The man who had lost his name was listening, down in the canyon, under the dry creek bank. He was always listening.
When Adsevin went home that evening, her uncle said to her, “Listen, Adsevin. I have been talking with some hunters who go up the canyons there above the petrified forest and over the Hawk Ridge. They know of this deer-man. He left Forty-Five Redwoods House here a long time ago to live in the forest. He used to be a Serpentine man, but he has gone outside the Houses, they say. He got lost. Lost people are dangerous; they do things without meaning. Probably it would be better if you didn’t go back to Orlu Canyon. You may be frightening him, going there.”
She said, “Do the hunters know where he lives in the hills?”
“He has no house at all,” her uncle said.
Adsevin had no wish to worry her uncle, but she had no fear of the man in Orlu Canyon, and did not understand how it might be that she would frighten him; so she waited till her uncle was busy with the harvest, and went back on the northward paths.
It had not yet rained, but the trees were releasing their water held in trunk and root, and the spring had some water in it lying deep among the rocks. The dirt around the spring was muddy and deer-trampled. In the skin of the red boulder there was a mark cut beside the Blue Clay sign she had made. It was the coyote-eye of the Eighth House. Seeing it, she said, “Heya, heya, Coyote! So you are here, Dweller in the Wild House! This gift is for anybody in that House who might like it.” She set down what she had brought, some grapeleaves stuffed with soaked barley, raisins, and coriander, and then went away as she had come.
When she and her uncle were together after work, a while later, she said, “Mataikebi! [maternal-uncle-woman-dear] The man says that he lives in the House of the Wilderness. I don’t think you need to be afraid of him or for me if I go there.”
“What if I went there and smelled the air?” her uncle said.
Adsevin said, “The doors of that House do not close.”
So her uncle went to Orlu Canyon. He saw the marks on the boulder, and beside them he saw a hematite rock from the streambed, polished red, beautiful. He did not pick it up. He sat a long time on that rock shelf, thinking and listening. He did not see the lost man or hear him, but he thought he was there, near the alders across the spring. He sang heya wakwana and went back to Chukulmas. He said to his niece, “I think the air there is good. The creek is beginning to run now. A rock from the creek is there.”
When Adsevin went back, she took the rock, and left a string bag she had woven. She said, “They will be dancing the Grass soon in our town. All the people of the Wilderness are welcome in that dancing.”
She saw him watching her then, listening to her. He was behind a six-trunked madrone across the canyon, and she could see his shoulder, his hair and his eyes. He crouched down when he thought that she had seen him. She looked away, and turned away, and went back up the ridge.
So from wakwa to wakwa, from season to season, she would go back to the springs of Orlu with some small gift. She would speak, telling the lost man about the dancing in Chukulmas, and she would take his gift if he had put one there on the red rock, and sometimes she saw him. Always he saw her.
When an old woman of the Serpentine who lived in Forty-Five Redwoods House was dying, Adsevin went to Orlu and spoke of that, thinking that the woman might have been kin to the lost man, and that he might want to sing the Going Westward songs for her, if he had not forgotten them.
On the First Day of a World Dance she came in the heavy rain to Orlu Canyon. The creek was roaring and foaming yellow in spate, and the birds of the canyon were sheltering and crouching in every shrub and tree. It was hard to get down the canyon wall to the red rock, as the mud slipped away underfoot. In the noise of the rain falling and the creek beating its rocks against each other, she said, “We are dancing the World in our town, as people are dancing it in the Wilderness. Tomorrow is the Wedding Night. A man of the First House and I will be married then.”
In the noise of the rain she did not know if he was there or if he could hear her voice.
That year Adsevin did not want to dance the Moon, being newly married. She and her husband came away from town, up into the hills, and made a summerhouse of nine poles on the ridge above Sholyo Canyon. One day she went over to Orlu from there. She came over the ridge in a clear place where a digger pine had fallen, and looked down the canyonhead to the spring and the red rock above it. She saw the lost man sleeping on the rock. He lay face down with his cheek on the carved marks in the rock. She stood still a long time and went away without waking him.
When she came back to the summerhouse the young husband asked her, “Where did you go?”
“To the springs of Orlu,” she said.
He had heard talk in the Bay Laurel Lodge about the forest-living man who had gone wild and was seen in Orlu Canyon. He said, “Never go there.”
“Yes,” she said, “I will go there.”
“Why?” he said.
She said, “Ask my uncle why I go to Orlu. He can tell you, maybe. I cannot.”
The young man said, “If you go there again, I will go with you.”
She said, “Please let me go alone. There is nothing to fear.”
After that her husband was uneasy living there far up in the hills. He said, “Let’s move down to your family’s summer place,” and she agreed. While they were there, at White Ash Banks, the husband talked to Adsevin’s uncle, and to some hunters who often went up in the canyons. He did not like what they told him about the lost man; they said that when they went to Orlu he was always there near the spring. But the uncle said, “I think it is all right.”
Adsevin went down to Chukulmas to dance the Water; it was she who brought the water from the spring at Orlu. And after that she would go back alone to Orlu, before the great festivals. Sometimes she took food. Her husband watched this and said nothing, telling himself what the uncle had told him.
A boy made Adsevin and her husband his parents, along about the time of the Water; and after he had been living a few months, in the time of the new grass, Adsevin took him in the carrier and set off on the northern paths. She had said nothing to her husband. He saw her go with the baby and was alarmed and angry. He followed her at a distance up into the hills, up the canyons, across the high ridge to Orlu. On the ridgeback he lost her trail; there was no trail. He could not see where she had gone, and there was no sound of her going. He was afraid to make noise looking for her and stood still, listening.
He heard her voice below him, down in the canyon over the creekbed. She said, “This is my son. I have named him Following Coyote.” Then she said nothing for a while. Then he heard her voice again, “Have you gone away, Coyote?” Then for a while she was silent, and then her voice cried out loudly without words.
The young man sprang forward pushing and tearing through the brush to the edge of the canyon and down the canyon wall to the place where he had heard her voice. She was sitting on the red rock ledge with the baby in her arms, weeping. As he came there the husband smelled death. When he stood by her, she pointed down towards the spring. The lost man had died lying under the big alders across the creek just below the spring. He was already part earth.
POEMS
SECOND SECTION
THE POEMS IN this group are spoken or written offerings to the author’s heyimas or lodge.
The Kesh idea of property was so different from ours that any mention of it entails explanations. What one made, or gained, or owned, in the Valley, belonged to one; but one belonged to one’s House, and house, and town, and people. Wealth consisted not in things but in an act: the act of giving.
Poets owned the poems they made, but the poem really did not exist until it was given, shared, performed. The identity of owning and giving is perhaps easier to see when what is involved is a poem, or a drawing, or a piece of music, or a prayer. The Kesh, however, saw it as holding equally true for all property.
THE BLUE ROCK’S SONG
&n
bsp; From the Serpentine Wakwaha; unsigned.
I am coherent, mysterious, and solid.
1 sit on dirt in sunlight between the live oaks.
Once I was a sun, again I will be dark.
Now I am between those great things for a while
along with other people, here in the Valley.
A MEDITATION IN THE EIGHTH HOUSE IN EARLY SPRING
By Ire of Sinshan.
Thin bluish clouds move northeastwards
high up and slowly. Help this soul,
southwest wind of the rainy season,
help this soul be healed.
Under bark of the fallen pine
worms have carved fine mazes,
delicate circuitous houses.
Maze-makers, help this soul die.
Veins stand netted on the bluish boulder
where rain wore the soft rock down.
Blown rain of many winters,
help this soul turn round.
Shadows of dead branches,
sunlight and dying things,
O wilderness, one bird sings
one note far off in the sunny wind.
Rock was softer than the rain,
tree weaker than the worm. No help for it.
So soul be weak, fail, drift, and blow
with wind through net and maze, and sing
one note once only in the wilderness.
Hehóle-nó
DYING
An unsigned personal offering to the Red Adobe heyimas in Madidinou. The form is called “Tours and Echo.”
Only one dying,
you can’t have it,
I can’t have it,
we all die it,
share it.
You die, I do;
I die, you do.
You can’t save me,
I can’t save you.
Only one crying,
we all cry it,
bear it.
ASCENSION
Given to the Black Adobe Lodge of Wakwaha by the author, Agate.
Sometimes a bubble rises, a foam-soul,
and drifts on the mental wind
up the River, up the Valley,
to the Mountain, to be born to die.
From the southeast the wind is blowing.
In male and mortal flesh the soul
hollow and rising struggles, cries,
bone-home its prison, captive
seeking escape, deliverance, to go free.
The wind keeps blowing from the east and south.
Mothers of the doorway, fathers of the vines,
let the son go, the foamborn,
the warrior, the voyager, the exile,
or he will burn house and vineyard.
The east wind carries the smell of fire.
He is destruction, the thrice-born,
ashes in running water. The black field
lies behind him. Let him go,
let him go up the Mountain for his desire.
Sparks rise up on the south wind and go out.
IT WAS NEVER REALLY DIFFERENT
Given to the Red Adobe of Wakwaha by Ninepoint of Chumo.
It was never really different.
Maybe it needed more arranging.
Maybe the beginning
was when more things were needed.
Before the beginning, however,
who knows but what some woman
swatted a fly grown from a maggot
in a mouse spleen some fox left
by the creek, under the bushes?
How can you say she didn’t?
How can you say she won’t?
Because of waves,
is the sea different?
When I hit the drum like this,
I think the sound
was there before the beginning,
and everything has gone to make that sound,
and after it
everything is different.
Tongue Drum
THE SUN GOING SOUTH
An offering to the Red Adobe heyimas of Chukulmas by Settled. The syllabic meter is “nines,” often used for elegy and meditations on mortality.
In late sunshine I wander troubled.
Restless I walk in autumn sunlight.
Too many changes, partings, and deaths.
Doors have closed that were always open.
Trees that held the sky up are cut down.
So much that I alone remember!
This creek runs dry among its stones.
Souls of the dead, come drink this water!
Come into this side valley with me,
a restless old woman, unseemly,
troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones.
BEFORE THE MOON
Given to the Obsidian of Chumo by Catfish.
Under the ground,
under the moon,
the wind is blowing,
shadows are moving
over the ground,
shadows of eucalyptus.
Leaves are blowing
under the eucalyptus,
wind moving shadows
over the ground,
before the moon.
MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES
“An old poem,” spoken by Ram of Madidinou, in the Madrone Lodge.
Butterfly, coming out of mystery,
goes into it.
Serious dancer!
The soul imitates you.
You live in all the Houses,
alighting briefly
Moth, coming out of mystery,
goes into it.
Shape changer!
You teach the bear.
FOUR/FIVES
“Old poems,” spoken by Kemel of Ounmalin, in the Madrone Lodge.
Our souls are old,
often used before.
The knife outlasts
the hand that holds it.
Hills turn valleys:
still the spring rises.
As I grow old
my soul gets younger.
I go seaward:
it travels upstream.
Listen, river:
I am not my soul!
DRY TIME INVOCATION
“I made this song to sing when the dry season goes on too long and there are forest fires, or when the mind desires rain.”
—Doe, of the Blue Clay of Wakwana.
The winds are empty, the north wind, the east wind.
The sky is empty.
What we look for,
what we hope for,
they are under the sea-waves.
The shining unsleeping strangers!
The people of the deep waters!
May they be released,
let them return to the south wind,
let them return to the west wind,
let them come to the Valley,
the cloud people, the rainclouds,
send them, O sea, release them,
as the hills send down the creeks,
as the River descends to you,
as our singing descends to you,
as we dance down to you,
releasing, returning the waters,
the turning of river and rainfall,
the sea to the source returning.
OLD WOMAN SINGS
By Flowering of Sinshan, given to her heyimas.
The meter is “fours.”
I was a plum.
I have become
a prune, a prune,
dried on the seed.
Eat me, eat me!
Spit out the seed!
It will become
a tree, a tree,
blossoming plum.
UNDER KAIBI
Written by Ire to accompany a wall painting in the Blue Clay heyimas of Sinshan.
How the water winds slowly, slowly
in the mudflats, in the fog,
on the low dim levels.
A sound of long wings,
but I cannot see the heron.
QUAIL R
ISING IN BRUSH
By Kulkunna of Chukulmas, given to the Blue Clay heyimas.
Whirring, whirring you manifest
many-quailness, earthcovey
uprising startled not far,
wingthunder in chaparral.
Not to eye manifest, under
seeing, reasoning, far under,
only to ear and inwardness, sudden
whirring-earth-feathered splendor.
THIS STONE
From the Serpentine heyimas of Telina-na; by Wordriver
He went looking for a road
that doesn’t lead to death.
He went looking for that road
and found it.
It was a stone road.
He walked that road
that doesn’t lead to death.
He walked on it awhile
before he stopped,
having turned to stone.
Now he stands there on that road
that doesn’t lead to death
not going anywhere.
He can’t dance.
From his eyes stones fall.
The rainbow people pass him
crossing that road, long-legged, light-stepping,
going from the Four Houses
to the dancing in the Five Houses.
They pick up his tears.
This stone is a tear
from his eye, this stone
given me on the mountain
by one who died before my birth,
this stone, this stone.
FOUR HISTORIES
Old Women Hating
Told aloud by Thorn of High Porch House in Sinshan.
Where High Porch House stands now in Sinshan, a long time ago there was a house called After the I Earthquake House. It had stood there a long time, toe long. The stone thresholds and the floor tiles were worn hollow. Doors hung crooked in their frames Boards had come loose. The walls were full of mice and the space under the roof was stuffed full of birds’ nests and wasps’ nests and bat dung. The house was so old nobody remembered what family built it to start with. Nobody wanted to repair it and keep it clean. It was a house like an old, old dog who doesn’t care for anybody and nobody cares for it, and it lives dirty and silent, scratching its fleas. The people in Sinshan then must have been careless, to let that house get so old and dirty; it would have been better to take it down, take it apart and use the good boards and stones, unbuild it and build a new house. But sometimes people don’t do what’s better, or what’s good. Things get going along and they are as they are and who’s going to change them? It’s the wheel gets turning. It’s hard to be mindful of everything. And it’s hard to interfere in what your neighbors do, too.
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