The Shaman Laughs cm-2

by James D. Doss

  "Don't bad-mouth Father Raes. And it is your business. I'm here to file a claim."

  Arlo was wide-eyed. "You're kiddin' me. We wrote a policy on your damn cattle? I don't believe it."

  "Believe it, piss-ant." Gorman pitched a scuffed blue envelope on the oak desk.

  Arlo opened the envelope, eyed the policy suspiciously, then bellowed. "Ecker, you write this big ass-hole a policy on his swayback cows?" Under his breath: "Dumb Kraut son-of-a-bitch."

  Herb appeared at the office doors. "Yes I did, Mr. Nightbird."

  Nightbird muttered to Gorman. "Damn Europeans been nothin' but trouble since Christopher rowed his boat ashore." Arlo buried his face in his hands and groaned. "Why'd I go hire a foreigner?"

  Gorman imitated that superior air he had often seen on his daughter's face since she had become a college student. "Probably 'cause he came cheap." You get what you pay for.

  Arlo was practically pulling the turquoise stud from his earlobe. "Damn, I feel heartburn coming on!" A ray of hope flashed across his face. "Is the policy paid up?"

  Ecker approached somewhat uncertainly; he offered his boss a folded computer printout from a legal-size file folder. "Yes sir. In effect through next December for twenty-four animals."

  Arlo squinted uncomprehendingly at the printout; Gorman watched his face and was reminded of a weasel. "How do we know the policy was written on your dead bull? Maybe," he glanced sideways at Gorman, "you got two hundred cows, you only insured two dozen?"

  Herb Ecker produced a piece of blue paper. "The photographs and ear-tag numbers are all here, Mr. Nightbird." The young man pointed at a color photo stapled to the list. "That is Big Ouray. Ear tag number 101."

  Arlo glared at the color photograph of the sullen bull, then unfolded the policy and read it through the bottom of his bifocals.

  Gorman grinned. Arlo was boxed in; maybe he'd get a major case of heartburn. Maybe even one of them coro-whatzits.

  Arlo folded the papers and dropped them on his desk. "So how'd your damn old bull die?" He tried hard to sound casual. "Some cityboy hunter mistake him for an elk?" That would void the policy.

  "Elk season," Gorman said, "ain't till October." The rancher smelled a trap; he looked down at his muddy boots. "Big Ouray's stone dead; that's all that matters. I want my money."

  Arlo sensed a weak spot. "Policy only pays on death by natural cause. Terminal belly ache, lightning strikes, baseball-sized hail stones, predators, that kind of thing."

  Gorman looked up quickly. "It was a pred-predabiter."

  "What kind of predator? Mountain lion, bear?" Arlo grinned. "Sasquatch?"

  "Don't know." Gorman shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Whatever it was didn't wait around for me." Or did it? The blood-chilling howl from the mesa top still rang in his ears.

  Arlo chewed on his cigar, allowing Gorman time to sweat a bit. "You'll need some evidence. The insurance adjuster, maybe he'll think you killed the bull." He saw Gorman's massive fists clench. "Now don't get edgy. I didn't say / believed you'd try to cheat the insurance company, but you know how nit-picking these adjusters can be."

  "You tell the adjuster it was a predabiter. Then he'll pay."

  "Okay. Tell me what kind of animal killed your bull."

  "Don't know for sure."

  "There must have been signs, tracks. What the hell kind of Indian are you, Gorman, you can't tell from the signs…"

  Gorman raised his big frame from the chair and leaned over the desk, waving his hand as if he might grab Arlo by the throat. "What the hell kind of Indian are you, Arlo, trying to cheat one of the People? You little thief, I ought to-"

  Arlo backed his chair up against the wall. "Now calm down, I didn't mean to upset you, but I got to go by the rules. Have Doc Schaid examine the animal."

  "I called the vet already; he's on his way to the canyon by now."

  "If he says it's natural causes, we'll pay. I guarantee it. You have Arlo Nightbird's word."

  Gorman grimaced. "I'd sooner have a bad case of the piles."

  Arlo let the insult pass. There was a rumor that, in his youth, Gorman Sweetwater had killed a knife-wielding Apache with those huge hands. The cigar hobbled in Arlo's mouth as he talked. "Dammit, Gorman, you ought to retire from this cattle business anyway. Can't make any real money at it, not with the import quotas from Argentina going up every year. Before long, you'll likely have to move them bone-bags out of Spirit Canyon anyhow."

  Gorman was stunned. "What do you mean? I've had an allotment in Canon del Espiritu for my whole life; my father had it, and my grandfather…"

  Arlo hung his thumbs over his alligator-skin belt. "You read the Drum, you'd know I'm the new chairman of the Economic Development Board. We're going to shake the federal government's money tree. They need a temporary site to store radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. We're going to propose using Spirit Canyon. Indian reservations are a natural; the state legislatures don't have much to say about what we do on our own land."

  The rancher's doubtful expression annoyed the entrepreneur.

  "Listen, Gorman, the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah and the Mescalero Apache down in New Mexico got a big head start on us, but I think we got a good chance to beat them out with our canyon site. I've been working on the Phase One proposal for weeks now; it's only for fifty thousand, but there's big money for whoever finally gets the installation."

  "I heard about it, but I don't see why my cattle couldn't stay in the canyon if that knuckler crap is as safe as they say it is."

  Arlo took another sip from his small flask of bourbon, scratched his crotch, and belched. "Government rules say we have to keep domestic animals and people away from the site."

  Gorman stared out the window at passing traffic. "The tribe wouldn't never allow the matukach to put garbage in the sacred canyon."

  "Sacred bullshit. I'll tell you what's sacred. Greenbacks, deutsche marks, yen." Arlo rabbed a beautifully manicured finger against his thumb. "That's what pays the rent. Anyway, it's not like it'll hurt that useless old canyon. I hear they'll cover the waste with enough concrete to build a freeway from here to hell and gone. And it's only temporary. When Yucca Mountain is ready, they'll move it all over to Nevada."

  "When would that happen?"

  Arlo ducked his head. "Oh, not too long." Fifteen, maybe twenty years. Maybe never.

  The rancher turned to leave. "You see I get paid for Big Ouray."

  Arlo followed him to the outer office. "Hey, is that Ben-ita? She sure has filled out."

  Gorman saw the leer on Arlo's piglike face. It had been a very bad day, and this was finally just too much. He wheeled on the smaller man. "You better get control of it, Arlo, before somebody snips it off." The rancher's hand made a cutting motion across his crotch.

  Louise Marie LaForte, an elderly French Canadian who had stopped by to renew her fire insurance, watched through slit lids.

  "Oui," she whispered to Herb Ecker, "a warning to take seriously."

  Arlo raised his hands in apology. "Hey, I didn't mean nothin'…"

  Ecker fumbled awkwardly with a sheaf of papers; he avoided looking at Benita.

  The rancher, with his daughter leading the way, stomped toward the door.

  Arlo's mouth dropped open. "Get a hold of yourself, old man, all I said was-"

  Gorman slammed the door hard. The plastic sign listing the daily hours of the Nightbird Insurance Agency popped loose and clattered onto the floor.

  Arlo watched Ecker replace the small sign on the door. "Hardnosed old bastard," he muttered.

  Herb Ecker cleared his throat; he moved close to his boss.

  "I'm about to take the mail to the post office. Is there anything you want before I leave?"

  Arlo waved his cigar impatiently. "Yeah, you Kraut Boy Scout, I want you to take some friendly advice. Sell insurance on automobiles and houses. Move some term life whenever you get half a chance."

  He glanced toward Louise Marie but didn't bother to lower his voice becau
se any fool knew that all old people were half deaf. "Scare the old grannys into spending every penny they have on supplemental health insurance. But you sell one more policy on somebody's good-for-nothing livestock, and you can find yourself another job. I could replace you like that"-he attempted to snap his stubby fingers-"salesmen are a dime a half-dozen and overpriced at that." Arlo clamped his teeth, almost biting through the fat cigar. "Maybe you'd like to go back to Doc Schaid and clean up after the animals for minimum wage. I imagine he likes Krauts."

  Herb's back stiffened; there was a momentary hint of defiance in his eye. "I am not German, Mr. Nightbird. I am Belgian."

  Arlo leaned forward, his unblinking eyes like fried eggs, and shook his finger in the young man's face. "Wops, dagos, Krauts, Frogs," he rasped, "they're all the same European immigrant white trash to me."

  Louise Marie LaForte momentarily forgot that she was pretending not to hear; the mouth-filling oath spilled out between her pursed lips. "Cochon… stinking little swine!"

  Arlo slowly turned his head and focused his bloodshot little eyes on the old woman, who clamped a tiny hand over her mouth. Louise Marie was certain that she would live to regret this error.

  And she would. But in a way that she could not have imagined.

  Daisy Perika stretched out onto her bed. She imagined what Father Delfino Raes would say about what she was about to do, then pushed the St. Ignatius Catholic priest from her thoughts. The old woman relaxed for several minutes, then closed her eyes and remembered the rhythmic chant that was centuries old when the Pharaoh's astronomers still believed the earth to be flat. Over and over the words pulsated in her consciousness… a song sung by women in trances who had heard the whisper of the Spirit. After hearing, they had used sharp awls of fish bone to stitch the tough walrus hides together. Their men had stretched the walrus skin over skeletons of green birch to fashion the sturdy little boats. The First People had chanted the words to the rhythm of their whale bone oars as they rowed their tiny craft across the dark waves among the floating mountains of blue ice. To a land that was harsh and sweet, old and new. To a world that, for two hundred centuries, would belong to their sons and daughters. But the song, which was to pass through a thousand generations and a score of languages yet unborn, remained fresh and vital.

  Now the shaman chanted the sacred psalm of the people who had heard the urgent voice of the Spirit:

  That Great Mysterious One… listen it is he who whispers whispers to our women

  We would stay here… ooh near the graves of our fathers in the arms of our mothers

  But he whispers to us… listen he whispers to us

  and we hear his voice

  Now across the dark waters… away we go away forever

  from the graves of our fathers

  Under the face of the moon… see we go away forever

  from the arms of our mothers

  These cold winds carry us… far away like leaves

  away like dead leaves

  The old woman's throat was dry; Daisy licked her lips and swallowed. She waited for a moment and the words began to flow again, like sweet water from a spring of ages.

  That Great Mysterious One… listen he calls us to this quest

  a hard journey to a far land

  To another world… away into a darkness

  into a great darkness we go

  We are now become… new children without fathers infants without mothers

  We are now become… old grandfathers of tribes grandmothers of nations

  Ve who were last… see we are now become the First People

  Now the song was sung. Her whispered words were replaced by a thumping sound, in rhythm with the beating of her heart. It was like the hollow fump-fump call of the Lakota medicine drum, the rawhide relic that now hung on the wall in her kitchen. Since her second husband had died, there was no one to tap his palm on the drum, to aid Daisy's entry into the misty edges of Lowerworld. By necessity, the shaman had trained herself to hear what must be heard.

  As the imaginary drum beat filled her consciousness, Daisy gradually lost awareness of her surroundings. The gray shadows in her bedroom were replaced by the familiar streaks of colored light and the heady odor of moist black earth, that rich soil found under the shadow of rotting pine logs. Daisy felt herself floating; then, without warning, she was falling. The shaman instinctively grasped for a handhold, but there was nothing solid in the dazzling array of flashing lights. She was under the branches of towering pon-derosas… then passing through the earth, along the roots of an ancient juniper in Canon del Espiritu. Her journey ended abruptly, the flashing lights were replaced with a flickering yellow glow. Firelight. She was in that place that other Utes whispered about in campfire stories-the subterranean abode of the pitukupf.

  The dwarf seemed surprised at the sudden entry of this creature of Middle World into his subterranean domain. He was busy sewing up a tear in his green shirt. He paused from his chore, dropped the deerbone awl into a sandstone pot with a humpbacked red rabbit painted on the bottom. The little man pulled his pipe from under his badgerskin belt. Daisy watched silently as the pitukupf stuffed a wad of dried kinnikinnik into the clay bowl; the dwarf used the inner bark of the red willow when he had no real tobacco. She would remember to bring a gift of Flying Dutchman. He lit a splinter of dry pifion from a glowing ember on his hearth, and touched this to the pungent kinnikinnik.

  When he was ready, the pitukupf nodded to indicate that his guest should sit on the floor by the fire. Daisy held her hands near the embers and relished in the warmth; her fingertips and toes always became terribly cold when she made these trips. The shaman wanted to ask the dwarf whether he had killed Gorman's prize bull, but hesitated. If the pitukupf had killed and castrated the bull, he would probably deny any knowledge of the deed. If the dwarf was innocent of the killing, he might be insulted by the implied accusation and become sullen. It was important to take just the right approach with this unpredictable creature. "My grandmother told me long ago: "The powerful pitukupf in Canon del Es-piritu, he knows everything.' " Her grandmother had actually said: "That grumpy pitukupf, the one who lives in the badger hole in the canyon, he thinks he knows everything." But the flattery was not wasted.

  The little creature solemnly nodded his agreement with this accurate assessment of his knowledge of deep matters.

  "Tell me, if you know," she continued cautiously, "who was it that killed my cousin's bull?"

  The dwarf stuck his hand into a tiny stone pot of red ocher; he touched his bony thumb to Daisy's forehead and left a scarlet print. An eye to see with. He whispered into her ear, telling her that the bull had been visited by an evil presence, but that he, the pitukupf, could not help his human friend in this matter. The answer was not in Lowerworld, but waited for her in another place, much farther away. She could go there if she was invited, but, he told her with some bitterness, it was forever forbidden for the pitukupf to enter into that domain.

  Daisy covered her eyes with her hand. If only Nahum Yacuti were here; the old shepherd might tell her how to get to this strange land where answers waited. "Ahhh… Nahum," she whispered, "this is very hard… what shall I do?"

  First, there was a dizziness, followed by a sense of floating. Daisy felt a warmth enter her old body, then a tingling, as if many needles had pricked her skin. She opened her eyes and realized that she was no longer in the home of the dwarf. At first, there was only a vortex of pale green light; she fell into this whirlpool and tumbled like a leaf caught in a swift stream… until she was on a wide plain, knee-deep in moist grasses of every description. There was no path here; the eternal dew on the grasses wetted her skirt as she walked. She marveled at lovely flowers that were lavender and orange and white, with attending bees that buzzed and darted among the fragrant blossoms. The rich brown soil of the plain was visible between tufts of grass, and the ground was littered with beautiful stones of every shape and color; she picked up chips of mottled gray flint, pink quartz and m
ica-speckled granite. This great sea of grass seemed to go on forever under a cloudless sky whose amber light did not come from a sun. There seemed to be nothing here but grass and wild flowers. The shaman was wondering about this experience, as she often did. Were these strange journeys taking her to actual places? Or perhaps they were merely visits to dark lands in her mind. She was turning these thoughts over when she heard the rumble of thunder. But no… this was not thunder.

  The massive form of the buffalo appeared on a low rise, his hoofs striking sparks on the flinty soil. The great animal paused and gazed down at the aged shaman, whose form was now that of a slender young woman.

  In a way that Daisy did not understand, the buffalo spoke to her. She did not hesitate at his summons; the young woman ran to the animal and leaped onto his broad back. The shaman held on with both hands to tufts of coarse hair in his shaggy mane. She could feel his great muscles ripple under her thighs as Rolling Thunder bolted across the grassy plain toward a dark wood. Here, the beast paused, puffing great billows of moist breath that became a fog over the forest floor. The sky was hidden from her view; great trees spread their branches over a barren floor that, except for a sickly gray moss, was devoid of any living plant. The largest trees were petrified, with leaves of glass, curly bark that had the texture of black granite. She was astonished to see many animals standing in this eerie forest. Deer. Elk. And cattle. They appeared to have been placed with great care. Some had postures that suggested movement: a poised hoof there, a lifted head here, nostrils that seemed to sniff the still air. But these creatures did not move. Nor did they breathe. Were they, like the trees, also made of stone? Big Ouray, Gorman's brawny Hereford bull, stood among them. His stout legs were spread in a wide stance, his head raised high. The bull's mouth yawned open in a silent bellow.

  The shaman slid from the broad back of the animal. Then, the buffalo began to walk among the lifeless creatures. The old woman in the young woman's body followed the great beast.

  She reached out to touch the glossy coat of a bull elk. No. This hide was quite real, but she could feel no ribs beneath the soft skin. And for the eyes-the eyes were cold. Dead. Gingerly, Daisy touched the tip of her finger onto the shining surface of a large brown eye. The orb was hard, exactly like a polished stone. A glassy eye that stared. At nothing.