Wastelakapi… Beloved

markwildyr.com, Post #138

 Photo: Courtesy of Pinterest

NEWS FLASH: JMS Books has contracted with me for the publication of Wastelakapi… Beloved. At long last, the fifth book in the Cut Hand Series will be published. Tentative issue date is January, 2021. The publisher has also shown interest in republishing the first four books in the series should I be successful in reclaiming the rights.

Ergo, it’s not surprising that my post this week comes from that manuscript. I guest-posted on Don Travis’ website (dontravis.com) excerpts from the Epilogue, Chapter1, and Chapter 2 on September 24 and October 1, so I’ve selected a scene from the beginning of Chapter 3 for this post. John (Medicine Hair) is talking to his brother-in-law Captain Gideon Haleworthy. Let’s see what happens.

* * * * *

WASTELAKAPI… Beloved

 According to Gideon, a murder trial was about to begin in Federal Court in Sioux Falls up on the Missouri River. The defendant was familiar to me. I had fought at Drexel Mission alongside a Brulé named Tasunka or Sanika-Wakan-Ota and remembered him as a pleasant-faced young man with a somewhat awkward manner. His white man’s name was Plenty Horses.

As Gideon told the story, Plenty Horses had been sent by the government to the Carlisle Boarding School in Pennsylvania for five years. He returned home just in time to witness the Wounded Knee massacre. Ironically, Carlisle was the same school I falsely claimed to have attended to explain away both my obvious education and why no one knew me at Pine Ridge. After the battle at Drexel Mission, I returned home with the body of my beloved while Plenty Horses rode for Stronghold Table in the badlands of Pine Ridge. The Brulé rose after the massacre and repaired to this natural fortress to protect themselves against an attack by the very soldiers who had murdered their kinsmen at Wounded Knee.

On the seventh of January of this year, Lt. Casey rode into the stronghold with two Cheyenne scouts. He claimed to have come to determine if the uprising could be settled peacefully. The chiefs refused to talk to him because they planned to meet with General Nelson Miles on the following day. As Lt. Casey turned his mount to leave, Plenty Horses raised a Winchester hidden in his blanket and fired into the back of the officer’s head. The young Lakota was arrested and taken to Fort Meade near Sturgis, South Dakota to be tried for murder.

Landreth’s question about whether Bird and I acknowledged the “war” was over–asked in such a strident tone–fell neatly into place when Gideon said the Brulé’s pro bono lawyers planned to defend him with the claim the parties were at war. The thinking was that the slaying of one combatant by another was not murder.

With that understanding came another answer. The sheriff’s hostility toward Bear and me, and now Winter Bird, was motivated at least in part by fear. He likely considered Indians as mindless, no-account savages who didn’t have the backbone to stand like a man alone, but who instantly became sly and treacherous when there were two or more of them. He wasn’t singular in that opinion.

This both empowered and alarmed me. I glanced at Bird. He’d paid close attention to Gideon’s telling, but was his grasp of English sufficient to follow my brother-in-law’s rapid Yankee speech? My friend’s eyes let me know he’d followed enough of it. That increased my wariness. When a man knows someone fears him, he may pursue the matter too vigorously. Besides, this raised another question. Did Landreth consider the war over?

Gideon must have missed our reaction to his revelation because he moved on to other things. Timo Bowers, the Yanube City blacksmith, was still going strong although he must be in his sixties by now. Most men would have retired to the grave well before that age, but his profession kept him in better shape than most. During my eighteenth summer, he had been the first man to bring me to ejaculation.

Caleb Brown still ran Brown’s Emporium, established by his uncle, the original Caleb. He remained a steadfast friend during all the troubles. He and Timo and Andre were the reason why it was impossible to hate all white men.

Then Gideon brought my attention back to him. “John, how are you really doing?”

I waved away his question. “I’m functioning. That’s about all I can expect. Matthew… Matthew was a great loss.”

He nodded. A blond curl fell over his forehead, making him look younger than his thirty-two years. We were of an age. “I understand, you know,” he said.

I looked him straight in his blue eyes just like a white man. “You understand what?”

“I understand what your relationship was. And I saw for myself the depth of the feeling… uh, the love you shared. I can’t imagine violence taking Rachel Ann away from me like that.”

The hair on my neck bristled, but I took a breath and relaxed. While Gideon and I did not view things through the same eyes, he was a decent man capable of more understanding than most of his kind. “How long have you known?”

“Quite some time now. You weren’t obvious about your relationship, but I have some insight into the Strobaw family that most people don’t, so I figured it out. I also know the family secret,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

“I know you and Rachel Ann and your siblings are half-breeds, not quarter bloods.”

“I wondered when Rachel Ann would share that with you.”

“Only recently, and she revealed the reason for the deception. To make it easier for Cuthan to inherit the Mead. But she never revealed your and Matthew’s secret.”

The European part of my brain prompted me to ask a question. “Do you think less of me now that you know I loved a man?”

He shook his head. “No one who truly knows you could ever think of you as anything but a man. A good man.”

“You realize, of course, that’s what got Otter and James murdered.” I referred to my spiritual grandfather and his mate, retired Major James Morrow.

He hesitated before nodding mutely.

“And the same thing could happen to me.”

“If it does, it won’t be because of me. I respect you too much to decry you to anyone.”

“I wasn’t sure. We’ve crossed swords before,” I reminded him.

“We look at things from different perspectives, that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned from that.”

“You gave me my name and my reputation, you know.”

He pursed his lips. “I did?”

“Back in ’83, I repeated what you told me about those unusual sunsets and blue moons and lavender suns caused by the eruption of Krakatoa over on the other side of the world. The tribesmen I was talking to instantly named me Medicine Hair and declared me a shaman.” I laughed with a trace of irony. “I told them I learned those things from the army’s telegraph, but they decided I had medicine, anyway.”

“Be damned. Didn’t know. Hope you don’t blame me for…?”

I held up a hand. “It wasn’t you who sent Matthew and me to Pine Ridge. It was that shóta, that snake, Raven. He’s the one who ambushed an army patrol in my front yard. By the way, I know you came with the rest of the family to rebuild this place. I appreciate that.”

Gideon shrugged. “Wasn’t anything.”

I laughed. A genuine one this time. “I imagine not. You merely had to find time during the middle of an Indian war to come help your Indian in-laws rebuild a farm your own command had burned to the ground.”

He was silent for a long moment. “I was there, you know.”

“Where?”

“Wounded Knee.”

My jaw dropped. Something moved in my belly. Had I fired on Rachel Ann’s husband like those families ripped apart in the American’s Civil War?

“Not at the… uh, battle,” he said. “But they called in reinforcements when some of the tribes rose afterward.”

“There was no battle, Gideon.” My voice turned bitter. Chill bumps rippled my back. “It was a massacre pure and simple. A rifle went off. No one will ever know whose, and the soldiers on the hill opened on us with everything they had. They even shot some of their own troops who’d come down to disarm us.” I paused, but he made no response. “Were you at Drexel Mission, too?”

He shook his head. “We remained at Wounded Knee Creek. I looked for you, John. None of the bodies had been buried by the time we arrived, and I walked the whole area afraid that with the next step, I’d find you or Matthew. I didn’t learn about Matthew until later.”

Rachel Ann interrupted that awkward moment and put both of us to work shifting the furniture in the little house so everything was the way she wanted. Bird had disappeared into the blacksmith shop at some point during my talk with Gideon. I was teaching my Lakota friend the foundry trade and discovered him an apt pupil. He took pride in learning to become a mazkape, as the Lakota called a blacksmith. He did not emerge from the building again until after Gideon had taken his leave for the fort. Doubtless, the sight of that blue uniform bothered him beyond tolerating.

* * * * *

 The stage is now set. We’ll learn more when the book is released this coming January. Thanks for reading.

 My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

 The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

 DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

 And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

 Until next time.

 

Mark

 New posts the first and third Thursday of the month at 6:00 a.m., US Mountain time. 

MEDICINE HAIR is Out as an Ebook!

Several readers have contacted me to ask about the release date of MEDICINE HAIR, the fourth book in the Cut Hand series. Well, it's out! At least as an Ebook. I understand the print book will follow.

The fifth -- and likely the last -- in the series, WASTELAKAPI ... BELOVED, is in its second draft at this time. All we have to do now is convince STARbooks Press to publish it. You can help me do that by posting some favorable readers' comments on Amazon and encouraging your friends to buy a copy of MEDICINE HAIR.

Appreciate all the support I get from you guys (and that includes you gals). I cannot possibly tell you how much it means. Those of you who are authors will appreciate my sentiments.

Thanks,

Mark

An Excerpt from the upcoming novel, MEDICINE HAIR

STARbooks Press has delayed the publication of MEDICINE HAIR, the fourth novel in the Cut Hand series, until December, so I thought I’d give you a short excerpt from the book. The novel continues the story of John Strobaw (War Eagle/Night Sky Hair) and Matthew Brandt (Shambling Bear). By the time we reach the following scene, we are aware of changes in worldwide weather and atmospheric conditions caused by the eruption of Krakatoa on the other side of the globe in late August 1883. John’s brother-in-law, Captain Gideon Haleworthy, learned of this event via the army’s telegraph and passed the information along. The following is an exchange between John and a small group of Lakota men who have slipped off the reservation to forage for their families. This takes place in Chapter Two of the book.

*****

MEDICINE HAIR

     Crow Hop motioned with his chin to the hill. “One of us keeps an eye out for a patrol.”

     My eyebrows shot up. “You are renegades?”

     Firm Foot shook his head. “Nay, not as you mean it. But the army declares any who leave the reservations renegade. When we leave, they call it ‘breaking out’ and figure we’re digging up hatchets to make war. I’m surprised they haven’t put you on an agency.”

     “I have too much white blood for them to make the effort. Besides, my <i>tiospaye<i> is gone. Murdered over thirty years ago by American soldiers. Dragoons they called themselves back then. I’m a farmer, and that’s what they want us to be, isn’t it?”

     Firm Foot looked down his nose. “They’ll not make a dirt scratcher of me. I am a warrior. The militia turned me into one the day they shot down Grass Dancer and my sister on Trickling Water north of here.”

     Crow Hop nodded. “The white men are good at turning us into warriors. Not so good at turning us into farmers.”

     “I have nothing except coffee and tea and water to drink, but you’re welcome to that. I can probably find enough bread and cheese and jerky for a meal.”

     He accepted my offer. Fifteen minutes later, we all gathered on the porch, most of my guests sitting on the planking to eat and sip and converse. After more talk, it became clear they were on the hunt for provisions because allotments at the agency were slow and often short. I offered one of my steers. Even though this was why they had come, they remained seated. Lord, don’t let this turn into one of those long, protracted things where it takes forever before a blood gets around to talking turkey. Nature intervened to speed things along.

     One of the younger braves grunted and lifted his chin. Most of us were under the cover of the porch and had to stand in the yard to see he was pointing to a sun enveloped in a wispy purple hue.

     “Witchcraft!” someone muttered.

     Crow Hop nodded agreement. “A bad omen. Something’s gonna happen.”

     I spoke without thinking. “It already has.”

     They all turned in my direction. Then Crow Hop walked over and removed the hat from my head.      “Tell us what you know about these things, Night Sky Hair.”

     Others of the group muttered when they took in the strange peppering of yellow in my black mop.      Now that I’d stuck half a foot into the affair, I regretted it. The reservation schools hadn’t been very successful if I understood correctly, so most of these men probably had little formal education.

     “I know why the sun is playing tricks on us and the moon is changing and sunsets look like prairie fires.”

     “Pho!” Firm Foot exclaimed. “Tell us.”

     “Far beyond Turtle Island, so far that it is on the other side of Mother Earth, there is an island the foreigners there call Krakatoa. During the last moon, a volcano on the island blew up. You understand what a volcano is?”

     “It’s like the Yellowstone country where hot water shoots into the air and smelly mud comes up out of holes.” This from the young brave who’d spotted the sun changing colors.

     “Yes, like that, except it springs from a mountain and is many, many times more powerful. It blew up – what they call an eruption – and threw most of the island into the sea. The explosion spewed a thousand times more dirt into the air than the Yellowstone geysers. And it changed everything.”

     “How so?” Crow Hop wanted to know.

     “It threw so much ash and pumice and smoke into the air that Father Sky waved it away to keep from choking and sent it all around the earth. And that cloaked the sun and covered the moon and infected the sunsets. We will see these things for a long time.”

     “How do you know this?” Firm Foot asked in a rising voice.

     “Medicine,” Crow Hop said. “Can’t you see from his hair that he has medicine? My father told me this man’s Spirit Dream foretells great joy and dancing and a bloody slaughter. A battle we will not win.”

     “And the murder of a great man,” I said. “One of our own.”

     Firm Foot regarded me for a moment before stepping forward to finger my hair. With a somber face, he announced that from this point on, I would be known as Medicine Hair.

     “You misunderstand,” I said. “I learned all of this from the whites who have singing wires that circle the world. You know that Mother Earth is round, don’t you? Like a ball.”

     Most of them nodded, but some put a lie to the gesture with widened eyes.

     Crow Hop and Firm Foot put their heads together for a moment, and then Spotted Panther’s son walked up to face me. “I do not trust anyone who claims to be a medicine man. Better that he should demonstrate it and let me discover him as such. I now understand why my world has changed, and it is you who have given me this knowledge. It is as I said. You are Medicine Hair to me now.”

*****

And so it is that John Strobaw, a young half-breed with some of his mother’s Scandanavian blond hair scattered among the black covering his scalp receives his last and most significant name … Medicine Hair.

Guys, as usual, thanks for reading, and come back soon.

Feel free to contact me at markwildyr@aol.com.

Mark

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. on the first of every month.

Coming Attractions

I wish I had stirring or seductive (or perhaps stirring and seductive) music to play along with this post, together with control of the volume on your computer. Then I could do “Coming Attractions” like the movie theaters do … blast you out of the auditorium with teasers of things yet to come.

I don’t have sound, but I do have cover art for my next three books, thanks to the folks at STARbooks Press, and thought you might like to see what I’ve been working on.

Although it is not the next book due out, I wanted to feature the cover for Medicine Hair, as this is the fourth and final book of what I call the Cut Hand Series. I’ve had a lot of fun writing about the individuals who populate these four novels, and it’s going to be hard to turn them loose. But I think it’s probably time. I have had more great reader contacts on the Cut Hands books than all the other novels. Some of them are downright passionate about Cut Hand and Billy and Otter and John and Matthew. Just go to Amazon and check out the reviews and comments posted there. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate honest-to-God readers who’ve taken the time to let me know they enjoyed the books. Anyway, this is a copy of the cover art for this finale. Sorry, but the book isn’t scheduled for release until Spring 2015

Charlie Blackbear is the next book scheduled for release (Fall 2014), so it should be out soon. Because I don't have a back cover to show you, I'll tell you it's a contemporary novel along the lines of The Victor and the Vanquished. As a matter of fact, Wilam and Joseph from the V&V make a brief appearance in this novel. The following gives you an idea of what the story is about:

Charlie Blackbear is already a near-legend in his little corner of the world by the time he turns eighteen. He can hold his liquor. He’s chased down and caught most of the girls and a few women on the little reservation where his lives. The size of the package he carries has been whispered about since he was in middle school.

When he wakes up drunk in a motel room with a man going down on him, he shrugs it off as an alcohol thing and goes right back to chasing women. But when he takes a job with a logging crew and shares a room at the Boar’s Nest with his best friend, Daniel Warhorse, he fights a growing, unexpected, and unwelcome attraction to his childhood friend. When Moon Eyes, Daniel’s girlfriend, gets pregnant and this good-looking kid named Aden Jones starts showing up in Charley’s life, things get terribly complicated.

I sketched out the book, Johnny Two-Guns, a number of years ago in response to some event in my life. The novel still exists, while I can’t even recall what I read about or experienced that was the genesis of the story. Whatever the stimulus was, it likely occurred in Denver, as that was where I was living at the time I started writing about Johnny. This book, too, has a contemporary setting. STARbooks has not yet given me a date of expected publication for this one.

Anyway, these are the things traveling on down the publication road (where the speed limit is like a school zone, 15 mph), so I thought I’d share them with you.

By the way, I like the cover art for all three books. Let me know how you react to them.

Thanks for checking out the site.

Mark

New posts are published at the first of every month at 6:00 a.m.

The Circle of Life

My blog of July 2 entitled Prejudice—the Human Condition, mentions my novel, CUT HAND  (STARbooks Press), in which the Native American concept of the Circle of Life is outlined. As I am now involved in the writing of the fourth and final book in the Cut Hand Saga, I often look back and see how a change in attitude— even on the part of tribesmen—toward this philosophy takes place over the years. (By the way, the title of this fourth novel will be MEDICINE HAIR, not Night Sky Hair as originally intended.) I’d like to reproduce the section of CUT HAND  dealing with the Circle of Life.

In the following scene from Chapter 4 (Pages 35 and 36) of the novel, Cut Hand and Billy Strobaw have left Billy’s two companions, Splitlip Rumquiller and Wild Red Greavy, on their way to the warrior’s village. They intend to build a life together among Cut Hand's people where their way of life would be more accepted than among the Americans. At the moment, they are discussing Billy’s difficulty reconciling a “win-tay” lifestyle with his upbringing. Let’s watch and listen.

###

We dawdled away most of the phase of a moon gaining fluency in one another’s languages. I shuddered to think I had been bound for the Santa Fe Trail where I would have missed him. But, even the joy of Cut’s presence could not purge the occasional guilt I experienced in private over my libertine practices.

“Don’t you understand, Cut?” I snapped once when he challenged my mood. “I love you, but my God says that is wrong. Men don’t lie with men!”

“This God of yours must be the same Great Mystery who made me. My creator gave me a hunger in the loins, so I can make children, but he never said there was only one way to enjoy the act. Why would he make it pleasurable if it was not to be used?”

“Even you said it was wrong for two men to lie together.”

“Yes. And it is wrong for two women to lie together, and two Win-tays to lie together. That is against nature.”

“But I am a man,” I cried in anguish. “I have a yard and stones like you! We are two men lying together, Cut!”

He went so quiet that I grew deathly afraid. “If that is true, I will leave you here and hang my head in shame. But a pipe and stones do not make a man, Billy. You are not a man because you were born with a penis. You are not a man because you are brave and strong and killed two warriors.” He tapped his heart. “Your spirit determines what you are, not your genitals.”

“That can’t be right!” I protested. “God makes you a man or a woman. There isn’t anything else!”

Then I learned one of the great differences between the Red and the White worlds. To the European, life begins, progresses, and ends along a linear. A man is a man and behaves as such or suffers for it; a woman travels an even narrower pathway. They are opposite sexes. The Indian perceives life as a Sacred Circle. There is no “only-man” or “only-woman,” no opposite genders, merely complementary ones.

Cut drew a hoop in the earth. Humans, according to his notion, might fit anywhere within the circle. A man was a man according to his spirit; a woman was a woman because of hers. A man became a man by accepting a man’s responsibilities. His sexual appetite had less to do with his orientation than his choice of responsibilities.

If a boy child selected a bow as his toy, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a man. If the boy chose a woman’s tool, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a Win-tay, a not-woman, a double-face, a human being with male genitals who accepts the responsibilities of a woman.

One male may appear more manly than another, or less so, but his spirit determined his lifestyle. So men or two-spirits or women fit at various places on that great circle according to choices made before the Soul Journey ever commenced. The point was that humans belonged wherever they felt natural, and one man’s “natural” was not necessarily another’s. It was a powerful philosophy allowing a person to live where he fit, rather than fit where he lived – a staggering concept that brought me some ease of mind.

###

Too bad that philosophy did not become the prevailing one. It would have alleviated a great deal of suffering in this world of ours.

Note: New posts are published around the first of every month.

Comments are welcome, not only on this post, but also about any relevant subject the reader wishes to discuss.