Meatloaf in Manhattan by Robert Power Read Free Book Online Page B

shining balls vomit from her mouth.
    â€˜It’s probably best you go Mr Daly,’ says the nurse, wiping my mother’s mouth with a handkerchief. ‘She doesn’t know you, she doesn’t really know anyone anymore.’
    â€˜My things,’ sobs my mother, the small silver balls all around her feet.
    I look into the empty bag. Crumpled into the bottom is a photo. It is faded and scratched, the surface almost erased. A fossil etched into the leather of the bag. The vague imprint and outline of a small boy and a dog in a garden. There may have been a smile. There may have been sunshine. A forgotten memory. I collect the shiny balls from the ground. I pick up every one, even the bloody ones, my fingers sticky with my mother’s blood and saliva. I fill up the bag as the two women watch me in silence. I close the clasp of the handbag, snapping it shut, passing it to my mother. Like a child with a teddy bear she clamps it close to her cheek and smiles.
    â€˜My things,’ she says.
    â€˜Your things,’ I say.

THE STORY OF LITTLE-PATH AND MARCUS KELLOGG
    Little-Path stands on the railway platform. He is sixty five years old. It’s been over fifty years since the day of the battle and he knows he has only a few months to live. His smooth black hair, streaked with the occasional grey, is tied tight in a ponytail. In his headband he wears the feather he won for bravery in the counting coup at Greasy Grass. Despite his illness he stands tall and strong. His eyes are bright and clear, belying the darkness of the sights and scenes they have witnessed.
    He wears his raccoon-pelt coat to keep out the cold wind from the Great Plains, the one he fashioned and sewed on the reservation in Montana. He cups and blows his hands and watches the train disappear around the curve of the track, then walks slowly through the busy hallway of the North Pacific railway depot. He’s used to the looks he gets from strangers. Hostile. Suspicious. Fearful. Some stop and stare. Mothers hurry children along, worried he might be hiding a tomahawk and bloody intent. But Little-Path pays them no heed. If they knew the life he’s led they might show some sympathy, a modicum of kindness. But how could they really know?
    Outside, the clock on the station tower tells him he is an hour early for his meeting. So he sits on an empty bench to gather his thoughts. He reads again the brief note from Eileen Kellogg that has brought him to this town of Bismarck, North Dakota.
    Some half a century earlier it is dawn in the week of Little-Path’s thirteenth birthday. He is woken by commotion. Looking outside he sees the chaos unfolding. Braves running in all directions, gathering horses and weapons. All the tribes mingling, Brule with Hunkpapa, Sans Arc with Oglala. Runs-the-Enemy sees his young friend and brings his stallion to a sudden halt, dust whipping around the animal’s hooves. ‘Quick, Little-Path,’ he shouts, his horse bucking and twisting beneath him, ‘There are soldiers, very close, at the edge of the camp, we must make ready to fight. They’ve already slaughtered the two wives and children of Chief Gall, and murdered our women who were gathering turnips by the creek.’ Runs-the-Enemy’s face is smeared with warpaint. Fast Horn, an Oglala, gallops by, blood pouring from his stomach. ‘I’m shot through,’ he shrieks, ‘soldiers, near the high divide of the Rosebud Valley.’
    Runs-the-Enemy’s eyes are wild for revenge as he turns his horse and speeds to the gathering place where the Muskrat Creek and Medicine Tail Coulee empty into the Little Bighorn River.
    Earlier that same morning, an hour before sunrise, Marcus Henry Kellogg sits outside his tent. He is a handsome man of forty years, clean-shaven save for bushy sideburns. His deep-set eyes are both intense and sad, reflecting the grief of a wife ten-years dead and two daughters left to be raised by their