We Go Back Home (C) 2018 by S.L. Pritchard

Book One - (first draft - not proofed yet)

my dream last night - I was an native american female, mid 30's, working at the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California - I had a high clearance job (not top clearance, but still important enough to require some kind of clearance) working with technology and high-end weaponry-grade nuclear materials - I was very quiet, mousy, hardly ever spoke to anyone, never made eye contact - I was known to have a very high IQ and a very closely guarded group of skills of value to my employer - I did not mix with the other employees, I did not want an intern, I did not eat in the lunch room, but in my truck even when it was cold & rainy outside, I did not participate in holiday activities, no one knew where I lived, I collected my pay in cash every friday at the end of my shift, it was said I lived in a tent, shat in the woods, and had no fixed address - there was one white fellow, a guy named Evil Troy (everyone had ridiculous nicknames at my place of work), who paid some attention to me. He came in to work every day with a gift or a sandwich or sweets for me, which I would not take, and left notes in my locker which I tore up and put back in his locker, tried to give me food at lunch time (no), asked me out on dates every friday (no), admired my vintage step-side pick up (did not respond to him), but I never accepted any of his offers. He kept trying, but he never got so much as eye contact. One day, he came to my desk area, sat down in the extra chair he'd brought with him, and sat close to me. He gave me a harrangue about how he knew something bad was coming, that the military guys in Washington were very sure something bad was about to happen in California, a riot of some kind of all the black people in the nation were coming west and were gonna take over the state and start their own country. I let hm rant on for a while. Finally, I fixed my eyes on him, which made him stop talking. I stared at him boldly for a long while, his head seemed to sink into his chest, a bit. Finally he stammered, "That's the first time you've looked me in the eye." He seemed to smile a bit, then the smile faded from his ugly face and a look of horror was there. I was thinking at him in the way my grandmother had taught me to, when I wanted to frighten someone. She was a Dreamer, and so was I. I was thinking violent thoughts at him, of tearing his flesh with my teeth, of stabbing him, of murdering him with my own hands. I was certain he got those images in his mind. They were meant to drive him away at the least, meant to cause him to destroy himself, at the worst. It worked, just like it was supposed to work.

Evil Troy was found in the men's bathroom later that day. He took his own life, or so the official report said. He was found hanging by his belt from the door support of the bathroom stall. Suicide was by no means unknown to our work facility. That was the first death that put me on the next path I walked for a long while, until I was ready to go Home.

For 15 years I had been writing and distributing a newsletter, lecturing,  holding councils, communicating via whatever media was available, and contacting political leaders, about how Native Americans could lift themselves up out of the pits of despair we had fallen into. I used a male name, a stereotypical male indian name. I counted on and used the egos of those leaders, who would display my message to the media, to voters, to constuents, to their own reflections in a mirror. Such vain creatures, white people were. They invented the mirror soley for that purpose, to admire themselves, even though it had so many other uses, like starting fires with no flint nor tinder, using only the Father Sun's reflection. My message went far and wide because of their egos, and it cost me nothing. I wrote the newsletter on a computer donated to me by the BIA who had also given me a framed certificate of appreciation for my office wall because I had graduated from Standford in nuclear physics. No one ever contacted me about that again. Obviously I was a statistic in someone's annual report, validating their own feelings as well as justifying to their employers how well they did their job, helping Native Americans achieve the American Dream. In my personal statements, I would remind the readers we did not need to go back to the pastoral lifestyle and starve or freeze. We should, in fact, go forward with our lives and use the techniques and methods that were most useful and would keep us alive and thriving. We'd made it this far alive, let's go forward with peace as hard as any stone and with determination as strong as any bond. We were Folks, all others were people. Our value is not so important as our self-worth is, I said to them. Let's not be defined and valued by others. We must do that for ourselves. As we care for our families, let us also care for the natural world around us. What we take out, we must put back ten fold. When we see damage, we must remain determined to make repairs, no matter who perpetrated that damage. Finding fault was not important, was not productive. The Mother Earth would do that, in her own time and in her own way. This land was not ours, but we were caretakers of it, and that meant we are obliged to do no harm to it and always bring benefit to it. Same thing if it was a watery world or a place of clouds and rain and lightening. That is all a part of the Mother's body. If that damage is so great it takes more than the span of one lifetime to fix it, or the lifetimes of many others, to fix it, then so be it, then let the folks of that family or clan or tribe or nation take on that obligation and keep working on making things better. It is decided that planting trees is usually the best way to make repairs, and burying the ashes of our dead is far better than burying their bodies, but both are acceptable, they both nurture the soil. If someone among us becomes incapable of living according to the rules, then that person will be evaluated by the elders and other adults, and if found to be salvageable then taken out of the village, housed with others, supported but prevented from causing harm to others. But if it's determined that person is not salvageable, is too much of a threat, then he or she is removed as quietly as possible, and that persons relatives were compensated and supported as they grieved for their loss.

Back at work, our manager memo-ed each of us that we would be interrogated later that day, so we must make personal arrangements to stay overnight, or for as long as it took, until the interview from the authorities were completed. That was standard operational procedure. We'd done that before. We usually had to wait a week before the FBI, CIA and Homeland people got there, but then our management would give up waiting and order the interviews to begin. The other authorities would trickle in, every few days or so, until the interview room had standing room only. There would be armed guards at the door, a sub-manager to check people into the room or out, and a secretary or two that would do the scheduling and record all that was being said in the interviews.

The catering staff would be doubled and everyone got fed. Some trailers would show up on the facility grounds so everyone had a place to sleep at night. There would be port-a-potties and garbage dumpsters all over the place. The guards for the facility fences were tripled, armed, and patrolled the boundary fence 24 hours. It was all done very quietly. No one on the outside would know it was happening because most of the activity occurred at night.

These were very dangerous times. American society was fragmenting. The have nots were ready to string up the have gots. There were places in the nations where the Civil War had broken out again.

My interview was finally called one morning, just as I reached my work station but before I got into my white paper coveralls that I wore in the lab. When I was escorted into the interview room, which was stifling, there was very little oxygen left because there were so many people in there were breathing heavily and sweating and feeling terribly anxious. I was seated at a desk, given a bottle of water, a writing pad and a number 2 pencil. I was asked if I had a cell phone. I did not. I never carried one. I did not own one. That made them suspicious immediately. I identified myself, many of them flipped through pages of binders they were given, that had the Livermore Lab emblem on the front, and they found my entry. They read that I was Kashia Indian, had graduated 6 years ago from Stanford with a masters in nuclear technology, which made them look up at me and stare. I did not make eye contact with anyone. Gandmother had taught me when I was little that to make eye contact with the people would be allowing them to see in, and I must never do that unless I am prepared to protect myself, even if that meant to kill that person. The white people had a lot of power but they were terribly ignorant about how to use it. They would sometimes harm great swaths of the world just by waving their hands and not even realizing the damage they had done. Other times they were trying so very hard to make something happen, and nothing at all would happen. They always seemed to be trying to find the most valuable things on the planet or in the universe, but they stil valued gold above all else. Only a small fraction valued song. And song came from dreams. That was were the greatest power came from, from Folks. From their dreams.

I was treated so poorly during those days of the interrogations. My pay was stopped and I did no work. I had no communications with anyone. I was not allowed to speak to my co-workers or to anyone who worked there. One Sunday night I reached a boiling point and I typed up a letter of resignation. I handed it to my manager the next day, then exited the building, climbed in my truck and left the facility without permission. As soon as I got on Highway 1, headed north and when I was certain I was not being followed, I went camping at Salt Point, right near the ocean. I was there over a week. I slept, contemplated, watched the sun come up and watched again as it set, for 10 days in a row. I fasted. I prayed. I waited for the dreams to tell me what to do next. Finally it came one night. A womans voice, deep in the night, said to me that I had already started the journey and I needed to keep moving forward if I was to ever reach the end of this path and rejoin the road I was supposed to be on, the road I had already been on for a long while.

That next morning, I packed up and headed out of the campground. I was on the way to see my mother at the rancheria near to For Ross. But there was a stop, first. There was a pow wow in Santa Rosa, and I had been invited to attend and dance with the women and give a talk.

They wanted everyone to wear traditional dress. I hated wearing it, but I did my best to comply. It made me feel like my legs were tied together at the knees, that my moccasined feet were unable to cope with walking for only a few minutes at a time, like the noise that came from every movement (because of the shells and other ornaments) made it impossible for me to get anything done in a quiet way, which was my preferred way.

We were all in native dress. I was wearing a deerskin dress with a red felt capelet covered with olivella shells and small lead bells. It made so much noise as I walked, stood, sat, breathed. I didn't like it. I was wearing a very plain red calico shift underneath, one that belonged to my grandmother. It was soft as the inside of an abalone shell, from so many washings by hand. That calico dress was silent against my skin.

During the noisy ceremonies, the drinking and eating, the gambling, the drunken stomping and whooping, I watched the Folks and saw a few familiar faces, and then I saw a very familiar figure. A tall man, in full feathers and deer skins. His skin was painted grey which meant he had become a ghost shirt. He painted himself every few days with a paint that was made from pulverized burnt sea shells and the ashes of hardwood fires and the ashes of dead Folks they'd dug up in the cemeteries. Those places were unknown to the people. Twice a week, he smeared himself and sat by a fire to dry the paint. He would carry on with the ceremonies until he dropped at night from exhaustion. He would not eat but only drink a bit of water during the day, and when his body was ready, he would receive the dream he was asking for, to find out what his plan would be. When I saw him again, and our eyes met, he recognized me, and I, him. There was no greeting. There were no words spoken. We had nothing to say to each other.

We were husband and wife. There was a time we lived in a house with two bedrooms, had two children and another on the way. He was studying at Stanford on a BIA scholarship to get a diploma in engineering, and I was finishing my degree at Stanford. We had a mortgage and a savings account. We both worked menial jobs while we went to school full time. We got mail delivered to the house, most of it junk mail to show us what to envy. We had a television, read the local newspaper, had two cars. We ate fattening meals three times per day. We got fat.

Then the children got sick, and they died, and the baby in my body died. It all was caused by measles, which they'd never been inoculated for. Our tribe would not allow it. Then the grief destroyed the bond between us, which happens so many times when a bonded couple is hit so hard by the pain of loss.

I had not seen him in a decade. He looked fat, lazy, unhealthy. His eyes looked blurry like those of someone who drank too much and smoked too much and slept too little. His front teeth were mostly gone. He recognized me. He looked me in the eyes, and I let him do that. I thought kind thoughts at him, but there was a barrier. That barrier was made of pain, and I could not get through.

All of us women dancing in that circle, continued our side step shuffle. The men continued their stomping and whooping in the center. Somewhere to the side was a group of nine men pounding on drums.  There were young people staggering around drinking alcohol and finding that they did not like it, so they were actually looking for a place to puke or lay down to die, they didn't know which.

That was going to to go on all night. The sun had not yet sent. I wanted out of that noise. I wanted to find a quiet place and be away from that. I slipped away from the circle, silently. I walked to my pick up, which was the only thing left to me after the marriage. I took off all the noisey clothes. I stood in my old, soft red calico and felt the peace come back to me, to my skin, to my bones. I realized right there and then I was looking for a newer way to be who I was, not a traditional way, not a clacking, clinking, foot sore way.

I also realized now was the time I would travel that part of the path that was for one purpose, to get to the next destination, and along that path there was to be blood shed, because that's what I owed to the others that had kept our Folks alive.

I slept in my pick up that night. I had some provisions, some water, blankets and a pillow, a way to make a fire, a handgun and some ammo under the front seat.

The next day, at first light, I got the map out of the glove box and traced a route on it with a pencil. I drew circles at the places I would stop to sleep. They were near places where I would be likely to get gas for the truck, food and water for me, and where I would locate people in isolated places. Victims. I hated that word.

I started the next morning, at dawn.

The first place I stopped at was beside a lake that had a dam built in front of it, to provide water to farms and orchards that were planted there in hopes of benefiting the landowners.  It was a dreadful, hot, low quality piece of land that the dam was built on, prone to mud slides because there were no trees to hold the soil, and many times that dam had cracked or shifted or somehow failed failed failed because it had been built cheaply by men who did not follow the blueprint, but shaved off money for themselves using shoddy materials. There were long gone before anyone got wise. No one had figured that out until the natural rhythm of much rain came along after a long drought and the dam failed to keep the water back and the land before the dam was flooded. No one died, but many people lost their homes and livestock and house pets and the people were displaced and life for them was forever changed. All that they had been building was gone. That next fall, there was a very poor harvest from the orchards but the owners didn't care. They were insured. The pickers did care. They were not insured. They went on public assistance to try to survive until the next harvest next year. That did not work out, so they stayed on public assistance and settled down to beget the next generation of unemployed pickers.

At the far end of the lake, far away from any houses, there was a small, quiet, peaceful camp ground. In that campground was a house built solely for the use of the park ranger who had that part of the dam as his territory. Park rangers were no longer caretakers of the land. They no longer counted the wild turkey and feral pigs and netted the blue trout out of the river to estimate their numbers and to see how they were thriving. Park Rangers were now officers of the law and they were armed. This officer had disappeared. He was growing marijuana on the park land, behind the house they had given him to live in, and the last time he took his harvested marijuana to San Francisco to sell, he disappeared. That was about 6 month ago. His wife and baby were still at the house. When I came to that place, I found there had been no one down that road for a very long time. I found the woman sitting on the front steps of the house. She was rocking, muttering, sitting in her own filth. Her mind was shattered. I stepped out of my pick up, stood in front of her, and asked her if I could use the hose to put some water in my radiator. She did not stop rocking or muttering. I put water in my radiator, into my canteen in the cab, into the two gallon jug I had in the back of the pick up. I stepped around the back of the house. All the doors and windows were open. There was stench coming from the house. I pinched my nose and went in.

There was a dead baby on the hearth rug. I could not tell how long it had been dead. I threw a rug over it. The flies rose up in protest. I went back outside, found a shovel, found a soft bit of ground under a shade tree where no grass grew. I walked around the house and looked into each room. There was food in the kitchen. I put some of the dried and canned items in some bags and took them out to the front, put them in the back of the truck, then stood close to the lady sitting in the front steps. I told the lady we needed to put that baby to bed. "I'll be glad to help with that, missus. Baby truly needs to go to bed now." She stopped rocking and muttering and looked up at me. I was thinking thoughts at her about going into the house, picking up the fussing child, going into the nursery, putting baby to bed, and watching closely as it smiled and went to sleep peacefully. The lady nodded and stood slowly, as if she were very very old and carried a very very heavy load.

I stayed there a couple of days. Only two days and nights. I closed up the house, turned off the electricity and the gas. On the third day, I left. The lady and her dead baby were asleep, someplace safe under a tree, behind the house.

Whats next? She goes to the next place on the map, finds more white people that are isolated, damaged, takes them out humanely, buries them. She does this many times in many ways. She counted about fifty individuals. She can feel the oncoming tidal wave of societies death throws approaching. On that final evening before the earthquake, I was at a rendezvous of Native Americas, or actually old hippies mostly, and a group of drunken men overpowered me and pulled me into the back seat of my truck with the intention of raping me. I  knew where the gun was under the seat and I knew it was loaded and I finished them all quickly. The party is raging so loudly that no one noticed the noise. I dumped the bodies down a crevice that was actually a feature of an earthquake fissure. I apologized to the Mother for dumping them like that, uncovered. That night, I had a dream that the Mother came to me and said she was not angry with me, but that it is now time to stop destroying people. I've done all I can, all I was asked to do. I can finish this path and get on the path to go Home. I'm needed there.

I drive to Fort Ross, with the intention of visiting the rancheria there, where my mother and two sisters live. But before I go to the rancheria, I stopped at the grocery store and load up on tobacco,  packaged food and fresh food, beer, cleaning supplies, over the counter meds and a few treats for the young ones, some candy and sodas. I drove to Fort Ross, entered the fort, left gifts at the naval stone, which is considered the center of the world in the faith I was raised in. The stone is in the basement of one of the big Russian made buildings made of redwood. I spent some time kneeling, praying, thinking about this stone, my hands on it. Then I walked out to the point, faced the wide blue Pacific Ocean and left gifts of fresh fish for the Ravens and Coyotes, our tribal totems. I sang a song for the totem animals then returned to my truck in the visitor center parking area. I sat for a while, looking out to sea. So many memories, from this place. Wonderful memories from my childhood.

I drove to the rancheria, approached the front gate, stepped out, started singing a song. It would be terribly rude to honk the horn. A child, probably a boy, I assumed, comes up the lane to the gate, looked into my face but did not recognize me, unlocks and swings open the gate. I waited for him to close and lock it, get in the cab, and we continued on the lane to the only purpose built wood building on the site. It is a store, meeting hall and laundry. The boy and I started unloading the truck, then two other boys started to help when they saw the soda bottles in the back of the truck. A group of men and women and kids started gathering. No one seemed to know me. At last, I turned to them and introduced myself as the daughter of Regina. A few whispers. People are looking closely at my face, at my hands. They see the resemblance. An old woman comes forward, takes my left hand as if it's a holy relic, looks at the fingers then at the palm. She looked again into my face and whispered a few words in Pomo, then turns to the crowd and confirms to them that this must must Regina's youngest daughter. "Regina is at home. Let me take you there. It's down this street, on the way to the Round House," she says in English.

I grab a couple of bags out of the truck cab to bring with me to see my mother.

Regina is in the back bedroom, in bed, eyes closed. She's not asleep. She is visiting another place, but she is coming back now. She hears our footsteps.

Then there is silence in the house.

"Is that you, my daughter?" she asks. Her voice is faint. I pause and take a deep breath. I begin to sing the song I last sang to her, gently and quietly, which was a kinder way of leaving that just saying goodbye and walking away abruptly. She smiled and wept tears, waiting for me to finish the song.  Se taught me that song. She did not open her eyes, but her ears heard me. She reached out, I took hold of her hands. They were so rough, so chapped and callused. Years and years of weaving baskets and blankets. "I brought you some of that hand cream you like, Mother," I said quietly. "And some other things, too. Yarn to knit yourself a new shawl. Some canned goods. Some meat and fish. Some seeds for your garden. Some aspirin for the headache." She touched the shopping bags and nodded with a smile.

Here was the woman who bore me in her body.

Later after we had carried her to the meeting hall, and everyone else had gathered there, I distributed gifts to everyone. The menfolk and all of the older women that wanted it, got tobacco and rolling papers and matches and lighters. The women all got sewing notions and over the counter medicines and bags of groceries. The special gifts, like sweets and sodas, went to the children, but they also got travel sized toothbrush kits, and my reminder to clean their teeth each morning and each night.

These Folks were pleased with the gifts. There was fresh meat and fish to cook, so some of the men started up the barbeques outside. Many people brought chairs and tables from their houses. The tables were set with paper plates. Bags of sliced bread were torn open so everyone could just reach in and take what they wanted. My mother asked for bread and milk, and I fixed her a bowl, with a little sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon, just like I recall she used to make for me, when there was nothing else in the house to eat. I was introduced to my sisters, then they introduced me to their friends, and to others that were blood relations. My sisters were shy. They were younger than me, from another father. But they were kind and courteous. They were lovely to look upon. They smelled of wood smoke. They smelled like Indians. They had the same husband, which was an accepted tradition here, and they both had two young children each, from him. The husband was in jail in Sonoma, and was on his way to prison in some other part of the state. He's killed a white person. They were both drunk, but only my brother-in-law had a weapon, a knife, so he was the one who would go to prison.

This they both told me in whispers and gasps. There were many voices gasping out in a couple of languages, and then the food was ready to eat and things became a lot quieter for a while. These people didn't often have fresh meat in their diet, and they rarely had money to buy things like aspirin and bandaids and toilet paper and soap.

As second helpings were being finished, I asked the three older males if they would comes outside to talk with me. They came reluctantly, as they all wanted to stay and have third helpings if possible, but I told them they would be able to have dessert, because I'd brought lots of cake and ice cream. I asked the men to understand I could not stay very long, perhaps a day or two, but I would like to leave some cash money for everyone to use. I pulled out a large yellow envelope full of $25,000 in twenty dollar bills. Money saved from my salary. I opened it and had them each look at it. I handed the envelope to the oldest man, someone whom I believe my mother was distantly related to. He smelled the money and wrinkled his nose in disgust. I said, "You know that a bad time is coming, correct?" They nodded "yes". "There are so many Folks on the move right now, going north to Canada, to relocate out of the United States." They nodded. "I've quit my job, taken all my money in cash, and I'm on my way north, to resettle. I've done what I promised to do for the elders, seen my mother and sisters one last time, left some money with her relatives, with you, and now I am ready to go Home."

The three of them looked at the ground, at the shadows, at the tree tops. They did not look at me, and I was glad of that. The older man said,  "What happened to your husband?"

I looked at the ground and said he had become a ghost shirt and was lost to me and to us all. They stared at my chest and at my hands. I saw tears in their eyes.

The next day, in the late afternoon, a short, sharp earthquake was felt in the village. A few windows were cracked, and a bit of well water sloshed out of the old well hole that was at one time, the only water resource for this settlement. But now they had piped-in water, and underground cables for the electricity. But there was no electricity because the breach was somewhere far away from the rancheria. None of the television sets worked, so there was no signal from Sonoma or San Francisco, neither could the car radios get any reception, as all of them had dead batteries and needed a jump. One of the elder males suggested they should invest some of the money I gave them in a small solar powered generator, for just such occurrances. Another male agreed, that may be a good idea. The menfolk were quite content. They had a new project to plan - a shed for the new generator they would someday buy.

In a couple of days, it was time for me to go. I sang a leaving song to my mother, but she made no signs as if she heard me. I left quietly, almost silently, after leaving a gift in her lap. It was a Mothers Day card covered in roses, a bundle of basket weaving materials, and a very good sturdy jack knife, new and shiny and sharp.

On the way to my truck, my two sisters appeared. They wanted to ride with me to the gate. They had the key to unlock the padlock. They actually wanted to talk to me, ask me about something important. To look at their faces told me it was extremely important to them. I stopped the truck just before the closed gate, turned off the ignition, and gave them my full attention. They weren't so shy now that it was just us three, alone together. "Who is your father?" asked Maureen. "You're real father?" asked Erin. To have given them Irish names I found highly amusing. The name my parents gave me was 100% Kashia, and no one but my most intimate aquaintences called me that name. Perhaps they, too, had intimate names. I hoped they did.

"My father's name is William. He is a person you will never meet. He is long gone now," I said. "He was an anthropologist who did the digs at Fort Ross, found many Folks buried out there in the cemetery behind the fort, had them all reburied properly and made the state of California pay for it." The girls both looked at me with big eyes. I continued. "Yes, he was white, and had brown eyes and not very pale skin. He cared very much about California Folks. He wrote books about them, got his college degree about them, earned his money in a job teaching others about them." I looked down in my lap. "He was a smart man, but not always very kind. He married a woman who was a school teacher, and was never kind. He had me to live with them, tried to make us all a family together, but that didn't work out very well. They had two sons together, but we never were a family together. His wife made sure of that." They were silent, barely breathing. "So you see, my sisters, we share blood, we share a mother, but we don't share a father."

They both started to weep a little, and I thanked them for their tears and for their kindness. "But now, my sisters, the world is ending, and all we can do is try to find our way Home." I paused and looked at the bright horizon of the newly risen sun. "Where ever that might be."