Key Grip Read online

  As I went back and forth between kitchen and car, I attempted to make eye contact with the young men, even saying hello once. But they avoided looking at me, preferring, it seemed, to scope out the contents of the shopping bags. On my third run, one of them stood up and grabbed a bunch of bananas from a bag and passed them to his friends. The fellow next to him began rubbing his thumb across the six-inch blade of his bowie knife. He stared at my midsection as if planning to gut me.

  I made four or five more trips until all the grocery bags were heaped on the muddy kitchen floor. A half-eaten hamburger bun, pinned beneath the leg of a chair, reminded me that I had eaten nothing but a blueberry muffin all day. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich came to mind, but as I looked around, the idea faded. Flies worked every available kitchen surface. Dishes lay in the sink, stacked higher than the faucet. The stovetop was encrusted with ketchup, mustard, and burnt coffee. The refrigerator door, held ajar by a huge mound of frost, lacked a handle. Packaged meat, crammed into the freezer section, appeared gray and speckled. The refrigerator shelves overflowed with inedible leftovers. I left the kitchen and went back outside to put my car trunk in order and tidy up my personal belongings.

  After about ten minutes I heard Mike call my name from the porch. I rolled up the car windows, took a deep breath, and re-entered the house. Arturo and Mike were standing in the center of the living room. The sullen guy with the bowie knife stood up to give Mike a seat on the sofa, then he left the room, eyeing me coldly as he went out the door. Arturo put the five chokecherry stakes in a corner and started to unwrap a toy airplane for Wambli.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to be introduced, but all eyes were on Wambli, who now threw the balsa wood airplane against the wall, breaking its right wing in half. Everyone’s attention drifted to the television, which featured a talk show with a bunch of white women gabbing about relationships. I gazed at the mostly bare walls, embarrassed. I felt ashamed of the television and the people on it, as if it and they and I had somehow conspired to create the plight of the people in the room. An old Pendleton star blanket hung on the wall opposite the sofa, serving as a backdrop for some curled three-by-five-inch family photographs, each held in place by a single thumbtack.

  “You got them cigarettes?” said Mike.

  I went to the kitchen, fished around in the bags, and came back with a carton of Marlboro Reds.

  “Just one pack,” said Mike. “Put the rest on the counter.”

  “May I use your bathroom?” I asked.

  Mike jerked his thumb over his shoulder. It was a small house.

  “Be right back,” I said, though I wanted to crawl out a window and drive away to the Comfort Inn we’d passed several hundred miles ago. But instead I walked through the kitchen and down a short hallway, past three small bedrooms. Clothing was heaped everywhere. Judging by the garments on the floor, girls slept in the room closest to the kitchen. A rack of barbells, a slew of hand weights, and a poster of Madonna identified the boys’ room. I assumed that Mike and his wife slept in the room where the police scanner continued to squawk, though nothing really distinguished the room as adult.

  I closed the door to the tiny, windowless bathroom and flipped up the toilet seat. The whole thing crashed to the floor, lid and all, revealing a shit-speckled, piss-streaked porcelain bowl. The wet bath mat stank of mildew. Two muddy bath towels lay draped over a shower door that had slid off its track. Both the showerhead and the bathtub faucet leaked a steady stream of hot water. The sink spigot dripped cold. Over the sink four bent nails marked the space where a mirror had once hung. A banged-up hair dryer, plugged into an unprotected socket, dangled from an old shelf bracket.

  I replaced the toilet seat, rinsed my hands, wiped them on my pants, and returned to the living room.

  Everyone but Mike had left.

  “Get out there and help Arturo,” he said. “We’re gonna sweat in a couple of hours.”

  I set up my orange tent on rough ground about fifty feet west of the sweat lodge. Arturo made camp in the little Depression-era cabin. As I drove the tent stakes into the hard earth, smoke drifted toward me from the fire pit located in front of the sweat lodge. Arturo and I had piled fifty-four rocks, per Mike’s instructions, atop a tower of dry pine logs. The crackle and snap of the fire made me feel as if everything was going to be okay. I secured the fly over my tent, tossed my inflatable mattress and sleeping bag inside, zipped the door shut, and walked over to the sweat lodge.

  Shaped like an upside-down bowl, about twelve feet in diameter and four feet high at its apex, the lodge was constructed of tied-together saplings covered with layers of old blankets and tarps, which are meant to keep out light and hold in heat. With the door flap open, a dank, musty smell wafted from its dirt-floor interior.

  A raised, earthen altar in front of the sweat lodge consisted of a circle of small rocks with a weathered buffalo skull in the center. Next to the skull Arturo had placed Mike’s medicine pipe and a large rattle decorated with feathers. Having grown up in a family in which religion took a back seat to art, I found most altars strange. This one had all the elements of child’s play, but felt deeply spooky to me.

  I changed into shorts and stood alone by the fire. The sun sat less than one hand above the horizon. The air was cooler now; the fire coals intense. The heated rocks—most of them about eight inches thick—glowed like volcanic magma beneath layers of gray ash. I still hadn’t eaten but was neither hungry nor thirsty. For a few moments I indulged in a kind of reverie, taking in the wide expanse around me: the vast horizon, the seemingly endless pasture where skinny horses grazed beyond my tent. I let myself imagine living there. My tent would make a perfectly ample home. Compared to the parks in New York City, there was some real elbow room here. And a blessed silence, broken only by a whisper of wind.

  Then the Indians came roaring in. Mike’s Buick, loaded with the young men I had seen earlier, skidded to a halt five feet in front of me. Two more rez cars, filled with men, women, and children, pulled up next to my tent. Four children piled out of the lead car and ran directly over to my Honda. After glomming the contents of the change tray and glove compartment, they began playfully jumping on the hood and roof. I imagined having to hitchhike home.

  Soon the sun touched the horizon and the mosquitoes came out. Everyone gathered around the fire. I said hi to the kids and nodded hello to two old women—the only people who seemed willing to acknowledge my presence. The men made no pretense of welcoming me, nor did the young woman who stood on the other side of the fire. But I didn’t feel shy about looking at each of their faces, firelit and dark, their skin the color of blood-wort. For some reason it seemed okay to be staring at them—as if their reticence invited me to stare and thus become part of the group.

  A tall string bean of a man, who looked to be about forty, stood at the edge of the fire pit next to his wife. He poked at the rocks with a pitchfork. Neither he nor his wife spoke a word.

  Mike showed up, followed closely by Arturo, who was lugging a plastic five-gallon spackle bucket filled with water. Mike told me to help Arturo put the red-hot rocks into the sweat lodge, and as we began forking them into the rock pit, Mike wrapped a beach towel around his waist and removed his pants and shirt. His hairless chest was covered with raised scars that resembled exit wounds, evidence of many years of piercing during sun dances, the annual sacrificial ceremonies that the U.S. government had outlawed for much of the twentieth century.

  When we finished forking the fifty-four rocks into the lodge pit, Mike said something in Lakota that made everyone laugh. When I looked around, I saw that everyone was amused by me. The string-bean man said something in response, and everyone roared again, even harder. Nervously I looked down at my feet, at my white Reeboks covered with ash. My fly was wide open. Mike explained, in English, that his brother-in-law, Lanford, wanted to know if I was planning to feed the mosquitoes a little dick. The kids doubled over with laughter as I zipped myself up. An old woman told
me not to worry; it was just in fun. The young men shook their heads as if they had never in all their lives seen such a dumb wasichu.

  People started preparing for the sweat—the women wrapping themselves in ragged sarongs, the men stripping off their shirts and putting on shorts. Every man present, except me, sported weltlike scars on his chest and back.

  I hung my shirt and eyeglasses on a fence post and stood aside politely, as if waiting for the host to seat his guests. Mike, already seated inside the sweat lodge just to the right of the door flap, waved the women in first. I watched as the four of them crawled inside, moving clockwise around the hot stones until they sat to the right of Mike. I wanted to be the last one in so that I too could sit next to the door. But Mike told me to crawl in now—and to sit all the way in back.

  “You get the seat of honor,” he chuckled. “The hot seat.”

  I dropped to my knees and muttered “Mitakuye oyasin,” as Arturo had trained me to do, then I crawled somewhat tremulously around to the back. Mitakuye oyasin translates variously as “all our relations” or “we are all related”; the we refers both to all races and to all beings, including the four-legged and winged, and of course the spirits. I sat cross-legged, directly opposite the door, fighting off the feeling that I was way too large for the space assigned me. How would I find my way out of here in the dark? The hot rocks blocked my path.

  A fat spider crawled up my left calf and across my thigh. I folded my arms to avoid provoking it.

  Arturo made his way past my knees and sat to my left. The other men entered and closed ranks at my right. Lanford sat down at the north side of the door, a round drum and leather-tipped drumstick on his lap. I was hemmed in now for the duration.

  A fourth car pulled up outside. Its headlights went out, and I heard two doors slam. I watched through the door flap, incredulous, as more people undressed outside. I could see a bit of the black horizon and a triangle of indigo sky, pierced by a single bright star. I focused on that star and pinned all my hopes on it. Don’t let me panic. The intense heat from the rocks was already cooking my knees. My eyeballs felt dangerously dry.

  An overweight woman wearing shorts and a tank top crawled through the door and sat next to Mike. Three more men crawled past Lanford, forcing everyone even closer together. I was knee-to-knee now with Arturo—and with the sullen guy who had been fiddling with the bowie knife earlier.

  “Watch the kids,” Mike said to a teenage girl outside. “Don’t let them be banging on that New York car.”

  Suddenly the door flap fell and it was dark. The guy on my right leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “Hey, Custer, this is your last day on earth.”

  I blinked, and then blinked again. I had never been in this kind of darkness. When the first ladle of water hit the rocks, my whole body stiffened. Sizzling drops splashed my kneecaps, and steam engulfed my face. I gasped and cupped my hands over my nose. Another splash, another surge of steam. I could tell by the spitting sound that buckets of water could be poured on those rocks before they would even begin to cool down.

  I heard Mike say from the other side of the darkness, “We’re gonna do four doors tonight, in honor of our friend here from New York.”

  I didn’t know what “four doors” meant, but I was sure it wasn’t pleasant.

  Lanford started banging the drum, and Mike began to sing:

  Wahkathaka usimala ye!

  Wanikta cha echamu yelo . . .

  Everyone took up the song with him. Another splash of water, and all the available oxygen was consumed by steam. My breath fled my lungs, as if sucked out by a tornado. I squirmed backward, my spine pressed against a ridgepole. I tried to topple sideways, get down where I could breathe. No room to move. I sat up straight, seeking air above. It was hopeless. I gasped.

  The drum kept an insistent one-two, one-two rhythm, with the accent on the first beat. When I was a boy, I used to play an album of 78-rpm records called The Little Indian Boy. Whenever the boy was lost, his father would drum for him just like this. In the dark now, this childhood memory collided with thoughts about my own father, who had died sixteen months earlier, sparking an intense feeling of loss.

  It seemed no one knew how to hold a tune. With Mike leading the way, everyone shouted the song. I started bellowing too, faking the words, rocking my upper body back and forth in time with the drum, and holding my hands over my face to shield my eyes from the steam. This song seemed to last forever. I imagined blisters bubbling on my face, my hair combusting spontaneously. Forget the dangers of hanblecheya —I was going to die right here.

  When the singing stopped, Mike said something about my going up the hill the next morning, or at least I assumed that was what he said because I heard my name mixed in with Lakota, as well as the word hanblecheya. Everyone said, “Aho!” which I took to be supportive. Then Mike shouted, “Mitakuye oyasin,” and the door opened at last. Steam poured out into the night.

  The star I had seen earlier had sunk below the horizon. The water ladle was passed around the lodge, starting with Lanford, and each participant took a sip. When it came to the fellow on my right, he took a drink, tossed the remaining water on the rocks, and passed the ladle back the other way.

  “Anyone else want water?” asked Mike.

  I kept silent for fear of seeming unmanly.

  I glanced at Arturo. In the dim light of the coals I could see that his eyes were closed, his posture erect, his pigtails hanging on his chest. He looked every inch the warrior he claimed to be.

  The ladle went the other way. The women drank, and the door was closed again. Again the steam surged, thicker and thicker. A new song began:

  Thukasila Wakhathaka Eya hoyewaye lo . . .

  When I heard moans of agony coming from the guy on my right, I began rocking back and forth in earnest, gasping for air. “Oh, God,” I intoned, “help me breathe.” Other people were singing. I tried to join in but kept slipping into the begging mode. “I want to live!” I said into my cupped hands. “Let me live through this!” When the singing stopped, more water hit the rocks, and the place became even more unbearable. I was going to die in a dark sweat lodge as payment for the sins of my race. The guy with the bowie knife was right: I probably was General Custer in a former life. I did in fact have Indian-killer blood running through my veins, and I chose this very moment to remember the details. My seventh great-grandmother, nine generations back, had killed and scalped twelve Nipmucks in revenge for the killing of her newborn child. Hannah Emerson Dustin, my namesake. Her statue, with bloody scalps hanging from her victorious fist, still stood in Concord, New Hampshire—right there on Contoocook Island in the Merrimack River, where she had done the dirty deed back in 1697. This was karmic revenge.

  “Forgive me,” I mumbled into my hands.

  I was about to yell this contrition out loud to the spirits when I realized that the singing had stopped and someone else was speaking, in English. I had no idea who—the voice issued from the vicinity of the drum. A man was saying he wished he hadn’t gotten drunk the night before; he had said things he didn’t mean and behaved badly. He prayed for his mother and his sisters. “Aho!” said the others. “Aho!” I said, happy to recognize a soul as miserable as me. Then another man spoke, and another, either in English or Lakota, and the circle of prayer revolved toward me.

  The fellow on my right simply said “Mitakuye oyasin” and tapped my arm. I squeezed my eyes shut—as if it mattered—and started to speak, addressing Tunkasila (meaning “grandfather”) first, as the others had done. I said nothing about being Custer, and I didn’t ask forgiveness for my race or for my murderous ancestor. Instead I heard myself praying for the people on the reservation, for the Little Boy family, and for my family and friends back home. I ended with “Mitakuye oyasin.” I couldn’t recall ever having prayed in public before.

  Arturo said, “Mitakuye oyasin,” thus passing the prayer to the old women, whose petitions took forever. I wanted to scream. Lanford beat the drum to give them
a little privacy. When the door opened again, everyone collapsed as low as they could, trying to find breathable air. No one spoke.

  During the third door Mike asked the spirits about me. He concluded that I was to go up the hill for one day—dawn to dusk. He told me that the spirit of Fools Crow, a famous medicine man who had died a few years earlier, would accompany me. As he spoke, little sparks blossomed in the pitch-black air, as if someone were flicking a Zippo lighter, although no sound accompanied the sparks. I heard a rattle being shaken. Then everyone sang again. It felt like Hades in there. The bowie knife guy to my right began to retch. My pores were bleeding sweat.

  During the fourth door we joined in a nearly endless song of thanksgiving. It was the hottest door of all.

  Dripping wet, we crawled out into the cool night air. At least an hour had passed, or maybe a lifetime. I staggered to my feet like a newborn calf. One of the men vomited into the fire pit; another fell onto an outstretched bath towel. The stars were out in force.

  Mike lit his pipe and we stood in an informal circle, sharing a smoke. I felt completely drained and wanted to laugh. I thought of cold spring water and pictured the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I was going to devour in the house.

  “Got your tobacco ties together?” asked Mike.

  “Yep,” I said. “Blanket, tobacco ties, chokecherry stakes.”

  “Good,” he said. “Arturo will give you one of my pipes tomorrow morning. He’s gonna take you up the hill. Now go to your tent, and don’t talk to anyone until you come down tomorrow night. No food, no water.”

  I stepped into my sneakers, hoping to at least say goodbye to the people with whom I had just suffered so intensely. But everyone, including Arturo, deliberately avoided looking at me—knowing, I suppose, what I was in for.