Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  “Of course not, ke bi ti, plugged-up asshole!” she said in a firm Black Eagle Child tone, straightening herself up as if that’s all she needed to recuperate. “You hit the ball too hard.”

  “I know,” I answered sheepishly, looking away as she brushed off the dust imprint of the softball over her stomach.

  “Why did you have to hit the ball hard?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a sigh, feeling guilty and made uneasy all of a sudden by her assertiveness and reprimand. Finally, once everyone began to disperse, I looked into her exquisite light brown eyes and became transfixed immediately by her youthful luminosity. Of that I graciously partook and imagined to near reality how her actual presence in an assignation would overpower my senses with pangs of incurable physical desire.

  She was photogenically immaculate.

  And me? For the first three minutes out of the shower, I perceived myself as perhaps at my most handsome state. In those rare, fleeting moments, with hair slicked down by comb, along with a limp Fu Manchu-style mustache and facial skin that was shrunken down to the bone with icy water, I was clearly a fan of myself. After that, the face unthawed, revealing my worst. In terms of posture, my shoulders were drooped low and almost even with my chest. At five feet, eight inches,! fought hard to make my 158-pound body presentable.

  In the midafternoon sun, Selene, the butterfly enchantress, was stunning, to say the least, for an eleven-year-old. The red shirt she wore seemed to reflect off her suntanned skin. Below her eyes was a fine sprinkling of freckles. She returned my gaze and smiled coyly before saying what she wanted to say all along and deservedly so.

  “You re too old to be playing, anyway.”

  “You’re right again,” I said.

  That was all it took to abruptly conclude what had otherwise been an enjoyable afternoon. We stood there, looking at each other while the bikes were jerked noisily from the dusty racks. The children who had accompanied their older siblings were being herded from the creaky playground rides toward the gravel road. In small clusters the uphillers went uphill, and likewise for the downhillers. Everyone would take up the whole road, knowing the Settlement automobile traffic was next to nil.

  As I started to trudge toward my companions in the green Oldsmobile parked under the water tower on the hill, Selene, as a matter of coincidence, ended up walking in bouncy stride beside me. She had chosen to take another route home, a shortcut through the woods and the new residential area known as Candlestick Park. Her move puzzled me. I had just drilled a fossilized projectile into her gut, and now she was next to me. It caught me totally off guard.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, turning my full gaze to her.

  “Where I live, stupid,” she answered with a faint smile.

  “Shall I walk you home?” I asked. “Do you need someone to watch you?”

  “Somebody to watch me? No. But you can walk me home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. If you’re not afraid.”

  “I better not. Your parents might beat me up.”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  To this day, I don’t know what made me ask to walk her home. The words came out without the slightest hesitation. We walked a good ways up the hill, making small talk and going past the water tower and the Oldsmobile before I stopped and bid her good-bye. She chided me for being afraid to stay with her past Candlestick Park. “Yo-ur neigh-bor-hood,” she said with what seemed overemphasized lip movements. I liked it; she was arresting. Underneath it all, though, I was uncomfortable at the prospect that my “paper cocoon” fate would one day envelop her as well.

  As Selene walked through the wooded pathway with several butterflies following her, however, I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her shoulders were wide and her long-legged walk was as graceful as slow-motion film footage of an oceari wave. After she looked back at me once more, she ran her fingers through her long, light brown hair. I locked my eyes on her and imagined what she might look like in several years. “You have a fan forever, Selene,” I whispered into the flower-scented wind that had just flown around her halfway up the pathway. Before reaching the open meadow of the housing complex where my family lived, Selene was spotlighted by the intermittent rays of the sun in the way the wing of a turning airborne eagle shines high above in bright daylight over the Black Eagle Child Settlement. . . .

  When I got back to the green Oldsmobile with Pat Red Hat and Ted Facepaint, they looked at me with smirks on their faces, like I had committed a felonious crime. My bedazzlement over Selene Buffalo Husband probably showed on my face, until the odor of cigarettes and stale alcohol stains came to me.

  “Come on, goddamnit! She’s just a little girl, a friend!” I protested, knowing that was all it took to exacerbate the situation.

  “Well, well, Jesus! You’ve . . . you’ve talked about her long . . . long enough,” said Ted, nearly shorting.

  “How many years now? Two or three?” joined Pat.

  They were right. In drunken binges I loosened up to the point where I had mentioned how precocious her beauty was. Rare was the moment I professed my admiration for anyone. Which was why my friends thought they were on|to something, comparing me to the likes of “Kensey.” They were wrong, though.

  “Your little girlfriend,’ what’d she say?” asked Pat through a pair of thick, Roy Orbison-type sunglasses. Since the spaceship encounter at Liquid Lake, he wore them also at night. Sometimes they became so grungy, we took them off out of compassion and cleaned them when he passed out. Ted and I sometimes thought Pat detested soap from his “mouth-washing” days. When I reached through the car window for a can of Schlitz beer, I could see myself still as a reflection in his sunglasses. Pat began pounding his massive clenched fist on the steering wheel, demanding to know what exchange took place. It was all an act, of course, but the effects were dramatic. I could hear the vibrations from the hits all the way from the steering column to the rear axle. “Come on, you fuckhead, tell us!” he cried.

  “She didn’t say much,” I said, hoping that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. They sat still and then began chuckling in an oh-she-didn’t-say-much mockery.

  “Bo . . . bo-shit,” said Ted from the front passengers seat. “We saw you. R-r-really looking at her . . . her stomach. You didn’t care about her injury, man.”

  “Hey, I was scared when the softball hit her. Alright? She took it real good, you know.”

  Pat turned the steering wheel and released it, smearing the green grass onto the front bald tires. He looked at me through the sunglasses and began talking. “Yeah, but when she saw you coming, she got better, it seemed like. Real quick like.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And . . . and you guys seemed to forget about who else was there,” contributed Ted. “No-o-obody else in the who-o-ole wo-o-rld kinda thing.”

  After that, there wasn’t much I could do to keep from cracking up at Ted’s observations. I got into the backseat of the Olds, closed my tired eyes, and held my breath in preparation for a drink.

  We were still there well after sundown. In multitudes the crickets sang to us, as did the mosquitoes when they were not bloating themselves with our blood. Their small whines signaled their victory. They ascended to the skies, Grandmother had said, to have a ceremonial feast.

  We were bloated, too, with Schlitz and Leinenkugel’s beer. The cooler, including the car’s trunk, was full of beer we had stolen the night previous in downtown Why Cheer. At closing time we walked into the Spur Stadium, a redneck tavern, and staged a fight. While Pat was twirling a pool stick like a martial arts expert and running after Ted, I strolled to the mammoth refrigerator and began taking cases of beer out to the Olds. The local rednecks and wanna-be motorcycle gang from the skidrow “Perk-o-Dan” (Percodan), Zhevschtick (“Shitstick”), and Mirven families didn’t interfere with the fight as long as it was an Indian-on-Indian assault. The manager called the police but the police didn’t care either. In fact, they requested a blow-by-blow account over the te
lephone of the “fat poolstick-wielding Indian” versus “running skinny Indian” escapade. That’s how we got most of our booze. Either that or direct break-ins.

  Pat, who was a state champion heavyweight wrestler, was a good performer. He knew about angles and how crunching body sounds could be made by simply stomping the floor while the punches or kicks were being delivered. First influenced by professional wrestling programs from Chicago that he watched on television at the Settlement’s Barber Shop and Pool Hall, Pat wasn’t anyone to mess around with.

  I once sparred with his behemoth grandfather, Mr. Dugan Red Hat, who was a retired professional wrestler and bare-knuckle fighter. Clayton Carlson Facepaint, a Black Eagle Child war hero, was a skilled deliverer of knockout blows and finger pinches; Mr. Red Hat was noted for touring twenty years with the Greater American Midwest All Star Wrestling Confederacy. Everyone knew about his travels overseas to the country “down under,” as he’d say: Australia. Not many, it was reported, remained standing in the ring. People gambled at the bare-knuckle fisticuffs he hosted and participated in as an undefeated champ.

  When Mr. Red Hat challenged me to “a gentlemen’s match,” all I was doing that day was retrieving two buckets of water from the pump in old man Jim Percy’s yard. Inside the bare circle of tan dust where a Star-Medicine ceremony had taken place the night previous, I tightened the shoe laces on the ragged boxing gloves with my teeth and looked across the makeshift ring constructed of twigs and baling twine. I remembered seeing Mr. Red Hat. For two days, Unlike the other people who had come and gone in the cars or on foot, he was restless. Which was strange because he was also the first and last person there. The legendary” grappler didn’t stay for the actual mushroom ingestion ceremonies themselves, but he was there whenever food was being served. Three times on schedule.

  High atop this hill, next to Jim Percy’s two-story house, the doings were held inside the canvas tipi. Beginning at the tail end of sundown on a Saturday, when the lone drum first echoed over the valley, Mr. Red Hat was sliding down the steep path to the gravel road. From behind the mailbox post he pulled out a brown paper bag. After looking around he took a drink from the bag and disappeared around the bend of Wolf Alley, a notorious hangout for local winos and disenchanted beings.

  Following the opening drum roll, the long, drawn-out singing of a single man descended from the night. From then on, there was drumming and music. Different voices singing different songs. From the bedroom window of Grandmother’s house, we could see the orange triangle of the tipi on the hilltop flickering with sparks as the campfire was stoked. The next day, on a Sunday, everyone filed out of the tipi, spoke, and chatted until the morning food of meats, sweets, frybread, coffee, and Kool-Aid was served. By midafternoon, after the noon meal, most of the cars and their passengers had left. Except Mr. Red Hat. He and old man Jim sat on the wooden bench in the shade, drinking coffee. At seven o’clock the next morning, as I went after buckets of pump water, they were still sitting there. They didn’t say much. Maybe this was why Mr. Red Hat brought the boxing gloves out that first time, to cure the utter silence.

  “And in this cor-r-r-ner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Ed-d-d-gar Pr-r-r-i-in-ci-pal Bear!” he yelled out with giant cupped hands to old man Jim and the others as we walked over to the smooth earthen ground where the tipi had stood. “Representing the Black Eagle Child American Legion Hall Boxing Club out of Why Cheer, Iowa. Zero fight history. Let’s give Prince Bear a round-o-plause!”

  Mr. Red Hat’s command of the English language was superb. His voice sounded like a radio. After he announced himself, we squared off. At first, before we stepped on the ground sculptures within the tipi circle, we skipped or jumped over them. But when the contest got heated, the four small ash mounds got scattered. I had always looked upon the configuration as a spectacular toy, and I always left it untouched. Encircling the mounds were a series of rectangular imprints of sacred mats.

  Initially, I didn’t understand why I had agreed to fight an aged adult who looked like a majestic Northern Plains chief. All that was missing was his long, trailing wir bonnet. Yet I ended up taking his challenge seriously, whereas Mr. Red Hat was mildly inebriated and having “a jolly good time.” He had a Buster Crabbe-like hairdo that reminded me of a wood duck’s head; it was cropped close to the skin along the front and behind the ears. At the grassy sides of the tipi circle, our audience barked, whined, and scratched the ground. From the large, flat wooden bench, old man Jim and the left-behinds chuckled. We had our gloves raised high and both of us were consistently jabbing from afar and missing. We shuffled over what Mr. Red Hat said were the “Three-Stars-in-a-Row” and the “Star That Is a God.” “Ain’t that right, Jim?” he’d yell while looking toward the shade of the apple tree.

  “E a i, yes!” old man Jim would confirm. “Na a wi, mi ka ti ko! Now fight!”

  Curiosity awakened, I looked down at the elaborate ground sculptures only to be a target for a good wide-fisted uppercut. Since the gloves were tattered and soft, my head turned upward. I found myself staring at the blue sky while falling backward in short, choppy heel steps before hitting the powdered dust.

  “Stay down, son,” Mr. Red Hat advised as he began a panting eight count. But I was determined to stick it out and stood up. The fight proceeded. When we accidentally landed blows to one another we were surprised.

  That was my rude introduction to the legacy of the punching and grappling Red Hat family. Every other Monday morning for two summers while retrieving the cool pumpwater for Grandmother I would be challenged by Pat’s grandfather. . . .

  Upon learning of the Spur Stadium caper and the cache that we absconded with, we were soon joined by a bevy of thirsty friends. Pat and Ted reenacted the stageid fight over the moonlit hillside and got good laughs out of it. Buzzing into the summer moonlit night, I was warm-faced. Selene Buffalo Husband enveloped me with heart-stirring thoughts. Nothing was as important as Selene in the “who-o-ole wo-o-rld,” as Ted had concisely put it.

  “You know, Ted,” I later said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I went out with Selene one of these nights. Somewhere years down the line. Holy, she impresses me!”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “Once you’ve told yourself that it will happen, then what you wish will transpire.”

  “Transpire? Where’d you get that stuff, man? Anyway, Selene surprised the hell out of me. Especially when she teased me for being afraid to walk her through the neighborhood.”

  “What harm could have come from it?”

  “None, I guess. Maybe I was afraid of my intentions being misconstrued.”

  “Hey, where did you get that word, Ed? Mis-screwed? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s misconstrued. Meaning somebody might have thought I was up to no good. A wrong interpretation. ‘Corn Mush’ himself aiming for the moon business.”

  “In broad daylight? What could happen? Bo-o-o-shi-i-it!”

  “Good point,” I said. Maybe I should have accompanied her, I thought, at least through the housing complex. Hell, she would have teased me even more for being afraid to be seen with her in front of my parents’ house. Or hers, I went on thinking.

  Selene Buffalo Husband, in those few minutes, uncovered forever my frailties. Her biting comments, along with her youthful radiance, would stick with me for years to come like a long hard drive up center field. In my mind a dozen times over I beheld her presence and easily relived those moments we shared. I could will the thousand multicolored dots that floated and clustered behind my closed eyes to assemble, making that day at Weeping Willow repeat itself. . . .

  That night when the ice melted in the cooler and the booze got warm, I ditched plans on getting “mizzed,” miserably drunk. It had been a hangoverish but exciting afternoon to begin with, and there wasn’t anything left of the weekend. Like a huge bowling ball, the highlights had rumbled through the checkered Mirolike alley of my totality, exiting with a deafening crash. The mock fight downtown and seeing Selene Bu
ffalo Husband face-to-face was all that could possibly happen.

  That was the thought going in.

  From the dashboard-lit interior of the Oldsmobile, the reception on the radio was astounding. I really wasn’t paying attention to what Pat and Ted were discussing. It didn’t matter; I was emotionally numb. The DJ from Little Rock, Arkansas, introduced the band called Smith, reminding me of Luciano Bearchild’s girlfriend, Angela Holiday, singing like that at the Lonesomest Valley.

  It’s not the way you smile tliat touched my heart

  It’s not the way you kiss that tears me apart.

  I recalled the day’s uneventful but typical start.

  There was a miz-warmth oyer my face when I plopped my body to bed. It was three o’clock in the morning, two hours before my parents awoke to get ready for the Brown-Spotted and Black-Bobtailed Bear clan ceremonies. By sunrise my parents, Tony and Clotelde, had put in their false teeth, showered, and eaten a hefty breakfast of fried side pork, eggs, steamed frybread, and coffee. I woke up briefly when they began chatting and then arguing about the previous day’s events. Their bickering signified that the day-long activity of prayer, song, and ritual was stressful. When the argument escalated I tugged the covers over my head.

  Waking up shortly past noon, I went outside and discovered the weather was splendid. The warm breeze swept through the nearby pine trees of Candlestick Park, and the leaves of the tall corn rustled in my parents’ well-kept garden. On the roof of the cookshack three Siamese cats were sunning themselves; in the shade of the light blue house a group of mongrel dogs greeted me by closing and opening their eyes in contentment. I knelt over the water faucet and drenched the top of my neck with cool, scintillating water. Tony, Clotelde, Alan, Dan, and the girls had all gone their ways. It was a feast day, the first earthlodge observance for the harvested crops and the imminent arrival of autumn. ...

  * * *

  At the precise moment when I was overcome by guilt for not being with them, the Oldsmobile took a hit: a volley of walnuts rattled the roof. We all got out and looked up into the trees. We were somewhat frightened until a group of boys began to chuckle. Perched above us as dark, hunched figures, they resembled vultures on a snowy day at rest.