Touring the "Marble Orchard"

[Diane Merkel]

An excerpt from "Touring the ‘marble orchard’ on Memorial Day"
by Roger Clawson of the Billings Outpost: www.billingsnews.com/story?storyid=19810&issue=328

My grandfather, the Civil War soldier’s son, farmed a stone’s toss from the Little Bighorn Battlefield on the Crow Reservation. Hattie’s seven brothers and sisters ran barefoot in the grass, drove plow horses, picked mushrooms and thrived on the land purchased from Swamp Flag and Bushy Tail.

Grandfather and grandmother would be buried in Big Horn County. So, too, would a tall Indian man who may have been the great chief Sits-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Land.

No one lays flowers on the grave of the old chief, if indeed it is the old chief buried beneath a steel plate outside the Bureau of Indian Affairs building at Crow Agency. His “wife,” the last of perhaps three, is buried on the distant Atlantic shore.

At least, she claimed he called her “wife.” Victoria Mauricio also claimed to have ridden in a UFO, to channel the spirit of Ramses II and to talk to the spirit of the old chief.

When Mauricio said the old one wanted his bones found and buried on the reservation, a number of tribal members responded with a bone hunt in the hills outside Meeteetsee, Wyo. Mauricio assured the tribe that the bones they found were the right set.

My grandparents’ flock scattered, and my father, the Old Poacher, found his final resting place in the Custer Cemetery. A World War I vet, he was laid to rest in a flag-draped coffin. American Legion buddies saluted his passing with several ragged volleys fired from war surplus 30-06’s.

From my father’s grave I look to the bluff where the stagecoach driver is buried. I spent a Huck Finn boyhood between these hills. Hunted deer. Caught catfish. Learned the value of pi. Squandered my innocence. Stole lumber to build boats.

Someday, I, too, will sleep beneath the sod. So shall we all.