We have many stories. To the white man, they would say they’re myths and legends, but to us, they are our cultural history. And in one instance, the clan that I’m a member of, the Water Buster clan, there were two thunder birds who became human beings. And they came to live among us, and when they decided to go back to the spirit world, one of them made promises that he would honor. If someone got sick, he would heal them. He would bring the buffalo nearby. If enemies came against us, he would put them on the run. If we would just take care of them. And we still take care of those bundles today, so I believe that we have been taken care of.
-Calvin Grinnell, Tribal Historian for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation[1]
***
The sun started to rise on an old Native American man, his face wrinkled and leathery as he opened his front door, pushing hard against the snow on his front porch that had accumulated overnight. Barefoot in the snow in his t-shirt and underwear, he looked to the four corners of the earth as he burned a sage bundle and sang Hidatsa prayer songs – Ma’pimata’ tsagi’du ma’pi a’wagata’rats (at the first snowstorm times are good. I came near never seeing that day again) and Mare’ruk kowi’ts (If I go, I am no more).
The smoke prayers wafted into the sky, reaching the clouds. Two puffs of clouds separated and spiraled downward towards the old man. Spinning round and round, the wisps flew towards the incense, blew through it, and into the front door.
Albert Roadmaker lived alone in his two-bedroom FEMA trailer along the Missouri River on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The trailer stood outside and in front of a burned-out husk of his prior home that was now falling in on itself.
He was proud of his trailer; he had gotten a good deal on it, and almost everything worked. After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of these trailers were supposed to be destroyed, but some found a home where rules and regulations go to die. Here on the “Rez”, rules were made to be ignored. White and black men turned their noses up at the thought of living in a trailer. But good enough for an old Indian, he thought.
One time, some busybody inspectors came to tell him he couldn’t live in his trailer and asked when he would demolish his old burned-out home. He told them it was temporary, and he was camping anyway, like the old ways. Didn’t they have anything better to do than bother an old man? He was an elder, after all. The inspectors grumbled about him playing the elder card and promised to return.
Roadmaker stared out his kitchen window, waiting for the coffee to finish percolating while he listened to an ancient AM radio full of static announce the day’s top stories. Newly fallen snow had painted the earth over sagebrush and grass. It was a good day to die, he thought.
He heard voices calling to him from the guest room. He shook his head and closed his eyes.
Bring us some meat, some cigs, and better yet, some beers, said one voice.
Geez, this one, too early to be boozing, said the second voice.
It’s beer 30 somewhere, said the first voice.
The voices broke into laughter together.
The man shuffled down the hall and pushed open the door. Two human skulls, wrapped in buffalo hide, stared back in silence from the open bedroom closet door.
Settle down, you two, or I will put you back on the anthill. Clean you up good this time.
The two skulls seemed to twitch, just a little.
Back in the kitchen, he adjusted the radio’s knob to improve reception, then got out a cassette tape recorder, and hit record.
After yesterday’s snowstorm, Western North Dakota listeners should prepare for a heat wave. Morning freezing temperatures will melt away into the upper 90s. Stay tuned to see whether we set a North Dakota record for the largest temperature change ever recorded in a single day. Code Red air quality warnings remain in effect, and Methane levels will reach a record high.
In other news, oil tycoon Billy Bob Bacon, CEO of Hot Shot Oil, announced their latest fracking method, rumored to inject a high-temperature liquid into already depleted oil wells. Bacon promised that this new technology would allow Hot Shot to get every drop of oil from the ground for the American people. Drill, baby, drill! He was quoted as saying.
When asked about the cost to the Native Americans living on the Reservation, Bacon promised that every well would be fully remediated and that the Rez would be returned to its former condition.
You have my word in writing, he promised.
When asked what was in the fracking liquid, Bacon answered that it was trade secrets and took no further questions.
Ten eighteen-wheeler trucks rumbled by outside his kitchen window in a cloud of dust, leaving mud tracks behind—”Hot Shot” painted across their aluminum tankers. The trailer shook as they stopped at an oil well less than a mile down the road. Drivers got out to run hoses and turn on valves. White billowing clouds of steam rose as the trucks emptied their secret liquid down the wellhole and then left to refill, more dust announcing their departure. The newly fallen snow turned a dirty gray.
Roadmaker wondered what they were injecting now. Just yesterday, the fracking trucks worked at the oil well next door, pumping chemicals deep into the earth to break up the shale rock and free up the oil. And how deep were they drilling this time? If they kept it up, they would eventually drill down into Hell. Even the Devil would be pissed if his ceiling suddenly started leaking this toxic shit.
In the distance, mechanical pumps moved up and down in a mind-numbing shriek of steel on steel that brought the oil up from over two miles down. Oil storage tanks littered the once pristine prairie horizon while white-hot flares of unused natural gas burned off against a blackened smoke sunrise. The dirty little secret of the oil boom was the excess natural gas, a by-product of oil fracking; the white man only wanted the oil and burned off the natural gas because they had nowhere to store it.
Roadmaker remembered those ancient black-and-white photos of the white man killing off buffalo by the millions for people to have fur coats back east. Countless skinned carcasses littered the plains, rotting against an infinite horizon, their meat left to rot on the ground. The buffalo were gone; only his people remained in their ancestral homelands. When the white man was done skinning the earth of oil, Roadmaker knew they would also be left to rot.
He picked up a photo of his wife and daughter posing from a graduation photo taken 20 years ago, “Congratulations 2004 Graduates” printed on a banner behind them. They posed outside the end of the driveway, a Sweetwater Ranch sign above their heads. Their white, freshly painted home in the background, the grass neatly mowed, the flower beds bursting with spring color from the maroon and yellow tulips his daughter had planted previously for the local high school colors, the Mandaree Warriors.
Both smiled back at the camera like they would live forever—a proud Mom and the blind confidence of a daughter in cap and gown. The weathered photo ink had washed away in places; new rivulets of ink tears dripped off the paper.
He turned to the tribal radio station. The calypso artist Baron came on playing “Mother Earth Crying”, a song his wife and daughter used to sing and dance to in the kitchen. He could see them now as he danced alone and sang to his invisible partners. Tears streamed from his eyes, and snot hung from his nose.
Mother Earth is crying, she say to stop the polluting…oy oy oy
Mother Earth is crying, we got to stop the polluting…oy oy oy
Now, I am crying, he laughed to himself.
Warrior up, he thought, or the skulls would tease him again. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. Real warriors don’t cry, only when no one is watching.
From the picture, his daughter’s face looked back at him, hinting at jaundice. He remembered thinking she needed to get some sun. He felt the scar running along his back where his right kidney used to be. Not all sacrifices have happy endings. He thought of that young tribal doctor, pudgy with thinning hair, and his diagnosis from twenty years ago.
Are you Albert Roadmaker? I am sorry to report that your daughter has kidney cancer.
And then the next month, another diagnosis.
Mr. Roadmaker, your wife, has lung cancer. Is she a smoker?
Or the now older, heavier bald doctor’s latest bad news from last month.
Albert, you have early-onset dementia. Here are some brochures about memory care facilities. One thing you can try is to get yourself a tape recorder and record your daily events. When you get lost, replay the tape, and maybe you can jog your memory to find your way back.
At his wife’s funeral, a woman who lost her only daughter said at least you have a son left to take care of you. The words still stung.
He turned on the kitchen faucet. He heard the well pump prime and expected a clear, sweet water flow, but instead, the water turned from brown to clear to light blue, and as the flow increased, a sulfur smell filled the room. He lit a match and touched it to the faucet. A small blue flame burned at the faucet’s edge between the blue water and the pipe. He turned off the faucet, and the flame extinguished.
Outside, his garden plants lay flat, frozen to the ground, flash-frozen by yesterday’s snow. Since his Hidatsa people could first remember, they had grown corn, beans, and squash together—the Three Sisters, named for their ability to work together. The corn stalk gave height for the bean vine to climb, and the squash spread out underneath, choking weeds and deterring insects.
A deer walked up to the fence surrounding the garden. Its ears prickled, somehow sensing the man’s presence in the kitchen. The deer leaned down to sniff the wilted vegetables but lost its balance on the snowpack and skittered around in a circle, its fur ragged and bare, ribs pressing against the skin.
Damnit, another one is staggering around with Chronic Wasting Disease, waiting to infect the rest of the herd. He reached for his .243 rifle and softly raised the window sash, aiming at the deer’s broad side for the heart and lungs, sitting just above and behind the front shoulder. He shook his head again, thought about everything his people had lost, and pulled the trigger.
Albert Roadmaker decided that today would be the day.
What life is worth living when everyone you ever loved and cared for is gone?
His mind was sharp in the morning as if he were his old self. As the day wore on, he knew he would forget what he was doing and start to hallucinate.
Everything dies or leaves, including wife, daughter, parents, friends. The one son he has, lives in New York City, and he never hears from him. Albert Roadmaker refused to live in an old-age home or memory care facility. The doctors tried to make it sound better than it was. But he didn’t want to burden his son. This would have to be an accident. His choices lay out before him on the couch.
Shotgun?
Or sleeping pills and whiskey?
Better yet, an old, forgetful man cleaning his shotgun while taking pills and whiskey. Nothing too original. Suicide never is.
The voices started again from the other room.
Some warrior you turned out to be, said the first skull.
The second said, his new Indian name will be Albert Kills Himself. They laughed some more.
Shut up, you two. You were supposed to protect us from our enemies and heal us when we got sick. Don’t tell me about failure.
He took down a framed photo on the wall with a quotation and a small brass plaque titled “Return of the Water Buster Clan Bundle – 1938”. It was a picture of the two skulls with some of his uncles and cousins. His people were the Hidatsa, and his Water Buster Clan had possessed the sacred bundle passed down from generation to generation. In the early 1900s, a clan member sold it to a museum, but the Hidatsa wrote letters and even met with President Roosevelt to get it back. Since its return, the tribe wasn’t sure who had the bundle.
Didn’t old crazy Albert Roadmaker down in the Badlands have it last?
No way. No one would trust him with it; he’s nuts.
The Waterbuster bundle was said to contain the spirits of the two original thunder beings and could bring rain, lightning, and thunder. It was also said to heal the people, protect them from harm, and drive away their enemies.
Albert put down the picture and thought there was something else. It was like he was forgetting something; it was just on the edge of his mind but somehow out of reach.
Bury my deer at Wounded Knee, shouted a skull from the other room.
Geez, this one, can’t even remember his name, said the second. More laughter.
Albert flinched. He closed his eyes. Concentrate.
My name is Roadmaker. That’s who I am. Roadmaker. And there was a deer. Now, where is that shovel?
But then the phone rang from the son he hadn’t heard from in years — no pleasantries exchanged, a phone call between those with nothing left to say. Getting divorced, he said. He needed something.
Do you want to spend some time with your grandson?
Yes.
He can be on a plane today.
Where do I pick him up?
Baggage claim.
I will send someone.
Okay.
Kicked out of boarding school again, 15-year-old Luke Roadmaker exited the baggage claim area with his luggage and went to the VIP area. Chauffeurs and professionally dressed drivers held up neatly printed name cards and posters, some with oilfield company names. Off to the side, two young native men, not much older than Luke, held a crude crayon-drawn cardboard sign – ROADMAKER.
They said they were his elders, in the Indian way. Or, cousins or uncles sent by his grandfather to pick him up. Their explanation didn’t seem to make sense. The missing other half of the cardboard sign appeared, holding the remnants of a case of beer. They offered him one for the ride back to the Rez.
Cousin, your grandpa Roadmaker gave us a case of beer to pick you up, so you must be precious cargo, ennitt? Asked the first man.
But he didn’t offer us any cigs or snacks, nephew, so you must not be that important, said the second man.
They were in an old beat-up baby blue Ford pickup, its worn paint fading and flaking off in all the colors of the sky. Its chrome borders and bumpers still intact, shiny, and sparkling in the sun.
Get in the middle, one of them said, we are the merciless Indian savages, so watch out.
You’re just a city Indian, said the other, so you are riding bitch on the way home.
They rode for hours drinking beer across the prairie, but all the two elders/uncles/cousins seemed to want to talk about was the weather.
Looks like a storm, one to break all the rules, smiled the driver.
Gonna be a big one; we’ll have some fun, the other smirked.
Luke looked up to a clear blue sky. No cloud in sight. No way it was going to rain.
They passed the sign, “Entering Fort Berthold Indian Reservation,” home of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations.
Now, how are you guys related to me, asked Luke. How can you be my elders, uncles, and cousins simultaneously?
Don’t you know your clan relatives? Have you ever been to the Rez, half-breed?
Once, when I was little. Why did you call me a half-breed?
Because you have a native dad and a white mom, that makes you a half-assed Indian.
Aaayye, they said in unison, laughing at him.
Government houses painted white appeared in straight rows as they crested a hill; the only outward difference between them was the painted plywood panel under the front window—yellow, blue, red, green, and sometimes even pink or turquoise. Broken-down cars with grass growing around their tires waited for repairs; many were up on cinder blocks with tires missing or their hoods up with engines missing.
How did I end up here? Luke thought. Ten demerits. That’s all it took to be kicked out of boarding school again. His parents were getting a divorce, now dragging on in its fourth year. His white Mom was busy with her self-improvement, and his native-American Dad was bent on mastering the financial universe… and his secretary.
He was banished to a grandfather he had never met, in the middle of the Rez, by parents he never saw. His dad said the two had fallen out years ago, and the old man lived alone on the Reservation. Because he got expelled, Luke couldn’t go to his planned summer session in Costa Rica. He daydreamed of Tiki bars and all the partying he would miss.
They drove through the town, Luke and his elders/cousins/uncles or whatever they were, and out into the country, following behind a convoy of Hot Shot trucks, but the pickup wasn’t fast enough to pass them on the two-lane highway, so they followed along dodging rocks thrown from the convoy truck tires and choking on dust. One of the rocks hit the windshield, cracking it like a bolt of forked lightning. They turned left, rumbling over a steel-girder cattle-crossing, onto a melting muddy road. Snow melt dripped from the fenceposts.
A lone black mailbox signaled that someone lived out here. Words in white: Roadmaker. A pack of wild-looking dogs curled up around the mailbox, standing guard. Patches of melting snow covered the prairie. Two tire tracks snaked over the prairie snow mud grass, disappearing over the horizon.
Here is where we drop you off, cousin. You can walk from here. The driver said. We’re heading into town to snag some girls.
Nephew, those dogs are mean till they get to know you, said the other. It’s warming up, and the whole place will soon be mud. We will get stuck if we go any farther. Just over that hill is your grandpa’s place; he lives in the badlands.
A beat-up mobile trailer waited in the valley below, surrounded by old cars, trucks, corrals, and fences. It had no skirting, and you could see its dry-rotted tires underneath. Behind the trailer was a burned-out old husk of a home, and next to that was a red aluminum barn with cows and horses who self-segregated on opposite sides of the corral, keeping an eye on one another.
The cousins/uncles unpacked the luggage and stacked it up on the side of the road.
See you around, cuz, said the driver.
The pickup started to turn around and moved off the two tire tracks. As its wheels turned onto the prairie, they began to spin. Grey sticky mud flew from under the wheels, coating the sides and landing on the windshield and roof. The wheels slipped and spun over the prairie snow mud back to the main road, and a blinker went on to turn right.
No one was around, except for the pack of dogs. One dog, the biggest of all, didn’t take its gaze off Luke. Better hustle, nephew. It’s going to storm, said the passenger through the open window.
And with that, a raindrop hit Luke in the face. A gray cloud line seemed to materialize out of nowhere as a cold wind picked up, rushing in as the sky darkened and roiled.
The pickup grabbed at the pavement, lurching away, and the driver hit the horn triumphantly.
As soon as the horn went off, the dogs came to life — chasing, barking, and biting at the tires as the truck sped away.
In the distance, Luke could see the storm front moving in. The pickup seemed to fade and floated into the horizon before disappearing up the road into the storm bank. Raindrops reincarnated as icy-smooth golf balls. Then, chunky, misshapen frozen softballs exploded like calving glaciers on the roadway. The dogs turned away from the hail and towards Luke.
Luke sized up his luggage. He couldn’t carry everything. He grabbed his backpack and sprinted, slipping down the road into the badlands. Hail stung him on his head and shoulders.
He made the first switchback turn on a dead run. He heard the dogs before he saw them. Barks and growls rang out, and the pack came down the road with the big dog in the lead.
Luke tried to think. The dogs would be on him in seconds. He remembered his Dad’s instructions to bring gifts for his grandfather.
He likes tobacco, whiskey, and beef jerky, he’d said.
He reached into his backpack and came up with a handful of Slim Jim beef jerky. He started to wave them in the air. The dogs were almost on him. He threw out a handful. The dogs stopped. They began to bite and rip at the plastic tube coverings. The big dog slowed down, only long enough to snatch one up and chew it in three hard bites and a gulp. Then it kept coming. Luke reached the bottom of the badlands – he had 100 yards to make it to the trailer.
His Dad had always tried to teach him to show no fear in front of a dog, to show who was boss. Luke grabbed the remaining Slim Jims and found the plastic edge to rip one open while holding the backpack over his head to shield him from the hail.
He turned to face the big dog, trying to overcome his fear.
Hey! He yelled at the dog and extended a Slim Jim. Stop!
The dog came to a screeching halt. Growling but at attention, oblivious to the hail, it stopped and stared at the Slim Jim, licking its jowls all the while. Luke snapped it in two, and the dog slurped and shuffled forward. Luke stuck one half in his mouth and started to chew. The dog whined.
Luke chewed his piece and tossed the other half to the dog, who caught it in the air and swallowed it in one gulp. The dog’s eyes focused on Luke’s hands. Then it gazed back up the hill at the other dogs, still struggling to get the Slim Jims out of the wrappers, and turned to sprint back towards them.
Luke heard a noise from the trailer. The door creaked open, and an old man with long white hair in a ponytail down his back walked out in his white tank top undershirt.
Hello, Sonny Boy. Come inside from the hail before the Thunder Beings get you. And watch out for those dogs. I’ve never seen anyone other than your Dad stare down a pack of wild dogs before. That big one is Rez Dog, and he bites.
Costa Rica. The warm sun on his face, the blue waters in front of him, his toes in the sand. Luke lounged in his beach chair. He wore his favorite Ray Ban sunglasses, a lit joint in one hand and a salted margarita in the other. He smiled and looked back at the tiki bar playing Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville behind him.
He had met two old guys in Hawaiian shirts and straw hats at the bar. A bikini clad woman under each arm, they had long braided hair and were partying hard. They claimed to be out of money and were trying to get everyone to buy them drinks. They seemed familiar to him. Kept calling him Grandson. A crowd of partygoers had gathered around the two old guys telling stories. More like lies, thought Luke.
Grandson, order some of those Beef Wellington tapas for us. We’re hungry, said one.
Better yet, quit bogarting that joint and share a smoke with your ancestors.
Aayyye, said the other.
And give us a pull off your Margarita. We’re elders now, you know! They laughed.
Then they began to sing, “Wasting away again in Margaritaville.”
Suddenly, a cold breeze picked up, the skies darkened, and the sand blew sideways at Luke’s feet. He tried to tighten his Hawaiian shirt around him, but it seemed to get colder. He grabbed his beach towel. It didn’t help. He shivered and balled up. How had it gotten so cold?
The old guys sang together, arm in arm, Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame, but I know it’s my own damn fault.
Luke moved off his chair and sat on the sand, pulling his towel and shirt tight around him. He balled up face down and brought his hands and feet under him to warm them. He was freezing and chattering. Someone dragged a needle across the record to change the song.
AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ came on from the Tiki Bar. The two old guys, strumming an air guitar, started headbanging in time to the ‘Thunder’ chorus.
“Sound of the drums, beating in my heart,” sang the first elder.
“Went through to Texas, yeah, Texas, and we had some fun,” screamed the second.
It got louder and louder and colder and colder; the ground started to shake as the song continued. Luke shivered. What is this? An earthquake?
He closed his eyes tighter and tried to cover his ears. He moved back and forth on the ground, trying to stay warm. Then he heard a voice.
Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy, wake up. How did you like sleeping with the Thunder Beings? They have good music, ennit?
Luke awoke to two human skulls wrapped in a buffalo robe staring back at him from a crack in the bedroom closet.
Get up. It’s time to feed the animals, said grandpa.
Luke spent the rest of that year and many more summers with his Grandpa Roadmaker. He learned his people’s history, ways, myths, and ceremonies. On his 18th birthday, his grandfather gave him his Indian name. The Rez had made an Indian out of Luke, after all.
But it was not always good times. Luke saw the devastation the oil boom had brought to the Rez. Aunts, uncles, and cousins died daily, it seemed.
Quick deaths from a bad batch of drugs spiked with Fentanyl, shipped to the Rez for fast cash from unscrupulous drug dealers, eighteen-wheeler oil tankers rushing beyond the speed limit into a rez-mobile full of natives, or that sudden, mindless violence from the man camps that housed oil field workers from all over the world. Desperate, lonely men away from their families for months at a time, high on drugs and alcohol, looking for a quick fix.
And the slow deaths from cancers of the lung and kidney, organs that filter air and water, pushed to their limit by Billy Bob Bacon’s Hot Shot formula. Many local activists tried to discover what was being injected into the ground, but Bacon and his lawyers continued to hide behind the confidentiality of trade secret laws.
Or that slowest of deaths, the depression of those left behind trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and continue – surrounded by pollution, unable to remember the sweet taste of water or the earthy smell of sage in the wind. Each day, a new battle against that consuming darkness to get up out of bed. And no obituary ever read suicide. That known unknown was mercifully left unsaid, yet everyone knew the deceased had already suffered enough.
***
All Rise.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please be seated.
A thunderstorm raged outside the United States District Courthouse in the Houston Division for the Southern District of Texas. Wind, rain, hail, lightning, and thunder fought against one another all at once, and sheets of water rolled off the courtroom windows as the building shook.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, bear with us as we are in for some weather today. We will now hear opening statements from the Plaintiffs’ attorneys in the case of “MHA Nation et al. vs. Hot Shot Oil, LLC, Billy Bob Bacon et al”. The Native American Plaintiffs claim a breach of contract for failing to remediate their tribal land after the oil wells stopped producing.
The Defendants have filed for bankruptcy and claim they are insolvent and, therefore, no longer financially responsible.
Mr. Roadmaker, are you ready to proceed?
This is it, thought Luke. On the table corner, on an out folded napkin, lay some tobacco, a dixie cup of whisky, and a Slim Jim.
He remembered all the hard work he had put in to get to this moment: college, law school, years spent working for corporate law firms representing oil companies to learn their tricks and secrets. He remembered why he had gone to law school in the first place – to make a difference for his people.
He summoned up the memories of all the harm done to his family, relatives, and tribal members. And Luke recited the history of the oil boom on the Rez – both its boon and bane. At the defendant’s table, Billy Bob Bacon and his army of lawyers scowled back at him.
He thought of that summer when he first met his grandpa, and AC/DC’s Thunderstruck started playing in his head.
Lightning flashed outside the courthouse; thunder exploded above. Luke caught a fleeting glimpse of an arrow flying from one cloud into another.
He smiled.
May it please the Court.
This is a simple case of a promise made and a promise broken. A promise that once the oil was gone, Mr. Bacon and his companies would remediate the land to its former condition so that its Native American people could live on their land in good health and peace – with clean water and fresh air.
Let me play a recording for you where Mr. Bacon made this promise. I apologize for the poor quality of the recording. My grandfather made the recording years ago while battling Alzheimer’s. It is the only copy known to exist.
Luke hit play, and Billy Bob Bacon’s recorded voice from that morning broadcast came on, ‘Every well will be fully remediated. You have my word in writing.’ Luke stopped the recording.
And now, the promise is broken. Because the oil is gone, Mr. Bacon wants to keep all his profits and not repair the land he has contaminated because it will cost him billions. There is no profit in healing Mother Earth, honoring your promises, or doing the right thing.…
***
The sun was going down, and the verdict from the big case in Houston was all over the news. Albert Roadmaker opened his front door to face the west at the end of the day. He burned a sage bundle as he waved an eagle fan through the smoke and sang a Mandan prayer song.
Ma’ake te’han makos’ (the earth always endures.)
It was a good day to be alive.
***
[1] https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-belonging-kinship/three-affiliated-tribes
Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash
