HomePoorbear
by Janet Shell Anderson
Before she died, Sun Rose said she saw an angel at Craven Creek. She told her grandfather. He doesn’t believe in angels.
The huge October moon lifts over Quiverhill, over Poorbear Lake, Bear in the Lodge Creek, over the Oglala Lakota village of Wambli on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Sam Poorbear walks down the path from Crazy Horse School toward the Badlands. A rez dog he feeds every day follows him. Both are old, alone. No one claims either of them anymore. Every night they make the trip. The prairie is pale gold under the strong moon. Sam’s hands shake. The old dog limps. Both were young under other autumn moons, a long time ago.
His granddaughter, Sun Rose, his delight, has died. She was four. Pneumonia. Wambli is a hard place. The nearest hospital is fifty miles away. His nephew Melford is gone too, not long ago. Melford lay down in Gethsemane Cemetery, by his mother’s grave, not feeling well, and died. He was only twenty two. The women in the village say he died of heartbreak when Alison Quiver married Tom Amiotte. Sam doesn’t believe that. In the years when Sam drank he used to believe in broken hearts. Now he doesn’t, although he could not say why.
It’s a peaceful night. Sam walks toward Craven Creek. He never drinks anymore, just walks the night, still strong enough, old as he is. The dog patters along. The hills are steep, the pasture dry. On the ridgeline, beyond the meadow, in the pines, it’s very dark except for thin strips of moonlight. Sam knows his way, comes out of the trees, looks down toward the creek, the Badlands, the Mako Sica, the evil place, pale as the moon. He’s near Ghost Canyon. He sees the three sticks tied in a tripod, red cloth, tobacco, his offering; he comes to it every night.
In the Badlands, in the moonlight, the night is so quiet, voiceless, not even a coyote cry, not even the air rush of a truck on the distant highway. The night is windless, still.
Then the dog howls.
Sam sees something: an edge of Badland wall, a smear of light on mudstone, a moving shadow of pines. He sees human shapes: Sun Rose, Melford, Constance, who was killed in a car crash near Interior, Marcia Rose, Sam’s young wife, dead years ago. He drank after that for a long time. Heartbroken.
Sam is not afraid of things that used to be, people that once were. He is not afraid of ghosts or visions, nightshadows or angels. Or just imagination, remembrance. He prays his soft Lakota prayer. The dog moves close, and the old man strokes its ears. He loves the dog, and it loves him. They will be all right. They endure.
Janet has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction, included in "All My Grandmothers Could Sing" a collection of poets, published a flash novel in
Fifth Wednesday, and flash fiction in Long Story Short, Cease Cows, decomP, Vestal Review, Grey Sparrow, The Citron Review, FRIGG and others. She is an attorney. Contact Janet.
