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Some people who worked for the casino did okay, worked hard, saved, and created a better life for their families—better housing, food, clothing and medical care. Others used the sudden increase in income on drug, alcohol, sex, and gambling, and ended up worse off than when they started.
That wasn’t something unique to a reservation. It was the same everywhere. Some people took advantage of opportunities to improve their lives and families. Others wasted and squandered, pandering to addictions.
Life is what you make of it.She remembered as clear as if it were yesterday that her grandmother told her that. For a long time, she argued against it, and refused to accept any validity of the statement.
The last conversation she had with her grandmother was about that sentence. At the time, she was with the Rangers and had seen things she’d just as soon forget. When people speak of the horrors of war, they label it correctly. Oakley was sickened by the brutality of humanity. Sure, she was guilty of being brutal. When it came to a fight, she intended to survive and did what it took to ensure that.
Ending a life wasn’t an act of honor. It was either a means of survival, or an act of war, and war was not always honorable. It was do or die. The only honor available came from the way you treated your victims. If you took pleasure in it, you were not someone with honor.
And without honor, you are nothing.
“So, sweet Oakley, what have you made of life?”
Oakley didn’t have an answer. Her world was small in a sense, comprised of duty, dedication, and training. She had few civilian friends, spent most of her time around men, being treated like one and trained like one, and thus far, love was something reserved for family.
There was a time when she knew what it meant to love a man. Then she screwed up and wrecked both their lives. He walked out on her, and she never saw him again. That was okay. Seeing him would have just been areminder of how badly she’d screwed up and what it had cost her.
She said as much to her grandmother, because Huttsi was the only person she could trust with that truth. Huttsi smiled and patted Oakley’s hand. “And yet you’ve made a life for yourself. Is there something of value in that life?”
“A lot,” Oakley responded without having to consider. “I’m proud to serve, to help people who are being suppressed, enslaved or exterminated.”
“There is always a need for wolves, my child.”
“Wolves?”
“You, Oakley. Our family followed the wolves, molded our society in harmony with theirs, and learned from their ways. Some came to be friends with the wolves. Like your ancestors. There have been women in every generation of our family who had the heart, strength, power, and intelligence of the wolves. These women could walk with the wolves, communicate with and understand.
“They are a breed of their own and are often called upon to save the tribe. You save tribes that are not your own, but one day you will be called upon to protect your tribe. When that day comes, I hope you not only answer the call, but allow that calling to bring something to your life that makes you know that the life you’ve made has worth and honor.”
“I hope you’re right, Huttsi.”
“When am I not?”
Oakley smiled as she remembered. She felt good about herself when she was with the Rangers, or as good as possible with her history. Then fate intervened,and she transferred to the K9 division. She had never regretted making the change.
This last change was unplanned, to say the least. She wasn’t sorry she decided to train the wolves, but would admit to being lonely. It had been so long since she was part of life here on the reservation that she almost felt like an outsider.
It would be different if Gunner was here.
Oakley didn’t know why thoughts like that kept popping into her mind. She and Gunner barely knew one another. No, that wasn’t true. She knew him in a way that defied language. When she looked into his eyes, she knew him, knew his heart.
And right or wrong, she had fallen for him.
She didn’t know if that love would ever be returned or acted upon and right now wasn’t the time to worry about it. No amount of worry would change whatever was to come.
Right now, she needed to focus on the reason she was here. The wolves. So far, things had gone smoothly, so she couldn’t complain, and yet at least once a day she experienced the resurgence of old grievances.
Living here seemed to remind her how much her people were devalued, how much was taken from them, and how they’d remained on the fringes of American culture, rather than being accepted as an integral part of the country and its citizenry.
Perhaps it would always be that way. The government would continue to take back native lands, labeling native beliefs as evil. Pagans, some people called them. Oakley snorted in disgust. Natives were deeply spiritual people, and their beliefs came with a lot less bloody history than white man.
Yet still, the natives were labeled something less than whites, non-essential members of society.
It disgusted her now as it had then, but she tried not to dwell on what she couldn’t change. After all, according to the people she knew when she left the reservation with her father, she turned her back on her people and their ways.
Oakley understood how they could see it that way. It didn’t matter what people thought. It seemed to her that everyone today was far more interested in pointing out differences and hating people for them than trying to find common ground.
She was done trying to fit in with the Natives or the whites. Oakley found a home with the military and felt she had a family. Today, she pushed back at that small doubt that maybe it’d been a mistake to retire.
