Almost Home

They were almost here. Two miles away from Lodge Grass. Two miles from home.

If you know Lodge Grass at all, then you know the Frontage Road. It runs north to Crow, south to Sheridan. Actually, it used to be the main road, back in LG's boom-town days, then I-90 bypassed us Route-66-style, and Lodge Grass started slowing down. The hotel, the movie theatre, the bank, the restaurants...today we have a post office, an IGA, a hardware store that looks closed down, and Da Spot, complete with powwow music and a lot of trucks out front if the neon "open" sign is lit.

We've had a lot of deaths this week. Too many. And then Friday, the accidents. The first one, two miles north on the Frontage Road. A 20-year-old young woman was ejected out the back window during a over-correction rollover and didn't survive. Hours later, another accident, near Dunmore. Another rollover, another ejection. The girl who died was sixteen. Around the same time, two early-twenties women lost their lives on the neighboring Northern Cheyenne rez, their car meeting the front of a semi on the snowy roads.

I sat in my house and looked at the names, wondering at the implications. So many families touched. So much loss. The amount of death seemed so intense when the chairman passed away; now, days later, it has doubled, tripled, increased to the point where it is not measurable.

And yet, people will survive. They will pick up the pieces and go on. The sun may not seem as bright, but it will still rise over the Wolf Mountains in the morning.

Jesus, be close.