Gibbous Moon over
Manderson
Daniel
G. Snethen
Murdered &
Missing Indigenous Women is a serious
epidemic
terrorizing the existence of Lakota and
other
women of Native American Heritage. Many
victims
are never found and have been secreted away
into
modern society’s underground sex trafficking
trade.
This story is a concerted effort to bring awareness
to
the plight of thousands of women who are suffering
such
affliction and to the thousands more who live
every
day in fear of being abducted.
Legend has it that when
Tasúnka Witko,
Chief Crazy Horse, was shot and run through with a bayonet during his escape
from Fort Robinson, NE, that his mortal wounds killed him as he and his Kolas
camped among the chalky bluffs overlooking Manderson. Many claim his
remains are buried among those bluffs; others argue his body was taken
elsewhere. No one truly knows the whereabouts of Tasunka Witko’s remains
and some still believe his spirit is looking over them as protectorate even
today.
Alfonso Bisclavret was a
medicine-man, a
Red-Sash Society member and a Yuwipi warrior. He was Heyoka, considered
sacred—wakan
and not someone to mess around with. As far back as even the oldest Unci
could remember Bisclavret had always resided back in the chalky white bluffs of
Manderson. No one knew for how long nor did they know his ancestry. Perhaps
even Bisclavret’s memory of ancestry and origin had been forgotten with the
passage of time.
“Yes Wicahpi,”
her wizened Lakota
grandmother replied, “Alfonso was running his sweat-lodge when I was a little
girl. My Unci Lucy told me he was a powerful holy-man and that
Bisclavret was an old man even when she was a little girl. My Grandma Lucy
claimed no one knew how old Alfonso was and that he was our protector now, and
back then and had always been and always would be. Some even claimed he could
shift shape.”
And then with a soft but
seriously stern voice Star’s
Unci Mercedes continued, “Stay away from him. He does not want to be
bothered. I have never seen him except once and that was during a night dance
many years ago during a full moon. Like all the other men, he wore traditional
regalia, only his had a skull cap of buffalo horns and a prominent
midnight-black wolf’s tail and when all the men howled at the moon his was the
loudest and most fearsome—it makes me shudder just remembering it.”
Star was a young woman now
but still lived with
her Unci Mercedes and her Lala Adolph. Adolph wasn’t really her
grandfather and he wasn’t married to her Unci except in the Indian way.
But he was the only grandfather she’d ever known. Star didn’t know who her
father was, no one did—not even her mother, and her mother died when Star was just
16. Grandmother Mercedes raised her from a little girl and they shared more of
a mother-daughter relationship than anything. Other tiyospaye members
living in their small log home included her Lecci Bruce and his three
daughters who alternated time between living with grandmother or living with
their mother in Evergreen. When Clarice was hooking up, which was most of the
time, the cousins lived with Star and their grandmother.
Star loved her cousins but
she also loved her
privacy, something she could never have with those three monsters prowling
around her house pulling the tails on her cat-children. No amount of scolding
or threats dampened their enthusiasm for pulling cat tails, an endeavor which
often ended in crying and bleeding scratches inflicted by infuriated felines.
The February snow had blanketed
the valley
between Wounded Knee and Manderson. The hilltops were covered too and the countryside
undulated with three-and-four-foot-drifts, meandering their way down into the
valley along White Horse Creek.
Star’s pea-green 1974
Ambassador station-wagon
pulled up into the potholed dirt parking lot surrounding Pinkies, an old
cinderblock constructed store appropriately painted pink. Isaiah, as she called
her car, was ancient even for reservation standards. But he was her baby and
Star loved him. Afterall, not only was Isaiah her transportation, he was also
her sometimes home, her only safe place to lock up what valuables she had, her
sanctuary and even—when feeling particularly amorous, her love nest. Simply
stated, Star depended upon Isaiah and without him she would be lost.
Though it was within an
hour of midnight the
parking lot was crowded and the store busy with serious shoppers. It was EBT
night and staples had run low for most natives on the Pine Ridge and now was
their opportunity to get what they needed before the shelves emptied themselves
the next morning. Star and her extended family would feast for a couple of
weeks and then slowly eat less until finally only the children and the weakest
ones of her tiyospaye had anything of sustenance to eat during the last
few days before the cycle repeated itself again.
* *
*
The ancient Lakota shaman
sat naked
inside his sweat-lodge, upon his haunches, praying to Tunkasila for
wisdom, strength and purity—naked that is except for an ebony-colored wolf’s tail
tied about his waist with a length of teeth-chewed deer gut and a skull cap of
bison horns. His red sash bound around the sacred staff of chokecherry wood lay
upon the buffalo-skull altar before him, atop of which were several sprigs of
sage. As he prayed, his coyote brethren howled in chorus, their eerie voices
echoing in unison with the deep hollow hootings of the night owls,
reverberating off the sheer white cliffs surrounding his Holy tabernacle.
* *
*
Star’s shopping cart
looked like a grocery
store Jenga game. Each item carefully placed and yet one wrong twist or turn
and the towering mass precariously stacked above cart level would come tumbling
down. Actually, this had happened to her more than once.
And Star remembered her
Unci Mercedes’
instructions, the same instructions she gave every EBT night, not to put the
bread on the bottom of the cart and not to put the large pickle jars on top of
the egg cartons and to get exactly five 10 lb. tubes of hamburger and no less. And
to be careful how she stacked the groceries. This all followed an earlier more
serious discussion they’d had about the epidemic of missing and murdered
indigenous women.
“I’m serious
Wicahpi; trust no one, not even
the men you think you know. These beasts are all wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Believe me, even some of our Native men will think nothing of selling you for
drugs and money. Remember your Auntie Celeste was last seen loading her hatch
in the parking lot of the Rapid City Walmart, and she disappeared in broad
daylight. I cry and pray for her every night. I don’t know whether to pray for
her to still be alive or to mercifully be dead. Be careful my bright Star, Unci
loves her Wicahpi.”
Unci
Mercedes was both traditional and Christian. A
crucifix hung in each of the four tiny rooms of her cozy cabin. Her great-great
grandfather built the cabin around the turn of the twentieth century with hand-hewn
logs of Ponderosa Pine taking from a ridge of hills and bluffs giving the Pine
Ridge its name. She’d been sent to boarding school as a little girl and was
cared for by loving but ultra-strict Jesuit Sisters who discouraged and meted
out punishment for anything traditional or secular and not strictly Roman
Catholic. Her parents were fluent speakers and Mercedes spoke too, but this was
not encouraged by the Sisters.
Earlier, Mercedes had attended
a female sweat,
purifying herself and praying for her sister’s daughter— Celeste and also for Wicahpi
her blessed Star, whom she loved above all others. And now she knelt on her
aged knees beside her bed, with rosary beads in her wrinkled hands, weeping to
her Jesus to please continue looking over her loved ones.
Star stood in the long line
of EBT shoppers
waiting to pay for two or more weeks of groceries with her EBT card. This
usually took fifteen or so minutes. Star picked up a recent issue of the Lakota
Country Times to help pass the time as she patiently waited her turn in
line of pregnant grocery carts. An article on the front page riveted her
attention. From what she read, it seemed as though there had been a rash of
killings both on and surrounding Indian Country the past couple of weeks.
Two mangled men were found
in Porcupine, one of
them Lakota and the other Hispanic. A white man was found just inside
the Martin housing cluster, with his head twisted backwards and all of his
cervical vertebrae shattered. No witnesses.
An abandoned white van with
tinted windows was
found near Lake Sylvan in the Black Hills. Later, hikers found the mutilated
remains of three Caucasian males dismembered, half-eaten and strewn about in
the surrounding rocks and forest and even up near the pinnacle of the trees.
Five ligatured, blindfolded
and gagged Lakota
wiyans were found locked in the back of the van. They’d been abducted in
Minneapolis and from what they could tell were en route to Seattle, Washington
for a boat-ride overseas. They heard god-awful growls and noises which deafened
even the screams of their abductors. But they saw nothing of the deadly
assailant. Authorities could find no sign of the killer. The scene was rife
with strange unidentifiable clumps of fur and indistinct tracks resembling at
times those of a large ungulate and others, some sort of canid and yet
elongated and almost human-like but which, of course, was impossible.
* *
*
The waxing gibbous moon,
looking over the
chalky bluffs of Manderson, was witness to the scene. Inside the Inipi ceremony,
spirits revealed truths to Alfonso Bisclavret, as he poured living water on
rocks of heated lava, truths which made him grunt and snort and howl with rage.
The old medicine man’s sinews contracted with new-found vigor and life and the
scar on his belly blazed red in the steamy atmosphere of his buffalo-hide
shrine as his entire body was bathed and baptized in the steam and sweat and
salty tears flowing from his eyes.
* *
*
Star loads the back end
of the Ambassador
wagon, gets behind the wheel of Isaiah and points his pea-green nose towards
Wounded Knee. Home is nestled along the meandering banks of White Horse Creek
just about a quarter of a mile off the main thoroughfare. About four miles out
of Manderson, powwow
music playing on KILI radio—straight from Porcupine Bluff, Isaiah begins to
sputter. Star sees the red check-battery-lamp light up her dashboard; she hears
a pop and Isaiah’s motor goes silent and she steers and coasts him to a dirt
approach alongside the road. “Damn, what just happened.” Using the flashlight
function on her cellphone, Star checks beneath the hood. “There the culprit is,
or actually isn’t,” Star thinks, staring at where the alternator belt should
be, but wasn’t. “Just can’t believe it, another broken fan belt.”
Star swipes the call button
for her Uncle Bruce
before realizing it will do her no good. “Damn, figures I’d get stranded in the
one dead zone between Wounded Knee and Manderson,” she mutters to herself.
“Well, I guess there’s enough moonlight to see by, so I better get to hoofing
it. Bruce will just have to bring me straight-back in his pick-up for the
groceries at least. Might be morning before we can bring Isaiah home.”
* *
*
Rejuvenated and purified,
the ancient man of
indigenous nature crawls forth from the womb of his sacred place. The spirits
had spoken to him and he was concerned. Evil had entered the reservation and he
sensed that once again the sacred wiyans of his people were in danger.
He sensed it in the screeching of the red owl, the howling of the coyotes and
even the bloodred orange of the moon seemed to be crying, warning him of
immanent evil wickedness close by.
* *
*
Wicahpi heard
the low rumblings of a burnt-out muffler
as it topped the hill facing her. It sounded familiar—almost comforting and
like one of a hundred different vehicles she’d driven or ridden in across the
remote reaches of the reservation. It might even be that of her Uncle’s. The
silver gibbous moon floated above the paint-peeled silver Dodge Caravan as it
approached her, and Star stood in the middle of the road feeling relieved,
frantically waving her rescuer down. The vehicle slowly approached her; Star
noticed the paint-peeled hood was nearly entirely bald on the driver’s side
while the passenger side of the hood looked pristine. Her brown eyes took a
quick glance at the plates and her false sense of relief immediately morphed
from euphoria to fear: Green Colorado plates.
The first man, the driver,
stepped out of the
rumbling Caravan, the light of the gibbous moon eerily reflecting off his
silver lenses and his nearly hairless head. The second man, a well-dressed and
athletic-looking man, stepped in front of the minivan, illuminated like a god
in the headlights, his beard and mustache well-trimmed and his smile large and
welcoming. Luna gazed down upon the scene with waxing suspicion.
Bisclavret galloped along
the chalky piney
bluffs above Manderson, meandering his way down into the valley which lay
between the villages of Manderson and Wounded Knee. He stopped on a rise, the
orange moon looking over his shoulder, snorted and sniffed and raised his huge
head, wreathed in a crown of horn, and caught the scent of her fear in the
northwesterly wind as it filtered through his foam-flecked nostrils and noticed
also the cloying scent of wicked Wasicu-lust increasing ever stronger as
the seconds passed by.
Star, the Moon and the entire
Universe watched
as the two gentlemen slowly approached her. “Can we help you little lady,” the
driver offered, his voice raspy and breathy. “Never mind him,” a voice like
Elvis’ followed-up, “It’s obvious you can use our help. Are you broke-down or
did you run out of gas? We have a couple of gallons in the back of old
Silver-bell here and we always carry our tools with us.”
Wicahpi’s
peripheral vision noticed the
bald-one making an obscene tug to the waxing bulge of his denim crotch in
reaction to his comrade’s comment as he followed-up with, “We sure as hell do
ma’am.” And he tugged once again, smiling like a Cheshire cat.
The gait of the transfigured
Lakota shaman
increased exponentially, as the midnight denizen closed the gap between the
white cliffs of Manderson and the snow-laden valley juxtaposed alongside the
meandering banks of White Horse Creek, and still the gluttonous gibbous sphere
of celestial maternity maintained its position poised directly above his shaggy
shoulder.
Star tried to run, but her
feet would not
cooperate. She could smell the sweaty lust permeating the air she breathed as an
arctic breeze wafted the vile odor from the loins of the denim clad one violating
the senses of her pasú. Wicahpi wrinkled her nose trying to rid
it of the offensive smell and finally her legs cooperated as she slogged and trudged
across the snowy wasteland—the Colorado bastards closing on her heels.
“Slow down Miss, hold
up, we just want to help
you,” she heard the soothing reassuring syllables of the attractive demigod
behind here. Star’s body crumpled beneath the weight and stench of the glabrous
one. “Listen you little bitch,” swore her would-be rapist. “You can scream if
you want, I likes it when they screams, I loves it when they screams. It makes
me hard baby, oh so hard. Scream for me bitch, scream.”
And Wicahpi screamed
with every fiber of
her being. And she fought and she clawed at the blue beady eyes of her
assailant and her nails drew blood and her face was douched in vitreous humor
as one of her unpainted nails broke and imbedded itself in the muck of an
imploded eye of the Colorado demon bent on violating her.
A large grey-feathered owl
perched outside the
window of a small log cabin and called, hooting incessantly. And the ancient Lakota
Unci hearing the messenger of impending death crawled, alarmed, from out
beneath the star-quilt covering her bed. And Unci Mercedes, once again
knelt upon her aged knees beside her bed with rosary in her grandmother hands
and prayed to Tunkasila like she’d never prayed before. Never before had
the harbinger of death spoken so clearly to her, as he did that night through the
windowpane. And Unci Mercedes’ voice raised up wailing its prayers of
lament as she wept and wept and wept for her beloved Wicahpi.
And for a moment Star thought
she heard the
golden voice of Elvis rising-up over the mingled screams of her own and those
of her assailant’s before realizing it was just the Presley impersonator
mocking her with his acapella vocal rendition of: You are Always on My Mind.
Both zippers gaped open
and the circumcised
member of the Colorado demigod lay entirely beneath the moonlight, exposed in
all is glory, just as magnificently proportioned and perfectly precision-made
as the rest of his sculpted body but the uncircumcised one’s was bent and bumpy
and red and scabby and the most-perfectly hideous thing her eyes had ever
purveyed. And Star screamed again and again and vomited as her pants were being
torn from her body and cold naked cringy hands touched her like she never ever
wanted to be touched.
And then one of the rarest
of all
meteorological events ushered in, with the crack of a lighting-bolt—thunder
snow. All eyes averted to the blinding flash, even Star’s, which split the
heavens, then cowered in fear at the illuminated vision of the primordial behemoth
bestiary metamorphosing before their terrified eyes.
Bisclavret’s massive
bearded, red-eyed head
rose up on hind quarters bellowing like a locomotive. His head shook; his
entire body quivered as he morphed and soared up towards the golden gibbous
moon on electrified pinions of blues, greens, golds, oranges and reds. His
voiced screeched like an approaching fourth-of-July bottle-rocket as he
plummeted, talons outstretched—raking the face of the bald-headed one to laser-like
precision ribbons of flesh. And disappeared beyond the reach of Luna’s decerning
eyes.
Up from Unci Earth
arose an Ursid like
mass, void of any reflection, not unlike a blackhole, even beneath the
illuminating candela of a solar-powered gibbous moon. With a nondescript nebulous
limb of stygian blackness, it grasped the hairless one by the bulge of his
jeans, tossing the blood-drenched dying mass of humanity, head-over-heels, a
good hundred yards from its would-be victim.
The midnight shadow turned,
shifting once again
into the lupine nightmare of antiquity as it slowly and menacingly approached
the immaculate one—demon facing god. The hairy, Holy hell-spawn went straight
for the jugular, severing the vile vein of the progeny of manifest destiny:
bathed in the blasphemous baptismal blood of her vanquished foe, glowing
bloodred beneath the countenance of her lycanthropic mother. And then to the
entrails and finally the genitals of her carnivorous repast before she loped
beyond the waning light of the waxing gibbous moon over Manderson.
Glossary of Lakota Terms in Oder of Appearance
Tasúnka Witko (horse that is
crazy…Crazy Horse)
Kolas (close friends…almost
like family)
Yuwipi (ceremony involving
the tying up and releasing of a shaman
by spirits)
Heyoka (a clown or backwards
person often considered powerful or
mystical)
Wakan (sacred or holy)
Unci (grandmother)
Wicahpi (star)
Lakota (a tribe of Indigenous
people residing on the North
American Plains)
Lala (grandfather)
Tiyospaye (extended family)
Lecci (uncle)
Tunkasila (Great Spirit-Grandfather-God-Creator)
Wiyans (woman)
Inipi (a purification
ceremony conducted inside of a sweat-lodge)
Wasicu (the white man…literal
meaning is “taker of the fat”)
Pasú (nose)
