Chapter 29

Then I stripped and ducked through the opening to spend the next hour ladling water over hot rocks, breathing deeply of thick steam, and praying. I sang to both the Christian God and Wakan Tonka, begging forgiveness even as the despicable preacher’s desperate, dying rales echoed in my ears. I’d been surprised by the voided bladder and loose bowels, and it made me ashamed. Not for that coyote, but for Otter, who had probably done the same in front of a mob of whites.

Seeking relief from mental turmoil, I tried to call up scraps of conversations I’d heard in town. Anything to distract me. Edison, that famous inventor back east, had done it again. The Wizard of Menlo Park they called him. He’d patented something called a phonograph that captured noises and played them back like echoes of the real thing. Be nice to hear music on something like that.