Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  Day 44

  Today we get to watch male sexual dimorphism in action.

  Through images transmitted from one of the imaging pins, we see the makings of a fight. Here, ten meters apart, are two males. Each is larger than the two females we had observed. Each has the throat patches for long calling, and each has ignored the other’s loud signals. They stand stock still, staring at each other, obvious violence in their stances, in the tension of their muscles.

  I feel an equal tension. Here’s the violence. Here’s what I came to see. My purpose in life is to calmly watch each attempt to hurt the other. One male is somewhat taller. The second male has a sleeker build, and may be capable of more damage.

  The sleeker one calls out, a long loud call.

  The tall one stares hard.

  And the sleeker one turns and walks way.

  The tall one remains silent.

  When the sleeker one is out of sight, the tall one calls out, long and loud, several times. The intelligence makes out words, blurred together the way words can blur together in a song. “I am here. You are there” is the translation in Arabic. Then follow five footnotes of the specific slazan words, their denotation, and the connotations we know.

  I ignore the notes. I wonder: Which one had wandered this area first? In other words, which one claimed residence? What had the fight been over? Territory? Access to a local female? It must have been the taller one’s territory; most animals will not invade and force a confrontation unless they are certain of winning.

  Is there a territory? The ethologist assumes yes. What makes a territory worth defending? There has to be a stable source of food, a well-defined area.

  The Ju/wasi have territories of sorts, but none that they defend. An area around a waterhole is called a n!ore. Several siblings who have lived there for a while are considered its owners. Relatives through blood have access to the flora and fauna of the n!ore. But each Ju/wa, through her relations or the relations of her husband, has access to several n!ores. Since intergroup marriage is the norm, ties between n!ores are constantly created. In the desert reserve, it can rain over your waterhole one day and over your neighbor’s the next. One spring can be wet and plentiful; the next can be dry and stingy. The best insurance, the best risk-management policy against such unpredictable circumstances, is to accept visitors to your n!ore so that in your time of need you will be accepted elsewhere.

  The root goal of all animals is to survive in order to reproduce, and the best overall strategy is to consume as many calories as possible while expending the least possible energy. It takes energy to patrol a territory, to protect its resources. The desert reserve is an area of patchy resources—a broad expanse of dunes and dry river courses—to keep it for yourself calls for much energy for little gain. It makes more sense to know your territory, intermarry, and share your resources according to custom. However, if you decrease mobility, increase the reliability of the resources, decrease the flexibility of group identity, decrease intergroup marriage, farm, harvest, keep to yourself—then there is something to defend, something to perhaps fight a war over.

  But what about the two slazan males? How big a range did the tall one have? And what did he gain by keeping the other male out?

  Chapter Ten

  The Ninth Day

  The sun was still resting atop the trees when I returned to the hillside the next morning. She sat behind a waterberry bush and waited for the second animal to come out of the rock. The hole in the ground was still there, Clever Fingers’ body and true body still buried beneath the dirt. The sun left the trees for the proper solitude of the sky. Bushytails‚ pointed-ears‚ and a longfoot all came at different times to drink from the creek. I had brought some of the food that Arm Scars had left her, and she ate when she thought of eating. Mostly, she heard the voice in her head ask her questions, and she had no answers.

  By late afternoon the second animal had not emerged, the first one had not come back, and I decided to tell Flatface about her plans.

  The land around Flatface’s hut and hearth had been cleared of trees, for she liked to return there every spring and fall. Not far away was the hut and hearth belonging to Flatface’s eldest daughter. Trees and berry bushes had grown between the two places, so each woman could have her solitude, Flatface’s hut had been built by Long Call soon after he had started nesting near the river, and Roofer had built a roof as solid and as dry as the one that covered I’s shelter.

  Laid out alongside the walls of the hut were stones with flat surfaces. Flatface had spent the past several summers, when the river was shallow, seeking gray rocks with surfaces that had been flattened by the rush of water and sand. Then she had taken colors, mashed from different berries and mixed with soot, and with her fingers she had drawn lines that looked like things you could see. She let the rain wash the rocks clean so she could draw again and again until she had drawings good enough to consider them her wisdom. Then she would take them to the Many Huts, where she would build a hut to shelter and preserve her wisdom for any woman who was interested. Wisdom, each mother said, is easily lost. The words a daughter does not hear turns into air that no one breathes.

  Flatface herself was sitting by the cooking fire and eating fish that was spread out on a clay platter. Before I had reached the charred remains of the waiting fire, Flatface, without looking up, called out, “Long Fingers, Healer, I have fruitnut and fish to eat.”

  I declined twice before she accepted. She sat down on the other side of the fire, taking only what Flatface placed within her reach.

  “Do you come with news or stories?” asked Flatface.

  “News. I leave tomorrow morning to go to the Many Huts. I have with me my bag of herbs and poultices to leave you, if you wish. I know how you listened when your mother spoke.”

  “But it was to your mother she gave the gzaet. Are you sure you should leave?”

  I hesitated. For the first time in her life she felt like there were certain things best left unsaid. She said them anyway. “The animal has left the rock. I do not know where she has gone.” This seemed to frighten Ratface, who looked to the tree branch where she had hung her bow and her quiver.

  This glance in turn frightened I, who hesitated, then continued. “A second animal has appeared. It now lives in the rock. It has not come out.”

  “You went back to the clearing,” said Flatface. She averted her eyes, as if in shame. “How will you know if you breathe in a true body while you cut up a body?”

  “I did not cut this one up.”

  Flatface looked at I. “My eldest daughter took whitefish to Old Sour Plum. He told her the body is gone.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Did the animal eat it? Old Sour Plum said you gave the animal a gift of food.” Flatface stopped, looked away, then looked back. “Did you give the animal food so it wouldn’t try to eat us?”

  “No,” said I, even though the words were not true. “The animal buried the body.”

  Flatface looked horrified, and she looked content with her horror.

  “When a person dies,” said I, “you and I can move. You and I can stay away from the body. The animal must not be able to move the rock. She must not understand about true bodies. Perhaps it is her way.”

  “It is the wrong way.”

  “Yes. But it is the animal’s way. Now there is a second animal. Are more animals going to come? How will you or I or anyone else deal with them? Some person must have seen one animal or another. If one woman saw such an animal, she would have placed such wisdom in the Many Huts. That is why I must go”

  “It is not safe to go to the Many Huts alone. Should I go with you?”

  “I am sure Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter will accompany me.”

  Flatface said nothing for a moment. She took a rock, smashed it against the shell of a fruitnut. First she ate the fruit; then she broke the second shell and ate the tiny nut within. In front of I rested a fruitnut‚ and she did the same. Then Flatface said, “You
r mother and I shared a mother. What do you share with this woman who watches lightfoot?”

  “She is full of respect and full of help.”

  “Her belly carries two.”

  I said nothing.

  “You know that I gave birth to a child who gave up breath when he was knee-high, and I gave birth to a child who gave up breath when she still suckled from my teat, and you know that I left them where they had died so their true bodies could return to the night sky.

  “I want you to know today that I have buried one newborn and another. One was born too early and was unable to breathe. She was as red as clay and as soft, and she was small enough to fit in my two hands. Even though I shouldn’t have, I held her to my breast and I cried and wailed because this would have been my first child. The second one was born with one leg. A man cannot live with one leg. I buried him before he could breathe in a true body. I wanted to hold him, too, almost as badly as I wanted to hold the first.”

  Flatface had averted her eyes just enough so that I could watch the emotions play across her face and know they were true. But now she faced I. “Your watcher of lightfoot should know this. We sometimes have to bury children.”

  I had no response, because she knew Flatface was right. She looked off in the woods and said, “I would prefer your company, but there is no one else by this part of the river who could heal anyone who needed help.”

  “Then go to the Many Huts. But before you go, tell the woman with the animal’s teats to go.”

  It took a moment for I to realize that Flatface was referring to Huggable, who, like the animal, had teats and no infant. “You want her gone because she killed the almost-a-man,” said I.

  “Nightskin, the one you call Far Hunter, has spoken to my daughter, and to Wisdom, and to Wisdom’s eldest daughter, and to Squawker. Each woman wants Animal Teats to leave. Nightskin says she caused terrible trouble when she had lived by the river’s mouth. There will be more trouble if she stays.”

  “Has Nightskin left for the river’s mouth?”

  “No,” said Flatface. “She says she will live near this part of the river.”

  “There is no mother of her mother who has lived here.”

  “The same is true of Squawker.”

  “There was plenty to eat when Squawker’s mother came to live near the river. There is less now after the animal arrived.”

  “My daughter has eaten well. Nightskin is a fine hunter.”

  “Nightskin does say she is a fine hunter.”

  Flatface looked ashamed. “Yes. She boasts like a man.”

  “And you accept her as someone who will live near this part of the river?”

  “Since the animal has arrived, there has been trouble. I am frightened. She is a woman with strength.”

  “She is like a man with arrows.”

  “And you. Long Fingers, are you a pregnant woman who watches and waits for things to happen? The animal is still here, and nothing has gotten better.”

  Huggable sat with her back to the cooking fire. Laid out in front of her were a series of long, fairly straight sticks. One such stick was in her hand, and she was shaving off thin strips of wood with a hard gray adze that someone must have given her elsewhere, because no man who lived near the river worked well with stone. She was making arrows. Her quiver, which hung just outside the opening of her shelter, was full of arrows. Huggable’s daughter sat away from her mother. She was removing bones from a fish whose body had been slit open. She was getting dirt all over her fingers and in turn all over the fish.

  I wanted to stand at a respectable distance from hut and hearth, but that was impossible given the way it was tightly surrounded by brush and trees. “I am here,” she said softly, so as not to startle, as well as to give the illusion of polite distance.

  Huggable’s daughter smiled, thought better of it, and averted her gaze. Huggable rose and turned. Her teats had shrunken. There was the rustling of leaves, the purposeful snapping of green limbs. Hugger emerged from brush on the other side of the camp. He staged at I with wide, hard eyes; he thrust out his shoulders, and he stood there, trying to look menacing. “Go away, Healer,” said Huggable.

  Her daughter looked to I, then to her mother, clearly upset by the words.

  I told Huggable that she would be leaving for the Many Huts and would be gone for a number of days. “Maybe you should leave here, too.”

  Huggable averted her eyes. First I thought this was a gesture of respect; then she saw that Huggable was looking to Hugger, who took a step forward. I found herself wishing she felt threatened by Hugger, but she’d known him since he was a boy.

  I said, “Maybe Hugger should leave with you.”

  “He won’t leave.”

  “Then mate with others.” There was the poorly built hut, and there was the kaross lying by her hut that still had patches of lightfoot fur on it. “You will get better things if you mate with more.”

  “No.”

  “He’s protecting you,” said I, keeping her voice steady while all she felt was increasing anger. “You fucked only with Hugger so you could ask for his protection.”

  Huggable turned and walked away from both I and Hugger. She stood, her fingers plucking at leaves, tearing them apart. Hugger, without effect or power, leaned from one foot to the other. He still was not a man. Solitude was something he played at like a girl plays at hunting. Huggable continued to tear at leaves because there truly was no way for her to respond to the strength of I’s words—to fuck, to manipulate, to promise exclusive mating and a child in exchange for a difficult favor—even people from the river’s mouth must find that disgusting. But, then, Huggable was not from the river’s mouth. And there sat her daughter, the dirtied fish laid out before her. Would she grow up to act this way?

  “When Nightskin saw you,” said I, “she threatened you with arrows. What would make a woman so angry?”

  “I did nothing wrong.”

  “You killed her mate. That is a good enough reason for leaving. If she kills you, she will have to go far away to live. She will have more solitude than a woman with a child can face.”

  “She won’t leave,” said Huggable. She tore a whole handful of leaves off a sourberry bush. “She’s strong like a man. No one can make her leave. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You are not safe here, then. Why stay?”

  “Because I know she will follow me.”

  “If you leave, she will return to the river’s mouth.”

  “Did someone tell you that? Because she told me she plans to stay by this part of the river. She knows no one by the river’s mouth will want her back, not even the women with whom she shared a mother.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know. One woman then another told me.”

  “Why would they say such a thing to one who shares no mother?”

  “Each did because she had to. There is no reason for me to tell you. Now go away. This is my hut. This is my hearth. You are not welcome. I have no food to share with you.”

  “Leave. That’s all I say. Leave, so that your daughter will have a mother.” I did not remain. She was ashamed of her words and the effect they would have on the girl. She heard the daughter’s sharp cry, she heard the girl’s quick footsteps. She turned, thinking the girl might be running to her, but she saw through the brush that the daughter was in her mother’s embrace, her thin arms tight around Huggable’s neck.

  The forest was darkening, and I sought out Nightskin. But Flatface’s daughter and Talk Too Much said they did not know where she had built hut and hearth. Talk Too Much, whom I called Wisdom to her face, went on about how Nightskin was awaiting child and how no man would build a hut for a woman who would not mate again for a long time, even if the woman was a good hunter and could provide meat. Talk Too Much also told I she would build a waiting fire where I could sleep now that it was almost dark, but I wanted to sleep in her own hut. If she did not know the paths so well from years of walking them, she might ha
ve lost her way. There was the sound of movement in the distance, and she imagined a four-legged nightskin seeking her out. She ran quickly, her leather carry bag slapping her side, until she made it back to her camp.

  Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter were sitting by the waiting fire. Next to the cooking fire there was a whole sparklefish‚ and an array of springleaves and wetroots. I looked over to Lightfoot Watcher, who after a few words of greetings, respectfully ignored her. Her belly was tremendous. The teats were almost large enough to nurse. I malspoke her own laziness as she ate the food Lightfoot Watcher had provided. She thought of the twins and what Lightfoot Watcher had asked of her, and she found it hard to sleep that night. Every sound from the forest seemed alive with threat. If she died, who would know how to use the gzaet, who would heal those who were hurt? The fear ate at her as if it had gone days without eating.

  The Tenth Day

  In the morning I wrapped her kaross about her body, tying it off at the waist, and she filled it with nuts and tubers. She placed some herbs and poultices in her carry bag, and she hung around her neck several strings of memory beads, one of which had to do with the delivery of children when the mother was infirm. She wrapped her gzaet in a blanket, set it in her hut, and placed several memory beads over it, the shape of the design meant to discourage intruders.

  She said farewell to Lightfoot Watcher, who in turn said that a woman should not walk alone through places where another woman might gather. I said she had disturbed Lightfoot Watcher’s solitude far too often, and the other woman insisted that on long travels a woman prefers company to solitude.

  Soon Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter had made their preparations, the three fires were doused, leaving coals the color of ash and the color of night, and the three set out on the journey, I leading the way, Lightfoot Watcher following from a respectful distance, and her daughter beside her. As they walked, the daughter began to enjoy her solitude, walking farther away, sometimes running ahead, other times taking a thin animal trail that ran near the main trail. She found and killed a many-legs. She pointed out the tracks of a nightskin that had walked here a night or two ago. She was bitten by a hatebug and cried for the longest time.