Dragonfly Dance

My Grandfather Was a New Initiate

14 My Grandfather Was a New Initiate My grandfather was a new initiate at the Ft. Totten Indian boarding school. He was told he had to steal a can of tomatoes, a sweet fruit to these hungry little boys in the dorm. Down the cement stairs, past the headmaster’s studio with its own bath, into the Dakota dark he stumbled across Cavalry Square to the outside kitchen shed door, fumbled for the hanging string, down the narrow stairs, grabbed the heavy can and lit out into the steel arm of the headmaster. They brought me to the magazine room where a barrel was strung across. I had to lay over it, and two bigger boys held my arms. The little boys had to watch. The headmaster whipped my bare back with a rubber hose. Uh, uh! I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch my breath. I passed out. The boys said they had to hold me up for one more whip. At Ft. Totten today red bricks crumble beneath white paint. Name plaques on the buildings recognize its days as a fort and then a boarding school. 15 Standing inside the black powder/flour storage room, it’s small, maybe ten by ten. How did all the little boys fit? As I stood and wept, the hot July winds gathered forces from across the plains and hurled like warriors into the square, an arrow soaked in gunpowder, lit, aimed and the room exploded around me, the bricks a liquid red. ...