Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  Sounding agitated, Ted defended himself without the slightest misinflection. “No, I’m not talking strange. That’s what my aunt Louise Stabs Back told me. This place is supernatural.”

  Kensington, who was standing behind Horatio and Hayward, clutched his backpack like a hand puppet, holding it beside his wide face. He was still convinced it was geese diving from the stone columns; playing around.

  In the middle of their discussion, another voice joined in from the darkness. “Geese don’t throw themselves like bombs into the water, you savages!” Startled, the boys jerked their flashlights toward the voice’s direction. It was Pat Red Hat, emerging from the swampy portion of the woods.

  “Bombs?” whimpered Hayward. “What are you talking about, Pat?”

  “Those spaceships,” Pat said, pointing toward the hillside, “I think they’re doing this, warning us to stay away.”

  Pat ambled up to them and told them to turn off the flashlights, saving their batteries for later. Over the starlit railroad tracks the group of boys sat down—three facing south on one rail and three facing north on another, listening.

  “Don’t you get it?” Pat said; “we’re not supposed to be here.”

  “How many times has the water exploded?” asked Edgar.

  Before anyone answered that it was two times, Liquid Lake exploded again. Twice in succession. They could feel vibrations of the natural stone basin undulating under the soles of their shoes.

  On their subsequent ascent of the shadowy hills above Liquid Lake the boys were convinced by what Pat Red Hat had said: that whatever force didn’t want them in the area made the water explode. But there were limitations. There had to be. Stuff like that, being harmed through actual interaction with Supernaturals, just didn’t happen. The most they could logically expect was a fearful apparition.

  As they got higher up the hill their courage grew. On their first break halfway up they passed around a jar of tea and everyone took long swigs. “Ah, that’s good tasting,” each proclaimed after a healthy sampling. Wiping the excess onto their shirtsleeves, they all sat down, not far from each other. Each of them gazed upward past the thick forest canopy, trying not to think about what had just transpired. They noticed the stars were becoming increasingly brighter and more distinct. Beside them, in the underbrush, even the sounds of small animals or birds became more audible. And then out of nowhere a cool, nearly undetectable breeze materialized; it swirled over their warm, perspiring skin, bouncing from one boy to another, until one of them felt something poking him.

  “Hey, did you touch me a little while ago?” someone asked.

  “No, did someone touch yoti?” someone answered from the shadowy foliage. They could hear the capricious breeze swirling around in the brush, making small murmuring sounds, but they ignored it. They had no choice. They had to concentrate on something else. Edgar started talking about how delicious tea tasted after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms, sticky rice, and frybread. After Pat said he could almost smell the food, inhaling the night air, he talked about how he’d try to outstare the fiery morning sun as it came through the treetops. Hayward said something about not liking being jabbed in the ass with such a hard flashlight. Kensington cradled the backpack and gently rocked it as if it were a child, and Horatio babbled on about tree-gnawing beavers. They were speaking this gibberish until the mysterious hand began touching them.

  “Hey, did you touch me again?” someone asked.

  “No, did you touch me? Wait. Who is nearest to me?”

  “I am,” someone replied.

  “No,” someone said from behind a tree’s silhouette, “I’m the closest.”

  Only for someone else to say, “Hey, someone just touched me!”

  From the foliage, as the boys spoke their nonsense to no avail, the lights of a dozen fireflies began to assemble and flicker. Like the crickets they, too, were coming out, lighting up the fine stalks and leaves of ground-level plants. With that, the boys sprang to their feet. Once the weight of the backpacks over their boney shoulders was secured, they were ready to continue their climb. Beside them the fireflies began making an elaborate kaleidoscope-shaped design with their flickering green and yellow body-lights. Without a word the boys took a few steps up the incline and then paused to listen, looking backward. Far below, Liquid Lake was a shrill cacophony of frogs, and to the east and west toward O’Ryan’s Cemetery and Rolling Head Valley, the whippoorwills were calling. Before, except for the watery explosions and an occasional mosquito or two, it had been disturbingly quiet. It was now different under a deluge of pleasant night sounds.

  As the boys started walking up the terrain, the fireflies broke from their geometric design, following closely behind. When the boys stopped for a breather, the fireflies stopped also, lifting and then dropping repeatedly in one spot with their slow but intermittent body lights. The boys began to realize this particular batch of fireflies had probably been with them—two fireflies per person—from the time each of them entered the wooded domain at sundown. Everyone was aware of that fact but no one wanted to point it out, for fear of triggering another mystery. No one dared to look. Again, out of fear, they had no choice but to ignore the pestiferous fireflies.

  Upon reaching the top of the pine-tree-covered hill, the boys began tramping down the weeds and underbrush. They made a big circle and spoke little, gathering dry twigs and branches for the camp-fire. By then the twelve original fireflies had multiplied into dozens more. On each occasion when they suddenly dropped and flickered their lights in flight, other identical fireflies would appear. In turn, the new fireflies would generate others until the boys, who were sitting around the gathered firewood, were surrounded by a large circular mass that was a bright hazy green in color and pulsating.

  “Start the fire,” Pat said in a weak voice. “Who’s got the matches?”

  “I do.” Ted’s hands shook violently as he attempted to open the paper box of matches. The matchsticks could be heard as they were being rattled. To help him out, the flashlights were turned on again. With all eyes and concentration on Ted’s hands, his shaking calmed down. He struck a single match and lit the crumpled Why Cheer News-Herald, which set everything else ablaze under the iron grill. The dry twigs crackled and hissed as the flames rose to the cool night air.

  In the orange-red firelight they could see each other. Mostly they saw frightened faces. Behind them, aligned horizontally with their ears, was the circle of green light. They saw they were connected in this blinding, luminescent configuration. They couldn’t ignore it; it was there pulsating and growing brighter.

  Horatio, as he sat on bent feet, shot his hands upward, covered his face, and began sniffing. His partners, Hayward and Kensington, both wearing frowns that made them look like fish, kneeled beside him, wide-eyed and struggling to breathe. And Ted was still holding on to the box of matches and couldn’t let go; he shook them like a ceremonial rattle. Pat, with his eyes staring fearlessly at the green circle, stood up, shaking his fists. Edgar, near tears, reached over with a branch and stoked the fire. Sparks from the campfire leapt out to the treetops, stopped, and then floated back down. Soon the boys found themselves encompassed by a fiery green waterfall. Pat began singing, or he tried to, before a clogged nasal system shut him up.

  When the boys regained their sight, there were two overlapping beams of light, green and red, being projected by a tiny yellow light that was itself connected with shiny threads to a giant silver craft. By some mechanism the spaceship was being lifted from the sandy earth. The fine grains of sand could be heard scraping against the metallic surface.

  Suspended in the air between the packed trees, the silver disk-shaped craft and its occupants, small in size, could be seen silhouetted against the opaque windows, moving about. The boys sensed collectively that these occupants were seeing to it that whatever had to be done was accomplished in precise order. A whirring sound then erupted in their ears, and just when they were about to be levitated toward the asce
nding spaceship, a leather pouch belonging to Luciano Bearchild was thrown into the campfire. It burned rapidly and the contents began to boil as if something was about to be deep-fried in grease. As the red, glowing coals came into contact with the antiwitch compound of cedar, wool, and fine boughs of tender clusterberries, the blue smoke rose in the boys’ place and traveled to the spaceship’s designated point of entry. Suddenly, the green, burning waterfall reverted back to normal fireflies until all that remained was a phantom domelike impression in the boys’ vision.

  Birthplace of the Republican Party

  In the latter 1950s, between the ages of seven and ten, I became aware there was another existence altogether to our east, and a strong curiosity developed. With the exception of bimonthly trips to Why Cheer and Gladwood for groceries and clothes, I really didn’t know anything of these white neighbors who—as IVe mentioned—pegged their area as “BIRTHPLACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.” Although most Black Eagle Child households were dependent on their canned meats and sweets, I never gave their origin much thought. Mixed with our homegrown vegetables or with fish and wild game year-round, the food was fatty, sweet, delicious—and maybe in the long run dangerous to our health.

  For Grandmother the Twintowns meant employment. There she worked as a laundry and dry cleaners helper. Every day by cab or her feet she left for work. Sometimes, depending on the season, my mother, Clotelde, also worked at the chicken hatchery or window frame factory. While Severt, my uncle, was away at Parsons College, Winston, my other uncle, dropped out of school to work at Whitmore’s Sawmill. Everyone tried to hejp out. Later, I would learn that my grandfather, Jack Principal Bear, had toiled for years as a railroad laborer. Philosophically and politically, any contact with “the Outside World” was forbidden, especially among the Sacred Chieftain heirs. But by then everyone was aware that keeping a family fed was a basic necessity. Fiercely conservative on all issues pertaining to tribal progress, the Principal Bear family had a staunch work ethic embed in their conscience.

  On occasion, when Grandmother worked on Saturdays, my brother Alan and I were treated to the movies. The Why Cheer Theater was right next door to the Laundry and Dry Cleaners. We didn’t mind waiting three hours for the doors to open, and watching the shows twice over was common. By the time we got out, it was a short wait before Grandmother got through with work.

  We became familiar with the theater, ne ne ki sa i ka ni; it was a dimly lit place where my younger brother grew to idolize James Dean and the one-eyed Cyclops in Sinbad and the Seventh Voyage. The theater’s flashing lightbulbs and the tantalizing aroma of popcorn beckoned us. Inside, over the red carpeted floor, we marveled at all the candies under glass. On both sides of the wall, past the concession stand and the restrooms, movie posters of Giant and I Was a Teenage Werewolf were illuminated. Entering the unlit area itself was spellbinding and dizzying because the floor was built at a downward angle. The music would be on, vibrating off the high ceilings as we came out of the archway. We’d stumble around until we found the very first two empty seats.

  The movies, ne ne ki sa a ni, were an ingenious way to see and experience the lives of other people in what was otherwise a faraway, inaccessible world. As the curtains were drawn, monolithic life-forms moved rapidly on the white screen in an array of plots and scenes. Hearing amplified speakers for the first time made our eardrums tickle. Overall we didn’t understand the dialogue, for the English language was new. Even the Westerns seemed harmless back then.

  The Why Cheer Theater was also a comical place where Grandmother once walked down the aisle believing she was actually with the characters on the screen: grimy but sultry World War II nurses escaping from a Japanese prison camp. She was so caught up that she got tired from the wild adventure. Her intent, she would often muse, was merely to go to the side of the jungle and “rest.”

  On another theater outing, an infant-child by the name of Brook, Rose Grassleggings’s youngest daughter, got her hands caught between the backrest and the chair seat. It was shocking to know how this sweet, soft-spoken thing could bellow like a man. Little did I know that Brook, hermaphrodite that she/he was, would later enter the lives of Ted Facepaint and Junior Pipestar.

  The theater was also a place where I sat next to a young girl who would go on to impact my life and career. Were it not for the fact that what you are about to read came about through an erotic dream I had as a young man, I would be extremely reluctant to discuss this matter. Had this happened in real life, in other words, I might have gotten into serious trouble: She was ____ years old back then, and I was ____. Because of the crowd in attendance for What’s New Pussycat? she and her ____ ended up sitting next to me. I had seen her before and thought she was quite attractive, as Settlement girls go. After sitting beside her and intentionally rubbing my elbow against hers, I dreamt of her. For several years, once or twice a month, the nightly scene repeated itself: With no regard whatsoever for lawful conduct, singing along with Tom Jones, I suddenly found myself back in the theater. “Pussycat, pussycat, I love you, yes, I do. . .” In the dream I would slowly hoist her limp dress up with my left hand, jamming it gently between her warm, moist thighs. Before she could react and resist I slid backhanded through the loose elastic band of her towel-textured underwear and over the smoothness of her skin. As her chubby hips arched upward in surprise I went deeper, widening the way with my sensitive fingers, all in an effort to touch the softest, most private portion of her body. In waking up, however, there was a stupefying guilt for having such insatiable, obsessive thoughts. For that, a burning sensual desire behind my belly button, I had no control.

  Little did I know that this young, lovely girl who was rudely subjected to my nocturnal pubescent urges would become a future beloved companion. Seriously. Eventually, the dreams stopped and I forgot about her. I wouldn’t see her up close until a softball game four years later. But for a while there I couldn’t help but wonder what influence, if any, heaven forbid, Kensington Muscatine had upon these idiosyncratic musings. Sometimes childhood acquaintances can have an unsettling influence. That time at Liquid Lake, for instance, when the fireflies transformed into a burning waterfall, the sight of Kensington’s left hand protruding through the blue jean backpack, clutching an undressed doll with its plastic nippleless breasts exposed to the strobelike flashes of the Supernaturals, became memorable. Pat Red Hat often joked that from that night dn when he espied a bare-chested “Sandra Dee,” he was forced to wear sunglasses. “Sandra Dee, not the flying saucer, blinded me,” he’d say in mawkish rhyme, and we’d all laugh. “Sandra Dee, Hollywood actress, stripped of her dress, excited me” was another quip. The sad fact was, Pat’s retinas had been burned by the Supernaturals’ manifestations and the “Sandra Dee” doll was only the beginning of an unnatural penchant for “Kensey.”

  For an hour or so movies at the Why Cheer Theater transported us to unimaginable places. Sometimes Alan and I were the last of the matinee crowd to leave. We hung on to our seats, knowing the projectionist would rewind the film. Bedazzled by the fast, reverse motions on the screen we made our twenty cents’ admission go a long ways. But when the burly, silver-haired white man waddled down the aisle with his flashlight, the fantasy promptly ended.

  Outside, under the dusty lightbulbs of the marquee, Alan and I inhaled the warm summer air mixed with the odor of automobile and tractor exhaust, buttered popcorn, and steam from the dry cleaners where Grandmother worked. We stood over the warm concrete sidewalk, waiting for Grandmother and Joe Gadger’s taxi. Destination: the Black Eagle Child Settlement.

  In less than twenty minutes we’d be home.

  Once Grandmother paid the talkative taxi driver, we’d cross a small, clear creek, using the three wooden planks as a bridge. If the planks floated away in a flood, they were easily replaced by finding others. Situated in the shadows of trees and thickets, the creek had a pungent smell of mud. Here, the dragonflies flitted at our presence and the light green frogs leapt deep into the sandy pools. Corre
spondingly, in a flurry of silt and chunky particles, large minnows and chubs propelled themselves to safety underneath the willow roots, chasing out crawdads in the process. Past the makeshift bridge, we’d climb the clay-hardened steps that were carved into the ravine. Like swimmers emerging from a river, we’d come up onto the large, well-kept lawn.

  This was where we lived.

  The small unpainted house was all lit up by the hot afternoon sun, standing out against the hills of the thick, green forest. Caught between two worlds, this home was where we were taught there was nothing of value worth learning from white people, not even their language. Oh, we could work for a living and enjoy their cinematic forms of entertainment, but anything else meant contaminating oneself. Grandmother said so. Granted, using their food, clothes, and shelter is unavoidable, she would say, yet it is imperative in the religious and cultural sense we remain Black Eagle Child. Because education in the white world, through the martyrdom of Dorothy Black Heron in 1890, was a legal requirement, these critical factors were not easily retained.

  For the Principal Bears, the family in which I was born and raised, the enactment of a law designed “to hasten the transition of the primitive heathen to Christian citizen” was the birth of the tribe’s discordance and remoteness. The Sacred Chieftains felt there was more at stake than mere subjugation. It isn’t so much a test of our susceptibility, the Six Grandfathers conveyed, as it is an effort to keep prophecies from reaching fruition.

  With the advent of education came unwanted experiences. The Six Grandfathers wrote about it. Extensively. Over a period of sixty years a startling, collective revelation materialized through the gradual loss of traditional practices and values. Democracy, or a crude replica thereof, was eventually shoved down our grandparents’ gullets in the 1930s. In confirmation of our fears a bread factory was built near the railroad tracks. Next came a small grocery store that was also a barber shop and pool hall.