The Grass Dancer

“When Harley saw his father, Calvin Wind Soldier, and his brother, Duane, in dreams, they were wearing crowns of glass. Drops of blood trickled down their foreheads, beaded on their black lashes, and slipped into the corners of their mouths. Four weeks before Harley was born, his father and older brother were killed in a car accident.”

The novel opens with Harley’s dream about his late family members. This immediately indicates the importance of Harley’s personal tragedy, and of dreams and ancestors, in the broader narrative. Calvin and Duane wear crowns made of the windshield glass that shattered in their fatal accident. This suggests Harley believes their deaths gave his father and brother a kind of higher status and power that Harley does not possess.

“Herod thanked Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, for bringing them all together, representatives of several tribes and several states. ‘We’re still here,’ he said, and many of the drummers pounded their drums in approval. ‘Our culture is still thriving, and it makes me feel good to look around and see so many young ones taking part.’”

Herod acknowledges the role traditional spirituality plays in the powwow. Without Wakan Tanka, the Indigenous people would not be brought together or, perhaps, would not be extant. He acknowledges the importance of the youths being present, signifying the continuation of their way of life.

“But Harley couldn’t tell her more, even though he could see his mother standing beside the casket. She was big with Harley but carrying him indifferently. She was busy with her first son, her sleeping son… Harley saw his mother press her belly, wanting something more to give Duane. He imagined she located his own spirit membrane, caught her fingernail under its edge and peeled it away from her unborn child. It looked like cellophane and crinkled when she pinched it into a small wafer the size of Father Zimmer’s holy hosts offered at Communion. And so Lydia fed her sleeping son his brother’s soul, forced it between stitched lips.”

Harley feels his mother is unable to love him completely. He believes she would trade his soul to bring back his brother. When Pumpkin gives part of her soul to Harley, she provides him with the nurturing he feels his mother has denied him. However, when the narrative later shifts to Lydia’s perspective, it reveals that Harley is wrong about his mother’s feelings toward Duane and himself.