Tommy Two Bears called it “counting coup.” His uncle Joe LeDoux called it attempted suicide.

Me and Joe were with Tommy the first time he did it. It was late ’94. The three of us had been to Rapid City picking up a satellite dish for old Clarence Short Bull. We were headed out of town on 44 when we come up on this bar called the Shuffle Inn. “Let’s stop in for a quick one,” Tommy says. “I’ll buy.”

It wasn’t the kind of place that would roll out the red carpet for our sort. The lot was full of F250s,  Silverados, and Dodge Rams jacked up high enough to ford the Missouri. And they had gun racks and bumper stickers like MY WIFE YES, MY DOG MAYBE, MY GUN NEVER.

“Shuffle Inn,” Tommy says. “Sounds like a nice, friendly place.”

“Shuffle Inn, “Joe grumbles. “And get flung out.”

I told Joe I felt the same way when I visit Wounded Knee cemetery. But he wheels into the lot. “Hell, Marvin, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he says. “White Buffalo Woman will return before Tommy offers again.”

We walk in, and it’s wall-to-rednecks. I’m feeling as welcome as a rabbi in a Klan meeting. Everybody stares at us. I swear that one of them growled when we walked past him. While me and Joe settle into a booth, Tommy heads to the bar to buy a round of beers.

As usually happens, one round leads to a second one, then a third. After all, when a guy buys you a beer, it’s bad manners not to buy one back. I was getting close to comfortable when Tommy stands up and says, “I gotta see a man about an Appaloosa.”  

So, me and Joe are shooting the breeze while Tommy’s in the john. We’re having a laugh about what Harold Smith said at the last council meeting when I hear this, “yip-yip-yip!” Later, Tommy tells us it was his war cry. Joe said it sounded more like a coyote with nut cramps. I look up just as Tommy cuffs this guy in the back of the head. Knocks his JB Stetson clear over the bar. This guy went two-eighty if he was an ounce. He wheels around and hollers, “What the hell?”

Tommy’s wearing this mile-wide grin. “I’m counting coup on you.”

A second later, that redneck’s fat fist counts coup square on Tommy’s chin. Tommy staggers back onto the pool table. Balls fly every which way, and two guys start counting coup on Tommy with their pool cues.

We got out of the ER around midnight. On the drive home, Tommy explained what got into him. Between the pain meds and his jaws being wired shut, we couldn’t hardly understand him. But the general drift was that he’d decided he was a warrior. “And, you know,” he says, “there’s more honor in counting coup than killing an enemy.”

“And,” Joe adds,” it’s a hell of a lot more legal.”

“Exactly when did you decide you’re a warrior?” I ask him.

“After my third beer,” Tommy says just before he nods out.

*          *          *

Tommy stayed with Joe and his wife, Mary, while he healed up. Joe’s always felt protective of his nephew, seeing as he’s Tommy’s only blood kin. Mary made it clear Tommy could stay only if he quit drinking. So, we took turns sitting with him while he dried out.

He had one rough row to hoe—the shakes, sweats, the whole nine yards. Afterward, he tells us, “I had a vision.”

”Vision, my ass,” Joe says. “You had the DTs.”

Tommy shakes his head. “No way. This big fat raven flew down, landed on my chest, and talked to me.”

“That was no damn raven. It was me holding you down,” Joe tells him. “And I’m not fat.”

But Tommy swore he’d got a message straight from the Creator. He started striking up conversations with every crow and raven he ran across. Even started wearing a crow feather in his hair.

*          *          *

As warriors go, Tommy Two Bears didn’t hardly look like the second coming of Crazy Horse. Standing maybe five-foot-seven with his boots on, he was skinny as a reservation dog. Wouldn’t have tipped the scale at 130 with his pockets full of nickels. He had enough grease in his hair to lube a 4 x 4, and he’d never got his two front teeth after they’d got knocked out in high school. Of course, those missing teeth made it easier for Tommy to suck down his Aunt Mary’s soup while his jaws were wired shut.

After he mended, Tommy started spending time over at Leonard Hayes’s place. He told us Leonard was his spirit guide. Leonard is maybe fifteen minutes younger than the Black Hills theirselves, and everybody respects his wisdom. When Tommy wasn’t at Leonard’s, he was holed up in his trailer with books like Back Elk Speaks and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.

By the time his jaw healed, you’d hardly recognize him. He’d packed on a few pounds and even started washing his hair. And he managed to stay off the booze. Of course, he still had this crazy idea of being a warrior. Claimed he was going to reject everything to do with the white man. And he did—except for Hostess Snoballs.

Tommy bought a mess of army surplus tents over in Rapid City. The next couple of weeks, he sewed them together to make a tepee of sorts, and he moved right in. It was all lopsided and listed to the north five or ten degrees. But anyone could see how proud Tommy was of his handiwork. From then on, he only slept in the trailer nights when a strong wind would knock over the teepee.

Last fall, Tommy got it in his head to hold a ghost dance. He stopped at almost every house on the rez recruiting folks. Leonard Hayes was the only grownup he sold on the idea. About a dozen or so kids got really excited about it, though. They spent every Saturday for a month over at his place. Tommy lectured them on the dance, the Paiute messiah guy, Wovoka, the whole ball of wax. Then they’d practice dancing or paint sacred symbols on the khaki shirts Tommy picked up at Rapid City Army/Navy Surplus.

The dance was set for Thanksgiving Day, but Tommy got sicker than a dog. After breakfast, he decided to purify himself with a quick sweat. There wasn’t enough time to heat rocks, so he pulled his hibachi inside the sweat lodge, filled it with charcoal, and fired her up. If Leonard hadn’t stopped by early to pick him up, Tommy would have been an honest-to-goodness ghost. He had a pounding headache and couldn’t hardly hold down chicken broth for a few days.

Joe didn’t waste an ounce of sympathy on him. “Next time you’re in a hurry for a sweat, dumbass,” he tells Tommy. “I’ll give you my George Foreman grill and a long extension cord.” I think Joe was still steamed at Tommy for thinking he was a big fat crow.

The next Saturday, they held the ghost dance in the community center parking lot. About fifty folks showed up to watch, mostly parents and relatives of the dancers. Father John showed up, too. Joe thought it was funny that a priest would come to a ghost dance. So, he says to Father John, “Scouting out the competition?”

Father smiles. “Sun Tsu says, ‘Know thine enemy.’” Seeing that Father John is a Norski, I’d guess Sun Tsu guy must be some famous Viking.

The dancers were outfitted in those painted shirts and breechcloths. Tommy’s breechcloth was huge. Went clear down to his ankles. Ugly John pokes me in the ribs and says, “That much material to cover Tommy’s little family jewels is like housing a couple of peas in a pup tent.”

Tommy gave a talk on how the shirts’ magic symbols protected them from enemy bullets. Then, he told how Wovoka promised if they danced long enough, the dead warriors would rise again, and the buffalo would return. “And better yet,” he says, “all the wasíchus will sink into the earth and disappear.”

At that, Ugly John called out, “Tommy, since my old man was white, will I just sink up to my crotch?” Even old Leonard Hayes cracked a smile at that one.

After that, Leonard started drumming and singing. Tommy lit out on the damnedest dance I’ve ever seen—spinning, dipping, stomping around. Jim Little Crow said Tommy hadn’t danced like that since freshman gym class when Jake Little Crow slathered Atomic Balm in Tommy’s jockstrap.

I didn’t buy into the ghost dance hoopla. Still, every so often, I’d look over at Father John. If anybody would do any serious sinking, it’d be him. His shoes were a little dusty, but he didn’t show any sign of being swallowed up by Mother Earth.

We might never know how much dancing it would take for the old ways to return. Maybe an hour into it, Tommy’s still whirling around like a fart in a windstorm when he steps on the end of his breechcloth. His belt breaks, and he goes ass-over-teakettle on the blacktop. The few folks still there had a good chuckle. Father John turned away and faked coughing to hide his laughing jag.

Tommy tried to carry on, holding up his breechcloth with both hands. But it was a lost cause. The boys started laughing and grabbing at each other’s, well, you know. All told, I felt a little sorry for Tommy.

The night me, Joe, and Ugly John are at Clarence Short Bull’s for our weekly cribbage game. Leonard drops in to watch TV. Clarence’s new dish pulls in Jeopardy better than Leonard’s rusty, old antenna. Just about when the Wheel came on, talk turned to the ghost dance, or as Clarence called it, Two Bears’ Paiute polka.

“If Tommy’s a warrior,” Ugly John says, “he’s a Contrary because everything he does turns out bass-ackwards.”

“The way I see it, folks are like arrows,” Leonard says. “And arrows, they’re meant to fly.”

“As arrows go,” Clarence says, “Tommy could barely hit the ground, much less the target.”

“Maybe,’ Leonard says, “the target isn’t as important as the flight.”

Ugly John snorts. “That’s like saying it don’t matter if you’re holding treys or aces; it’s how you play your hand.”

Leonard shrugs. “Maybe so.”

Last Christmas Eve, Joe’s Mary calls Tommy to invite him for dinner and keeps getting a busy signal. She gets so worried that Joe has to drive over to check on him. He finds Tommy sitting cross-legged in that drafty tepee, wrapped in blankets, chewing on a chunk of half-frozen jerky.

Joe thumps him on the head. “Why the hell don’t you answer your phone?”

“I tore it out,” Tommy says. “Short Bull or Quanah Parker never needed a damn phone.”

“And they never had the choice between eating your Aunt Mary’s pumpkin pie or sucking on a frozen jerkysickle, dumbass.”

*          *          *

This past spring, Tommy got the boys excited about another ghost dance. It got called off the night before when Marvin Wilson shot his cousin Billy. It seems Marvin thought the shirt would protect him. The bullet only nicked Billy’s right shoulder, but Clayton, his old man, was plenty steamed. Joe LeDoux had to talk a blue streak to keep him from kicking Tommy’s ass. Soon after that, Tommy took up the bottle again. He still talked warrior stuff now and again. But nobody paid him any mind.

A few months back, Joe shows up over an hour late for cribbage night. He doesn’t say a word. Just heads to the fridge for a beer.

Clarence says, “What’s the deal?”

“Had to drive over to Rapid City and bail out my damn nephew.”

“Another bar fight?”

“No such luck,” Joe says. The long and short of it was Tommy drove to Rapid City and spray-painted a mural on the side of the Shuffle Inn. Lucky for Tommy, a cop cruised past just as the Shuffle’s owner started thumping him.  

According to Joe, Tommy acted like some kind of Lakota Rembrandt. Said his mural should be declared a tribal treasure. “That nephew of mine couldn’t draw water, much less Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Kicking Bear,” Joe says. “Feathers going every which way on their heads, they looked more like Huey, Dewey, and Louie on a bad hair day.”

Tommy’s sentence was two weeks in jail, plus he had to paint over the mural. We drove Tommy up there so he could do the work. Took three coats to cover the mural.

Watching a guy paint is thirsty work, so we buy a six-pack for the drive home. Tommy downs his two cans before we hit the city limits. Fifteen miles down the road, we come up on another tavern.

“I gotta take a leak,” Tommy says.

Joe tells him, “I’ll pull over down the road  where there’s no houses.”

Tommy starts whining and begging. “I won’t cause no trouble, I promise.”

Tommy promising not to cause trouble is like a dog promising not to roll in dead fish. But rather than risk ruining his new seat covers, Joe wheels into the lot. Tommy jumps out and jogs into the bar.

After fifteen minutes and no Tommy, Joe climbs out. “You want to help me drag his body out, Marvin?”

I’d have sooner do pushups in a rattler den. But Joe is my best friend, so I follow him into the Dew Drop. Instead of finding Tommy stomped into a grease spot, he’s standing in a crowd of cowboys, each one half as big—and twice as ugly—as Mount Rushmore. He’s joking with them, slapping them on the back, and punching their shoulders. He hollers, “Another round for my buddies!” He points to a guy in a Dekalb seed cap. “And charge it to this big bastard.”

Then he sidles over to us and whispers, “Come on over and count some coup on these dumb rednecks.”

After two boilermakers, I quit planning my will. A couple more, and I’m feeling almost at home. By the time we stumble out to the parking lot to sleep it off in Joe’s pickup, I’d sang Achy Breaky Heart more times than I cared to. But I’d been punching rednecks’ shoulders and slapping their backs right along with Tommy and Joe. And every time I did, it felt like a secret victory. Of course, waking up in the truck bed next morning, I felt like somebody counted coup on my skull—with a Louisville Slugger.

*          *          *

Leonard Hayes says in life, we all got battles to fight, both from outside and inside. Earlier this spring, Tommy lost the whole damn war to General Mogen David. Tommy would’ve been happy with the turnout at his funeral. The whole tribal council was there. And all of his ghost dance kids. Even Billy Wilson showed up in his ghost dance shirt, bullet hole, and all.

After the ceremony, me and Joe drove over to Tommy’s. As sorry sights go, it was in my top ten. Not a scrap worth salvaging. We piled everything around the trailer and lit her up. Everything but the tepee, that is. Joe said he’d take care of it later.

The next week, I’m driving past Tommy’s and see Joe’s pickup parked by what’s left of the trailer. Joe’s fighting to set up the tepee all by his lonesome. It seemed like a waste of time, but I stop to give him a hand. Even with the two of us, it was a hell of a job, especially guiding the lodgepoles into the holes Joe had dug for them. When the last pole was in place, he says, “Now let’s those bags of Sakrete out of the pickup bed.”

By the time we set the poles in concrete, the sun was flirting with the horizon. And that tepee’s leaning over even worse than when Tommy was alive. But there was something about seeing that lopsided canvas cone standing against the sunset. Nowadays, every time I drive past it, I get this funny feeling.

“That feeling,” Leonard tells me, “It’s called pride.”

– Michael Propsom

Note: “Counting Coup” originally appeared in Fish Stories: Collective IV in the spring of 1997.

Author’s Note: This and several other “rez” stories came to me after I had become lost on the Rosebud reservation. Following an interesting—and initially unnerving—exchange with a carful of Lakota men, they graciously guided me to my destination. That experience gave me a little insight into how it feels to be a minority.