angels do take flightn

From: k.b.Rameson (blackk@marlboro.edu)
Story type: Angel
Location: mono county california
Source: Form Submission
When I was a young boy our family lived in an old hogan on Robinson Creek

The cars would rush by on a seasonal road nearby which led to the old town of big valley and on to dogtown, aurora and bodie gold settled these valleys and the truth of how the west was "won" is probably more evident here than not the Chickchanzee , Mono and Pauitte peoples once lived here and there scattered in family clans. And the pioneers ran them off and killed them.

There was an old woman named Maggie White Eye who walked the whole distance of nine or twelve miles between the Mono Village Saloon and the Bridgeport Indian reservation to drink where she was born and then she would walk or limp all the way back to the reservation-never accepting rides from anyone one day she walked so slowly by the way she always did-barely looking at me- and waved a flight feather of some road killed owl in my direction the next day our mother drove my brother and i to the airstrip--our father had flown in from the bayarea to take us away for at least the summer no one had appraised me of the situation-i was only six years old at the time. I had never flown in a plane or been away from our mother. when we arrived old maggie was leaned up against the plane she had lost one mocassin and was trying to stay cool in the shade. who knows how long she had waited there. Our father told her she would have to leave-this made me cry and i wathced my old friend limp on the melting tar hunched over but still smiling- he made some comment on how drunk she was off we flew with me screaming and hollering. Our mother was so far below and there was no sign of maggie.

years later, i vistited th trading post and asked the Lent familu what had ever become of Maggie, -someone told me she was probably close by and sure enough i saw her standing in the tiny video store next door-her white eyebrow all the present More years flew by and I asked our stepfather the mountain man MR. Black who is quite close with the Indian families how Maggie was doing- does she still walk the long distance between her birth home and that windy barren reservation? He didn't know what I was talking about-he had never heard of Maggie White Eye. Supposedly she never existed. Well I still have the words she said to me one day and I will share them with you

: "Black Antelope" she called me-" running like the grey sand on the mountain- you will always know the truth even though you may be forced to lie. you will always be a free spirit so long as you know angels do take flight... watch out for the pinon jay." well my best friend passed away a few years ago- in fact she killed herself- Her name was Angie Fredrickson-Pinon Jay. Maggie prepared me for these days when I was only a little boy. I remember her and will always. Funny thing though... brother, mother and father all remember Maggie White Eye leaning up against the plane.
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