A Horse Named Sorrow

39

169 39 Even­ tu­ ally, I ­ reached a small town ­ called Prine­ ville, and I was back in sage­ brush high ­ desert with its ­ grasses and oc­ ca­ sional pines. I found a diner, and while scarf­ing a bur­ ger and fries, I no­ ticed a ban­ ner ­ across the ­ street an­ nounc­ ing that the Prine­ ville Pub­ lic Li­ brary was hav­ ing its an­ nual sale. As I al­ ways liked to walk ­ around a bit after eat­ ing, I ­ headed over to look ­ around. It was ­ pretty much what I’d ex­ pected: bin after bin of cheap trade paper­ backs and ­ best-seller-caliber hard­ backs with ­ glossy jack­ ets: Da­ nielle Steel, Ju­ dith ­ Krantz, Tom ­ Clancy, Mi­ chael Crich­ ton, and ­ Jackie Col­ lins. What a world. Then I saw some­ thing I ­ didn’t ex­ pect: face out, once again as if talk­ ing to me, was that book that had asked me back in San Fran­ cisco to bury its heart. I’d never con­ sid­ ered read­ ing it, and ­ couldn’t ­ besides with that big hole in the mid­ dle of it, so I’d ended up burn­ ing it in the fire­ place and had put it in a lit­ tle stuff sack and ­ packed it, with the vague no­ tion of grant­ ing its wish if I ever came upon ­ Wounded Knee. I ­ picked up the book and ­flipped ­ through the table of con­ tents, and it was like Dor­ o­ thy wak­ ing from the dream of Oz. There was Chief Jo­ seph and Crazy Horse, and Sit­ ting Bull and the Sioux and the Kla­ math that Cher­ rie Kee had men­ tioned in ref­ er­ ence to Eu­ gene. I ­ bought it for fifty cents. And I sat down on the curb next to my bike and ­ started to read. Lis­ ten O nobly born to what I tell you now . . . Yet an­ other book of the dead. 170 I’d never been par­ tic­ u­ larly inter­ ested in In­ dians. I ­ didn’t like those old mo­ vies. The In­ dians were al­ ways run­ ning ­ around too much, chas­ ing peo­ ple and mak­ ing an­ noy­ ing war ­ whoops. They made me ner­ vous. Of­ course, I knew ­ vaguely ­ they’d been ­ screwed roy­ ally by a Man­ i­ fest Des­ tiny–ob­ sessed ac­ ro­ nym that I was a mem­ ber of—but I’d never been cu­ ri­ ous about the de­ tails. Like my mom that way. She ­ didn’t know a thing about ’Nam or what the ­ father of her child died for. Bet­ ter not to con­ sider what God and coun­ try were ca­ pable of. I ­ leafed ­ through the Ed­ ward Cur­ tis photo­ graphs. Wow, those Sioux were hot; I mean they had some pres­ ence. A bunch of dan­ dies with a lot of con­ fi­ dence. Fab­ u­ lous out­ fits, with sea­ shells for armor and lots of feath­ ers. They even ­ called them­ selves birds, and they ­ called them­ selves some­ thing else too . . . a horse peo­ ple, a horse na­ tion. And I sat there for two or more hours, on the curb, in the shade of a lit­ tle tree, read­ ing about the Sioux, about the ­ broken trea­ ties, the sub­ ter­ fuge, the greed for gold, and the kill­ ing of the buf­ falo. It had the mak­ ings of a se­ ri­ ously ­ tragic opera from the start, with a final aria by Cus­ ter, or Crazy Horse, or Sit­ ting Bull, or all three. The Sioux were­ nobody’s fools, and over a se­ ries of years they won not just bat­ tles but an ac­ tual war ­ against the ac­ ro­ nym, burn­ ing down all the ­ American forts in the Pow­ der River coun­ try and forc­ ing the ­ acronym’s army to re­ treat and even sue for peace. And here I ­ thought Viet­ nam was the first war they lost. The ­ Lakota’s (the ­ Sioux’s real name in their own lan­ guage) world­ seemed to be the great­ est ex­ pres­ sion of free­ dom—a way of life that was in no way lim­ ited or con­ fined by oth­ ers. In bat­ tle they ­ counted coup. It­ wasn’t about mur­ der or an­ ni­ hi­ la­ tion or gen­ o­ cide so...