PINE RIDGE, S.D. — The deflated balloons and Styrofoam chips broken from fake castles — prom night’s refuse — have been swept aside.

Robert Ten Fingers is back home, a trailer house in the shadow of the picturesque Slim Buttes west of Pine Ridge.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, lost amid the gentle bubbling of heated grease that fills his mother’s pot. Danelle is making fry bread and pulls the long thick pieces out, one by one, to place on a stack to cool.

She turns around to chide him, noticing for the first time he’s wearing the red and black gingham pants with chains she so dislikes. They remind her of a 1970s-era British punk.

But he’s adamant about his right to express himself. And she backs down.

“She’ll usually let me do what I want, but not too far,” he says later.

v v v

It’s been a hectic school year for Robert. A year of studying, organizing events and marching.

He didn’t get elected senior class president, but he earned the title of student body president, a position that keeps him busy overseeing social activities.

He’s proud of his academic work but is facing an uncertain future, wavering between his interest in the military and his desire to further his education.

He knows one thing for sure: He doesn’t want to stick around here.

v v v

As a boy, Robert remembers playing soldiers with his cousins.

The five boys hoisted broomsticks on their shoulders to mimic guns. They marched in line past a blackened garbage can and chipped white picket fence outside their grandmother’s rural Oglala home.

Robert’s two uncles, back from the first Gulf War, watched from the porch.

Left, right, left, right, Robert yelled.

He wanted to impress his uncles, twins who were like fathers to him. His own father preferred the bottle to his family.

The memory stuck with him, inspiring him to become a soldier.

He participates in the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps at high school and ponders a career in the military.

In part, he says, it’s his way of carrying on his people’s warrior legacy.

Mostly though, he’s still playing soldier, trying to impress his uncles.

“I’m proud of them,” he says. “I do this for my uncles.”

v v v

Robert remembers marching again last September.

He joined more than 100 of his classmates walking from the Pine Ridge High School to the tribe’s administrative building. They were protesting the firing of their beloved superintendent, Terry Albers.

They directed hard questions toward tribal leaders gathered in front of the building. Why did you fire Terry? Did you fear his influence with the students?

They got few answers and left unsatisified.

It wasn’t the last Robert heard of the incident. High school administrators criticized him for his role in the rally and made him promise not to attend other such gatherings, he said.

He agreed, but quietly wondered whether he could keep such a promise.

v v v

Robert is not so sure he wants to be a soldier anymore.

He still takes part in ROTC and carries the flag at color guard ceremonies. He still does push-ups every morning and reads books about the exotic lands he may one day visit as a soldier.

But the fire just isn’t there, he says.

He wants to pursue marketing and envisions himself creating advertising for a corporation.

He doesn’t know how to tell his mother, and she constantly tries to persuade him to stay close to home. Attend college in nearby Chadron and work on the reservation, she says.

But this is no place to live, he thinks to himself.

Here, he’s watched his family dwindle, watched them die smashed under the metal of car hulks, their bodies broken and unrecognizable.

He’s seen his 4-year-old cousin, tubes running from her arm in a dark hospital room. Her jaw splintered after being accidentally run over by a relative.

He’s found himself in a similar place, despondent and crushed by the weight of his problems. Unable to see a future for himself.

His head has filled with thoughts of suicide.

v v v

He stared blankly at the white, tiled floor, afraid to speak. Seated before him, a school counselor questioned him.

Why did you write the note Robert? Is something going on at school?

He didn’t answer. He remembers simply lacking the courage.

Police took him to Pine Ridge hospital to evaluate his mental condition, to try to understand why he wrote a fake bomb threat  that emptied his high school.

How can they possibly understand? How can they know what it’s like to be a young homosexual man living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation?

It was nothing more than a cry for help. That’s how he describes the threat now.

“I could never harm another person, no matter what,” he says.

He doesn’t want to be known as a high school terrorist. He’s never done anything like it before or since.

Several of his teachers and mentors agree: Robert is no danger to anyone, except maybe himself.

“He’s had a lot of struggles in his life,” says Doni DeCory, project director for Youth Opportunity, a Pine Ridge-based youth recreation program.

But he’s endured, she says, and has pulled others up along the way.

“He’s a very intelligent and vocal youth and has a lot of leadership qualities. The youth always look up to him as being a leader. He stands up for what he believes in.”

Robert failed to show up at high school graduation last year to accept a medicine pipe on behalf of the junior class.

“He’s got a lot of potential, but there’s a lot pulling him down,” his math teacher, William O’Connell, says later.

v v v

Robert’s fears were confirmed one day in class.

As he listened to a discussion about the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a boy in the class talked about how gay people were abominations who should be shot.

Robert didn’t know what to say. He just waited quietly for the bell.

The Lakota once revered the winkte, or gay man. He was sacred, made powerful by living as both man and woman. The Lakota believed children given their Native names by a winkte would be protected by his power.

Times have changed.

Robert says he was 13 when he began to realize he was gay. Girls had always been his friends, but he was attracted to boys.

For four years, he hid his secret from his mother, thinking she wouldn’t be able to handle it. When he finally worked up the courage to tell her, he did so by writing a note and placing it in her purse.

That day at school was hell, and he eventually found himself in the school counselor’s office, tearfully confessing his troubles and fears of what would happen at home.

His mother greeted him at the door and told him to follow her to her room.

I’ll always love you, no matter what, she said.