Micah's research was particularly helpful when he was assigned the story earlier in the week about Stevie Reever. The storm which cruised through the upper Midwest had done some serious damage along the way. According to his calculations, based on other stories he had looked up online, the death toll so far from the storm that was crossing the country currently stood at nine. Reever made 10. And if the meteorologists were right, and the storm system continued its slow trek east, the number wouldn't stop there.
Because of that, he knew he should be working follow ups and maybe catching more background information about the storm for a broader story.
But an opportunity to actually sit down with the elusive Blackfoot medicine man was not something he would turn down, come wind or high water.
While working on the superstitions story, he had repeatedly heard the name "Old Joe" brought up as a reference point. Most of the experts he had spoken with, particularly other sources within the Native American circles and those outside the halls of academia, had urged him to try and arrange a meeting with the medicine man.
Unfortunately, it was an easy thing to suggest and a much harder thing to arrange. For starters, Old Joe didn't own a phone, at home or of the cellular variety. He refused outright to see any visitors from non-tribal journalists, and almost always turned down requests to be interviewed even by writers with Native American based publications like the Navajo Times out of Arizona and Florida's Seminole Tribune.
Micah had reached out to those closest to the medicine man, but wasn't particularly optimistic. He had even considered calling his mom to see if she might know someone from the old days he could reach out to, but decided that such a long shot wasn't worth the unhappy memories it would bring back for her. His mother, the white half of his breed mix, never talked bad about the people she lived around in his formative years, but he learned from family members after he was older that she had often been ostracized and frequently subjected to humiliating insults during her life on the rez. In fact, she was rarely referred to by name when buying goods or interacting with other families, instead being known as and called to her face "white woman."
With no connections of his own in that community, and seemingly without a benefactor or ambassador willing to intervene with Old Joe, Micah had done what he sometimes had to do as a reporter in the face of closed doors: move on to other sources. Micah finished the piece without hearing from the medicine man, still pleased with the resulting story.
Yesterday, he had received an e-mail asking for his office phone number, claiming that Old Joe would be calling the following morning. It was what had rooted Micah to his cubicle today when he would have rather been doing some storm chasing.
Now he was on his way to meet the medicine man. The position itself was a rarity in this century, when doctors and medical professionals had become as common a fixture on the various reservations as roadside vendors selling Native American artwork. The number and variety of doctors was due in large part to the youngsters from tribal communities who had gone on to college and medical school thanks to progressive educational programs in the 1980's and 90's. The lineage for some of those students was sprinkled with medicine men who had served their villages in another era. The students who returned as physicians were accepted as healers by the people they grew up with but were not honored with the title of medicine man because they did their work with "white man's medicine" and equipment.
The art of using herbs and incantations for healing was dying out faster than phrenology and faith healing had disappeared in the white world.
Although Micah's story on Native American mythology had long since gone to its final resting place beneath bird cages and serving as paper coats around discarded fish, he was still excited to talk to Old Joe. His natural curiosity as a newsman would ordinarily be enough of a reason, but there was more to it. Micah felt that the emotions and questions about his own heritage resurrected by the story could be further fed by meeting the man whose role was as the bridge between the old ways and the new.
He also had a new question: "Why me?" Micah knew that Old Joe avoided publicity, and those who distributed it like so much ripe produce from a roadside stand. When he had made the initial calls, Micah knew the chance of an interview was a long shot. So what had changed the medicine man's mind?
Chapter Eight
When he was 10 years old, Brad’s mother taught him a piece of mental magic that changed his life. She taught him about making lists. Her purpose wasn’t to impart the traditional time management technique of making lists to help ensure tasks were completed in an efficient fashion, although that became a valuable byproduct as Brad grew older. Her aim was to help her son slow down his brain and give thoughts some semblance of order. By corralling his thinking from vectorial to linear, he was able to clarify tasks and define their end. It didn’t necessarily slow the speeding train, but kept it between the rails, which made his thoughts more manageable.
At the start of a school day, his body rested from a full night’s sleep and fueled by the sugar-laced breakfast cereals that were popular in his childhood, Brad would spend his first 10 minutes in class making a list of each class, with the name of the teacher, and the room number. Then he would map out a column where he could write down that night’s homework assignments as they were handed down throughout the school day. Just that physical act was enough to reduce the steam engine’s pressure and lay the track for the morning’s mental run.
By the time he entered high school, the endless scraps of paper and pocket notebooks had given way to mental lists that Brad would trot out whenever he needed to solve a problem or govern the mental engine that could still occasionally hurtle out of control into kaleidoscopic collisions of thoughts, ideas, options, and alternatives.
In more social settings, the tabulating list in his head usually involved an inventory of the physical attributes possessed by the person with whom he was conversing. The trick helped him through some of the more awkward moments of puberty, allowing him to appear almost confident when dealing with girls in his classes or during the Saturday night dates that increased in frequency in almost direct proportion to the increasing amount of time he spent on the football field the night before.
While alone with his date on the way to the movies or the fast food restaurant, Brad would mentally begin at the top and work his way down.
“Red hair…two zits on the forehead…dark red eyebrows…brown eyes…small nose, upturned at the end…thin top lip, thicker bottom lip…scarlet lipstick…chin with a small dimple…medium length neck…pointy collar bones…”
This was where the trick sometimes splashed down, “Houston, we have a problem” style, as the litany ran smack into a camouflaged pool of hormones whenever the inventory reached just below the girl’s neck and shoulders. Sometimes Brad was able to keep things safely quantitative, with simple estimated measurements of bust size, cup letters, the number of buttons on a shirt, or the words emblazoned across the front.
Sometimes he couldn’t.
Once, in his junior year, the list stalled on the cup size of a girl he found well-endowed and physically attractive, but not in that “take her home to meet mom and dad” way. Amy McUmber, a senior, had actually invited him to the homecoming dance one Friday night after a particularly successful football outing against a cross-town rival.
The two were sitting in his mother’s car in the school parking lot outside the dance when Brad’s list stalled. When it did, while inventorying just below her neck, so did his gaze.
“You like those?” Amy asked, a provocative smile teasing her lips.
Brad knew that the safe thing to do was look her in the eyes and squeeze past the moment with a joke. But when the list machine in his head stopped, so did his rational, ordered thinking. Ditto for his motor functions, as his eyes never left the semi-exposed and rounded flesh protruding from the top of the spaghetti-strapped dress.
Not waiting for his answer, Amy took his right hand in hers and drew
it to the underside of her left breast, helping him to gently squeeze as her eyes narrowed and her head eased back against the car seat’s head rest. The fast thumping of the bass guitar emanating through the nearby walls of the gym matched the beating of his heart, as Brad leaned across the front seat and gently kissed her.
The kiss became less gentle when her tongue slipped between his lips, urgently exploring the inside of his mouth the way his hand was now exploring the inside of her dress. Amy’s sudden inhalation when his fingertips brushed across her now exposed and rigid right nipple actually had the effect of sucking Brad’s tongue into her mouth. Once there, that moist organ began providing the metronomic rhythm matched by his right hand swirling outward from the circle of her deep red aureole to the soft yet firm round place where her breast connected to her ribcage, then back toward the impossibly intoxicating nipple.
It turned out that the thump of the bass through the gym walls was as much of the music as Brad and Amy would hear that night.
“You want to go someplace?” Brad whispered between damp tongue kisses.
“Yes,” she replied in the same husky, passion-swollen voice.
Brad drove to a secluded road. Later, as the dance wore down, their car was joined by others as anonymous classmates also sought the quiet of the little-used road to continue and expand the erotic movements they had started on a hardwood gymnasium floor.
So the list machine in Brad’s head wasn’t perfect, but it got him through high school.
In college, he learned a new technique for slowing down his thinking:
Binge drinking.
Never really a hard-core drinker, the alcohol-infused rites of passage which so often accompany the collegiate experience introduced him to the sawdust-in-the-gears effect of liquor on his hyperactive brain.
While he found the technique effective, and practiced it often during the last two years of college, he hadn’t used the “liquor brake” much since then.
Since Sharon, the statuesque blonde he met the winter before graduation.
By his senior year at the university, Brad had developed a legitimate comfort around women. His position on the football team, which had a somewhat successful season in his last year of eligibility, made him a known entity, which was as close to being a quasi-celebrity as you would find on a college campus. His propensity for being a staple at nearly every celebratory gathering on or off campus meant he was constantly surrounded by attractive and available co-eds.
Because of a gnawing streak of conscience instilled by his parents during his upbringing, Brad wasn’t one to toy around with drugs, using his dedication to athletics as the excuse for declining the many offers which came his way. Citing the fact that NCAA athletes were subject to drug testing during the season, a minor fabrication considering most Division III schools weren’t monitored closely, Brad was able to fend off the temptations, which really weren’t particularly tempting to him in the first place. The habit of “pass Brad by when it’s time to get high” was so deeply entrenched that he rarely got offers by the end of the season. Of course, the incongruity of turning down illegal drugs but regularly imbibing in alcohol while still technically a minor never caused an ethical stir in Brad’s mind.
The upside was the drinking kept him from being tagged a “goody goody” by members of the fairer sex, the kiss of death in collegiate sexual politics, which meant he had plenty of female company in between classes. Occasionally Brad would wind up sticking with the same girl for a couple of weeks, more a result of circumstance than any real connection.
Once the season was over, the parties continued, but Brad became a less frequent guest. Following a plan that front-loaded his heaviest classes into the first three and a half years, all that remained was a lineup of electives and softer required courses.
During winter break his senior year, Brad and some football friends headed to Roundtop, a ski resort in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania. On previous trips, he and his buddies had spent far more time in the lodge with fists wrapped around Rolling Rock beers than actually on skis. This time, with no worries about knee injuries screwing up the next football season, Brad was intent on mastering the leg-busting Gunbarrel slope. It was ironic that he had less interest in alcohol now that he was actually of legal drinking age.
At his size, Brad wasn't a Wide World Of Sports image on two skis, but his natural balance and athleticism usually allowed him to reach the end of the slope with no traces of white or wetness on the seat of his trousers.
On his fourth run, Brad was working to slalom imaginary posts. While navigating a sharp right turn, his pole became stuck in a patch of thin ice, ripping it out of his hand. Quickly able to come to a stop, he looked back to see his pole sticking straight up in the air, almost like one of the slalom poles he had been imagining just moments before. Before he could trek the few dozen feet up the mountain to retrieve the aluminum obstacle, another skier hit it full force, causing the svelte person clad in the pink snowsuit to stumble then tumble. Brad tried to turn and ski out of the way, but the rolling ski-less tumbler caught him behind the knees and collected him into the snow-covered mass. His own skis joined those of the unfortunate wreck victim, who was now yelling coarse epithets about snow, cold, skiing, and opinions about the kind of asshole who would leave a ski pole right in the middle of the slope. Without skis, Brad was able to extend his legs and dig into the snow, bringing the couple to a skidding stop.
The skier sat up, revealing a woman's reddened face framed with strands of blonde hair that had escaped from the knit ski cap now askew on her head.
"Are you okay?" Brad asked, bracing for an Arctic blast that would have nothing to do with the temperature.
"I would be if some putz hadn't tried to shove a ski pole up my ass," came the harsh reply, as the woman began rubbing her left knee.
Brad tried to think of a clever retort, but came up empty.
"I'm afraid that would be me," Brad answered. "I know 'sorry' doesn't even begin to cover it, but it's all I've got at the moment."
"It's a start," the woman said, finally getting her bearings and taking a moment to look at the man responsible for her crash. "It might mean a little more if you offered to help me up."
By now, other skiers were slowing down, some asking if anyone needed help or medical attention.
"I think we're okay," Brad called back while extending a gloved hand to the pink suit still sitting on the snow.
Once vertical, the woman took a few seconds to inventory her limbs, ensuring that none of the bumps were serious. "Easy for you to say," she said, although most of the snarl had gone out of her voice.
"So, do you have a name? I'm sure my attorney's going to need it when the lawsuit shows up in the mail," Brad said.
"Sorry, I don't sue college jocks," the woman replied. "There's no money in it. But if I happen to pass out, tell the paramedics it's Sharon Marsden."
"I really am sorry," Brad said. "If I wasn't such a college jock, I'd invite you for a drink to try and make up for it, but I'm not smart enough to remember where the bar is."
Sharon smiled. "Your skis, my skis, and all the ski poles don't seem to have any trouble finding it, since the bar's in the lodge at the bottom of this hill." She waited for a beat. "How about you. Did they issue you a full name at the Olympic ski team training facility, or should I just call you by a three-digit number?"
"Sorry. Brad," he answered.
"Well, Sorry Brad, can you help me round up my gear?" she asked, her right eyebrow inching into a teasing arch as her smile increased slightly.
While a lot of guys would have taken the invitation as an opportunity to put their arm around some strange girl's waist under the pretense of helping to keep the victim steady on the downhill march, Brad instead grabbed her upper arm in a sincere attempt to keep Sharon from resuming her tumble as they worked their way toward their wayward rented equipment.
Afterward, he made good on his semi-offer of a drink, where he learned that Sharon worked nearb
y as a receptionist in a real estate office near the resort, a job she had held since graduating from college the year before.
The following weekend, Brad returned to Roundtop to meet Sharon, a ritual that carried through the winter break and continued long after the snow had melted and the snowmaking machines had been mothballed for the summer. Six months after graduation, the two got married in her hometown of Glenolden and relocated to Ridley Park. Initially, Brad commuted to Philadelphia for his first few jobs before landing the insurance position at Atkins and Cowher near his home.
Now, six years later, those happier times seemed less like a pleasant memory and more like a mocking image that exacerbated the pain that no amount of Goldschlager seemed able to kill.
Chapter Nine
Browning, Montana
Tuesday
November 20, 2012
Micah pulled into the parking lot of the Native American Cultural Center at straight up noon. He plucked his houndstooth fedora from the passenger seat and squared it on his head. The hat was his private joke/tribute to caricatures of news reporters from the 1940's and 50's, when news hounds depicted in old movies tucked their "press" card into the hatband. Fortunately, celebrities like Justin Timberlake had brought the style of headwear back into fashion a couple of years ago.
He pulled his iPhone from his breast pocket and pushed the button to check the time. By this time tomorrow, he would be in Silver Spring, Maryland interviewing a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring as part of his feature on weather. The irony of talking with a medicine man about spirits and myths dating back hundreds of years one day and listening to a 21st century scientist the next wasn't lost on him. Grabbing his camera, his pocket recorder, and his reporter's pad, he headed into the low, modern brick building.
Howl of a Thousand Winds Page 5
