Two Worlds Walker by Janet Shell Anderson | Cave Scribbles

“You’re a two worlds walker,” Sam Amiotte says. 

Rachel White Plume looks at him. He’s running around with women from Rapid City and thinks she doesn’t know. They walk from the track at Crazy Horse School toward the pasture where two gray mares drowse in the warm dark. A coyote cries on the ridge and another answers. Their voices, sharp as barbed wire, cut the blue-black night. Male and female? Enemies? Shrill as words, the coyotes call across the Lakota village of Wambli, South Dakota.

“It’s, like, you do ceremonies, Lakota things, and then you go to Oglala college in Kyle. Study psychology.”

They pass two graves near the running track; small white crosses rise out of the high grass. The coyotes are a chorus now, a crazed song. The moon rises round as a face.

“You think I’m white washed?” Rachel asks. Not Lakota anymore. He’d better not say yes. Vain for a man, he smoothes his waist-long hair. He’s smart enough not to say the wrong thing again; she sees that in his clever eyes. He smiles, has a great smile. 

  

“No. Nothin’ like that.”

He turns toward the horses, but they shy away from him. Rachel is getting educated; Sam’s just a horse breaker on a nearby ranch. He’s going to lose her. They both know it.

When she was a little girl, Rachel’s uncle said in her hearing that she was perfect but that like all the children in the village, the life there would break her, ruin her. Her uncle is dead, now, long gone. The words hung over her, bitter as the coyote cries in the night. Now the hot stars shine over Wambli.

“It’s a good night to be alive,” Sam says, going quiet.

“In both worlds,” Rachel laughs.

The coyotes still, and the night goes wide and bright under far galaxies. Rachel White Plume smiles, glad Sam Amiotte hasn’t yet figured out she is a two worlds walker and he’s not the only one who has other lovers in Rapid City.

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