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OBSIDIAN
Copyright © 2007 by Wayne C. Long
Clarence Kicking Horse had seen it all through those sexagenarian eyes, now glazed over
with cataracts. Eyes that had seen things few others had seen. Eyes … windows to the
soul some called them. His doctors had diagnosed him as chronically depressed.
Sitting listlessly askew in his wheelchair at the Red Fork Center for the Elderly, shoulder-length
gray hair cascading from his sunset colored forehead, he stared through the dirty
window as occasional dust devils and heat mirages whirled and eddied beyond the rear
asphalt parking lot. He tried in vain to remember his youth.
1950’s South Dakota. Days of powwows. Cool nights of counting coup in the back seat
of his ‘57 Chevy, partying with eager rez girls. Clarence Kicking Horse had once been as
wild as an unbroken sorrel mustang and as prolific as a king salmon.That is, until the
excrement-coated pungee sticks of ‘Nam forever pierced his spirit.
A nurse’s aide popped her head into Clarence’s shabby 8 by 10-foot room, cheerfully
announcing: “Ya has a visitor, Mr. Kickin’ Horse!”
Now who in the hell would wanna see ME? silently queried the despondent old Indian in
the sagging wheelchair. Don’t have any relatives. Don’t have any friends either! Betcha
it’s just some damn trick to get me into the shower!
“Go to hell!”
He continued frowning at some imaginary bit of sagebrush way far in the distance.
Focusing was proving harder and harder as one hopeless day wore on into the next.
Am I seeing things again?
And then … a faint sound, a kind of soft footfall, as from deerskin moccasins. Something
was coming down the well-buffed hallway.
Wait. Breathing?
Clarence could sense a presence in his room, not unlike sensing a Spirit Dog in a sweat
lodge ceremony. He felt something moist touch the flaccid skin of his forearm resting on
his chair.
What the …? Licking!
Kicking Horse abruptly withdrew his arm as his hearing aid processed metal chain
clinking against pitted chrome wheelchair tubing.
“Mr. Kickin’ Horse, I’d like ya to meet Obsidian!” invited Shenequa Barnes, the aide.
“She’s a therapy dog from a place up in Canada. Calgary, I think!”
The old man puzzled over what he had just heard and felt.
Damn eyes! Can’t see for crap!
Obsidian attempted once again to connect with the patient. Nuzzling her short, dense
black coat against Clarence’s gnarled forehand elicited a response from the ancient
warrior. What was that fleeting look … a smile?
Barnes had seen the positive effects of pet therapy before, at other nursing facilities
where she had worked. She had pestered Jerry Robinson, Red Fork’s administrator, to at
least give it a try. He finally relented.
This unique canine visitor had been trained to carefully approach the elderly, especially
those like Clarence, who suffered severe mental and visual impairments. No barking, no
quick, startling movements.
Obsidian was as black as her namesake, that volcanic glass used for millennia as arrow
tips by ancient hunters. She had been raised by a Cree breeder and sold as a sled dog.
Creator mercifully intervened after her musher, enraged at losing the Iditarod race, shot
her in her hind quarters. She would never race again.
That slowly-forming smile on Clarence Kicking Horse’s wrinkled face evolved into a
wide grin as he proceeded to stroke the pricked ears of this gentle, loving animal.
Nurse’s aide Barnes, referring to her trusty notebook, spoke to the hearing aid of the old
Indian.
“Obsidian’s actually a rare breed, an American Indian Dog! Folks thought they was
extinct. In olden days, these smart, strong dogs pulled sleds or was even fitted with
backpacks for long huntin’ journeys by the tribes. They was ‘specially prized as guard
dogs, protectin’ the very young an’ very old.”
But unbeknown to Barnes or anyone else, Creator had given this particular American
Indian Dog a special gift after her gunshot injury. Obsidian had been blessed with the
uncanny ability to telepathically speak to the old ones, alive and passed. Obsidian, it
seems, was a true “Spirit Dog.”
Miss Barnes, as her engraved nametag denoted, watched approvingly as those two natural
Indian souls communed together like lifelong friends. He, softly mumbling some ancient
tribal chant from his youth; Obsidian, her keen ears parabolically aimed at the old man’s
mouth, taking in the cosmic meaning of those barely-audible syllables. Man and dog,
embracing on a level beyond the physical. Was it primal? Surely as primal as a
petroglyph engraved on a shaded rock face in the western buttes.
What was they sayin’? Barnes puzzled.
Within the deepest recesses of Clarence’s mind, in that mental zone reserved for just the
deepest pain, lurked a darkness that even the finest doctors of psychiatry could not
penetrate. But it only took Obsidian a nanosecond to pick up on that telltale synaptic flash
as it jumped within Clarence Kicking Horse’s wounded brain.
What’d she seen? Barnes queried silently.
“Time ta say ‘bye, now, Mr. Kickin’ Horse!” exclaimed Miss Barnes in a loud voice to
her patient’s hearing aid amplifier.
“Obsidian’s got other folks ta visit taday. She’ll surely come again, if you’re a good
boy!” laughed the rotund African-American woman.
At that very moment, Clarence felt a bipolar tugging inside his head, as the dog licked his
trembling hand, to take her leave. Something had just happened in that brief encounter!
Something … known only to the Great Spirit.
Helpless, hapless days wore on into months for the patients at Red Fork.
“Many moons have passed,” Clarence repeated to the black nurse’s aide with the jolly
disposition, as he rambled on and on about his one brief visit with the therapy dog. He
seemed to brighten, recalling that electric feeling as the dog’s energy entered his own
body.
The old Indian had never been much of a spiritual person, at least not in the way of
actually attending a washichu church. But, somehow now, a spirit seemed to be moving
unseen within the old man’s depression-wracked psyche, a Yuwipi spirit, conjured up
from within the bound blanket of Clarence Kicking Horse’s mind.
During their rounds on the night shift, the Red Fork nurses often heard Clarence crying
out in his sleep--bits and pieces of Vietnamese words; truncated recitations of old Indian
prayers offered up to ancient relatives; some, two-legged; some, four.
That blessed dog! spoke the patient during his Technicolor dreams.
Obsidian returned several times to visit the ailing warrior, each time gleaning more from
deep within the old Indian’s mental cave. And in this spiritual duet, Clarence drew long
and hard from the river of knowledge running deep within the Spirit Dog.
Man and dog. Dog and man. Loyal companions sharing the bleak confines of that nursing
home room, if even for just twenty minutes at a session.
Then, weeks later, on a slate grey autumn day, Obsidian once again padded down the
sterile hallway to the Vietnam veteran’s room, for another routine visit.
Amazingly, both natural beings knew the exact day and hour way beforehand, as if
Creator had whispered it into their waiting ears. Clarence beamed with anticipation as the
hands of his battered alarm clock wound down atop the bedside table.
I’m ready, Spirit Dog!
The sixteen-year-old American Indian Dog, so familiar now with those tile floors, sat
patiently outside the closed door of room 16. Shenequa Barnes unhooked Obsidian’s
beaded leash from its neck chain. Miss Barnes slowly opened the door, her trademark
spiral-bound nurse’s aide notebook in her left hand, as the odor of stale urine assaulted
her nostrils.
Lying on top of his bed today, with glazed eyes fixated on some imaginary laser point
deep within the dingy plastered ceiling, Clarence awaited those words.
“Guess who’s here, Mr. Kickin’ Horse?”
From his nearly mummified appearance on the twin-sized institutional bed, Clarence sat
bolt-up with a strange, almost mystical willfulness that Miss Barnes had never witnessed
during six years of caring for the elderly Indian. Though his eyes were dim and his voice
weak, Clarence Kicking Horse cleared the phlegm from his aged throat and lovingly
invited his loyal therapy dog to jump up onto the chenille bedspread.
“Obsidian! Come here, girl!”
Miss Barnes lingered in the lonely Naugahyde chair with its threadbare tribal blanket,
scanning today’s page in her nursing notebook, alongside her patient and his jet-black
visitor.
All of a sudden the old man cried out.
“I have something to tell you! Write this down!”
With a gentle stroke of Obsidian’s flank, Clarence Kicking Horse proceeded to spill his
guts to the nurse’s aide and the universe beyond.
“My mind’s been sick for many moons, the shrinks tell me! I wanna confess why that is!”
Startled from her notes, Miss Barnes fired back.
“Say what?”
Clarence repeated his wish that she take down what he was about to say, in no uncertain
terms. He began …
“Back in ‘Nam in ‘65, I was a tunnel rat at Cu Chi. I did some terrible things over there.
But one thing I did has haunted me ever since …”
Miss Barnes dutifully copied it all down, as Clarence and his dog visitor exchanged
knowing glances atop the bed.
Rereading what she had thus far written, Barnes looked up and saw Kicking Horse
resting his head upon the velvety smooth body of the female dog. Obsidian turned to lick
his face.
Within seconds, the dog lifted her head and let out a series of shuddering howls, so
uncharacteristic of her when visiting patients.
Barnes rose from the chair to see what the fuss was all about, leaning over the bed to
check on the old Indian, her hand upon his wrist. No pulse. Obsidian howled forlornly,
continually stroking the visage of the old warrior with her paw pads.
Miss Barnes instinctively jabbed at the electronic call button above the bed to summon
help from the nurses’ station, setting in motion a series of well-choreographed moves all
those in the building were trained for.
Head nurse phoned the administrator and summoned the Medical Examiner. Twenty-five
minutes later, George Banister, County M.E. efficiently concluded jotting his findings
and left for the door.
Nurse’s aide Barnes stood in stunned silence, glancing out the window of the ambulance
service area. Tears welled up again.
As the official-looking County vehicle slowly made its way down the long driveway of
the Red Fork Center for the Elderly, Miss Barnes, trying valiantly to compose herself,
couldn’t believe what she saw.
Obsidian, her beaded leash dragging along the faded asphalt, marched reverently behind
the M.E.’s vehicle in a canine funeral cortčge. American Indian Dog and
Indian Man--linked forevermore.
Another response to the chain of calls made that day was from the local VFW post in
town, which gathered its members to select an honor guard for Clarence’s send-off.
Post Commander Dalton Jeffries knew that at least one of them should be an Indian
himself, out of respect for their dead brother. Jordan Drum would be a perfect fit, being a
Gulf War veteran and an apprentice medicine man from the rez. Drum had that innate
sixth sense that only a handful of men, red or white, had.
Donning his dress uniform that Friday morning, Drum gave a quick look at his bathroom
mirror before leaving for the funeral out at the edge of town.
Great Spirit, I call upon you to lift up our dead warrior brother so he may live again at
your side!
Jordan Drum’s spit-shined combat boot hit the bottom of the screen door as he trailed off
to his waiting pickup parked outside in the dew of that crisp autumn morning.
Assembled around a freshly dug grave, the honor guard and the priest made their last-minute
adjustments. A bone-chilling katabatic wind blew down from the snow-capped
mountain range in the distance, sending barely visible snow devils up to Father Sky’s
elevated realm.
The homily was read; M-16’s fired in unison; the plaintive bugle was blown; then flag-folding.
Finally, silence, as the warrior’s coffin slowly descended.
While the rest of the honor guard and the priest walked silently back to their respective
vehicles, apprentice medicine man Drum laid out the makings of a small fire pit beside
the gravesite of Clarence Kicking Horse. Reaching into his shamanic bag with one hand
while fanning smoldering tinder with his other, he withdrew a bundle of sweetgrass,
ignited it and commenced smudging himself as he extended his arms to the mid-morning
sky.
“Set him free, Great Spirit! Set him free!”
Then, he withdrew something else from his bag. A beaded leash.
Suddenly, the infant flames of the medicine-fire billowed as the solitary Gulf War vet
again beseeched Creator. Was it yet another sharp blast from the katabatic wind stoking
that funereal fire … or something else? We washichus will never know.
But of course Jordan Drum did know, as he chanted to the four directions, dancing in the
regalia of a modern warrior. Out of the corner of his eye, Drum next witnessed what few
men have ever witnessed.
Within the curling contrail of the smoky fire pit, Drum beheld the faint, transparent
visage of an elderly Indian, shape-shifting as he rose into the sky. And by his side, the
ghost of a black dog spun round, shape-shifting as she, too, rose on the heated column of
holy smoke.
Awestruck, Drum sat back on his ceremonial blanket, still as a statue, to catch the show
as the two spiraling earth-born friends transformed into each other. Man into dog and dog
into man.
No sooner had they risen than they were gone! Drum blessed Creator again and
concluded his solitary vigil at the graveside. A smile crossed his wind-chapped face.
It was done.
“That bless’d dog sure loved that ol’ Indian man with her whole heart! That she did,”
recounted Miss Barnes when it came her time to reveal the circumstances surrounding the
death of Clarence Kicking Horse.
At the request of the common-law ex-wife of the deceased, an estate hearing was held
months after he died in Red Fork. It seems that the ex-spouse learned from a mutual
friend that Clarence had died intestate and yet monies were found in several bank
accounts in his name, throughout the West. Had he been so cruel during his tortured days
on earth that he intentionally hid these funds from her? And if so, for what reason?
Maybe … just maybe … he simply lost the will to decide. PTSD can do that to a warrior.
All in the courtroom sat in awed silence as Barnes read from her notebook the dictation
she had taken.
“ … An’ ol’ Clarence … I mean, Mr. Kickin’ Horse … he tol’ me that he kep’ a big
secret from his wife an’ from God hisself! Seems that on one of them missions around the
Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam, him an’ his squad members, all high on weed, found a
woman with an infant bound ta her breast with jungle vines. A sergeant began
interrogatin’ her.
‘VC! VC!’ yelled the sergeant in disgust. ‘VC!’
“That wild-eyed woman with the baby ran screamin’ toward her hootch.
‘No VC! No VC!’
“Trippin’ on a pile of bamboo, she exposed this here trapdoor leadin’ to a tunnel. Next,
that whole squad jes ‘sploded!
‘Waste da bitch!’ yelled one trooper.
‘Do ‘er, man, do ‘er!’ taunted others.
“That’s when ol’ Clarence screamed ‘dung lai!’ and runs up on her, rippin’ that baby
from its momma’s tremblin’ body. Throwin’ that bawlin’ kid inta da air, shoutin’ like
some crazy man, he gets right inta her face, shriekin’: ‘YOU VC!’
“An’ then, without battin’ an eye, that crazy Indian kick’d aside that trapdoor with his
boot an’ throwed that poor child inta da tunnel! Soon’s he done it, he yanks da pin off a
grenade an’ lobs it onta that poor baby!
‘Fire in the hole!’ he shouted.
“Done sent ‘im right over da edge, it did! Couldn’t have no normal relations ‘back in da
world’ as he’d say. Saw that dead child everywhere! Couldn’t bring hisself ta havin’ kids
with his Indian gal an’ all. Those two jes fell apart. And so did he!” concluded Barnes.
The black therapy dog never returned to the Red Fork Center for the Elderly. Nor any
other nursing home. She was with Clarence Kicking Horse now, in the black robe of
heaven.
But in her place appeared a phoenix-dog, reborn on earth and tasked by Creator with a
new mission. She would soon walk the corridors of Veteran’s hospitals, offering her
unique brand of consolation to brothers-in-arms. She would also visit children’s wards of
hospitals across the country, seeking to repay a debt for the unforgivable; the death of an
almond-eyed child down a jungle tunnel in a forgotten land.
To complete the circle of life, a proud young Indian boy with jet-black hair was seen at
the feet of a tribal holy man, learning just what it takes to become a warrior, a protector
of the very young and the very old, and an arrowsmith of the highest caliber, working his
artistry in that stone of stones … obsidian.
Copyright © 2007 by Wayne C. Long. All rights reserved.
This story may be copied or forwarded only with written permission of the author and as long as the copyright notice and the rest of this paragraph are included.
For permission to publish this story, please contact wayne@longshortstories.com
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