RavenShadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

what she wanted to do, paint on cloth. I met her at Emile’s one day. She was showing him a big piece, a horseback warrior on a periwinkle blue banner shaped like a guidon.
    “Good idea,” he said. “Indian warrior, U.S. Army symbol, I like that.”
    You can hear what people are not saying, too.
    She raised her arms and eyebrows like, That’s all?
    He finally grabbed a big sketch pad and re-drew the horseman three or four times on different pages, really fast. The last sketch—it’s hard to find words for this—had a sort of flow in the lines that made the paper almost pulse, like it had electrical energy.
    “Mine just lays there,” she said, looking back and forth.
    Emile nodded.
    She looked like she wanted to cry.
    I got her to have coffee with me before she drove home.
    Now she was working on a truly big piece, the size of a banner like you hang in front of a store to make a statement. For it she needed white silk, and had no bucks to buy it.
    One day at the Sioux Nations Shopping Center, where she clerked for minimum wage, she took me out in the parking lot and showed me what looked like a backpack. “My Eureka,” she said.
    She started unstuffing some white cloth out of the pack. Silk. “My uncle’s World War II parachute.” Silk .
    “Wonderful idea,” I said. I also thought, Typical Indian artist, broke, and creative as hell.
    “Donan says he’ll hang it from a pole in front of the gallery for the fall show. If I can get it finished.” Donan was a Hill City gallery owner.
    The barman brought the Virgin Mary and the beers.
    I said, “You know, I’m celebrating. Here’s my Freed from Labor Day promise. If you ruin all of it, I’ll buy you another parachute.”
    She grinned, but her eyes showed this hurt. “If I ruin it all,” she said, “I’ll get another Eureka.”
    Sallee had the affliction of artists—they’re unhappy unless they do the one thing that turns them on. I’d learned that real good from Emile.
    “What you celebrating?” says Rosaphine.
    “My freedom,” says I.
    I looked around the bar. I reached down into the lungs of the biggest chest in the room, found my biggest radio voice, and hollered, “Ten—n-n-n HUT !”
    The white drinkers, a mix of fifteen or twenty tourists and Hills folks, looked over at the drunken Indian. (One more time, lads and lasses: Nobody loves a drunken Indian.) I laid the words out like thunder. “Today I took my freedom. I told that white employer, that boss, that overseer, I sang in my best Johnny Paycheck imitation, ‘ TAKE THIS JOB AND AND SHOVE IT !’”
    One of the rednecks softly seconded, “Right on!”
    “So, LET’S CELEBRATE ! Bartender, this round’s on me. SET ’EM UP !”
    I lifted my glass, listening for the roar of approval. Instead there were a lot of funny looks, and from the back came a comment in a redneck accent, “Once in a lifetime! An Injun’s buying!”
    The bartender set to work.
    I looked happily into Sallee’s eyes and saw hurt. I didn’t get that. Then I thought, Generosity means more when it isn’t boozy. I felt ashamed. I said, “I did quit my job.”
    She nodded and noshed on her celery. I found it sexy. She was looking White Buffalo Woman-like again.
    The bartender filled our glasses, including more veggie juice and celery for Sallee. I gave him some twenties. Rosaphine and I drained our beers.
    Rosaphine slipped an arm around my waist. “So tell us.”
    I did, the whole story—Long John Silver’s corruption, his grave offense via Sybil, my setup, the beauty of my deception off the air, and the crowning glory of Long John shouting RIGHT ON THE AIR vileness I never dreamed to get out of him.
    Rosaphine haw-hawed, slapped her thigh, slapped my thigh, squeezed my thigh, and haw-hawed a lot more. Sallee looked worried.
    Suddenly I thought, I could tell her more of the truth. I could say, “Sallee, I wasted a huge piece of my life working at a job that paid the rent but did nothing else for a soul,