The Bones of Paradise by Jonis Agee Page B

mother, and try to help her home. I start back to camp, must ease past bodies stiffening in the cold night air. I had not known so many were undone.
    As I get closer, the field is alive with movement. Wovoka was right! We are reborn! The bullets didn’t tear into our ghost shirts, didn’t kill our flesh, we are unharmed! A man scrambles to his feet, holding up the eagle talon necklace that Black Coyote wore, and the beaded moccasins his mother made for him, ah, the scavengers, like crows they cover the dead, stealing what doesn’t belong to them, sending my people into the next world naked and full of pain. They strip the bodies of everything, even the hair. This they do to women and children who have not made war upon them, while the cavalry eats and drinks at their fires like warriors who have done a good day’s battle on innocents, sick and old, so few young men here anymore, and now I have no past, no future, the husband I am promised still running, though the back of his head is blown apart, his legs seem to churn beneath him in the dirty cold.
    That night I go back to the badger hole, climb in, and dream half a dream, in which I tell the hummingbirds that they must fly in the four directions of the winds and tell all the people what has happened here at Čhankpé Ópi Wakpála,, let the world know of the slaughter. It is growing light when I remember to look for the object the thin man dropped by my mother before he left. It is a yellow chain with a round disc that opens to reveal tiny pictures of a white woman and skinny man. I put it over my head and tuck it in my blouse. The murderers were too drunk on blood to search her, so I am able to find the beaded deerskin turtle she wears around her waist that holds my mother’s life cord. I find her large knife in its sheath on her thigh and wonder why she did not reach for it. I pull off her tattered, bloody ghost shirt, fold it carefully, and place it inside my dress.
    There is nothing I can give her except to cut a hank of my braid and tuck it in her hand that she may use my life spirit to carry her home. I kiss her bloody cheek, cover her face with my blanket, and know that where I am going, there will be warmthand food. I begin to walk, carefully avoiding the men who search the dead for booty, half-starved for the last feather, the last bone necklace, the last deer-foot whistle, the last ragged pants, the last half-torn belt with the beads falling off like bread crumbs for the people to follow into the earth. We do not bury our dead. We do not! They need their funeral rituals! I want to shout at them, but I must stay quiet and scuttle along like a mouse, unseen, unheard, until I reach the church at the trading post, where I will find what people remain alive. I will tell them how our people were loaded on wagons like twisted limbs fallen off dead trees, and carried to pits and dumped while dirt was piled on top, their spirits crying out for help so loudly I had to cover my ears, and all the others cover theirs and weep silently. Finally we understand the malice of the angels their god sends.
    You might think this is the end of my story, but it continues for the next ten years until one day I saw skinny man again. He came into the trading post, asked to speak with the Indian agent, and pulled out a coin purse, made a show of it as if daring anyone to ask. Our people recognized the shame and turned away. My heart thumped hard and seemed to stop. It didn’t matter, I said my prayer to my mother’s spirit, pulled out the locket, and let it sit on my blouse where he might notice it.
    The night before I went to meet him for the third time, Rose, I told you that I was going to see a white man who had something of our mother’s that he wanted to return. I never had the chance to tell you the rest. You see how you must send the story of wrong out into the world, but since the hummingbirds don’t come when I die, I am telling you now.
    I