Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #6

jerks to a standstill. Out from the driver’s side emerges Charlie Big Eagle. Standing over six feet tall, he is the holy man who will perform the ceremony. Out of the passenger door the father of the bride, uncoils long thin legs to the ground, then the rest of him follows. It’s Chief Hard Rope and he looks every inch his name. He stands taller than Charlie Big Eagle.

Both men wear dark western-style suits and no smiles.

Hard Rope leans into the car and pulls out his daughter, Sweet Water, and her attendant, Gentle Bear, a short round girl who looks close to my age.

Sweet Water, almost as tall as the men, wears a fine old military jacket with brass medals and shiny epaulets, the traditional bridal wear of an Osage princess. Her hair falls straight, hanging like a curtain of black silk. Her face is strong with a clear milk-chocolate complexion. The military jacket enhances her firm jaw and prominent nose. How did I ever think of her as plain? I can see Sweet Water in battle, astride a horse, cutting down Emma Sue Rule with her fuzzy pale curls and skinny legs without mussing a hair on her noble head.

Gentle Bear has to scramble to keep up with Chief Hard Rope, Charlie Big Eagle and the bride to the rise of the bluff.

Sweet Water looks Wolf in the eye, acknowledging him, but she doesn’t smile. Wolf has the good sense to appear humble and maybe a bit peaked. He doesn’t quite reach Sweet Water’s height. For the first time I can recollect, he looks like the lesser god in this gathering of souls.

Charlie Big Eagle wastes no time with chitchat. He begins with a prayer in the Osage language. It ends with I-tha'a-bpe. “I wait for someone,” he says at last. “We all wait for someone.”

A fork of lightning strikes the near horizon. I count one, two, three, four. A crash of thunder rumbles across the prairie like quarry stones in an oil barrel. The air turns cold and humid.

Charlie Big Eagle quickly draws the ceremony to conclusion, figuring that we are about to be deluged with rain and even worse, become lightning rods up on the bluff.

Charlie Big Eagle and Hard Rope stand higher in the sky than the rest of us, and more likely the targets of electrical attraction.

Charlie Big Eagle pulls out a knife and for moment I wonder if Chief Hard Rope has had a change of heart. But no, Sweet Water offers her arm and Charlie Big Eagle makes a quick incision. He grabs Wolf’s arm, pushes up my brother’s sleeve without asking