James Giago Davies. Photo from Native Sun News

Skeletons abound in every closet
Here’s the oldest one hiding in mine
Iyeska Journal

A crisp, cold Saturday afternoon, winter, 1971, under an azure blue sky. There was a little blonde, had a pretty smile and a nice figure, liked batting her eyes at me, or I wouldn’t have been walking across North Rapid with a dozen other teenagers.

I was all of 13 that year, had kissed my first girl just weeks before, and I planned on making the little blonde my second. It wasn’t a big plan, I was just going to hang with these kids and play it by ear. She seemed interested enough, just had to bide my time until kids drifted off here and there and then I’d offer to walk her home. She lived alone with her mother and her mother was at work, the opportunity couldn’t be more ideal.

It would be another six months before the June 1972 flood swept away the neighborhood we were walking through: this was old Rapid City, and block after block of residences covered the river bottom where the Civic Center and Central High School stand today. Just northwest of the intersection of Omaha Street and West Boulevard was a wooded area, with walking paths that converged on a narrow bridge that spanned Rapid Creek, the water between its rock-lined shores frozen steel blue.

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(James Giago Davies can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)

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