RavenShadow

by Win Blevins

O, ye intellectuals, divining the nature of man! While denying the divine, of course.

  It was exhilarating—the world of intellectual speculation was new to me, and I could hardly sleep for excitement after Ron left close to dawn.

  The very next week, Intro to Anthropology class, we talked about the creation stories of indigenous peoples. Ron explained the basic kinds of creation in the U.S., Stacked World stories and Earth Diver stories, and he told a couple—how Earth was all water and Duck dove down to the bottom and brought up the first earth, and the world was made out of that, a classic Earth Diver story.

  After class I went and talked to him, and we switched from “Professor Sternberg” and “Mr. Blue Crow” to “Ron” and “Blue.”

  “Ron, I don’t see much in talking about creation stories, analyzing and classifying them in this way. I mean, the magic and mystery is taken out of them, the meaning is taken out of them.”

  Ron grinned. “I agree. So why don’t you tell us a story, not analyze, and give us the poetry of it.”

  I’d trapped myself.

  Nervously, I said I’d be ready at the next meeting. Hell, I remembered a lot of old stories, but I was no expert, and I didn’t know what you would call a comprehensive Creation Story like a Stacked World or Earth Diver story.

  That night I found a big book on Lakota mythology in the library and got a story out of it. It involved creation, but really it was the story of how Evil came into the world. And it was a hodgepodge—even the author admitted the stories were never told in this way. Still, it was made out of old, traditional materials, and I decided to go for it.

  When the class was settled in, Ron nodded at me. “Ready, Mr. Blue Crow?”

  “Come to the front or stay here?”

  “As you like.”

  I took a deep breath, walked to the front of the room, carrying my sheets of paper. I turned and faced the white people. These were the people I’d been envying all my life. They had money, relative to me, who grew up without electricity. They had the power of knowledge—they’d made everything that ran their world, right down to the fancy building we went to class in. They had privilege—an employer would assume any one of them was smart and on the ball, and was likely to assume I was shiftless and lazy. You bet I was envious of these people. And now I wanted their approval. I started with a comment. “I’m going to use the word god here. It’s not right—mythic hero would be close. But god is your word for these guys. Here goes.”

  I read the story out loud, the way I’d typed it up.

  “The four first gods, Sun, Earth, Sky, and Stone, were lonely and longed for companions. Sky gathered them together and granted to each the opportunity to create a companion. Sky himself made Wind. Sun made Female Sun, or Moon. Stone made Thundercloud. And Earth made Passion, a beautiful woman.

  “Passion was so beautiful that Earth became jealous of her. They quarreled, and Earth cast Passion into the waters. Then Earth was without a companion, and once again lonely.”

  I forced myself to make eye contact, especially with Rhonda, an attractive, blonde, pre-med student I’d been flirting with. I hoped she wouldn’t think this story was anti–woman or anti–beautiful woman.

  “Passion was angry, and appealed to Sky. ‘Pity me, for Earth hates me, and I am an outcast.’

  “Out of pity Sky gave her the waters as her domain, and ruled that she could associate with the gods.

  “Soon Passion was bemoaning her outcast state to Stone. So entranced was Stone by her beauty that he forgot his companion Thundercloud and took Passion unto himself. And soon a son was born to them.”

  Jeez, my words sounded like Bible stuff. I looked nervously at the class fundamentalist, a farm boy, and the class atheist, a former fundamentalist with a chip on his shoulder.

  “This son had an evil disposition, so Sky named him Evil One. Because of his rages, he is also known as Wind Storm.”

  My fear said, Two names for the same god, Evil One and Wind Storm—that’s gonna confuse them. I shushed the fear.

  “Evil One grew into a giant who loved rages and reasonless destruction. Passion sent him to torment Earth. Evil One also set out himself against the gods Beauty and Wisdom. But Beauty calmed him with her greater powers. Wisdom said to Evil One, ‘We are sons of the same father, Stone. As the older brother, I require you to obey me.’ So it is that when Wisdom and Evil dispute, Wisdom prevails.”

  I could just hear them muttering, The hell it does.

  “Now Passion became infatuated by her own son, Evil One, and she bore him a son. For this infidelity Stone set aside Passion forever.”

  Is that why rock is so hard?

  “The offspring of the incestuous act of Passion and Evil One was Demon. He was beautiful, alluring, cunning, and deceitful.

  “Demon and Passion schemed to get him permission to live on Earth. Demon finally charmed Earth into admitting him to her abode. Now Passion had her revenge against Earth for making her an outcast—Demon would cause Earth trouble forever.”

  This was probably the first scheme, mother and son against the goddess Earth.

  “On Earth, Demon’s way has been to incite his father Evil One to greater mischief. Cunningly, he usually escapes blame. His special pleasure is tricking men and gods into ridiculous or shameful deeds, and then laughing at them. He even delights in tormenting his mother, Passion, his father, Evil One, and his grandfather, Stone.”

  Ungrateful child, an old theme. Other old themes were coming—rejection, resentment, and revenge. The dramatic part was coming up, too.

  “Thundercloud looked angrily on the love between his creator and one-time companion, Stone, and Passion. Therefore he declared himself the enemy of the beautiful Passion and her child, Evil One. He sent his storms against them everywhere in the world.

  “Passion asked Sky for help, so Sky decreed that Thunderstorm could not enter the realm of Passion, which is the waters.

  “Evil One, whose other name is Wind Storm, defiantly went against Thunderstorm. Their battle was awesome and terrible. Thunderstorm cast his awful glance at the Evil One again and again, but Evil One is the son of a god and cannot be destroyed.”

  The thundercloud fighting wildly with the wind storm—I liked this part.

  “Evil One struck over and over at Thunderstorm but could not hit him. The clouds boiled, lightning flashed, thunder boomed. Evil One (Wind Storm) roared back. Growing things were torn up by their roots. Forests were smashed. The strife between Thunderstorm and Wind Storm goes on to this day.

  “So came evil onto our Earth. So walks evil here now.”

  I fidgeted, wondering what they thought. In a pretend offhand voice, I added a comment. “Your culture also has its story of how evil came into the world. Satan fell from the grace of God. Eve partook of the apple. So the whites also recognize the play of the large forces of evil in this world. Our account of the origin of Evil is different from yours.” I ran my eyes around the room to see how my version of their culture suited, but I couldn’t tell anything.

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” Ron said.

  I took a seat.

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” Ron said again. A couple of the students echoed his sentiments—thanked me for doing it. But finally Ron himself broached a hard question. “We’ve heard a lot of these stories now, myths from all cultures.” He stopped and looked imploringly at me. He wanted me to know what he was saying wasn’t against me personally. “I wonder how we should understand these stories. I have a kind of theory. We seem to treat these stories like children’s playthings, beautiful baubles of the imagination. I don’t think that’s how they’re meant.

  “Mr. Blue Crow, when you heard this story. Who told it?”

  “My grandfather.” I squirmed under my own answer, and under Ron’s scrutiny. “Also, a lot of it from a book.”

  “When you learned this story from your grandfather, how did he expect you to understand it?”

  I was too embarrassed to play this game. I just shrugged. />
  “I mean, everyone here is dazzled and charmed by this story. But when we leave here, we’ll all rush back to trying to understand the implications of the theory of evolution for mankind. We’ll talk about nature raw in tooth and claw. We’ll look for missing links. We’ll beat the bushes of New Guinea and search the dry canyons of East Africa for bones that fill in the picture. And we won’t, any of us, give thought to the idea that your story, or other Lakota stories we call myths, may have light to shed on anything.

  “Am I right?”

  He looked around the class, but no one was ready to jump in fast, probably from social sensitivity.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s the spirit in which your grandfather taught you the story. Is it? I mean, I think he was offering the story as a truth to stand on, a place to begin to understand the world. Wasn’t he?”

  Ron waited, and finally I said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, I want to put this question to all of us. We’re all well-intentioned here. We all enjoy these stories. My question is, Do they have some real truth to offer? Or should we just listen, be charmed, and rush back to our scientific explanations? To Darwinism and its successors in the theory of evolution?”

  Long pause. Finally Ron added, “This is very important. I open it up to the class.”

  Immediately the farm kid piped up and said his creation story was not any theory of evolution, it was the story as the Bible tells it. God created the world and mankind, and the Bible tells how it was done. He said this in a kind of belligerent way.

  Ron nodded and thanked him.

  Rhonda, the girl I wanted to go out with, spoke up next. “I’m pre-med. I don’t see how this is debatable, really. This method, the scientific method, it’s gotten us everything we have. Automobiles, airplanes, the landing on the moon. I mean, buildings, heating and air conditioning, penicillin, treatments for cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio.” She shrugged. “I mean, how can we ask whether to rely on science or on myth when we know what science has done for us?”

  Ron said, “Some people say there’s no conflict between the religious and scientific way of seeing things.”

  “Oh come on,” said the class atheist, who was the best student besides Rhonda. He was a black-haired kid, intense, skinny as a willow limb, wanted to be a writer. “The Bible says we were created at a certain time and in a certain way. You can count the generations back and practically name the date. Science shows that the world is four billion years old—we have the geological evidence. Mankind is three million years old—we have the bones.

  “I don’t get this stuff.” He sounded as impatient as he looked. “I was raised a fundamentalist, and I’m here to tell you, we don’t need to go back to those superstitious ways of seeing things.”

  Silence. Rhonda broke it, looking at me regretfully, but speaking strong. “I think the world has passed the religious way by. Science tells us the truth about the world. Scientific medicine tells us how to heal people. All this old stuff is … It’s in the way. It’s holding us back. To heal people I don’t need myths. I need statistical studies. And medicines. And medical technology.”

  She looked at me again and said in a kindly way. “I’m sorry, Blue.”

  “Mr. Blue Crow, you got things you want to say?”

  I shook my head and said truthfully, “I don’t know what I think about this.”

  Someone else did have something to say, and other discussion followed. I didn’t hear it, really. I was in a carried-off state. The discussion wasn’t meant to get anywhere anyway, ideas were just getting tossed around, like balls being juggled. Ron recommended that everyone think about the issues and let us go.

  He turned to me immediately. “Thanks for the story. This is what our class should be.”

  And he walked off, leaving me holding the bag. I tried to catch up with Rhonda but missed her. I remember wanting to make a gesture of togetherness. And I remember thinking, without any reason I could explain, that I was making a choice, a fateful choice.

  I never did get to go out with Rhonda.

  A couple of hours later I took Bradley to the airport in his Saab. He was flying home to Chicago to go hear Josh White and spend time with a woman. My weekend was the season’s first basketball practice Saturday at midnight. The college always started basketball practice on the first legal minute, and the fans turned out big for the midnight session. There’s not a lot else to cheer about in North Dakota.

  After Bradley said goodbye at the gate, I stood at the cyclone fence, fingers clawed in the wire diamonds, and watched the plane take off. It struck me how that big machine represented the path we’d been talking about very well. Magic travel, journeying that in the old stories would have been made into a miracle. Yet explainable, modern air travel, if you knew the science to grasp it. Talk about lift and pounds per square inch. No need to call down a magical eagle to bear you up.

  On the way back from the airport, I carried my mind carefully, in a state of suspended animation, like it was infinitely delicate and about to break.

  Unaccountably, old stories rose in my mind. How Inyan, Stone, the first being, alone in the world, took from himself and created Earth, and let his own blue blood flow and they became the blue waters of Earth, and the spirit of the water separated itself from the waters and stood upon the edge of Earth, and became Skan, Sky, which is not material but spirit. And so Stone created the first two other great gods, Earth and Sky.

  I simply let this story, and others, play in my head, like music. Sometimes as I drove I looked in my heart and I saw, with clarity, two most strange feelings there. One was exhilaration, excitement at my new discoveries. The other was anger, not at whites this time. Anger at my people, anger at my family, anger at Grandpa, anger at my ancestors.

  For some reason I couldn’t go to my apartment. I felt restless. I drove around aimlessly for a while and finally went to the gym.

  Here at least I belonged. I had a locker, sweat clothes, shoes and shorts, and a basketball. I dribbled on the cement of the locker room floor. Bang-bang-bang-bang! Pound it into your head, Blue Crow, the old ways don’t work. I dribbled awkwardly around the benches, out the door, and down the hall. I never was much of a dribbler. When I got into the gym, I took on my athletic personality, Wings.

  My mind two-tracked now, thinking philosophy and playing ball. I looked up at the lights and knew without words that science gave us the big banks of bulbs that light up whole gymnasiums. I took the ball hard to the basket, went up, and absolutely without frills, nothing but force, made a power dunk. I’d never become a shooter (no touch) but I could dunk and make some moves under the basket.

  The ball whacked the floor, bounced right up through the net, and fell soft as a feather back through. I’d never seen that happen, and took it as a sign that things were super-cool.

  Stand back to the basket, think. The sweat lodge—I sla-a-a-mm DUNKED it!

  Free-throw line, eye the basket, rim made of metal—metallurgy is a science. The ball is the Sun Dance—one big step and jump to the bucket—THROW it down! THROW it away!

  I felt savage. I laughed out loud. I was throwing away savagery, I was embracing civilization, and I feel savage!

  Back to the basket, look back up at the glass, which science teaches us to make out of the silicon in sand. The ball is the Yuwipi ceremony—jump, turn in the air, and JAM it to the floor!

  I hadn’t missed a dunk. I wasn’t going to miss a dunk. I was rockin’ and rollin’, I was in a groove, I was playing unconscious.

  Right side of the basket, in close. The ball is, is … the painted skull of the buffalo. Fake left, go baseline under the basket, JAM behind my head.

  I was sweating way more than I should. I was breathing way too hard for a few minutes’ workout. I was excited. I was avid. I was rambling and raging.

  Same spot, other side, same move, harder for me from this side. The ball is the staff draped with eagle feathers. One dribble, drive beneath the basket, THROW it down, and it’s GO
OD!

  For the next twenty minutes, alone, I played maybe the best basketball of my life. From every angle I attacked the basket. I pretended the ball was the hanblechia ceremony, the hunkapi, the tapa wanka yap, all our ceremonies, and I dunked every one, I threw them away and never missed a shot.

  Switch shots—I was going to shoot hooks, harder for me. Back to the basket: The ball was the sacred hoop, it was the eagle-wing fan, the eagle-bone whistle—everyone of these emblems became a hook shot, and every hook shot fell. I couldn’t miss—I’d never been so hot.

  Everything I could think of that stands for medicine, our spiritual way of looking at things, which that day I was calling superstitious, I hooked it down or dunked it down.

  When I could think of nothing more, I dribbled around the court, sweating, panting, wagging my head from side to side, working my mind. What have I not thrown away? When I’d thrown away everything, I was going to go to the other end, stand at the free-throw line, and shoot a three-quarter court set shot, which I was sure would go in!

  Then I thought of it.

  I hadn’t thrown away the Sacred Pipe. Neither my own Pipe, the one I inherited from my great-grandfather, nor the father of all Pipes, the one brought by White Buffalo Woman and held by the nation’s Pipe Keeper.

  Desire rose in me like a hot geyser. I wanted to throw away the Pipe, all Pipes, and I would do it with jump shots. Normally, I was a lousy jump-shooter, but today I would make anything I let fly.

  I picked my best spot, fifteen feet right of the basket on the baseline and threw the Pipe at the basket.

  It hit the front rim and bounced back to me.

  I shot it again. Hit the front rim and bounced back.

  I shot it once more, harder. Hit the front rim and bounced back.

  I shot it a fourth time, way too hard. Hit the back rim and bounced back.

  I dribbled around. Four times is enough. This doesn’t feel right. Something …

  I went for a sure and easy shot, ten feet straight in front of the basket. This time I would throw away the White Buffalo Woman Pipe, the most sacred of all Lakota relics.