03 Iktomi

When the midday hour arrived, I sprang from my desk and entered the stairwell with my bagged lunch. Knowing that the roof would not likely be a meeting place, I descended one floor to the lobby level. I exited the hospital office building and began searching the crowded sidewalks for the mysterious woman.

After a few minutes of searching, I crossed the street so that I could look up towards the top of the twenty-story office building for any signs of movement, whether it be her long shiny hair waving in the wind or a wave of her hand. With no signs of life on the rooftop, I returned my search to the passersby.

She probably doesn't like crowds, I thought. Considering the massive hospital campus, I contemplated a secluded building that would not have much traffic. My eyes soon came to rest on an old church located across the street, on the west side of the building where I worked.

Passing through an arch in a tall brick wall, I entered a large courtyard surrounded by several massive oak trees. The winds were brisk, causing the branch's shadows to shift back and forth over the well-kept grass. Before a fountain, the dancing light shimmered around a woman sitting on a stone park bench with her back towards me, her long black hair glistening in the sun.

I approached slowly, fearing that the woman would be someone else, but as I neared, a joyous feeling came over me as her head turned to reveal a warm smile, which I returned. "You look happy today. I hope you are well?"

"I am. Thank you." She motioned me to join her on a park bench. "You look much better than when we last met."

I happily joined her on the bench. "Thanks to you."

"Did your doctor pump you full of drugs?"

"They began to," I replied, "but, a fellow patient showed me how to hide the pills on the side of my tongue. I flushed most my medication down the toilet."

"Poor fish." The woman returned her gaze to the fishless fountain before us, the clear water shimmering as it flowed down yellow stone steps into a shallow pool.

I stared nervously at the water and said to break the silence, "I've heard that trace amounts of drugs, legal and otherwise, end up in the water supply in big cities. They say the amount is so faint that it is harmless. Makes you wonder though."

The woman simply continued to smile.

Opening my bagged lunch, I pulled out a clear plastic bag containing her cigarettes and matches. "I believe these are yours. They gave them back upon discharge."

The woman faintly shook her head. "You can keep them. As I said before, your kind has spoiled them. Even without the additives, the tobacco has been changed by modern farming."

"My kind?" I continued to smile, unaffected by her remark.

Her lips revealed a faint sneer that broke into a grin. "I meant settlers."

"I figured as much." Dropping the cigarettes in a wire trashcan at my side, I returned to my paper bag lunch to produce an apple, banana, and a ham with cheese sandwich. I sat the fruit between us and proceeded to unwrap the sandwich. "Would you like half?"

The woman glanced briefly at the sandwich. "No, but thank you. I stopped eating meat a long time ago."

"I can pull off the ham."

"No need. I only eat fruits and nuts."

"No cheese?"

"Nope."

"Okay, but I think the nut house locked up the wrong one of us." When I caught her gaze drifting to the fruit a second time, I offered them to her. "Please. I only like to eat fruit after climbing the stairs for exercise. I'm not climbing today, so please."

The woman smiled as she took the banana. "Thank you." She peeled the fruit and took a bite. "Not bad, but it isn't nearly as good as the ones we grow."

"You live on a farm?" I asked, gleefully taking a large bite from my sandwich.

The woman paused chewing, shrugged, and then swallowed her bite. "I guess I do. Never thought about it before."

"Can you grow bananas in America? I don't think they can even be grown in Florida?"

The woman peeled the banana skin further, looking as if she were studying the quality. "No, not Florida. It's a place far away. A place few have ever heard of.

"What's it called?"

The woman took another bite. After further contemplation, she said, "It doesn't have a name. We just call it home."

The woman's riddle only added to her mystery. I happily eyed her as I took another bite of my sandwich.

The woman's attention then turned to the giant oaks. "I like it here. It almost makes being in the city tolerable."

"If I didn't spend my lunches in the stairwells—and if our winters weren't so long and brutal, I'd have all my lunches here." I gazed about the courtyard to find that we still had the church courtyard to ourselves. "It is odd how so few people visit here. I hardly even see any patients come here to pray."

"Maybe they pray inside, in front of the altar?"

Finishing my bite of sandwich, I pointed to the oaks. "I'd rather pray before these trees. Imagine if they could talk, if they could describe the changes that happened around them." I hesitated taking my next bite to point at the trees along the street. "People used to say that sunlight never touched the city streets in the early days. The old elm trees were so tall and grand that they blocked out the sun. Many elders have told me that most of the city streets in Minnesota used to be lined with giant elms."

Inhaling deeply, the woman straightened as she viewed the distant landscape. "You're right. I cannot believe that I missed their absence. Minnesota used to be blessed by giant elms when I was a child. The rivers were lined with them."

"What are you talking about? Dutch elm disease didn't wipe out the giant elms until the late 60s, early 70s. You're no older than me."

The woman grinned discreetly. "I'm much older than you. Older in ways you don't understand...yet."

"Really?" I retorted with a hint of sarcasm. I popped the last bit of sandwich in my mouth, smiling as I chewed.

"Yes. When I was a child, Minnesota had yet become a state."

Picking up my second half of sandwich, I had to pause.

"It's true," said the woman with a faint smile. "But that's fine. I don't expect you to believe me."

"Okay," I said. "I'll play. What was it like when you were a child?"

Her lips formed a defiant smirk, but they melded when she continued with her story. "Minnesota was even more beautiful than it was now, but like the elm trees, we had our own plague. Ours came in the form of settlers."

My smile grew at the whimsicalness of her story, but when a solemn look unexpectedly overcame the woman's expression, mine followed suit. "Sorry."

"It's okay." The woman leaned forward as she held the apple before her, again slowly inspecting the fruit before taking a bite. She chewed for a while before asking, "Do you know of Minnesota's war with the Dakota tribes?"

My brow rose with heightened curiosity, for I did enjoy history. "Yes, of course. When I was a kid, my church minister kept close ties with the White Earth Chippewa tribe. He and my mother made sure I understood what really happened to the native people. I think this is why I grew up questioning government propaganda."

The woman again bit into the apple, becoming lost in thought.

Chewing on a bite of sandwich, I nervously swallowed. "Did you have relatives that were directly involved?"

"Yes." The woman looked at me. "I remember it almost as if it was yesterday."

My insides nervously tightened from the sincerity of her tone. Slowly, I returned to my sandwich.

"What do you remember of the Dakota War?" she asked.

Inexplicable, my skin felt clammy as I quickly swallowed my food. "Just that western migration of settlers was making it increasingly difficult for the Sioux to live off the land, forcing them to sell much of it. When the agents and traders started stealing the funds promised to the Sioux, the Sioux began to starve. When the Indians asked for help, the lead government trader told them to eat straw or their own dung. Soon after, things exploded into violence. I was taught much more, but this is all I can remember at the moment."

The woman took another bite of apple, holding the mostly eaten fruit before her face. "Have you ever been so hungry that you'd consider doing the unthinkable just for a bite to eat?"

"No. I've been very fortunate."

"I've been that hungry." The woman's eyes slowly drifted to me. "It's amazing how savage a human, any human, can become if starved." Returning her gaze to the apple, her eyes welled with pending tears. "My people were trying to make it work. We really were, but the settler encroachment was an unstoppable flood; that is how someone once put it to me. We understood that life as we knew it would change us forever, but we just wanted our fair share, to be able to sit at the same table, but they rolled right over us, crushing us under their heels. There was nothing we could do."

The air in the church courtyard seemed to change, becoming heavy. I no longer felt like eating.

"Two years before the war, I had a friend shot and killed in cold blood by a farmer. The farmer claimed that he thought the young man and his friend were deer. Trust me; my friends were not a threat. We have never looked like deer."

My sandwich crust quivered in my hand. I cleared my throat and said, "You say this as if you were there."

"As unbelievable as it sounds, I was there, at that time." The woman looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "Do you believe me?"

Taking a moment to compose my reply, I said, "I want to believe. If not you, I'm sure someone like you suffered this great tragedy and loss."

The woman took a smaller bite of apple and chewed more hurriedly. "When war broke out, I took shelter with a neutral tribe, the Yankton Sioux. The Yanktons opposed the war and even provided shelter to white settlers. How was this kindness by the Yankton and other merciful tribes rewarded?"

"They—" I cleared my throat again. All the Sioux were forced out of the state."

"Yes. All the Sioux were blamed. Even mixed-bloods like me were persecuted. But not the agents or traders who stole from us."

Remembering Minnesota's darkest history, I asked, "Did you have any relatives executed?"

The woman's voice weakened further as she spoke. "No, but I knew some of them. Most of the 38 executed were innocent."

"It was the largest mass execution in the United States. I remember from my teachings that the city of Mankato didn't take down plaque commemorating it until the 70s." I bowed my head and said softly, "I always thought it strange to commemorate something like that."

"Strange, is it not." The woman bit off the last piece of flesh from her apple, staring at the narrow core left between her fingers. "What of the other's sins?"

"Others?"

"The grave robbers."

Knowing instantly of this particular sin, sweat began to run down my back. "The bodies stolen by the doctors? I think many were returned in the 90s, even the skeleton connected to this hospital."

Pinching the stem of the apple between her fingers, the woman let the core hang in the air. "President Lincoln should have hung all 303 like they originally wanted."

"Why?" I asked.

"Don't you remember?"

"No. Sorry."

"They and others rounded up ended up dying from starvation and disease in the prison camps as they waited for deportation to Nebraska. Over 300 died in captivity."

Diverting my eyes, I began to speak in a pensive tone. "I do remember now. The ones that survived were forced march to Nebraska and South Dakota. Why do you think President Lincoln saved the rest from execution?"

The woman's look became stern. "The president did not spare anyone. If you study how the events unfolded, the facts will tell you everything you need to know. The president first asked for those who truly committed a hangable offense, but his clerks could only find two. That was not enough for President Lincoln, so he told the clerks to find more until they presented him 39. The president thought that this number would make the settlers happy. One would think that the president, a lawyer, would be outraged that the trials for many of the men lasted less than five minutes, but the president did not pursue looking into any of those questionable events."

Out of nervous habit, I began rubbing my sweaty palms on my slacks. "It was probably the death of innocents that fueled the call for vengeance."

"The Dakota war claimed innocent lives on both sides. Why would President Lincoln treat the Sioux differently if we are all Americans? During the American Civil War, innocent civilians from both the North and South died because of the South's uprising. Did they think that Sherman's brutal march to the sea to be of military importance? It was not. The president did not hang a single southern soldier or southern political leader for the South's uprising, but he found it easily to hang 39 tired and starving Sioux, people who had been betrayed by the Union."

"I don't know. Maybe he was preoccupied with freeing the slaves."

The woman chided me, replying, "Former slaves freed the slaves. It was their hard work, not the president's." The woman set the apple core on the ground and sighed. "If you don't listen to the president's polished words and focus on his actions, what does it say about the man?"

Doing as this woman suggested, I ignored the rhetoric drilled into my head as a child and focused on the double standard shown to different people. I recalled how the president was not a complete favorite of the north, having to fight hard for his reelection. And like other leaders, only his assassination turned him into a martyr. "His actions tell me that he was just another politician."

"Yes; just another politician. I was so angry that I wanted my own vengeance." The woman's hands bunched briefly into tight fists before she spread her fingers wide and laid them over her knees, sighing. "Not of the president, mind you, but I did consider going after Governor Ramsey or possibly Sibley. Being mixed-blood, I knew I could have passed as a settler and gotten close to these men."

As her story drifted farther from reality, I began to wonder if this angry woman was actually a patient of the hospital.

She looked into my eyes and smiled. "I know you think I'm insane, but I'm not."

"No," I lied. "I just think you're very interesting."

The woman chuckled and said, "That is what Iktomi told me."

"Who?" I inquired.

"Iktomi. I was strolling through the forest, practicing my English to appear European when the man rode out of the shadows on a great white horse. He laughed at my English and said that I sound like no one he had heard before. He had no right to criticize me, for his accent was nothing that I had heard before. He claimed that he had learned to speak proper English many years ago back in England. Thinking his tongue forked, I eyed him with caution but quickly recognized him from several months earlier. With a gasp, I asked if he was Iktomi, and he said yes."

Lost in this odd turn in her story, I immediately asked, "Who is Iktomi?"

"In Sioux mythology, he is known as the spirit who enjoys causing mischief. His name translates into spider. Iktomi often toyed with the young male Sioux who would foolishly try to capture him in a quest to prove their manhood."

"He really existed?"

"Yes. I met him once before at a trading post, while others were selling their dwindling trappings. I was waiting outside when this man approached me. He was flirtatious, but polite, so I continued to talk to him when my younger cousin joined me, immediately becoming frightened when he recognized the man. I turned to my cousin and told him to mind his manners when he said that the stranger I was talking to was Iktomi. That man had caused my cousin and his friends to get into trouble for riding the tribe's horses too far across the prairie weeks prior. I hushed my cousin for his silliness, but when I turned to apologize to the man, he was gone."

I began folding my brown paper bag for reuse when I asked, "Are you sure it was the same...man." I smiled with the realization that I had become absorbed into her impossible story.

Perhaps amused by my reactions, the woman returned my smile. "Yes, I'm sure. When Iktomi found me practicing my English, he admitted that he had led my cousin and his friends on a long chase across the prairie; he even apologized for his abrupt departure at the trading post. He said that he was happy to have found me."

"What did he want?"

"He wanted to save me." The woman's face—along with her tone of voice—became austere. "He said that I was a lost spirit, that I shouldn't go with my tribe when they march us out of our lands. He told me to let go of my silly quest for vengeance since the great flood of people from Europe will only continue, that their expansion will destroy many innocent lives as they spread to the other ocean. He warned that this tide was unstoppable. Instead, he offered me a place in his tribe, claiming that his people were immune to the European expansion. He promised me that I could be myself and would never have to live in fear. I would never go hungry again."

I wanted to ask if she had accepted Iktomi's offer when I stopped myself, wondering more if this woman was delusional.

Undeterred by my disbelief, the woman continued to smile at me, knowingly so. She continued, "I asked Iktomi for the location of this magical place immune to settler expansion, but he only disclosed that it was at the end of a sacred tail to the north, beside a lake the Chippewa called Tamarac. It was obvious that he was not Chippewa, or even mix-blood like me, so I asked for the name of his tribe. He said Canoti. It was not the word itself, but how the word flowed from his lips—as if carried by wisps from the Canoti themselves. I immediately became dizzy and fell to the ground, though I did not lose consciousness."

"Who are the Canoti," I asked.

The woman turned to sit sideways on the park bench. "The Canoti are the little people of Sioux folklore."

"What? You mean fairies?"

The woman lightly shook her head. "Don't call them that. They don't like that name."

"Fairies?"

"Yes. They have never liked that label."

Enjoying this twist in her story, I smiled. "Are they actually little?"

"When they want to be, but usually they are normal size."

I pulled on my face in an attempt to hide my smile.

"It's okay if you want to laugh at me," she said. "I don't mind."

"I'm not laughing at you. I'm...actually happy." Gnawing on my lip, I stared into her golden brown eyes. "A week ago, I was the saddest I've ever been. I never would have thought that a week later I'd be sitting here talking to a woman about fair—, little people of the forest."

Appearing pleased, the woman diverted her eyes to the fountain and said softly, "Thank you."

"Please continue; what happened next?"

The woman looked briefly up at the sky, combing her memories. "He laid himself down next to me, and we watched the trees sway above our heads. Oddly, he did not say a word for a long time. And once the shock began to wear off, I simply asked if I was dreaming; I didn't know what else to say. Iktomi laughed and leapt to his feet. He walked to the white horse and removed something from a pair of straw panniers slung over the animal's back. Returning to my side, he presented me bluebell flowers. When I held them in my hand, I realized that these were not native to this land. I again suggested that this was a dream. He said, 'There is dreaming, and then there is dreaming.' He explained that the dreams we're accustomed to are in black and white. He then asked me what color were the flowers. I replied that they were the most beautiful blue I had ever seen. 'See,' he said. 'You're not dreaming.' When I inquired about the other kind of dreaming, he simply picked a flower and popped it into his mouth, saying as he chewed, 'That is something that I hope to teach you someday.' He had most infectious smile.

Feeling the hard park bench, I slid off the stone slab onto the grass before the woman. "He sounds like a shady character."

"He's not. He's the sweetest, most passionate man you can ever meet."

"Did you go away with him?"

"I did, but it wasn't easy. He said that we had to leave right away, that I did not have time to say goodbye to my tribe who would soon leave for the forced march to Nebraska. He then told me that if I should change my mind by the time we reached the sacred trail that he would leave me with the Chippewa. They would adopt me into their tribe if I decided not to follow my people to Nebraska."

"You didn't change your mind; did you?"

The woman grinned. "No, I did not. He even gave me one last warning, telling me that if I went with him that I would be sacrificing everything, that the world I knew would no longer exist if I should ever decide to come back. As we rode upon the great horse along the path of bluebells, I knew in my heart that I had chosen wisely."

As she reflected over that decision, I could sense that her simmering anger had dissipated, her entire body appearing more relaxed. Hoping she would continue with her story, I asked, "Did you end up sacrificing everything?"

"Oh yes. I did not return for almost three years. When I did, I discovered that 118 years had passed. Everyone I had known had died. I could not even find a distant relative. I saw automobiles for the first time, and airplanes."

Leaning against outstretched arms, I admired even more this woman's creativity and storytelling ability. "Don't forget television."

The woman eyed me. "I haven't. That was the strangest discovery of them all. I stopped at a diner and found people eating at a counter, staring up at the box with a moving picture. I thought how ironic that these descendents of the settlers who conquered our lands were now controlled by such a small contraption. I could tell immediately that their lives were bound to it, influenced by the messaging. To me, television was the new tidal wave sweeping over the land. I hated everything I discovered and returned to my new family."

"Why are you here now?"

The woman hesitated to answer, but when she broke her silence, she spoke with a delicate tone. "I'm here for you. I've come back to make you the same offer that was made to me by Iktomi."

My insides tightened as her words oddly registered with me. "What? Move up north? You mean White Earth Reservation?"

"No. To the place where us spirits of another sort call home."

I stared at the woman, remaining silent, not wanting to insult her.

"I'm here now because the stars in the universe have given us the opportunity for you to visit and not lose everything. When I left this place, my choice was clearer since my world had already been destroyed. Today, I come back to give you the option many of us never had. Often, when humans decide to return permanently to this world after visiting our, they end up paying a severe price. I believe you should have a choice and not have to pay that price, that is, if you should decide not to stay with us."

The bells of the church chimed one o'clock, startling me back into reality. I rose to my feet and began retrieving the remnants of my bag lunch. "I enjoyed your story very much, but I have to get back to work."

The woman rose from the park bench. "You have to decide by sundown Sunday. You won't have an opportunity of choosing again."

Unsure how to respond, I forced a smile and said, "Thank you again for the story."

When I turned away, the woman gripped my arm. "Wait. I have a gift." Upturning my free hand, she reached into her blouse pocket with her other. She placed something soft into the palm of my hand before cupping her hands around my mine. "If you want to find me, you only need to follow your heart."

When she released my hand, I looked down to find a half dozen bluebell flowers resting upon the palm of my hand. Their petals were the bluest thing I had ever seen. I became captivated, but when I looked up to thank the woman, I discovered that she had already disappeared from sight.