Jim Bauer 805 7th St Havre, MT 59501 Victor Four Winds (Deceased) INDIANS SCATTERED on DAWN'S HIGHWAY BLEEDING By W. C. Leadbeater and (the late) Victor Four Winds 1 PEYOTE, BE THE DEATH OF ME Outside Invisible City, on the Gros Ventre Reservation near Mandan, North Dakota, the peyote worshipers were gathered: lovely Tina Two Ways, so chic, braless in her leather vest; her brother George, apprentice to the sorceror: twin spirits sharing in the ceremony conducted by Jerome Four Feathers, the tribal medicine man. For a moment George thought of his lovely girlfriend Sophia, then his thoughts turned away from earthly things and he had a vision of a sex-serpent as the peyote bud was passed from person to person: Holy Communion. It is beautiful, Tina thought. Not the beauty the white man teaches...Father Vincent, that bigot--but our beauty, our pride, pride in our own Spirit: Now Sister Sun is shadow in the door, now the smoke of the peace pipe is acid in our lungs-- And colors deepened. Shadows ran, the places where shadows lay, under the rocks riverrun of dark asphalt, the Night like a mescaline autobahn. Then the priest, Father Vincent, stood in the tipi door, saying, "Suffer not the little children to come to me--but not this way, this blasphemy--this ungodly herb!" He scattered the fires, knocking shining points of light into blackness; sending them into darkness, but a colder, bleaker darkness as he broke the peace pipe, shattering their dreams with his violence and scattering their hopes of reaching the astral plane tonight. But not forever...this attack would not go unavenged, the sorcerer's apprentice was sure of it--he looked to his master for guidance but his master only looked at the shattered peace pipe. Tina shrieked. Her brother, George, put his arms around her--to comfort her. Where is Sophia when we need her? George thought, thinking of the last time he'd been with his woman--she'd begun to cool to him, the more deeply he got immersed into peyote; the gods and goddesses of Native American myth. The priest walked up to Jerome Four Feathers, the medicine man, kicking sand in his face and spitting on him. The Indian ignored him as if he wasn't there. "Fight!" Father Vincent screamed, putting up his dukes. "The Spirit is possessing me; I have the strength of ten--I will show you Indians the strength of the Lord!" Jerome said, "You may have the strength of ten, but what will you do when you confront the strength of Four? For there are but Four Directions, and the circle will take you to all of them." Jerome Four Feathers stood and came at Father Vincent with his rattles shaking, swaying in fancy dancing in the face of this violence from from Europe--this White man's religion--it is the culture of hypocrisy, of shambles, of shame, he thought, even as he said, "I will not fight you except with my gourds and my rattles; I will fight you in the sky, if you want to fight." Suddenly George was erect, jumping up, knocking the still high--as everyone except Father Vincent now saw the battle from the vista of a thousand yesterdays and a million tomorrows--to shout, "I will protect you, Jerome! I'll fight this damn madman who comes into our midst without tribal officers; I'll kick the shit out of..." Just then Chief Iron Heart stepped through the tipi door. "George," he said. "I loved you as a son, since your father died. You too, Tina. And even you, Jay Bluebird. And all the others who are here. But Father Vincent is here through my will. This drug madness--it has to stop. Drugs are dangerous, poison to the mind. If you lay one finger on Father Vincent, I will have you locked up by the tribal Police! Because the old priest is right. These cactuses--" he kicked over the bowl of peyote plants, "These cactuses are killing our people. If the Indian is to live in the white man's world he must be strong. He must not waste his time chasing the demons of a devil-religion or be weak like women and..." Tina stood, saying, "I am a woman, and I am proud. Chief Iron Heart, if you were not here, I would fight along with my brother--and my Spirit tells me you are wrong--our ancestors had medicine; this Priest worships a Dead God. And his death is eternal; there is no resurrection." The muscles of the slender woman were like iron bands as she stretched them in the Light that is above the All that came from the place where the fire had been as fire cascaded in the minds of the worshipers. "Leave this place," Iron Heart said to Father Vincent. "Your work here is done; you have scattered the Fire they worship and the devil-plant into the Fire--and the Fire burns it to ashes and..." "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," Father Vincent held his Bible over his heart as though it were a shield. Chief Iron Heart continued, "...and I will see that they eat no more peyote. You talk to them in Church; I will talk to them now, in their own language, in the Words of our ancestors--" Again, Father Vincent quoted the Bible, "And the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. I go quietly now--it is up to you to punish them for the sins of the Flesh!" Chief Iron Heart switched to Native Gros Ventre, began to lecture: "George! Tina! What is the meaning of this, raising your fists against my emissary? It was I who brought Father Vincent here; because we Indians--" Everybody giggled. They were seeing a different reality now, an alternate universe, and this battle--it seemed something of a different world...certainly it was: something out of the white man's world-- "Oh, what's the use of talking to you?" Iron Heart said, frustratedly. "You're all stoned. You're just like white punks on dope; you're just as bad as the crack gangs in the ghettos. Do you want to end up like them, in the nuthouse?" Then he turned and walked away in silence. Behind him, Tina called out, "Together, we is Stoned Immaculate!" and George called out, "Don't walk off so quietly...walk with Wakan Tanka!" After he was gone and the others dispersed Jerome said to George Two Ways, "You have come far; you are one of my best students, a student of the Oneness called the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka. But when I fight a man in the sky, I mean I will fight him with medicine. I want you to go to the magical lands to the South to learn more about our ancestral ways and..." Jerome had fetched another piece pipe, then filled the pipe with tobacco and offered it to George, saying, "We have much magic and medicine to discuss; we must smoke to the success of your mission to the Ancient One." George Two Ways said, "Do you mean that I am the Chosen One, the one who is to travel to the Andes, where the strange herb you have spoken of grows?" "I mean that I am too old myself for this sort of adventure, my medicine is growing weaker as I grow older and your medicine is strong, though undisciplined. You must go in my place--you must have the power of the Smoke god to protect you; that is why we smoke while we still feel the magic of Mescalito--and tomorrow you will take a plane ticket elsewhere, to the land to the South, as you have said, to obtain the rare herb that is to peyote what peyote is to tobacco--the sacred secret of changing time-streams." Then he picked up his gourds and rattles and began to chant. It was a lonesome song, and sad. It was the song of Coyote. The Trickster. It was said that Coyote kept his Tool in a chest; soon, Two Ways dreamed, he would have his Tool in Sophia, and would be fondling her magnificent chest. Then in a psychedelic instant he was in bed with his lover; telling her the whole story of Father Vincent's smashing of the peyote ceremony--though he didn't know how he had gotten in bed or whether this was dream or reality. Sophia sighed in orgasm, "Oooh! Oh! Aaah!" and then said, "But George--if this isn't too unromantic a thing to think of while we're screwing--I took a course in altered states in college--and according to science, a drug is just the externalization of what is inside you--sure, it can reveal beauty...George, I don't know what to do about you and Tina. You two are my hardest case management cases, and I'm violating professional ethics by sleeping with you--I'm supposed to be your social worker, not your lover...though I do appreciate your detailed understanding of Native American, myth, and...I don't know how long we can go on this way, me sneaking around behind the backs of the central office in Fargo. And you drove up stoned, Lord knows where your sister is--" "Probably at the Corner Bar," George said. "Probably," Sophia said. "George, I'm afraid I'm going to have to break up our affair. I know you may not be in a position to understand, but--" "This is the perfect time," George said, "Because tomorrow I go to a different world--and there is a new woman waiting there for me--I can almost see her--" "Drug psychosis," Sophia mumbled, then said, "Do you have the keys for the batmobile? Cuz I'll drive you home." George dangled silver before Sophia's eyes. "Corner Bar, you say?" she said, as she fired up the used Chrysler New Yorker which everybody on the reservation called "the batmobile" because of its huge tailfins. "If not there, try Gandolph's," George said, even as Sophia dressed. In a minute they walked a gravel path; and like caped crusaders masked by twilight took off for the Corner Bar--or Gandolph's. They found Tina at the latter--smashed. She didn't know it yet: her brother was to become a different sort of priest for his people...and if there was a Savior, he was in need of salvation-- But such has always been the way with Saviors. #