The Bird Is Gone: A Manifesto

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Red Hat Trick— n. to see what you can't see. Syn. 1. medicine hat.

  Red Matters— n. the only political talk show to use a gong.

  RMZ— n., Geog. re-militarized zone.

  Rubber Glove of God— n., Entert. the traveling SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIE'S variation of a minor BACTEEN riff (not to be confused with ‘Make Him Dance’ or ‘The Latterday Coup Machine’ or ‘Pale Young Four Toes’ or ‘The Unphallic Tale of the Woodpecker’ or ‘Tongues of Dung’ or ‘No More Beads’ or ‘The Best of All Possible Worlds’ or ‘The Only Good INDIANS’ or ‘Subterranean Iron Horse Blues’ or ‘A Particularly Articulate War Cry’).

  satellite reservations— n., pl. used for farming elk, sage, tobacco, etc.

  Savage (sav' ij)— n., Liter. opera about a Yamana-man traded as an infant for a shiny button. He grows up to kill eight Europeans on a missionary boat.

  security gourds— n., pl. ‘emit a shrill whistle when anyone approaches.’

  Seventh Cavalry— 1. the WASHINGTON GENERALS of the clan league –n., Sport. 2. composed mostly of ex-rodeo clowns and professional eaters n., Socio.

  Shanghai Lil— 1. never used the pill –n. 2. named for her epicanthic folds –n. 3. Navajo-Havasupai-(Mennonite-) German performance artist whose career spanned from the Brief Indian Awakening (The Scraeling) to Conservation (SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIES) –n. 4. indomitable –n.

  Sheep Belly— 1. an INDIAN Nobody –n. 2. a minor trickster –n., Socio.

  shy boy— n. LP DEAL.

  Sitting Duck— n., Entert. the INDIAN LENNY BRUCE.

  Skin & Bones— n. a children's game where they lower their heads and hump their backs up like buffalo, then wait for whoever's ‘it’ to shoot them, skin them, and leave their bones. But then they rise up singing, are all ‘it’ now, give chase to the hunter, see also: DAY OF THE DEAD

  Skin Pageant— n., Socio. where you figure out who Miss America isn't.

  Skin Parade— 1. the mass exodus following the RED ALERT –n. Hist. 2. a chain of topless bars in Florida, America –n. Syn. 1. Red Tide, RED DAWN, Red Shift; Red Cloud, Red Wind, Red Scare, Relocation.

  Slugpusher— 1. the bartender in a gin joint –n. 2. a gunslinger –n. 3. BACTEEN'S side-armed, side-whiskered all-American sidekick. –n., Myth.

  Split Feather— 1. adopted name of ex-Olympic Menominee gymnast who led the first piskun of Indian Days –n., Hist. 2. typically depicted leaning forward, out of the frame, running ahead of uncounted tons of salvation. –n., Art.

  Springheel Jack— n., Sport. a WAR GOD.

  Sun Dogs— n., Sport. dominant bowlers of the clan league.

  Susannah of the Mounties— 1. n., Entert. underground stag movie popular in the TERRITORIES, based on the 1939 National Telefilm Association movie starring Shirley Temple and Randolph Scott, where ‘Shirley (‘Susannah Seldon’) is the orphaned survivor of an INDIAN attack in the Canadian West. A Mountie named ‘Monty’ (Scott) and his girlfriend take her in. Everybody suffers further INDIAN attacks and the Mountie is saved from the stake only by Shirley's ‘intervention’ with the INDIAN chief (John Big Tree).’

  Sweeney Todd— 1. serial-killing barber –n., Liter. 2. BACTEEN'S nom de plume when visiting America –n., Myth.

  tabula rosa (tab' yl rōs)— 1. ‘red slate’ –nomin., colloq. 2. anthropological term for one who's sufficiently brainwashed to be a TOMATO –n. Syn. 1. indios bianco (not to be confused with apples).

  tan lines— n. what the Lone Ranger had to have.

  telepawn— 1. to call the Aborigine Hotline –v. 2. to sell your soul to the devil –v., colloq.

  Thorpes (thôrp)— 1. track and field athletes –n., pl. 2. hard to catch –n., pl.

  tiospaye (tē' ō shpā)— 1. who you run with –n., colloq. 2. your extended family –n.

  tomato— n. red on the outside and the in-, yet white just the same.

  Tom Starr— n., Hist. tall tall Cherokee man b. 1813, purported to have killed more than one hundred people.

  toughest chickens—phras. never had their internal chickens plucked.

  travois (tr' voi)— 1. a wheel-less cart you tie behind your horse, dog, whatever –n., colloq. 2. anything you tie behind your horse, dog, car, etc., with the intention of transporting something in or upon it –n., colloq.

  trick— n., colloq. what the older generation told us the SKIN PARADE was: a TRICK to get all the INDIANS in one place. The Gatling gun they imagined was huge, locked in a geostationary orbit somewhere over the Great Plains.

  Two Burn Flat— n., Geog. the barren, ashen region surrounding FOOL'S HIP.

  Two Guns White Calf— n. the original copper INDIAN, used now to market PuriTan sunbathing products.

  Two Little Indians— n., Entert. the MAGPIE & MUSKRAT show.

  Urban Elk— n., Sport. the SUN DOGS' traditional opposition.

  Vanishing Indians— 1. masters of camouflage –n. 2. a troupe of nomadic heyokas best known for fortifying YAQUI BUOY against NORMAN'S INVASION by constructing a leering papier-mâché coyote large enough to straddle the road –n., Hist.

  Virginia Dare— n., Hist. led the SKIN PARADE.

  War Gods— n., Sport. those WARRIORS who have had their jerseys retired and bundled.

  Warriors— n., Sport., what Denim Horse and Back Iron should have been. Syn. 1. Red Giants.

  Wasee Maza— Hist. said of Wounded Knee: ‘when I saw all those little infants lying there dead in their blood, my feeling was that even if I ate one of the soldiers, it would not appease my anger.’

  Wash Board— n., Sport. hereditary name of a line of Inuit bodybuilders.

  Washington Generals— n. Sherman, Sheridan, Cooke, etc.

  Waymon Tise— n. categorically denies his role in the SKIN PARADE (of discovering the loophole in the CONSERVATION ACT which simply specified ‘fauna,’ which, as he noted in a public radio interview, could legally entail INDIANS, as we were still on the books with mountain lions and coyotes as ‘varmints,’ bounty).

  X-Rays— n., pl. the only way to look at some of the old bundles.

  Yaqui Buoy (yä' kē boi)— n. the first tollbooth to achieve mythological status.

  Year of the Cat— n., Hist. this one.

  ARTEFACTS

  ITEM 1:FBI MEMO 32.B-197 M (‘THE HARRIS DETAIL’), BADLY MIS-DATED (DUE TO POOR REPRODUCTION)

  Though none of Mary Boy's peyote-dispensing federal agents seemed to have distinguished themselves by their height (p.21; cf. pp. 61, 90 and 105-6), nevertheless, versions of this recently-released document still surface on a regular basis to support his claim.

  The handwritten portion ‘4’ reads:

  We have / photos / of in the Canadienne / league, trying to revive his / basketball career, if you need them. Please note (Harris) that these photos / are NOT from his hi- / school yrbook. Look at the DATES, / gentlemen, not the lapels. And any / correspondence to Agent , / just address it to me. I'll see / that he gets it.

  The handwritten portion ‘5’ reads:

  And yes, the / / has been corrected. / As you have now / been.

  Perhaps part of the appeal of this memo is that, according to the Mayan calendar(s), ‘December 23rd, 2012’ (presumably a decayed ‘12/23/72’) is supposedly the end of this world, the beginning of the next.

  ITEM 2: FIRST GENERATION TRANSCRIPTION OF DIGITALLY-RECOVERED PORTION OF SIDE B, AUDIO CASSETTE 56.T-182 LB (‘THIRD PRIZE’)

  As the last ‘definition’ for ‘Border’ (the fifth entry in the ‘Terms’) suggests, ‘tomatoes’ are to be deposited at the border between the Indian Territories and America-proper, which is of course strictly in keeping with traditional patterns of Native American justice, which, in the absence of any form of capital punishment, insist instead upon banishment, or exile, to the point that this forced absence of community or any social and/or familial bonds is actually perceived to be worse than death itself.

  The complication, of course, isn't on the part of the exiled—in this case, LP Deal (RM-5454-21), evidently still talking i
nto his wrist-microphone (in the women's restroom of p. 155)—but on the guards themselves, who are put in the position the ‘tomatoes’ have been in all along: they've been assigned to deliver (one of) their people to the anthropologists. But they've been culturally conditioned away from just such an act At this point they would seem to have only two options: enforce the banishment by delivering the ‘tomato,’ thus betraying their culture (as anthropologists are, to them, the distillation of all that America is or has been), or not deliver the ‘produce,’ thus risking both their own employment and the guaranteed further betrayals the ‘tomato’ will commit if allowed to remain inside the Indian Territories. However, over the years a third option has presented itself: carelessness; ineptitude. The guards drive for the border as they've been directed, only; first, forgetting the most direct route—‘taking the long way there’—and, second, ‘accidentally’ leaving a host of donated goods in the back of the windowless van for their traitor: ropes, pills, belts, shoestrings. Sometimes just a door that unlocks at seventy miles per hour. Because they're wearing handcuffs, the ‘tomatoes’ have to turn around to open the door, nod thanks to the guards, their hair whipping in their eyes.

  Of the two former guards interviewed about this so far (AH-9199 and ), neither have any comments on these small acts of ‘mercy’ (their word), but choose instead to stare out the window of their respective cells, a song rising in their throats for the morning.