"The Cheyenne Gift" Hook
"The Cheyenne Gift," a short story set on an Indian reservation in Montana, was published in Scattered Hearts Anthology. The photo by Daniel is of the Indian Memorial Sculpture at Little
Big Horn Battlefield by Oglala Sioux artist Colleen Cutschall (Sister Wolf)
“Hey you white boy; you get up off that couch and get this junk outa my livin’ room. Stop feelin’ sorry for yourself. Eva’s dumpin’ you is no reason for you to mope. I’m talking to you!” Hilda yanked my leather coat with its long Cody fringe, and me, up from where I had my head buried in its soft folds.
Even though Eva's copper-hued face still filled my consciousness, I twisted over and looked up at 'Mother' Hilda as she stared down at me, without wrinkle, just like her husband--ageless. I had boarded with this family the previous summer while doing volunteer work on the Cheyenne Reservation. Now I was back on the Rez. It was located in the sandstone foothills and low mountains of southern Montana, only a war dance away from the Little Big Horn Battlefield...
I was still so tired and still numb; had lost two nights’ sleep hitching up through Nevada and Utah—through a blowing snowstorm often huddled by the side of the Interstate wrapped up in my dark sleeping bag like some cigar store Indian--thumbing for rides. Definitely not like Huntington Beach in sunny California where I received Eva’s ‘Dear Lone Ranger’ letter shortly after the new year. While I was studying the Romantic poets at Cal State Long Beach, the love of my life decided to drop me for a Cheyenne guy at her BIA high school in Lame Deer. So much for our Indian summer.
Now it was February, below zero, and yet here I was back in Montana trying to make a last stand for my sweetheart...images of Eva…her plump figure, cinnamon-shaded arms extended, bending to scoop up a silver pitcher of icy water from the barrel behind her uncle’s cabin…her in a purple blouse and faded jeans standing below the tall sandstone pinnacles, looking toward me while I snapped her picture with my Kodak…her in my arms under the silhouetted silver water tower, the stars, sequined-shimmering, and the taste of berries on her tongue, from earlier when we had eaten a bowl full at her uncle’s...
Read the whole story.
Big Horn Battlefield by Oglala Sioux artist Colleen Cutschall (Sister Wolf)
“Hey you white boy; you get up off that couch and get this junk outa my livin’ room. Stop feelin’ sorry for yourself. Eva’s dumpin’ you is no reason for you to mope. I’m talking to you!” Hilda yanked my leather coat with its long Cody fringe, and me, up from where I had my head buried in its soft folds.
Even though Eva's copper-hued face still filled my consciousness, I twisted over and looked up at 'Mother' Hilda as she stared down at me, without wrinkle, just like her husband--ageless. I had boarded with this family the previous summer while doing volunteer work on the Cheyenne Reservation. Now I was back on the Rez. It was located in the sandstone foothills and low mountains of southern Montana, only a war dance away from the Little Big Horn Battlefield...
I was still so tired and still numb; had lost two nights’ sleep hitching up through Nevada and Utah—through a blowing snowstorm often huddled by the side of the Interstate wrapped up in my dark sleeping bag like some cigar store Indian--thumbing for rides. Definitely not like Huntington Beach in sunny California where I received Eva’s ‘Dear Lone Ranger’ letter shortly after the new year. While I was studying the Romantic poets at Cal State Long Beach, the love of my life decided to drop me for a Cheyenne guy at her BIA high school in Lame Deer. So much for our Indian summer.
Now it was February, below zero, and yet here I was back in Montana trying to make a last stand for my sweetheart...images of Eva…her plump figure, cinnamon-shaded arms extended, bending to scoop up a silver pitcher of icy water from the barrel behind her uncle’s cabin…her in a purple blouse and faded jeans standing below the tall sandstone pinnacles, looking toward me while I snapped her picture with my Kodak…her in my arms under the silhouetted silver water tower, the stars, sequined-shimmering, and the taste of berries on her tongue, from earlier when we had eaten a bowl full at her uncle’s...
Read the whole story.
