The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  By now my heart was trying to bang a hole in my chest and the blood was roaring in my ears like a buffalo stampede. I watched in paralyzed horror, waiting for lightning to strike or the earth to open or whatever was going to happen. Yet nothing did, even though now I saw that Elvis Bearpaw was doing something so unspeakably blasphemous that my mind couldn’t take it in. A moment later he ducked back out of sight, and then after almost no time he appeared again from among the tables, running flat out back the way he’d come, into the shelter of the trees. He didn’t make a sound the whole time.

  It took a little while before I could move. At last I got my feet unstuck and began walking again, toward the town and my parents’ cabin. When I got there the place was dark and I let myself in as quietly as I could, but my mother was waiting for me and she woke my father up and they both gave me a good deal of shit. Under the circumstances I hardly noticed.

  * * *

  Early next morning I went back to Grandfather’s cabin. I hadn’t slept much even after my parents finally let me go to bed. My feet felt like somebody else’s and the light hurt my eyes.

  “Damn, chooch,” Grandfather said, “what’s happened to you? You look like you were rode hard and put up wet.”

  So I told him about Elvis Bearpaw and what I’d seen him do. I’d been planning to tell him anyway; I just hadn’t been sure when.

  “Doyuka?” he said when I was finished. “You’re sure?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. “I mean, I know I saw him and I know he went onto the grounds and in among the tables, and he did something. Whether he did what I thought I saw him do—well, the light was bad and I wasn’t very close. And,” I added, “I don’t really want to believe it.”

  “Huh.” His lined old face was as unreadable as ever, but there was something a little strange in the way he stood. His hands made a quick restless motion. “You tell anybody else?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.” He turned his blind eyes toward me and gave me a toothless smile. “You always did have sense, chooch. Too bad certain other people don’t have as much.”

  I said, “What are you going to do, eduda?”

  He looked surprised. “Do? Why, you know perfectly well what I’m fixing to do, chooch. Right up there on that stage, in front of the whole world.”

  “I mean about Elvis Bearpaw,” I said, a little impatiently. “Will you tell the Chief and the other elders? Will they stop the Game, or—” I flapped my hands. “Or what?”

  “Oh, no, no. Can’t do that, chooch. Too late now,” he said. “No telling what might happen. All we can do is let things go on, the way they’re supposed to. Afterward—” He shrugged. “Come on. Time we got ourselves out to the grounds.”

  We began walking in that direction. We weren’t the only ones. People were pouring out of the town and the campgrounds like swarming bees, all of them heading toward the Game grounds. They all recognized Grandfather Ninekiller, though, and gave us plenty of respectful space so that despite the crowds around us we were able to talk freely.

  “Anyway,” Grandfather said as we passed the council house, “you forget my position. Once the sun’s come up on Game day, I’m not allowed to talk to anybody, even the Chief, about the Game or the player. If I try to tell your story, I’ll be in the shit nearly as deep as you-know-who. Shouldn’t even be talking with you about it, strictly speaking.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “But what the hell.”

  It seemed pretty strange to be picking at fine points of Game protocol, after Elvis Bearpaw had practically pissed on everything and everybody. But I didn’t say so.

  Grandfather’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “Don’t worry too much about it, chooch,” he said in a softer voice. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”

  * * *

  At the Game grounds we waited outside the medicine line until Grandfather’s two young assistants came and led him away toward the big platform. I watched them help him up the steps, and felt thankful that I wasn’t allowed to go with him. Once inside the line, nobody was allowed to leave, or eat food, or drink anything but water, until the Game was ended.

  By this time the surrounding area was covered with people, from the medicine line—or rather a little way back; most people had enough sense to leave a couple of bowstring lengths’ worth of safe space—clear back to the edge of the woods. And into the woods, too; there were kids of all sizes, and quite a few grown men, sitting perched up in the trees like a flock of huge weird birds.

  Most of the people sat on the ground, or on whatever seats they’d brought along; it was considered ill-mannered to stand, since that could block somebody’s view. For the most part they sat in bunches of family and friends, and nearly every group had a couple of big baskets of food and water, because the no-eating rule didn’t apply to the people watching from outside the line, and there was no reason to pass up the chance to make a little picnic of the occasion. There was a lot of laughing and talking and passing food and water gourds around; in fact the noise was pretty intense if you let yourself notice it.

  Uncle Kennedy and his bunch had saved me a place, down near the southeast corner of the grounds, close enough to hear and see everything. I sat down, accepted a roasted turkey leg from Aunt Diana, wiggled my skinny young rump into a reasonably comfortable fit with the ground, and had myself a good long look around.

  There was plenty to see, for sure. Out on the playing field, the players were already standing at their places behind the long tables, facing the platform and, roughly, the still-rising sun. Front and center, naturally, was the table of the Host Nation, manned by the seven players who represented the seven clans of the Cherokee Nation. Elvis Bearpaw was right in there, standing straight as a bowstring. I couldn’t make out any particular expression on his face, but then all the players were looking very straight-faced and serious, in accordance with Game manners.

  On their left stood the Seminole players, in their bright patchwork jackets, while on the other side of the Cherokees were the players from the Creek clans. Directly behind were the tables of the Choctaws and the Chickasaws.

  Behind the tables of the Five Nations were those of the Seven Allied Tribes: Shawnee, Delaware, Sac and Fox, Potawatomie, Kickapoo, Ottawa, and Miami. I didn’t know anything about their clan arrangements or how they chose their players, though no doubt they used some form of blind lot drawing like everybody else.

  Each table was flanked by a pair of senior warriors, dressed all in black and carrying long hardwood clubs. The Deacons—I’ve never known why they were called that—would be watching the players constantly all through the game, for even the smallest violation of the rules.

  Up on the big platform, looking out over the playing tables, sat the chiefs and senior medicine men and other leading persons of the twelve tribes. Our Chief, for example, was accompanied by the Clan Mothers of the seven clans. There was also the Crier of the Game, fat old Jack Birdshooter, and, down at the south end of the stage, Grandfather Ninekiller and his assistants.

  Now that was how it was done when I was a boy. Later on a lot of things got changed. I can’t say whether the changes were for good or bad. I only know I liked the old days.

  When the sun was high over the fields, the Crier stepped to the front of the stage and called for attention. The Chief of the Cherokee Nation was about to speak.

  * * *

  Come to think of it, that’s one thing I wasn’t too sorry to see dropped from the ceremonies—that long-winded speech, or rather recitation, that the Chief always used to deliver to start things off. Not that the speech itself was so bad, but when you had to hear the damn thing every year, word-for-word the same every time …

  “Long ago there were only the People.”

  Marilyn Blackfox was a pretty good Chief in her day, but she never had much of a speaking voice. But it didn’t matter, since the Crier immediately repeated everything she said in English, in a voice that carried like the bellow of a bull alligator.
That was out of courtesy to the people of the other tribes, but it was also handy for the large number of Cherokees who couldn’t understand their own language—not, at any rate, the pure old-style Cherokee that Chief Marilyn was speaking.

  That didn’t matter either, seeing that most of us had heard the speech so many times we could have recited it from memory in either language. I leaned back on my elbows and let my mind wander, while she droned on and on about how the People tried to treat the whites right, when they first showed up, only to learn too late that this was the most treacherous bunch of humans the Creator ever let live. And about the massacres and the hunger and the diseases and the forced marches and the rest of it: old stuff, though no doubt it was all true.

  “But even in the days when it seemed the People would vanish from the world,” Chief Marilyn went on, “our wise elders were given a prophecy—”

  Well, here came the bullshit part. According to Grandfather, who should know, the prophecy was that fire would come from the sky and destroy the whites, leaving only the People.

  Which, as everybody surely knows, wasn’t how it happened. Oh, there was fire enough, when the whites and the black people began fighting each other—I’ve seen the blackened ruins of the cities, and the pictures in the old books—until the whole Yuasa nation was at war within itself.

  But what finally finished the whites was that mysterious sickness that rushed across the land like a flash flood, striking down the whites, and the black people, too, even faster than their diseases had once wiped out the People.

  The legend is that the Creator sent the sickness to punish the whites and free the People. But Grandfather once told me a story he’d heard from his own grandfather: the whites, or certain of their crazier medicine men, created that sickness on purpose, meaning to use it against the black people. Only somebody screwed up and it wound up taking the whites, too.

  Some parts of the story are pretty hard to believe, like the business about people breeding little invisible disease bugs the way you’d breed horses. But I think there must be something to it, all the same. Because, after all, there are still a fair number of whites left; but have you ever met anyone who’s ever seen a black person in the flesh?

  Nobody knows why the People—and the ones with similar blood, like the Meskins—were the only ones the sickness didn’t affect. Maybe the Creator has a peculiar sense of humor.

  * * *

  “And so at last the People reclaimed their lands.” Chief Marilyn was raising her voice now as she got close to the end. “And life was hard for many generations, and they found that they had forgotten many of the old ways. But they still remembered one thing above all from their traditions, the one great gift from the Creator that had held their grandmothers and grandfathers together through the evil times of the past; and they knew that the Game could save them, too, if they remained faithful. And so it was, and so it is today, and so it always will be.”

  She stretched out both arms as far as they would go. In a high clear shout she spoke the words everybody had been waiting for:

  “Let the Game begin!”

  “Players,” the Crier roared, “take your seats!”

  Out on the field, the assembled players of the Five Nations and the Seven Tribes did so, all together and with as little noise as possible. They better; the hard-faced Deacons were already fingering their clubs, and even simple clumsiness could be good for a rap alongside the head. I mean, those guys loved their work.

  While the players bowed their heads and studied the polished hardwood boards in front of them, one of Grandfather’s assistants began beating on a handheld water drum, the high-pitched ping-ping-ping sounding very loud in the hush that had settled over the whole area. The other assistant led Grandfather—who was perfectly capable of managing by himself, but the routine was meant to remind everyone that he was truly blind—to the wooden table at the front of the stage. With one hand the assistant raised the lid of the big honeysuckle vine basket that took up the whole top of the table, while with the other he guided Grandfather’s hand toward the opening.

  Grandfather reached into the basket. The drummer stopped drumming. You could have heard a butterfly fart.

  Grandfather stood there a moment, groping around inside the basket, and then he pulled his hand back out and held up a little wooden ball, smaller than a child’s fist, painted white. You couldn’t really see it at any distance, but everybody there knew what it was. There was a soft rustling sound that ran across the field, as the people all drew in their breaths.

  Without turning, Grandfather passed the little ball to Jesse Tiger, the Seminoles’ elder medicine man, who stood beside him. And Jesse Tiger, having looked at the ball, passed it on to the Creek medicine man on his left; and so the little ball went down the line of waiting medicine men, till all twelve had examined it. At the end of the line, the Ottawa elder—I didn’t know his name—handed it to Jack Birdshooter, the Crier. Who took a single careful look at the ball and shouted, in a voice that would have cracked obsidian:

  “AY, THIRTY-TWO!”

  There was another soft windy sound as several hundred People let out their breaths. Everybody was craning and staring, now, watching the players. None appeared to have moved.

  The drummer was already pinging away again. Grandfather had his hand and most of his forearm down into the huge basket this time, and he didn’t fool around before pulling out the second ball. The ball went down the line as before and the Crier took it and looked and blared:

  “OH, SEVENTEEN!” And, after a pause, “ONE-SEVEN!”, just to make sure some idiot didn’t mistake the call for seventy.

  Still no action on the field. The players’ heads were all bent as if praying. Which, of course, most if not all of them were. I wondered what was going through Elvis Bearpaw’s mind.

  There went the drummer again, ping-ping-ping. There went Grandfather’s hand, in and out, and there went the third little ball down the line of dark-spotted old hands. And there went Jack Birdshooter:

  “ENN, SIX!”

  A number that low, this early? That was a lucky sign. And sure enough, over toward the other side of the field, the Deacons were watching one of the Shawnee players as he reached out and carefully placed a polished black stone marker on one of the squares of the walnut board in front of him.

  There was a muffled cheer from the watching crowd. Even the dignitaries up on the stage permitted themselves a soft chorus of pleased grunts. This Game was off to an unusually good start.

  My uncle said, “Want some more of that turkey, chooch?”

  “Here,” my aunt said, handing me a big buckskin-covered cushion. “Might as well get comfortable. It’s liable to be a long day.”

  Up on the stage the drummer was at it again.

  * * *

  It was a warm day for spring, and there was no shade out on the open ground around the playing field. My eyes were sore from my nearly sleepless night, so I kept them closed a good deal. Aunt Di claimed I fell asleep for a little while there, but I was just resting my eyes and thinking.

  I lost track of the progress of the Game soon enough; it wasn’t long before all the players had at least a few markers on their boards, and nobody could have kept an eye on all of them. That, after all, was part of what the Deacons were there for.

  As best I could see from where I sat, Elvis Bearpaw had a good many markers down, though nothing all that unusual. His face, when he raised his head to listen for a call, was still giving nothing away.

  The morning turned to afternoon and the sun began her descent toward the western rim of the sky. The shadow of the sun pole, in front of the platform, grew longer and longer. There was a big brush-covered roof above the stage, to shade the dignitaries, but it was no longer doing them any good. Most of them were squinting and shading their eyes with their hands. Grandfather Ninekiller, of course, didn’t have that problem. He kept reaching into the basket and pulling out the little balls, all the while staring straight and blind-eyed towa
rd that hard white afternoon sun. From time to time he would pause while his assistants put the lid back on the great basket and lifted it between them, on its carrying poles, and gave it a good shaking, rocking it from side to side to mix up the balls. By now I figured it must be a good deal lighter. I wondered if this Game would go on long enough for the basket to have to be refilled. That was something I’d never seen, but I knew it occasionally happened.

  This one was starting to look like one of the long Games, too. Already a couple of the senior Deacons were checking the supply of ready-to-light torches in the cane racks beside the platform, in case the play went on into the night.

  “BEE, TWENTY-TWO!” shouted the Crier. And down at the end of the front row, not far from where I sat, one of the Seminole players reached up and put another marker on his board.

  * * *

  The sun was going down in a big bloody show off beyond the trees, and the torches were already being lit and placed in their holders, when it finally happened.

  By then I was so tired I was barely listening, and so I missed the call; and to this day I couldn’t tell you what ball it was. I was sitting there next to Uncle Kennedy, munching honeycake and trying to stay awake, and my ears picked up the Crier’s voice as he boomed out yet another string of meaningless sounds, but all my mind noticed was that he seemed to be getting a little hoarse.

  But then my uncle made a sudden surprised grunt. “Ni,” he said sharply, and I sat up and looked, while all around us people began doing the same, and a low excited murmur passed through the crowd.

  Down on the field, Elvis Bearpaw had gotten to his feet. The two nearest Deacons were already striding toward him, their clubs swinging, ready to punish this outrageous behavior, but Elvis wasn’t looking at them. He was staring down at his board as if it had turned into a live water moccasin.

  The Deacons paused and looked at the board too. One of them said something, though his voice didn’t carry to where I sat.

  All the people in the crowd began getting to their feet. Somehow they did it in almost-complete silence. There wasn’t even the cry of a baby.