I'm going to read a bit from my first novel Elsie's Business,
which some of you here have read.
The story is a modern retelling of a story
from Lakota oral tradition, the deer woman's stories.
There are dozens of these stories among northern plains
tribes and they're meant to be didactic teaching stories.
The moral of these is that young men should
be careful of picking up strange women, but in my novel
I've put a different twist to this story.
And Elsie's Business, Elsie is the victim of strange men,
but she is avenged by the deer woman
and then she becomes the deer woman.
Besides the theme of that old story
I wanted to point out the facts of violence against women
of color, who are victims of violence
at rates far higher than those for women of other ethnicities.
But you rarely, if ever, see brown faces on the TV news,
and rarely are those crimes ever solved.
It is as if these women of color did not matter.
Elsie's Business my way of saying
I remember, I care, and this is my tribute to all
those women of color who suffered
and whose names we may never know.
I'm going to read a little bit from further over in the story.
Main character of Elsie is dead at the beginning of the story.
And her father, who didn't even know
he had a daughter till she died, has come back
to this small reservation border town to claim her body
and take her home.
But it's wintertime and he's run into all kinds of problems
with getting the body disinterred
in the middle of the winter.
In case you've never lived up north,
the ground freeze is very, very hard
and it's difficult to even dig a regular grave.
So, this is being told from his perspective, the father.
And there is another character in here,
who is the local coroner.
So I'm just going to read a little bit of this.
The date is January 31st, 1970 and the chapter
is called "Wiping The Tears".
It's about a ceremony that's pretty
common in the upper plains, especially for my tribe.
A year after a person has died you have a ceremony called
Wiping The Tears.
And after that ceremony is done, after that year of mourning
is over, people are supposed to pick up their lives and go on.
They're not supposed to keep thinking back and remembering
and grieving, it's time to go on.
So this is a Wiping Of The Tears Ceremony
that was held for Elsie.
The sun isn't up yet on Saturday when Oscar calls you
for coffee and breakfast.
Oscar is an old man that Elsie's father
is staying with, in this town.
While you're eating as few of his pancakes
as good manners will allow, you ask him
if there's anything you should know
about this ghostly ceremony, anything
that will be expected of you.
"Just stick beside me" he says, "I'll
tell you what to do when."
You're still nervous when Irene, and her husband Roger,
and the boys show up.
Roger is a big man, his bulk filling
half the front seat, his head almost touching
the headliner of the car.
He gives you a quiet greeting, you and Oscar
get in the backseat, and the boys curl up under blankets
and go back to sleep as you make the drive west out of Jackson.
Up the long hill, past the tourist
cabins where John Caulfield used to live, in number 8a.
The car is filled with the smell of cooked meat coming
from a lidded big pan on the floor, between Irene's feet
so I won't tip over.
You look at Oscar and he explains,
"for the feast" and points his lips to the bag of groceries
on the floor of the back seat.
Indians do that a lot, went like that.
A can of coffees on top.
A few miles west of town Roger turns off the highway
onto a narrower paved road, to a little town
he tells you is Greasy Water.
There's a little store and a gas station there,
a few houses scattered nearby.
But soon the pavement ends, and Roger drives slowly
through tracks worn into the snow,
over roads that wind here and there, like a line of string
carelessly flung out on the ground.
The sun is full up and the car suddenly
drops down a steep hill into a canyon in the prairie.
Totally unexpected from the flat perspective
until you are there, and going down through a one lane cut
in the snow.
The hill is so steep that your ears pop and at the bottom
the road widens a bit.
The tail end of the car slivers on a slick spot.
The boys is wide awake now yell, "do it again dad, do it again!"
Through the pines and winter-bare cottonwood
you glimpse a frozen creek yards off the road
and you think of catfish jumping and hot summer weather.
Cut up catfish dipped in cornmeal
better frying up golden brown in big black skillets.
A couple of miles further on, Roger turns the car sharply
to the left between berry thickets
onto a road that you wouldn't even have noticed
was there, except someone has shoveled a way
through the snow for cars.
Back into the thickets and the trees,
sits a log house, small, with smoke
rising from a tin chimney.
And in the yard, half a dozen cars,
and men standing around several fires
that have been lit in a circle.
There's a big shed with double doors
open and a table inside with stuff piled on it.
"That's for the giveaway," Oscar says,
and then seeing you don't understand he says,
"it's customary."
"Most ceremonies include a giveaway
from whoever is sponsoring it.
The Roberts this time, except since this wasn't really
planned far enough in advance, so other people
have contributed stuff."
You look at the goods piled up and see
there are cases of soda pop, a couple of blankets,
cans of coffee, bags of sugar, other stuff too.
Somebody better take that soda inside pretty quick you think,
before it freezes and bust the cans.
Roger stops the car and everyone gets out,
the boys yelling and rushing towards half a dozen other kids
piling out of the cabin.
Irene carefully carries the big pan of meat in front of her
into the house.
Hau Kola, Roger shouts at the men,
one of them comes over to him and they clash shoulders.
Ho eyes, tokeske oyaunyanpi huo?
the man asks, "Hena, waste yelo."
You and Oscar are looking over the selection of good,
"who's it for," you ask.
"Everyone" he says, "everyone takes something."
"It doesn't look like much yet, but there
will be more by tonight.
Mighty night It looks like a pretty big pile to you already.
You look at the small cabin, with the cars and the people
already there, and know they won't all fit in that house.
It's going to get damn cold before this is over, you think.
Understanding now, the reason for all those
bonfires in the yard.
Cars and the trucks keep coming, the giveaway pile grows.
And you and Oscar are asked to help others build,
what looks to you like an igloo, made of bent over tree limbs
with the ends secured in the middle.
It's a small structure with a hole dug out in the middle
and when you're done, some tarps are thrown over,
at the edge it's weighted down with rocks.
"What's that for?"
you whisper to Oscar.
He grunts as one of the tree limbs
comes undone and whips back and slaps him in the gut.
"Sweat lodge" he says.
"What's that?"
"To sweat, what else?"
Then he explains more, "It's a purification right
for the wicasa wakan before he performs the Ghost Ceremony."
The wicasa wakan as Oscar points him out to you,
doesn't look like anybody special.
Just an old man, older looking than Oscar even,
wearing a battered cowboy hat, layers of clothes
covering his skinny body.
Late in the afternoon, as if a silent gong
had rang that everyone except you had heard,
women pour out of the little house like columns of ants.
The men gather, the crowd become silent.
The wicasa wakan steps out of the sweat lodge, his body
naked from the waist up, glistening with sweat
reflecting the dying sun and the red flames of the bonfires.
A big drum sits in the middle of the crowd on top
of an upended old car hood, put there,
he's supposed, to keep the bottom of the drum
from getting wet.
Five men crouch around, and each with a single drumstick,
they strike the drum in unison.
The sound continuing and echoing and behind you, in the crowd
a voice begins to sing.
The wicasa wakan takes up as redstone pipe.
Some children are scuffling in the back and one of the women
says to them, "Shh, anagoptanye!
Wastepe!"," it begins.
28 years you swept the floors, and mopped them, and waxed
them, and buffed them.
You picked up the pieces of broken chalk
from the classrooms.
You scrubbed out the toilets, and you had unclogged them
when the kids dropped stuff down there that shouldn't
be dropped down there.
You knew that Mrs. Clayton in fourth grade room 27
was a stickler for having the blackboards washed every week,
that Miss Ingersoll in the second grade room 11
didn't much care about the blackboards,
but her trash cans, by God, better be emptied every day.
I learned about that look on Principal Adams face,
that look that meant you better stay down
in the basement repairing broken desk desks or somewhere
out of his way.
You watched kids come into kindergarten and go up
the scale in grades and out the other side,
and some of them you remembered because they were good kids,
and some of them you remembered because they weren't.
You look forward to the summers when
you could stay home, and tend your garden, and go fishing.
You accepted the summers when you had to find some other work
to make ends meet, the summers when
you had to go places you didn't want to go
and never wanted to see again.
And then the last years came when your knees
hurt so from arthritis that it was hard to bend them,
when the floor polisher kick as it hit spots with too much wax
made your spine felt like a whip being cracked.
And you loaded up on pain pills to sleep at night
so you can get up in the morning and do it all over again.
The last graduation, the speeches,
and congratulations, and thank you's,
and the piddly retirement pay that was all right
because you bothered to save your money for years, money
that you'd mostly spent now for Elsie.
A gold watch on your arm, the traditional retirement
gift that you didn't think would mean a stinking thing to you,
did.
The ceremony has ended.
The people are lining up for the giveaway.
Oscar pushes you into line, and you move forward,
shuffling in the snow.
The woman ahead of you says to her companion something
about that red blanket on the end,
and she hopes it's still there when it's her turn.
The line moves forward, pauses, and moves forward,
and the pile dwindles, and then it's your turn.
But you stand there and you wonder what on Earth you would
do with any of this stuff.
You could always use the groceries,
but it feels silly to carry it back on the bus.
And Oscar nudges you.
"Take something," he says.
You step forward and reach up your coat sleeve,
pull off your gold watch, and place it
carefully on top of a 10 pound bag of sugar and step
away, for Elsie.
When the gifts are all gone, the women
bring out the food in the house and put it on the empty table
where all the giveaway stuff had been.
The people line up again, filling their plates,
standing or squatting around the bonfires and eating.
They go back for seconds, and then they
bring out their wateca buckets to fill up with the leftovers.
As the women are cleaning up the tables, the drums begin again.
You're tired, and exhausted, and cold,
and you can't believe there's more to this ghost ceremony.
The wicasa wakan spreads the blanket
on the cleanest patch of snow he can find
and begins to speak in Lakota.
The people line up yet a third time,
dance in a slow dipping 1-2 rhythm
pass the spread blanket, dropping coins and bills
as they pass.
There are at least 100 people when the dance is slow.
When it is done, the drums give a final thump.
Wicasa wakan gathers the corners of the blankets
together, bagging the money in the middle,
walks through the snow, and hands it to you.
Your arms are frozen at your sides.
And wicasa wakan bounces the blanket up and down,
making it jingle and rustle, and Oscar nudges you
so hard you almost fall over.
"Take it," he says.
You take the blanket, and the wicasa wakan steps back.
"Say thank you," Oscar whispers, but the heavy blanket
has weighted your tongue.
"Pilamaya," he says for you, and turns and shouts it
to the crowd.
"Pilamaya!' there are nods of [INAUDIBLE] smiles.
Here and there a muttered waste yelo, waste k'sto.
The people head towards the cars carrying their wateca
buckets and tired kids.
Waste yelo.
February 1st, 1970, the kindness of strangers.
This is money that he needs to pay to have Elsie's body taken
back to his home, and he didn't have enough,
and that's what the collection was for.
The money is spread out on Oscar's table
in neat stacks of change and paper bills, quarters, dimes,
nickels, a few 10s, one 20, and a whole lot of the ones.
You've counted it three times and it
keeps coming up the same.
$316.25.
Oscar reaches for the big chief tablet
and the stubby yellow pencil to check the figures again.
You stop his hand.
"Don't," you say.
"It's the same answer."
He puts down the pencil and pushes the tablet aside.
"Sometimes there's a different answer
if you look long enough."
"Not this time," you say.
"I have to leave tomorrow, so I'm back to the same question.
Know anybody that can take me to the bus station?"
Oscar doesn't speak for a minute, then he sighs and says,
"Yeah.
Roger's cousin isn't working.
He'll take you.
I'll walk over to his house in a little while and ask him."
You wave your hand at the money on the table,
"I got to give this back."
And Oscar crosses his arms.
"Can't.
That'd be an insult," he says.
"All right, then use it to buy stuff for the next giveaway."
Oscar doesn't say anything, he just picks the money up a pile
at a time and dumps it into a brown paper bag.
A little later after Oscar's walked over
to see Roger's cousin, you hear footsteps in the yard.
Someone bangs on the door, and first thing you think
is that Jack Mason has found you.
He's the bad guy in this novel.
There's a moment of panic, and then
a voice hollers, "Oscar, you home?"
You think that Jack Mason probably
wouldn't know Oscar's name, probably,
so you open the door to find Frank Staley.
This is the coroner.
He's standing there in the cold, his breath streaming whisky
scent.
He covers his mouth with a brown leather gloved hand and coughs.
"Oscar isn't home right now, Mr Staley."
"Doesn't matter.
I really came to see you," he says.
"Me?"
"Yes."
He motioned for him to come in.
He stomps the snow off his over shoes
and steps inside looking around curiously.
"So what do you need to talk about?
Price going up again?"
"Come on now, that's not fair.
I have to make a living.
There are laws to follow.
I can't just--" "Never mind.
Never mind.
I understand."
"But you don't."
"It's good news.
A third party has agreed to pay for the expenses
of transporting the body."
"What?
Who?"
You ask.
I'm not at liberty to divulge that.
It was a charitable donation, shall we say.
"They're paying for the transport, right?
Well what about the vault and the coffin?'
He waves a hand.
"Well, that too.
That too.
And the exhumation order is all signed.
If the weather holds, we can exhume the body day
after tomorrow.
This is Sunday, so you can be on your way
by, say, Wednesday morning."
You're thinking that there's some good people
in this town and some bad ones too, and all in all,
you'll be glad to be gone, long gone.
And you're thinking, too, that this town
will be glad to have you gone.
"Wednesday?
Why not Tuesday afternoon?"
"God damn it, man, the body has to be
removed from the old vault and the coffin,
encased in a new one.
You know?
And who knows who might die in the meantime.
Give me a break.
I run that place pretty much by myself."
"Sure.
Sure."
You say.
"OK, Wednesday afternoon."
You're wondering if Roger's cousin can take you
to the bus stop on Wednesday instead of tomorrow,
but then Staley says you can ride shotgun with the driver.
That's a customary courtesy.
You wonder why he didn't have the manners to mention
that customary courtesy before, but you
think about the dollars that are going to stay in your wallet
for a little while longer, so you just say, "Thank you."
Staley takes hold of the door knob,
and he voices what you'd been thinking just a minute ago.
"I don't mind telling you this town
will be glad to put an end to this whole business.
It's been a bad deal from start to finish.
Looks like it's about finished."
You want to say, but it isn't finished,
and it will never be as long as whoever killed her isn't known.
All you can hope for is an uneasy peace for yourself
and a better resting place for Elsie.
"I figured the crew should have a grave opener around noon
on Tuesday, if you want to be there,"
he says as he shuts the door.