The Highway

Kimimila slid from her horse’s back, her moccasins whispering through the tall prairie grass as she led the buckskin towards the long line of rusted cars that went as far east and west as her eyes could see. She heard the hoofbeats of another horse and turned to see Wicapi on her sturdy gray.

“I don’t like this place,” Wicapi said from her gray’s back, as she rode next to her sister. “Auntie says it’s a wasicu graveyard.”

“The whole world is a wasicu graveyard,” Kimimila said as she hopped for a moment to pluck a cockle burr from the hem of her threadbare jeans, inherited from an older cousin who hit a growth streak, before continuing towards the old highway. A disgruntled grasshopper leapt away from her, his wings chattering. She walked up to the nearest vehicle and pulled on the door handle. Locked.

She tried the next door. Also locked.

As Kimimila walked along the cracked and overgrown pavement to the next car, Wicapi kept pace with her sister, shading her eyes and gazing all around at the grass that rippled under the fingers of the wind. The remains of the road made Wicapi think of a monstrous snake, and her spine prickled in response.

Kimimila lifted the handle of the next car’s door. Locked. The car was a van, and the motorized passenger door was not only locked but had long since lost the power to open itself. The sound of horse hooves on the pavement comforted both girls as they continued in silence.

At the next car, a sun-faded coup, Kimimila lifted the handle and pulled, the door opening with a discordant screech that made the buckskin throw his head up with his ears pitched forward in alarm.

“Ho-ah!” said Wicapi with a laugh, “You scared Zizila.”

Grinning, Kimimila scratched the buckskin’s neck near his shoulder until his upper lip wiggled in enjoyment, “Big tough war pony scared by a noisy door. Here, hold his reins.”

Obliging, Wicapi watched as her sister leaned into the car.

Stale hot air rushed out into Kimimila’s face, making her cough and stand back up for a moment. After a few moments, she ducked back into the car, her eyes traveling over the mess of faded items covering the seats and floors.

“No bones,” she called to Wicapi, as she drew herself in to kneel on the driver’s seat and examined the items on the front passenger seat. Next to a long dead phone and a road atlas, a large cracked purse, once perhaps red or magenta, now pale pink, gaped open, and she hesitated a moment before picking it up and dumping its contents on the seat. Like many other purses Kimimila had upended, this one held an assortment of items once considered essential by its owner: a pocketbook, pens, loose coins, and long expired cosmetics.

“Hurry up, Butterfly,” said Wicani, the unhappy wheedle in her voice apparent to Kimimila, “Let’s go pick some chokecherries. The aunties said they would make wojapi.”

Rolling her eyes, Kimimila said, “Just hang on.”

She gave the purse one last shake, and a plastic toy pony with a rainbow colored mane and tail, fell out. As soon as she saw it, Kimimila knew that their youngest cousin Gnus’ka would love the toy. The boy loved horses and would sneak to the herd anytime he managed to escape his mother’s and aunties’ watchful eyes. Kimimila tucked the toy into the pocket of her jeans then shifted to peer between the seats into the backseat.

Directly behind the driver’s seat, a box of canned food, decades beyond usefulness, took up one side of the backseat. On the other side of the backseat, still strapped into place, rested a child’s safety seat. A faded stuffed animal, something like a deer-faced rabbit but with a pocket on its stomach and a wedge-shaped tail, lay alone in the seat. Kimimila picked it up, turning the animal to see the less faded side and reached into the pocket. She pulled a flatter, smaller version of the same animal from it.

“A mother and a child?” she said to herself. Perhaps one of the elders might know what old time animal kept its child in a pocket. She dipped her fingers into the pocket to see if it might yield more and felt a small hard object in the very corner. When she drew it out, Kimimila saw it was a necklace with a golden heart dangling from its tarnished chain.

The heart was hinged on one side, something Kimimila had seen before, so she put her thumbnail to the edge and pushed the locket open. Two small pictures filled the opened halves of the heart: on the left, a young woman with hair the color of wild honey, a closed-lip smile on her face, and, on the right, a man wearing a soldier’s uniform of the old days, his grin wide as he waved at whoever had captured his likeness in a time that had been so many years ago that her grandmother’s mother had still been a child.

Kimimila felt sweat running down her spine. It would be cool in the shadows of the chokecherry bushes. She snapped the locket closed.

Putting the strange stuffed animal back in the seat, Kimimila tucked the smaller stuffed animal and the necklace back into the pocket and then, carefully removing her favorite earrings, pink butterflies, from her ears, dropped them into the pocket as well.

“Thank you for the blue pony,” she said to the warm air, before she backed out of the car and shut the door.

“Finally,” said Wicapi as her sister took the buckskin’s reins from her. “This place is full of sad spirits. Let’s go.”

Kimimila vaulted onto her horse's back, flopping across the patient gelding's back, a feat she had just grown tall enough to accomplish, and wriggled into sitting position before saying in a teasing tone, "Sad spirits? Okay, medicine woman. Let's get out of here before you start spooking like Zizila."

Wicapi made a face at her sister, then they both laughed. Touching their heels to their horses' sides, they rode away at a canter, their voices soon lost among the soughing of the wind and the sharp cries of killdeer.