Tyrus

by Wakaya Wells

            NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE SUN GOES TO SLEEP. Night falls on the streets of Tulsa. It makes sense to me; I lost my sense of direction, or I never had it. Maybe sometime in between the removal of my bloodlines. I don’t know which way to go as I leave my sister Amy’s house. I need some medicine to help me sleep, and gummy bears because I haven’t eaten in several days. The ground moves under me and I start to go somewhere familiar.

◈◈◈

            Others had gone out searching for the sun. Two young brothers traveled west to find it. They were just teenagers, but their village sent them away with enough food and encouragement to last them a while. Every morning when the sun would rise and trail across the sky, the boys would continue walking along its path. They had never gotten too far away from their people: too many unknowns to consider safe. At the end of the first few nights, the older brother would tell the younger, “We will find it tomorrow, I know it.” After some time, they made it out of their homelands and continued westward. Some days they walked, others they ran until they got tired. They passed through different territories in the following weeks and months, many people surprised by how young the brothers were to be attempting such a difficult task. But the boys were Choctaw, they knew the sun would favor them, and were proud to search for its home.

            They got lost many times. By the time they reached a great ocean, their journey had taken so long they were both grown men. That was when they learned where the sun went at the end of the day. They walked across the water and down into his home, where they found Sun and his wife, the Moon, preparing a meal. Their home was full of stars and galaxies. Sun and Moon were both surprised to see the brothers.

            “Why have you come to our home?” Sun asked.

            “We have been following you across the sky since we were just boys. We wanted to see where you go when you sleep,” the older brother said.

            “Now that you know, stay with us for dinner. Then you will go back the way you came. Do you remember how to get home?”

            “No,” the younger brother said.

            “I will show you the way, but when you return home, I forbid you from telling anyone about what you have seen here or on your journey, or else you will die.”

            The brothers, Sun, and Moon ate dinner together, and when they had finished, they were sent back on their way. The brothers traveled day and night, even more tired this time than before. Years passed, and they grew old. As they passed back through the different lands on their way home, they kept their stories to themselves as Sun had told them to do. When they got back to their village, they were old and weak men, with white hair and wrinkled skin. Few if anyone remembered who they were, and no one remembered charging them with this task. Their mother and father had passed away years earlier, always wondering when or if their boys would return. The people gathered around them, and when the brothers saw that everyone they knew was gone, they looked at each other and realized they must now share about crossing the world and finding where Sun went to sleep each night. As soon as they had finished telling their story, they collapsed into the ground.

◈◈◈

            All the old timers know the names of trees. Know how places fit on a map and what roads lead east to west as soon as they enter a new place. Driving through Midtown Tulsa, I see 31st runs east to west. Sheridan, north to south. It is an intersecting grid and I am moving, floating above the streets and see it all weaving and winding within itself. There is supposed to be a CVS just a few blocks away according to Amy. I have not slept in three days.

            Things are starting to appear before me. Protests are happening at Dartmouth, and even though I am not there, I can feel the movement so much that I can’t sleep or eat. I’m going to deliver the sermon in Unger, and I feel like it’s coming together. Tomorrow morning me and Amy will drive down and I will be at my family’s church again. Things are connecting: my time in school, what I’m studying, family history, Mississippi, conversion to Christianity, and healing. It ought to be my senior thesis. 

            I see the red lettering on the left side of the road, but the parking lot is empty, and the inside of the store is dark. I keep driving. Most pharmacies are near each other, I figure I’ll just run into one. I roll down the windows to hear the city. It is quiet. It is not worried why I haven’t slept or eaten. I am just a tall, skinny, Choctaw driving in my sister’s car, a burgundy Honda Element. I’m just a visitor here.

            A white man in Carhartt coveralls paces down the sidewalk, a Walmart bag in his right hand. My uncle Charlie used to roam the streets himself. He is a meth addict turned preacher, something not uncommon for Choctaw County. Once God took hold of him or maybe when he finally got a car again, he started to pick up transients and give them rides to where they needed to go. Still does, probably.

            “Oh, Charlie, you don’t need to be doing that,” I remember hearing Mama say.

            “I figure they’re trying to get somewhere just like I am. I’ve never got hurt or anything,” Uncle Charlie reassured her.

            Mama said, “Still.”

            I see someone, right below a streetlight, sitting on the corner of Garnett and 31st. Not really sitting, but squatting on the back of his legs and ankles. His hands are clasped together, halfway holding his knees. A large button up shirt with yellow stripes hangs off his thin frame. He looks Native and probably in his 50s given his worn face. He keeps looking back east and west, even though the only cars that can pick him up were driving east. Maybe he isn’t too worried about getting a ride. It is 10 o’clock on a Wednesday night, where does anyone in Oklahoma need to be?

            I don’t consider it for too long, because as I get closer, my foot lifts off the gas and onto the brake. I pull up next to the man and roll down my window.

            “Where you headed?” I ask, leaning over to the passenger side.

            “I thought I got lucky when I saw you pull up; thought it’d be a hot honey driving,” he opens his mouth and laughs, a few teeth missing. The light from the street casts a shadow across the right side of his face.

            I half smile, “Did you need a ride?”

            The man pulls on his ear lobe, gazes back behind my car. “Yeah, I guess I can’t sit here all night huh?” He stands up from his squatted position and takes a few steps towards the car, the top of his body sways from side to side, not cause he’s drunk, I figure that is just how he walks.

            “Where you trying to get to?” I ask as he sits down into the passenger seat. He smells like Carmex lip balm, and not the kind that comes in a new plastic tube, but the one that is in the hard container, often in the floorboard of an old pickup truck with grease on the lid. The kind that lasts forever.

            “I saw your plates, Choctaw. That you?” He tilts his head and gives me a once over.

            “Yep, I’m Choctaw. What about…”

            “Me too,” he interrupts. “Well only a little, I’m mainly Osage.”

            “Osage, huh?”

            “Well who were you trying to pick up?”

            “I don’t know. I guess I just saw you and knew I would pick you up.” We have driven a few blocks from the corner and I still have no idea where he, or we, are going.

            “See that must be some kind of sign. They were talking about signs at church tonight. Mhmm. Must be why you picked me up.”

            “Oh, you go to church then?”

            “What, a Osage hobo can’t go to church?”

            “No, I didn’t mean... I didn’t say that.” I try to show my apologetic face looking over at him, I notice his missing teeth and wide smile.

            “Come on Choctaw boy. I’m just playin with ya. I ain’t no hobo. I’m just a traveler. And sometimes I guess I go to church. I’m not gonna hurt you.” He lifts his knee up and wraps his hands around it, his khaki pants. 

            I think to myself whether or not I should say I’m not a boy. I don’t know what he’d say, I don’t know what anyone will say down here.

            “I’m not gonna hurt you, either,” I tell him. “So, what did they say at church?”

            “Brother Odell was talking about being ready when God gives you a sign. Doing what the occasion requires. The power of change. King Saul, stuff like ‘at.”

            “And what does this occasion require?” I ask.

            “Well, I don’t know yet. Maybe just getting me to where I need to go.”

            “Where’s that?”

            “Well I’m not trying to interfere with you and your schedule.” He starts handling the different items resting on my dashboard and middle console. I see him flick on and off a small flashlight Daddy had given me to keep in the car. ‘Ya never know when you’ll need this,’ I remember him saying. He reaches for the Corrientes bull horn and an arrowhead. “What has you roaming around tonight?”

            “I’m just on my way to the pharmacy, if I can find one open. Haven’t slept in a while.”

            “Well, I don’t mind stopping there with you.” He points his long, skinny index finger ahead, nearly touching the glass, “There should be a CVS up here on the right a little ways.”

            “Yeah. I guess that’s okay.”

            “I think I might stay over at my dad’s tonight. He lives near 15th and Pine. You good with directions?”

            “I didn’t use to be. But I think I’m getting better.” I answer.

            “Don’t worry, I’ll show you where to go.”

            The roads are all straight and the ground flat. There is nothing here that makes it look particularly Tulsan. A row of shops, restaurants, and gas stations line both sides of the street, there’s not much traffic and hardly any people, just us.

I don’t think he will try anything dangerous. He don’t have a gun on him or anything.  I could tell Mama that, and how I am 21 now, and she still wouldn’t like it. She’d say I am still the baby. But he doesn’t seem like he is on drugs. He has a place to go. I look him over a few times. I am fine, and he is fine, because I am giving him a ride to where he needs to go. I am a sign.

            I pull up to the CVS and park to the right of the entrance. We both get out of the car and walk in, him in front of me and at a faster pace as if it is him who needs to stop here. I walk towards the back where the pharmacy is, and he wanders to one of the food aisles.

            The place is mostly empty. Products line every aisle, not much different than the CVS I would walk to in Hanover while at school, each trip spent complaining about how everything was so expensive. I search the shelves for something to help with sleep. Melatonin extra strength. I pick it up and walk down the aisle. I notice a sign for nausea. Maybe this will help me eat.

            “Is it okay if I take these two together?” I ask the pharmacist.

            She takes them and looks at both boxes. “Yep, that won’t be a problem.”

            “Thanks.”

            I head towards the front to find the candy aisle. Gummy bears. Now, I have everything I came here for. Standing at the front counter, I do not see him anywhere. I stand, turning my body around to see in each direction of the store. Maybe he left? I’d yell his name out, but I don’t know it.

            “Hey, don’t leave me now! I’m ready.” The man walks up behind me, in his hands are a bag of tortilla chips, bean dip, and a 20oz of Dr. Pepper.

            I place my items down in front of the clerk, a chubby white woman with strawberry blonde hair and a diamond nose piercing. Her name tag reads Anna. She begins scanning them. “Is that it?” she asks. I motion for him to put his things down.

            “Oh, hey you don’t have to do that,” he says.

            “I got you, it’s alright.”

            Hi puts his chips and dip down. After she scans his Dr. Pepper, he picks it back up and starts drinking it.

            “$36.52,” she says.

            I reach for my wallet and get out my card.

            “Can I get a pack of Pall Malls, too?” He points to the wall behind the clerk. “I hope it’s no trouble,” he tells me, with a smirk and open hands. “This right here’s my nephew,” he says with a big smile, looking at the clerk and now at me, “My Choctaw nephew.”

            The words feel sharp, nice, but a lie.

            Her eyes go from him to me and back. I figure we don’t make sense to her. Me, a tall and skinny, white-looking, boy-looking person. Him, a short and skinny, Osage street man. Turning around for the cigarettes, she follows each pack with her finger until she sees the Pall Malls, scans them, and sets them back down on the counter. “Is that it?”

            He nods.

            “You mind if I smoke?”

            “No, I don’t mind," I say, once we make it outside the sliding doors.

            He lights up his Pall Mall and takes a deep drag off it, blowing the smoke out of his mouth and nose. This could be his one millionth cigarette, but I can tell he feels relief every chance he gets to smoke another. How much longer it will be before I am back at Amy’s house. Will I make it back?

            “So, what’s a Choctaw doing in Tulsa?” He takes another drag.

            I look up at the lights shining down on us from the tall poles. I stare at him, it is the first time I get a full look at his face. Lines and spots cover his cheeks and forehead. I don't know if it’s from drugs or acne, or both. Maybe scars from chicken pox, like the few I have on my own face. His nose isn’t too big, just round and shiny. He probably had thick eyebrows at one time, but now they are thinning and light. His hair is sticking straight up, black, and jagged, like it has been cut with a knife. It sticks out at different lengths from his head.

            “I don’t know really. My mom asked me to come home, they’re having a service at the church in Unger. I’m in school right now.” I smell the cigarette smoke and dig my hands into my pockets. “My sister lives here. So I flew in here and we were gonna drive down together.”

            “What are you studying?”

            “Native American Studies.”

            “An Indigenous scholar, huh? My daughter has that degree. That girl is smart. You smart, too?” He holds his left hand in the nook of his right elbow and brings the cigarette to his mouth with his right hand to inhale.

            “You have a daughter?”

            “Oh yeah, she’s grown up now though, met a boy in college, moved off. Lives in DC.”

            “What she doing up there?”

            “Something with the government. I don’t know.” He looks off in the distance and pinches his lips tight together. “Her mom don’t like her ‘being involved’ with me,” he uses his fingers to quote the woman.

            “Is that right?”

            “Yep. Haven’t seen or heard from her in four years.” He spits onto the bushes that line the store wall directly behind us.

            Two girls walk into the store, holding hands, and laughing, too caught up in each other to even notice us standing close by. I wonder if it is safe here now, to be out like that, or maybe because it’s late.

            “Huh.”

            “Why’d you even pick me up?” he asks.

            “Well, I guess I started thinking about my uncle. He picks people up off the street all the time. He always says it’s a blessing and he’s never got hurt or anything.”

            “Must be a good guy, then.” He has smoked his Pall Mall down to the filter, and throws it on the ground, putting it out with his foot.

            “He’s a preacher now, actually.”

            He reaches into his shirt pocket. “You mind if I smoke another?” He holds the pack in his hand, sees me shake my head no. “A preacher, huh?” He pauses, lights his cigarette, and inhales, “You one, too, then?” he asks, blowing the smoke into the air. 

            “I don’t know. I mean I’ve preached before, but that’s been a while.” I scratch the back of my head and breathe in more of his secondhand smoke.

            “If you’ve done it before, then you must be one.”

            I feel the wind on my face, see it blowing through the tops of the few trees lining the street in front of us.

            “Why’d you stop?” he asks.

            “I went to school. I guess that changed things. The last time I preached was right before I left for Dartmouth. My eighteenth birthday, actually.”

            “18, huh?” he says, like it means something to him, too. “What’d you talk about?”

            “Redemption. Revival. About seeing love in God. The good stuff you know, Jesus rising from the dead. The resilience of overcoming the grave.” I take a deep breath in, remembering the day as if it had just happened. “My uncles and aunts were all sitting there, my parents, my sister, and all my cousins. People were even crying.” I laugh a small sound. “All in the church I grew up in between Soper and Boswell, my grandparents' church down on Unger Road. I can still hear them saying ‘hallelujah, amen, and testify.’ My aunt Sherry even prophesied over me.”

            “What did she say?” The man looks into my eyes, deeper this time.

            “She said that she knew I had it in my mind the places I was headed, but that God told her that I was going to go further than even that. That I couldn’t comprehend or fathom what was to come. I believed it, too. I had seen my grandparents healing people, praying and telling of what’s to come.”

            Out on the street a few cars are driving by, and just across the street a woman fills up her car at the gas station. I look over beside me and he is staring at his feet, taking another drag from his cigarette.

            “And then I went to school, and things changed. God and Jesus aren’t the same anymore. How can I be a believer when that shit wasn’t shared with us, but forced down our throats? Indians had to accept it, or we were killed. How do I manage that?”

            “You sound like my daughter talking. Your generation is always thinking, trying to figure it all out,” he points his index finger at me, “the thing is you might not ever figure it out.”

            “It’s like I knew that happened, you know?” I continue, not really hearing what he said. “But it’s not something we ever really talk about down here. And what else do I have to believe in? It’s not like I got all these ceremonies to go back to, they’re all gone! We barely even have our language. So, what am I supposed to do? What are any of us supposed to do? What does it even mean to be Choctaw anymore? We act like we’ve always been Christians. I heard an elder saying how lucky we were the missionaries came to give us faith. Can you believe that? They got us good. Man, they got us good. We’re not interested in all the bad that’s going on here. We just go to church on Sundays, people back home don’t even care about any of this shit. And you know why? It’s because we got our casinos, we got our healthcare, and we got our Jesus.”

            I breathe in, realize I have been talking for a while, not giving him a chance to respond. I look to my left and notice this man is now holding his chest with his right hand.

            “You okay?” I ask.

            “Yeah, I just. It’s my chest.” The top half of him bends over like an ironing board.

            “You want to sit down?” I ask, touching his shoulder. His cigarette falls from his hand.

            “No, I think. I just need to...” He kneels down, “I feel kind of tingly.”

            “Are you okay? What do you want me to do?”

            “I think I’m…”

            He falls to the ground.

            Frantic. I turn him over on his back, his eyes sink to the back of his head. I smell what’s left of the cigarette smoke leaving his mouth.

            “Help! Somebody, call,” I scream, looking around in the parking lot, but there is no one. “Just stay here, don’t…” I lay his head down gently on the pavement.

            I run to the doors and wait for them to slide open. Once inside, I yell at the clerk, “Call an ambulance, call 911.”

            “What’s going on?” she asks, looking up from the phone in her hand.

            “He’s having a… My uncle, he’s having a heart attack!” I run back out of the store, and see he hasn’t moved, his arms are laid out by his sides. I squat down beside him, wondering what has happened. What can I do? Will the ambulance get here in time? I take off my jacket and put it under his head.

            I must do something; I can’t just wait. I reach for his hand and hold it tight.

            “Hold on, you’re going to be okay.” I lay my hand over his heart to see if his heart is beating and put my finger under his nose to see if he is still breathing. But that just means he is alive. I don’t have any medicine, any tools or equipment. I search for something around us, but all that is sitting on the sidewalk are his chips and bean dip, an empty bottle of Dr. Pepper, and my gummy bears.

            My own heart is beating too fast. I have lost my breath and I am sweating. I look both directions, but I don’t see or hear an ambulance. The clerk comes out of the store and stares at us for what seems like a minute. She is holding her phone with one hand, and the other she holds over her open mouth. Shock, a man is dying in the parking lot.

            I cannot wait. I slow my breathing and close my eyes. I grip his hand a little tighter and fix the other over his heartbeat. Without opening my mouth, prayers start to form behind my teeth. In Jesus name. In Jesus name. In Jesus name. They have always told me to pray in Jesus name. No. Chi apela li. I help you. Chi haklo li? Do you hear me? God save him. No. Creator, don’t let him die. Heal his body. Somebody help me. I’ve seen healing, I’ve seen Granny Marie and Papa Vernon lay hands. I’ve seen them heal.

            Deep inside my ribs, our ribs, something is beating. My eyes, already open, open further. I can see us in the same place, only different. Here are two Indians on the ground in front of a CVS in Tulsa. And one man, this man, is walking down the street. Tonight. Last night. Every night. He’s sitting in the pew at the church a few blocks north. He’s crouching on the side of the road, crying. Thinking about his daughter and counting the months, the years since he last saw her. I lift my hand up from his chest and raise a fist to the sky. I see us and I wonder where he goes to sleep. What secrets keep him awake? What’s the story of his heartbeat, and what story will stop it? Start it. We are in the midst of a revival.

            I begin to shout in that old way, “Hvshtali, God, Jesus, Chihowa, let this man be healed! Bring your own heart and put it within him as soon as I touch his chest. Breathe life into this body, Hvshtali! Life, life, life.”

            I bring my fist down, uncurl it, and pound it onto his heart. As soon as I touch him, his eyes open wide as anyone I have ever seen. He looks up into the sky, a deep breath comes into him like his whole body is filling up.

            “What?” He coughs. “What happened?” he asks, lifting himself up with his elbows on the concrete.

            “You fell down. You were unconscious. I think you had a heart attack.” The words come out of my mouth, but they don’t even make sense to me.

            He looks down at his body, “I did?” He feels his chest with his hand. “But I feel fine, though.” He looks back at me, “What’d you do to me?” The look, dark and suspicious.

            “I didn’t do anything, I swear. I mean I prayed. There’s an ambulance on the way.”

            “Ambulance? No, we have to go. I’m not going to the hospital. I’m fine.”

            “Don’t you think we should wait, make sure everything is okay?”

            “I’m fine. I can’t afford an ambulance. I still gotta get to my dad’s. Help me up, will ya?” 

            15th and Pine. We are en route. He takes me through every stop light in Tulsa. Each stop, a moment for him to explain the distance between him and his father’s home. He doesn’t realize what has happened and I don’t either. I tell him everything, repeating it again and again for him, and for me.

            “Some people say it’s a bad neighborhood. But there’s good people that live there.”

            “There’s good and bad people that live in every neighborhood," I say, like I know.

            “Just make sure once you drop me off, you go back the way you came.”

            “Are we getting closer?”

            “We’re almost there, just keep going. I’ll tell you when to turn.” He has opened his bean dip and lowers chips and his fingers into it interchangeably. “I feel good now. I feel alive. You must be a sign. You’re a healer, you know it?”

            “So, you don’t think the ambulance or police are going to come looking for us?” I ask.

            “For what? I’m an old Indian that lives on the street. They probably weren’t going to come anyway. I can’t get picked up. Word travels too fast. Someone would hear I was in the hospital and try to come and see me or get me.”

            “You in some kind of trouble?”

            “No.” He looks out the window, then back at me. “I don’t know. I’m good now, though. My Choctaw helper, my nephew came for me.” He pats me on my shoulder. “I knew something good was going to happen when you pulled up.” He grins ear to ear.

            “I don’t even know what I did. Or how I did it.”

            “It’s right here, take a right.” It’s a gated community. There is trash in a few of the yards, and cars parked along both sides of the street. We ease past the first houses, then he holds his hand up for me to stop. “This is me right here.” I put the car in park. “Let me tell you something, it’s better not to question it.” He looks straight into my eyes. “Jesus was an Indian like us. My grandpa used to tell me that. That’s why I still go to church.” He puts his hand on the door handle.

            “You think cause Jesus was an Indian, that’s why you’re still alive?”

            “No, I’m just saying. It all works out. Don’t worry about it.” There are no cars parked in his driveway, but I notice a car just across the street, with its light on inside, like they are waiting for someone.

            “You gonna be alright?” I ask, trying to look further in the darkness.

            “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just make sure when you leave, go back the way you came.”

            “Okay.” He steps out of the car and walks across the street to the house. “Hold on, hold on.” I get out and walk towards him.

            “Yeah?” he asks.

            “What’s your name?”

            “Tyrus.”

            “I’m Presley.” Holding my hand out, he reaches out his and we shake.

            “Thanks for the ride, Presley. You know, you’re gonna be alright.”