by Will Weaver
While Tom and Madeline slept, Guy walked down the shoreline. Coming around a bend, he drew up to watch a blue heron flop up from the reeds into flight. He walked on. He found the broken stump of the old pine that had fallen onto the ice the winter of Zhingwaak’s fish house. The smaller, round face of its sawn end was weathered and gray. The torn stump was like a chair. He sat and shaded his eyes as he watched the crane drift back to its reeds. He looked farther down the shoreline for Tom and Madeline, but they were out of sight around the bend. He thought of Zhingwaak’s story “The Rolling Head.”
Once in an Indian village by a lake there was a teepee. In it lived a hunter and his wife and two little boys. Every evening when the hunter came back to his teepee he found the two boys crying.
“Why do you cry?” he asked them every time.
And the mother always said, “Oh, they just cry.”
One evening the hunter returned to find the boys alone. He asked them, “My boys, why are you crying all the time?”
Then the oldest son told his father why. The son said that as soon as his father left the wigwam in the morning, the mother painted her face and put fresh bear grease in her hair to make it shiny. Then she braided her hair and tied it with a new strip of buckskin.
The father was very angry. The next day he hid himself and saw all that his son had told him. That night the father and mother argued. The father killed the wife with his knife.
Then he went to his boys and said, “My sons, I must leave you. When you see the sun setting red in the west, that means I will be dead too.”
To the biggest boy he said, “Ningos, you must leave, too, and take little brother with you. But be careful. Your mother’s head will follow you. Her head will keep calling to you. ‘Wait—wait,’ it will say, and other clever things too. But do not listen to it,” the hunter said, “or you will never escape.” Then he told them what to do each time the rolling head drew too close.
The boys listened, then started out that same afternoon.
Soon they heard the head rolling on the path behind them. “Wait, wait,” it called out in their mother’s voice. The boys did not listen. But soon the head was very close behind.
The oldest son stopped and cut down some thorn bushes as his father had told him. He threw the thorn bushes over his shoulder onto the path until he had built a mound of thorns that covered the head.
Then they went on.
Only a little while later the boys heard the head behind them again. “Wait, wait,” the head called, “I have food for you.”
Little brother began to cry. “Let’s turn back,” he said to the big brother.
“No, we must not,” the big brother said. He remembered again what his father had told him. This time he dug up flint rocks from the ground and threw them over his shoulder. Bushes broke into flames and made a burning wall. He pulled his little brother along, away from the flames.
Soon they reached a lake. But the rolling head was close behind them again. It called out in their mother’s voice, “Wait, wait—I must nurse little brother.”
Little brother cried again. “I want to go back, I want to go back,” he said to the big brother.
“No, we must escape,” the big brother said. “And there is how we’ll do it.”
On the shore of the lake was a great crane, bigger than any crane in the world. And on the far side of the lake stood another crane. The two cranes then bent their heads toward each other. Their long bills made a bridge. The two brothers ran up the crane’s legs and along the feathers of his neck and then went across the bridge. The water was far below them. They ran onto the bill of the second crane, then slid down his neck and legs to the far shore.
Only then did they look behind. They saw the head rolling across the long bill of the first crane. But then the two cranes raised up their beaks. The mother’s head fell into the lake below and did not come up again.
The littlest brother began to cry again. But the older brother pointed to the shore beside them. “Look, little brother,” he said. The shore was thick with wild rice whose grains were as long and thick and brown as their fingers.
The little brother stopped crying. And they turned to explore this new land.
Guy stood up and turned back. As he came around the bend to the picnic spot, he heard laughter. Heard water splashing. He stopped to watch. Tom and Madeline were swimming and skating water at each other with their hands. Their clothes lay on the blanket. Once Tom chased Madeline and caught her and held her a long time. Guy looked away, behind him. He thought of turning back but suddenly Tom called out:
“Tex!”
Madeline turned and trod water. She watched.
Guy stared.
“Come on in,” Tom called.
Guy waved.
Tom kicked back underwater like a brown otter.
Guy slowly came forward.
“Come on, Guy,” Madeline called.
Guy smiled, shed his clothes.
***
Afterward the three of them lay wet and shiny and shivering on the woolen quilt, Tom in the middle. They clutched the blanket and waited for the sun to dry their skin. They lay like two slices of wheat bread with a peanut-butter center. Their teeth chattered and they laughed.
After a while, when they were warm, they sat up and slipped into their clothes. Madeline did not turn away. Her small breasts hung flat and brown-nippled. Her stomach was wrinkled but tight. From her walking she had no fat.
In one moment, on the same blanket with his mother and Tom, Guy felt some anxious part of his childhood break up and fall away. An ice dam letting loose. A spring river flowing fully open for the first time. In one moment he saw his mother fully, saw her newly.
Tom helped Madeline up from the blanket and she held his hand to steady herself while she slipped on her shoes. Guy stared at their hands. The bridge of brown and white. He stared and felt nothing but sunlight striking all the way through him to his heart.
37
The weather held hot. In the brilliant sky an occasional jet trail was the only cloud. It hung in place for hours, like a white cable stretched above the floor of the land. Nothing moved above. Little moved below, except Cassandra Silver.
“Hey—there’s your girlfriend on TV,” Martin said during the ten o’clock news.” Guy walked quickly across the living room to watch.
“. . . representing Senator Howard Stanbrook, aide Cassandra Silver has petitioned the district court judge to overturn an injunction that prohibits irrigation on the White Earth Reservation,” a young woman newscaster said earnestly in her Midwestern nasal quack. She turned to Cassandra, who stood beside her on the courthouse steps.
“Miss Silver, what is the basis of your petition?”
“We feel the injunction puts undue hardship on the farmers of White Earth who use irrigation.”
“Particularly the potato farmers?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said.
“Do you expect to succeed in overturning the judge’s decision?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said.
“When will that decision come, do you think?”
“Soon,” Cassandra answered.
“Tomorrow? This week?”
“It’s up to the judge, of course,” Cassandra said, smiling briefly, “but soon.”
The newscaster turned back to the camera, which closed in on her round face and curly blond hair: “. . . decision could come too late to save this year’s potato crop, which could mean massive layoffs at the Ricardo Losano French Fry Plant. . . . Jean Jacobsen, Channel 7 News.”
Guy dialed the Lumberjack but got only Cassandra’s recording. At the beep he said, “What the hell are you doing? I want to see you.”
He saw Cassandra the next day in the Flatwater Quill. Her photo ran on page one, along with the l
ead article, “Violence on White Earth Threatens Federal Bill, Payoff.” In the paragraphs that followed, Cassandra detailed the amount of federal money destined for the reservation and when it might be available—as soon as Christmas. But senators and congressmen from other states would be reluctant to vote for Stanbrook’s bill until he could show them a violence-free, democratic consensus from the Indians of White Earth. And that could come only from the Indians themselves, Cassandra said.
On the page following the article about Cassandra was a large advertisement for a meeting, on White Earth, of “Indians for New Leadership.” The meeting was scheduled for that evening at the Humphrey Center. Guy and Madeline went early.
Main Street of No Medicine Town and the Humphrey Center parking lot were filled with Indian cars, some battered and with windows missing, some shiny and newer. The lawn of the Humphrey Center was withered brown and looked dead, but the main hall was very much alive. It filled an hour before eight o’clock with short-haired Indians smelling of after-shave and deodorant, and with long-haired Indians smelling of patchouli, sage, and leather.
Cassandra Silver sat in the front row among some short-haired Indians in polyester suits. Guy and Madeline found seats at the far rear. Guy watched Cassandra. On either side of her the short-haired Indians periodically leaned close as she murmured something. They nodded each time. At exactly eight o’clock an Indian with a sweat-shiny face, a short-sleeved blue golf shirt that did not quite cover his belly, a white belt, and burgundy knit pants stepped forward to the microphone. He introduced Cassandra.
“. . . fortunate to have with us . . .”
“Looks like the payoff pitch,” Madeline whispered to Guy.
Cassandra took the podium. She was dressed in new blue jeans and a white cotton blouse with epaulets. She wore only a hint of lipstick, had parted her hair in the middle.
“I’m happy to be here and to be a part of a new direction for the residents of White Earth,” she began.
“Go back to Washington,” a long-haired Indian shouted from the rear, “nobody invited you here!”
“We invited her,” the golf-shirted Indian called to the rear.
Cassandra waited for the shouting to die. Then she began to outline the main provisions of Stanbrook’s bill.
“If Stanbrook cares so much, why the hell ain’t he here?” another long-haired Indian interrupted. Other Indians in braids shouted at her.
Cassandra pressed on. Her jaw straightened with each interruption. The louder the audience became, the more resolutely she spoke. In speech-class fashion, her eyes moved back and forth among the front rows, then worked their way back. In mid-sentence her eyes fell upon Guy.
Her voice faltered, stopped. She stared. The hall slowly quieted. Indians in the front turned to look behind them. Cassandra pulled her eyes from Guy’s and looked back to her papers on the podium.
“Excuse me,” she murmured. She shuffled her papers, then began again.
When she finished to equal parts clapping and jeers, the heavyset Indian in the golf shirt took the microphone. “Indians are here tonight because we’re concerned just where the Tribal Council is taking this reservation. Indians never had any violence here on White Earth,” he said.
“Except when the white man starved us and took our land,” one of the leather-clad Indians shouted.
The Indian with the microphone ignored him. “There was no violence here—”
Another tribal Indian called, “Every day we don’t have our land is violence against us!”
“Arrests, shootings,” the fat Indian with the microphone called. “It’s never been like this. Indians don’t want it this way.”
“That’s the way it has to be,” a braided Indian shouted.
“No—no,” others shouted.
“The reservation is no better than its leadership, and right now White Earth is in bad shape. Tom LittleWolf came back here with a promise to use the law to help us—to protect us. But the chairman we’ve got now is not the chairman we elected. He doesn’t even use the name we elected him by—that says it all!” the blue-shirted Indian called out.
Madeline looked sideways at Guy.
“Instead of the law all he’s giving us is a lot of trouble and violence,” the man called.
“That’s right,” people answered.
“That’s why this meeting,” the big Indian called with increasing confidence and volume. “We want new leadership—moderate leadership.”
“That’s right . . . hear!”
“Paint up and take it back!” an Indian in long braids shouted.
“It’s too late—too complicated to get back the land. We Indians should support the Stanbrook bill. We can use the money for jobs and housing here on the reservation. We need a tribal chairman who understands that!”
There was shouting from the rear. The tribal Indians stood up, yelling. Short-haired Indians in the front rows also stood to shout. Guy and Madeline looked at each other briefly, then slipped down the row and through the side door.
Outside, Guy spotted Cassandra. She had opened the trunk of her Chevy for some well-dressed Indians who began to carry cardboard boxes from her car to theirs. Guy walked down the sidewalk toward her. She looked up, then straightened to watch him come.
“Hello,” she said evenly to Guy and Madeline.
The sun beat in their faces. “Hot enough for you?” Guy said slowly.
“I do well in heat,” she replied.
Guy looked into her trunk at the boxes. “What are these, air conditioners?”
“You might say that,” Cassandra said.
Guy looked up from the boxes. “Goddammit, where have you been?” he said quickly. “I’ve been trying to find you.”
“Working. And I didn’t want to be found. By you.”
Guy was silent.
“Excuse me,” Madeline said, and walked away. They watched her go.
“She’s never liked you, for some reason,” Guy said.
“Being liked is not part of my job,” Cassandra replied. “You made me forget that for a while.”
“That’s good,” Guy said.
“No,” Cassandra said quickly. “It only complicates things.”
“What things?”
“My job. My life.”
“Which are one and the same,” Guy said.
“Yes—goddammit—at least for now,” Cassandra said.
“So how do I complicate your life? I mean your job.”
She looked at him angrily for a moment. “Whenever I’m with you things get . . . out of hand. Cars burn. Beds break. People get arrested, even killed, for God’s sake. Suddenly everything is . . . off balance.”
Guy waited.
“I come here with a job to do, a job I’m very good at, a job I’ve done before,” she continued, faster now. “Then you come along and everything gets crazy and I start to forget just what it was I came here to do.”
“And when I’m not around, you remember why you’re here,” Guy said.
“Yes,” she said quickly, setting her jaw, “which is more, I’m starting to think, than you can say.” She paused. “Just why are you here, anyway? Why did you come back? What are you trying to get done? I’ve never quite understood that.” Her cheeks were flushed red.
Guy was silent.
“You come back to see your family,” she continued before he could speak. “You argue with them. You get beat up, shot at regularly. You fight with your father. You spend lots of money on a farm that’s going down the tubes. For a while I thought I had you figured out, but now I’m not so sure.”
Guy paused. “Tell me what you had figured.”
“I figured you were a loner. I saw that you didn’t like to be backed into any corners where you might have to explain yourself. I found out you
like books probably better than people. I know you made some money in California by being in the right place at the right time, and by not letting people get too close to you. You’d be a good boss in that respect. You can put everything behind you when you lock your company’s door at night. Except that you don’t work at night or even much during the day because you don’t care a lot about money. This means you either don’t understand how the world is run or you don’t care—I haven’t figured out which.”
“Not bad so far,” Guy said.
“But what I do know for sure,” she said in a rush, as if to speak before the thought went away or changed, “is that my life seems much clearer to me when you’re not in it.”
Guy stared at Cassandra for long moments. In the last moment before one or both of them turned away, he spoke. “There’s a big rock, as big as a car, down along the shore of No Medicine Lake,” he said slowly. “I used to go there when I was a kid.”
“Don’t, Guy,” she said, “please.”
“You can dive from the rock into the water,” Guy said. “All summer long the water stays cold but the rock stays warm.”
They stared at each other. The red sun and the blazing asphalt shimmered around them, an envelope of heat.
***
Guy pulled himself up on the rock and stood in the sunlight above Cassandra. Behind him the sun shone orange on the water. He reached down to pull her up, but she stepped back. She looked back toward the car. “All right,” Guy said, “I’ll show you how.” While she watched, he shed his clothes. Then he dived backward into the water. Its coldness grabbed at his nuts and made him whoop underwater. He emerged coughing. Cassandra laughed once. Then Guy turned, swam out a way. When he looked back Cassandra was on the rock pulling off her jeans and shirt. A moment later she soared off the rock in a long, white gleam of arms and back and legs. She surfaced gasping from the cold water.
“Come on—you have to swim to keep warm,” Guy called.
They swam for a long time, then turned back to the big stone. They clambered up its smooth warm bulk, then lay belly-down, hugging the stone for warmth. They lay until the stone warmed their undersides and the late, red sun heated their backs. Then they dove in again.