Read Online Lone Wolves by John Smelcer - Free Book Online Page A

she yelled. “Faster!”
    Sampson looked up at his granddaughter’s worried face, blinking at the sharp-pointed stars and trees tilting over the river when the trail passed close to a steep bank. Soaking wet as he was, he could no longer feel his body.
    Denny shivered without her parka, protected from the wind and cold only by a sweater, her teeth chattering.
    Out of the corner of her eye, against the whiteness of snow occasionally brightened by the night sky, she saw something running through the scraggily trees parallel to the trail. She strained to make out the shadowy figure in the darkness. It was the black wolf with one gray ear, the one she had seen at the cabin. She was certain that it was the same wolf. He was running with them, following alongside, loping easily through the deep snow.
    Denny marveled at his strength.
    â€œMush!” she yelled to the dogs.
    â€œFaster!” she pleaded through tears, turning her eyelashes to ice.
    But somewhere along the wide and frozen river, beneath the Big Dipper and the northern lights dancing on the rim of the world, beneath the watchful eye of the moon, her grandfather’s spirit left him and rose from the belly of the sled he had built with his own two hands, flew above his worried granddaughter, above the racing dogs, above treetops lining the river, above the hills, toward beckoning white mountains towering in the distance.
    The spirit of Sampson Yazzie soared above the world like a raven.

7
    Hwtiitł
    Potlatch
    T wo days after Sampson died the small village church was packed for his memorial service. Delia and all four of her siblings, a brother and three sisters, were there, seated in the first pew. It was the first time in years that they had all come together. Death is like that, tearing lives apart while at the same time bringing lives together. It seemed as if everyone who ever knew Sampson was in attendance. Even Sampson’s cousin Joseph came on his snowmobile. Denny’s father was also there, though he never said a word to his daughter, or even looked at her, for that matter.
    After the congregation sang several songs from a black hymn book, Denny scribbled a poem on the back of the funeral program.

    Hymn Singer

    At grandfather’s funeral
    I watch my father
    mouth words to “Amazing Grace”
    Tsin’aen ne’k’eltaeni
    Tsin’aen ne’k’eltaeni
    and I am a stranger
    dressed in something black.

    When she was done, Denny neatly folded the paper and shoved it into her coat pocket, planning to rewrite the poem into her diary when she got home.

    At home that evening after the long church service, Denny’s grandmother spoke without looking up from her sewing.
    â€œU’eł txast’aas.”
    Delia looked at her daughter for translation.
    â€œShe says she wants to give Grandpa a potlatch.”
    â€œOkay, Mom,” said Delia in English. “We’ll give Dad a potlatch. I’ll make some phone calls in the morning.”
    Although living things huddled or moved slowly during winter, word of Sampson’s potlatch traveled quickly. Three days after he died, the whole village held a potlatch in the community hall. It was -35 degrees that afternoon. Everyone from the village was there, as well as over a hundred people from other villages who braved the cold to be part of the celebration. It’s an important thing when an elder dies. Two men who were related to Sampson went out and shot a cow moose, as was customary to feed all the potlatch guests, which are called dzoogaey . Although it was not hunting season, the government allowed a moose or caribou to be harvested for a potlatch—perhaps the single most important cultural tradition still remaining in the villages.
    It was the duty of kin to prepare for the potlatch.
    Women spent the day before cooking enough food for all the dzoogaey and filling boxes with dry goods and gathering blankets to be given away at the potlatch.