Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2. Annie Proulx
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anguish and the sense of isolation that she had breathed in from the books all the week long.
“I bet you never been on a rez, have you?” he said. She shook her head.
“There’s more to it than deciding whether you want a live on the rez or in the world. Remember that Indians did not invent therez. They were the white man’s prisons to get the Indians off the good land. Linny, there’s no virtue in choosin the rez. You can lock yourself into a corner with no way out.”
The girl made an impatient face, little more than a twist of the lips but discounting all he was saying.
He knew it was hopeless but went on. “I’m guessin you want a do the whole thing, don’t you—sweat lodge, beaded moccasins, get yourself a pretty Indian name, find a good-lookin Indian stud, and get into the rez life? I see that brain goin a million miles a hour. Just so you know, I had those same feelins long ago. I went back, met your mother, got you started, and so forth. Romance. To me, now, the romance is wherever you find it, but not very likely on a rez.”
“Why didn’t you guys give me a Indian name?”
“We did.” He smiled. “Little Bedbug.”
“Dad! Goddammit, I’ll pick my own name. Something nice. Like Red Deer or Jade Blossom.”
“You got your cultures mixed up.”
“Well, what’s your name? They didn’t name you Charlie, did they?”
“Yeah, they did. They saw how the world was, so they named me Charlie. I suppose you want me to go around bein called Stands Lookin Sideways or Big Dick?”
The girl’s face was black-red, and he was afraid she was going to start crying or shouting. But she said, “You wait,” and ran up the stairs to her room. In a few seconds she was back again with paper in her hands.
“You can make fun,” she said, “but I been readin all that Buffalo Bill Cody stuff in Mr. Brawls’ boxes, there, all that stuff about the movie he was goin a make, that he did make, called it The Indian Wars Refought, and they staged a couple a the important battles. Most a the movie was the reenactment of Wounded Knee. For the movie Buffalo Bill got all the survivors together, Indians and army soldiers, and had them do it again for the camera. Put himself in as a scout. The books say it was the first documentary. The guns was loaded with blanks and only passed out at the last minute because some a the Indians wanted a use real bullets and shoot the army. General Miles was ridin around orderin everbody do this and do that. It was all very realistic and exact, and guys who’d been there almost passed out when they saw it.”
She took a deep breath and looked at him with red-faced sincerity. “The big thing is, that movie has totally disappeared and there are people would give a lot a money for that film. There are no copies anywhere. It was only showed a couple a times, then, after Buffalo Bill died in 1917 Essanay gave it another title and started showin it. But nobody paid much attention and now it’s lost. There’s some think the government got rid of it because it was too realistic, showed the U.S. Army in a bad light shootin women and babies with that big Hotchkiss machine gun cannon.”
“No shit! That’s the film you found in them little cans?”
“Yeah. Or I think, goin by the labels on the cans. Can’t really tell until somebody looks at them.”
“Hell, let’s go see. Where are they?”
“Dad, we can’t do that. They been sealed up in those airtight cans for ninety years. You open those cans and the film will disintegrate right before your eyes. They got to go to a special laboratory specializes in film preservation. Get opened underwater or something.”
She rattled the paper. “Anyway, there’s a couple reviews in Mr. Brawls’ boxes from when it was first showed in 1914 and one guy thought it was the greatest movie ever made and most a them wrote how nothin like it had been ever done before. But I found somebody not so crazy about that movie. They had it at the library in a Buffalo Bill folder. This Chauncey Yellow Robe didn’t like Buffalo Bill’s movie. He was a Sioux, but it don’t say from where.”
She stepped forward and by that motion made the kitchen space in front of the counter a stage. She began to recite, her voice deepening, impassioned, and for Charlie Parrott, leaning against the wall, his daughter, eyes narrowed and jaw outthrust, became the long-dead Yellow Robe, speaking with bitter scorn. His hair stirred.
“‘You ask how to settle the Indian troubles. I have a suggestion. Let Buffalo Bill and General Miles take some soldiers and go around the reservations and shoot them down. That will settle his troubles. Let them do in earnest what they have been doing at the battlefield at Wounded Knee. These two, who were not even there when it happened, went back and became heroes for a moving picture machine.’”
She had become the old orator, her eyes fixed on Charlie, her right hand extended, shaking, the nail of her index finger a glowing coal. She continued, her voice swollen with Yellow Robe’s contempt.
“‘You laugh, but my heart does not laugh. Women and children and old men of my people, my relatives, were massacred with machine guns by soldiers of this Christian nation while the fighting men were away. It was not a glorious battle, and I should think these two men would be glad they were not there; but no, they want to be heroes for moving pictures. You will be able to see their bravery and their hairbreadth escapes soon in your theatres.’”
She stopped, put her head down, chin on her chest. Gradually she became Linny again.
“Hey, that was scary,” said her father. “It felt like old Yellow Robe was right here in the kitchen.”
“At least his words were.” She spoke in her normal voice. Yellow Robe had gone back into the sky.
But the recitation had moved Charlie Parrott. He wondered if his mother were still alive. A memory of the reservation came unbidden, a blistering day, the sky white and dry, heat waves trembling above the junk cars, one of them where a woman named Mona plied her trade. Nothing moved, no dogs, no people, no lift of wind stirring the dust and trash. He recalled the awful boredom of the place, the hopeless waiting for nothing. He shuddered.
“Tell you what. Soon as Georgina gets back we’ll go down there. To Pine Ridge. I’ll find out who is still around. You can see for yourself. We’ll take that lousy Land Rover a yours—it’ll look good on the rez.”
“What, today?”
“You bet.”
“Georgina will be pissed, a lot a those boxes and papers still got to be done. Because I probably won’t come back.”
“I know that, but I bet she can hire somebody in town, some college kid finishing out the summer. It’s not the end a the world.”
“And how about the film cans? Like, they really are valuable. They could be worth a hundred thousand dollars to the right people.”
There was a long silence.
“Well. By rights they belong to Georgina. I guess it’s your decision what to do with them. Now, what say we get packed up? Georgina comes back I need a talk to her. Maybe an hour.”
“What for? Let’s just go. Leave her a note.”
“Unmannerly. I got a tell her what I’m doin, what the scene is. So she don’t worry.”
“Goddammit!”
“Linny, grow up. She means somethin a me. I’m not just walkin out without a word. And remember that all you been reading happened a long time ago—more than a hunderd years ago.”
“No, Dad. To me it happened last week. I never knew any a that stuff. They don’t teach it in school. It gets me—” And she slammed her chest with a theatrical thump.
“You’ll have to work it out yourself. We all do.” He knew nothing he said would be heard. She would get involved, and after a few years of passionate activism she might fall away from it