Читать книгу Red Earth White Earth - Will Weaver - Страница 12

2

On the Fourth of July, an hour before sundown, the rodeo ended in a pink haze. Guy and Tom sat atop the corral fence, faces into the sun. They were eight years old. Guy was nearly a head taller than Tom, his thin neck was sunburned red, and his hair was as white as the pigeons that dipped and fluttered above the grandstand. Tom had no neck; his black hair, shaved short, ended at his shoulders, wide shoulders that promised strong arms and a deep chest.

Guy and Tom sat on the edge of their plank perch like two birds near flight. They wanted to watch the cattle jockeys whip the Brahma bulls into the trailers, but they also wanted to be first at the edge of the river for the Big Blast. Already town kids were deserting the corral fence. Already behind them people were filing from the grandstand. Already in the parking lot pickups spun their tires on the gravel and threw plumes of dust into the red sunlight.

The biggest bull, a tatter of rope dragging between its legs, slammed forward into its trailer; Guy and Tom looked at each other. They leaped from their perch.

They had no bicycles, which proved they were not town kids, but they could run. They dodged through the crowd. Their shadows weaved and darted among the walkers as they sped down the crowded, unpaved street. When they reached the asphalt streets of downtown the dust of the fairgrounds fell away. At Main Street the day’s heat, trapped by the brick buildings, washed over them like an oven door opening in their faces. The tar was soft underfoot. A block beyond Main Street they smelled water.

At first the river’s smell was only a faint coolness in their mouths. Then it flowed thicker over their cheeks and foreheads. In another block, the water scent divided itself into sharper layers of smells. Wet willow wood. Green algae. Somewhere a rotting duck. The faint vinegar and iron smell of the municipal sewage plant downstream.

But they were not first at the edge of the river. Already town kids lined the shore of the Bekaagami River. Tom jerked his head at a big willow tree whose roots snaked into the water. He squatted and made a hand cradle. Guy took a running step, hit Tom’s hands with his right foot, and went up like a pole-vaulter. He caught the lowest limb and pulled himself up. Then he reached down for Tom. White hand on brown wrist, brown hand on white, they scrambled up the loose bark to the crown of the tree until the limbs began to bend under their weight. Above the crowd, they could see everything.

In front of their willow stretched the bay, a blue two-acre bulge of the Bekaagami River whose slow south side formed the Flatwater Municipal Swimming Beach. A long fly ball’s distance from shore floated the dynamite raft, a rick of brown logs eight feet in length. The logs were made of papier-mâché. They concealed the stick—some said ten sticks—of dynamite. Fourth of July was Dynamite Daze in Flatwater.

Dynamite was the town’s founding father. In the 1890s Flatwater had grown around the thick peninsula that slowed the current of the river. The great rafts of white pine and Norway logs floating south to the lumber mills in St. Paul always tangled and jammed at Flatwater. There lumberjacks made a permanent encampment on the peninsula. Daily they dynamited the channel clear. Later Guy would come to see Flatwater as a town built on an impediment, see the constricted flow of the river and the town beside it as connected and metaphorical. But he did not understand that now. Right now he turned with Tom to check the height of the sun.

“Nine minutes, tops,” Guy said.

“Five,” Tom said immediately.

“Bet,” Guy said.

“Nickel,” Tom replied.

“Shit, you don’t have a nickel,” Guy said.

“You don’t have a watch,” Tom said.

“Neither do you.”

“Do too.”

“Bet,” Guy said quickly. He knew Tom had no watch. This was easy money.

Tom held out his arm and turned his palm and fingers sideways to the sun and to the horizon. Guy watched as Tom squinted over and then below his fingers. Tom peeled back two fingers, then a third. Sighted again.

“Free,” Guy said suddenly, which meant the bet was off.

Tom grinned. The sun shone on his wide white teeth and through the gap between them wide enough to hold a pencil. “Lucky I let you off,” he said. “See, here’s how I do it.” He squinted over his fingers again. “It’s simple. Every finger’s width is five minutes.”

“Shit,” Guy said.

Tom shrugged. “Try it with a clock sometime.”

Guy was silent for a moment. “So where’d you learn that?” he asked.

“Zhingwaak showed me.”

Zhingwaak was the old Indian who lived on the reservation. He sang and drummed at the powwows, and told stories to the children. Guy’s father said that was because Zhingwaak was too lazy to do any real work.

“Was Zhingwaak a real medicine man once?” Guy asked.

Tom shrugged.

Guy turned back to watch the sun. He sighted over his fingers but the light hurt his eyes. Its orange glare shone on the white crown of the water tower, gleamed on the galvanized sides of the town grain elevator. Already Main Street was in shadow, and so were the white houses that ran in even rows like a picket fence down to the city beach.

On the brown grass near the diving platform stood a circle of tourists. Black camera straps cut across flowered shirts. Inside the circle four or five Indians shuffled to the thudding of a drum. The drumming sounded weak and far away, like a partridge thudding his wings somewhere deep in the woods. The Indian powwows were organized by the Flatwater Jaycees. Guy’s father said that the powwow was to keep the tourists’ minds off the Bekaagami mosquitoes, keep the tourists’ wallets in Flatwater as long as possible.

Tom followed Guy’s eyes to the dancers. He watched briefly, then looked away.

Suddenly behind them at the shore an outboard motor coughed alive. Tom whooped. They whirled to face the river. It was time.

The sheriff’s motorboat left the shore and plowed slowly toward the dynamite raft. In the late sunlight its waves spread like even windrows of wheat across a blue field. The boat slowed before the raft, bobbed sideways toward it. A green-headed mallard fluttered away from the water near the raft. Some people along the shore clapped. The sheriff leaned over the side of the boat and lit the fuse. When he jerked backward into the boat, his deputy gunned the engine. The propeller snarled once and the boat sped toward shore. More people clapped. The sheriff waved to the crowd. The green-headed mallard floated close to shore.

But suddenly the water around the mallard began to dimple and splash. The mallard fluttered once, then swam in a widening V toward deeper water. More splashes followed the duck.

“Look,” Tom called, jerking his chin, pushing out his bottom lip to point down shore. Indians never pointed with their fingers.

Down the shore stood a cluster of town boys. With slingshots. One of their stones splashed a hand’s length from the mallard, which scrambled into flight. It flew to the dynamite raft. There it perched on the highest papier-mâché log, ruffled its feathers, then settled down to stare at the crowd.

“Wait—no—” came one or two voices from the crowd.

“Holy shit,” Guy murmured.

The mallard turned to peck once at a flea on its left wing, then sat motionless again.

The crowd fell silent. Suddenly the raft and the duck began to balloon in size. The duck swelled into a rooster. Then a Thanksgiving turkey. It rode the rising silo of foam and shredded papier-mâché. At the height of the blast the duck reached sunlight. There it became a peacock in full spray. Then in a rainbow mist of meat and feathers it disappeared.

The Big Blast crashed through the willow. It whipped the thin branch ends across Guy’s and Tom’s faces, and they grabbed each other to keep from falling. Below them the crowd let out a long cheer. The fireworks began.

After the final red rose died away in the black sky, Guy and Tom stayed put. The crowd passed beneath their tree. Tom began to break off dead twigs and drop them onto the heads of the passersby. A man cursed and rubbed his head. When he looked up he saw Guy and threatened to bring back a chain saw, though his wife soon enough pulled him along.

“Thanks, fuck-face,” Guy whispered.

Tom’s teeth glinted white in the dark.

Within ten minutes the beach was empty but for Tom and Guy, and a few of the town boys who poked along the riverbank looking for unexploded fireworks. And the powwow Indians.

A steady drumming still came from among the dancers. The tourists had left, but the Indians still danced, six or seven of them now. The dancers moved clockwise in a jerky circle about the bright yellow eye of a gas lantern.

Guy and Tom slid down from their tree. “Come on,” Tom said, jerking his head toward the shadowy town boys along the riverbanks.

“Naw,” Guy said. He was tired. He had been in town all afternoon at the county fair. His mother had brought him. She was helping at one of the food shows. He was supposed to meet her near the powwow after the fireworks.

“Let’s watch,” Guy said, staring at the dancers.

Tom shrugged and followed him closer.

They sat close by on the grass in the shadows and watched. “They dance different when the tourists leave,” Guy said. Now the dancers sang more. Couples crisscrossed hands and danced a dipping, weaving pattern. Sometimes women picked men from the crowd. Guy turned to Tom.

“‘The Forty-Nine Song,’” Tom said.

“Why forty-nine? Forty-nine states?”

Tom laughed once and shook his head sideways. “Huh-huh. Lots of Indian men went off to fight Germans in the war. Only forty-nine came back to the reservation.”

They kept watching. Many of the men dancers had taken off their shirts. Their skin glistened in the lantern light. On the chests of two older men bounced necklaces, thin gray tubes of something strung on a leather cord.

“What are those?” Guy asked.

“Rabbit bones,” Tom said. “Leg bones. You break off the longest leg bones, then poke out the guck inside and let them dry.”

“We could make those,” Guy said immediately. “This winter, in old man Schroeder’s grove we’ll trap some rabbits—big ones.”

Tom was silent.

They watched some more. “What’s that, a gingerbread man?” Guy asked. On the wrist of an old woman dancer whirled a tiny doll-like man.

“How should I know?” Tom said crossly.

After a while Tom said, “Not a gingerbread man. Flying Man.”

“Why Flying Man?”

“Goddammit, I don’t know everything,” Tom said immediately. “Come on, let’s go look for bottle rockets.”

“Can’t.” Guy looked through the darkness for his mother. She should have been there by now. He wondered where she was. His father was home unloading oats by tractor light. He was always working.

They watched another minute until Tom said, “Fuck, this is more boring than school.”

Guy didn’t answer. He was staring through the dancers to the far side of the circle. He was watching the drummer, old Zhingwaak. He suddenly realized that Zhingwaak was watching them.

“Tom . . . ,” Guy whispered. Tom looked. Without missing a drumbeat, Zhingwaak lifted his hand and motioned them forward.

“He wants something,” Guy whispered. He looked around the powwow. There were only brown faces, and far beyond, the silent white houses.

“Us,” Tom said. “We better go over there.”

They approached the dancers and Zhingwaak. Guy walked behind Tom. In the flickering light and shadow of the lantern, Zhingwaak’s long face all ran into his mouth. The deep lines across his forehead and around his eyes, the deeper furrows on his cheeks, the gullies and ravines along his nose all flowed downward over his thin lips and into the dark hole of his mouth. Zhingwaak spoke.

“Young boys should dance,” he said. His voice was younger than his face. His words hummed.

Tom looked behind to Guy. Guy looked at the dancers.

“You, Ningos,” Zhingwaak said to Guy. “Your mother comes often to our school to help us. You live on the reservation and play always with Tom LittleWolf. Dance with us.”

Guy swallowed. The passing dancers began to pluck at Tom and Guy as they passed.

“I . . . don’t know how,” Guy said.

“The dancing will come to you,” Zhingwaak answered. “Because you come to us, the dancing will come to you.”

Tom and Guy stood by Zhingwaak and watched. The drumming was like the steady beat of a hay baler, only faster. Riding on the hay wagons sometimes Guy and Tom did little jigs to match the pump-pumping sound of the machinery. Tom looked at Guy, jutted his lip toward the dancers. They grinned at each other and joined the moving circle.

Following the “Forty-Nine” dancers, Guy and Tom moved within a ring of Indians who only watched. The outside Indians were in shadow. Now and again the red eye of a cigarette glowed, then arched to the ground as one of them came forward. The new dancers smelled of whiskey and cigarette smoke and perfume. They were younger than Zhingwaak and the old woman; they were Guy’s parents’ age and some younger than that. As they entered the circle they laughed and shouted to each other. Sometimes they stumbled and fell. But the older dancers pulled them to their feet, kept them moving.

Zhingwaak’s drumming quickened with an extra beat. Guy wove this new rhythm into his path of invisible, numbered footsteps on the hard-packed grass. As more dancers came forward, Guy and Tom were forced farther to the center. Guy could not see out, so he watched the new dancers. After they had danced for a while their faces began to shine.

They stopped laughing and shouting to each other. They stumbled less. Their shirts soaked through with sweat. The new dancers’ smell of tobacco and whiskey and perfume changed into a sweet-sour odor like silage. A dancer alongside Guy shrugged off his shirt and flung it over the heads of the dancers into the darkness. With it went his silage smell.

Suddenly Zhingwaak wailed. It was a thin cry that started high in the air above the dancers and then fell. The cry slid down over the Indians’ black hair and shining skin, down the rabbit bones and the old beadwork and dried feathers of the old women, all the way down to their feet on the dry grass. The lowest note of Zhingwaak’s cry flattened into a humming. For Guy the humming became a floor upon which he danced. He leaped and soared. He was the Flying Man at the end of his leather thong. Only Flying Man was bound and Guy was free. Guy planed and leaped with Tom as Zhingwaak’s wail came again.

Suddenly the darkness washed away. They were flooded with a bright light. Guy squinted away from the white beam. The dancers froze in place. Sweat glinted on and then dripped from their chins.

A voice came loud through a bullhorn. The police.

“The Flatwater Fourth of July festivities are over, as it is now the fifth of July. The Jaycees have paid the powwow dancers in full. Therefore, the powwow is over. Please disperse at this time.”

For a long moment there was silence. Then Zhingwaak’s drumstick thudded again. From the crowd something arced, shining, through the beam of the spotlight and shattered against the police car. A beer bottle. Then more bottles flying like falling stars. Crashing, tinkling. Then the harder thuds of stones.

Suddenly people were shouting and falling. Policemen pushed through the crowd, jabbing with long sticks. One of the officers grabbed away Zhingwaak’s drumstick and broke it over his knee. He kicked aside the drum. “You—let’s go!” He jerked Zhingwaak’s arm behind him. Zhingwaak stumbled and fell. The policeman began to drag him across the gravel. Another Indian leaped on the policeman from behind. A policeman swung his stick. It hit the Indian’s head with a watermelon sound, and the Indian slumped to the ground.

From nowhere Guy’s mother was pulling him away. Beside her an Indian man retreated into the shadows. Guy did not see his face.

“Come,” Madeline shouted. She ran. Guy twisted his head back to look for Tom, for Zhingwaak. But there was only the glare of lights and shouting and the glint of the polished wood as the policeman’s sticks rose and fell.

“Why . . . ,” Guy cried, “why did the policeman come? Why did they take Zhingwaak?”

In the shadow of the stone beach house his mother held him. They looked back at the fighting. “Because . . . it’s very late,” she murmured.

“It wasn’t late,” Guy said. He started to cry, burning heaves in his throat and chest. “Not for the Indians it wasn’t late.”

His mother turned his face away from the fighting. Another police car, its red lights flashing, wailed past them.

“Yes, it’s late,” she murmured. “Especially for the Indians.”