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also of my spirit surging around inside of me, moving in great tides, quiet as ocean, eloquent as wind, saying something else. Something very else. But I wasn’t listening. I look for you, Raven .
    Finally, after twenty-something miles of cruising, Raven darkness? No, light …
    Most people imagine death as a great darkness. Some who’ve crossed over and come back say it is a white light and that you pass into it with a feeling of vast benevolence. Mine was to be a bright white light, and Raven’s malevolence.
    I felt relieved. Sad, disappointed, but relieved. That’s the main feeling I remember. Come, sweet light .
    Except that it was two lights.
    I tossed my head and rejected that. Optical illusion. Imagination playing tricks on me. One white light would be enough, wouldn’t it? You can’t die twice, even if twice is deserved.
    Two lights. I shook my head, waggled my eyelids.
    Two lights, with some kind of glow behind them.
    “Hey!” I shook Rosaphine with my foot. “Hey, wake up!” I jabbed her hard.
    “Hunh?” She jerked and sat up. “What the hell?”
    “What do you see?” I shook her with my foot. “What do you see ahead?”
    Oh, sweet Raven. I will ride your wings into the blackness .
    “A car on the tracks!”
    “What?”
    “A car on the fucking tracks! Stop this thing!”
    “What!?”
    She dove for the cruise control and slammed it with the heel of her hand. The Lincoln began to coast.
    She vaulted into the driver’s seat and jammed on the brake.
    From my standing start in the back seat, I took flight.
    I groped for the lift of Raven’s wing but found nothing. I zinged through the darkness toward the double light. I reached up for Spirit but plummeted toward earth. I held my arms out and arranged my fingers like Raven’s wing tips. Somehow I rotated face up. Upside-down I tried to croak like Raven but …
    A steel rail clobbered my shoulder …
    A fat tie cracked my head …
    Cinders peeled my back and butt …
    I rolled like a log spinning downhill across some very nasty ground. I came to rest. I waited for the world to stop whirling.
    Footsteps fast on the cinders. A voice growling over and over, “What the hell …?” I knew that voice. It was not Raven. It was not even Wakantanka. It was, it was … My mind surfed through clouds of confusion.
    Emile!
    I giggled. This was funny. Here I was, naked as nothing, drunk as a skunk, looking for a way to throw my life on the ground— BUT IT IS NOT A GOOD DAY TO DIE . Not really. And Emile pops up like magic to save me. Again.
    Now I understood. That was Emile’s rig at Buffalo Gap; I should have recognized it. He saw us cruise through the crossing, saw me in my naked, backseat bowsprit pose, and caught on. Oh, yes, Emile, you know the despair of being Indian, you know the despair of the bottle .
    “Emile, you saved my life.”
    “Both our lives.” Rosaphine was suddenly sober too. Shestood there as dressed as I was naked, as serious as I was silly.
    “You saved my life.” I was surprised at the gratitude in my own voice, and in my heart.
    He felt of my shoulder.
    I hollered.
    “You’re going to the emergency room.”
    Another drunken Indian in the ER. Nobody loves a drunken Indian.
    “Blue Crow, you have gone nuts.” Rosaphine’s voice. She was getting it. “ JESUS !” She got it now. Yes, yes, I did try to kill us .
    “I’m taking him to the ER. Help me.”
    They prodded me to my feet and trundled me into the front seat of Emile’s pickup.
    Rosaphine said loudly, “I got to get out of here. FUCK !”
    “Drive his car to my studio.” He told her where. “Sleep on the couch. I’ll be along.”
    Nothing more from Rosaphine. The sound of the Lincoln starting. A screech of tires. I didn’t hear from that girl again for a long time.
    “Brother,” said Emile, “when you get out the hospital, you got to go on the mountain.”
    Those words took away my silliness. Each one of them hit me like a ten-pound sledge.
    I’d been waiting