by Darrel Bird
am wearing. He had gone out among the stars, and come home to us.
He wanted a wife, and gave me this nice suit for Kimi.”
A man about Gene's age stood up, and scowled at Gene, “You mean you gave Kimi to this worthless kachada? I will kill him!” And with that the man let out a great bellow, and hit Gene full force with a body blow. The blow knocked Gene at least three feet, and knocked the breath out of him. Kimi flew across the fifteen-foot space, and landed atop the man, and began flailing him. She grabbed a handful of his long hair, and began jerking him across the ground, her face livid with rage. The people began laughing at the scene, and the old man was laughing so hard he could hardly catch his breath.
Gene ran, and jumped on the man, and began beating him, until a man walked out from the crowd, and pulled the both of them off the man. The man got up, and limped back into the crowd. The man who had pulled them off said, “Waban has given Kimi to Kachada for the gray clothing, and that is all there is to it. Young men dishonor old men, but that is not our way. Runs-with-wind has made his own heart sore, and he will have to live with it.”
The people grew sober with the man's words, “ Now if Waban is not insulted, please tell us about the trip.” The man walked over and sat down again. Gene gathered that the man was of some importance to the tribe, he was a fierce looking man of about forty years old.
The old man stood again in his gray suit, and told in detail about the trip, and this time no one interrupted. Must be their version of a news paper, Gene thought; he was proud, as Kimi kept fussing over two cuts in his forehead. If the man held any hatred toward Gene, it didn’t show on his face as he sat facing the fire, his head down. Kimi had left no doubt as to who was to be the winner in any contest that might arise for her.
Six years later Gene was sitting his horse at the top of the hill that overlooked the fish camp; he heard his wife laugh as she chased their two girls on the little beach. His eyes wandered to the great broken structure that had been the dam. His past life was like that structure. Only bits and pieces were left as he kept watch on the only thing that mattered to him, and that was his wife, and their little girls. The old man had long since died, and Chatan had his own family, yet he knew somewhere in that dusty spec of his mind that was above genius, that all of this was only one drop in time for the human family.
The end