SACAJAWEA'S GRAVE
by Camy Sorbello
Tanya sat on the rusty tailgate of her truck and watched as DuWayne moved from hole to hole, aiming the nozzle of the vacuum straight down into each burrow. After six holes he shut the machine and lumbered back to the main tank that sat on the prairie grass near Tanya's pick up. She cringed as he opened the hatch on top and peered inside.
"It's okay, girl," he bellowed. "They're all alive 'cept one, and he was most likely dead to start with." He yanked out a limp prairie dog corpse and lobbed it over Tanya's head. She heard it land with a plop on the ground just past her truck.
"This one's a cute little fella. He should fetch 'ya a good price." DuWayne's jack-o'-lantern grin poked out of his grizzled furry face as he displayed a squirming gopher for her approval.
"Yep," he yelled. "Prairie dogs is all the rage these days. City people pay big money for 'em for pets. I'd sooner have a weasel in my house."
You are a weasel, thought Tanya as she watched him empty ten young prairie dogs into a blue Kitty Caddy travel cage. Then he picked up the six-inch corrugated plastic hose and turned on the giant vacuum cleaner again.
Tanya saw the prairie dogs huddled together in the cage. She thought about her three children at home in their trailer with Aunt Beulah. How scared would they be if a giant sucking hose crashed in through the roof and vacuumed them into a dark tunnel, right in the middle of Sesame Street.
She could picture them now, eating their peanut butter sandwiches. Aunt Beulah always served them up on her favorite old chipped plate that she'd bought for a quarter at the flea market after a Pow Wow on the Little Wind River.
It showed a faded scene of Sacajawea pointing toward the sun setting in the west as Lewis and Clark gazed on in astonishment. Tanya had laughed along with Aunt Beulah the first time they'd seen it. Now the joke was old and tired, like she felt at just 29.
"Here 'ya go, girl." DuWayne' s voice overpowered all. " We got 30 all told, not counting the two dead ones and the runt I hadda kill."
" Fine. Put my ten in here." Tanya reached back into the bed of the truck for an old time wooden chicken crate, also bought at the flea market for a dollar.
"Ten!" roared DuWayne. " Ten! How do 'ya figure ten?" "
"I figure it because it's one third of 30, you moron!" Tanya screamed at him. " You agreed to my terms after I agreed to yours." She added softly, "Remember?"
DuWayne hesitated an instant, then replied, "Oh, yeah. Right."
He'd lost count, and had to start sorting the animals all over again.
Tanya had paid for her third of the harvest an hour earlier, on the front seat of DuWayne's dump truck. He'd smelled of beer and diesel fuel, and his blue eyes were bloodshot.
Once, an AIM activist had spoken at the Wyoming Indian Reservation High when Tanya was a sophomore. He had proclaimed blue eyes a symbol of the white man's oppression. Tanya had laughed at it, more interested in boys and make up than her native heritage.
But splayed under DuWayne on the shredded vinyl seat with the stick shift stabbing her ribcage, it made sense. She'd felt like a squaw that had been traded to a white man for an old horse and a couple of beaver skins.
Except she herself had made the trade.
"Here 'ya go, girl."
DuWayne slid the chicken crated prairie dogs onto the tailgate.
"Them oughta bring you enough wampum to feed yer papooses."
"They" re not my papooses. They're my children, DuWayne." Tanya spoke slowly, trying to sound calm and reasonable. " And it's not for food," she explained again. " It's for medicine and shoes."
"Can" t you just call a medicine man to hoot and holler out a cure?"
Tanya didn't answer. She might need DuWayne again since he owned the giant vacuum cleaner.
" Well? Cancha?" He was persistent.
You big, stupid buffalo turd, she wanted to say. But didn' t.
"No, DuWayne. Not unless he can hoot and holler out some amoxycillin for my baby girl's ear infection."
Her daughter was fifteen months old. Her son Cody was four, his brother Carson six. Her ex-husband, Floyd Kincaid, had said he was descended from the Great American Hero, Kit Carson, and named their first-born after him.
Tanya was a newlywed, still starry eyed in love, and said, "Sure, Floyd, honey, whatever you want" , like she always did in those days. As an Indian, she should have known Kit Carson had driven the Navajo from their homeland while working for the U.S. government. He was no hero on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Two years later Tanya was less in love, but pregnant again. She was stuck living in a turquoise trailer out on the prairie with no car, a busy two-year-old, and a TV that played just one station. That one station brought in Regis & Kathie Lee clear as a bell every weekday morning.
Floyd was nowhere to be found when his second son was born, so Tanya chose a name on her own. Through the foggy haze of pain, exhaustion, and joy that is childbirth, she saw the incandescent glow of Kathie Lee's perpetual smile. Above the commotion of the hospital maternity ward Tanya heard the cheerful chirp of the other Kathie Lee's voice on the TV. It was saying, "My son Cody blah blah blah" and then Cody blah blah, that darling Cody blah blah blah" " With her last ounce of strength, Tanya whispered, "Cody" to the nurse, then fell asleep.
By the time she woke it was too late to change it. Cody Kincaid was Cody Kincaid for always and ever. Disgusted, Aunt Beulah muttered something about Buffalo Bill Cody exploiting the Indians.
"Aunt Beulah. I didn't name the baby for Buffalo Bill. I named him for Iron Eyes Cody, the great American Indian actor and director."
The lie worked. Aunt Beulah was proud of Tanya's sudden awareness of her heritage, and spread the word at Pow Wows and funerals, her two main social activities.
But when it was time for her third child, her daughter, to be born, Tanya was alone. No husband, no TV. So alone that she was in early labor as she drove herself to the hospital.
She stopped on the shoulder to catch her breath near the dirt road that lead to the "Grave of Sacajawea" .
Four women dripping with turquoise jewelry came by in a car with California tags. They seemed to be all talking at once as they stopped and pointed to the sign. Then they turned down the side road.
Tanya watched them and their dust until they disappeared from sight. Tourists, she thought. Always wanting to visit the grave of Lewis and Clark's Indian squaw. Tanya had never been there herself, but intended to go someday.
As she drove on towards the hospital she saw a mule deer and her baby nibbling the sage along the roadside. The spotted fawn lifted its head and gazed at Tanya as it chewed slowly, and followed the truck with its eyes as it passed by. The fawn didn't run, but remained calm and peaceful.
A few hours later as Tanya held her newborn child and looked down into her dark eyes, she saw the eyes of the fawn looking back. She wanted for her daughter the same freedom and tranquility as the deer that grazed along the Wind River.
For the first time she felt the spiritual connection to nature that had always eluded her, or that she perhaps had avoided. She named her baby girl Fawn.
And now Floyd the ex was long gone. Fawn needed antibiotics, and Carson wanted a pair of Nikes so he could run on the school track team. Tanya felt she owed Carson at least that much since he was stuck with a nasty dead white guy's name.
"Well, darlin', good luck in Riverton." It was DuWayne, still bellowing. " You know where to find me if 'ya need me."
"Yes, DuWayne." Tanya hoped she wouldn't, but feared she might, if the price of prairie dogs in Riverton didn't match the price of Nikes. "In Lander, at the Happy Heifer Café. Third booth on the left."
He probably got his mail there, she thought.
"Yup. And if for some reason I ain't there, I'm probably down to the Bullshoot Bar and Grill, by the tracks, less'n it's busted up again from a fight and the cops shut her down like last month."
DuWayne slammed the door of the dump truck without bothering with good byes. A cloud of black smoke belched out of the rusted tailpipe and a moment later he was gone. Good riddance to bad pennies, Aunt Beulah would say.
The wind blew Tanya's long hair across her face as she shoved the crate of prairie dogs along the truck bed until it rested against the cab. The animals were huddled together into a ball in one corner, twenty tiny eyes staring up at her in fear. They belonged on the prairie, in their cozy burrows beneath the grass, not in a cage. Tanya wondered if the spirits of her ancestors were angry with her.
Then she covered the crate with a canvas tarp to keep out the cold on the long drive to the pet shop in Riverton.
Maybe the men's spirits, she decided, but not the women's.
