A day and a night in Rapid City, South Dakota—and the night ain’t even through yet. Had to hold my travels and kill some time on account of thunderstorms, dangerous winds, a tornado watch, and (I’ll be Blahdamned if I knew this) hailstorms featuring ping-pong ball-sized hail.

            No, sir. Not me. I’m just a simple ol Western New York boy when it comes down to it, and I am out of my element.

            A fish out of water.

            I’ve been in the middle of open water, in fact—taking gulps of the stuff, filling my lungs, with nothing to grab onto… but that’s another story for another day. I bring it up because the analogy fits. Kind of.

            When that sky turns out of the blue and into the black, forget about it. It can do whatever it wants to you. You are completely at its mercy. Smells of petrichor you wouldn’t believe, an eerie coolness that tells you it’s about to go down: you’ve got nowhere to hide, son, and it’s happening now! It’s happening fast! It’s happening to you! And people actually live here. With this kinda shit in the nice months, snow in the bad months (maybe they are the good ones in reference to one another?), and a whole lotta nothin in between (literally). Great Plains? I don’t see what’s so “Great” about ’em. Maybe they mean “Great” in a Trumpian kinda way? Regardless, they’re more like the Great Pains to me, and oh! how I digress.

            So I’ve got time to kill and I figure that’s a good thing before I kill myself with more driving. Plus, I’m crossing the country, I should probably take some time, right? Instead of killing it killing myself, bypassing it all, focusing on the edges of the road and the hours and the miles and all that.

            So I head to Mount Rushmore. Some people say it’s smaller than they thought it would be, I thought it was just about right. Could be smaller if you ask me. Could not exist at all. But there’s a gate barring us from the closest viewpoint of the monument (not for coronavirus, but for construction), which was not mentioned when parking or paying beforehand (leave it to the whiteman to go bad on their promises, eh?).

            This kid from LA singles me out to take his photo, as he’s traveling around the country in his Infiniti G37. I agree, then he offers to take mine. I questioned even taking a photo of this monument at all given what it represents, and my affinity toward not snapping shots of famous man-made structures even a child can picture with their eyes closed—or that a quick image search can take care of (even better) if not. But I concede, and it’s at this moment I flip those dead presidents the double backwards bird. The kid (Angel, at least half Hispanic or Filipino) loved it—at least as much as I could tell through his mask.

            In the moments which followed I wondered if I’d get kicked out for doing such a thing to one of the most brazen symbols of Americanism there is, yet realized they probably see it all the time—if not worse (I’m not that original)—especially in this politically-charged, unjust, racial climate—though if I were black they’d probably escort me to the exit, and that is the problem. (Who can know these things for certain? But the notion that we can all picture the aforementioned scene and agree to its possible reality is the exact issue we are facing, and epitomizes why I was partaking in such derogatory actions in the first place.)

            From there I’d had about enough, as the Teddy Roosevelt impersonator is awful, Angel’s photo is horrendously off-center, and children are running rambunctiously about—not to mention I’d found a better photo opportunity to the side of the main area without the construction gate imposing upon the angle, in my less-than-professional-yet-highly-biased opinion—not that it matters (what does?). It’s all juvenile, dirty, kid stuff anyhow, and Angel has already disappeared.

            Side note on children: Why? Seriously, why? Just stop. For the Love of Almighty Blah—please, stop! They bring nothing to this world, we’re overpopulated as it is, and they’re doomed to grow up in a pre- or present- or post-apocalyptic abyss—a technological and social wasteland! Not to mention they’re annoying as all hell! There’s only one reason you’d do it: You’re selfish. To them, and to me. Prove me otherwise. And I, for one, don’t appreciate it. The children might not, either! You let them choose their gender but do you let them choose to live? Oh, don’t start looking at me like that now. I’d take one for the team, even if it meant myself. And I’m not just pro-choice, baby—no, no. I’m pro-abortion. At least for a generation or two, until we get it all figured out. Whatever. I mean, it’s worth a shot. Nothing else seems to be working. Vote for me?

            Anyway—the kids are running through the parking ramp, their high-pitched, incessant screams echoing everywhere just as the kids are running down the halls outside my hotel room now at 11:30 at night, as the parents not only don’t stop it, they encourage it, and I wonder if I need to ditch the national monuments and tourist attractions altogether, as well as purchase pricier flights and hotel rooms, though I feel the young families’ reign on American travel/travel-in-general is inescapable—it is without escape—and that even then I’d only be dealing with the same shit yet on an unimaginably more entitled, bratty level, and I don’t want to find myself in a full-fledged fistfight with the father in aisle five because I reprimanded his kids—or, better yet, him—or showed him how to properly do so, thank you very much!

            So I formulate my next move in the parking ramp as the kids’ screams pierce my brain and I decide I’m a piece of shit for passing Crazy Horse a few miles back and I’d be an asshole and an idiot not to check ’im out, even though it’s a backtrack. (To be fair here, the Crazy Horse Monument does not receive the proper hype nor signage it deserves. Typical, right? Not to mention I had to pass through a wannabe Wild West, fake-ass shit tourist town called none other than Custer on the way there. You make your own impressions, I’m just drawing out the facts—*wink wink*—and Custer, Crazy Horse, and Rushmore are all within 20 miles of each other. Heavy area.)

            The Native American kid at the ticket booth isn’t happy about shit and I can’t necessarily blame him, unless it’s all part of an act (oh—how my straight, white, male privilege allows me to think). He takes my $12, assures me, “No refunds,” and I head through the gate.

            When I get to the parking area I find a beautiful museum—the Indian Museum of North America—yet the monument is only about 10% finished (over a period of seventy-fucking-two years!), and without a bus pass you can get no closer than a mile away (leave it to the redman to gyp you, right?).

            Still though, the message rings loud and clear, in the way the story goes and in the meaning of Crazy Horse’s pose: the whiteman asks, “Where are your lands now?” and Crazy Horse points in the distance and says, “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”

            Sadly, the monument will never be finished (unless generations from now) though they clutch to the dream—not only of the completed sculpture, but of the Indian University of North America in the mile between the museum and the monument as well—which somehow makes me feel so much better about my own unfinished work. (Side note: the sculpture is the largest on earth, and can fit all four Rushmore faces in his head alone, which is pretty sweet—suck it, swine!)

            Unfortunately, I can’t help this sinking suspicion that it’s all for show. Why’s the museum so nice? How’s 10% all that’s been done? Where are the 10 children of the Polish-American sculptor and his wife, dead in 1982 and 2014, respectively? Is this all some elaborate smoke-in-mirrors type of showmanship? To keep us coming and strung along forever? Are these thoughts my straight, white, male privilege peeking its nasty way through again? Or is it just the exact situation at hand, and an epic dream that they refuse to give up? Only time will tell, or will it? I only hope their intentions are true and the goal one day achieved, as it will only happen long after we’re gone, if ever at all…

            Once checked into my room I’m out for some Mexican food and beer and I can’t help but notice the Native American people all over the streets—looking shoddy, downtrodden—and the names of this region massively taken from their tongue. The girl who rings out my takeout is Native American, the girl at the gas station where I buy gas and beer is Native American—and neither of them are happy. It could be me, or I could (most likely) be overthinking it because of the pretenses of the day. When are gas station clerks or restaurant cashiers ever happy, you know? Privilege shows its horrid face once again.

            Yet, on my way back to my room I’m surrounded by lackluster restaurant chains, generic hotels, and other glossy sub-par worthless bullshit as my mind screams, “We killed their people and took their land for this??”

            The sun is setting, causing a golden Dakota glow over everything—over the Dakotas, the Black Hills, downtown Rapid City—and as I stop at a red light an older Native American woman in a newer model SUV on a smartphone stops behind me. I can see her smiling in my rearview mirror. I think of her now as I eat my American-made Mexican food (which I mispronounced when ordering) and drink my American-made Mexican beer (which I chose because of its abject characterization of a Mexican God—Jesus, or, as they wrote it, Hey-Zeus—on the can), and I can’t help thinking: Is this how it had to be? Maybe it’s not that bad? Is there any other way?

            That’s when I look across the desk and see the Crazy Horse pamphlet lying there—just like his body now, just like his dead—and the quote on the front, the big selling point, officially registered and trademarked:

“Never Forget Your Dreams”

–Korczak Ziolkowski

            Now that’s crazy. And I realize the answers to those three aforementioned questions are, in order, as follows:

            1. No.
            2. It is.
            3. There has to be.