Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  The only signs of activity were young people bundled up tightly in dull gray and green blankets, walking from their cars to the outhouses. Others seemed to arrive from the opposite direction and appeared as if they hadn’t slept. They held their cigarettes loosely over their red lips and bid each other good-bye.

  Among them I noticed a teenage girl who could have been an older identical twin of a Black Eagle Child girl back home. Although this one was dark-complexioned, she was very attractive. She must have been very popular, if one judged by the number of friends who strolled alongside, chatting and giggling.

  “Wa ba mi-Ko ko-me to tti-ma na-e skwe se a-Dolores Fox King. Look, Grandmother, this girl looks like Dolores Fox King,” I said.

  “Ka tti-be ki-ko me ko-me to tti. Why, this seems to be right,” answered Grandmother, who kept trying to roll down the window to get a better look. We listened to their lively garbled talk and watched the group disappear into taller grass.

  With the cold wind biting through our blankets, Grandmother began straightening herself by combing her long white hair. Together, we spotted Clotelde, my mother, her daughter, emerge from the cookshack with a small, steaming cardboard box. Around us, packs of people had converged quietly with chairs, cameras, and blankets to await the dance exit and the “stick-shooting.”

  “To ki-ke si me e mo. Ni wa ba me wa-ma a i-me to se ne ni wa. Wake up your little brother. Let him look at these people.”

  From one nudge Alan was awake. Clotelde, who had been invited earlier to help cook, brought over boiled eggs, cinnamon rolls, and hot tea. As we huddled in our seats with breakfast balanced between our legs, a single wailing voice lifted into the cloudy sky. It was followed by the loud simultaneous cry of the participants inside the longhouse, whose blanket door had been untied and removed. A young man emerged with a shovel that was smoking.

  “I ni ke-me kwe-e ke tti wa tti. Na a wise ki tti i a ta ki. I think this is the moment they come out. Now let us go outside.”

  We took our food and drink to the car hood and finished peeling the hot eggs. Alan shivered and rolled himself into a blanket ball with only his mouth and eyes showing. I sat next to him with my back resting on the windshield.

  Above, breakaway pieces of clouds shot toward the east, following different flocks of birds. Strange ones like seagulls, birds we rarely saw back home.

  The first person to come out from the longhouse was a young, lanky-built man they called “Bragi.” He had the responsibility of purifying the dance area. Wearing faded blue jeans, partially beaded moccasins with fur lining, and a tan and maroon high school sports coat, Bragi paced near the entrance, waiting for instructions. In his arms he held a short snow shovel, containing flickering red-hot embers and a clump of cedar twigs. Fanned by the capricious wind, the blue smoke whipped and almost caught fire. Bragi dropped to his knees and physically muffled the flames with his gloved hands. Upon instructions being given from inside, he stood up and nodded, then began to make the four oblong circles around the longhouse, being extra sure the smoke was controlled and steady.

  Grandmother described what had happened while we were soundly asleep.

  “Before sunup, a young man was appointed to walk up to the longhouse fire, kneel down before it, and scoop out the heart of the all-night fire with a shovel. He then dances with this twelve times around the longhouse, and at every third passing he stokes the fire, replacing the coals and the cedar. If he is overwhelmed by searing heat, the whole affair is weakened. For him there will be lengthy ridicule, and his mentors’ judgment will be questioned.”

  From top to bottom—a feat that acquired agility and upper torso strength—the lanky attendant carefully traced the outline of the entrance with the extended shovel. Through his facial grimaces it was obvious he was having a hard time writing with the monster pencil that gagged the delicate lungs with the billowing plumage of the Red Swan’s wings.

  Then, from inside, a new set of instructions was shouted out. A song was sung without the aid of a drum or rattle. With a whimsical shrug of his hunched shoulders, the attendant began to mimic a dance. He was embarrassed as he turned and faced the crowd but he continued dancing. In certain places in the drumless song, he cradled and pointed the shovel like a loaded rifle to the audience, to the cars and to the four directions, before he began trotting lightly around the longhouse clockwise, making a large, growing circle that wove through the women cooks, the spectators, and their vehicles.

  As his circles got wider on the third or fourth round, he eventually ran beside our open car window, waving the monstrous smoke-writing pencil in a particular way to its imaginary occupants. By ignoring us, we were being acknowledged and blessed. Blessings for the outsiders, in other words, and their transportation. Blessings to their radiator.

  Blessings, I added, for wherever in hell we had come to.

  With the wind blowing just right, the cedar smoke wafted directly into the front grille of the Mercury Coupe, where it was dearly needed. Bragi’s shovel drew the right messages. Old man Frost wouldn’t have to rescue us again. He would keep his twinkling eye from becoming the sun’s reflection on the rusted truck’s window.

  The sweet cedar aroma blew into the car and followed the smooth contour of the gray padded interior. It swirled once inside, peppering us with graceful touches, and then went on through. Something odd occurred when I inhaled the cedar: I was instantly reminded of the childhood sickness I once had. The cedar, I had always thought, cured me. But there were instances when its penetrating aroma conjured frightful mental images of a green Spanish galleon.

  From the way Bragi was bent over from the weight of the shovel and with beads of perspiration streaming down his brow, I sensed the shovel was getting heavier. Heavy messages came with heavy responsibility. As Bragi, the attendant, took a pause, I associated his glistening sweat with the cool water that was squeezed out from the washrags and onto my small-boned, fever-ravaged body. I could see the neighborhood women still standing protectively around my bed, listening to my erratic congested breathing. I was disoriented, and hallucinations were born about the fish-headed demon in a suit.

  Coming back to consciousness I saw how imperative it was for Bragi to direct the purifying smoke to everyone. Whether the cedar originated from a toy shovel or a large snow scoop, I was confident it would cleanse whoever was in its presence. In my childhood it changed into a hurricane of regurgitation and reversed the direction of the Spanish galleon. For Bragi, the task at hand was to convince Jack Frost that the area was safe. Once that was accomplished, the exit from the longhouse began. Next would come the critical part, the “shooting” ceremony.

  In the quiet that followed the singing and dancing, Bragi stood erect and breathed deeply with limp arms. His apparel, especially the large n on his sports coat, seemed incongruous. Like the tall unkempt grass, it didn’t seem appropriate for so serious an occasion. been touched on their shoulders with the peeled sticks. Their respective places were quickly taken over by “strong-medicined” dancers whose victorious cries and spurts of wild dance filled the smoky air.

  I couldn’t get over what I had witnessed: Before Bragi even had a chance to consider “shooting,” old man Frost, crouched in dance behind the doorway, shot him from behind where his heart, 0 te i, is located, and caused him to fall sideways, falling face-first into the moist, freshly trampled grass. There was a loud gasp from the audience as the sports coat-clad body hit the ground like petrified timber.

  “They will wait one round before trying to shoot someone else again. Look, the dancers will rotate their sticks and take aim before lunging to someone’s vulnerable shoulders. Over there on the side are the ones who deflected shots.”

  With all attention on Bragi, I didn’t see the six to eight other dancers who stood outside of the circle in a half-bent position. They stood by themselves, “trying to shake off the effect of the medicine-bullets.” On the ground the young and “weak-medicined” middle-aged people were scattered, some going into violent
convulsions.

  As the dance intensified iri song and drumbeat, other dancers shot each other. Those shot broke from the circle, staggered like drunks, and then dropped to their knees, trying to recuperate. Behind each victim would be a retreating stick-shooter who was blowing short breaths of air to the base and tip of the four rattling sticks. These were the older “strong-medicined” ones, who simply slumped over for a few seconds when they were shot, and promptly got back in line.

  At the conclusion of the chaotic free-for-all, my father and William were surprisingly among the six remaining dancers. I couldn’t believe they had made it through. I had seen them earlier, but lost sight of them. It was as if they had disappeared into the spaces between the dancers, eluding the older and more powerful stick-shooters.

  Downed dancers were spread out over the shiny grass near the cars. Concerned relatives and friends walked out and revived them with a gentle shake, words, or cold water. There were a few, like Bragi, who had to be lifted up and supported until he fully regained his balance.

  In extreme cases where the trance couldn’t be broken, old man Frost was called upon. He would kneel down and gently brush their expressionless faces with his callused hand and talk to them in a normal manner. As they.were slowly waking from their unconscious state, he would inspect their shoulders and act as if he was searching for an object lodged between the shirt or blouse and skin of the dancer. He would eventually remove shiny, black pieces of rock— obsidian—and place them in his twin bandolier bags.

  “That is what they use: bullets” said Grandmother.

  On the long drive back to the States, I found it hard to discount the ritual we had witnessed. For Alan, though, there was pleasure in sneaking up and jabbing my shoulders with dry, sharp twigs. I played the shooting game with him despite Grandmother’s repeated objections, and I was fascinated by the prospect of shiny, black bullets— talons—that couldn’t be seen, tumbling end over end in a flurry of sparks. At each roadside stop we reenacted the stick-shooting. The black talons flew from four rotating sticks and impaled themselves in the necks, shoulders, and spinal column of the Red Swan carriers.

  William must have sensed my curiosity, for before we got back to the Settlement, he inquired if I harbored any intentions of becoming a member.

  I must have nodded

  Many years after the pilgrimage to Horned Serpent Lake, I found myself in an earthlodge at sundown, beating the hand drum with a loop-tipped drumstick. The Red Swan Society songs, we were told by William, had to be memorized and sung in the right manner. Furthermore, they could be learned only through frequent attendance of ceremonies. I knew then that no matter how much I beseeched the Holy Grandfather to guide me as He had done with my father and William, it wouldn’t happen. At least not right away.

  Because of this religious deficiency I sometimes wonder whether a stray obsidian bullet grazed my heart that morning in Canada at the “stick-shooting” ceremony. Instead of empowering me, the ricochet talon ripped me apart from responsibility.

  When William Listener passed away six years ago, he took with him many songs and prayers of the Red Swans. A human-shaped presence consisting of hundreds of tiny lights evidently emerged from the intensive care unit and floated down the hallway of the Heijen Medical Center. These lights were said to be all the songs that only he knew, the total embodiment of religion leaving, for there was nothing around here for them anymore.

  I knew this, and so what was I to do?

  A Softball Game That Was More than Epic

  In the summer of 1969, on the playgrounds of Weeping Willow Elementary, I found myself engaged in a rather laborious game of soft-ball with children and several teenagers who had congregated from the various neighborhoods. Comprised of an even mix of boys and girls from opposite parts of the Black Eagle Child Settlement, it soon became a competition between the “uphillers” and the “downhillers.”

  Although I was slightly older than most who were playing that afternoon, I was feeling energetic for a seventeen-year-old. By then I had barely struggled past eleventh grade at Why Cheer High School, and the only thing that mattered was the immediate present.

  On this particular day, around two o’clock, I walked slowly up to home plate, swinging a crude homemade bat. Above, there wasn’t a cloud to be seen and the blue sky had a certain limitless height. Thoughts of school were temporarily far away, and around younger-aged people I was feeling less inhibited about my batting and fielding skills. Meaning they weren’t exceptional. Beginning from Weeping Willow’s playgrounds and even inside its gymnasium, spherical objects that were either hit with a wooden club or bounced on a polished basketball court never struck me as being vital. The only complication was, since everyone else was playing these tiring, sweat-producing games, I had to take part and make like it was fun and meaningful. Otherwise, had I chosen to mope somewhere in a corner and act uninterested, they might have sent me to the mental institute in Independence, Iowa. So; to a point, I gave spherical objects my best.

  As I gripped the bat that was split and nailed together in several places, I thought that it would be ecstasy not to dribble or bunt the goddamned ball anymore. In fact, I was quite bemused by it all until it dawned on me that I had one more year of physical education classes at Why Cheer High School. Ever since mandatory group showers at Weeping Willow, I loathed undressing in front of others and washing my body. I could tolerate sports activities, but when they always concluded with nudity, it nearly pushed me over the line. In retrospect I know it had nothing to do with a fear of seeing penises or subconsciously comparing the size of mine with those of other Indians or whites. No, nothing of the sort; being naked in a semipublic setting was just unnatural.

  Like the time I was about seven, standing stark naked in a metal tub with my younger brother Alan. Even though we were in the cool shade of a massive eight-parted maple tree, I was uncomfortable being scrubbed with a washcloth and soap by a doting mother. No one was around, but I still felt we could be observed from the gravel road by people in cars or those walking. And that other time when I was fording the Iowa River by the tribal fairgrounds with Grandmother and the Water Runner cousins: I was told to strip my clothes and carry them above my head. The three sisters, on the other hand, merely folded up the bottom of their dresses to their upper thighs, slipping them under the elastic of their underwear. There I was, sloshing around in the swift current, nearly tripping from embarrassment, and shivering with cold, retracted testicles and a profoundly embarrassed “Corn Mush.” To this day I think Grandmother made me strip for the benefit of her curious granddaughters. Maybe? Or was it for my own safety, that I probably stood a better chance at survival minus my apparel if I tripped due to my clumsiness?

  Nakedness at night, Grandmother later taught, was the ultimate defense against sorcery and unexplained phenomena. “When you make your stand, chew the witch-counteracting medicines and spit-spray yourself with it, covering your entire naked body. In particular the arms and limbs, your heart and head. Walk right up to the entity that has been sent and demand it show itself in person, making a strong verbal challenge. In its realm, due to your nakedness, you will also be invisible. . . .”

  . . . Just when I looked up from home plate and realized who was pitching the softball, I had already unleashed a furious swing that sent the weather-hardened softball whistling toward a delicate young girl by the name of Selene Buffalo Husband. All the players gasped as the softball shot straight past her extended gloved hand and into her stomach with a loud skin slap.

  Before, I hadn’t really taken notice of her, that she had tied a large bowlike knot with her front shirttails, exposing and highlighting her belly button. She was wearing a light red shirt and blue jeans that were cut above the knees. I had been so intent on playing that her presence had failed to register. Which was odd because years before I had had a number of erotic dreams about her. But, on that particular day, the bare skin of her beautiful stomach was the sole contact point. The petrified softbal
l hit her quite hard. She maintained her composure for a good ten seconds before slowly doubling over. As she held her stomach with a gloved hand and propping herself up on one knee with the other hand, her head dropped and her knees buckled.

  That’s when I remembered who she was.

  She had long shiny brown hair whose tips had been lightened to a brownish red tinge by long hours in the summer sun. The color was identical to that time I first saw her on the warm sidewalk outside of the Why Cheer Theater after the afternoon matinee. Unlike most Settlement girls her age, she had strikingly photogenic qualities. She was even more visually pronounced in bright daylight. Yet, even in the darkness of the movie theater years before, as she struggled to gain her vision sitting beside me, I secretly espied the beauty in her future. There was nothing sinister or “Kensey” Muscatine impure about that, except in old dreams that only embarrass me. The biggest difference between the dreams “Kensey” and I had was that I never acted upon them. “Some children are simply born beautiful,” Grandmother had said once at Horned Serpent Lake, Canada, “and they will grow into beautiful young adults.” Selene Buffalo Husband, as it turned out for me, was one of them.

  On that summer day, all of the softball players, myself included, ran up to her after the audible belly impact. What I almost did was turn around and flee. Even my companions, Ted Facepaint and Pat Red Hat, who had been watching from the hillside in a green Oldsmobile, began scolding me loudly for hitting her. I made absolutely sure I was the last one getting to the pitcher s mound. I remember thinking: What am I going to do if she’s seriously hurt? Had that been me, I continued, taking it in the gut—what a strong girl she must indeed be—I’d be writhing in pain like a decapitated snake over the bluish gray pebbles. I stood back and waited anxiously for the right moment. Once her own brothers questioned her and ascertained she was alright, I gathered enough courage to walk right up to her and ask a stupid question. “Are you OK?”