REZ's EDGE

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Chapter 2 — The Offering

  

 

Light.  There is light.  Light becoming very bright behind the skin of my closed eyelids.  My eyes crack open at the speed of a clam and see that we are driving east towards the rising sun.  East?  What the?  “Dad, why is the sun up?  Why are we going east?”

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Looking over at my Father, I shudder.  It isn't my Father driving.  It is Big-Chief!  Slamming my body up against the passenger door, I try to get as far away as I can from the big Indian man.

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It is he, but Big-Chief is different.  He's changed his clothes.  He is wearing a buckskin shirt adorned with a porcupine breastwork piece.  He has only a breech cloth covering his manhood.  It is tied with a sinew rope about his waist.  His reddish-brown skinned legs are glinting with his own healthy human oils.  His feet upon the accelerator and floor board are covered with animal hide moccasins.  He also wears a single eagle feather tied into his hair that droops and flows downward with the breeze that is coming through his cracked open window.  His hair is no longer the messy dirty hair he formerly wore.  Now it is clean and shiny.  He looks younger too.  More clear.  Alert.

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“I'm taking you to meet the chiefs of the native people. You are the vessel that will atone for the sins of your people against mother earth, the great spirit, and the true human beings of these lands.  Your blood will be shed so that all others of Anglo-European descent can be forgiven for their sins and we all can live as one in peace and harmony from this day forward.  You shall be the sacrificial lamb.”

 

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My body is violently thrown forward and my head smashes against the dashboard.  The seat belt strap across my body feels like it is trying to saw me in half.  All is dark except for streaks of light, and in an instant I hear crunching, grinding, shredding, ripping, total utter chaos, and my own screams ripping from my lungs.  Shrapnel hits and tears at my face and body.  Then it all comes to a stop.

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It is night and all is quiet except for the loud thumping inside my chest that causes my temples to pulse with the beat.  Gravity is reversed and trying to pull my body into the top of the Thunderbird's cab and headliner.  The drumming increases and crescendos.  Stars explode inside my head and then....  Blackness.

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We sit at each of the four directions.  One to the north, one to the south, one to the east, and one to the west.  All facing inward.  Each wearing his own animal skins.  Big-Chief, Gray-Bud, Stain-Savage and I, cross legged and on the ground.  I face towards the west and can observe the sun just slipping below the horizon.

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Big-Chief begins, “You, the lamb, have been spared.  Your Shepherd has sacrificed himself so that you might live to see the day that each of our peoples will become as one family.”

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My Shepherd?  Who's my...

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Then I see him.  My Father.  My Shepherd.

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He is naked and attached to a large lodgepole imbedded into the ground.  Thin lines tied to the top of the pole are pulled taught against my Fathers weight.  His feet are on the ground, but his knees are buckled.  Pieces of animal bone have been pierced through the flesh above each of his nipples on his chest.  The lines are attached to both sides of each bone and hold my Fathers weight, pulling the more slender top of the lodge pole back in an arcing bow.  The skin of his chest is pulled up and away from his body, trying to almost climb each of the lines.  The weight of his head pulls his skull almost upside down with his chin pointed to the sky.  His arms hang limp and his finger tips just touch the ground.  Pieces of flesh have been stripped from his arms, his legs, his torso, his back.  Raw flesh is exposed in multiple military stripes up and down his entire body.  Blood drips from the wounds and trickles down his legs and arms and finger tips.  It pools on the ground below him.

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Big-Chief continues, “He himself sacrificed his own flesh. He bravely pulled off strips of his own flesh in sacrifice to mother earth, the great spirit, to the unification of all our peoples, and for you.  He did so with honor and did not cry out once.  He hung from the lodgepole from the crack of dawn and his eyes followed the sun in its arc across the sky until it set in the west.  He brings dignity to you.  He is Dakota.  You are Dakota.  We are one.”

 

 

 

It starts slowly.  A tiny little pin prick that grows into an ice pick and then a dagger in my skull.  I writhe in excruciating pain and heave vomit from my stomach that runs from my nose, into my eyes, across my forehead, and into my hair.  The stomach acid drips off my hair and into the headliner of the vehicle.  My skull throbs in pain in unison with my heartbeat.

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My body hurts everywhere, from toe to head, from asshole to elbow.  But I feel terrible pressure at my right collar bone.  The brunt of my weight is supported at that boney prominence.  There and across my hips, but it's worse at my collar bone.

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I hear things.  Engines.  Mechanical things.  Dripping things. Rustling things.  Voices.  Moaning.  No, distant wailing.  I sense light flickering around me.  I smell vomit, gasoline, grass, burning oil, dirt, blood, electrical scorching, urine, weeds, and defecation.

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The wailing is coming closer.  It shoves the dagger in my head deeper.  My eyes feel like they want to explode out of my skull to escape the pain.  All I can see is blurred darkness and a few intermittent flashes of light.  I cannot focus.  Not my eyes, and not my thoughts.

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More light flashes.  Rustling.  Crushing turf.  Footsteps.  Bright white light in my face.  A voice.

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“We'll get you outta' there.”  

 

Out of where?  Where am I?  Who am I?  What am I?  I am only pain.  Pain is all I am.

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“Don't try to move.”  “They're almost here.”  “Can you speak?”

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Can I speak?  “Unghhh,” is all that escapes my mouth.  My tongue feels like baked flesh, and like it's been stung by a wasp and swelling.  I don't think I could formulate a word even If I could make my mind think of one to say.

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The wailing has become a scream.  A scream of the siren and then it stops.  I hear more voices.  Car doors opening and slamming shut.  There is more wailing; very faint and off in the distance again.  More rustling, and trampling coming my way.  The wail grows slightly.  More footsteps.  The light in my face goes away.

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“The boy's conscious.  We need to get'm out of there.”

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“What's the status of the driver?”

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“Not good.”

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Driver?  What driver?  More light in my face.

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“Son.  We're with the Randallville Emergency Medical Technician Team.  You've been in an automobile accident.  Can you speak?”

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I think.  My mind formulates the word.  The correct answer is yes.  I fight through the pain, the baked swollen tongue, and attempt to say the word.  It's raspy and dry, but there it is, “Yes.”

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“Can you tell us your name?”

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My name?  Pain is my name.  No, that's just what I am in.  My name?  What is my name?  Don't I have a name?

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Things are getting blurry.  The light gets blurry.

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“It's okay son.  Just try and relax.  We are going to get you outta therrrrrrrrrrrr..................”

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Blackness.

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I feel hands upon me, touching me, manipulating me.

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The dagger is shoved from the base of my skull and down into the spinal column at the middle of my back.  I scream bloody murder from deep within.

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“He's conscious again.” “Hang in there son.  We're extracting you from the vehicle soon.”

 

Son?  That's not my Father's voice.

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There's a yank from underneath my arms.  The Machete whacks into my shoulder at the clavicle and I find the word that I should not know, but do, “FAAAAAAAWWWWWWK!”

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Lights are flickering about within the vehicle and before they can pull me out I see him.  “Dad!”

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He was the driver.  He's still hanging upside down by his seatbelt in the cab of the Thunderbird.  There is blood.  Lots of blood.  His head protrudes from a lake of blood.  Blood that comes from his skull where the sheet metal is split and has cut through his scalp and his skull.

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“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo......................................!”

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Blackness........