“But the same time each night?”
She sighed, and I watched as she stopped rolling the coin. Some of the tension left her body as she realized that finally somebody was taking her seriously. “Yes.”
“Standard frequency?”
“Our frequency, 155.44500 RM.”
“What time?”
“12:34 a.m.” We looked at each other, the two of us aware of the importance of that particular time around these parts.
“You mind if I ask you a different kind of question?”
She shifted in her seat and turned toward me, giving me all the blues I could handle as she went back to rolling the coin over her knuckles. “Go ahead.”
I gestured toward the mist-swept cliffs ahead of us, the vibrations of the falling water still discernible in the cruiser. “Out there on the edge of the cliffs, when I called out to you and you first saw me—why didn’t you answer?”
Sometimes it’s the rockslides that surprise the tourists, the state geologists, and the Wyoming Department of Transportation, unsure as to how they could’ve happened at all—things that may not impede travelers but certainly make their journeys more interesting, because the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway holds a distinction unlike any other road in Wyoming.
She turned her head, placed a fingernail under the coin, and flipped it to me. I caught it in my right hand and opened my fingers to look at it. “Because I wasn’t sure you were really there.”
I studied the silver dollar, which was in surprisingly good shape considering its age, and mused on the stories I’d heard my entire life. You see, the Wind River Canyon Scenic Byway is haunted.
? ? ?
Henry and I waited patiently as Kimama Bellefeuille gave a blessing to the steaks sitting on the table in front of us. Kimama was an Arapaho medicine woman with a Shoshone name who gave the impression of being a thousand years old, and people generally did what she told them to do because she wore them down, like a glacier.
“Cese’éihii heetih-ceh’etii-n hióówo’owú-u.”
The two of us were sitting together, our combined weight of over five hundred pounds on a single bench seat by the window in the restaurant while the ninety-pound, seventysomething-going-on-a-century-old woman on the other side of the booth had a bench seat to herself; it was a question of respect. Henry leaned toward me. “She is asking the animals of the earth to hear her words.”
“He-ciiyowoon-inoo, heet-wonibiini-heetih-’iéhi-t.”
“Your surplus is going to be eaten so that the people will prosper. . . .”
She interrupted him and said something I couldn’t make out.
“What’d she say?”
“She wants to know if I am going to translate each line of the prayer.” The Bear looked unsure, maybe for the third time in his life, and we both looked at Kimama like truants. “I thought that—”
Kimama interrupted him, and Henry translated. “She says she can continue in English for the Bird Turd, if you would like.” He bit down on a grin and made the decision for me. “That would be appreciated.”
“Umm, did she just call me a bird turd?”
He nodded and spoke through the side of his mouth. “Bird shit is generally white.”
I turned back to Kimama, but she had already recommenced the prayer, this time in English. “So that the breath of life will endure for a long time, so that the tribe will be numerous, the child whatever his age, the little girl and the little boy, and man, whatever his age, and the woman, even the Bird Turd, whatever his age . . . We pray that these foods will keep us healthy as long as the sun follows its path in the sky.”
Watching the old woman open her eyes and pick up her utensils, I figured the religious portion of the meal was through. “I don’t like being called Bird Turd.”
She mumbled something more in Arapaho, and I turned to Henry. “What?”
“Kimama says she will call you Frosty, if you prefer.”
I looked back at the medicine woman. “I don’t like that one either.”
She mumbled something more before cutting a piece of her steak and forking it into her mouth.
“She says she will call you Niice’nooo.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Bucket.”
“Why is that?”
Henry laughed. “Because you are beyond the pale.” I stared at him. “Get it? Bucket.” I continued to stare at him. “Pail?”
“No.” I watched as they shared a glance and then began using my knife on my steak and not her. “Well, I’m going to call her Pain In The Ass.”
She mumbled something more in Arapaho.
The Cheyenne Nation rolled up a forkful of pasta. “She says she has had that name since before you could drive.”
“I bet she has.” I ate a bit and looked at Henry. “What’s she got against me?”
“I don’t like big men.”
I turned to look at her, envious of her easy switch from Arapaho to English. “Why?”
“Maybe I will tell you someday, Bucket.” She studied me through her sharp, dark gimlet eyes. “So, what did the flat-hat say?”