Lakota Baby. Elle James

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      School wasn’t easy for a Native American boy in a white man’s world, but Joe had kept his head low and studied hard, determined to return to the reservation and his way of life as soon as he was old enough. The time had come sooner than he’d expected when Kevin was laid off and once again the family was destitute.

      They’d packed up their meager belongings and moved back to the reservation where Kevin drank, bragged about Paul and berated Joe every chance he could get. A miserable life for a little boy who’d lost a loving father. No wonder he’d pushed Maggie away. What had the white man done for him besides give him pain?

      Maggie felt deep compassion for the ten-year-old Joe. She’d struggled with the truth of Dakota’s parentage. He deserved a father like Joe’s. He deserved Joe. But Joe had spelled it out in his parting speech. There was no room in his life for her. So Maggie had to make arrangements to keep the tribe from knowing the baby was Joe’s.

      Her first instinct was to leave her job and run as far from the reservation as she could. But the teens she’d been working with needed her almost as much as her unborn baby. When Paul started coming around her work, flirting with her, she jumped at a solution.

      As it turned out, Paul was the only one who’d known she was pregnant before she married him. He’d been patient, waiting for her to get over the man who got her in that condition. In love with her from the start, he waited throughout her pregnancy, showering her with encouragement and as much affection as she’d let him. But when the baby was born, the wall of her emotions for Joe still stood between them. Maggie wanted to love this man who’d stepped in and helped her in her time of need, but she couldn’t.

      Paul must have realized this because he spent more and more time working at the casino. Maggie never saw him. For the most part, she and Dakota were on their own.

      Without her son, Maggie felt more alone in the world than ever. If not for Joe, she didn’t know what she’d do.

      AFTER MAGGIE’S INTERVIEW, Joe dropped her off at the youth center, despite his better judgment. She’d insisted, saying she needed time to check on her kids and to think.

      He’d grabbed her hand before she slipped out of his vehicle. “Promise me you’ll call if you need anything?”

      “I will,” she said, climbing down.

      “I’ll pick you up around three.”

      Her head jerked up and she stared at him, her eyes glassy as if she had to concentrate to focus. “No need.”

      A gentle smile lifted his lips. “You don’t have your car here.”

      “Oh.” She was preoccupied, and rightly so with her baby missing. “Okay.” That was all she said before she turned and walked toward the building, pulling her coat tightly around her.

      Joe wanted to go after her and coax her into telling him everything going on in her head. He felt like she was living detached from him and the world around them and he couldn’t get through to her.

      With his stomach knotted, he swung his SUV to the west, bumping along a rutted track that shouldn’t be called a road by anyone’s standards.

      Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into a dirt driveway and sat for a moment, staring at the one-story clapboard house standing alone on a knoll. The yard was free of clutter with not even a bush to adorn the base of the building. Two naked cottonwood trees edged up out of the dead grass, a poor break against the bitter north wind.

      A nondescript house for one of the most respected members of the Painted Rock Tribe. Matoskah, or White Bear, had been the tribal Medicine Man for as long as Joe could remember. His reputation for native cures for common physical ailments had Lakotans from towns scattered across the reservation traveling the lonely back roads to seek his help. But more than the cures for disease and sickness, people sought him out for spiritual healing.

      And that was the reason for Joe’s visit.

      With the burden of a child’s life weighing on his shoulders, Joe needed focus and a mind clear of emotions, memories and confusion.

      A mind clear of Maggie.

      How could he still be upset that she’d married another man? He’d told her to take a hike, that she had no place in the life of a Lakota. Of this Lakota.

      What they had shared was lust—deep, powerful lust. Not enough to maintain a relationship, not on a reservation where poverty and destitution were the norm. For some of his people, lust might be enough. But he and Maggie were from two different worlds. She was white and Joe was a dark-skinned Indian, sworn to uphold the ways of his people and preserve the Lakota bloodline and traditions for future generations.

      Memories and regrets punctured his soul the day of his stepbrother’s funeral, when he’d seen what he could have had. Maggie and her baby—a family to call his own.

      Shoving his shoulders back, he knocked on the faded door and waited in the cold. After one long minute, Joe stepped from the concrete stoop and strode around the house. In the backyard stood a dome-shaped structure. Vapor wafted in the bitter morning air, a hazy fog lifting from the taut hide stretched over arched willow branches.

      A smile lifted the edges of Joe’s lips. Only Matoskah kept his sweat lodge erect year-round, when others were dismantled after powwow and tourist season ended. The buffalo hide, darkened with age and years of smoke, held the secrets, hopes and dreams of many Lakotans, divulged in the way of the ancients.

      Joe hesitated to intrude on the shaman’s meditation.

      “Enter the womb of our people, Son of Lonewolf.” Age did little to diminish the powerful voice of the tribe’s trusted healer. And how did he always seem to know who stood outside the lodge?

      Holding the flap of skin aside, Joe stooped to crawl like an animal into a den, the steam rising from the rocks embracing him. He squatted to the left of the entrance and let his eyes adjust to the light from the fire’s coals and the little bit filtering through the thick skin overhead. Before the steam could escape, Joe turned to secure the flap, sealing the lodge.

      Vapor swirled around him and he inhaled, accepting the surge of power that coursed through his veins. No matter how many times he’d been in a sweat lodge, he could count on that blanket of peace permeating his body and soul. Overdressed for tradition, he unzipped his coat as sweat beaded on his upper lip and forehead.

      To the right of the entry, a hunched and wrinkled figure sat cross-legged, facing the coals and steaming rocks in the dug out center of the small space. Naked except for a meager loincloth, Matoskah sat staring at the glowing coals. The flap of supple deer skin was his one concession to modesty in the spiritual haven of his ancestors where the Indian was meant to be naked in the womb of the earth.

      Joe reached out to grasp the spiritual leader’s forearm. “Mitaku oyasin, chante wasteya, nape chiyusa pe.” My relative, with a good heart, I shake your hand. The words brought back an image of his father sitting across a similar bed of steaming rocks from an eight-year-old Joe. He’d taught him that the words symbolized the importance of family and the completeness of the circle—only one of many lessons his father would teach him of the Lakota way of life, lessons he’d promised to pass on to his children and his children’s children.

      Matoskah grasped Joe’s forearm in a firm grip. “Hau kola.” Hello, my friend.

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