slow motion, extreme close-up. The next time we saw each other, we were on.