FIC: Welcome Home (Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse, R) for myhappyface (1-2/4)
TITLE: Welcome Home
RATING: R
FANDOM: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: The boys do the surrogate thing, and Ray prepares for the baby coming by manically decorating the nursery. Crow Horse prepares by doing everything in his power to have a vision before delivery. Meanwhile, Ray's parents meet Crow Horse's folks.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: For Holly, because I love her almost as much as she loves Thunderheart. This is technically a sequel to Homecoming, Marrow, and Stealing Home, though they are not required reading.
THANKS: I am hugely grateful to ticketsonmyself and clevermonikerr for the beta. You guys are my heroes.
Chapter One: In Which Crow Horse Would Take a Bullet
South Dakota, 1983
Crow Horse drove to Rapid City while the sky was still dark. The roads were mostly empty, and Ray was at home in bed, so the strange insular silence of being out in the world at that twilight time rode shotgun.
Sure, Rapid City was much more metropolitan than the rez, but as big cities went it wasn’t one, and there never seemed to be anyone at the airport. Crow Horse thought it was a waste; damn thing took up so much land, what with all the space needed for the planes to slow themselves down, and yet so much of it was empty, not getting used by anybody or anything. Plus, the terminal reminded him of the dentist’s office, and the world could sure use less of them.
Crow Horse was the only one waiting at the sterilized, plastic gate. Occasionally some airport staff would walk by and give him the eye, looking at him the same way clerks at department stores did, like being Indian meant he had pockets full of stolen merchandise. Crow Horse crossed his arms over his chest, and he leaned against the wall. He ignored them with the practiced air of one who is many years used to not giving a shit what you think.
Finally, a plane took that long stretch of land to burn up its speed, and people appeared, sudden as snow, in the terminal. Most of them ran right through, just stopping long enough to hop on another plane, but finally Crow Horse caught sight of his people, and they were staying. He walked over, and tipped his hat.
“Mrs. Levoi. Sir.”
Ray’s ma hugged him. “It’s still Maureen, Walter.”
“Eyah. Sure.”
They collected their luggage and piled into the truck. It was a tight fit, but it would’ve been worse in the cruiser, with one or both of Ray’s parents riding in the back, behind bars.
“Ray’s sorry he couldn’t make it. He’s been on doubles, and he just got off an hour ago; he doesn’t need to be driving all the way out here and back to the rez on that little sleep, anyhow.”
“Short staffed?” Ray’s stepdad asked.
“Always,” Crow Horse said. “And we’ve both been picking up extra when we can, since we’re gonna be takin’ time off pretty soon here, when the baby comes. Y’all have a nice flight? This your first time out west?”
“The flight was fine,” Ray’s stepdad said. “How long did you say the drive was?”
“Couple hours,” Crow Horse said. “Things in the desert tend to be pretty spread out.”
Ray’s folks shared a look. Crow Horse forced a smile.
“So,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Washington DC, 1978
Crow Horse had snapped off most of the buttons of Ray’s shirt in undressing him, so Ray buttoned his jacket around himself and walked fast enough that maybe no one would notice. Crow Horse, whose fault it was, could not keep himself from smiling, but he kept up with Ray’s pace.
They reached the garage and Ray’s hands shook so badly he dropped his keys, and when he picked them up, he placed them, without thought, in Crow Horse’s palm, and asked Walter if he could drive him home.
So unlike desert nights on the rez, DC kept the heat even after the sun went down, and it was late but still sweltering. They rode with the top down, and Ray was boiling in his jacket buttoned all the way, but he was too dazed to change anything, so he sat roasting in the passenger’s seat watching the bright lights blur by, and giving one word directions when occasion called for it.
Two weeks past the stronghold, Crow Horse had shown up in his office with no warning, and he had kissed Ray and undressed him and bent him over his own desk and fucked him like a soldier returning home from war, and what’s more was Ray had let him do all of these things. And Ray had felt strangely at peace with everything, like he was falling back in step with a dance he had learned a long time ago and just forgotten for a moment.
Now, separated from the events by time and space, Ray felt like he had just been pulled from a car accident. He was sitting by the side of the road watching life rush by him, but his mind could not catch up with where his body was now, and instead lagged in the past.
In shock. That was the term. Ray felt like he needed a doctor.
When they got close enough, Ray fumbled with the garage door opener, and Crow Horse just automatically steered into the open mouth.
“All these houses look the same,” Crow Horse said. “How do you remember which one’s yours?”
Ray didn’t answer. Crow Horse turned off the ignition, and the relative cool and darkness of the garage settled around them like a silence. Finally, Crow Horse stopped waiting for Ray and got out of the car, and then he went around and opened Ray’s door.
“You plannin’ on sleeping in there, chief?”
Ray was not planning on anything. Apparently, plans had no bearing at all on what actually happened in your life. But he got out of the car.
Jimmy met them at the door, tail wagging. Crow Horse snorted.
“You kept that damn dog?” he said.
Ray’s hand felt absently to Jimmy’s head, but he could not summon an answer. He wasn’t sure, himself, why he had brought Jimmy with him. It hadn’t felt like there was a choice; it had just seemed like what he was supposed to do.
“I need to change,” Ray said, finally unbuttoning his jacket. He fingered the ruined front of his shirt. “You want something to drink?”
Ray left Crow Horse in the living room with a Coke, and went into his bedroom. He didn’t need to-Crow Horse could not see him unless he was looking, and more importantly, Crow Horse had already seen him-but Ray shut the door behind him. The world seemed too big with the door open.
Ray took off his jacket. The cool air hitting his back felt so good he moaned. He took off his shirt, his shoes, his pants, and then he sat on the edge of the bed, his febrile body drinking up the air conditioning. His hands had stopped shaking, but the car wreck feeling of detachment, of his mind being out of step with his body, remained. He didn’t know what to do next, so he just sat, heavy as a stone.
1983
Crow Horse checked the clock. Ray had probably only had three hours of sleep or so. Still.
Crow Horse crawled up on the bed, above the covers, rested his body against the curl of Ray’s spine. Ray moaned quietly, and pushed his nose into his pillow.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “You’re home. What time is it?”
“Almost eight.”
Ray blinked up at him. “You back from the airport?”
“Yeah. Got your folks in the living room.”
“Mm,” Ray said.
Beneath him, Crow Horse felt Ray’s muscles relax. Nope. That wasn’t happening. Crow Horse squeezed Ray’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. “I love you. I’d take a bullet for you. But I just spent the last two hours squeezed in the cab of the truck with your folks. Alone. If-”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “I’ll be right out. Just gimme a minute to put on some pants.”
Crow Horse hopped off the bed. “And maybe brush your teeth.”
Ray frowned.
“Sweet talker,” he said.
Crow Horse tapped at his watch on his way out of the room. “I’m timing you, kola.”
Ray groaned, and hid his face in his pillow.
“Two minutes,” he said.
1978
Ray finally remembered how to get dressed, and he left his bedroom in jeans and a t-shirt. Crow Horse was perched on his couch, soda bottle empty, Jimmy at his side, trying unsuccessfully to con Crow Horse into petting him.
“You okay?” Crow Horse said. His dark eyes held Ray gently but inexorably.
“Sure,” Ray said. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” Crow Horse said. “I poked around your kitchen, though; you don’t have very much food.”
“I’m never here. But I know a place.”
***
Ray picked the restaurant because it was the closest to his house, it was generally dark, and they had deep, recessed booths he could sink into and disappear. It wasn’t that he wanted to hide, exactly; he just felt a comfort in burrowing.
Crow Horse ordered a beer and some ribs. Ray just asked for water; he felt his anxiety as a physical anomaly in his body. He felt like he had been injured, and he could not feel hunger beneath that.
Crow Horse watched a small scuffle break out over the pool table closest to the bar.
“This doesn’t strike me as your scene,” he said. “You come here a lot?”
“No.”
Crow Horse’s gaze was laser-level and absolutely devoid of sympathy. “You don’t come here; you don’t go home. You go anywhere a lot?”
“Work,” Ray said, and swallowed most of his water in one gulp.
Crow Horse tapped his fingers on the tabletop’s icing-thick varnish. “Yeah, okay.”
Ray sank into the booth, pushing his shoulders into the pleasant resistance of the leather, like a challenge.
“You say that like you don’t work too much,” Ray said. “But even when you’re not working, you’re working.”
Crow Horse shrugged. “Got food in my fridge, though. Places I go.”
“I’ve spent most of my career undercover. It’s different. You can’t come home every night.”
“So you spend most your time being somebody else?”
Ray had never thought about it quite like that. “I’m good at it.”
“That don’t worry you?”
It did, in fact. After his first deep cover assignment, Ray had been unnerved by how easy it was for him to live as an imaginary person, and how difficult it was to fit back into his own life.
“I didn’t say that,” Ray said lamely. He picked at a scratch in the varnish.
Crow Horse’s nod was more like a horse tossing its head in an irritated attempt to scare off a fly.
“Right,” he said. “You haven’t said much of anything.”
The good thing about Ray’s frustration with Crow Horse and his line of questioning was that it made him less aware of the disconnect between his mind and body. Anger could be clarifying like that.
“I’m sorry,” he snapped. “You just showed up here with no warning at all; I didn’t have time to prepare a speech.”
Crow Horse looked angry and hurt, and he opened his mouth to say something smarter and more cutting than Ray would be able to think of. Ray continued talking so he wouldn’t have the chance.
“You just waltz in like I should have been expecting you, with your big boots knocking shit over and just-you just-” Ray’s voice shook, a sudden break. “Walter, I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Crow Horse’s expression softened.
“It’s okay. You just need to relax. Why don’t you just have a drink, and we’ll talk-”
“I don’t drink.”
“Sure, not usually, but drastic circumstances call for drastic measures.”
Crow Horse went to flag down the waitress. Ray grabbed his hand from the air, dragged it back down to the table. Crow Horse blinked at him, surprised.
“I really do not drink. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are.”
Ray imagined Crow Horse’s expression would be the same had he just sprouted wings and flown around the table.
“Okay, kola,” Crow Horse said finally. “Okay, so you don’t drink.”
Crow Horse pulled his hand free from Ray’s, and then placed it gently atop it. Ray pulled away. Crow Horse sighed.
“You wanna talk?”
Ray shook his head adamantly. “No. No, I do not.” That breath had barely left him before, “Have you?”
Crow Horse sat his beer down, and put his attention fully on Ray. “Have I what?”
“Have you . . . done that. Before. What we-what we did. Because you seemed-you seemed to know what you were doing.”
“I been with a few men, Ray,” Crow Horse said softly.
Ray chewed on his lip. “Are you-I mean . . .”
“I been with women, too. Mostly women. But a few men.” He shrugged. “Wasi’chu’s are too uptight about all this, labels and things. That’s not the Indian way.”
“There’s a Sioux way about sex?”
“There’s a Sioux way about everything, Ray. You gotta stop thinking of Indians as just a collection of headdresses and aphorisms. We got a whole world, Ray. Sometimes it jives with what the Wasi’chu’s do, and sometimes not, but it’s all ours.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray said, and he was. “This is all really new to me.”
“I know, and you’re trying to learn, so I’m not mad.” He studied Ray’s face. “Where do you get your blood from? Your dad, enit?”
It was hard to talk about, but the gentle tone of Crow Horse’s voice was soothing, and Crow Horse was looking at him with such kindness and understanding that Ray was able to look him in the face.
“Yeah. My dad. He was half.”
“And he didn’t teach you any of this?”
“No. And he died when I was a kid, so . . .”
Crow Horse nodded. “Okay. Well, you need to know something, tell me, and I’ll try and help. About this . . . I’m not sayin’ it’s tradition or anything, men with men, but we don’t have this Wasi’chu moral outrage, sins against God thing. The thought is that winktje-that’s a Lakota word, Ray, for what we’re talking about-are part of the whole, and more than that, if They tell you to do something, there’s no use trying to get out of it; you’re ’sposed to be with who you’re ’sposed to be with, and that’s it.”
“They?” Ray asked after a long moment.
“You know. Them,” Crow Horse said, and they both smiled.
1983
It actually took Ray eight minutes to appear in the living room, but who was counting. By the looks of it, he had dressed, shaved, and run a comb through his hair. Crow Horse glanced a kiss off Ray’s cheek as he pressed a cup of coffee into his hand, and determined that he had brushed his teeth, too.
Ray hugged his mother, and had the kind of semi-icy standoff that passed for affection with the Colonel.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” he said. “Flight okay?”
“It was fine, sweetheart,” his mother said.
“Drive was long,” the Colonel said.
Ray smiled apologetically. “Rez life.”
“Like working twenty hour shifts?” the Colonel asked.
“I’m used to it,” he said, lightly. Then his face turned serious. “No, I really am. Huh.”
“Well, you’ll be getting even less sleep when the baby comes,” Ray’s mother said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ray said. “We’re taking some time off to compensate.”
“Good.”
“Even hired some auxiliary help,” Crow Horse said. “Don’t ask me how we got the money for that.”
“Like a nanny?” the Colonel asked.
“At the station, he means,” Ray said.
Ray’s mother squeezed his shoulder, and smiled. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m so happy for you.”
1978
It was pretty late when they left the restaurant, and Ray was tired, in his bones tired. He half wanted to go to bed, and wake up with none of this having happened.
“You can get me a hotel or something, Ray; you don’t have to take me home with you,” Crow Horse said. “But if you do, it doesn’t have to be a sex thing, okay? I know you get worried over things, possibilities, but you don’t have to about that.”
After Walter had talked Ray down, the rest of dinner had been good. They had fallen into a comfortable pattern, the back and forth rapport they had had back on the reservation, and Ray had remembered the reasons he had liked Walter to begin with, the reasons he had stopped Walter from leaving his office, the reasons he had been still and open and waiting beneath Walter’s touch. Now Ray realized he was more tired than he had been in a long time, and he was going to spend all night not sleeping, knowing Walter was in his house, just a few feet away.
“Don’t be silly,” Ray said, and then flinched, because telling a grown man not to be silly was less silly than purely asinine. “You drove all the way out here; I’m not going to stick you in some hotel.”
Crow Horse smiled, in a way that showed his pleasure at getting his way, and his complete lack of surprise in Ray’s decision.
“Where’s your tripod?”
Jimmy was draped across the sofa, not sleeping but too lazy to get up to greet them. He gazed up at them with his luminous large eyes, tail thumping against the cushions.
“So,” Ray said, “there’s the sofa. You can kick Jimmy off; he usually sleeps with me. It doesn’t fold out, but I can make it up, or-” He could not believe he was saying this, and it was hard to get the words off the ground, “-you could-there’s my bedroom.”
Ray had been more confident asking out his first crush than he was now, bearing Crow Horse’s quiet scrutiny.
“I’ll sleep where you want me to,” Crow Horse said. “Last thing I wanna do is make you uncomfortable. Just be straight with me, and you won’t hurt my feelings.” Ray hesitated, and Crow Horse added, “Think on it a minute, if you have to.”
Ray thought about it. He weighed the anxiety he was feeling right now against the anxiety he would experience alone in his bed, listening to Crow Horse breathing and moving in the room next door.
“I want you to sleep with me,” he said softly.
Crow Horse frowned. “Be straight with me-”
“I am. Just-I don’t mean . . . it doesn’t mean, sex, I just-”
Ray realized he had failed to form a cohesive thought, but he was out of words, so he just stood there, dumb, bearing Crow Horse’s gaze.
“Okay,” Crow Horse said.
1983
“So when do we meet this girl?” the Colonel asked. “The surrogate?”
“Tonight,” Ray said. “We’re going to have supper with her.”
“What is she like?” Ray’s mother asked.
“She’s a nice girl,” Ray said. “She’s from the rez, but she’s lived in Wasi’chu cities. She came back here a few years ago when her mother got sick.”
“She loves Ray,” Crow Horse added. “He saved her life a couple years ago.”
Ray’s mother’s brow rose. “He saved her life?”
“Oh, yeah. She hit a deer driving home one night, and Ray was first on scene. He pulled her outta her car after a couple hours stuck in there, took her to the clinic, and then sat at home with her until her kin could get there to look after her. She loves him. We ran across her lookin’ for a surrogate, and she jumped all over it.”
1978
Crow Horse turned his back while Ray changed. Ray had always been athletic, so he had not had locker room anxiety since before puberty, when he had been the first one to get a growth spurt, and had grown three inches ahead of his classmates. This was like that: he felt strange, alien, like he was a different species and would be found out any second.
Ray remembered Crow Horse’s hands on his waist, the feel of Crow Horse’s body against the length of his own. He felt giddy for a moment, and then, immediately, like kickback, ashamed.
Crow Horse was waiting for him on the bed. Ray sat down beside him, but then immediately busied himself setting his alarm. Crow Horse had stripped to his t-shirt and shorts, which was much more than he had been wearing earlier when they had-anyway, right now it didn’t seem like a lot, and Ray could not seem to lock down perspective. He could force his mind to it for a moment, but then he drifted away to the immediate, his heart wild in his chest.
“Look, Ray, I told you, I’ll sleep where you want me-”
Ray looked up from the clock.
“You’re probably pretty bushed,” he said. “Long drive, right?”
“Yeah,” Crow Horse said slowly, eyeing Ray distrustfully. “You make the drive back here from the rez?”
“I did.”
Insane. It had been insane to drive for two days when the Bureau would have bought him a plane ticket, but then, he’d had Jimmy. But Jimmy wasn’t a reason, only an excuse. Ray had wanted an excuse; he had wanted the two days to get his manic mind to settle after everything that had happened on the rez. He was more tired now, though, then at the end of that long drive, when the bright lights of the city had finally begun to light his way, the countryside fading away in the rearview.
“It’s a long drive,” Ray said again.
“Yeah, Ray. It is.”
“You came all the way out here to check on me,” Ray said. He studied Crow Horse’s expression. “Or just to see me?”
Crow Horse’s face was open; his emotions rose right to the surface. After all the cryptic bullshit and institutional game playing Ray was used to, it was a nice change.
“Maybe both,” Crow Horse said, looking warm and fond and maybe a little surprised that Ray had found him out.
Ray exhaled slowly, the tautness and anxiety binding his chest leaving with his breath. Suddenly he felt integrated, calm, and competent.
“You said we don’t have to have sex,” he said.
Crow Horse nodded slowly. “I did. We don’t.”
“Does that . . . does that mean we can’t?”
Crow Horse chuckled. “No, Ray. That is not what that means.”
Ray leaned forward to kiss Crow Horse, but he got eighty percent there and froze, his nerves hitting him so hard he couldn’t move. Crow Horse watched him, suspended in the abyss, for a moment before closing the distance between them, his hands steady on Ray’s body, his touch gentle but sure.
Chapter Two: In Which the Lamps Tend Themselves, and the Boys Sweat
1983
The surrogate’s name was Hannah Makes Room. She had a light complexion and freckles; long, dark hair; delicate features; and a quick smile. She was even-tempered, and had a way of putting people at ease. Ray had first seen her in an uncharacteristic display of raw emotion, but he had liked her right away, anyway, and he could tell his parents did, too.
She was nearing term, and had a habit of resting her small hands on her large stomach while she was speaking.
“So, Hannah,” Ray’s mother said, passing the corn, “how did you become a surrogate?”
Hannah shrugged. “First time was on accident. I got pregnant in high school, and Grampa Reaches put me in touch with this real sweet couple who’d been trying for a baby with no luck. It made such a good thing out of a bad situation; it made them a family. So when I learned you could do that for a living, I decided to try it.”
“You’re compensated, of course,” the Colonel said, “beyond fuzzy feelings.”
“She is,” Ray said, looking up from his potatoes. “But it’s worth it, sir.”
“Ray’s savings was just sittin’ around in a bank account, anyhow,” Crow Horse said. “About time it got off its duff, started doing some heavy lifting.”
Ray met his stepfather’s eyes. “I’m going to be a father. There’s no price on that.”
1978
The harsh noise of his alarm shocked Ray from fretful sleep. It took him a moment to separate himself from the world of his tumultuous, disturbing dreams. But they were just dreams; he had been having nightmares since leaving the reservation, but he had not been having visions. Ray rubbed his face like he could push the images from his head, then smacked the alarm clock until it stopped trilling. And then he hung for a moment, suspended in the unnatural position: bent up like a cobra, his torso erect and his legs and belly still lying prone. Crow Horse was in bed beside him, real and actual and blinking sleep from his eyes.
Ray felt himself flush.
“You makin’ enough noise?” Crow Horse said.
“S-sorry,” Ray stuttered. He started getting out of bed, but then he noticed he was naked, and Crow Horse was looking at him, so he sat back down, pulling the sheets over his lap. “I, um, I gotta go into work. If I didn’t have to, I’d call in, but I have-”
“You got things to put to bed, Ray, I know that. Gettin’ all this Coutelle business straightened out is important to me, too.”
“Maybe-maybe you could drive me to work, and pick up your bike, so you don’t have to be trapped here all day.”
Ray craved the solitude of the morning commute, a moment to himself before entering the bustle of his working life, but leaving Crow Horse shut up in his house felt like caging a wild animal, and Ray could not be responsible for that kind of cruelty.
“Sure.” He stretched. “Just lemme know when you’re ready to go.”
Crow Horse closed his eyes, and Ray took the break to walk to the bathroom unobserved. What was wrong with him? Crow Horse had already seen him naked. A lot. And in ways no one else had seen him, ever. So why was he so skittish?
Ray turned the shower on, and suddenly, the weight of the water was almost too much. He had felt fine until this moment, and then he began to wash himself, moving his soap-slick hands over the altered terrain of his body. He had bruises on his shoulders and he ached deeply in places he had barely been aware of. Ray felt suddenly, viscerally violated, betrayed not by Crow Horse but by himself. He had let Crow Horse do those things-he had even asked him to. And he had enjoyed them, which only made him feel sicker.
Crow Horse was in the kitchen, wrestling with the coffeemaker, when Ray left the bathroom, showered and shaved and starched in his suit.
“You take a long shower,” Crow Horse said, pressing a mug of tepid brew into Ray’s hand. “Was starting to worry you’d drowned in there.”
“I’m just having a little trouble getting going this morning.” Ray took a drink, and flinched. “I’ll show you how to work the coffee machine when I get home tonight.”
“Ray, I rebuilt the engine on my bike, and I can’t make sense of this damn thing. You make life too complicated.”
1983
“What about Nestor?”
Ray made a face. “Absolutely not. We could call him after my father.”
“Which one?”
Ray frowned. “Good point. Jack?”
“Yeah, but then he’d get called ‘Jackie,’ like a girl. We could name him after me.”
“No.”
Crow Horse looked hurt. “What? You don’t like my name?”
“It’s not that,” Ray said. “I’m just not comfortable calling my child the same thing I cry out during sex.”
“Well, then, guess ‘Jesus’ and ‘please please please’ are out, too.”
Ray’s mouth turned, sourly, just as his mother entered the room.
“What are you boys fighting about?”
“We’re not fighting,” Ray said. “We’re arguing.”
Ray’s mother raised a brow. “Is that an important distinction?”
“Yes. Fighting means we’re really worked up about something; arguing is just Walter’s favorite pastime.”
“It’s your own fault,” Crow Horse said.
“Wait, what? It’s my fault that you enjoy picking on me? How-”
“I wouldn’t do it so much if you didn’t get so cute when you’re flustered.”
Ray blushed.
Crow Horse laughed. “See? That, there, that’s just what I’m talking about.”
1978
Ray walked Crow Horse to his bike.
“You need me to draw you a map, or-”
Crow Horse smirked. “Getting home’s the same way we went last night, enit? They didn’t change any roads or nothin’?”
“No, but-”
“If it’s the same way, I know how to get there. I been there once already.”
Crow Horse smiled, but not unkindly. He stepped toward Ray, and for a moment Ray was half terrified and half exhilarated that Crow Horse was going to kiss him, right here in the very public government parking garage, but Crow Horse just clapped his hand on Ray’s shoulder, and got on his bike.
Ray watched him drive away until Crow Horse was lost among the rush hour traffic, and then he walked slowly to the elevator, each step a weight laid down upon his shoulders.
***
For some reason, being interviewed was much more draining than conducting interviews. It had something to do, Ray thought, with the balance of power. Having power was always easier than not having it. Today was easier; the past couple days had been rough, so they’d brought in Michael Glazier to help mediate. The Bureau didn’t have a union, so Ray didn’t have a rep or a lawyer to sit down with him here, but Mike had been his handler since he had started working undercover, and he was as close as it came to someone looking out for him.
The interviewers sat at the head of the table. Mike sat on Ray’s side, and Coutelle and his lawyer-he did have a lawyer-sat on the other, which meant that the worst part of every day was the hours Ray had to spend bearing Cooch’s scrutiny, the hours he had to spend figuring out what to do with his eyes, like he was some punk kid called to the principal’s office.
When they broke for lunch, Mike took Ray down to the commissary and bought him a sandwich.
“You’re doing the right thing, kid,” he said.
“Yeah, thanks. I know, but that doesn’t make it easier.”
“Don’t mind me saying so, but you look a little extra beat down. You sleeping all right?”
In fact, Ray had not spent very much of last night sleeping, but it wasn’t because he had been lying awake. Ray smiled into the mouth of his soda.
***
Ray left as soon as depositions were over for the day. He didn’t have any active cases, but that didn’t mean there was nothing he could be doing. Still, he knew his bosses would let things slide given the circumstances, and for the first time in his life, Ray just wanted to let things slide.
Crow Horse was lazing on the couch with Jimmy, his feet up on the coffee table, half watching a basketball game and half dozing. He sat up when Ray walked in.
“Didn’t expect you so soon,” he said. “Thought you burned the midnight oil.”
“The lamps can tend themselves for a night.”
1983
Ray’s work on the nursery had been what some people might call manic, and what Crow Horse called “free labor.” Ray’s folks went to bed early, jetlagged, and Ray went to work on the nursery. Crow Horse had thought a crib and maybe a new coat of paint would do the trick, but Ray didn’t do anything halfway, and he’d knocked out a wall to put in a picture window and a little window seat, which he’d built by hand, just himself, his tools, and some how-to books. Crow Horse’s nagging feeling that he should be doing something to help was far out-shouted by the good sense to leave Ray to his own when he was in the middle of a project. He listened to this good sense for a while, fooling around with the television and generally dragging his feet, before poking his head in.
Crow Horse found Ray leaning against one of the finished walls, arms balanced on his bent knees. He looked bushed, and there was paint on his face. Crow Horse tried not to grin too big, and came to sit beside him.
“Lookin’ real nice in here, hoss.”
“Thanks,” Ray said. “I just hope it’ll be ready in time.”
“It will. You got more time than you realize.”
Ray didn’t say anything. He looked down at his paint-splotched hands.
“Look,” Crow Horse said. “I got a real important job for you.”
Ray looked at him. “Okay.”
“Names are real important to us Sioux,” Crow Horse said. “A name tells you who you are, what you can do, and what you got to give.”
“Okay,” Ray said again. There was a length to the word that suggested he didn’t understand yet.
“It’s also important who gives you your name. It has to be someone worth something; someone important. And someone with love for you.”
Crow Horse could tell, by the way Ray’s brow was pinched, that he still didn’t get it. Crow Horse continued.
“What we got, you and me, it’s hard, and it’s gonna be hard for our kid, too. So he needs a real good name to get through, and you need to be the one to give it to him.”
Ray blinked, his lovely mouth curving into an ‘o.’ “Me? You want me to pick out the name? All by myself?”
Crow Horse curled his fingers around Ray’s jaw as he wiped the paint off Ray’s face with the pad of his thumb. He let his smile loose.
“Yup,” he said. “It’s a big responsibility, so don’t screw it up.”
***
They went to the Crow Horses’ for lunch. Ray and Walter wouldn’t be eating because of the inipi, but Ray couldn’t have kept anything down, anyway, his stomach was so twisted with nerves. Everything was fine, but then they started talking.
“I don’t understand why we have to stay the night here,” the Colonel said.
“Me neither,” said Crow Horse’s pop. “Surely they can be left to their own.”
Crow Horse’s ma frowned. “Nonsense. We’re happy to have your parents stay with us, Raymond.”
“Walter and I have a prior engagement,” Ray explained again. “I’m sorry to leave for an evening, but there’s no way to reschedule, and it’s important.”
“And you’re going to be gone all night?” Ray’s mother asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’ll be doing what, exactly?” the Colonel asked.
“We’re going to an inipi,” Crow Horse said.
“English,” Ray’s stepfather said.
“It’s a sweat lodge, sir,” Ray said.
“That’s a real thing?” the Colonel asked. “So you’re going off to a sauna?”
“It ain’t the damn gym,” Crow Horse’s pop said. “It’s a religious ceremony.
“Okay,” the Colonel said. “So you’re going to spend all night sweating.”
“Is that safe?” Ray’s mother asked.
Ray ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, a stall as he tried to conjure the right words.
“No, ma’am,” he said carefully. “We won’t stay all night at the sweat. We’re going to do the inipi this afternoon-that’s the sweat lodge. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to do a moon fire ceremony after. And if we stay for that, we’ll be out all night.”
The Colonel frowned. “What do you mean, ‘if it doesn’t work?’”
“Walter wants to have a vision,” Crow Horse’s pop said. “Before the baby comes.”
The Colonel’s brow rose, which Ray had expected. Ray spoke quickly, before the Colonel could start.
“Look, I know a lot of this stuff is hard to understand if you’re not living it, so just try to understand that these are religious ceremonies, and they’re important to Walter. Okay?”
Ray’s mother put a hand on her husband’s arm. “Just let it be, Harold.”
The Colonel frowned, but nodded. “Fine. What’s the second ceremony? Will you be indoors?”
“No, sir,” Ray said. “It’s outside, but we’ll be with a group.”
“And what does it entail?”
Ray had really been hoping this question wouldn’t come up, and he was planning on phrasing things as delicately as possible, but Mr. Crow Horse spoke before he could.
“The boys’ll be with the wichasa wakhan-”
“The what?”
“‘Medicine man,’” Walter translated.
“It’s like a Wasi’chu priest,” Crow Horse’s pop said.
“Pastor,” the Colonel said tightly.
“Eh?”
“We’re Methodists.”
Crow Horse’s pop looked at Ray.
“Their holy man is called a pastor, sir, not a priest.”
“Eyah,” Crow Horse’s pop said. “Anyway, the boys’ll be with the wichasa wakhan, and some other men, and they’re gonna sit around a campfire and be led in prayer. And to move things along, open ’em up, they’re going to eat peyote.”
The Colonel’s jaw dropped, something Ray had never seen. It shocked him out of his embarrassment.
“I’m sorry?” the Colonel said. “You’re going to go out into the middle of the woods to do drugs?”
“It’s not really the woods,” Ray said lamely. “There’s . . . it’s more like the desert.” His stepfather regarded him unpityingly, so he added quickly, “Look, say what you will-I know this stuff is hard to understand from the outside, just please . . . try to keep an open mind.”
The Colonel shook his head. “Your boyfriend is taking you out into the middle of the desert to get high, and I’m being unreasonable?”
“Easy to judge when your boy’s already had a vision,” Crow Horse’s pop said. Ray winced.
“I’m sorry?” the Colonel said. “You think you’ve had a vision, Raymond?”
“Hell, he’s had a half dozen,” Walter said.
“Don’t be discouraged, Walter,” Crow Horse’s ma said. “Grampa Reaches said he got his blood from a medicine man; it’s only natural they’d come easier to him.”
“What do you think a vision is, Raymond?” Ray’s stepfather asked. “Do you see the future? Can you predict lotto numbers?”
“A vision ain’t a parlor trick,” Crow Horse’s pop said. “It’s about orientation, about learning more about yourself, something you couldn’t know another way.”
“Ray has used a couple to help with cases, though,” Walter said.
Ray sank down into his chair, and prayed for invisibility.
“Walter,” he said, “please stop helping me.”
***
It was a little strange-but somehow exactly what his stepfather would expect his life was like-to be stripping in the middle of the woods with half a dozen other men. Ray reverted to locker room etiquette, keeping his eyes down and going as quickly as possible. He tied the towel around his waist and then waited at the edge of the clearing for Walter.
Ray’s own towel was a faded blue, but Walter had been given, inexplicably, one with a bright Hawaiian print, complete with a squawking parrot. Ray grinned.
“Aloha,” he said.
Walter rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.”
Grampa motioned them all into the inipi, the little turtle-shaped lodge. It was low, and close, but strangely comfortable, even packed thigh-to-thigh with six other men. Then the fire runner brought the inyan in, depositing the heated stones carefully with his pitchfork, and when he left, he shut them in. Most of the light left, and in the darkness, the rocks glowed. Ray could feel the heat jumping off them before the water pourer doused them, sending up plumes of steam. Ray closed his eyes, felt the steam wash over his face, his nearly nude body, and he listened to the drums start up, in time with his heartbeat. When the singing started, he felt his body sway along like reflex, and when he looked beside him, he saw it affecting Walter the same way.
When the glow of the inyan died down, the fire runner brought in more, burning red hot. Another wave of steam, hitting Ray as solid as a wall. It was difficult to breathe for a moment, a weight on his chest, like it wasn’t just air.
Sweat beaded on his flesh, and, with the next wall of steam, began to drip over his body’s valleys and downhills. He wondered what his body was thinking; he knew it was called a sweat lodge, but he was still surprised; he had never sweated this much without exercising, and here he was sitting still. It was a dissonance, and as he considered it, his perception of reality wavered, if only for a moment.
The fire runner came back a third time. Ray closed his eyes as the water pourer sent up another wave of steam, and when he opened his eyes he just saw the gray specter of the steam filling the inipi. For a moment, he was unable to fill his chest with air, and he watched the wavering world contained within the haze, like the miasma of some other world, contained in the little turtle-shaped tent.
The world inside the steam shimmered and shifted. The sound of the drums, the singing, faded into the background, as consistent and overlookable as Ray’s own pulse. A soft voice, above the heartbeat of the drums, so close and clear it could have come from Ray’s own internal monologue. But not in that voice.
“Hey, Ray.”
The steam phantom took form, face placid, shoulders held back warrior straight.
“Maggie.”
She had a small bundle cradled in her arms, carefully and thoroughly wrapped.
“Taking a big step, wasi,” Maggie said. She bounced the baby against her hip.
And Ray felt himself imbued suddenly with enormous calm.
“I’m ready,” he said, and as the words left his mouth, he knew they were true.
Maggie smiled. “Just checking.”
Ray felt a pressure on his arm and started. When he’d settled enough, he found Walter’s hands on him, found Walter watching him with concern.
“You all right, kola?” he whispered.
Ray was panting. He wiped sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Fine,” he said.
Walter looked at him distrustfully.
“You have a vision?” he asked finally.
Ray could tell, by Walter’s raw look, that he had been the only one. He wanted to lie, because they were here for Walter and Ray felt, with a burst of impossible logic, that maybe the vision had been meant for Walter, and he had just gotten in the way. Like it was his fault Walter was still waiting.
Ray wasn’t good at lying to Walter. He nodded.
Walter’s mouth thinned, and he nodded back. He must have realized the face he had on, because he squeezed Ray’s shoulder, and told him it was okay, it was going to be okay.
***
They left the inipi, the steam pouring out into the waking world like the exhalation of some great beast. Ray’s body drank up the cool, dry air, and his mind began to adjust to its every day frequency. He always felt slightly bruised after a vision, slightly dazed, like he had just stumbled from an accident.
The inipi ended with food, which was the best thing. Ray and Walter and the other men sat on blankets on the cool ground and ate until their stomachs ached, uniformly ravenous. Grampa and the other men talked, but it was just talk, and Ray drifted in and out.
It was a few hours until the moon fire. They helped clean up, and then took Grampa’s invitation back to his trailer. Ray felt suddenly, helplessly sleepy, and Grampa showed Ray to his bedroom without Ray even saying anything. Ray fell weakly to the cool plush of the mouse’s nest soft little bed. It was probably older than he was, which was somehow, strangely comforting. He heard voices in the living room; Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer speaking English, Grampa and Crow Horse speaking Lakota. He couldn’t hear a single word of it properly, but the voices mixed together into a comforting hum.
Ray was almost asleep when he heard the door open, felt the mattress move. The sweet, familiar weight and warmth of Walter lying down beside him. Ray wondered for a moment if Walter was mad, but then Walter put an arm around Ray, pulled him close, and the thought disappeared as quickly as it had arisen.
Walter pressed a kiss to Ray’s shoulder. “You awake?”
“Mm. Not really.”
“Can you tell me what you saw?”
Ray snuggled against Walter, against the plush of the bed and the blankets.
“Maggie Eagle Bear,” he said.
Walter went a little rigid around him; Ray shook his head.
“No, don’t worry. It was a good vision. It showed me that I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Ray didn’t want to say it, because he knew it was exactly what Walter wanted. But he wasn’t good at lying to Walter.
“To be a father,” he said softly.
And Walter surprised him, hugging him extra tight.
***
When Crow Horse shook him awake, it was dark outside. Ray stretched; sleep still clung to his cells, making his muscles heavy, his movements clumsy.
“I sleep long?” he asked.
“Couple hours. You got a little while yet before we start; thought you’d want some time to get your bearings.”
Ray yawned. “Thanks.”
Crow Horse waited patiently while Ray’s body sloughed off sleep enough to get up. He went into the bathroom and rinsed his face, dragged a comb through his hair.
“Didn’t help at all,” Crow Horse said affectionately.
Ray grunted, and hunted the cluttered floor for his shoes. “Is everyone here?”
“They’re here, or they’re comin’. Couple people out setting up now.”
Ray was done tying his shoes, but he stayed bent over them, his hands frozen over the laces.
“I’m nervous,” he said. “I’ve never done drugs before.”
Crow Horse came to sit next to him. “I know, kola.”
“Have-have you?”
“Have I what?” Ray just gave him a look, and he nodded. “Done peyote? Nah, but don’t worry about it. You trust Grampa, right?”
Of course he did.
Crow Horse laid a hand on Ray’s back, and Ray felt the tension in his shoulders relax.
( Chapters Three and Four )