“Twenty-five years after that, in nineteen forty-two, according to U.S. Marine Corps records, Shawl-in-the-Sky was married to a full-blooded Sioux named John Brave Deer, who was a corporal in the Marine Corps. He was killed in action in the battle for Guadalcanal, but not before he had fathered a daughter. The mother, Shawl-in-the-Sky, named her baby Little Shawl. She was thirty thirty-seconds Sioux and one thirty-second each Southern Cheyenne and French, and was the great-great-granddaughter of Crazy Horse.
“Thirty-three years later, in nineteen seventy-five, that child, at the age of thirty-three, bore a child out of wedlock to an unknown Caucasian first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, who was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, north of Rapid City and the Pine Ridge Reservation. Before the birth of that child, she had changed her name from Little Shawl to Lilly Shaw, and moved to Rapid City, where she worked as a night-club hostess, and where she met the officer and began the affair that resulted in her pregnancy. The child, whom she did not bother to name, was left with its grandmother, Shawl-in-the-Sky, to be raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The grandmother gave her the surname Feathers, after her own mother, Many Feathers, and the given names Nelli Mae, from the long ago, much storied Nelly May Lavarie, the mother of the second She-Is-Not-Afraid.
“So,” Naomi White Cloud concluded her report to the elders around the board table, “the records I have checked all indicate that the child named Nelli Mae
Feathers, born illegitimately in nineteen seventy-five, who is thirty-three sixty-fourths Caucasian, thirty sixty-fourths Sioux, and one sixty-fourth Southern Cheyenne, is the linear great-great-great granddaughter of Tasunke Witko, known in the white man’s history as Crazy Horse — and she has brought the relics of his venerated body to us.”
An almost reverential silence filled the boardroom as the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Crow elders exchanged awed, devout looks.
Crazy Horse had returned to them.
Two days later, Nelson Clay had just finished cleaning out his desk when Naomi White Cloud came into the office that would now be hers.
“I don’t know what to say, Nelson,” she began.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he told her.
“I really didn’t come here intending to take your job.”
“Doesn’t make much difference one way or the other now, does it?”
“I suppose not. You could stay on, you know. As my assistant. I could speak to my uncle—”
“Please,” Nelson winced. Then he asked, “Did Ms. Feathers get her money today?”
“Yes. My uncle and Moses Big Rain met with her at our bank and formally transferred three million dollars into a trust account for her. So the museum now legally owns the relics of Crazy Horse. Uncle Martin is planning a big national publicity campaign and is going to remodel one wing of the museum into the Crazy Horse Memorial Exhibit.”
“Sounds like a lot of exciting work for you down the line.”
“Yes. And of course I’ll be taking over my uncle’s position one day.”
“Of course.” Nelson smiled and closed the suitcase into which he had packed his personal belongings. “Say goodbye to the curator for me,” he added wryly.
Naomi walked out to the museum lobby with him. “Since you’ll be leaving your museum car here, Nelson, can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“Thanks anyway, but someone is picking me up.”
She waited with him outside the museum entrance until, presently, a car drove up. Rose Blackthorn was driving. Sitting beside her was Nelli Mae Feathers. “So long, Dr. White Cloud,” Nelson said.
He tossed his bag into the backseat as Nelli Mae slid over to make room for him in the front seat.
Naomi’s mouth hung open in confusion and disbelief as the car drove away.
Down the highway, behind the wheel, Rose glanced at Nelli Mae and asked, “Do you think all those stories your grandmother told you were true? That you might really be a descendant of Crazy Horse?”
“I don’t know,” Nelli Mae said. “Grandmother loved to tell stories that had been told to her as a child. I have to admit, though, that she never told the same story the same way twice. Anyway, what’s the difference?”
“None, I guess,” Rose allowed. “Nelson,” she then said, “I’d like to make a quick stop on our way out of town and put some flowers on my Great-great-great-great Uncle Hawk Wing’s grave. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all,” Nelson replied. “That’s the least we can do for him. Or what’s left of him.”
The Care and Feeding of Houseplants
by Art Taylor
Art Taylor is becoming one of the most distinguished short-story writers of his generation. Since his EQMM debut in 1995, he’s sold nearly three dozen short stories, several of which have received critical recognition. “A Voice from the Past” (EQMM 2009) was listed as a “Distinguished Mystery” in Best American Mystery Stories; “Rearview Mirror” (EQMM 2011) won a Best Novelette Derringer; “A Drowning at Snow’s Cut” (EQMM 2012) won a Best Long Story Derringer; and “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” won Press 53’s 2012. Open in the flash fiction category.
During one of their trysts, one of those long lunch breaks they took from the ad agency where they worked, Roger invited Felicia to bring her husband over for a Friday-night cookout.
“Tell hubby it’s casual,” he explained to her after he’d caught his breath once more. “Tell him we’ll just—” and here he grazed his fingers a little more insistently along her damp skin — “just get together and heat up some meat in the backyard.”
Felicia arched a single eyebrow and then turned her head toward the far side of his bedroom — looking at what, Roger wasn’t clear. Unlike the other women who’d sometimes shared his bed, often under similar circumstances, Felicia seemed a true mystery — aloof, challenging, and the more desirable for it. He followed her gaze. Her beige linen business suit was folded sensibly across a chair by his bedroom window. Beyond stood the backyard itself, the patio, the teak table and chairs. Roger could already see himself standing by the grill, making small talk with her husband. Your wife’s breasts, he would think as he smiled and chatted with the other man. That mole on her pelvis. That scar at the hollow of her ankle.
“Whatever you may think,” Felicia said finally, “Blanton is not a fool.”
“Blanton,” Roger said and then again, “Blan-ton,” stretching out the syllables as if they were his to twist and toy with. “You know, I still just love his name.”
Blanton’s grip was unsteady as he moved the watering can from one pot to the next in the solarium behind his and Felicia’s house. His fingers trembled. His attention faltered and fled. The bougainvillea got too much water, the passionflower too little. He nearly drowned a blossoming powder-puff before he jerked the can back — just in time. He looked at his hand as if it wasn’t his own. The age spots there had spread like a fungus. Further up, arm hairs had begun to gray. He thought of the gray hair sprouting from his ears. Were those really his ears? Could he believe them?
“We’ve been invited for dinner.” That’s what Felicia had told him barely a half-hour before. “One of my coworkers.”