Coyote blue

other stuff on the fire and see how it goes." He threw on some cedar needles and they smelled pretty good too, then he threw on some sweet grass and some sage. "This stuff will be part of the sweat ceremony, too. And some water – we need some water so it will really get hot and miserable in here."
    "And we can get truly purified and clean?" asked the third duck.
    "Right," said Old Man Coyote. "First I'll pour four dippers of water on the rocks for the four directions."
    "And the four ducks."
    "Right," said Old Man Coyote. "Now I'll pour on seven dippers for the seven stars of the Big Dipper. Then ten more because ten is a nice even number."
    He handed each of the ducks a willow switch to beat their backs with. "Here, wail on yourself with these."
    "What for?" asked the second duck.
    "Tenderize… er… I mean… it brings up the sweat and purifies you."
    Then, when the ducks were beating their backs with the willow branches, Old Man Coyote said, "Okay, now I'm going to pour a whole bunch of dippers on the rocks. I'm not even going to count, but we are going to be really hot and really clean and pure." Then he poured and poured until it was so hot in the lodge that he could not stand it and he slipped out the door, leaving the ducks inside.
    Later, after he had plunged into the river to cool off, he ate a big meal and laid down to rest. "That was plumb swell," he said to himself. "I think I'll give the sweat to my new people. It can be their church and sacrament and they can think of me whenever they go in. It is my gift to them. I guess no one really needs to know about the ducks." Then Old Man Coyote picked up a willow twig and picked a bit of duck meat from between his teeth. "The sage gives them a nice flavor, though."

Chapter 7 – The Children of the
    Large-Beaked Bird Crow Country –
    1967
    Samson Hunts Alone sat on a bench by the sweat lodge behind his grandma's house, watching as Pokey carried the hot rocks with a pitchfork from the fire to the pit in the sweat lodge. Samson was supposed to be paying attention to the ritual that Pokey was performing and preparing himself to pray to the Great Spirit to bring him good medicine on his fast, but more than anything he wanted to be inside with the little kids and the women watching "Bonanza" on television. Grandma had cooked up a big batch of fry bread for the meal after the sweat and Samson's stomach growled when he thought about it.
    Pokey, straining under a pitchfork full of red-hot rocks, said, "Can't nobody cross my path between the fire and the sweat during the first four trips."
    Uncle Harlan, who was sitting next to Samson, let out a sarcastic snicker. Pokey looked up at him, his brow lowered in reproach.
    "The boys have to learn, Harlan," Pokey said.
    Harlan nodded. On the other side of Samson sat his two older cousins, Harry and Festus, thirteen and fourteen, who had been through the sweat for purification and prayer for their success on the basketball court at Hardin Junior High School. They had come the fifteen miles down to Crow Agency with Harlan, their father, to participate in Samson's sweat.
    Uncle Harlan didn't believe in the old ways. He often said that he didn't want his boys to grow up with their heads full of ideas that didn't work in the modern world. Still, because of the obligations he felt to his family he often drove down for sweats, participated in ritual gift giving, and never missed the Sun Dance in June. He lived in Hardin, north of the reservation, where he rebuilt truck engines during the day and drank hard in the bars at night. He fought often and lost seldom. When he was drinking with Uncle Pokey, the two of them lying on the bed of Pokey's pickup staring into the limitless stars of Montana's big sky, passing a bottle of Dickel Sour Mash between them, Harlan would talk of his time in Vietnam, of the two brothers he lost there, and of the warrior blood that was part of the Hunts Alone family. Pokey would answer Harlan's painful pride with parables and mystical references until Harlan could stand it no longer.
    "Damn it, Pokey, can your medicine fix a Cummins diesel? Can it fill out a tax form? Can it get you a job? Fuck medicine. Fuck fasting. Fuck the Sun Dance. If I thought I could do it, I'd take Joan and the kids and go a thousand miles from here."
    "You'd be back," Pokey would say. Then the two of them would lie there drinking in silence for long minutes before one of them would bring up basketball, hunting, or truck