Tuksook's Story, 35,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

  Gumui arrived. He hugged Tuksook, slightly colliding with Item.

  “Item, forgive me. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’re forgiven, Gumui,” she said with a knowing smile. Gumui, she saw, was relieved as much as she was.

  Tuksook was still somewhat foggy, but she hugged Gumui with all the strength she could. “You hit me so I would sleep. Thank you, Gumui. Thank you so much,” she murmured and let her arms fall to the sleeping place, for they seemed too heavy.

  Mi arrived with the moss and a skin that she’d seen Item use when cleaning the wound. Item took the skin and placed it under Tuksook’s short leg. She took the very warm moss and pressed it against the wound. She held it there, warming Tuksook’s wound. Then, she replaced that moss with an additional application that still was warm. She wiped the wound.

  “Mi, I need the honey and poultice.”

  By the time Item said half the words, Mi was gone. She knew exactly what Item needed. She returned with both things, walking as quickly as possible without running.

  “That warmth feels comforting,” Tuksook mumbled, slipping back to sleep—this time a real sleep.

  “Mi,” Item said, “you are a good help.”

  “Thank you, Grandmother,” she replied, leaning against Item with her arm around Item’s back. “I think she looks better.”

  “She is healing very well. This is not what I’d normally expect. I expect Wisdom has a hand in this.”

  Mi looked at her grandmother. She said, “He has answered many requests for good healing.”

  Item put her arm around Mi. “Yes, he has.”

  As the days passed, Tuksook began to make herself mobile. Single-mindedly she focused on the task. She asked for some sticks with a forked top to make the sticks People sometimes used when they had a sprained ankle or broken foot bone. She lined the top of the sticks with soft beaver fur. Gumui observed, but he didn’t mention, the patience she was showing. That was something Tuksook had never shown to this extent. She used the inside privy he had constructed with Stencellomak’s help. She had limited mobility by hopping. It was enough to have her there and back to her bench/sleeping place.

  In time the covering was removed from the end of Tuksook’s short leg. She was able to go outside to the meadow to walk. Daily her proficiency with the walking sticks grew. Her only sadness was that she could no longer walk to the rock where she and Gumui at times, and she and Mi at other times, had spent so many days. She would look at it realizing that there were some things she could no longer do. Because of her conviction that feelings should align with the concept of what is—is, she did not show self pity or anger. They were not part of her. Tuksook accepted what came and tried her utmost to make the best of it. She had not forgotten the shower of roses as blessings. She and Mi recited stories while sitting on the rocks at the edge of the meadow.

  “Mother,” Mi said after finishing reciting a story, “People are amazed by you.”

  “What do you mean, Mi?”

  “I hear them sometimes say things like, ‘She’s a solid example to us.’”

  “I don’t want People to have the wrong idea, Mi. If I have done anything here, it’s to make it so I can walk with my walking sticks. I want to be able to move about. That’s how I can do it. It’s not a big thing.”

  “Well, some of the People think it is. Jowlichi is really impressed.”

  “I’ll have to think how to change that. I don’t want People impressed with me.”

  “Mother, there are, as you well know, some things you have to live with.”

  “Wisdom cautions against it.”

  “I know. Even so, Mother, I am impressed. Could I do what you’ve done without self pity? I doubt it.”

  “I don’t wish you to have that feeling.”

  “Mother, it’s something you have to live with. You don’t seem to know how you appear to other People.”

  Amuin hit the rocks together, calling out the evening meal. For the first time, Tuksook was very hungry. It surprised her that she was hungry. She hadn’t thought about food since the accident.

  She and Mi walked to the food preparation area. Gumui filled Tuksook’s bowl.

  “Gumui, that’s too much!” Tuksook protested.

  “You need to fatten yourself a little, Tuksook. Eat all of it.”

  Mi always found it amusing when Tuksook and Gumui differed on something. They didn’t ever argue as many of the People did. They each were so nice about it. She had seen Tuksook make a face at Gumui, but her eyes were soft and loving, not squinty in the way that the People who argued used their faces. She watched People, but most of all she watched her parents.

  The leaves had fully burst forth and the land was predominantly green. It was Tuksook’s favorite time of the year. It was a time of hope, she felt, a time of rebirth. In her mind web, she thought of the seasons on the earth as phases of life: the greening time was a time of hope and birth, which led to death and rebirth as a spirit with Wisdom. She knew that the people of Wikroak believed they returned to earth after death, not as spirits but as living creatures or another person. Tuksook did not believe that. Both views saw cycles, but Tuksook could not accept people transforming to other people or living creatures. When, she wondered, would it end, and then what? She viewed the cycle linearly as, first, a spiritual seed. Second, at some time Wisdom touched the seed in the woman giving it life. Third, the birth of the baby occurred which grew to a child. Fourth, the time of growing from child to full grown youth occurred with all its strength and promise and self-centeredness. Fifth, the time of maturity and understanding the way of Wisdom and the way of the People occurred with its knowledge and recognition of the importance of putting others before themselves. Sixth, decline and death occurred. Seventh, a rebirth as a spiritual body in which individuals would be recognizable to those who were in the navel of the earth and had known that person in life. Tuksook also saw life as one part of a three part cycle: spirit to physical body to spirit. To those who asked, that was how she explained it. She believed it.

  Tuksook walked to the edge of the meadow to see a returning boat. She wondered if they had caught more than one sea aurochs. Her long leg was not comfortable standing too long, so she sat on one of the carved rocks to watch.

  Huaga walked over to her.

  “Tuksook, it appears they have two sea aurochs,” Huaga said.

  “It’s hard for me to see the ropes,” she replied.

  “It looks like two to me. I want you to know that some of the best years of my life have been spent living in this meadow.”

  “You don’t miss the sea?” she asked.

  “Sometimes I do. The sea can be like a wife.”

  “That’s an interesting thought,” Tuksook laughed.

  “No, Tuksook, I’m serious. It has a call to it, an allure, lighting the fires of desire. It can present you the greatest heights and the deepest lows.”

  “I see,” she commented.

  “Tuksook, did you lose your leg, because you merited it by doing something wrong?”

  Tuksook laughed a hearty laugh. Then, she said, “I’m not really laughing at you, Huaga, but that question is not a question one asks, when they live in Wisdom’s way.”

  “Tuksook, I’ve been a boatman most of my life. I’ve called on Wisdom when the boat was in peril, or I thought it was. However, my knowledge of Wisdom is very shallow.”

  “Let me try to explain, Huaga. Would you like to sit on one of these stones?”

  “Yes,” he replied and sat.

  “Huaga, each person is born with a purpose. All of us have different purposes, which is why we do well here at the meadow. There are many things that need doing. If we all had the same purpose, we might lack for shelter, food, warmth, and even knowledge of Wisdom. Our purpose begins with Wisdom. Each of us has at least one thing to accomplish. You have had more than one, and so has Gumui. I have one—Wise One. But as with others, sometimes there are other purposes that don’t show immediately. I have lo
st a leg, not through Wisdom’s retribution but for two reasons: the first is for me to learn patience, and the second is so that others can learn something from observing me. You, for example, wondered whether I’d done something wrong. You can learn today that such a thing is not Wisdom’s way in my case, though in some other cases it could be.”

  “When my leg was pinned to the ground, I knew I had a small purpose within the larger one: to be sure all that needed to be done was done, and nothing was overlooked. I leaned on Wisdom for that. Elders and others would come to my presence and feel great pity for me. I had known for a long time I had to break through fear after the earthquake and have damage repaired whether to People or things like the bent tree house.”

  “But weren’t you in terrible pain?”

  “Have you ever had a serious injury, Huaga?”

  “Yes.”

  “First, there was great pain. Then, do you remember a time when you didn’t feel any pain for a short while?”

  “Now that you put it that way, I think I do.”

  “It’s a good thing that can save our lives sometimes when the body temporarily cuts off the pain so we can do what is immediately in our best interest.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “My best interest was first to find all the People to see where the injuries were and have them treated, and second, my interest was to be sure that things were taken care of. I needed that period of painlessness to do that. Once my contribution was made to the People, I could deal with my leg.”

  “I understand.”

  “When I awakened after being in that dark sleep from which I could not have been awakened, I didn’t ask myself what I did wrong. I thanked Wisdom that my life continued.”

  “That’s not how most People would see it,” Huaga said.

  “I wish I could change that. The key to the change is to know that every single thing that happens to a person is a blessing from Wisdom. People facing very tough times might have trouble seeing that, but if they could only focus on how the things they dislike are blessings, it changes their whole way of being. The focus becomes the time consuming effort to track the thoughts of Wisdom—not feeling sorry for self. I can only do that and be an example. Others can learn from it or not. That is how Wisdom works.”

  “You make me think thoughts I’ve never thought.”

  “What do you think of that?”

  The boat had arrived at the shore and in fact there were two ropes hanging off the back of the boat. Huaga stood to take a better look.

  “Do you need to go, Huaga?”

  “No, I just wanted to see what they caught. It’s two sea aurochs. What do I think of your words? It’s hard for me to look at the People remaining in the drought and see blessing of any kind.”

  “Again you missed the point. The drought was fact, neither good nor bad—just something that happens in the earth from time to time and place to place. The blessing was that Wisdom told my father, Midgenemo, to leave the area, to travel by boat to a new place. Many heard Wisdom through my father’s words, and some heard but set up a barricade to the full message. It is a blessing that some were saved. Those who stayed behind suffered starvation, not because their decision merited it, but rather that they chose to live a life that had a certain end in starvation. You returned there and gave them yet another opportunity to flee the drought. For whatever reason, they chose to stay. They may have feared boat travel more than starving, or they may have had a false hope that the drought would soon end. It’s not that Wisdom is punishing them for something; it’s that twice they had the opportunity to leave something they knew was awful, and they rejected it. The first time they rejected the leading of Wisdom. The second time they rejected your leading. They chose to remain where they’d surely die. They knew that. Wisdom didn’t choose to slay them, they chose to die.”

  “You have relieved me of a heavy burden,” Huaga said from somewhere deep within himself.

  “How’s that?” Tuksook asked.

  “I have blamed myself for their starvation, as if I neglected to try hard enough, or because I took the food I planned to share over the cold times and used the food for the sea crossing.”

  “Had you left the food, you’d only have prolonged the inevitable.”

  “I understand, Tuksook. I feel as if you’ve taken my mind web and shaken it vigorously. Out of that I feel freed from guilt I carried since we left the old land the last time.”

  Tuksook laughed. “Stay free of it, my friend.”

  “Tuksook, is there anything I can do for you?”

  “My needs are few and small, but there is one thing you can do for me, because you are big and very strong. I would like very much to spend the time from now until the evening meal on the rock up the hill where it’s warm and I have loved the view. I’m too heavy for Gumui to carry and safely climb the hill. People work up there today. I would be safe.”

  “I can do it and would be more than happy to do it. Do you want to go now?”

  “Yes, I’d love that,” Tuksook replied, taking her walking sticks and standing. Together they walked to the path that led up to the stone.

  Huaga’s experience on the boat had made him very surefooted. He carried Tuksook up to the rock and put her down on it. He said, “I’ll return in an eye blink, well maybe more than one.”

  Huaga came back with some jerky and a small bag of water. “I’ll return when Amuin hits those rocks together.”

  “Thank you, Huaga,” she replied. Comfort surrounded her that she usually felt on the rock.

  Tuksook leaned against the rock behind the one on which she sat. She viewed the lowland river and the meadow, taking in each detail that she hadn’t seen in years. She shut her eyes in rest. The rays of the sun were warming indeed. She felt wonderful.

  Solitude at last! Tuksook reveled in it, and suddenly she slipped the bonds of the physical world to slide into the spiritual one.

  “Wisdom!” Tuksook said, not realizing she walked on two long legs. She went up the steps in the special place Wisdom made to represent himself to her. She threw her arms around his knee and looked up into his face. The compassion she saw there overwhelmed her.

  “Tuksook, I have something I can say to you now. You have grown strong and straight right to the sun.”

  Tuksook remembered the words and quickly she remembered asking Wisdom to let her grow to the sun, and Wisdom told her she had to experience troubled times and learn patience before she could grow to the sun. The person she’d seen grow to the sun was Oneg, a child immobilized by a broken leg. While spending day after day alone in the bent tree house, Oneg used her time to learn to play the flute. Her playing it had given joy and contentment to those who heard it year after year.

  “But, Wisdom, I haven’t learned patience, so how could I learn to grow to the sun?”

  “Tuksook, while you labored to walk, you learned patience with the People and yourself. When you took time to explain things to others that would relieve their bad feelings, you learned patience. Before the earthquake, your impatience was sad to see. You lost faith. You turned again fully to the physical world, instead of remaining open to the spiritual world. You expected things told to you in the spiritual world to occur within the time constraints of the physical world. You were given a long time to learn patience, and you rejected it. Then, the earthquake struck, and you remembered what you’d learned in the spiritual world. After you waked up from the removal of your shattered leg, you had nothing but patience. Many others saw and marveled at your patience. You set a good example. In doing so you began to grow to the sun.”

  The beaming of Wisdom’s face was something Tuksook had never seen. She gazed on it entranced. Suddenly it occurred to her that she had two long legs. “Wisdom what is this—I have two long legs?”

  “When you live in the spirit you are whole, regardless of what happened in life. You are whole except for your physical body. While you live in the physical world, you have a long and short leg. When you co
me to live in the spiritual world, you’ll have two long legs.”

  “Wisdom,” Tuksook said after a long silence, “You gave me patience in the same way that you gave me the stories. I see it as your doing, not mine.”

  Wisdom smiled, saying nothing.

  “Will you tell me whether we have to face yet another earthquake like the big one we just experienced?”

  “Tuksook, you have no need to know, but I will tell you this, the land will experience many more of these jolts, some even larger. The size of the one you just experienced was a large one. In the lifetime of all the People who live in the meadow, none will ever experience another of this size. There will, however, be many of smaller size.”

  “Thank you, Wisdom. May I ask whether there are any of the People left in the old land.”

  “None of the ones your People knew. There are others at the edges of the drought, and yet others where the drought has had no effect.”

  “Will you explain to me how it is that we will be carried into the world by the People who were called Minguat?”

  “Tuksook, I have told you that the People live in others. A part of your father lives in you. A part of Ki’ti lives in you. That does not mean a piece of that person, instead it is an unseen essence that is in every part of you and is passed to you through your parents, such as the color of your hair, eyes, and skin, and many other things. Other than that, you lack the ability to understand the actual way it occurs.”

  Tuksook changed the subject. “Wisdom, Mi is an extraordinary child.”

  “Some children seek and find me early in their lives. Living with you and Gumui has caused her to see the world differently. She will be a blessing to the People even as you are blessing her.”

  “Wisdom, I’m overwhelmed.”

  “Tuksook, I speak to you only fact.”

  “I love you Wisdom. Please be closer to me than we have been in the recent past.”

  “You have only to call on me. You know that.”

  “Sometimes I’ve felt your presence as if you walked right beside me.”

  “I am always there, Tuksook, it is your spiritual openness that makes you feel me there. But I am always there beside you.”