“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD.”
Deuteronomy 18:10–11
“Then, there being no other alternative by which to save their country and property, the Chickasaw, as the lesser of the two evils that confronted them, went with the Southern Confederacy.”
Julius Folsom, September 5, 1891, letter to H. B. Cushman
“That’s how I do this life sometimes, by making the ordinary just like magic -just like a card trick, a mirror, and a disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention. The red hand is always quicker than the white eye. No matter how close you get to my heart, you’ll never find out my secrets. I’ll never share them with you nor show you the same trick twice. I’m traveling heavy with illusions.”
Sherman Alexie, Native American author

Description

Levi Impichchaachaaha’ Ironhorse leans against Cletus’ pillared bed, dressed in his favored buckskin-fringed jacket, denim, cowboy boots, and a pink crew-neck with a cartoonish depiction of the Honey Island swamp monster. He slowly chews on a well-gnawed bear-root and regards his domitor with a steady heavy-lidded gaze. A checker-cloth hobo bag, complete with a tied-on water-elm switch, rests on the bed beside a naked corpse, its flesh bloated with bayou-water. Cletus wraps his long-time companion in a fierce bear hug, then fills him on recent events and the primary purpose of his visit.
“Beggin’ yer pardon fer yelpin’ and fussin’ up yer night, Levi, but I might could use yer help,” he says as he strips down and dresses himself in his formal attire. The laconic Chickasaw listens quietly, his silence belying the man’s prodigious intellect and the deep, strong currents of his thoughts. When Cletus is done explaining what he wants, Levi doesn’t even bother replying. He just sets down his bear-root, unknots his knapsack, and begins the divinatory ritual.
Cletus’ latest meeting with his long-serving ghoul