stories from Last Barn Standing

C a u g h t   in   a   b r o k e n   f in g e r   o f   t h e   o l d   r a k e ,  a trio of seed pods long to join their sisters in the leaf pile. I’m too young to feed the fire, or so my father tells me as he flicks an ash off the end of his cigar. He loves this moment, this well-earned peace as he feeds his beloved burn can on a quiet October morning. I stand close to him smelling the smoke from past fires on his jacket. “I hear geese,” he whispers and while we listen, he wraps his free arm around my shoulder, smiling, “You can pitch those in now, if you like.” I open my hand. Two are stuck to each other, their woven skin and tendrils embracing while the third pod stares at me from its darkened sockets. I can’t help but wonder if they realize how near the end of their journey they are. I decide to hold onto the three sisters tightly, not giving them up to the pile just yet, bearing the pain as I crush their pinpoint pinions in my fist.

“It’s time,” father nods as he lifts the lid of the burn can with the pole end of the rake. As I move closer to the fire, I am taunted by the sirens’ high pitch whistles, their flaming tongues darting in and out of the rust-seared holes as if licking blackened wounds. Casting fear aside I release the pods; in they go, one by one - pop, pop, pop!

As I look up at my father for reassurance, the sinew of white smoke rises from his cigar and joins the trail from the fire drifting on that same wind the geese told us about. Breaking free of my protector I follow its tail as it travels toward the street where the sweet gum trees stand like sentries to our home. Dutifully, I stop short of the curb just in time to watch the smoke lace the sculpted branches above me as if in prayer; a blessing on the last of the pods as they fall at my feet – the diehards, the faithful. 

Sebastopol Grange #306

December 19, 2016

“…oh sister, let’s go down, let’s go down, down to the river to pray,”

The Appalachian traditional song rocked the Grange with its redwood trusses and roof boards holding fast against the bitter, cold night in Northern California. 

Cold is a relative word. For the sixty or seventy natives who gathered that night in this West County hall, temperatures dipping outside the walls into the thirties were a mild inconvenience in comparison to the reports of 30 below from the scouts who just returned from Standing Rock.

Water cannons sound like a plastic toy on eBay. They’re not. Mechanics of these riot control devices are painfully simple – hook hoses to a gas-powered generator, build pressure to draw water from a large source - like a river for example - then release the water with a force of a fire hose. On November 21, 2016, water cannons were trained on the water protectors who occupied the road feeding the bridge over the river to their reservation. Winter had kicked in the door in North Dakota; temperatures were well below freezing. Over 400 people were sprayed by the water cannons that night. The fifty or so who sought help in the Wellness yurt couldn’t get their clothes off fast enough; icicles clinging to braids and eyebrows even as they told the healers how they didn’t feel the cold; at least, not right away.

The gentle slave spiritual tolled the voices in the room.

“…oh mother, let’s go down, let’s go down, down to the river to pray,”

The Veterans arrived in force to the Standing Rock encampment on December 5th on a heroes’ mission, just in time to spit in the face of the federal government’s well-publicized deadline to close off the area at Cannonball River. Unprepared for the elements like so many others, the over 2,000 Vets who joined the camp were also far from comprehending an equally important dynamic of their deployment. This was a Prayer Camp run on Indian Time, a concept remote from both ‘Colonial’ breeding and military clocks.

“…it’s a stew,”

said the speaker, a woman named Judy. Judy is a healer who spent the past month working in the Herbal-Wellness yurt. Her articulate, calm voice rattled off the daily components of the occupation to give us some idea – constant drones and helicopters overhead; snipers on the hilltops with rifles trained on them; agitators infiltrating the camps to incite and disrupt. PTSD rampant among the ‘protectors’.

The gospel chorus takes a defiant turn,

“…oh protectors, let’s go down, let’s go down, down to the Missouri to pray.”

Judy continued her report,

  some of the indigenous men arrested were stuffed into dog kennels while others were strip-searched and humiliated;

  rubber bullets were targeted on women demonstrators causing unspeakable pain;

  tear gas canisters thrown at protestor’s heads split them wide open.

“…prophecy,”

a troubling word voiced by the drummer, Adam. Not easily understood by most of us although he tried to explain. His voice was calm like Judy’s only more deep and low. It was when he sang traditional prayers to the rhythms of his drum his voice was not his voice, instead it was high and visceral; part human, part Earth. 

Adam credits his wife for the words, for searing their meaning into his songs. His wife stands next to him, shy, traditional. The youth had called them to Standing Rock, he said. The ‘youth’ for Adam and his wife took the shape of their three sons. Their two grown sons had left for Standing Rock on their own but it was the youngest, a senior in high school, who would make his parents leave their jobs, secure the blessing from his teachers and gas money from his grandmother. It was the third son who reunited his family in North Dakota 1500 miles from their home.

Judy got the call during meditation. 

Adam got the call from his sons.

“Let David speak!” a woman in the back of the room shouted out.

A quiet man of years, a Native American and a veteran cloaked in his Army green parka arose from his chair. Long black and gray hair, thick and unruly, carried a road-weary David to the stage where he sat hunched between Adam and Judy to tell his story. 

“Vets are the weapons of the military machine,” David told the room quietly. He explained how the Vet is a warrior, whether native or non-native. The high-profile mission of the military veterans at Standing Rock was to act as a human shield between the police and the peaceful demonstrators. David tells us that put in such a position, the Vet will react; it’s their training, it’s their nature.

A blizzard pushed the Veterans deep into conflict only hours after they arrived, David tells us. In their retreat to the casino seven miles away from the camp they slept on cold floors for four nights.  “3000 vets and 1000 Indians in a bar is a volatile cocktail,” he went on. The fuse was set; it only needed to be lit by the instigators, the mercenaries charged to disrupt their mission. “It was an easy road for them,” he said sadly. David didn’t elaborate or if he did it was lost, his litany tangled in trauma. 

“If you have PTSD, don’t go to Standing Rock,” he warned, his voice rising. From that point on he spoke in a chaotic rhythms and phrases, his words coming through often alarming. I wondered how much of his words were mixed with past battles. 

“When I get the call, it’s going to be blood;” that was his prophecy.

Acting as an interpreter, Adam explained how the warrior is taking the path to peace at the Standing Rock.

“John Trudell’s spirit has come back with a vengeance,” he said defiantly, defusing David’s stories. Adam should know well the challenges and detours of peaceful resistance being of Dakota and Mexican heritage like Trudell and the first cousin of Dakota Sioux warrior, Leonard Peltier.

It was Judy who picked up the microphone while Adam quietly lit a bundle of sage and offered it to David. The surviving warrior took in the sacred smoke.

“Spiritual Healing is going on in the camps at Standing Rock,” Judy explained, “and that healing goes far beyond the threat of the Black Snake.” Her eloquent story took us beyond the oil pipeline standoff to a worldview where a conflagration of the illnesses has permeated our humanity. Judy described our path, the world’s path, as a child’s path through the birth canal. “The child believes it is going to die; only after sacrifice and pain comes the healing,” she explained.

That is what I heard in the Grange that night.

Adam’s closing drum prayer ended with a universal ‘ho!’. The leaders invited all in the room to join hands make a circle. It turned out to be more than a circle, even approaching the sacred hoop as we pushed out to the walls. With right hand over left hand we listened to a final prayer in the peaceful voice of a healer, the one who had been told by the leaders to return home to tell the stories. 

Following her prayer, hands were thrust into the air in celebration and unity, all but mine. My injured shoulder stopped halfway in pain. I apologized to the woman, a stranger, whose hand I still held. The beauty of it was if I hadn’t resisted I would not have seen her; not really. As best I can describe, she was a Kachina; living, breathing, tall, regal. I imagined by her dress and bearing she was far from home and yet somehow, she belonged in this remote Grange on that cold night in December. The Kachina smiled at me, our hands still locked, “Then a hug,” she whispered and we did.

From the parking lot, the Grange seemed quite small and isolated in the Laguna farmland but I saw it had its own protectors. The clear night sky had shifted all its stars into a cluster directly above the hall. That left the distance on this moonless night unforgiving; as if the Black Snake had coiled around us. I closed my eyes. I heard a flute playing softly, my breathing, a frog or two. When I finally adjusted to the darkness I found David walking the perimeter of the Grange with his flute, head bowed like a dog that had been beaten.