He had located his Grandfather's address in some old papers that had belonged to his mother. During boot camp Wolf had sent a letter to Grandfather, and even though he had never written back the old man was waiting for him at the airport. In the following weeks Wolf spilled out the story of his experiences, including the incident of the healing power. Fast Horse nodded in understanding. He knew about battle, having served in the Pacific during the Second World War. As Wolf told his tale, he realized why he had wanted to come here to live with his grandfather. He had to know what these powers were, if they were real or some sort of hallucination.
Grampa understood because he was a shaman, the last Chaniwa medicine man, and he knew how to reach the spirits. For the first time in his life Wolf took the powers seriously. Fast Horse assured him that the powers were real, and a vital part of him. The power ran in their family, and existed in his grandfather, and in his grandfathers father and grandfather before that. But his were undeveloped, Fast Horse admonished. Wolf was the only Chaniwa with the gift who had undergone no training whatsoever.
So Wolf agreed to stay with him, and learn the ways of the shaman and of the Chaniwa. Wolf plunged headlong into the training, into the fasting, the hours of meditation, the songs, the dances. Fast Horse made him build his own sweat lodge, which he had done by digging a pit and covering it with a dome of branches and canvas scraps.
Then after a physical exam at the Veteran's Hospital in Albuquerque, Wolf learned he had brought back a little gift from the Gulf.
Some soldiers who had fought in Desert Storm— including a large number who had, like himself, fought behind enemy lines beforehand—were coming down with an unknown illness, tentatively dubbed the Gulf War Sickness. Wolf reported a numbness in his hands when waking, which had only gotten worse as the days went by. It was a progressive and sometimes fatal illness, something the doctors knew nothing about, except that it affected the central nervous system. Army Intelligence had speculated that it was a nerve agent released by the Iraqi army, as it was also well known they had used bacterial and chemical weapons during the war. But what precisely had been released, and where, and who it had affected, was still "under investigation." Wolf knew enough to read between the lines. Likely, they would never know what this was.
The news landed on him like & ton of bricks. To survive the Gulf, and be nailed by this… something you cannot even see. For a time the condition improved, and now he hardly ever felt any numbness when he woke. The doctor had suggested he try an unproven treatment, a course in coenzyme Q10. Either this or the healing herbs Grandfather had given him was having some effect, or the disease had gone into remission on its own. The doctors at the VA didn't know what to tell him, except that he might have a milder form of the disease. Only time would let them know one way or another. Keep using the Q10, they'd said.
That was some weeks ago, and his training had gone on as before. Only now he didn't feel the same urgency he did when he began, and he often found himself questioning the importance of his shamanistic learning. If Fast Horse noticed, he didn't say.
Before they turned in the night before, Grandfather had dropped some strong hints mat today's training would be important. Wolf suspected he was only responding to his apparent ambivalence toward the Chaniwa way of life. If so, he was right, he was questioning the whole thing. Especially in view of the fact that his life might be cut short in the next few years by a disease that didn't even have a name.
He poured his first cup, and a second for Grampa, who had emerged from his tiny bedroom. He was a thin, old man, but far from frail, wearing a thin konsainta, a garment resembling a nightshirt. He had about ten or twelve of them, one of them a ritual robe that was over a hundred years old. This was also part of the ritual; Grampa didn't get up until his cup was poured. Coffee was the only white man vice he permitted himself.
"Po-kwa-te," Grampa said in Chaniwa. It was not a "good morning" but a generic greeting used on waking, whenever that happened to be. "Sleep well?" Grampa added with a smirk.
"Could have been better," Wolf replied, pushing the bed up, making it a couch again. "Same dreams, same girl."
"Mmmm," Grampa said, taking a sip of the brew. The old man preferred it stronger than this, but they were running low on coffee. They took chairs at what passed for a small kitchen table, their place to drink coffee, talk, and wake up.
Fast Horse was probably around seventy-five years old, but no one really knew for sure. He had the hard brown, leathery skin of someone who lived in the sun; Wolf had become considerably darker himself, having sat in the sun for hours in meditation, several times during the week. Horse knew the Chaniwa language fluently, and was teaching it piecemeal as the studies progressed. The old man had long, white hair, double braided down both sides, and when he smiled his whole face contorted in a riot of creases and wrinkles, each one a tiny smile.
"Morning energies," Horse said, and Wolf was surprised he had them already. Perhaps he had been lying awake for some time already. "Your ailment. Let me see."
Wolf presented his hands, palms up, on the kitchen table, "they're fine this morning," he said. "No numbness."
Horse wasn't paying any attention to what he was saying. His eyes were closed as he took his wrists in his old, callused fingers. This was a part of the training that hadn't yet been covered, the healing with the use of earth energies. Wolf had often wondered if this, instead of the herbs, was responsible for his recovery. Relaxing his hands into his grandfathers, he thought of them as being apart from himself, giving them over completely, surrendering his ownership of his hands to the medicine man.
He felt a sudden heat, as if he'd stuck them over a stove, and when Grampa turned them loose the backs itched.
"Well?" Wolf asked, scratching them.
"You play with yourself too much," the old man said. "You need to find you a woman. Get married."
Wolf blushed, but knew better than to argue. "Tell me about it!" he said, flicking his ash angrily into a mangled pop can. "I dream of the perfect one every night, but she's only a dream."
"Why only a dream?"
"She's chi-en. I'll never meet her." He looked away, knowing his grandfather was scrutinizing him.
"Why never? The chi-en were our ancestors."
"Yeah, right," Wolf said. "We're descended from elves."
Fast Horse laughed loudly and heartily, his usual response whenever Wolf distrusted the legends. "So much you don't know, Wolf."
He drank his coffee in response. "What are we going to do today?" he asked, feeling the urge to get up and do something. The caffeine was doing its job nicely this morning. "I'm thinking about taking the Harley into town. We're low on coffee."
"You can take the truck," Grampa said, but Wolf knew he was baiting him. He knew how he felt about the bike, how he sought every opportunity to ride it, in spite of their lack of funds to buy gasoline. Wolf received a small sum from the VA but it wasn't much. They usually waited until they had a long list of things to purchase, making the bike impractical. If he went now, while the list consisted only of a can of coffee, he had a chance of getting out of there on two wheels.
"Are you ever going to get that old Indian motorcycle working?" Wolf asked, knowing that parts for the thing were probably next to impossible to find. It was a classic '46 Chief, but had fallen into disrepair. The rubber on the tires was old and cracked, and something was wrong with the electrical system. When Wolf drained the gas he found a lot of water in it, a bad sign for the bike. Under the dust, the old red Indian was beautiful.
But Wolf's mechanical time had been spent on his own Harley, which ran fine, even if it did leak oil. Marking its territory, he'd told Grampa. All Harleys leak. The Indian had never leaked.
"Well, then let me give you this," the old man said, pulling a scrap of paper out of nowhere. "There are some other things we could use as well."
Wolf took the list, biting back anger. There was no way he could get all this stuff back on the bike. This shouldn't surpris
e me. This really shouldn't. He was still going to go riding today. Suddenly he was anxious and restless, more so than he had been in a long time. Living with Grampa in a tiny little trailer in the middle of the desert for six months would have that effect on anyone, he reasoned.
"Maybe later on," Wolf said. Whatever was planned for "class" today, he wished it would go ahead and be over with. As hot as it promised to be, he didn't much look forward to another day meditating in the sun. The thought had even occurred to him to refuse, and he seldom entertained such rebellious thinking.
If Grampa sensed his impatience, he didn't indicate it overtly. But then, everything about Grampa was subtle, particularly when it came to shaman training. Grampa put a sheathed knife on the table, a hunting blade that was around a hundred years old, with a bone handle and a pitted, irregular surface. The blade always remained razor sharp, though Wolf had never seen him sharpen it. From under the table he produced a chunk of gnarled pinyon the size of a large orange, and began carving away.
"What are we going to do today?" Wolf asked.
Grampa didn't answer right away, but Wolf knew he was just taking his time. The old man knew when he woke what they would be doing, and likely had planned it the previous night.
"Today I tell you about your powers," the old man said. "The ones you saw when you were fighting in the desert, over in Africa."
"Iraq," Wolf corrected, knowing that it wouldn't make any difference to him. Anything overseas was more or less jumbled into the same geographic lump. Such details weren't all that relevant, as his ears had pricked at the mention of his powers. He had waited months for his mentor to tell him about them. The incident in Iraq had more or less been the reason for the training. Fast Horse had refused to tell him anything about them, as he "wasn't yet ready," and Wolf had accepted this explanation respectfully. But that was six months ago. He was ready to know, now. Today.
"The Chaniwa have had many enemies, some physical, some of spirit. Our physical enemies have already conquered us. We are a conquered people, but we are a proud people. Our lands have been taken, and we can no longer fight the white devils and the other tribes, but our souls are still free."
With his bare arm, Grampa swept a layer of wood shavings from the table and resumed whittling. The shape was too vague to tell much about what he was carving. Perhaps it was a turtle, or a bear; he had often carved fetishes from wood, as it was easier to work with his arthritic hands than stone.
"Before there were Chaniwa, there were the wandering tribes who hunted the buffalo and followed them with the seasons. One season, a small group split off and went south, following the trail of a small herd. Their medicine man told them they should go south, that their destiny was with this small herd of buffalo. He was a powerful medicine man, and much respected. But the other tribes thought them foolish, and returned north.
"They followed the buffalo to a large river, so vast they first thought it was a lake. The hunt was plentiful, and they spent many days drying the skins and the meat. There was a long rest, but they grew anxious in the heat. They yearned for home. Even the women complained."
This was not entirely new information for Wolf, who had been told the history of the Chaniwa already. He sensed that this time the history would include more of the secrets Grampa had been holding back all this time.
Grampa continued, "Then they saw the canoe with wings, pushing up the great river, against the flow. They thought these creatures were gods, as strange as they looked."
Wolf ventured a question. "Is this canoe with wings the sailing ship you talked about?"
"That is the one. It was a ship, but still looked more like a canoe. It's on the coin. Now, I will show you the coin."
Wolf watched, fascinated, as Grampa unwound a strip of leather at the knifes handle. He had heard of the coin before, some ancient artifact that had been passed down, but he didn't know what it looked like, or where he kept it. Until now.
In the exposed bone handle was a slot, out of which fell a small, metal circle, a little larger than a quarter. "It is not currency," Grampa explained. "It is a written record, passed down. There is magic connected to the coin, that is why I keep it hidden."
Wolf knew it would be futile to ask for a date, or even a number of years. He examined the relic, on which was the unmistakable rendering of a Viking ship. On the other side was a design of the four directions, the elemental points of the Chaniwa religion. Finding a blending of European and Native American cultures on such an ancient piece was spooky, particularly when that culture was one's own.
"The wandering tribe followed this ship as it took a branch of a smaller river, which flowed less swiftly, keeping a respectful distance. The medicine man remained silent when asked about these gods. He either didn't know, or was not allowed to speak of them. The tribe knew something important was about to happen.
They should follow the gods to see where they led them.
"Weeks passed as they made their slow progress up the river. The tribe observed things about them that questioned their position as gods. They argued among themselves, in a language no one understood. On some days they tried travel and gave up, because of rain, or because there was no wind. The tribe learned the wings were only big skins, and the wind was blowing them upstream. If they were gods, why didn't they control the rain and the wind? And why did they argue among themselves? Such things were considered weaknesses when it happened among the tribes. And most suspiciously, if they were gods, why didn't they know they were being followed?"
Wolf fought back an urge to yawn, and got up for another cup of joe. He refilled Grampa's cup, who took a long drink before he continued.
"Then the elders realized they had wasted valuable time following these strangers. They should have been traveling north, to catch up with the buffalo herds. They were already far south, and the course they had taken had led them into areas they had never been before. They saw mountains to the north. For a tribe that depended on the buffalo, they were in quite a bind, and the leaders didn't know what to do.
"They blamed the medicine man for failing them, but he told them they had made the decision to follow the strangers, not he. The tribe began to split. One wanted to return to their familiar path to the east, and another wanted to strike out across the mountains. Either way there would be famine, if they didn't adapt their hunting skills for game smaller than the buffalo.
"On the day there was to be a confrontation between the two groups, something amazing happened among the strangers and their winged canoe.
"A scout came running into camp, telling of a division among the strangers. It appeared some of the strangers had killed the others, and had destroyed the canoe, sending it burning down the river. There was something strange about the victors. Perhaps they were gods, or children of gods, after all.
"The 'Go East' faction wanted nothing of this, and set off before they wasted any more time. The 'Go Over the Mountains' group wanted to approach the strangers, to see if they were gods, and then maybe see if they could aid the tribe in their journey over the mountains.
"This made sense to the medicine man, who wanted to see the strangers himself. They set off to talk to the gods."
A gust of wind swept in off the desert, shaking the tiny trailer and pushing a bit of cool wind through it, reminding Wolf how hot it had been lately. I could sit in here all day listening to Grampa talk. Even if he never sets around to explaining how I fixed an assault rifle by looking at it.
"The first god they encountered was a chi-en, but right away the medicine man sensed evil in this one. The tribe blocked his passage in a narrow valley and drew weapons because he looked evil and wicked. Speaking to the wind, he said his name was Nargat, and demanded he be allowed to pass, making the mistake of being discourteous to the medicine man, angering the warriors. But they permitted Nargat passage at the Medicine Man's urging. This one was trouble.
Speaking to the wind was a form of telepathy. This was something he had wanted to know about right aw
ay, but again, Fast Horse had told him he wasn't ready.
Grampa continued, "Soon they saw that others pursued this Nargat. They observed the chase from a respectable distance, as three chi-en and a white woman hunted him. In a valley they watched a fire of strange colors appear, and into this Nargat ran. Then the fire disappeared, and there was nothing left of the evil one, not even ashes. The others gave up their chase and set up camp with what little they had. No teepees, not even skins, at least not the kind this tribe was accustomed to seeing.
"Again, the tribe was having second thoughts about the strangers. Perhaps they were gods after all. The medicine man went to speak to the three chi-en and the white woman alone. Right away he knew these people were good, and they welcomed him and the tribe to their camp.
"At first they spoke with the wind to be heard, then before long the strangers knew enough Akaniwa to be able to speak without the wind. The Indians never did learn much of their language, except for a few words like wikka, which meant medicine.
"They spoke all night, learning about each other, until the sun rose the next day. There were two women chi-en and one man chi-en, a brave who was younger than you, Wolf. He was the son of one of the women, but the women were young and beautiful, with long blond hair and blue eyes. They had pointed ears which made them look wise. There was a human woman among them, the white woman, who was also young and beautiful, with red hair and pale skin. She was a medicine woman too, and it was from her that we received the Hand of the Chaniwa, as it was a symbol of her medicine, wikka."
Fast Horse pointed to the "Hand," the five-pointed star woven into the dreamcatcher. Wolf wondered if there was some influence of the old Celtic religions, but didn't see how this could happen. A ship sailing from Europe to the New World, down its eastern coast and around the Gulf of Mexico, and entering the mighty Mississippi river, then branching off on probably the Arkansas river, was a little farfetched. But the Vikings had been known as explorers, he remembered reading once. And the Chaniwa had a different past, and a different gene pool, from the rest of the North American tribes. European blood introduced to the tribe nine hundred years ago would explain the differences in their appearance, as well as certain points of their religion, but again there was no solid evidence to point to, just the long tales passed down through the ages.
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