"Wasi'chu" by JWGoll
I drive with Delilah to New Leipzig just north of Standing Rock where her sister Grace lives with a disabled brother and two elderly aunts in one small ranch house ingeniously attached to two trailers. I’ve never been to North Dakota, and after driving for hours in this emptiness I feel an unexplained sadness, a loneliness. It’s unexpected and, surprising myself, I tell Delilah. After a pause to light a cigarette, she says, “This land isn’t empty, it’s full of ghosts, you just can’t see them.” She says it flat, matter of fact, no judgement at all. She doesn’t care I don’t know a thing. I think she prefers it that way. She passes me the cigarette, rests her feet on the dash, and leans into my shoulder.
In the evening we watch fuzzy TV, then the aunties go to bed and we start drinking. There’s Schlitz, Budweiser and weed. Grace laments the lack of vodka. The conversation drifts from family troubles to money troubles to “what the fuck you doing with this Wasi’chu.” They both laugh. Grace says, “He’s too skinny, what he do with his muscles?” Delilah says, “I sucked them dry,” and they both laugh again. I’m having a good time.
About one in the morning two men arrive from Fort Berthold, distant cousins of some sort. They’re very drunk and friendly and ask where I’m from, what I do, and seem to want to know all about me as they pass me a pint of Seagrams Crown Seven. Grace stands at the sink, back to us, pretending to wash the dishes. Delilah stands in the corner, arms folded, attentive. The men don’t care to notice. When I go outside to pee Delilah follows, hands me my keys and says, “You better go right now. This won’t turn out well.” I give her a deep kiss and she lets me. I try again and she pushes me toward the car.
Twenty miles south I slow down, too drunk to drive. I hide the car deep in the cheatgrass and blue grama prairie, but can’t sleep. My own shapeless sadness is as alien to Delilah as this haunted scrub prairie is to me. I don’t think we will last and she probably knows this already.
At six I head out again. I watch the flat yellow plain stretch beyond my sight. So these are ghost lands, she said, Wanagi Makoce, and I believe her. Now I can feel them. They aren’t angry or frightening, but they are tailing me. They wonder who I am, why I’m here, what I want. I wonder the same.
JWGoll is a writer and artist working as a Patient Advocate at a large hospital in North Carolina. His stories and poems are informed by experiences as a photographer in Chicago, the Dakotas, and Central Europe. He has published work in The Vestal Review, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, The Museum of Americana, Microfiction Monday, Right Hand Pointing, New World Writing, and Storm Cellar, among others. He is currently completing two flash fiction/prose poetry books, You Will Desire Me From Time to Time, and Notes from the Impossible City.
