When the heat went out of the ground and the rains came down from the Sky the woman with blue eyes left the big white house with the one tree standing before it. A man in a white coat with a thick tie knotted up around his neck like a rope came and said things would be different, the old schoolteacher had been transferred by order of Government Bureau. He would teach now. We would learn the ways of our White friends so we would grow not to take money from the Government but join in and do what was expected. He promised bacon and coffee for breakfast and shoes for our feet. When the rain turned to snow we were still barefoot. Every morning I made my way around the snowdeep drifts, running quickly so the ice wouldn’t collect on the exposed flesh of my feet as I made my way down to the stream to fetch a bucket of water back to the big house. It was in the gray hour of one morning that I took a rock and knocked a hole through the ice of the stream to dip the bucket in the swift current beneath. My eyes caught on something as the bucket rushed with water. On the other side of the stream looking straight into my eyes was a man squatting in the snow with a Rabbit skin robe flung over his shoulders. Standing tall behind him a woman moved a hand to her heavy face and felt the flush of her broad lips as if she was stroking the haunch of a pony. She let her hand fall to her side and it gave a little twitch, “It is him.” The man pulled the skins of his robe tightly around his shoulders and rose, blocking the woman behind him. “You are Ayas, you are Antelope, son to the one they called One Arm Henry.” I said nothing, listening to the water race beneath my fingers. “Ayas, your bucket is overflowing. It will not catch all the water in this stream.” I jerked the bucket up and placed it on the snow crusted bank, “How do you know me?” I searched in his face, trying to recognize the smoothed brown flesh in the past of a dream. But his eyes did not meet mine, in the gray morning they were lowered to my hand clutching the bucket handle, the yellow stonebacked ring on my middle finger glowed bright as a Bird. “You wear the stone of yellow. You wear circled around your finger the stone that holds all the promises broken by the weight of tongues. You are Ayas. You are Antelope. And like Antelope you are few in number. You slumber always in the shadow of the old hurts reflected in the yellowstone ring bound to your finger, the ring given in faith, broken in deed, the ring of the woman Painted Stick, you are Ayas, the last of her flesh. Come to us, your people, and live the straight way. It is too long you have lived among them. Come to us, to the Big Lake in the Sky. Come to the Big Water. Come, come to Tahoe.” I picked the bucket up with its burden of water, “But what of my brothers and sisters? What of them? It is first I must return to my brothers and sisters. We will all follow.” “Wait,” the woman came up to the bank, the water racing beneath her feet. “Someday all these children will follow. Someday you will hold them and sing. But on this day not.” The man came to her side, “Do not worry of your brothers and sisters, they sing you away until another day when you will meet as one. You follow us. You follow the trail of the past to gain your future. Come Ayas, Small Antelope, follow us into the past, come into your time.” His hand came across the stream. I took it. He pulled me over. “You will need for your journey shelter for your feet.” He drew a knife sheathed beneath his belt and cut strips of skin from the bottom of his Rabbit robe. He wound skins around my feet until they were bound and secure so I would not stumble as I followed in his footsteps. “It is a journey far and hard to the Big Water, it is a distance long to Tahoe, but for you the cold shall not be felt, your young legs not be weak, we will tell to you stories of Sisu, the Bird, of Atabi, the Fish, of Taba, the Bear. We will tell you how Yellowjacket killed Weasel and made off with the meat. We will tell you about how the people came to Coyote and took Memdewi, the Deer, from him and he sat down on a stone and cried. You will hear of the beginning when Coyote and Wolf were brothers and Coyote instructed his wife to weave a basket as Big as the Dawn, to make it tight as the night so that therein all the waters of the Sky could be held and not one drop flow out; into this basket Coyote scattered four handfuls of wild seeds, blew in from his mouth four whiffs of tobacco smoke, then holding the basket above his head danced four times in a large circle around the fire as he declared to all the animals thereabout, ‘I know not failure, whatever I make is right, what I think becomes and what becomes I think. What I think I never fail in.’ When he set the basket to the Earth there was much shaking and bulging of its sides, and from within could be heard the shouting and laughter that pierced the air all about like the buzz of twelve Bees on one flower. Coyote picked the basket up, shook it hard above his head and danced four times in a circle big as a mountain, talking as he did, ‘What I think becomes and what becomes I think. What I think I never fail in. There are plenty plenty people in here!’ He threw the basket to the Earth and out spilled the people falling on all the land, where they ran Coyote pointed, ‘There are plenty plenty people here and so I make a fire there, and there, and there, and I make lakes and clouds and raindrops and rocks. What I think becomes and what becomes is plenty plenty people gathered here forever to dance. What I think becomes and what becomes is plenty plenty Indians. But I know not of what they shall eat. What I think I never fail in. I know not of what they shall eat.’
I followed them. The man walking in the lead with the Rabbit robe heaped about his shoulders, the sly steps of the woman soundlessly coming behind him, and then me, fitting into the path their feet stamped in the snow. We climbed to the Sky. We climbed until the Sun went down and set across the snow scarred mountains in a fierce rainbow. We climbed until there was nothing, nothing spreading out before us but the hide of a lake stretched blue and strained to its farthest shore beyond the grasp of the eye. “You are home Ayas,” the man in the lead spoke softly as if his voice was the small breeze cutting itself to pieces through the pine tops above our heads. “You have journeyed long and arrived, you are home. You are home to the Big Water,” he swept his arm in a wide circle around him, tracing the speared mountain peaks that slid into the Sky and sliced out of sight, the base of the peaks gaping like blades of teeth around the yawning mouth of the lake that sucked the mountains and Sky right back down into the depths of its reflecting surface and threw them back up again, shimmering, spun together from the perfect cut of endless water, hurled in an ancient embrace at the throbbing heart of Sun. “Tahoe. You have returned to Tahoe. Ayas, you are Home. You stand before the Big Spirit. You stand in a high place before all the power of the Mountain House. The high water rises higher before you. You have returned to Lake Tahoe.” The time within my chest grew Big, swelled until all the water before me flowed and raced through my body, the fired ice of its depths searing the flesh from my white bones. One Duck danced in a straight line over the blue that embraced his solitary image, reflecting the soul of his flight on the skin of its surface until his wings tucked together and he was caught out of sight between Sky and water. Along the shore the small Birds lined up across the Sky and sang a pretty tune through the treetops for me as I entered the camp for the first time. I had arrived. I had journeyed far to my people, but I had not been told we numbered so many like spring Fish in the still waters of a pond. Six winter dwellings were drawn up around the thick trunk of a high tree, they were shaped by strong limbs of cut pine branches bent over to form a bowl and lashed all around with sewn strips of canvas. There must have been thirty of my people who lived along the shore of Big Water. They had come to greet me. Across the snow they came, the women in their dresses of bright cloth that touched the Earth as they walked, the many thin braids of their long hair licking about their laughing faces like black flames. And in front of them the men, some buried in thick Rabbit robes, others with the high blue pants of the Whiteman that strapped over the shoulders, and still others, with much of their flesh exposed to the gray sky. But what came to me first were the children, their fine brown faces set off against the white snow, their broad lips sending up my name in welcome, “Ayas has come! Antelope has come! The Small Antelope walks among us again!” Their voices carried high and far across the
soft blue glow of the lake, their deep currents echoing back into all the trees as they joined hands in a circle around my heart.
Into the late summer we had traveled far down the brown hills. My belly had grown fat on buckberries and pinenuts the women had gathered into baskets they had woven through the winter from slender willows. I slept easily on the warm Earth, filling my head with dreams of the quick bluebacked Fish, the brilliant rainbow struck down his sides quivering as he flashed by the handfuls into the net swept taut across the stream. Once when I awoke from my Fish Memdewi was sitting next to me, hunched on the bare ground with the Rabbit robe flung across the blades of his shoulders, the Moon sitting on top of his head. Since that first morning when my eyes had found him staring at me across the cold flow of water as I filled the morning bucket with water I had not seen him without the robe of the Rabbit, if it were withdrawn from him it would peel the skin from his body, leaving him naked like a Snake who has dropped the full length of his hide in the hour of long Sun. “I am called by all Memdewi,” he spoke to me through the warm air of the Crickets song. “There are reasons for that. Some have many names to many people. They have a name as a baby, a boy, a man, a man with woman, fighter, hunter and fisher. They have a name for every act and season. They are many names to all people. That is good. That is life. Such as it should be. I too had many names. I think with much good thought and laughter in my mouth of Broken Toe Swells. How many days passed before I could grow from the name to another. But people could not forget the time we came into the camp of those who hunted the Sun stones. How we crept along the creek like a low Fox and into their tents to take the white flour that makes the belly sing. How we ran back down the creek with our hair trailing behind us and I slipped on the bank knocking my foot against a wet black rock and could barely keep my place with the others as we fled through the trees. Oh how the people laughed as we ate the white flour that makes the belly sing. ‘Did you see that,’ they shouted. ‘Did you see Nanomba fall. He had so much fear he did not know where his feet were going. Feet Feet. Come back he cried. Splash. Down he went. Stumbling in the shallow water. Hah. Knocking his toe against a wet black rock. Poor Nanomba. Look at him now. Sitting there with the white flour that makes the belly sing smeared over his face. Look at his toe. It is broken. It swells. Hah. Broken toe swells. Look at poor Broken Toe Swells. Next time we will have to send a woman in his place. Or a Dog. Dogs know where they are going. Even blindfolded they will sniff their way to their own hole. Hah. HaH. Look at poor Broken Toe Swells. Does it hurt poor Broken Toe Swells?’ How many days passed before I could grow from that name to another. But now I am left with one name. Not even the woman I lay with has another name for me. She said to me, ‘You are not Nanomba. You are Memdewi. You are not Ax In Green Wood. You are Memdewi. Your are not Broken Toe Swells. You are Memdewi. You are not Knife In Water Bleeds. You are Deer. Your hide, I like its scent Your brown hide smells to me of mountain clover. Of wet sweet mountain clover mouths. Your hide smells to me of sailing clouds over antlers. Your hide smells to me of quiet dawns and small hooves. It is good when you lay with your hide next to me. Glowing brown in the dark. Polished wood of the bronze manzanita tree glowing in Sun. You are Memdewi. You are Deer.’ Yes, this is what she speaks, the woman I lay with. I am called by all Memdewi. And you Ayas are called Ayas. You are Antelope. You came one day onto this Earth when there was the time of the last great Antelope drive. You came the last time the people hunted as one their brother the Antelope. You were born for the last feast of the swift running flesh. I remember on that day when the man your father stood tall with the flesh of his body standing out against the wind, on his left side he had no arm, just a stump sticking out sharp, a brown blade. A brown blade at the place where the black ball shot from a fat gun blew his arm into the air. That happened when they sent him across the desert and over the mountains of rock to a strange land where men were killing their brothers. But they did not kill him. They got only his arm. They tried to kill his Spirit But he fooled them. He was sly, he was swift. He fooled them. And when he came back they called him Henry, One Arm Henry. But that was not his name with the people. With us he was Deubeyu. Always Deubeyu, headman of the Antelope. And I remember that day when, Deubeyu, the man your father, stood tall with the flesh of his body standing out against the wind, on his left side he had no arm, just a stump sticking out sharp, a brown blade. But his right arm he held high, the fingers spread to the Sun, the hunt was over, the day was dying down red. ‘We have gone hard, we have gone long,’ he spoke to the people. ‘We have gone far for this feast of Antelope flesh. Antelope is few. The White power is strong, their bullet quick. The family of Antelope is few. This day may be the last day the people feast as one on the family of Antelope. The White are many, their bullet quick. But on this day there comes to us a new boychild. He comes to us at a time when the tree is empty of Birds, the stream empty of Fish, the mountain empty of Bear. He comes to us in a time different from those we have known. He comes to us in a time when Antelope is few. This boychild come to us in this time I will call Ayas. In this time he will be Ayas. He will be Antelope. From this time on the people will always have Ayas. The people will always have Antelope. When he has passed into man maybe he will dream. Maybe he will dream long green tree days. Maybe he will dream Antelope. Maybe he will smell Antelope in the Sky. Maybe he will dream Antelope moving many times through trees. Always the trees. It is the way of our people. Maybe he will dream the hide tight on their bodies. Maybe he will dream their smell. The smell of gray fibers growing softly. Antelope moving in the Sky. Brown bodies turning. Maybe he will point the way. Direct a finger to the Sky, announce: There, that is where I smelled them, tasted their scent, heard their hooves beat beneath my eyes, that is the place they moved through my dreams, the night before this one, that is the place where they dipped their mouths and drank from the pools of my eyes, now it is time, we must go, you must follow me who will follow them, lead you to where they await us, where they are quiet, where the wind caresses the closeness of their fur, holds their thin legs straight to the Earth, that is where I shall lead, to the spot where hunger ends.…! Maybe these things Ayas shall dream. Maybe these things Ayas shall speak. Maybe he will dream the Antelope back. Maybe he will become the Antelope Dreamer. And the people will follow where he leads. Through the trees. Back to the time before this. Back to the time when the people were children to the mountain. So we will call this boychild Ayas, and Antelope will always walk among us. In another Day he will dream in the right time. He will dream all the Antelope down from the Sky. So we will call this boychild Ayas. We will never be without.’ Yes I remember that day when Deubeyu, the man your father, stood tall with the flesh of his body standing out against the wind and spoke these words. I remember well. So I have come to you on this new Day my brother. Memdewi has come to his brother Ayas. Deer has come to Antelope. And I say Come Follow Me. On this new day you will pass boychild into Man. Follow Me into the trees my brother Ayas the boychild, and return in the time of the Man.”
Rabbit Boss Page 28
