The Highway and The River: One Girl's Journey out of Evangelicalism and Into Faith

By Darlice Dockter

As the daughter of an evangelical pastor in a rural portion of South Dakota, her young life is spent absorbing a rigid belief system that makes no allowance for creative thinking. She learns quickly to "do as she is told," and to model good behavior as a reflection of her father's ministry. She grows as a very dutiful child without realizing that she could be separate, apart from the expectations that had been put on her. She is taught to believe firmly in the "Power of Satan" and that she was a foot soldier in the "Lord's Army."

As she grows into her teenage years, she is first full of questions, and later frustrated by the lack of continuity between what she was taught by her beloved Daddy and the workings of the world outside the doors of his church.

Meanwhile, she had formed a close kinship with the Indians who lived across the River. She had been warned about them from her early days as being "unsaved," irresponsible and even dangerous. She found them to be warm, accepting, people who could teach her a lot about spirituality, more than she had known in the evangelical upbringing of her childhood. She had come full circle in her questioning of good and evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667829968

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Highway and The River

© 2022 Darlice Dockter

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66782-995-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66782-996-8

Contents

Acknowledgments

Baby Bismarck

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Church

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Mary

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Jack

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

Sissy

58

The River

59

60

61

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

I have a deep sense of gratitude for the boundless goodness of life that allowed this book to be written. I thank Sister Therese O’Grady, OSB for directing me to Marsha Anderson Smith who showed me the real ropes in writing a novel. I thank Valerie Kluver for giving me the kind-hearted kick start I needed. All three of these women gave me the unmistakable notion that, not only could this book be written, it also Should be written.Thank you to Jim and Gladys Schott for saving my childhood stories and giving them back to me when I needed them. Thank you to Matthew, Nathan and Chandler who kept reminding me that I have been writing a book for decades. Thank you to Fr. Richard Rohr for giving me the original concept of Centering Prayer, without which Bisy would never have existed. Thank you so very much to J.B. Phillips who showed me many years ago that a my God might have been too small. Thank you most of all however to Henry and Lois who taught me and my siblings that it is a okay to be spiritual.

Baby Bismarck

1

High on the Absoraka Range, the first spark of sunrise rested lightly on a single sprout and turned it to neon. For one long moment, it shone alone until the edge of daylight soared on the silent wings of morning and touched the heads of other nodding sprouts. The air turned brighter, just a tiny bit warmer. Snow still covered most of the ground in March, but the first tentative cracks in winter’s death grip were beginning to appear.

The Glacier Lily was a determined, tiny thing and it craned its neck toward the sky with great urgency. The silence of the mountainside was interrupted only occasionally by the sound of ice cracking or the chatter of a sleepy Marmot waking from his long, cold hibernation. The Glacier Lily, also called the Dogtooth Violet, the Fawn Lily, the Avalanche Lily or, simply, the Snow Lily is well known for its tenacity, its fortitude, and its determination, but mostly for its astounding, unexpected, early Spring-time beauty.

This particular lily didn’t care much which name was chosen because it would likely never encounter a human being, the only creature that might concern itself with such a distinction. It is possible for people to hike the summit of Younts Peak, but it happens only rarely because of its remote location and the difficult climb. So, the Glacier Lily was left without an audience for its performance.

Having escaped the grunting, snorting, scavenging of Brown Bears and Grizzlies and the brisk, hard freezing ground temperatures of the winter, the lily remained resolute. In earlier days, Native American tribes would have harvested, cooked, and used lily corms as a prearranged crop and sometimes even saved them for trading with adventure-prone Europeans. These days those nutritious tubers are left alone to prosper. Their chief function it seemed was to announce, to no one in particular, that there is hope. The vernal equinox would be coming; gradually and imperceptibly the days would get longer and the nights would grow shorter. Light, warmth, prosperity, and comfort, even if short-lived, were on their way.

The tiny, fingerling lily sprout emerged from the edge of the glacier toward the sapphire sky without concern for its destiny. Maybe one of its cosmic functions was to support the early morning frost along its stem until the air was warm enough to soften that hardness, first into pliability, and then gradually, as it became liquid, to seep downward along the flue. Neither the droplet nor the sprout understood that this was the water’s starting point of a life-long pathway downward, toward the point of least resistance.

Sensing its own gravity, the droplet eased itself down the stem, onto the underside of the glacier where it joined others identical to itself to form a tiny trickle. Those trickles joined with others to form small rivulets. The entire drainage basin of Younts Peak’s north face began to vibrate with minute, imperceptible movements of water merging into rivulets finding their way to a lower path.

As if it were moving consciously, in sync with the cosmos, the droplet made its way to the center of the trickle, almost knowing that, if it should lose the warmth of the friction with the cold air and the sparkle of the sunlight, it would refreeze and stay suspended in that glacier above tree line for several weeks, maybe all summer—maybe forever.

The underside of a glacier is a fascinating place. Starkly icy, it is caught between the blackness of the earth and the dim, filtered sunlight that is causing slush and ponding above. Slow seepage of melting snow runs cautiously along the ceiling of the ground space but the glacier pays little attention. It is not going anywhere and the runoff will soon be over. The trickles become streams, which become creeks, which become The River, but the glacier will never know any of that. Its only purpose is to birth the energy that will eventually enter the Gulf of Mexico. It will remain high on the Continental Divide for eons, enjoying its solitude and expansive view of the world.

The eagle’s view of that glacier looks like a giant scorpion, its grasping pedipalps wrapped around the base of Younts Peak. The South Fork of the Yellowstone converges with the North Fork at the head of that scorpion, and feeder creeks form six more legs and a curving tail that twists northward. The River follows a steep, direct path to the East Arm of Yellowstone Lake. In its seventy-mile course, the water drops 4,424 feet, so gravity forces an urgent, demanding flow along its entire route. In March, the air temperature is rarely above freezing, so ice forms behind protected rocks or fallen tree trunks. It is only the strength of gravity that propels its torrent and keeps it from freezing solidly.

Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout eggs, laid and fertilized in November, lay hiding in their redds in the warmer shallows. Later in April and May they will hatch, turn into alevins (eyes with yolks), grow into parr, learn to be fry, and wait for the water to warm enough to begin their real growth. Eventually they will grow to be sixteen inches long on average but, at this stage, that’s a long way off. Only about two percent of the eggs laid will survive the temperatures, the marauding larger fish, the beavers, raccoons, bears and wolves. Life in the high altitude of the Absoraka is only for the very hardy.

Farther downstream, there might be waders, fly rods, leaders, dry flies or maybe even drift boats, but not here. The channel is too steep, the access too difficult and time consuming for any but the most determined fisherman, and even he prefers to let the fish do most of the work of riding The River. He will probably wait at the mouth to the East Arm of Yellowstone Lake.

If Yellowstone National Park were a movie, it would be a blockbuster. The story line began 640,000 years ago when a massive volcanic eruption forced a huge magma chamber below the earth’s surface to collapse in on itself. The result was an immense cauldron-shaped depression on the surface. It is the world’s most famous sinkhole, potentially the most powerful Supervolcano. As the surface cooled, the magma turned into igneous rock. Subsequent lava flows filled portions of the caldera, part of which is the great basin containing Yellowstone Lake.

This would be the Hero of the movie. Of course, there would be supporting characters like Old Faithful, smaller geysers, Tower Falls, bears, buffalo, elk, and tourists; but Yellowstone Lake has the grandness, the charm, the charisma to take the Lead Role.

For one thing, it is huge. As the largest high-altitude (over 7,000 feet) fresh-water lake in North America, it has 136 square miles of surface, 110 miles of shoreline, and is up to nearly 400 feet deep in some places. Between November and March, it may be frozen over with ice up to three feet deep. The exceptions are those areas surrounding several hot springs that feed the lake along with the great volume of melted snow from the Absoraka Range. All of this input comes along the southern edge of the lake, so the water flows northward into the funnel forming the Upper Falls, the Black Canyon, and the Lower Falls, all natural formations that existed long before humans ever saw them. Native Americans have lived on this lake’s banks, have eaten its fish and wildlife, and worshipped its spirits for at least 11,000 years. The script wasn’t written until the first visits of mountain men in the early to mid-19th century, and organized explorations began in the 1860s. So this ancient backdrop has surrounded modern interaction only for around 250 years, the blink of its cosmic eye.

The second reason is, it is Cold. Fed by glacier runoff and snow melt, through fast moving, desperate downhill mountain stream channels, its average temperature is 43 degrees. It has been said that a human would certainly die of hypothermia before drowning in Yellowstone Lake. That seems to be true, since recorded history tells us that at least forty people have disappeared in the lake, yet only seventeen bodies have ever been recovered. Why? One theory is that the frigid water preserves human tissue much as a refrigerator would. It also adds density, so bodies are much more apt to stay further down in the depths until natural forces can act on their disposal.

The third reason is that it is intriguing. This may or may not relate to the second thing, but there is a fascinating phenomenon that occurs usually in the early morning hours, most often in the southern part of the lake’s wildest areas. Some call it The Whispers. It is a series of indescribable, enthralling sounds seeming to begin at a great distance and increasing in volume and intensity as they accelerate northward. It has a preternatural quality that suggests it to be the return of the souls lost to hypothermia or the spirits of ancient indigenous religions. Other, more practical thinkers offer the theory that it could be subterranean geothermal activity that echoes through surrounding caves. The point is that each person has his own sense of what causes The Whispers, but no one really knows for sure.

So, Yellowstone Lake is the hero of great drama. The droplets, turned to trickles, turned to rivulets, turned to the Upper Yellowstone River flow into the cavernous lake as a resting, rejuvenating place before heading north into the point of least resistance. It takes that single droplet of water from six to eight years to cross Yellowstone Lake, so there is plenty of time to recover from its tumultuous ride down the Upper Yellowstone River. Here the modern version of human replaces the ancient, indigenous people of the area, and they amuse themselves with kayaks, canoes, float tubes, outboard motors, inboard motors, waders, fly rods, hand-tied flies and other outdoor gear. Brand names labels like Jeep, Ford, Chevrolet, Eddie Bauer, Orvis, Evinrude, Redington, Sims, Aroner, Thomas & Thomas, FTO, and dozens of others all flash their competitive logos in the radiant sun. To a certain portion of the American population, fly fishing is a bigger sport than baseball, and summertime at Yellowstone Lake and its adjoining rivers prove that point.

The point, of course, is fish stories. The goal is to lock onto as many Cutthroat Trout, Mountain Whitefish, Rainbow Trout, or Lake Trout as possible and as often as possible. The voracious, marauding Lake Trout are always Kill catches and the native Cutthroat Trout are always "No Kill, since the former had all but eradicated the latter. The Cutthroat Trout are making a comeback but the water droplet doesn’t care. It is on a mission to get through this lake, to dive over the falls to race along the valley floor, to join with the Missouri and, in the end, to dump into the Gulf of Mexico.

2

Meanwhile, a full-term baby girl floated mindlessly in amniotic fluid. Since her head outweighed her body, gravity led it to the lowest part of her mother’s protective pelvis and she waited, always seeking the path of least resistance. She waited, waited, waited, bones growing stronger, eyelashes getting fuller, crescents beginning to show at the base of her fingernails, curly hair forming a blond halo around her face that held amazingly deep dimples. Movements were slow, subtle, dreamlike. Her legs were doubled up against the wall of the uterus, and every now and then she would give a good, strong kick that strengthened her developing thigh muscles. Those legs would, for the next eighty years or so, be the unsung heroes of her locomotion. But not yet. She waited and grew strong.

*****

Bismarck, North Dakota was a well-established city in 1947. It was the capital of a state that was flourishing in the days following the Second World War because of its ability to produce abundant wheat crops, nearly limitless herds of cattle, and other lesser crops. Peace, prosperity, and security floated along the winds blowing in from the northwest. Yes, it was a cold place in the winter balanced by heat that was almost unbearable in the summer, but its people were happy. No longer afraid that Hitler and his Nazis would soon rule the world, they went back to tending their farms, feeding the country, and resuming their prewar life.

The winter of 1946 to 1947 had already proved to be a challenging one. Larger-than-average snowfall throughout the northern United States had contributed to a record-breaking Spring runoff in the Rocky Mountains. The Yellowstone River had swollen beyond its banks from a torrential Spring snow melt high in the Teton Wilderness. Yellowstone Lake had contained as much of the flood as its lava bed basin would allow, sending the cascade of ice and water down over the Upper Falls, and then the Lower Falls, pounding out into The River Valley. It flooded great portions of Montana as it locomotived itself north and east. At the border of Montana and North Dakota, it joined forces with the already marauding Missouri engulfing prairies, fields, farms, homes, outbuildings, livestock, and people...anything that stood in its ever-widening, destructive path.

It wasn’t the first time. The Missouri was widely known to be a wildly petulant, self-centered, unpredictable force of nature, caring nothing for anything but its own desperation for lower ground. The Yellowstone was, and remains, the longest free-flowing river in North America but, once it joined up with the Missouri, it agreed to a future of confinement. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had plans to tame the wildness. In fact, the Garrison Dam at Williston was in the final stages of planning, and survey work was beginning.

Was this the Missouri’s final act of rebellion? Possibly. If it was, she wasn’t going without a good fight. As the crest of the flood raced across northern North Dakota and headed south toward Bismarck, the force of it broke up huge sections of surface ice. The great chunks being thrown around like pieces of concrete made the outburst even more dangerous.

*****

All human communications were slow in 1947, but even so, the word spread quickly that this catastrophe was coming. Make plans! Prepare! Get out of its way!

That warning hit the ears of a young pastor in Mobridge, South Dakota. His name was Samuel Stockton, and he made plans to take his eminently pregnant wife, Emma, to the German Evangelical Hospital over the state line in Bismarck. With this plan in place, she and her doctor would, at the very least, be in the same state on the same side of the flooding river. They had figured that she had another week before the birth—but nobody trusted the Missouri.

Later, safely ensconced in her hospital bed, she cried. She was alone and scared. Not only was she about to go into labor, but they told her that her husband would not be allowed to come back even for the birth of the child. There was a massive outbreak of smallpox and she would be quarantined in the hospital until further notice. She sobbed. She clutched the edge of the blanket covering the huge mountain of her belly and wondered for the hundredth time, How in the world will something that enormous ever get out of me? After a long while, she picked up the book she had brought from home and began her week-long escape into GREEN GRASS OF WYOMING.

The baby waited. Totally unaware of what she was waiting for, she was content to swallow amniotic fluid, open her eyes to filtered light, and feel the restless movements of her mother’s body. Mostly, she listened to what was going on in the room where they both lay waiting.

...water is high at Williston, over the highway at Medora...

...flooding at Hansen and Beulah...

...Yellowstone started this whole mess. Ice finally broke, and water is receding up by Miles City. It’s all on the Missouri now.

...heading this way.

...Missouri’s on her last rampage. That Garrison Dam will put her in her place.

...ice here is breaking up...

...cresting tomorrow...

The baby didn’t understand any of the words, but she could feel the tension. Everyone was nervous. There was more:

...smallpox...

...no one allowed in...

...quarantine...

At one point, the baby felt her mother tense up. Emma couldn’t hold the pressure any more, she had had enough! What are you saying? she shouted. Are we going to be flooded? I came here to be safe!!

Oh no, Ma’am, came the comforting reply. The river has already flowed out of its banks in the lower part of town, but it is cresting tomorrow and it will never get this high. We are on a hill and on the third floor!

The edginess around the baby was palpable, but it didn’t matter much. She was comfortable, warm, nourished, and protected.

Until suddenly she wasn’t. The waiting was over. Her world gushed past her in great sweeping waves. No more languid floating. Now she became aware of skin-on-skin as she felt the inside of the uterus without the buffer of fluid. It wasn’t a terrible thing, but she didn’t have much time to ponder it. She quickly felt a huge, mindless pressure from all directions. There was no resisting, the force was too powerful. She tried kicking once, but it moved her head even further down into a space that was already too small. She craned her neck to ease the pressure on her head but it only forced her jaw to jut out. There was no lazy, haphazard opening of her eyes anymore. They were pinched shut against something immovable. There was nothing but Dark Mist.

A piercing sound tore through her universe. She knew from the vibration that it came from her mother. It was guttural, intense, agonizing, and it returned at increasingly frequent intervals.

...PUSH!

...I AM pushing...

...push harder...

That pain and fear seemed to go on for a very long time. The Dark Mist deepened.

...MY BACK! MY LEGS!...

...Uh, Oh...sunny side up...

...no wonder she’s been in labor so long...

...Twilight Sleep!! Now!! Go light on the morphine, heavy on the scop. We don’t care how much she hurts, we just don’t want her to remember it. Now!!

...But the baby...

...NOW!!...

...and get the straps. This one isn’t going to start kicking me!

There was a long period of time when the screaming became less intense but moaning increased. The baby could feel it rumbling up through the mother’s body. Then came her delirious words that nobody could make any sense of:

The Water!! I’m Drowning!! Hobo, no food! No, no no!!! Hear me, NO! Lizards and gravel...sand pit.

The doctor and nurses took no notice, as if they had heard it all before.

Cord wrapped, too! announced a nurse.

The doctor responded sternly. Tighter straps! Get those legs tied down!!

The baby was beginning to understand fear. Something terrible was happening to the mother, but it wasn’t worse than what was happening deep in her own chest. The Dark Mist was becoming thicker. She couldn’t breathe. Something terrible... something scary...something...

The doctor’s voice came again, louder, more forcefully. ...FORCEPS... Then he bent close to Mother’s ear and nearly shouted, ...Now, let’s get this moving, Push! NOW!

Something hard, metallic, that felt like danger slid in tightly on both sides of the baby’s tiny head and pushed inward toward her brain. There was pain but it increased to searing, burning anguish as it pulled her head forward. Her chin was slammed against something solid. The metal was jiggled back and forth until the impasse broke free and suddenly there was no more pressure on her face or head. The Dark Mist slowly, gradually filtered away while her shoulders, arms, and legs were drawn out. There was someone’s finger in her mouth pulling out leftover debris and a hand firmly wrapped around her ankles. She was raised high in the air and slapped hard on her bottom. She didn’t feel like responding to that assault, but she offered a muted, kitten-like little sound that seemed to satisfy the doctor.

...at least she’s breathing. We’ll see about her nervous system later...

...get that mother cleaned up and back to her room before she wakes up. Check for marks from the straps.

*****

The floodwaters from the last great rampage of the Missouri receded as quickly as they had advanced, leaving behind a trail of brokenness, destruction, and death. All along its path from Williston in the Northwest to Sioux City in the Southeast, it had overflowed, forcing everything and everybody in its way to either run away or try to fight it. Those who chose to fight were left homeless, battered, and brokenhearted.

It had shown no mercy, but the Army Corps of Engineers had promised that it would never happen again. They went to work with a frenzy never before shown, and dynamite began to shake in the northern part of North Dakota. They, and the U.S. Government, would win.

3

Wrapped tightly in the receiving blanket, the baby felt its security pressing against her back and diaper. Her legs and arms were curled under her as if they were still confined by the walls of the uterus that had been her home for so long. This world was a huge place with bright lights, loud noises, stabbing pain, and coldness she had never known.

The good part was that there were a few people who seemed to know about her, to recognize her, to care for her. They were called nurses, and they would talk to her, change her diaper, and sing silly songs.

She came to know hunger. It felt like a great yawning cavern within her that screamed out echoes of urgency, for what she didn’t know, but she did know that her life depended on her learning to scream back at it. She must cry out or die.

There was a woman. She heard them call her Mother. She would hold the baby sometimes when the others brought her into Mother’s room, but never for long. She seemed very sad. Sometimes she would offer milk from her breasts, which seemed very warm, but then they would bleed and she would cry. Later she would stare blankly at the wall. Then the others would carry the baby away, give her a bottle of formula, change her diaper, and put her back in her bed. Her bed in the nursery was stark, dark, and empty.

The baby began to welcome that darkness. Shutting her eyes against the brightness was one way to lessen the pain in her chest. Inside her head it was as it had always been—secure, quiet, and predictable—so she slept a lot.

The screaming, yawning hunger always came back, though, and along with it came her urgency to answer back. She already knew that, unless she made herself heard, no one would help her. She needed a lot of help, so she cried often and loudly.

It was the narrow time between the sleeping and the crying that she knew best. It was a twilight haze of nothingness, a quiet, creeping Dark Mist that would engulf her and make her permanently invisible if she didn’t fight against it. The Dark Mist was never far away, lurking in corners, under chairs, seeping under closed doors, a badness that she hadn’t known before her birth. Now it was a very big part of everything.

Having come very recently from the Other Place, she would close her eyes and try to get back to that place where everything was perfect and whole, beautiful and loving. The ache in her belly was no bigger than the ache in her soul. She could rest only when she could feel the closeness of that Other Place wrapping around her. In that place, the Dark Mist understood its lack of power. Here, it knew no boundaries.

After several days of the routine of sleeping and crying, they took her to the Mother. There was some talk from someone called the doctor, who said with great authority, There seem to be some issues with her respiration due to impairment of some sort in her lungs. Just be careful.

They gave Mother a bundle of papers and a little book called OUR OWN BABY. Inside it said that it had been presented by the Bismarck Tribune. It had pages for The New Arrival, Baby’s Family, Visitors, Gifts, and many pages to follow for recording growth and firsts. The first page had been filled out, "Baby girl Stockton, April 24, 1947, and the pages for visitors and gifts were carefully filled out in Mother’s fluid, well-practiced penmanship. After this day, it would never be opened again.

The Nurses carefully helped Mother into her wool coat and snow boots. The coat was green—startling emerald green—and she had made it herself with fabric purchased from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. She was helped into a wheelchair; the nurse gently kissed the baby goodbye and carefully placed the bundle in Mother’s lap. She pushed the elevator button down to the Main Entrance.

Outside in the brilliant blue day, waiting with great enthusiasm was a man called Daddy. Behind him and a little to the side was a much smaller person wearing a bright emerald green coat that matched Mother’s. Someone called her Sister. The nurse joyfully introduced the baby to her family and everyone smiled a lot. Daddy tenderly picked up his new daughter, held her triumphantly to the sky and said in a loud voice, Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this glorious child. May you bless her and keep her throughout all of her days! He leaned far over, pulled the blanket from around the baby’s face and, kneeling, he said to Sister, Isn’t she Beautiful?!

With no hesitation at all, Sister emphatically said, No, she is Not!

Oh, well, grinned Daddy, she will grow on you.

He held the baby close for a long time and gazed lovingly into her wide- eyed face. Sister had been holding a bouquet of yellow daffodils and energetically pushed them at Mother as she climbed up onto her lap. She snuggled in until they looked lost in a sea of emerald green. Everyone seemed very happy, and the baby squirmed deep into the strong, protective arms of the Daddy. There was something about him that reminded her of the Other Place, something whole and perfect, beautiful and loving. For the first time in her week on earth, she felt truly content. She had found her home.

Daddy took Mother’s arm and helped her out of the wheelchair and into the front passenger seat of the car as he continued to cradle his new treasure. Leaning in to give the baby to her, she turned away and said, Give her to Sissy. Unsure that a six-year-old should be trusted, he gave Mother a questioning look, to which she snapped, I’ve been holding her for a week. Sissy can take a turn.

As Daddy climbed behind the steering wheel, he took one more glance over his shoulder, wondering what the future would hold for his daughters. Whatever it was, he was certain that it would be very good. God was in charge.

Sissy was happy to accept her turn at being the responsible adult. She held the baby against her shoulder, while the baby’s blurry eyes tried to take in all of the newness around her. As sleep crept closer, her head bounced a little, and her fingers curled around a piece of Sissy’s hair. Sissy shouted, She’s pulling my hair! and unceremoniously put the baby down on the bench seat.

Then the baby saw it! Her eyes flew wide open, her legs kicked like pistons, and she began to wail. Fear gripped her nearly as strongly as it had when her head was stuck in the birth canal. She needed help, and she had learned to scream for it. The Dark Mist was rising from under the seats, from the windows, from the road itself. It was going home with them! Mother turned at the commotion, looked sternly at her six-year-old daughter and said, Just put your finger in her mouth. She’ll be fine!

4

Another name for Daddy was Rev. Samuel Stockton, and he was a good man. He was the pastor to the small congregation in Mobridge, but he was also an evangelist, a traveling evangelist. He didn’t start out that way, but through twists and turns handed him as he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, that’s where he ended up.

He was born in 1914, in Harvey, North Dakota, into a culture that had roared through the North American Great Plains fueled by Manifest Destiny and The Will of God. His parents were first-generation Americans with all of the idealism symbolized by the Statue of Liberty; they were the huddled masses.

By the time they came to America, they had already been huddled in Russia for a few generations, after having left Eastern Germany at the encouragement of Catherine the Great, the Russian tsar. The offer was for free land and religious freedom on the banks of the Volga and along the Black Sea. Conditions deteriorated for them over the following decades and, in the mid-19th century, thousands of Russian Germans left the oppression and followed their dreams of freedom to America, specifically in this case, to North Dakota. Emil and Gladys Stockton were among them.

Emil and his family were unaware that their free land had been forcefully taken from Sitting Bull and his Sioux Nation. The Stocktons were just specks, just grains of sand, just tiny particles of the massive tidal wave of Europeans that flooded across the plains of North America in Conestoga wagons, on horseback and on foot, separating from the mainstream wherever the deed from the American Government said they had a right to. They built soddies sourced from the top layer of the ancient ground that they cleared to grow crops. Of course, it was all very hard scrabble in the beginning. They were born to cold climates, but the harsh, unrelenting winters of North Dakota required a lot of hunkering down.

Emil worked like a slave to his acreage and Gladys became a wonder at making do. Eventually they started to get some traction. They finally built a wood frame house with two fireplaces and knew they were secure enough to think of a future. Farming in North Dakota in the late 19th century required a lot of manpower, so they had a lot of children—nine, to be exact.

Right smack in the middle was Samuel. He was named after the prophet in the Bible who was born to work in the temple. This Samuel did indeed have a special spiritual something about him that was recognizable from the start. He was quiet, observant, and not confrontational. It was never really spoken out loud, but he was Emil’s favorite, and the plan from the beginning was for him to get some higher education. Part of the reasoning for that was that Emil and Gladys needed someone who could read and interpret the government paperwork that accompanied land grant farming. Throughout the years, that caused a little friction between Samuel and his hard-working siblings because his hands were softer and his intellect was encouraged to grow bigger.

In his soul, though, he was a farm boy. He spent his young life in long, casual days entertaining himself among the animals and in the fields. His favorite place was the barn. He wasn’t old enough to go to school and when he grew tired of helping his mother around the house, he would always gravitate there. He loved the strong, pungent smell of hay and cowhide, but most of all he loved the smell of horses.

His best friends were Bess and Bennie, the huge Belgian dappled gray team that Emil used for plowing. They were enormous to Sam’s preschool brain, muscled and smooth. He often went to the fields with his father and he loved to watch their sturdy haunches when they bunched and heaved as the plow raked through the winter crust. The rhythm of their movement had often rocked him into a contented nap as he burrowed deep into his father’s protective arms. He loved those horses, and he loved his father.

In the Spring of 1919, April to be exact, the air hung heavily and the land lay listless under an oppressive blanket of hot, muggy early-afternoon air. It seemed early in the season for a thunderstorm, but there it was. Deep rumbling and threatening growling came from the west. An ocean of dark, ominous cumulonimbus clouds obscured the usual wide canopy of blue sky. No flies buzzed; birds didn’t even chirp.

Samuel was with his mother in the kitchen planning to give their new cookstove a workout. They were making bread. As she kneaded dough on a huge chopping block in the center of the kitchen, Gladys was the first to see the giant, twisting, snarling black spike of terror bearing down across the plains.

Samuel, Samuel, twister’s coming!! she screamed. Run to Papa, Get him home!!

Out of the door he banged as fast as his five-year-old legs could carry him. He knew exactly where to go. Papa was finishing the plowing in the south forty. Sam would have been there with him, except he decided to stay with Mama to make bread. This day, though, they were all in danger. It didn’t matter that Papa wouldn’t want to come back until the field was finished...Twister’s coming!!

His little legs pounded as he ran by the chicken yard, past the stock tank, around the corner of the barn, out through the pasture where the startled milk cow grumbled her questions, deep down into the dry irrigation ditch lined by hostile brambles, and finally rising to the crest of the opposite bank.

There he saw them. Emil was the picture of concentration as he reined the team from one row to the next, intently looking for the exact mark to set the plow. The wind was howling, the thunder was rumbling, and the horses were dancing a jittery dance; they weren’t making it easy for him. In their excitement, they didn’t hear little Samuel’s pounding footsteps or his almost baby voice calling. They didn’t look over their shoulders to see his panic. Fear and anticipation churned in his little body, propelling him onward, although his muscles burned and his scratched legs bled. His urgency numbed his pain...he had to save Papa from the twister!

Suddenly, he was there, grinning at his achievement. He raced up to the big, comforting haunch of the matronly Bess and slapped her as hard as he could to get their attention. TWISTER’S COMING! GET HOME!

That is all he knew for the next ten days. The coma was deep and black. They told him later how Bess had jumped sidewise in her surprise, frightening Bennie. Both lunged forward and pulled the heavy discs of the plow directly onto and through Sam’s little feet. His feet were not completely cut from the ankles, but the forward part, from the arches to the toes, clung to the crumpled bits of flesh and bone by pieces of skin. Bones were broken, muscles ripped, and vessels gushed rivers of blood.

Emil was thrown clear and, in spite of his own injuries, ran to the boy and scooped him up into those same protective arms. Now he was unconcerned about the team or the plow or even about the advancing storm. All he could see was the river of blood coursing from those little feet and seeping into a sticky, brown sinkhole in the soil. He didn’t even know if the small, limp form held any spark of life.

He snatched up the little body holding the throbbing, pulsing, torn flesh as high as he could to discourage the hemorrhaging, while he ran, retracing Samuel’s path back to the farmhouse. There, the horrified mother buried the gaping wounds in a wash pan full of flour and began a screeching, demanding prayer, ‘FATHER, SAVE SAMUEL!" The prayers continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening. There was no hospital, not even a doctor, so they did what they knew to do. They changed the blood-soaked flour often and prayed.

The twister passed above them, the clouds stopped growling, and the older children returned from school. The oldest son, Reuben, was sent to the field to retrieve the horses and plow, but his mission was cut short as he passed the barn. Somehow Bennie and Bess had managed to drag that plow home to the barn without any guidance and stood ready to be unrigged and fed. Other siblings were sent to the neighboring farms to spread the alarm.

In that time and place, food was the great healer, staving off the darkness and struggles of hard times. Loneliness, suicide, and depression always hung on the edges like patient vultures waiting for weakness or inattention. Food was the one powerful weapon providing strength, warmth, and energy. So, food began to arrive in the helpful, caring hands of friends and neighbors. There were great heaping bowls of potatoes, canned green beans in Mason jars, roast beef, baked chicken, dill pickles, homemade wheat bread, hand-churned butter, all the remnants of the winter root cellar to be replaced during the more productive summer months.

Rarely a moment went by when Samuel’s small, silent form wasn’t touched by a tender, warm hand on his feverish forehead or a huge, callused pair of hands engulfing his small ones. Neighbors and friends took shifts sitting with him, always praying, as the fever raged and the coma deepened. The peaceful look on his face belied the calamity in his feet and legs. Emil and Gladys didn’t sleep, didn’t even eat for days. Gladys was in full Manager Mode, giving orders, organizing the neighbors, preparing meals; but Emil never left Sam’s side, holding him and praying.

As the telling goes, the prayers lasted for ten days. No one was willing to give up. Neighbors would take a break to tend the stock, Emil’s as well as their own, but would always return with more food and blankets for the attending crowd. They always brought more big bags of flour to put in the wash pan for Samuel’s feet. The little house was bursting with people, but the tone was quiet and respectful. Samuel’s brothers and sisters stayed home from school, the older ones tending the young ones. Even the babies seemed to sense the urgency of the situation and stayed quiet. Everyone prayed.

On the eleventh day, his eyelashes fluttered and his sealed lips fell apart. Very slightly, his breathing became shallower and his consciousness moved toward the light from the valley of the shadow of death. Softly, tenderly, they coaxed him to open his eyes and, obediently, he did, ever so slightly. Slowly, slowly, the consciousness returned along with confusion and wafting, searing, screaming pain. Little Samuel was broken but he would survive.

A collective sigh of relief, gratitude, and praise to the Father in Heaven spread among the gathered community. There were no shouts of joy, no horns blaring. There was no singing or dancing. Neighbors simply smiled, hugged one another, and lifted grateful eyes to the heavens. They gradually went home, along gravel roads, across section lines, into the tiny towns of McClusky and Anamoose, and there they told the story. Magic had happened at Emil Stockton’s farm! The boy would live, thanks to the Grace of God. The little, sensitive, loving son of the sturdy German farmer had faced death and overcome it. From that moment on, everyone, including Samuel himself, understood that his life was not his own but was God’s, intended to be used for His Work. Samuel was very special.

Recovery was long and painful. He didn’t walk for almost two years. The progress was slow and tenuous. He didn’t go to school until he was eight years old, and even then he relied on homemade crutches. By then, he had fallen far behind academically. The Stocktons spoke only German at home, and his learning to speak, read, and write in English was very difficult and time consuming. His younger sisters were ahead of him in their studies, and he often had to ignore his pride and ask them for help. Throughout his life, he considered himself to be substandard in terms of academics, but it didn’t matter. God would take care of it.

As a young man, he tried to resist his calling. He truly loved that wheat farm and the supportive family that had nourished him so well. Going to Iowa to college and later to seminary didn’t appeal to his agrarian nature. He wrestled with the devil and prayed that God would release him from that calling. He really just wanted to work the land of his father and his grandfather. Later in life, when younger men would ask him about going into the ministry, he would always tell them, Avoid it if you can. It has to be God’s decision for your life, not yours. In the end, however, there was no question that it was God’s choice for his life. His was a holy ordination. He was God’s chosen child and he was resigned to finding God’s purpose for his life.

He did go on to college in Iowa where he met a sassy, energetic, attractive girl from South Dakota. Her outgoing, aggressive way of always saying exactly what she was thinking was the opposite of his quiet nature and, as opposites always attract, he found her fascinating. He didn’t realize that he would spend the rest of his life slapping the heel of his hand to his forehead and saying, Oh Father, this woman you have given me...

He was thirty-four years old the day he met this baby girl outside the hospital in Bismarck. She never knew him to be anything but a strong, athletic man who didn’t even limp when he walked. He played baseball and basketball better than most. He bore no evidence of his early injuries except scars across the tops of his arches, which he kept carefully concealed under dress socks and leather shoes. He never went barefoot, and didn’t allow his family to, either.

As fine an athlete as he was, he was an even finer Man of God. Every day he greeted the sun with a prayer lifted to his Heavenly Father that the day would belong to God, that His Will Be Done.

That included the beautiful, sun-filled morning in April in Bismarck. God had blessed him with another gorgeous baby daughter and he made a vow to always protect her from harm and raise her in the fear of the Lord. Whatever would come, God would take care of them.

*****

The ride home from Bismarck was a quiet one. Sissy did stick her thumb in the baby’s mouth, who sucked greedily on it and was comforted by it. Now, stuck in place because she was attached to the baby, Sissy leaned back, got comfortable, and was rocked into a nap by the sway of Daddy’s Buick. Mother and Daddy talked about the previous week, how lonely it had been. Mother wanted to know every detail of Sissy’s time away from her. Did she get to school on time? Were her clothes clean? Did Daddy remember to sing her favorite song before she went to bed? Daddy had stayed home with her during most of the week until he had to get to the church to get it ready for Sunday services. Then one of the church ladies stepped in.

Isn’t it just like this one to insist on being born on a Sunday? said Mother through an unsettled yawn. I guess she couldn’t wait for a more convenient day for a parsonage family.

Well, it was God’s Will, answered Daddy. The bad part is that the hospital finally released you on another Sunday and we will be out of sync for two whole weeks. We’ll manage. I’ll stay at home as much as I can until you are feeling strong enough to do it on your own.

Mother didn’t know if she would ever be strong enough. Having one child was new and exciting, but this one had been hard from the start. Labor had been long and difficult, she had been alone and lonely. She didn’t much like the nurses. The doctor paid her no attention until the very last day, and even then he was rude. Now, experience told her, sleep would be interrupted, because the baby would cry a lot. She made a firm plan to get this baby on a tight feeding schedule and get back to normal as fast as possible.

She didn’t dare mention out loud that, in addition to everything else, she was disappointed that the baby wasn’t a boy. Somehow that felt like a failure on her part. They would have to keep trying until she produced a son and an heir. After this hard delivery, she wasn’t looking forward to any more of that!

The minute they entered Mobridge, people started approaching the car to see the baby.

My, isn’t she lovely?

"Look at all of that hair!"

Sissy, you are such a good big sister.

Let us know if you need anything, now. Just call.

Finally, Mother snapped at Daddy, If anybody else comes out, just don’t stop the car. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Just keep driving!

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Finally, inside their tiny wood-framed parsonage, they sank into the deep upholstery of their living room furniture and tried to get used to having an extra person around. Daddy was looking through the bundle of papers that the doctor had given to Mother.

It says she had some damage to her lungs. What happened?

I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was just so exhausted from labor, I wasn’t paying much attention. He said just to keep an eye on it. I’m not sure what that even means.

...And you didn’t fill in a name for her? Didn’t we talk about Abigail? Or Elizabeth? I thought you were going to choose.

I don’t think she really looks like an Abigail or an Elizabeth. I couldn’t decide.

I’m just calling her Bismarck Baby."

And so Bismarck Baby was what they all called her at first. It happened so frequently that it got shortened to Bisy, and they all got used to it.

Daddy was anxious that she should be baptized very soon in case something should happen. They knew that she might have problems breathing, and he didn’t want her to have trouble getting into heaven if things should go wrong. On the following Sunday, they had a baptism ceremony during the regular service, officially naming her Elizabeth Abigail Stockton. She might have grown into the bigness of those names as she got older, but she was never given the opportunity. From the first day on, she was always known as Bisy.

5

Having the heart of a poet isn’t about writing poems, although it might be. Shakespeare was a poet, as was Jimmy Dean. The view of The Promise of America shown to The Seeker by Thomas Wolfe is no less poetry because it doesn’t contain rhyme, meter, or couplet. Poetry is a world view that is expansive, inclusive, and compassionate. It depends on being in the moment, paying attention to detail, and feeling its own breath in order to expose its soul.

Poetry is soul work, and some are a lot more prone to it than others. Some learn it by example or through experience, but most are born with it. Poets are lovers, and a poet born into a family of non-poets is an outcast no matter how much nurturing goes on physically. That poet baby is, from birth, the weird one, the side stepper, the stargazer, the non-conformer. There is very little understanding for a poet baby: There are expectations to be met, agendas to keep, resources to be secured, dogmas to be revered, but not much mutualism to be shared.

The poet baby sees the world through a different lens. Because of that, the child is labeled self-centered, sophomoric, and uncooperative. She knows from the very start, though, that none of that is real; she simply values her inner work more than her outer work. Her pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness is more interesting than conforming to expectations.

Bisy was a poet. Sissy was not. Strange that they should spring from the same gene pool, look so much alike, have the same environment, and yet have very different world views. Bisy recognized the Dark Mist as something belonging to her new world but that was only a part of it. The other, bigger part of the world was beautiful, engaging, and authentic. She knew the difference.

She also knew that truth, beauty, and goodness had come trailing after her from the The Other Place. She could recognize it almost everywhere, in the color of corn, in the chirp of a bird in the apple tree, in the softness of bathwater on her skin. Truth, beauty, and goodness had power of their own and needed no support from her only her recognition. They would flourish and remain constant regardless of what this world might try to do to prove otherwise. She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew.

She also knew that she had the power to make the Dark Mist get bigger, denser, scarier, and more invasive if she allowed it. As she lay, day after day in a tiny bassinet in Sissy’s room, she began to realize that kicking and screaming didn’t make the Dark Mist disappear, it only backed it away for a while. Being a poet, she also began to understand that taking it head on, facing it down, staying quiet did the same thing. Only when it caught her by surprise, only when she showed fear, did it advance toward engulfing her. Fear led to bigger fear, so she learned to treat Dark Mist differently.

She learned within a few weeks that a bottle with warm formula would appear like clockwork, every six hours, to the minute. She learned to sleep through the night because it seemed futile not to; either Sissy slept so hard that she didn’t hear the baby or she ignored her. If Mother came in, it was certainly not a satisfying thing. No cuddling, no rocking, no singing, no pacing...just a silent change of diaper and a bottle that was propped up against a pillow in the bassinet, then nothing. The Dark Mist lurked in the corner waiting to become sinister. She had learned not to acknowledge it and often fell asleep with unfinished formula drooling into the sheet. She became a self-soother. She learned to go inside herself.

Very early that Spring, her basic world view had been solidly formed. It was a good place, not as good as The Other Place, but it was safe, warm, and she usually had a full tummy. She was with Mother and Sissy a lot. They treated her as if she were a cute little toy, talking around her, about her, but never to her. She was there for their entertainment and amusement and, in the beginning, that was enough for her. She was content and never cried. She was Such a good baby!

The only time that seemed different was when Daddy came home. It was like someone turned a switch and the room was full of energy. There was laughing, tickling, and being held high in the air. There was eye contact. The Other Place always seemed much closer.

He told her what a cutie she was, how her big eyes sparkled when she laughed, how deep her dimples were, and how happy he was to be home again. He had been missing her. He said those things to Mother and Sissy too, called them My Girls, and there was always plenty of all goodness to go around. He filled up the house with his presence. That was always the best part of her day, when Daddy held her. When he was there, everything seemed to smile.

6

The Army Corps of Engineers kept its promise. The Missouri would be tamed. In 1947, they began the big, five-year project of building the Garrison Dam at Riverdale, about halfway between Williston and Bismarck. They said it was for hydroelectric power and everybody knew it was also for flood control. In the 19th century, the water had run as freely as the Indians over this land, but Progress was the theme for the 20th century. No more following the wind or taking things day to day. Manifest Destiny demanded that subduing the earth was the only real goal. Europeans had made a deep footprint on the American West. They needed to grow crops, feed the nation, and make life easier for the coming generations.

There was one problem, though—or more correctly, three problems. They were called the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Arikara Indians. They were in the direct path of the proposed reservoir.

Originally three distinct tribes, they had, during the 18th century banded together to protect themselves against the Sioux, a larger, stronger, more aggressive tribe. In 1862, the Arikara joined the Mandan and Hidatsa, who had already moved north to the site of Fort Berthoud, and formed the Three Affiliated Tribes.

In 1876, the first resident missionary arrived at Fort Berthoud, marking the beginning of rapid and widespread missionization by Protestant and Catholic clergy. The Affiliated Tribes learned quickly about social organization structured around village-church complexes, and the decline in traditional, native societies and clans began.

They began changing occupational roles mirroring European-American Frontier modeling. The men became skilled ranchers and women became admired for their domestic accomplishments. They were honest, hard-working, cooperative Native Americans who, by the 1920s, had become successful competitors in the cattle industry of North Dakota. They maintained lower rates of alcoholism and welfare than the surrounding white communities did. They kept their heads down, their mouths shut, and their hands busy.

Then, suddenly, they began to hear of plans for damming the Missouri River throughout North and South Dakota. These plans included lands that had been protected by treaty since the 1880s. After some Congressional maneuvering that considered white settlers but ignored Indians, the U.S. Government adopted the Pick-Sloan Plan, which involved the taking of tribal lands and promised flood control and some hydroelectric improvements for Indians and surrounding white communities. The Indians weren’t sure that flood control was an advantage; they had been dealing with floods for centuries; but there it was. As was typical in most contractual issues between the white man and Indians in the Western United States during this period of history, the Indians reluctantly agreed to accept the terms of the act. They did that because they were convinced by experience that, if they didn’t, they would lose their lands anyway without any compensation.

The great relocation plan began. The Indians were moved from the fertile bottomlands that had made them viable as producers, to the upper plains where there was no suitable water. They were given wells that were too deep to pump by hand and contained water that was too dangerous for drinking, watering livestock or even chickens, who began producing eggs that could not be used because they were blood red from the alkali.

The physical dam created fragmentation of the reservation, renewing old tensions and creating new divisions among the tribes. The flooding waters of the new reservoir submerged villages, towns, farms, ranches, sacred sites, cemeteries, and sacred shrines not yet protected by the National Historic Preservation Act, not to mention generations of loving attachment to the land itself. The Indians had loved the land because it teamed with The River to make them prosperous and content. Now that had ended.

A promised hospital did not emerge, housing for the Indians was substandard, and there came a growing dependence on cash rather than trade. Indians fell into a culture that included welfare programs, poor health conditions, increased alcoholism, and crowded living conditions.

But Progress won. The Garrison Dam was completed in 1952, followed downriver by the Oahe Dam just north of Pierre, South Dakota. They created Lake Sakakawea and Lake Oahe, respectively, which became the largest reservoirs in the United States covering most of the north/south distance of both North Dakota and South Dakota. Below those dams, the Mighty Missouri was reduced to a mere shadow of itself.

At Mobridge, between the two reservoirs where the Stocktons lived, the Missouri still looked a little like a river. It would never overflow its banks again as it had in its wilder days when it left cut banks, caves, and point bars, but the channel was wide and deep. The surface often looked like a big lake with waves, white caps, and shallow bays where fish collected, but the depths were treacherous, fast moving, and urgent. It still had that unrelenting need to seek the path of least resistance.

7

Bisy knew the sound of that river from her very earliest days. She knew that, whatever was going on in her house or the church, The River didn’t take any notice. It flowed on and on without regard for anything but its own unbridled need for movement. If she couldn’t hear the sound of The River for some reason, she could always hear the sound of her own pulse and, somehow,