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Billy & Delima LaVerdue |
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Billy & Delima LaVerdue |
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I came to St. Ann’s school, Belcourt, ND in the summer of 1942. I am a Hoosier. I found that the boys were not playing basketball. For a priest and a Hoosier that’s like not being baptized. I found that the school had one basketball and a gym that was not heated. Remember! North Dakota. The boys and I got wood for fuel. It warmed the gym some. We had no uniforms, so we played in street clothes and in “tennis” shoes that came in clothing boxes sent t o us. We started practice. A lot of drills, and running and dodging to build up stamina. Came Christmas we got three basketballs. I was learning about the energy that was locked up in those boys and about the personalities and characters their parents had bred into them. I found a 35mm projector. Once a month we had a show for the whole student body. The nearest show hall was eight miles away. Came Spring. We are running to the gym to see the movie. Three players came behind me. “Father, can we go to Billy’s place? Billy had a dream last night, and his mare had a colt. And, Father, the colt has got a white star on its head and a white front foot. It’s her first colt, and Billy saw it in a dream.” What do you do with boys and a young mare and a colt and a dream? “Ok! But, Billy, tell your Mom that I said it was OK for you to come home before the bus, and you other guys, tell your folks that it was OK.” Three hours later: I drove one of the busses. I was parking it, when up the hill to the Mission came a Model A. The speed was urgent. It slid to a stop. Billy’s father jumped out. “Father, go out to our place. Billy’s shot!!” “Go get the Doctor!” I said. “No! Father, you go, now.” I got there behind the log barn. A small crowd had gathered. There on the ground in deep grass in a light rain lay Billy under a blanket his mother had put over him. I knelt and uncovered his face. A tiny pulse of blood came from his forehead. I blessed him and touched him lovingly. Billy, the boy always smiling, joking at his missed plays, dancing, when he did well. I stood up. There with me was his mother, fingers crossed at her breast, thin in a gingham dress, cold in the drizzle of rain, looking at what had been her firstborn son. Dare I! Dare I ask? Yes! I knew Delima as I knew Billy and the boys in the other families. The boy who had pulled the trigger lay in the grass moaning and rolling in the wetness. Crying out. “I didn’t mean to.” And no one disturbed him. He had to cry. I hugged Delima silently. She was not sobbing, just breathing deeply. I began, “Delima, could I ask you……?” That’s as far as I got. “Father, would you go over to that poor boy. I’ve been over there twice already, and I want to help him. I know he will cry, but he shouldn’t, when he knows that we love him. He and Billy were the best friends. Please, Father, help him.” The other boy, Rainy, told the story. “When we got here we told Mrs. LaVerdure that you said we could come home to look for the colt. I wanted Billy to get his ’22, but his Mom said, ‘No!’ but one of us got it anyhow, Father. We got to the mare, but she still had the colt. She hadn’t dropped it yet. When we got back to the barn, and we were sitting on the ground and getting the mud off our shoes and we were unloading the gun, and Dummy he had the gun. He was clicking the shells out of the chamber. He was asking Billy if he could buy a shell. But Billy said, ‘No!’ because his Dad knew how many he had, and he used them to get some bucks in the bush. “And Dummy was clicking the gun. It was kind of stiff, and he thought it was empty, and then it went off. It hit Billy right in the head.” With that Rainy fell into the grass along side Dummy. Holding him and moaning. A car drove up. Modern police car with a
swinging light on the top. Out stepped an Officer, the County Sheriff from
Rolla. He was heavy. A cigar wet in his mouth. He cut the barbed wire of the
fence and walked over it. Delima, taller than he, stood over him leaning down, face to face. “Get your hands off that boy. He’s my boy’s friend. What happened was an accident. You don’t belong here. Get off my land. We don’t want you here. We don’t need you. Get off the Reservation.” He tripped a bit backing over the fence. Delima’s eyes followed him till he was out of danger. Mothers, Fathers, Uncles, Aunties, Neighbors all collapsed in prayer in the grass around the three boys. Wakes in those days were in the home, three days and three nights. Praying and talking and singing and eating and sleeping and supporting each other and the family.
The house was emptied of furniture except for chairs for the mourners. The coffin was open to everyone. Death was close. It was embraced. Children are lifted up. “That’s Billy. He’s here now, but he’s in Heaven.” Children said, “Oh”, with understanding. Heaven is real. I was at a window. My head back, tired. A long evening ahead. There was a movement in the shadows outside. It was the mare. At her side, with nose to the window, the colt – a star on his forehead, just as Billy had dreamed, and his left front hoof, clean and white. Billy’s colt. No one ever worked Billy’s colt. You could feed it and play with it and ride it and let it follow you around. “But that’s Billy’s colt, just as he dreamed.” My Hero and Heroine Bill and Delima LaVerdure. 07/06/04 fr. stan Turtle Mountain Times |
