Letter dated August 4, 2023

Tristan Black Wolf:

I found this sealed envelope in Jason’s papers, with your name and an old address in Stillwater OK on it. Glad you’re still in touch. No one has seen Jason in ten years, so we have opened his lockers, as he directed. You know his Nature. There is no knowing if he is dead. I don’t feel so. Meanwhile, his papers are being distributed, destroyed, or whatever else, according to his wishes. You get to find out what’s in this envelope. I was raised not to be nosy; nothin’ says I can’t be curious. The rest is up to you. Your Spirit will guide you.

Buck Spotted Pony

I am Jason Winter Wolf. I set down these words, unsure if I will ever share them. Stories are important, and this one perhaps more important to me than to others. I tell this tale here so that my memory will never fail me, if only about this one strange and wonderful story from my life. Whoever reads these words may think me a liar, a fabulist, a fool. Be it so. I continue, to tell this tale and to live, without their blessing.

To begin with, a few important details. I do not know my audience, if any, so I must make explanations, to be clear.

I am Wolf. I am not a human who morphs into a werewolf, as the folktales describe. I am a wolf who wears a human’s skin to live in this benighted world. My clan is Cheyenne, and those who know of my Nature accepted me as kin; others are simply aware that Wolf Medicine is strong in me without knowing, or needing to know, the truth of it.

Another truth about me is that I am berdache, or twin-souled, with both male and female within me. My expression is male, and my love is for other males; my inner self has always been the warring and the balance of these natures. Uncle Twelve Trees noticed it in me first, and he nurtured me through my becoming, emotionally, spiritually, sexually. There was no taboo; he is my uncle in the tribal sense, not actual blood kin. I shall not answer any prurient curiosity beyond saying that he knows that I am Wolf.

Enough background. It’s time to tell about Lonnie, and the events of last year which, for the record, is 1992 CE. Perhaps it will benefit me as well to let go of some of my stoicism and just tell the damn story.

Jeff Foxworthy once said, “If you go to family reunions to meet women, you might be a Redneck.” It’s not quite the same thing, going to clan powwows, but there is a similar, potentially incestuous feeling about meeting someone there. (There is a slang term, about someone being one’s “powwow paradise,” referring to a casual sexual encounter. Given the nature of tribal families, blood and otherwise, there is certainly that sense about such meetings.) Usually, you find people at powwows that you’ve known for some length of time, even if you don’t see them regularly. Shalako, the Zuni festival that begins around December 1, gathers their People from all over the world; sometimes, members of a clan don’t see each other except once a year during this time. It’s a time of homecoming, as well as of renewing all that is part and parcel of being one of the dinee. Local powwows aren’t nearly so large, although you’d be surprised who turns up, sometimes like good or bad pennies.

That’s where Lonnie came into my life.

My clan holds powwows irregularly, and mostly in the southeastern part of Oklahoma, or northeastern part of Texas. The biggest criterion is usually who had the idea to try to get everyone together in the first place; the second biggest is who has some beef or venison to share. Invitations came in almost any form, although usually by word of mouth, with anywhere from a few weeks to a few hours notice. There’s a wasichu joke about “Let’s put on a show; my daddy’s got a barn.” In our case, it was more like, “Red Hawk’s brewed up a few gallons of barbeque sauce; it should be able to tenderize bulls’ hooves by the weekend.”

Properly, a “powwow” is a formal gathering, with dances and ceremonies, carefully organized and brought into being by a group of people who act in what modern times would call a committee. Colloquially, we use “powwow” to mean any gathering of the clan; it can be made fancy, or it can be called to celebrate certain special occasions or holidays. These “unofficial” powwows, called more by word-of-mouth invitations being passed around to reach a mere hundred “locals” (within maybe two, three hours’ drive), are the most laid-back, much more of a party atmosphere. If there’s any dancing, it’s usually done by people in jeans and t-shirts rather than moccasins, leathers, and feathers. Sometimes, one of the Fancy Dancers or the Eagle Dancers or others will — what do the kids say these days? — “bust some moves” out in the yard, for practice, if nothing else. For the most part, it’s just people who feel the need to move their bodies to the sounds of drums, singing, chanting, whatever instruments are available. After all, no special instructions are needed to Owl Dance; if you can shuffle your weight from one foot to the other in time to the music, you’re in.

I always thought that Lonnie Sparrowhawk should have been a Fancy Dancer. I saw a picture of Dakota sculptor Janice Albro’s “Fancy Dancer,” a bronze statue a little over two feet tall, and I thought Lonnie could have posed for it. The face is similar, and the general shape of the body is the same. On that particularly warm day, Summer Solstice, mid-July, Lonnie was wearing significantly less than the bronzed Fancy Dancer was wearing. In his case, it was nothing more than a pair of cut-off denim pants and a layer of sweat that seemed to make his entire body shine like a mirage, stirred into being by memories of deep yearning. Perhaps my own.

Lonnie and I had met, at other powwows, at other places, several times before. He knew that I was gay. I’m not so “out” that every passer-by knows my life story, but neither do I cower in shame and try to hide it. I had an interest in Lonnie, but I never felt that he might be interested in me, so the topic never came up. That particular July afternoon, however, something in me changed. It wasn’t the first time that I’d seen Lonnie dance, but it was the first time that I’d ever seen him dance so passionately, with such a look on his face, as if he were channeling a combination of Kokopelli and Bob Fosse. When he was done, he received quite a number of whoops and ululations that wasichus would call “war cries,” and which we sometimes call “Injun yodeling.” He came over to where I sat at one of the picnic tables scattered around Buck Spotted Pony’s huge back yard and flopped down, exhausted. He was about to drink from a bottle of iced-down water, but I stopped him; it would have shocked his system. I gave him sips of lukewarm water instead, which he said tasted terrible but went down well.

His chest heaved for a while, pulling into his lungs the oxygen that his body demanded, casting off the carbon dioxide that he had built up. Sweat dripped across his skin, providing a source of fascination that I couldn’t keep out of my face. He smiled softly at me, and we talked a little — as much as he could between gulps of air and sips of water. After a time, most of the party’s attention was on other things, and he told me to come walk with him. A short distance away stood Buck’s barn and stable. Lonnie introduced me to a couple of the pintos that gave Buck his family name; they had been raising these beautiful animals for more than a century.

I’ll spare the suspense: No, we didn’t. Damn near, but we didn’t. He was (pardon the pun) straightforward with his talk. He took both of my hands in his, looked in my eyes, and asked me if I would kiss him. I didn’t know what to say, and after a few seconds (and a mental head-slap from Uncle Twelve Trees), I realized that words weren’t what was needed. I leaned toward him and kissed him, very gently, a soft touching of lips. After I pulled back, he looked at me again, and a smile slowly came across his face. “I guess that doesn’t really frighten horses after all.”

“Other things might,” I said, also smiling.

“Then let’s just try another kiss. Please,” he added softly.

We did, and several others besides. Since that moment, I associate the smell of warm horse hide and fresh hay with memories of Lonnie.

I can’t say if I fell in love with him right then, although the moment was perfect for it, absolutely romantic. The truth is that he wasn’t sure if he was in love with me, either. He’d not been attracted to another man, although he’d wondered, not so much about other men in general but about me in particular. This in itself was a curiosity. Was I special, or was I only a safe person to try out his homosexuality with? Was it to do with my being Wolf (he was one of those who knew)? Neither of us seemed to know the answer to those questions.

We talked together, back at the picnic table, for the rest of the day and into the evening, occasionally about sex, but mostly about each other. Lonnie seemed to wonder if my daily life would be some kind of adventure that was unknown and unknowable to straight people and “ordinary” humans. He wasn’t being condescending or patronizing in any way; he just plain didn’t know. His innocence was part of his attractiveness.

About the time everyone was either driving off or bunking down on bedrolls at the periphery of Buck’s house — like I said, there was no formality about these parties, and a host’s invitation can include the use of his home and grounds for camping, if that’s the best way to keep a drunken friend out of his car, or just letting the sweetness of an evening linger into a safe place to doze until dawn — Lonnie and I realized that we both did and didn’t want to part from one another. The kiss and the conversation were almost impossibly romantic; would it have been even more so, if we had spread a blanket beneath the stars, given our bodies to each other even as our spirits danced on the Oklahoma winds?

We chose another course. Throughout our talking, Lonnie had expressed his feelings with great candor. Perhaps more than anyone else in my life, he taught me that we have nothing to fear from the truth; even something that may hurt will hurt less if it is faced openly. I would learn about the pain of truth later. For now, I learned only of the potential for passion.

The feelings that Lonnie had were confusing to him — not love, not lust, and not mere curiosity. It was as if he quite literally didn’t know anything about himself, about his emotional and sexual nature, and that he trusted me to be a caring guide through this unknown land. While it was true that he wasn’t “in love” with me, what he was showing instead was trust — the absolute trust that I would not hurt him, not misuse him, not deceive him. This, perhaps, was even greater than the romantic love that we were partly enacting and partly dreaming of.

So it was that, as part of that trust, we moved slowly. The dark of that evening was spent in a quiet place, away from the others but near enough to hear the noise and laughter and music that continued for so long. We cuddled together, and when the night grew cooler with the winds after a hot day, I became Wolf, so that he would be warm. To do so, I had to remove my clothing, which wasn’t a problem; nudity was never an issue in clan life. He did not go mad with lust, either with my human form or my Wolf Self. I held him, and he felt what it was like to be in my arms.

Lonnie spoke of everything he was feeling, from the fascination with the differences between holding a man and holding a woman, to the soft warmth of my fur, to the unusual sensation of feeling what he called “male tenderness” — a combination of the usually-dominating, powerful male spirit coupled with compassion, warmth, nurturing. It felt like being protected, yet like being free to be his own man. It was, he said, like a dance of spirit. Until then, I had not thought of my twin-souled nature this way, not as a conflict but as a dance. This revelation alone changed me, for the better, forever.

Our conversation yielded a plan to spend the next weekend together, just the two of us, where we would discover what would happen. We parted with great reluctance, and with a great many more tender kisses. We kept in touch by telephone during the next week; we spoke every night, doing our best to limit the calls to short intervals, despite the desire to stay connected and talk for hours at a time. The plans were made, and he drove to my home — which was on the distant eastern fringes of Dallas — arriving early Friday afternoon.

We were in each other’s arms from the moment he arrived, and we quite literally made love all weekend — but not all of it was sexual. Lonnie was curious, more than anything else. I don’t mean that in a “distant observer” sense of the word. On that Friday night, after having spent all afternoon and evening talking about everything in the world, watching a movie cuddled up together on the couch, and finally deciding that we were ready to go to bed, both of us had the sense of being not quite ready for other things. It wasn’t the lack of willingness; Lonnie, seeing me naked (this time, in the context of becoming a lover) was enthralled, in the literal sense of the word. It was not because I am the world’s most beautiful man; I have my vanities, but that isn’t one of them. For Lonnie, it was Something, although he couldn’t say what, that held him in thrall to me. I could have commanded him to do anything at all, and he quite probably would have done so. We could have had an amazing, crashing, impassioned round of sex that would have lasted hours.

But it wasn’t the point. Even as he reached his trembling hands out to touch my chest, I knew that it wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about sex — not then. It was about trust. The touch of his hands on my skin was everything I could have wanted it to be, and it took all the strength I had to take his hands in my own and hold them gently, slightly away from both of us. I leaned forward and kissed him softly, my closed lips to his, then pulled back and whispered to him, “Come with me.”

I led him to the bed, sitting with him, looking into his eyes. “We have all weekend,” I said. “Do you remember what you said about curiosity, about wanting to find out all that you could?”

He nodded, not quite able to speak. By all that I hold sacred… he was so beautiful. It was almost more than I could stand.

“The anticipation of the day has made us both tired, and we have time to take time. Sleep with me tonight, Lonnie. Just sleep. Let our bodies be together in rest. We can always exercise later.”

The joke did the trick. We fell into each other’s arms, laughing. Turning out the lights, we found a comfortable position to curl up in, and he snuggled up behind me as if his body had been made to fit mine. With his arm draped across me, we fell asleep together. I’ve rarely enjoyed such a peaceful night’s sleep, particularly considering that I was in my human form. Usually, sleeping alone, I shift into my natural form; it’s just more comfortable. Lonnie made it all right for me to keep the human form and still be relaxed.

What happened the next morning — that’s something I’ll keep to myself. And while I’m at it, I’ll keep quiet about what happened later that afternoon, that night, the wee hours of Sunday morning, Sunday lunchtime, Sunday night, and thank goodness I didn’t have to get to work early on Monday morning.

There is something about it all that I need to set down: The experience led me to feel that he had spoiled me for any other man on the planet. We were intimate all weekend, in our talk and our touch and our sharing; we certainly were sexual, and during those times, it was as if there were something between us that was still talking, still sharing, still communicating. I had not experienced this since Neil was taken from me, so long ago, by a shaman gone mad… No. That story has been told.

What I’m trying to convey about Lonnie is a complete lack of assumptions about anything. It’s the nature of First Peoples to do that, as much as they can; pre-judging (“prejudice”) means that you’re putting your own mind ahead of the experience that you’re having. When someone points out that my hair is uncombed, reality says that it’s merely a statement of fact; it’s pre-judging that turns it into a put-down.

Lonnie assumed nothing whatsoever, other than that I would not hurt him, at least not intentionally. Everything else was an exploration of physicality that bore, no matter what we did, a sense of merging of spirit, of knowing more than what a mere five or six senses could possibly tell us. Just as there are some things that I won’t set down here, there are some things that I can’t. Words can cheapen things, because they are unable to convey all that is there. When I use the cliché that “words can’t describe what it was like to love Lonnie,” I’m being literal.

Our relationship was, in some ways, strange. We never moved in together; we never lived together. I was monogamous with him from that first night, never sharing my body with anyone else during that time. He was strangely shy about my visiting him at his home; he wasn’t ashamed of it, but he said that he “suffered from the most common Injun disease of all — poverty.” He wasn’t truly impoverished, because he owned outright the six acres that his small home stood on, and he kept, raised, and sold various animals, from dogs and birds to the occasional alpaca — the first time I’d ever seen, much less met, such animals. Lonnie kept a dozen or so on his land. Alpaca can be sweet and gentle animals that make a kind of humming sound — perhaps the llama-like equivalent of purring. It’s very relaxing. I wasn’t always a city-dweller, but even if I had been, I’d have enjoyed the peace of sitting under a shade tree and listening to the alpaca hum, come close enough to be petted, to nuzzle me, and even try to nibble on my clothing.

I probably couldn’t live like Lonnie. I’ve become addicted to things like videos, computers, and reliable air conditioning. Lonnie’s house has a single window unit for his bedroom, which he uses only on the hottest of nights. Winters are easy enough for him, considering the warm kitchen, beautiful log fireplace, and Franklin stove in the bedroom. He’s far from being truly poor, because that’s a state of mind. It took me a while to convince him how much I enjoyed visiting, and that neither of us had to become the other in order for us to be together. We couldn’t pick one or the other place for both of us to live, so we agreed to live in both places, sharing whatever we could when we could. A few nights were lonely, but only a few; we knew we’d be together again soon enough, only a weekend away, and that — and a tender phone call — made the loneliness back down and leave us alone.

If Lonnie had a single conflicted aspect that other people couldn’t reconcile, it was his massive intellect versus his inability to stick to a single topic or “career-path” for very long. He thought himself undisciplined, while I encouraged his eclectic nature: Fascinated, fiercely bright, swiftly absorbed in something new, rarely finishing something before going on to something else. In his time, Lonnie had tried everything from collage art and scrapbooking to studying music and languages. The local library both loved and dreaded seeing him come in; he made full use of the facilities, usually ending up with a list of as many as thirty books that he wanted to request through interlibrary loan. (They had a limit of ordering only five at a time, which Lonnie honored; he often got only halfway through that list of thirty before he came up with another list entirely.)

A few things stuck with him — the alpaca, for instance. They weren’t the only living thing that intrigued him. He took an interest in ferrets, iguanas, doves, opossums, raccoons, and even Komodo dragons at one point, but he acknowledged early that any fascination with a living thing that actually led to acquiring that living thing would be a commitment to the life of that creature. He thoroughly enjoyed visiting zoos and pet shops with exotic animals, and he learned a great deal about them — enough to be a walking repository of knowledge for others in his part of southeastern Oklahoma to consult him instead of the more expensive (and sometimes less available) vets. When he found the alpaca, however, it was something like love at first sight. He’s been devoted to them ever since.

The other thing that he took seriously was home modification, almost to the point of home-building. His small house is quite possibly one of the most energy-efficient places on the planet. When I first saw it, in mid-August of last year, I didn’t realize until he told me that he’d added three rooms to the original building. He had kept the feel of the original structure so much that I couldn’t see where the additions were made. He also built the large three-walled enclosure for the alpaca to shelter in during inclement weather. It was part of what kept him so slim and strong. That and the dancing. He never danced for the tribe in any formal way, just the local powwows. And for me.

I’m not a musician, but I can keep time on a drum well enough. There were nights — including nights when Grandmother Moon was full and lush and gazing down upon us with more love than our hearts could hold — when Lonnie would dance for me, and for me alone. In his large back yard, naked, bathed in that silvery liquid light, he moved his body as though he were not even touching the ground. He made love to me in his movements, in the chanting that he sometimes made, and I returned his love with my drumming and my own rhythmic vocal sounds. Sometimes, there were words; sometimes, the words were in an undiscovered language. It was never the same thing twice. The only constant was that, on hot nights or cold, I always had a blanket for him — a handmade blanket that his maternal grandmother had created for him — and I would wrap him in it and hold him close to me as he panted and sweated and shook with exhaustion. Usually, I shifted and scooped him into my arms to carry him inside; he held on to my neck, rested his head against my shoulder, trembling. Back in his bedroom, I kissed the sweat from his body, rubbed his muscles gently, kept him warm and held him against my fur until he fell asleep.

It was like a fever dream for him, sometimes, with or without Grandmother being full. Those times scared me. It was like he was possessed by something beyond himself, beyond the Spirit Guides that we both knew, beyond even stories and myths and faith and spirit that we as Cheyenne felt in our very bones. It wasn’t scary in the sense of being dangerous, being in the presence of evil. It was somehow completely beyond anything that we had ever known. It was as if — I write these words carefully, with greatest respect — as if he had he had somehow touched Gitchee Manitou Himself and brought part of Him closer into the world.

And it was just for me. It was as if he had used his body, his soul, his very essence, to bring back a part of God for me to share and join with.

I have come to the painful part of this narrative. This is what I must preserve in the best words that I have. The combination of several things told me that the night would be powerful. To begin with, it was Winter Solstice — Old Year’s Day. Half a year on the Great Medicine Wheel since we had began our story at Buck Spotted Pony’s powwow. On this night, it was well below freezing, the slight wind across the open land making it colder, but Lonnie still wanted to dance naked on the light dusting of snow in his back yard. Grandmother Moon had been full and eclipsed only 11 days before. Now, nearly at the Dark of the Moon, the clouds that had brought the snow had parted, leaving the land lit by stars. After he had walked outside with me, Lonnie stripped himself, even his moccasins. He walked on the snowy ground, barefoot, without flinching. I brought an extra blanket, thinking he might need it. I shifted before we began. Even furclad, I felt the chill of the night. We began anyway.

I drummed; he danced; we chanted; we helped to turn the Great Medicine Wheel, to bring back Grandfather Sun, to begin the New Year. I thought that he would stop after a few minutes, but he kept on. I saw steam rise off of his body, as if his sweat had sublimed there in the frosted air. His chanting grew more fevered, the words not English, not Cheyenne, not anything that any mortal tongue had ever uttered. His long black hair flying, he spun like the dervishes of Sufism until all at once he stopped and stared at me. That’s when it happened.

He phased out of existence.

It happened for only a few seconds. His body became transparent. As Wolf, my night vision is at its best, and I could see through him, see clearly the alpaca enclosure that was directly behind him, about twenty yards beyond. His body was a mirage, save for his rapidly pulsating heart. I saw a hand touch his heart with infinite tenderness, as if bestowing a blessing.

Despite exertion from my drumming, I froze to the core. Lonnie, his body seeming to re-form in the strange silvery starlight, staggered toward me. I leapt up and caught him as he fell. I threw the blankets around him, heaved him into my arms. He weighed nothing, as if he weren’t really there at all. I ran into the house with him, laid him gently on the bed, wrapped his blankets and my large furclad body around him as closely as I could. His tawny-dark skin looked pale and blue, the smile on his lips more a rictus of something between ecstasy and terror. “I saw,” he said clearly. He didn’t chatter, he didn’t stammer; his eyes, half-open and heavy-lidded regarded me clearly. Then he said, “We were right.”

He closed his eyes and died.

I shifted back in order to perform CPR on him, thanking every deity that I could think of that I’d actually taken the course. He came back after what may have been as much as ten minutes. His faint cough was almost a laugh. Weakly, he smiled at me. The smile was an encouraging sign, and his pulse was weak but steady. I took the chance to leave him long enough to call an ambulance. The paramedics wouldn’t have been able to find the place, if it weren’t for the fact that one of them was one of us; Johnny Laughing Bear, a big son-of-a-buck that the wasichus just called “Bear,” was on call that night, and he knew where Lonnie’s place was.

I went with Lonnie to the hospital, made sure that he was all right, and got Laughing Bear to take me back to Lonnie’s place around sunrise to pick up my car. I drove home, having not slept for nearly twenty-four hours, not sure that I’d ever sleep again. The next day, I found out from Laughing Bear that Lonnie was going to be okay. I called up the hospital and made arrangements to take care of the bill.

Lonnie called me after he got out of hospital, which was Christmas Eve. I let the machine take the message. He was very cheerful, wished me happy holidays (he knew that I’d be off work for several days that week), and said to call whenever I wanted to. He paused, and then thanked me with so much sincerity that it shattered my heart like glass.

I couldn’t call him. I couldn’t say why not.

Not long after the calendar new year, Uncle Twelve Trees came to talk to me. This was strange enough, since he rarely traveled very far from his home. He told me that Crow had given him a message, “one of those really obscure son-of-a-bitches.” Although he didn’t know the details from Crow, Uncle knew that it was about me and Lonnie, so what the crap had happened that got Crow to drag him out of his home to come visit me.

I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth to tell Uncle what I saw, what I experienced. I only said that Lonnie had wanted to dance outside on that night, and that he got carried away, got too cold, collapsed. I was frightened for him, I said, and I called the ambulance. I didn’t tell him that Lonnie had actually been dead for so long. I didn’t tell him why I was afraid to talk to Lonnie. Uncle didn’t press, out of respect to both me and Lonnie. He also told me I’d better make amends to Crow.

January was the worst. I had strange dreams about that Old Year’s night — not nightmares, but disturbing, jolting me out of otherwise peaceful sleep. Sometimes, I would dream about Lonnie, about making love with him, and I would wake up weeping. I didn’t go out. I nearly quit the project that I was working on; my boss let me “work from home” for a while, and I did manage to get the work done, although I spent much of my time reading, watching movies, trying to put anything into my brain that would wipe out the memory of what happened with Lonnie.

There’s no argument about my being a thick-headed stubborn idiot; I’m good at it, when I really put my mind to it. After nearly six months, I finally got tired of being stupid. The only person who could help me through this was Lonnie himself. Lonnie was the smart one; he waited until I called him, which I finally did, toward the Fourth of July weekend. It was on a Sunday this year, so Monday would be a holiday. I was already thinking about wanting to see him, so I kicked my furry tail into gear to call him the week before.

He was glad to hear from me. He was very kind; he didn’t make mention of how long it had been since we talked. I did. I was riddled with guilt, although I didn’t know what it came from. Like a foolish boy, I’d forgotten that guilt isn’t something that tribal children are supposed to learn. Responsibility, not guilt.

The conversation was stilted until Lonnie, gently, with great affection, asked me if I was really ready to talk to him. I said that I didn’t know. He asked if it would help if he told me that he was feeling pretty stupid about the whole thing and wanted to apologize. This confused me, because I couldn’t think what he had to apologize for.

“For dying,” he said. “That was a pretty dumb thing to do.”

Finally, the Injun in me woke up and smelled the pemmican. “Can I come see you?” I asked.

With that same incredible gentleness, he asked, “Do you have any expectations to bring with you?”

“Only a few hundred or so.”

“Good. I was afraid you were perfect. When’s a good time?”

The weekend was as good as always, so he invited me to show up Friday and to stay until I was ready to go. I told my boss that I would be back sometime before entropy ended, and he said to let him know when I was back from whatever DreamWalk I had to take. Not bad for a white boy. I like him.

When I turned onto the road that led to his property, Lonnie was waiting for me at his gate. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised by it. “Do you know everything that I’m going to do?” I asked him.

“Of course not. That would take all the fun out of it.”

He invited me inside. We didn’t touch, at first, not even a hug hello. He led us, this time; he knew what we needed to do. I won’t write everything that he told me; some things, I must trust to the memory of my heart, and others are private to Lonnie (in case someone other than myself does end up reading this). Briefly, he told me that he had been on a personal Medicine Quest of a sort that was nearer to Sun-Dancing. He had been on this quest for some time. That night at Buck Spotted Pony’s powwow, that powerful dance that I witnessed had shown him a bit more of his Vision. It was why he kissed me that night, there in the stable. I was part of his Vision, and from that Summer Solstice night forward, no human would see him dance. I could see him, drum for him, help him keep reaching. The passion that we shared was part of what fueled his Vision, and his continuing quest to delve deeper and deeper into that Vision.

Lonnie explained that it was a drug, something that he couldn’t stop wanting. I was part of that drug, and he wanted me “too much.” Those words hurt until he helped me understand. Loving me was not harmful to him; loving me, and loving what we created together, was tied into this passionate spiritual quest that kept driving him deeper and deeper into — to use his word — a Mystery. He wanted to touch that Mystery more than anything in the world, and he sought it every way that he could. He found it in part by exploring the world (his reading and his fascination with many things), in part by exploring his love for me, and in part through the dancing.

In a historically traditional Sun Dance, the dancer is pierced through the flesh of the skin above the breast; the two ends of this piercing, which is usually made of wood with eyelets at either side, is lashed by leather laces to a central pole around which the dancer moves in rhythm to the music. Lonnie, by his own admission, was too squeamish to perform a full Lakota-style Sun Dance. His equivalent was to push himself to other physical extremes — to dance himself into exhaustion, to take his body to its limits, just as fasting and other physical disciplines would do.

What Lonnie didn’t count on was that there really were limits to what his body could do before he caused damage to himself. He literally exhausted himself that Old Year’s Night, and the bond between body and spirit became tenuous. He really did die. More accurately, he left his body behind.

I told him what I had seen, and he simply nodded his understanding. “That’s what it felt like,” he said. “You saw what I felt.”

“You said something before you died,” I told him. “You said, ‘We were right.’ What did that mean?”

Lonnie smiled. “Just that. We were right.”

“Who does ‘we’ mean? You and me? Our People? Humans? Wolves?”

“Yes,” Lonnie said softly. “Exactly.”

I paused for a moment before I said, “You saw.”

He nodded. “And, through me, so did you.”

“Yup,” I grinned. “Saw right through you.”

In that moment of understanding and laughter, we fell into each others arms and joined our hearts and bodies again. It was a sweet celebration of that which is not physical through that which is.

Later that summer, on a weekend when Lonnie visited me, we rented two films that felt connected to our shared experience. One is Altered States, and the other is Brainstorm. Lonnie had seen neither one. We shared our love again, often, and it was different. Something fundamental between us had changed — quite happily, quite properly, without any more pain in it. We were something more to one another. It’s amazing how much simpler lovemaking is when you don’t have to pretend that God isn’t watching, that He is actually taking part. If any wasichus read this, they will probably be scandalized. That will be their problem.

From that time, Lonnie and I were no longer lovers in the monogamous, relationship sense. We are far more than that. We talk often, we visit often, and we make love often. Sometimes, we even have sex along with it. We have not spoken of last Old Year’s night. I don’t know if he will try it again, this year or ever again. I think not. We have Seen. It is enough.

Jason Winter Wolf
November 10, 1993 CE

Yes, Jason; stories are important. You told me a few, over the years. I sought Lonnie Sparrowhawk through the Clans; he, too, seems unreachable. In the Dreaming, I sought Wolf for help and advice; he told me that all was well, that nothing is lost, and to follow my heart so that I, too, may See.

I tell stories, Jason. You know that. I honor you.

Néá’ese.