Contract Killer

by Richard Hoyt

  The proceedings began with a middle-aged Indian man who wore an old cowboy hat with a dirty sweatband. He wore a Levi’s jacket that was open in front. He wore a western-style shirt with turquoise trim and mother-of-pearl snaps. He had a hard little belly. The huge buckle of his belt had the Budweiser beer trademark on the front. His black hair was woven into a thick braid at the back of his head. He stood on the front edge of the wooden platform that had been erected on the park side of the totem pole. He snapped a microphone around his neck. “Testin’, testin’, one, two,” he said. “Testin’, testin’.”

  The pot-bellied Indian put his hand over the microphone and said something to a woman standing at the base of the platform. He faced the park again. We in the park looked up at him, waiting. The noises of the flu and colds made a little symphony: someone coughed; the cough was echoed on the opposite of the park; two or three noses were blown; there was a flurry of snuffling. “Good mornin’ ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It’s nice to see you all out here in spite of the Seattle sunshine. My name is Leon Tallfir. I’m a Puyallup. It’s supposed to be my job to explain the stuff on this here piece of paper written by my daughter-in-law, which even she admits doesn’t make much sense.” He laughed and looked at the woman at the base of the platform, who laughed, too, and looked a little embarrassed. Everyone applauded. Thereupon, Leon set about to explain the stilted and confused description of myths and medicine men on the mimeographed sheet. Between the paper and Leon everybody got the gist of what shamans were all about.

  Tallfir’s voice was tinny and distant on the cheap microphone. He held the brim of his hat as he talked. He said, “If you’re the kind of person who watches TV all the time, you might not get much out of these stories. TV’s a great big tit, as I’m sure Coyote himself would say. Folks suckle up to the darn thing but don’t get much out of it. These stories are magic like you can sometimes find in a good book, only we didn’t have books so the stories had to be memorized and still are. They’ve been told and retold because they are truth, you betcha. This is what happened.”

  Tallfir started to unsnap the microphone from his neck, but he had one more thing to say. He gestured toward the group of Indian men, including Willie Prettybird, who waited their turn at one end of the platform. “These men are from various tribes here in the Pacific Northwest. They’ll tell you who they are. One thing I suspect, though, is that Coyote himself is probably one of them. I can’t imagine Coyote knowing we were going to tell stories about him — which he knows we’re doin’, believe me — without gettin’ in on the proceedin’s. There was an article in the paper tellin’ about today’s storytellin’ in which one of the brothers of the park here let it out that Coyote wears a red bandana. In view of that, our storytellers today all agreed to wear red bandanas so the real Coyote might blend in and not be an object of curiosity on the eleven o’clock news. You’ll have to decide for yourself who the real Coyote is.” Tallfir laughed at that, and so did everybody else.

  Sure enough, that was true. No matter if he was dressed in buckskins or blue jeans, each man wore a red bandana around his neck. In view of the politics of their white supporters, the absence of a female medicine man must have been of some concern; Indian shamans were traditionally as male as McSorley’s Bar in New York before women’s lib. Tallfir didn’t want to get into an argument. He chose to say nothing. No jokes. Nothing. The mimeographed paper said the ten storytellers represented such diverse tribes as the Kittitas, the Klickitat, the Clallam and the Cowlitz, the Yakimas, the Wahkiakum, the Snohomish, Skokomish, and the Swimomish. The ancestors of these gentlemen were around long before Eric the Red set sail to export VD to the Americas.

  The first modern-day medicine man to speak was a Clallam named James Whitefish, who was dressed in a buckskin getup that was really something. There were leather fringes down the backs of the sleeves and the legs. Whitefish wore a feathered headdress and moccasins that looked soaked and cold. He carried a tambourine-like instrument made of rawhide, which he whacked rhythmically with a stick. He went, “Neah huh huh!” Whack! Whack! Whack! “Neah huh huh!” Whack! Whack! Whack! He did that for three or four minutes, working himself into a trance, before he began telling a convoluted Coyote story that apparently contained some kind of moral about men who beat their wives and wives who were indifferent to sex. Both kinds of behavior were to be avoided.

  I was cold and dug my hands deeper in my coat pockets. I had the urge to warm them up with my crotch but remained civilized out of respect to Janine. I got lost in Whitefish’s story and started watching the crowd.

  I found something there that was just shy of stunning. Not one, but both of the Prettybirds’ adversaries — Foxx Jensen and Doug Egan — were among those watching. One with a dog and a motive, the other with a love of saws and a motive. They were on opposite sides of the park from one another. Mike Stark was in the crowd, too, looking merry as usual. “Hey,” I said to Janine, “did you see …”

  “Egan and Jensen. Yes. Here to see if these people are going to talk about their lawsuits. And Mike Stark. Look over there to our left.” She nodded her head in the direction of Rodney Prettybird and his friend Prib, standing on either side of Melinda Prettybird who had ventured out of seclusion to hear her older brother tell his Coyote story.

  George was at Jensen’s side, seemingly oblivious to the rain. I whistled in the dog’s direction. “Hey, George! Remember me?” George did indeed, and came a-running for a nuzzle behind his ears.

  Foxx Jensen beamed. “Old George likes to have his ears rubbed,” he called. “Miserable weather, ain’t it, Mr. Denson? Dogs like it, though.”

  I lowered my voice so Jensen couldn’t hear me. “George, was that you in the underground the last couple of nights? Down there howling like that. Was it, boy? Tell old John the truth.”

  George looked up at me with trusting brown eyes. His tongue slopped out over his teeth from the excitement of being in a crowd of people who competed for a chance to nuzzle his ears.

  I looked at Willie waiting his turn and couldn’t take my eyes off him. Willie was dressed in blue jeans, a red ski-jacket, and an Irish walking hat as might be worn by Rex Harrison or Laurence Olivier. He fiddled with his red bandana and stared at his cowboy boots. He held a small paper bag. He looked morose, depressed. Willie was ordinarily optimistic, ebullient. Not now. I had never seen him look so sad. He was not the kind of person to suffer stage fright. Not Willie. This was something far worse.

  Willie Prettybird was fourth on the list of storytellers. The rain suddenly swept across the park as Willie ascended the wooden stairs. Umbrellas popped as he appeared on the platform, his ski-jacket a shocking red. He stared out at us, clutching his paper bag, while Tallfir fastened the microphone around his neck. He began directly: “My name is Willie Prettybird. I’m a Cowlitz. This story was told to me by my grandfather. I don’t think it was originally Cowlitz because it begins in the headwaters of the Yakima. That doesn’t matter because it’s a good story. It could be Cowlitz, I’d be pleased if it was. This story is how our part of the world came to be made.”

  30 – COYOTE

  Splatters of rain leaped and hopped on the unpainted plywood at Willie Prettybird’s feet. He looked up at the clouds and grinned. He pulled the hood of his scarlet ski-jacket up over his head. He looked down at us and adjusted the microphone that lay on the red bandana at his throat. He began:

  “Once a long time ago a beaver monster named Wishpoosh lived in Cle Elum Lake, high up in the Cascades above Yakima, and was keeping the fish from the Animal People. He wouldn’t go dibs, which was the fair thing to do, then as now. The Animal People asked the Great Spirit for help, and the Great Spirit sent Coyote, who was living out there in the Horse Heaven Hills south of where Hanford is now.” Willie waved in the direction of Mt. Rainier, which was invisible behind the clouds. Hanford, as we all knew, was the atomic plant that, along with reactors at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, had furnished fuel for the Manhattan Project in World War II.
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  “So Coyote went there. He ran across hot sand where the wind blows all day. He traveled up the Yakima Valley and up to the valley that led to the lake. He ran up hot arroyos, running at the base of rim rock in the late afternoon. He ran across plateaus of cactus and sagebrush. He went up, up, through foothills. He ran past scrub juniper and jack pine. When he got to Lake Cle Elum he found the beaver monster. Wishpoosh was a hateful bastard. Coyote said Wishpoosh had to share the fish with the Animal People, but Wishpoosh said no. He said the fish were his. He said if Coyote wanted to take some anyway, he was welcome to try.” Here Willie Prettybird stopped. He considered his story. He looked at Jensen and Egan in the crowd below him …

  Mike Stark held up a clenched fist. “Yeah, Willie!”

  Willie Prettybird said, “Hell, Coyote didn’t have any choice but to take him on. The Animal People had to have fish in order to live. The Animal People didn’t want all the fish, mind you.” The rain began coming harder. Willie cleared his throat. Nothing would stop him from finishing his story. “Wishpoosh bared his teeth. Coyote sighed. They had at it. Wishpoosh and Coyote fought and struggled, and as they battled, the waters of Cle Elum Lake followed and made the Yakima River. It was a terrible battle. Coyote did his best, but the beaver monster was stronger. Coyote needed help and asked the advice of a woman in red who was a mushroom and lived in his stomach.”

  Willie Prettybird looked toward his lawyer and grinned. Janine nodded her head in acknowledgment and squeezed my arm. Willie reached into his paper bag and pulled out a snow-white mushroom with a shocking, white-specked scarlet cap. A person didn’t have to be a mycologist to know Willie shouldn’t be carrying that mushroom around. It had the look of evil, the forbidden. I knew from my earlier talk with Willie that it was a Fly Agaric. Even the white specks on the scarlet cap were startling, a warning to all but the biggest fool of fools. When Amanita muscaria is pictured in a mushroom book, the caption begins: POISONOUS. Willie squatted at the edge of the platform and held the mushroom out so that those up close could see it clearly.

  “None of you should ever eat one of these,” he said.

  “Amen, brother!” shouted Juantar, who had walked across the street from the Doie to listen to the stories.

  Willie said, “This is poison.”

  “You give Willie legal advice. Are you Willie’s woman in red?” I whispered to Janine.

  “I’ve got little red hearts on my underwear. Does that count?”

  “You do?”

  “You can check them out later on if you want.”

  After a minute Willie Prettybird stood up, saying nothing, and casually began eating the mushroom. The sight of him calmly biting into that taboo mushroom stunned even those who only suspected it might be dangerous. We could not take our eyes off him. It was as if we were watching Eve bite the fatal apple. Willie Prettybird was going to tell us a truth about ourselves.

  Having finished the Fly Agaric, Willie stared at the tips of his cowboy boots. He was waiting, we knew, for the advice of the woman in red who was a mushroom and lived in his stomach. We listened in silence as he concentrated on the woman’s advice. It would be a few minutes before she spoke. The wind abated momentarily and the rain changed into a wet mist. We waited with him, oblivious of cold feet and soaked trousers.

  We all knew Willie wouldn’t continue the story until he was satisfied that it was time. “Kinda makes me queasy in the stomach,” he said, and we all laughed nervously.

  “Take your time, Willie,” someone said. I looked and saw it was Mike Stark. Stark held up a clenched fist in support of the red-clad figure on the stage.

  “Is Willie going to be okay?” Janine whispered.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” I said.

  “You know, making a river took a lot out of Coyote. But he was a fighter. So was Wishpoosh. Neither one of them would give up. The earth rumbled and erupted as they fought. They fought so hard they made big holes in the mountains around them. Their fury emptied the clouds, which filled up the holes and made lakes. You’ve never seen rain like that. It took Coyote and Wishpoosh three weeks to battle through a ridge and make Union Gap. It took them eight days of bitter fighting to create the bend where the Big River bends near Wallula and heads west.”

  The Big River Willie was talking about was the Columbia. The bend where the Columbia turns west from south wasn’t too far from Cayuse, Oregon, where I grew up listening to the howling of coyotes in the Horse Heavens. Both Foxx Jensen and Doug Egan were listening intently to every word of the story.

  “Yes, Willie,” someone said.

  “The hateful Wishpoosh dragged Coyote on and on. The waters of the lakes followed behind. The monster tore through the high mountains and made the gorge where the Big River now flows. Coyote and Wishpoosh plunged through a ridge and made a bridge across the river. They pulled rocks from the shores and made waterfalls. Of course, the bridge fell in later.” Willie was talking about the Bridge of the Gods, a land bridge said to have once spanned the Columbia, and about Multnomah Falls, which plunges 620 feet off a cliff in the fabulous gorge.

  “Well, after Coyote and Wishpoosh battled their way through the high mountains, they came to the mouth of the Columbia down past Astoria where the big river flows into the ocean. Coyote was worn out. He was so tired he almost drowned in the waves. Muskrat laughed at him. Wishpoosh continued to eat. He grabbed whales and ate them. He ate seals. He tried to get all the salmon. He threatened to kill everything in sight. He wanted everything: More! More! More! He ate, and he ate, and he ate! He took, and took, and took!” Willie’s voice rose higher, higher, higher, until he was nearly screaming. He glared at Jensen. Glared at Egan. He was in a fury. His feral eyes bore in on those assembled below him.

  “Yes, Willie!” Stark shouted.

  Rodney Prettybird shouted above the crowd, “You tell ‘em, brother Willie. You tell ‘em, man. Tell the mothers. Tell the mothers where to go.”

  Willie was possessed, freaked out; he paced back and forth, eyes blazing. “Coyote knew he needed help. So he asked the woman in red who was the mushroom in his stomach what he should do.” Willie looked at Janine again. “She told him to make himself into a branch of a fir tree and let himself be swallowed by Wishpoosh. She told him to take a stone knife with him. Coyote floated out to the beaver monster and Wishpoosh swallowed him.

  “Once he was inside Wishpoosh’s stomach, he changed back into his animal form again and began to hack at the heart of the monster. He hacked and chopped and slashed until Wishpoosh was dead. Then Coyote made himself small and climbed out of Wishpoosh’s throat. Muskrat, who had laughed at Coyote earlier, helped him drag Wishpoosh’s body up on the beach near the mouth of the Big River. Everybody helped. With his sharp knife, Coyote cut up the big body of Wishpoosh. ‘Now then,’ Coyote said. ‘From your body, Wishpoosh, I will make a new race of people. They will live near the shores of Big River and along the streams that flow into it.’ From the lower part of Wishpoosh, Coyote made the people who were to live along the coast. ‘You shall be the Chinook Indians,’ he said to some of them. ‘You shall live near the mouth of the Big River and shall be traders. You shall live along the coast,’ he told others. ‘You will live in villages facing the ocean and shall get your food by spearing salmon and digging clams. You shall always be short and fat and have weak legs.’

  “From the legs he made the Klickitats. ‘You shall be fast and smart, famous runners and great horsemen.’ From the arms he made the Cayuse: ‘You shall be powerful with bow and arrows.’ He made the Yakimas: ‘You shall be helpers and protectors of all the poor people.’ He made the Nez Perce: ‘You shall live in the valleys of the Kookooskia and Wallowa rivers. You shall be great in council and speechmaking. You shall be skillful horsemen and brave warriors.’” Willie once again moved to the edge of the platform and squatted so he could be close to his listeners. We all moved closer so we could see the anguish in his dark brown eyes.

  “From here …” Willie put his hand over h
is heart “… he made the Cowlitz: ‘You shall be fishermen and shall live off the salmon that come to your river.’ Then …” Willie stopped. He stood and made huge scooping motions with the upturned palms of his hands. He suddenly began shouting: “Coyote gathered up Wishpoosh’s shit and hurled it far to the east, over the big mountains!” He shouted louder, louder. “‘You shall be people of blood and violence!’” His face was hard. He was furious, enraged at the beaver monster. He gestured to the east with scorn and disdain. “Take your shit! Take your greed! Take it!”

  Willie Prettybird was finished with his story. There was a silence followed by an eerie, prolonged applause. Those who had listened to Willie were gripped with emotion. The shared moment was so powerful it raised goosebumps on the back of my neck. Janine Hallen wiped moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  Willie gave the microphone to Leon Talifir and took his place by the side of the platform while the others told their stories. It was impossible for me to pay much attention to the storytellers who followed. Neither Janine nor I could take our eyes off Willie Prettybird.

  When the storytelling and the fund-raising speeches were finished, we made our way to Willie, who was the center of attention of a small group of men and women who wanted to be at once Bohemian and fashionable. Mike Stark stood on the fringes grinning his jolly grin.

  Willie had returned to his affable self. He slipped an arm around his sister Melinda’s waist and gave her a hug. Rodney and Prib were there, too, looking distracted, high on something. Willie seemed happy to see Janine and me. “How’d I do?” he asked cheerfully. “Did you understand what I was saying?”