Dream Wheels Read Online Free PDF

firmly.
    “No,” she said.
    The world exploded.
    Victoria Wolfchild placed the telephone back in its cradle and walked to the picture window that looked out over the pasture. The horses were looped to the hitching post at the edge of the veranda and the dog lay panting on the step beside them. She could see the back of him, leaned against the rail fence looking across the valley at the mountains. Smoking. She watched his ribs move out with the inhale, then contract slowly as the plume of smoke streamed out in a long, thin cloud, mushrooming at its end and disappearing into the purple-pink scalloped edges of the evening. Right now he was learning to digest the disappointment and the worry. Las Vegas was thousands of miles away and the distance felt even greater when you were landlocked and helpless at home. He’d want to be doing something, anything. Now, as she reached into the closet for her shawl, Victoria Wolfchild knew he’d be more wrought with anxiety once she told him the extent of the injuries. A star had fallen and the sky was suddenly emptier and colder. Joe Willie had ridden higher and further than either he or Birch had ever dreamed, and the old man wanted that championship for him more than he’d wanted anything these past few years.Still, it was the fact that the boy was hurt, and hurt bad, that agonized him now. As she stepped through the door onto the veranda she heard the faint syllables of the old prayer song they’d learned together many years ago. His face was raised to the sky now and she knew his eyes would be closed and his throat open to beseech blessings for the grandchild far away.
    He hadn’t had much use for the old ways when they met. Lionel had been raised in missionary schools. He never spoke of that. Victoria had made it a point to read what she could find of the experience and she’d felt a well of shame for that part of her country’s history. She knew that they had removed the language and the culture from those poor children and that once a tribal person had lost those they were pretty much at sea. So, after they’d been married a few years, she started taking him to local powwows and tribal gatherings. He was reluctant at first, not so much for the encounter with his cultural way but more because, even though Lionel loved her immensely, there was a part of him that felt embarrassed being married to a white woman. A cultural embarrassment that only played itself out when they walked among his people. Victoria sensed it in the way his hand let go of hers some when they walked. Not completely, not in any obvious way, but enough. She knew it in the way he looked beyond her when they talked, as if he needed to see who was looking. She knew it by his retreat into shorter sentences spoken lower than usual or by his rapt interest in the ground. It was something else he never spoke of but she knew it in her bones and she also knew that she didn’t blame him or hold it against him. The world sometimes held a big eraser in its hand and it didn’t care much whose life it skimmed over, didn’t consider the impact of its movements. Those whose lives were smudged by it went on with a hunger for the edges, for definition, for completeness. Lionel needed detail, and she helped him find it.
    They’d found an old man and his wife and they’d become regular visitors. The old couple spoke to them of the traditions that had once flourished, told them of the ceremonies and rituals that had once guided the lives of the people. Little by little they had filled out the edges of Lionel’s life. They filled out the edges of their marriage too. Together, they had found a spirituality that fit both of them like an old pair of moccasins: loose, familiar and comforting. She didn’t know when it changed for him, only that there was suddenly a time at a gathering in Montana that he’d stood there in a circle of his people and draped an arm around her shoulders while he sang along with a round dance song.