Chapter 10 of Last Journey by RomTom

The Place where we’d gotten stuck was a government housing development known as Upper Cutmeat. No one knew why it was called that.

Willard Fool Bull walked over from his home across the street and looked at our problems. He suggested that we bring the Bike Bus onto his property as soon as it was movable. We’d be welcome to use his shower and bathroom facilities and have some breakfast with his family. He said he could offer us some protection if we were on his property, and told us that where we were it was just a matter of time before we lost everything of value inasmuch as there were certain thieves about who would make swift work of us...

I decided to heed his warning and accept his invitation. So for the next several morning hours Steps and Ellie and I attacked the pile of mangled metal. The children wheeled the untangled bicycles to the Foolbull yard and arranged them in a line and I passed a cable through the frames and fastened it with a padlock.

We normally carried a hundred spoked wheels atop the bus. They were widely scattered in the weeds alongside the road. We gathered them up and strung them on a broomstick to tote across the street, load after load. Willard brought his pick-up truck to us and two loads in that reduced the mess at the side of the road considerably. Now it was all piled in Willard’s yard. We saved the pieces of the old rack and placed them carefully together. We’d need them for the repairs. Everyone cheered when we fired up the old Bike Bus and drove it into Willard Fool Bull’s yard.

Perhaps the reason I was so calm through this crisis is that I had been through it all before. Early the previous year, in March of 1989, we’d bought a new bus, a 35 foot long Bluebird and had a bicycle corral built on top of it and renovated the spacious interior. When we finished the rack we transferred all the bikes and pieces of bikes to the Bluebird and retired the old Bike Bus to a storage yard. Then we departed Oakridge, Oregon heading up to Washington to fix bikes on the reservations.

Two hundred miles into that first journey we left the freeway and dropped in on the folks at Rainbow Valley, an alternative culture community just south of Olympia. We had barely arrived and were slowly negotiating the rutty road that winds through the property when the welds on the new rack failed and most of the bikes fell to the earth. Obviously the welder had not done a good job. Many expensive eighteen speed touring bikes were ruined. A mobile welder from Olympia spent several days repairing the rack for us and beefing it up with super gussets. When he was finished we loaded everything up again and drove another two hundred miles.

The following morning we were approaching the Neah Bay Indian reservation. We were moving along at less than twenty miles an hour when faulty power steering caused the bus to miss a curve by a single lousy inch; the tire caught in the mud and sank deeper and deeper and wouldn’t come back up onto the asphalt roadway -- which caused the 35 foot long bluebird Bus to lean more and more-and to our horror we could see that the road edged a deep ravine! It all happened so fast! The titanic bus leaned until the left wheels lifted up -- and we rolled over sideways down the cliff. Miraculously Ellie and I survived the accident with only bruises. But the wreckage was devastating.

Some bikes survived. We did not let the calamity stop us. We carried all the bikes and parts and all our belongings up from the wreckage and stored them temporarily in a nearby cabin that was kindly provided for us. Then we returned to Oakridge and got the old Bike Bus out of storage and brought it to Washington and loaded everything on it again. The bill for towing the Bluebird out of the ravine was $6000, which of course we didn’t have. Consequently it was sold at auction.

Before we reloaded the old Bike Bus I had the mobile welder beef up the old corral with new triangular gussets too. It was so strong that I never would have figured anything could break it. Here is was a year later and I thought about those gussets as I looked at all the bent and twisted metal on the Indian land. Few if any of the new gussets had broken though. Instead the pipes had twisted and ripped apart in other areas. That sudden ten inch drop from the new roadway was a real earthshaker. If it weren’t for that the rack would not have broken.

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Willard Fool Bull introduced us to his family and brought us into his home to join his family for breakfast. We didn’t want to intrude—but the food smelled so good and the Indian mothers were so—motherly—to us, we soon were busily helping ourselves. There were many little mouths to feed and several adults but food was plentiful: pancakes, oatmeal, eggs, grits and bacon. Their hospitality was excellent and their hearts overflowed with kindness. I soon found myself wishing I could just melt right into them and turn into an Lakota Sioux Indian myself and never rejoin the other world again.

I hoped to find someone with a mobile welding unit who would drive out from the town of Mission, which was twenty miles back. But we had to wait-out the weekend before looking into that. There wasn’t even a phone for us to call ahead and get an idea who might have what we needed. The Upper Cutmeat people survived with bare essentials. It was a fact of life for them. Willard laughed and looked at me.

“Telephone? Ha. There’s no telephone here. City people have telephones.”

I began to repair some of the bikes. One that was beyond repair was a $700 Reynold’s 531 Trek 18 speed touring bike, now a twisted pretzel. But most of the others would be all right with a little work.

The Indian children watched me go at it. Each time I finished a bike one of them asked if they could ride it. They were so beautiful I could not tell them no—their faces were so happy when they rode away waves of spirit swept over me.

These chrome-moly BMX bikes were my best creations. They had new tires and new aluminum brakes and rebuilt aluminum wheels and mags and everything about them worked perfectly. The kids had never seen bikes of that quality ever before. The younger kids just knew they were fun to ride—but the older ones had an idea as to their value. I had so many bikes loose on the ground that I lost track of them. Every direction I looked I could see a child tearing around on one of my bikes. Some were heading off into the horizon. It soon became obvious that some of the bikes were not returning, that they might never return—and I knew I had created a problem in allowing the children to ride them. But how could I have refused them?

I got on my own bike and chased around trying to round-up the renegade bikes but it turned into an old game for the rapscallions and it was obvious that I was being an ass. Thereafter I locked up the bikes whenever a kid brought one back. I continued to let children ride some of the less valuable ones if the child convinced me of his or her honesty. That night I waited till long after dark for the lost bikes to come straggling in.

I had spent the entire day with children and I felt all warm inside. Sure, some of the kids had ripped me off. But other children had raced around tracking down bikes for me, locating them in bushes where they were stashed and following the tracks of knobby tires down dirt roads to distant homes. The kids who had helped me all day long stood beside me in the darkness watching for any sign of a late bike tearing across the shrublands. They talked with proud yet humble kindness. The stars reflected in their rich hazel eyes; herds of buffalo and wild horses thundered across the plains of their subconscious minds and their hearts were the drums of God.

“You can trust some of these children. My children, Richard and J.R., would not ever steal from you. But there are other children here whose parents have never taught them responsibility. Their parents pray with the booze bottle, not with the sweatlodge. Will you come do a sweatlodge with us tomorrow, RomTom?”

“I’ve done sweats before with Rainbow brothers and sisters. I find the cramped area too hot and claustrophobic... I’d rather jump in a lake to get clean...”

“What you have experienced is not the same thing as what I am speaking about. Our sweatlodge is very sacred to us. It is the “old church” of the Lakota people. We do the sweatlodge in the old way. We hear a lot about the way hippies try to do traditional sweatlodges but they do not know how to do them and they do not do them in the Indian way—they do them wrong... I would like you to come to our ceremony and see how we do these things. Then you can go back to the hippy people and show them the right way.”

Willard Fool Bull was speaking very seriously. I was discovering that he was an important spiritual leader among his people. I wanted him to think well of the hippy brothers and sisters and the way we love the Indian traditions, although we do adapt them to our unique culture.

“Hippies do love sweatlodges. Every Rainbow Gathering has a couple of them going all the time. The brothers and sisters disconnect themselves from the world’s lonely corruption. We remove our clothes and gather closely together inside the sweatlodge hugging, praying, laughing, singing and being honestly kind to each other. We cover each other with mud and bake like clay pots. We sing chants and tell stories and pass the herb. Sometimes we drink peyote tea. Afterwards we dive into lakes and wash clean. Sweatlodges are among the highest ceremonies we have.”

Stone-faced, he accepted what I said. The moon was rising. We watched together as the orb dissolved and reappeared through clouds illuminating the amber hills and plains. He turned to me and spoke again.

“The sweatlodge is a medicine for the heart. The Indian people are happy to share the sweatlodge wisdom with our hippy brothers. But we believe they are doing wrong because they do not follow the traditional teachings when they do their sweatlodges. Indian people, wear clothes. We believe it is disrespectful to the Great Spirit for a man to be naked in the presence of a woman who is not his wife, for a woman to be naked in front of men who are not her husband, for adults to be naked in front of children. It shames a man or a woman to do those things... We do not understand why you do those things. We wish you would not do them anymore. And there are other things too that your people do that we do not understand...”

“I mean no disrespect; but I want to say this: It is my understanding that America’s contemporary customs of modesty were forced on the conquered and starving Indian people by fat white missionaries—and that the Indian people were healthier, and wiser, and more noble before that affliction of the spirit twisted them into white-race imitations. The white race corrupted the beauty and simplicity of your people. All this preoccupation with store-bought clothing is a vanity perpetrated upon your people to create a need for white merchants to inflict you with monetary slavery. No matter how poor you are you have to own shirts and pants and dresses, even if you go without food for your children. When the temperature is a hundred degrees outside they expect you to wear clothes. It isn’t natural. Your ancestors knew better. But from the beginning the white store-owners were in cahoots with the white missionaries and together they robbed your people’s wisdom and then they robbed their lands. They made your people work very hard to get the money to buy everything from them. I have studied this situation. There is shame on my white race because of these things. The Rainbow people believe we may restore some of the lost wisdom to the heart of the Earth and that wisdom does not include senseless clothing and guilt-ridden misperceptions of morality. You have said that the traditional sweatlodge is sacred to you; I want to tell you that the freedom of being naked together—without shame—amidst the vast Creation where the Great Spirit has created all creatures to be naturally naked and without shame is the way we are returning to the truth of our ancestors, the ancient truth of all the Universe, of your people—and my people too.”

Willard looked at me as I spoke. His eyes indicated that he was not entirely following my words. He was not there to listen to my philosophy. He was trying to teach me the truth (as he saw it. He proceeded to repeat approximately the same thing he had said before as though I had not made any statement that required his attention and he did not comment regarding my words. He definitely didn’t like public nudity and he definitely thought he could cause hippies to change their nude ceremonies to match his traditional ideas. Nonetheless he had great personal dignity. And in respect for him I listened to all he had to say and I told him I would pass his words on to my brothers and sisters. And I believe it is valuable to do that, because when we do those old ceremonies in our way we should be aware of how the traditional Indian people regard us so that we may do our best to avoid insulting them.

(Two years later, in July of 1992, the Rainbow Gathering was held in Colorado. But a splinter group decided to celebrate in the Lakota people’s sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. I tried to warn everyone about the way the Indian people regard our nudity in sweatlodges as a sacrilege but no one listened to me. As a result, the two hundred hippies were run out of the Black Hills by some very irritated Indians.)

Ellie and I decided to do the sweatlodge with Willard and his family. After a lot of thought about it. Steps declined. He said the sweatlodge medicine was so powerful that he didn’t feel ready. Willard Fool Bull had spoken many words about alcohol abuse that had chafed Steps who was used to having white people condemn him for that weakness, but not Indians. He found it hard to reply to Willard and mumbled half-hearted acquiescence.

But he didn’t want to sit inside a tightly-packed hot sweatlodge and endure such criticism... I think it would have done him good; but I can’t say that I blame him for not going after all. I had similar fears myself, although not about alcohol which has never been a problem for me; but rather I worried that Willard Fool Bull might rant about the hippy nudist culture and I feared that I would speak out then in the hot dark little hut full of Indian people who I barely knew and make them angry with me... What would happen then?

I weighed everything in the balance of my heart and decided I was not actually fearful; the Lakota people were such kind-hearted people that I refused to allow myself morbid fears. If the discussion about hippies got out of hand in the sweatlodge I would just keep silent. Or Ellie and I would leave and walk back to the bus. But Willard talked mostly about the powerful medicine of the sweatlodge -- and the healing -- and I knew I wanted to see what he was talking about.

I’m always looking for healing, not just for myself, but for Ellie. Wherever I perceive an overflowing of spirit I want to immerse Ellie and see if it helps her any. And it’s the best thing for me, too. Growing and healing are not easy. And they aren’t even possible unless a person opens long-locked doors and tries to let in the song of life... We must go forth bravely...

The sweatlodge was to take place on three consecutive evenings starting with that night. Willard asked us if we’d like to go along with them while they made some preparations beforehand, sort of a sight-seeing tour. That sounded interesting.

The sweatlodge was five or ten miles away over bumpy back roads. We rode in the rear of Willard “s pick-up truck and bounced around uncomfortably. There were a couple fifty gallon drums bouncing around on the metal truckbed too. They took up a lot of space and made a lot of noise. Willard’s nephew was sitting on top of one of the empty drums riding it like a bronco as it bounced. The truck hit a large pothole and the drum with two hundred pounds of Indian on top of it came down on my big toe, the lip of the drum-lid split my toenail. It hurt pretty bad and it was evident I would lose the darn toenail before long. Ungroovy. Willard’s nephew apologized at length but it wasn’t his fault. I refused to let the injury ruin my day but I limped around in considerable pain for awhile and now I knew I really needed healing.

As the ride continued my toe throbbed like the blazes. All that bouncing around back in the bed of the truck wasn’t helping any. I was sure happy to finally arrived at our destination.

One of Willard’s relatives owned the spread of land. We all walked together down into a valley of trees and shrubs where the sweatlodge nestled not far from a flowing stream. Two Indian brothers were tending a fire in front of the low structure. We could see large stones white with heat amidst the embers. One deeply tanned man turned the stones with a broad shovel; the other was squatting before some as yet unheated rocks, carefully examining them for cracks. If water has gotten inside of a rock through exterior cracks the rock may explode dangerously when heated, spraying sharp fragments in every direction.

More people began to arrive, adults of various ages, but no children. According to Sioux tradition they may not enter the sweatlodge until they are thirteen years old. Willard greeted each person heartily. Most of them seemed to be his relations. Soon fifteen people stood upon the hard-packed dirt before the sweatlodge. They wore simple clothing, colorful and clean. Their jewelry was Black Hills gold and silver with stones of turquoise and red coral.

The small dome was about four foot tall and eighteen feet across. It seemed to be made of tarps and mud and pine boughs and evergreen fronds all packed solidly together. Willard opened the flap and we bent low and went inside, making our way carefully around the center pit which already held around ten white hot stones. Ellie and I found ourselves deep inside the dome, Indian folk packed in on both sides of us. We were shoulder to shoulder and the pit of white-hot stones was between us and the entry-flap. The people who were trying to make themselves comfortable around us were strangers to us. I was very nervous...

Willard followed last of all. He sat down and crossed his legs. The tent flap remained open for the time being and I was glad about that. I wondered what might happen there in the dark. My fears began to grow again:

My problem stemmed from something that happened a long time ago, probably around 1973, but it could have been earlier, 1969. Usually I can place events fairly well and remember them in detail but not this... I don’t even remember for sure where it was: Taos, New Mexico probably, but it also might have been at Earth People’s Park in Norton. Vermont. It’s a memory that has deteriorated badly... Perhaps it was one of those times when I had megadosed some fantastic lysergics. Most of those trips are no longer in my memory banks at all, if they ever were... I don’t know... Perhaps on lycergics, when we totally live inside the moment of “now”, we may spare little or no energy to any part of the mind that records the events. That sounds very possible inasmuch as I have met others who also do not remember their trips afterwards.

But I remember a sweatlodge—somewhere, and I remember being way deep inside it -- in the dark. And I remember the heat choking me so I had trouble breathing. And I remember the hash pipe passing around and I remember coughing painfully until I thought I was going to die. And I remember wanting to get out of the sweatlodge so I could breath. And I remember how terribly claustrophobic and freaked out I was. And I remember how the hippy brothers had made a big macho thing about forcing people to stay longer, telling them that no one could leave until they said they could. Anyone who complained or pleaded to get out was unceremoniously belittled and humiliated for being weak, for trying to “ruin the sweatlodge for everyone else”, and told not to be such a whiney little shit and to grow up. Of course the super-groovy guys in charge did sweatlodges often and were used to the high temperatures so they could withstand the heat and steam without difficulty, and they also smoked hash so frequently that they weren’t likely to cough themselves to death. They considered themselves to be “the wise ones”, the elders of hippydom. They found it appropriate to manipulate this device to compare their manliness to brothers who were new. a typical sort of manipulation for the crude male egos of those days – specifically one more way to herd the sweet young chickies into their lovenests and keep them away from newcomer males. The object was to drive off as many of those males as possible. And to attract the impressionable chickies to their high-holy charisma. It was sort of an assembly line.Ah! those lovely male intimidation schemes of the seventies and the double digit I.Q.s of the buttheads who needed them. No wonder so many of us bum-tripped bad and got out of lysergics. We didn’t need those games when we were in the pits of vulnerability. Yeah, when you think of all the do-it-yourself gurus who gathered their first gullible followers in those days it sure clarifies the large picture to have been there and witnessed the roots.

I had told Willard Fool Bull about that hellish sweatlodge. His emotions expressed an honest compassion as well as an abhorance for the circumstances I described. He urged me not to worry. He promised me that I would be free to leave the sweatlodge whenever I wanted. And once more he stressed that it was important that I personally experience the Indian way of the sweatlodge so I could help repair the damage that had been done by hippies who had abused the ceremony. I wanted to trust Willard Fool Bull. I wanted to believe the Indian sweatlodge was a kind place, a healing place. But that scar I carried from the earlier experience haunted me and I had severe doubts.

Inside the sweatlodge everyone was silent. The two fire attendants who had remained outside closed the flap. We were immersed in darkness. Yet we were vitally aware of the presence of twenty other human beings: perfumes, clearing of throats; and low whispers which grew silent, when Willard began to speak;

Willard continued. He welcomed everyone to the sacred sweatlodge and thanked them. He spoke a little about the deterioration of the Lakota culture and how important it was to return to the wisdom of their ancestors. The people murmered affirmation to all his words. Then he called attention to our presence in their midst;

“We have two guests with us tonight who do not understand the Lakota language so I will ask all of you to please speak in English so they will understand. Some Lakota words are necessary. We say Mita Ke Yasin whenever we wish to address the assembly or anyone in the assembly. When we are addressed by someone we say Mita Ke Yasin to them before answering them. These are our holiest words. Mita Ke Yasin means in English All My Relations -- because when we speak to someone or answer someone we might forget that we are related to them and they are related to us. Therefore we are not strangers after all. We might not know each other very well and that is all right. It is not possible to know everyone. But we can know that we are relatives. We have a responsibility to each other to never forget that. We would not show disrespect to our mother or our brother or to any relation. So we shall remember we are ALL relatives and show respect and give honor from our hearts. Mita Ke Yasin!”

Willard Fool Bull asked that each person accept the medicine pipe and speak their name and say where they were from and have a smoke and then pass the pipe to the person on their left. An ember suddenly glowed in the darkness and Willard’s face became visible for a moment as he lit the pipe and toked deep. The medicine pipe passed from one to another and I listened to the colorful Indian names, several of which ended in Fool Bull.

“Mita Ke Yasin. My name is Thomas but people call me RomTom. I am traveling from the Minnesota Rainbow Gathering home to Oregon and Washington where I repair bicycles on Indian reservations. I’m not sure what I should do with this pipe since I do not smoke tobacco...”

“Mita Ke Yasin, RomTom. The Lakota people welcome you and your wife. The Great Spirit has brought you here for a reason. I believe the reason is so that you will learn something important from the Lakota people. RomTom has told me about a bad experience he had in a sweatlodge among the hippy people. Therefore I want him to know that we will not allow the sweatlodge to become so hot and he may be assured that he will not feel uncomfortable. And also, RomTom, if for any reason, at any time, you feel that you want to leave the sweatlodge, you only have to say the words Mita Ke Yassin and we will all stop at that time and you may then request to leave and we will open the flap and make room for you to pass. Do not be afraid to ask us this. You or your wife may ask us at any time... And about the tobacco... Tobacco is a sacred herb that comes to us from the Great Spirit, a wonderful gift. It would be good if you would have a puff from the pipe, but if you would rather not, just hold the pipe and say your prayer in your heart and then pass the pipe to your left.”

That’s what I did and Ely was next. She spoke her name and puffed the pipe and passed it to her left. And so it went around the circle.

The assembled Lakota people began to sing a song in their language. Although the syllables were meaningless to me I knew they were sacred words. I was captivated by the solemn tones, the repetitive cadence, the odd interweaving “hi-ii-hi-ie”... The ancient union of their spirits even seemed to include me, strange as I was among that family and my heart wanted to explode because I wanted so much in those moments to be one of them. I thought if only I knew the words I could sing with them, but of course I did not know them. But I had to contribute; I could not remain silent; and so I sort of “Hi-yiied” softly in the back ground.

While we sang Willard stroked a rhythm upon the hot rocks with a swash of evergreen which he occasionally dipped in a bucket of water and the steam became hotter and hotter inside the airtight lodge and merged with our voices and the hot breaths that coursed from our lungs. I began to fear my old fears again.

But before long Willard called out and the attendants opened the flap. The sweatlodge was illuminated and they fanned welcome cool air into us. I looked around the circle. The people’s faces were united now in a common dignity and their kindness and beauty seemed overpowering to me.

Willard spoke a prayer to the Great Spirit and then once again he passed the pipe. He asked each person to tell why they had come to the sweatlodge and if they had any burdens on their hearts to speak them and everyone would pray for them. And so each person spoke from his or her heart and passed the pipe and there were many prayers.

One woman told us she had a son who was worshipping the booze bottle and becoming useless and angry and lost. The woman was crying and she spoke slowly. Willard consoled her and offered to speak to her son. He said he would urge her son to prepare himself for the sacred Sundance. An Indian must abstain from cigarettes and alcohol for a full year before the medicine man will allow him to participate in the ceremony. Then Willard intoned a prayer for the woman’s son and asked the Great Spirit to give the woman strength to continue trying to raise her family well.

Another woman told us her sister had cancer. The doctors said she only had a short time left to live. Willard spoke some words from his heart and he asked:

“What do doctors KNOW? Things don’t necessarily happen just the way they say!”

Then he laughed a little and remembered a certain person: he said the doctors had told the person that he would only live for six months but he had fooled the doctors -- he had lived for seven years and he had been strong and happy. Most of the people in the sweatlodge knew the man Willard was talking about and several burst forth to voice that they had known him too and that it had happened just as Willard said. And then Willard attested that the man had lived so well because he had purified his spirit and lived the right way and was good to his family and his people. The listeners again voiced their absolute agreement. Willard Fool Bull spoke a prayer for the woman and her sister while the woman cried softly in the dark.

When the pipe came to me I said my problems were small in comparison. Our bike-rack had busted and half our inventory had tumbled to the earth. Now we needed to locate a welder to do the repairs and we were afraid it would stretch our slim resources. But I knew the rack had broken across the street from Willard Fool Bull’s home because the Great Spirit wanted us to meet Willard and his family and learn an important lesson. I absolutely knew that. So I didn’t feel my problems were large, at least not the Bike Bus problems. But I said I would appreciate prayers for my wife because her spirit has suffered immeasurably since our children were taken from us.

Willard Fool Bull asked the Great Spirit to help us fix our racks and he spoke about Ellie and asked for the Great Spirit to help her on her path. I felt very moved.

So the pipe passed around until the circle was complete. Willard spoke to the young men and they closed the flap. In the darkness the Lakota songs began again and Willard slapped the rocks with the evergreen swash.

Altogether the tent flap was opened five times. The periods of singing in the darkness and steam were each ten or fifteen minutes long. We were never uncomfortable and we never felt worried. Not only was the experience much like being in a church, but it was a closer union between human being and God than I have ever felt in any church.

Willard’s nephew, Loopy, who lived with him, spent a lot of time with us. Loopy’s wife was white. The blond woman had no difficulty fitting in the kitchen with the Indian women, and her presence took the edge off any apprehensions we initially felt. Perhaps Step’s presence on our bus did the same thing for them.

Loopy had some very sensitive observations about prejudism, and about the white man’s greedy world and particularly about the ramification of Indians in American society. He also told us about the Sundance. He had hung from the tree ten times and he would be doing it again this year. He wanted us to stay a few weeks and come to the Rosebud Sundance.

What an experience that would have been! But Steps was impatient to get to Oregon and he made sure I knew it. He’d figured the whole trip to the west coast would take just a few days. So far it had been two weeks. He wasn’t quite as riveted to this beautiful culture as I was.

And with eight valuable bikes gone and no amount of looking turning them up I began to worry that my cameras and my Martin guitar would be the next things to go and who knows what else. It was a very insecure feeling.

And then Ellie put a big Kabosh on any idea of staying. If a cleptomaniac is a person who cannot resist stealing what is a person called who cannot resist sabotaging? A sabomaniac? Well, I think that’s what Ellie is.

We were on very delicate territory, and if we were smart we would be on our best behavior, walking on eggshells. We couldn’t leave with our rack busted and bicycles and wheels scattered all over the place, so if the Indian families took a sudden dislike to us we would be in one sorry predicament... That’s probably a big reason why I just ate the fact that eight of our best BMX bikes were gone and would never return—if that’s the price we had to pay for peace... But then Ellie went and did her little shenanigan and I thought it was the end.

Ellie isn’t supposed to mess with my photography. Because I do nudes I have to exert the utmost caution. I need to know the exact whereabouts of my photographs. I just can’t have Ellie wandering around with them, spacing them out somewhere. I allow her to look at the albums inside the bus but she is not supposed to mess with any photographs that are not in albums, the extras and duplicates that I keep in a drawer.

But occasionally Ellie has taken a couple pictures with her and left them out where people could come upon them. Usually she has done this in places where the people absolutely do not approve of nudity, like in my mother’s home once, and at a Christian community another time, and and in people’s homes where we were visiting. You can come to any conclusions you want about her reasons for doing that: conscious reasons, sub-conscious reasons, whatever, -- and you can laugh at it or twist it around and justify it or you can abhor it… It’s not my place to tell you what you should think about it… But I will tell you I have to live through those moments and I don’t like that bratty little habit of hers one little bit. So when she decided to leave three 3x5 nude photos in their bathroom I was not happy.

Willard Fool Bull sent word that he had to talk with me about something important if I would please come into his house. So I left what I was doing and went to see what he wanted. He said it was about my wife. The children had seen Ellie changing her blouse outside the bus. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t have any modesty about herself. But whatever the reason, he could not allow that sort of thing around his children. I was turning all red with anger and embarrassment. I told him that I thought Ellie must have forgotten herself; that we had just spent three weeks at the Minnesota Rainbow where people didn’t have to wear clothes and where breasts commonly bounced free in the breezes. She must have absent-mindedly changed her blouse without realizing she was back in the world where those things are not permissible.

Of course, that excuse was worthless to Willard. As far as he was concerned nudity was an offence to the Great Spirit. Period. So he just told me again that he could not allow it. I told him I would go directly to Ellie and have a talk with her and make sure she understood.

“When your wife took a shower this morning she left these photos in our bathroom.”

He handed them to me and I looked at them. They were left-overs from past shoots, nudes, rejects that I had not gotten around to putting in the trash -- three of them. I gritted my teeth. He said:

“I don’t want pornography around my home. I don’t want my wife or my sister to see these. And I don’t want to look at something like that either. And I certainly don’t want the children to see pictures like that...”

I told them that Ellie must have had the pictures in her pocket and they must have fallen out when she undressed. I apologized and excused myself so I could talk to her right away.

It was like talking to a wall, talking to Ellie. I was seething with rage. But who wants to carry on a conversation with a man who is seething with rage? No one, and certainly not Ellie. But I kept at it and kept at it until I figured she had a clear understanding of our critical situation and she yelled back at me:

The next day bright and early we drove east to the town of Mission to find a welder to repair the rack. I wanted to get out of there while we still had our skins.

The welder was an Indian fellow who didn’t appear to be Indian at all. He looked white and he had no accent when he talked. He was kind-hearted and only charged us sixty dollars to repair the whole rack. On top of that. I sold two bikes to townfolk for a total of a hundred dollars while he was busy doing the welding, so I came out money ahead.

It was approaching evening when the welder finished and we headed back to Upper Cutmeat. We loaded up most of the bicycles and wheels and felt much safer knowing we weren’t stuck anymore. It was pretty dark and we still had a few bikes on the ground and the canoe. Everyone’s attitudes seemed warm-hearted again and Willard was friendly and seemed to have put the incident with Ellie out of his mind. So we decided to wait until morning to leave.

Loopy and I sat talking in the canoe in the prairie grasses for several hours that evening. Loopy was telling us some powerful stories from his life.

He described how the Indian men pierce their chests and attach leather thongs with which they pull Buffallo skulls that weigh 20 to 30 pounds four times around a big circle. I asked him how it was possible to stand such pain? He explained that a lot of praying went on before the ceremony and the medicine man gives strength to each participant. I taped him with my camcorder while he spoke.

The next morning we loaded up the remaining bicycles and the canoe and said our goodbyes. Out on the highway Steps and I looked at each other and smiled widely. We were rolling again! How incredible! Ellie was excited too. And so the big old Bike Bus lumbered along the narrow highway like a twentieth century Conestoga and we watched the Indian lands of southern South Dakota passing by our windows.

We stopped in the next little Indian town because we needed groceries. The main road was unpaved. I parked the Bike Bus across the street from a grocery store and disembarked.

An ancient wrinkled Indian man was sitting on the curb watching me. He must have been seventy years old at least. He stood up and began swearing at me in Lakota and English both. He looked like he was going to attack me physically! I hurried across the street and made my purchases and looked out the store window. Yes, he was still there, standing in the road, watching me. When I stepped out of the store he started cursing again, louder than ever, waving a wine bottle at me threateningly, and nearly screaming now. I couldn’t understand a single word he was saying but I have rarely in my life felt so hated. I was shaking.

I stopped and looked at him. He ceased his cursing and glared at me angrily, waiting. I said courteously: