Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  The country club’s campaign to outdo this extravagant affair failed. Even with embezzled money! The rodeo and the hay-cutting exhibition with antique machinery attracted sparse audiences. This devastated the annual Pork Queens. They would bob their bonnets in sobbing spells inside the two or three registered floats of the rodeo parade.

  But even in defeat theft continued.

  Quick to capitalize on our celebration, the country club members took turns manning donation posts at the intersections of Highways 30 and 63. With aqua-colored buckets and gaudy cowboy outfits, they begged for pocket change. No one questioned if a charity organization called “Shetland Pony Rides for the Disadvantaged and Crippled Children of the Appalachian Mountains” really existed. After giving wrong directions to the Indian powwow, the rodeo clowns handed out suckers to visitors who willingly “gave” at the four-way stop signs.

  A terrible lesson was learned: The fact that a new doctor took over a well-established clinic and its tribal health services contract didn’t necessarily mean all was well. Not even if he spoke Black Eagle Child fluently. Dr. Plees, the trustworthy doctor who had ministered to the tribe for years, began to crumble. Why? No one knew. Infidelity? A likelihood. Combat-associated flashbacks? Depending. Untimely incestuous urges? Who knows when and where medical incompetence begins and ends?

  In any case, on the basis of growing complaints and charges, a tribal referendum vote fired Dr. Plees. The news media portrayed the dispute as “a simple misunderstanding.” In a show of support, a splinter group, the Indian War Veterns, held a chicken and boiled corn dinner dance for their honorary legionnaire, Dr. Plees. It was a flop, but a bevy of reporters took photographs: Here stood the honoree in a Northern Plains war bonnet, shaking hands with the Mad Soldier brothers—their real surname—inside the BEC American Legion Hall. That’s all the conservative Central Plains Register wanted. Sensationalism was SOP at the state’s biggest newspaper. An editorial even questioned if “outsiders” or “educated but radical-minded goons” were behind the mess. The press was, therefore, disappointed that there were no wild-eyed protestors brandishing placards with seething epithets.

  In fact, it proved to be a downright boring dinner dance. None of the Settlement drum groups who otherwise sang “at the drop of a dime” showed up. The Rocky Raccoon Singers, a noted Black Eagle Child singer and his scuzzy backups, were nowhere to be seen. They could usually be hired for food and seventy-five dollars. Rocky Raccoon—his legal name, based on a Beatles tune—wasn’t all there, but his music was tolerable. If the tape recordings were slowed down, someone said, you could actually hear and understand his word-songs. The rest, sadly, vanished in his falsetto style of singing and horse neighs. No songs of honor were sung, the leg bells didn’t ring, and the emcee, “Mongol, the Texaco Man” (Rocky’s uncle), didn’t have to do his crocodile tears routine. Instead, the grandchildren of the veterans sat in their beaded and sequined regalias listening to the amplified music of Elvis Presley and small, annoying speeches.

  To the doctor, these were “the heroic exception, the golden warriors” who saw the carnage of foreign battlefields and came home “with the American flag still in hand.” This statement drew the loudest commotion of the night, a smattering of mumbled affirmation from the Indian veterans. With cameras poised, the press could not discern who did the soft war whoop.

  “The remainder, though, Dr. Plees,” inquired the newspaper reporters, “are they your enemies?”

  “I don’t understand your question,” replied the doctor.

  “It’s obvious the Indian War Veterans respect your impeccable combat record, but how do the rest of them feel, the Tribal Council and those who voted against you?”

  “These are fine Indians. Generally. You fret none; I haven’t lost anything.

  * * *

  We were, however, accountable for the loss of his folksinging daughter s San Francisco Bay Area apartment. As he telescopically adjusted the crosshairs of his stethoscope on the frail walls of the Earthlodge clans, he orchestrated his necro-trickery. Devastating high-caliber control. The proverbial silver bullet tumbled in its illuminated trajectory path, splintering upon impact inside the bark and reed panels of traditional dwellings. Impalpable pieces of silver shrapnel swirled inside and clogged the mouths of priests in worship.

  Since “shadow-releasing” priests, like Rose Grassleggings, were a pestilence, he entertained the fire and ambulance crews with parodies of their rituals. It was silly, but when news of his sacrilegious antics reached the Earthlodge clans, he was considered “the devil.” Which was odd because the concept of the Antichrist was not Indian. A belief in a dark, evil side was shared with Christianty, but we do not believe that evil is embodied in a single man. With Dr. Plees, an exception was made.

  At crime scenes with Indian families present, the coroner, along with the police and paramedics, respectfully awaited the clan priests. If he was first on the scene and short on patience, however, he took the cherry-lit stage by blaspheming the most sacred of all tribal customs. The lifeless victims were shadow-released. Afterward, he whisked them to the clinic. There, it was rumored he crossed his scalpels before performing unauthorized autopsies on the “Bela Lugosis of the world.”

  But what made him notorious were accounts that internal body parts were missing. Hollow bodies seen through telltale stitches. Whole stomachs mysteriously disappeared. Especially during the winter season. The coroner knew no clan priest would dare disturb what he had already violated. If Indian families cried foul play, he always disagreed and backed his protests up with information that only a forensic pathologist could provide. No one knew. Through shoddy examinations he summarily dismissed all suspicious wounds and doubts.

  Black Eagle Childs, you see, respected—in a fearful way—their dearly departed. When their blood was spilled, for instance, a safe distance was maintained; it was thought that tangible evil used pools of blood as portals through which the legs of innocent passersby were tripped and grabbed.

  * * *

  Rose Grassleggings concluded emphatically that the coroner was the source of most apparitions. Her dreams said so. Each sequence would begin with a team of doctors standing around the cold, bruised body that she figured was Facepaint’s. She paid special attention to the minor details of the scenery. On occasion, the room wasn’t the same one she purified. There were subtle differences in color, smell, light, and dimension, and everywhere a wanton disregard for humanness resonated. English was spoken and biting comments were addressed to the deceased, who lay naked except for the white towel that covered the crotch area.

  Ignoring their harsh conversation, she would sprinkle dry roots of the clusterberry followed by granulated cedar pines over hot embers. This she had already performed in real life. First woman-root and then man-root fell onto the hot toy shovel and crackled. Sparks darted and gathered to make a blue fire. Above the small, smoldering flame she used an eagle-wing fan, along with her hissing breath, to direct the smoke over the body, feet first. Purification for travel to the Hereafter. What she had failed to detect was the coroners vile presence: he stood in the haze of the emergency room, presiding. Several times she recalled telling this horrid little man that Facepaint’s face conveyed anger, not contentment brought by suicide nor the fear expressed from a fatal car accident.

  She wondered why the coroner was there that day. Counting sick Indians? Had he dashed in and out of their rooms, reading charts? She thought it was part of the job requirement, unavoidable red tape. Indian families through outdated constitutional bylaws had to have a certificate of death before funeral funds were disbursed by the Tribal Council. There was absolutely no way around that obstacle. Before the inception of the tribal gambling enterprise, two thousand dollars “for grief” was a pretty heavy affair.

  Rose Grassleggings and Dr. Plees had already met three times. She was there at the behest of mourning families. “Do they really care? Do they have the metabolism to mourn?” she overheard him say. “Or is it jus
t the two grand?” She recalled it was necessary to ask for a moment of privacy. With the doctors gone, she took out the buffalo horn from under her sweaters and uncapped it. Inside, smoldering faintly, was the hot coal that lit the way for the wayward. She comically equated the coal with the Olympic flame from Greece, and it was known by that euphemism. Families relied upon her to say whether an autopsy was required or not.

  On the occasions that she went against the coroner’s word, his hatred raged like an ocean of boiling lava. Vessels containing Indian shadows had little chance to set voyage. All for a mediocre nightclub-singing daughter in San Francisco; all for a thirty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment on Fisherman’s Wharf once financed by the Black Eagle Child Nation.

  In the stillness that followed her dreams, she was aware a lot had happened at the Heijen Medical Center. The kindred spirit of Ted Facepaint was unwilling to accept its sliding door destiny. For several months she would lie in bed, wondering why all the negative forces convened on the sharpened end of a screwdriver, the crude weapon used to riddle Facepaint’s upper torso with puncture wounds. During these quiet hours in which the refrigerator hummed and the gas heater turned itself on in response to the cold, she envisioned the patterns made by the puncture wounds. Even before Ted’s body had been washed by the Facepaint family, she could see pictures had been drawn.

  Was this the artistry of Dr. Plees? An extra stab to the human canvas for morbidity? Was this the main reason why the precursory examination was deliberately botched?

  Was it just coincidence that one picture resembled three owls in flight with fully extended wings while another—on the right arm— looked like the sacred, astronomical icon of the Well-Off Man Church, the Three-Stars-in-a-Row?

  Obviously, sorcery came into play at some point, as did the bigotry of the law enforcement and judicial agencies of Tama County. It had been like this for ages. Among the white farmers and city folk there was a consensus that Black Eagle Child Indians “had no claim to being any kind of race.” Sometimes, especially through the art of human-on-human mutilation, it was hard not to agree.

  But there were other factors to consider, like the assistant county attorney, Peter Beech, who boasted about “holding the federal crime laboratory boys by their blond fuzzy balls.” If there was indeed an Antichrist among the whites, “Peter Bitch,” as he was known by Indians, had to be the Antihuman. Attired in grungy blue jeans, smelly sneakers, and sky blue ties with pink curled-pigtail designs, he remained dog-loyal to his superiors and downplayed anything that had to do with their Indian neighbors. “Mighty friendly bunch they are and law-abi-i-i-ding,” he would chortle at the end of televised press conferences. “Reason why the feds stay out. No crime whatsoever!”

  And so whenever an Indian-on-Indian crime occurred, there was unbridled glee within the Bohemian communities of Why Cheer and Gladwood. The town councils, along with their Protestant backbones, delighted in the exchange of blood and gore. Reporters with gruesome photographs that were still curled from drying met with the police and fire departments to share additional details that might have been overlooked by the camera. Like the vivid color of a tongue that had remained with the decapitated torso. Sometimes when their own townspeople took credit for “Duo-skin-cides” (double suicides of redskins), afternoon outings with hogshead cheese on rye bread, “Old Country” pastries, and iced Kool-Aid were made. With ladies from the Why Cheer Preservation Club decked out in old-fashioned parasols and men in suspenders and large straw hats, there was agreement how befitting it was for heathens to make the railroad tracks their pillow.

  “Here! Here!” they were known to yell as they cautiously walked down the tracks balancing their picnic baskets. From the hazy hilltop of O’Ryan’s Cemetery, the Indian gravehole diggers said their hats and parasols looked like black crows, hopping angrily from carrion to carrion, as if there wasn’t enough “refreshments” to go around.

  As the bluish gray moonlight came through the cracks of the curtains and onto her carpeted bedroom, Rose Grassleggings, Black Eagle Child’s premiere medicine woman, convinced herself winter was a lonely season to begin with. There was no denying that, not even for the few who saw what others couldn’t possibly see. She was no exception.

  Encumbrance appeared. Regardless of the many people she healed to unparalleled physical renewal, she was constantly being ”tested in the most devious ways. These dreams, plus the one that lived with her as a nightmarish daughter, were two recurring examples.

  The Journey of Encumbrance was explained to her this way by the “Deformed Pearl Diver”: “the Principal Father, for whatever reason, made a pact long ago with the Sinister Deity. It was a truce of sorts; a tenuous abatement in the war among supernatural deities. Already destroyed was the First Earth, and death became a permanent reality for one of his sons, the Lesser-Known Twin Brother. And so it came to be that just as there is kindness, there is outright evil. In a way, we are an ongoing test, for embodied within is all that is needed to properly look after ourselves. ...”

  The gift of life had therefore been given, but during moments when we digressed to unnatural states, we had someone sinister to thank. More and more, the winter acted like a ghost train, picking up the shadows of relatives. How ironic, too, Rose Grassleggings thought, that the snow symbolized the Well-Known Twin Brother’s return to earth. This was one of the very first animistic concepts taught to tribal youth. In the form of snow He watched everyone, scrutinizing their conduct, and judging whether or not they were responsible.

  Pipestar, Medicine Man Extraordinaire

  Junior Pipestar, medicine man extraordinaire, sat upright on the undisturbed edge of a Ramada Inn hotel bed. He looked over to the large reddish curtains and motioned to his assistant where minute spots of daylight could be seen on the carpeted floor. In one sweeping motion the young, thin girl stood up and quietly pulled down the cords. Any hint of light and all city traffic sounds beyond the brass curtain rods were shut out by two large, beautiful star quilts that hung on six giant safety pins.

  Things might have worked more smoothly, I sometimes reflect, had it not been for the RCA color television. This juxtaposition of natural and supernatural realities seemed awkward. Of course, if the RCA had been turned on deliberately, with the volume set very low, I can see its usefulness—to serve as a buffer for newcomers to an incomprehensible feat. Yet, from another perspective, the RCA was no different from the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes that sat on the food tray. The cereal box bore a Kansas City Chiefs football player with a gaudy-looking grin. Further postmodern incongruity. Another annoyance.

  As soon as we had entered the room, our eyes fought the intermittent darkness. With our backs to the RCA and the window, Junior Pipestar, twenty-first-century medicine man, sat on the bed, facing us, with a Bic cigarette lighter in one hand and a crudely fashioned cigarette in another. If a sense of utter respect has anything at all to do with being intimidated by a nonordinary human being, especially someone who could see, hear, and conjure what normal people couldn’t, then we were quite fearful. According to Rose Grassleggings, this medicine man could commune with ghosts that reached through the floor.

  Near the feet of my parents, Tony and Clotelde Bearchild, were four bundles of dry goods and miscellaneous gifts. With the cotton ropes untied, there were eight wool blankets from the Amana Colonies, sixteen cans of Iowa-produced ham, four fifths of Four Roses liquor and thirty hundred-dollar bills dangling from a wreathlike arrangement of cottonwood willows. This was the stipulated payment for not being put on the six-to-eight-month waiting list. We had been graciously accorded twenty minutes.

  On behalf of the bereaved Facepaint family my parents and I were there that day in Minneapolis; after driving all morning from central Iowa on Interstate 35 we barely made the appointment due to Super Bowl traffic. Not only were we compelled by the recent loss of a close friend, their son and brother, there was ample reason to suspect another factor was involved. That which is known as murder.

  En
tangled in the complex, tragic story, however, were the Tama County authorities. As a matter of practice, law enforcement departments viewed most Indian deaths as “alcohol-related suicides” or “more unfortunate accidents.” Investigating allegations of Indian-on-Indian crime was minimal, if anything. It was departmental policy to let Indians kill themselves. In some instances it seemed to work. Killers remained free—in a tribal community of fifteen hundred residents—to kill again. And they did. Ted Facepaint, in this case, was a victim twice over.

  For over 130 years, the Tama County authorities believed we’d eventually decimate ourselves. Through his growing dependence on alcohol, Ted Facepaint fraternized with most of the area sociopaths —white or Indian. Ever since the Facepaint family broke off from the Well-Off Man Church, a twenty-year sobriety period collapsed under the weight of old acquaintances who possessed Thunderbird wine-soaked livers. Households that revere this toxic bird have children who are apt to become chronic abusers as adults. Which is to say that Ted Facepaint, at forty, was under the influence; he was well beyond the limit.

  And so when reports circulated he had been beaten savagely on the Settlement thoroughfares prior to the vehicular mishap, the Facepaint family—with infamous intoxication arrest records—knew they weren’t exempt from Tama County’s departmental policy of noninvolvement. Fearing retaliation from these authorities if they asked more questions than usual, the Facepaints asked us to meet Junior Pipestar in Minneapolis and handle matters from there.

  Renowned throughout Indian country, “Mr. Pipestar”—as we were advised to address him in the parlor of the hotel suite—could provide psychic insights. A day’s journey on our part and up-front money for the medicine man’s services were required: three thousand dollars, preselected gifts, and other gratuities.