Winter Day in the Bad Times
by Janet Shell Anderson


Byron D. looks at what he has listed, notes he really doesn’t need since he’s lived most of it. He’s working on a speech to explain what has been happening on the reservation, why it’s been called the murder capital of the U.S. The speech is going to be televised. He’s excited. So he’s up at 6 a.m., drinking coffee, working. His wife, only twenty one, his little daughters, are in the back room, asleep. He’s a good lawyer, young, smart, going to be known. He’s Lakota, an activist, an American Indian Movement supporter, from Wambli, South Dakota. Tough. People respect him. He believes in what he does, would never do anything else.

He puts the yellow legal pad down, finishes the coffee. The speech can wait. He’s giving it in a week. He’s got to get going as soon as it’s light. He needs to drive eighty miles to Rapid City to talk to a possible witness.  

This time he isn’t defending anyone but trying to find out who killed a friend. Two days earlier, Wednesday, January 28th, a boy Byron went to school with, Winston Quiver, was murdered with an ax. Men broke into his house near the old church, kicked in the door, slaughtered Winston. Like Byron, he was an AIM activist, although he didn’t do much, but did stick it out at the Wounded Knee siege. 

The word in the village of Wambli is the FBI claimed Quiver’s murder was a domestic dispute. But Winston Quiver lived alone, except for a mongrel puppy. It was slaughtered too.

“Don’t kill the dog,” Byron thinks. “Kill all the family, friends, neighbors, but don’t kill the dog. White juries hate that.” White juries decide rez murder cases.

Old Man Lip, a strange man, came to Byron’s door last night. Old Man Lip is very traditional, doesn’t usually come to Byron’s house. Maybe he doesn’t like lawyers.  

“You got to do something about this. The GOONs did this.”

“Did you see anything?” The old man makes a gesture. What can he see? He’s half blind. Byron knows it was a stupid question, worse, insulting. He’s tired, off his game. “Do you know anything?”

“Talk to Stanley Whitemagpie.Tonight,” the old man says. “Don’t wait. Someone is watchin’ your house.”

Right. Byron hears this all the time, never believes it. Things are bad enough. The reservation is violently divided. The Guardians of the Oglala Nation, known as the GOONs, support the ousted tribal president. The GOONs have been seen in Wambli, where the president is not liked. Most people in the village support AIM, the protests, the effort to change things for what Byron believes is better.  

So it’s a bitter morning, snow all over the roads, and Highway 44 slick. The wind booms across bare pastures, rips through Ponderosa pines fringing the hilltops, plumes great white mare’s tail clouds in a cobalt sky over the Badlands Wall.  

No one is on the road. That’s not unusual around Wambli, village of five hundred Lakota, especially on a morning like this. He gets his old Pontiac into gear, tries to start the heater. The windows cloud up. No defroster, Byron opens a window.

He can’t spend too much time on this, one day, no more, because he has the speech next week and a trial coming up. His mind is more on the trial prep than on the murder; he doesn’t want to think about Winston. God, the guy never had much of a break, parents both dead, raised by an aunt, poorer than most, not especially smart, but was good hearted, a gentle sort of guy. Byron always liked him. Winston wandered around between Kyle and Wambli, Pine Ridge and Manderson, working on ranches, managing cattle, horses. He was really good with horses. He worked on one particular ranch where one of the tribal president’s brothers lived, Byron remembered. Winston had a tendency to walk into rooms uninvited, see and hear things he shouldn’t. He was famous for walking into the girls’ bathroom by mistake at school when he was nine. Kidded forever about it. 

Winston probably heard or saw something he shouldn’t have that brought on the GOON visit. Maybe not, though. Byron knows never to make up his mind about a case. He learned the hard way in court when he first started practicing law. Lost. Didn’t get paid.

Mind on the road. The car swerves. Ice. An oncoming car swings around a curve, roars downhill, skis toward the centerline, swerves back. Byron has no time for this.  

The car comes almost alongside, and Byron sees what he should have seen sooner, a gun sticking out of the back window. It blasts. His windshield shatters, and he feels the shock, pain. His car skids into the ditch, turns sideways, slams into the bank. The driver’s door pops opens, and Byron falls out, lands in snow, both legs spurting blood.

He hears the car turn on the highway and come back. The shotgun booms again; they miss. Thank God, thank God. But he can’t get up; his right leg is shattered. Bright arterial blood soaks his left leg, hip, hands. The car is gone. The road is empty. For a moment he can see all the way to the Bear in the Lodge Creek ravine, sees the curved white clouds over the hillside, the rise of the Badlands, the blink of sun on ice, beautiful, huge, distant as the end of time, the flash and glitter of light tremendous, silent, an ordinary scene, one he has seen over and over, now his one last time. 

Shot. He doesn’t believe it. Pain doubles him up. 

Everything is wrong. His wife. His daughters. He has to get to them. He breathes fast, can’t get his breath, can’t see. 

The great visionary white world snow dazzle goes black.











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