Voices de la Luna

Two men walked over frozen ground covered by a thin layer of snow. One was an Indian. The other was a white man.
     When the two men arrived at the Indian’s camp, the white man held up his lantern and before him appeared a troubling scene. An Indian woman was sitting cross-legged in the snow. Her eyes were closed and she was holding a child, wrapped in a thin government-issue blanket, to her bosom.
     The white man knelt down beside the woman and spoke softly, "Sister, I have come to offer aid."
     The woman did not answer.
     The Indian knelt down and tenderly pulled back the blanket uncovering the face of a two year-old child whose half-open eyes betrayed the gravity of the situation.
     The white man reached out his hand. With two fingers, he felt for a pulse at the child’s ice-cold throat. Bowing his head, fighting the choking sensation clawing at his throat, and swallowing hard to stifle the bile, he whispered, "I’m sorry, dear sister, but the little one has gone to a better place."
     The broken hearted woman clutched her only child tight and began to wail a feral and chilling cacophony of grief. Tears rolled down her cheeks and fell like raindrops onto the beautiful face of innocence.
     The Indian collapsed to his knees and pounded the ground with his fists until the snow turned crimson. Then he sat back on his heels, lifted his tear-stained face and bloody hands to the heavens, and groaned a mournful lament.
     The white man was overwhelmed with anguish as he walked back to his camp alone. When he arrived he stood by the fire in grief-sick meditation for several minutes. Then he slumped down beside the dwindling fire. Though he kept a diary, he had been so busy caring for his wife and others that he had not found time lately to write a single word. He did not want the events of the last two days to go unrecorded, so he removed a leather-bound journal from his travel bag and began to write.
     Sabbath, November 25: I arose before daybreak and contemplated the unpleasantness of another day on the trail. After breakfast we assembled for worship in the cold open air and I preached on the wickedness of the men from the treaty party. After communion, Mr. Hair led the way for the whole detachment. This day we travelled about eight miles and camped in the Sequanche Valley. Darkness brought piercing cold and freezing rain. Tonight an aged man died of the bowel complaint. He had been sick for many days.
     Monday, November 26: We proceeded with the detachment for about eight miles. Around noon my dear wife became ill with a fever and was scarcely able to walk. Late in the night, I was summoned to the camp of Goluhstee where I found his wife holding their dead child, a daughter of two years. The past three long months have been a period of spiritual darkness for my friends and me. Many have died on this arduous journey. The cold air is perfumed with the breath of death. What have my Cherokee brothers and sisters done to deserve such misery?

I have rocks in my head. And you can doubt me, even think me crazy, but these rocks—these stone secrets are real…stuck inside me because I swallowed them.
     The morning of my pebble buffet started out normally. My four-year-old sister Angie and I were making our way across the street. Running in front of her and hollering, "Catch me if you can," I stopped some ten feet before the curb. Crossing the street meant checking both ways and holding her hand as we traversed the asphalt border between our house and the McClain’s, the "community yard" where all the neighborhood kids gathered to play. Catching up to me, Angie held out her small hand. This was routine. Holding her tight, I checked both ways.
     "All clear!" I sang out as we ran across the street to begin a day of play. Games of tag, hunts for garter snakes, and making mud pies kept us busy and happy, until Angie tugged at my sleeve and whined, "I need to pee!"
     Not wanting to leave my friends I snipped, "Then go home! I’ll watch you from here."
     "No! Momma said YOU have to take me!" she cried.
     Through clenched teeth I screamed, "Just go—she won’t ever know," and then I turned around and continued to play. Seconds later, I heard skidding tires and an awful thud! Angie was flat and motionless on the asphalt of the street.
     Within seconds, momma was there, her hands clenched around my arms, shaking me, shouting, "I TOLD YOU TO WATCH YOUR SISTER! IF SHE DIES IT IS YOUR FAULT!"
     Seconds later she and Angie were whisked away in an ambulance. Left behind, scared, and alone, I listened to the siren screaming out its shrill accusations, "YOU... YOU... YOU," and was certain I had killed my sister.
     Falling to the ground, my hands landed upon thousands of pebbles, little rock witnesses. Picking up a handful, and without much thought, I swallowed a bunch of them. Crying and eating rocks, I sat on the edge of the street hoping the stones would do to me what I’d done to my sister.
      "Are you okay?" A man’s voice, low and tender, asked. Looking up, I saw a tall, barrel-shaped man. Afternoon light danced off his silver badge.
     Spitting the remainder of the pebbles onto the ground, I cried out, "Are you going to arrest me?"
     "Why would I arrest you?"
     My guilty confession oozed through the muck in my mouth. "I killed my sister!"
     Lifting me into his arms, he hugged me close. "Your sister is going to be just fine, but will you tell me why you have rocks in your mouth?"
     Sniffling, I told him of my plan to kill myself. "How long do you think it will take for the rocks to work?" I asked.
     Laughing as he carried me across the street and back into my yard, he told me that I couldn’t die from eating rocks. "Your tummy will just get rid of them." Wiping the remainder of dirt from my face and pebbles from my hands, he ruffled the top of my head and turned to leave. "Everything is going to be just fine.
     You’ll see."
     He was right. Several hours later, both momma and Angie returned. Bruised, but smiling, Angie hugged me as momma walked into the kitchen.
     "We were lucky ... very lucky," was all momma said.
     I didn’t tell momma or Angie about the rocks inside of me. They were a secret that belonged to the policeman and me. No one else needed to know. But as I stretched out in my bed that night, I felt the first slow slide of rocks down the back of my neck. Because the officer had assured me that they would leave my tummy, but didn’t tell me where they would go, I assumed they had already found their way out of my stomach, straight into my head, and were somehow rolling around inside of me. This thought didn’t scare me though. I simply figured it was the way things worked. You swallow something—it becomes a part of you. And, with this early knowing, I drifted off to sleep.