I
My name is Oliver August.
I am friendly, a Moose. I try to believe in disarmament. I cook for a hobby. Every seven years my cells change. But each new cell sings of health and well-being. No matter how often I am replaced, I remain formidable.
Compare me with the rest.
In my city, in my time, half the people I meet live in their own suburbs, far from the energy of heart and the steam of bowel. The other half, with pinched lips, breathe their own smoke.
Am I apart, the only one with balance? If so, why so?
Look into my eyes: rain puddles rich with life. My story should be told.
* * * *
II
When Oliver August, formerly passive, girded his valuable loins they charged like a unicorn, there was cause.
The cause was war.
War is a time for attack. But I did not rattle my sabre at the common enemy. I had a private skirmish.
The war I speak of was a small war. Not World War II, which moved millions, and which I missed by a whisker of time—the Korean War, a bubble of violence off to the left of the world’s population centers.
I was out of college less than a year when the Koreans stopped sharing rice. My full time job was soul searching. I was taking the internal grand tour. I resented interruption.
Suddenly the leisure of self-discovery drained away. Because of someone else’s history, the focus of my life was blurred.
My parents talked sense to me. They suggested that I go back to school. They regarded this move as wise and patriotic. The whole idea has firm roots in tradition.
It is considered a richer experience to give blood if a boy has his master’s degree.
After hesitation I agreed. My reasons were personal. I had just finished four hundred dollars worth of dental work. My mouth was a wet Fort Knox. In dreams I saw Communists mining my head for gold.
So, not eager to break goalposts, I entered a Convenient University. I readied for conflict in the department of philosophy.
The Department of Philosophy was a great, protecting bird. Under her thick wings small groups huddled together.
English literature was my major. Myself and others like me were assigned a place near the bird’s big chest. We took comfort in the regular blood thumps. The hot juices of scholarship kept each feather warm.
At first it was not so bad. After half a year of job hunting and the look of deep fear in my parents’ eyes, campus life was pleasant. College was as good a place as any to wait for my war.
I was deeply involved in a thesis on Chaucer’s symbolic animals for exactly one month. The news from Asia got worse. I worried with Douglas MacArthur. Chanticleer, the old cock, laid eggs of anxiety.
The thing is, I was overly concerned with my own symbols. Every night, my book by my bed, I dreamed about inlays, crowns, and unnatural bridges. With the equipment I used for chewing, a family in Peking could live like Mandarins.
Oliver August grew restless, logy, irregular, ill at ease. My courses lost magnetism. Most of the day I spent sitting in the library smoking room, which is a huge rancid lung. When you open the door to that chamber of gas, blue ooze filters out. I am sure that smoke from students long dead is still imprisoned there.
I sat, hour after hour, pooling my gray breath with the rest. I tried to read classics, but the words were wooden. For the first time in my life I grew jumpy. My belly housed an imp who churned and cursed fate. My palms gave salty sweat. There was weakness in my knees and tightness around my frontal lobes.
To pull myself together, I shopped for new involvements. Desperately, I looked for some subject to lure my response. The eighteenth century, the nineteenth century, Shakespeare’s minor plays, James Joyce, John Donne, the seventeenth century, art in the modern world, the middle ages—name it, I was there. I listened. I heard. I heard. I heard soldiers marching. I heard the lap of the Yalu River. I heard Oriental dentists sharpening their burrs.
Finally, thank god, something caught my attention. The course that won me the minute I read its abridged description was know the navaho ii.
Why?
I have since learned that many eminent persons, to keep their sanity, involve with a universe far from their daily experience. They become experts on the Civil War, on Henry Adams, on the Latvian Uprising of 1236. It is not too different from collecting stamps or coins. I needed something to keep my brain intact. I needed Navahos, and I needed them badly.
There was a problem. I should explain here that the University was divided genitally into a Brother and Sister school. Usually students were not permitted to cross this simple sexual barrier. But exceptions were made in cases of hardship.
know the navaho II was given Tuesdays and Thursdays at ten. I read about it on Wednesday. By Thursday at nine, I was waiting at the proper room, signed dispensations in hand.
At nine-thirty the instructor came. Her name was Miss Sydney Luptik. According to her biography in the catalogue, Miss Luptik had lived for years among assorted Indians. She was the author of two books, Arrows in the Sun and The Laughing Waters, and she served as an advisor to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Miss Luptik walked along the narrow corridor, a thin, dynamic soul who accomplished motion in a barrage of baby steps. It was easy to see her talking right up to a Geronimo or the Great White Father himself.
We met head-on outside her classroom. I told her how much I wanted to audit her. She refused me. She refused me the way she would have refused the Union Pacific permission to build its track over her grazing land. She refused me for the logical reason that I had not had proper preparation.
“Without know the navaho i,” Miss Luptik said, “how could you expect to jump into know the navaho ii? My course builds. You wouldn’t understand subtleties. It would not be fair to you, Mr. August. Come back in September.”
I swore I would bone up. I promised to devote myself. She could not be moved.
“Look,” I said, “by September I’ll probably be in the U. S. Army, and remembering back to the way I played stickball and ring-a-levio, I’ll most likely be dead on an alien shore. Give me my chance.”
Miss Luptik considered my unusual circumstances.
“Welcome to the tribe,” she said.
The course itself was beautiful. It was everything I hoped for. Even the classroom was exactly right.
We met in the basement of a building whose first female students were rebels against the tarantella. The walls were tooth-yellow, stained with brown. The blackboard was cracked down the center. The wooden chairs, which had had flat seats, were actually worn down into small valleys through the attrition of thousands of ripe, impatient rumps.
Each chair had one fat arm for book resting. The arms were covered with initials, dates and names. The place was full of nostalgia. Only a bank of fluorescent lights intruded, and a sprinkler system.
As might be expected, Miss Luptik had triumphed over her environment. She made it her own. Everywhere there were pictures of Indians at work and at play. A table near the window held a jar of seeds, samples of wampum, a necklace of clay, arrowheads, a drum, a pipe, a feathered hat, and a tiny model of a village complete with inch-high figurines.
Our group was small. Beside myself, there were six girls. Miss Luptik had given them names. I became Blue Bear, according to the custom.
Miss Luptik taught her section in semidramatic form. We acted out brief dramas of Indian life. In our impromptu playlets, a kind of group therapy with moccasins, Miss Luptik’s names added scope and dimension.
I, for example, might be asked to describe a day hunting buffalo. As Oliver August, I would have been paralyzed. As Blue Bear, out of Shaking Cow by Great Grizzly, I felt right at home.
Pale Moon, a chubby girl to my left, might tell of her betrothal. Green Tree, a Bostonian, would hash out her weaving problems. Waterfall, Bending Willow, Sipping Deer and Wild Bud might sing a fertility song while beating their feet.
So the days went. On Monday, Wednesday, F
riday, Saturday and Sunday I read the papers, listened to the radio, watched television, and did push-ups while waiting my call. Tuesdays and Thursdays I put on gaily colored clothes and concentrated on the antelope situation.
As the only eligible brave in know the navaho II, I became aware of the maidens who shared my hogan. The girls divided into note takers and knitters. I watched them note and knit with paternal tranquillity. In our dramas it was I who brought them fresh meat and supplied protection against everything but the flow of history. Even Miss Luptik spoke to me with special respect. I knew my responsibility and its rewards.
Which brings me to Marilyn Mayberry.
Of the knitters, Sipping Deer (Marilyn Mayberry) was the most chronic. She made mufflers—long roadlike mufflers with fringes at their beginnings and ends. She knitted like a sparrow pecks, in frantic flurries. While she knitted her foot tapped. Miss Mayberry was blessed with huge energy.
I noticed her the way I noticed the rest. No more. No less. She was pretty enough, a medium-sized girl, nicely built, short black hair, pleasant lips, nothing special except for fine breasts. She dressed well, much like the others, in thick sweaters and plaid skirts, long black stockings and Capezio sandals.
To comprehend the passion which developed between us it is necessary to understand Miss Luptik, a superb storyteller, a marvelous creator of mood, a lovely builder of climaxes, a born inciter to riot. Had Miss Luptik come along in the 1870’s there would be only red faces on the North American continent. General Custer would never have got past Jersey.
Miss Luptik introduced us to the ebb and flow of Navaho life in easy stages. As the term moved on, according to her master plan, she lifted us along the way like canoes in the Panama Canal.
From digging for roots and grubs, we came to the spring feast. From swatting flies, we progressed to the shrieking hunt. From hello in the woods, we copulated under cactus.
Together, in a group as tightly made as Sipping Deer’s mufflers, we achieved new levels of insight. Never suspecting, we traveled from fact to poetry.
With her wise face, her bouncy body and tinkly voice, Miss Luptik carried us. I, her enraptured papoose, went willingly. Strapped to her bony back, Blue Bear was happy.
The fluorescent sun and sprinkler-system rain bordered a terrific cosmos. Tender Tuesdays. Tremendous Thursdays.
Yet all this was only overture, a process of tenderizing. As it is with all instructors, Miss Luptik had her specialty. When she finished teasing us with trifles, when she reached the purple gut of her course, then know the navaho II ceased to be an experience and became a trauma.
Her specialty? Direct from life’s cellar, Myth and Magic, the elemental sisters.
Miss Luptik began her lectures on what she called “the creatures of the wind” on a fine May morning. A puddle of yellow lit her desk. Our room glowed like the inside of a brown egg.
A black cutout standing in the glare, Miss Luptik cleared her throat and found her start. From her purse she produced a wooden doll with a feather on its head.
The doll was a squarish fellow, something like a B-picture robot, but decorated in the Indian manner with slashes of white and red. Miss Luptik held him at arm’s length in total silence. Then, from the floor of her soul, she screamed, “Make rain.”
Until that moment, our instructor had talked of migrations across the Bering Strait during the Ice Ages. She had talked of Mongoloid traits, of longheads and roundheads, of layers of piled life, of seed gatherers and grinders, of modified basket-making peoples, of the anasazi—the ancient ones.
I listened, satisfied, studying the markings carved on the arm of my chair.
That day, Miss Luptik shed her skin. She added the dimension of horror. She connected up with eclipses, council fires, coyote howls, time itself. She burned like tobacco in long, thin pipes.
“Make rain.”
It did not rain immediately. There was a drought that month. But my skull flooded. I nearly drowned in joy.
There was no question but that Miss Luptik was about to give beyond the demands of tuition.
“The higher tribes,” Miss Luptik said, still holding her powerful didy doll, “believed deeply and devoutly in the Great Spirit, Father All Father, the Universe Man.”
Her voice, as she spoke, took on a singsong, like Carl Sandburg’s when he falls into his democratic trance. But it was not the shoes of industrial workers that sparked the instructor. It was bare feet on hot land.
“Say after me,” she semi-sang.
“Great Spirit, Father All Father, Universe Man.”
We made a good chorus. And we liked the tune. Trained in the monotheistic manner, we felt a kinship, knitters, note takers and Oliver A.
“Ambiguity,” Miss Luptik said. “Paradox. Along with their faith in a single moving power, the dynamo of creation, our Indian brothers took an animistic view of daily life. Wakonda—life energy—filled everything. Everything. People and rocks. Flowers and sky. Day and night. Wakonda.”
Nice, nice. Good, good. That was our reaction. For Wakonda, the life energy, had also visited the Bronx. Here was another idea that was familiar, therefore friendly.
“Say after me.”
“Wakonda.”
“Again once more.”
“Wakonda.”
“Wakonda was generally something to feel warm about. Why not? The smallest bug, the wee-est pebble had its chip of spirit. But the concept had its nasty side. Wakonda Good, Wakonda Evil. Mr. and Mrs. Navaho had their bogey men, too.”
A knitter laughed. Miss Luptik frowned.
“Wakonda Good. Love. Babies. Corn. Wakonda Evil. Dwarfs. Ogres. Underwater people. Thunder people. Maize blight. Sickness. Sterility. Death.”
A note taker coughed. And coughed again. Miss Luptik was patient. She wet her upper lip with her tongue. The doll had not moved from her hand. Like the carving on a bowsprit, it gave dignity to her prow.
When the coughing spasm subsided, Miss Luptik raised her second arm and held it suspended at an angle of roughly ninety degrees to its companion.
“What a treasury of lore sprang from this simple belief. Epic poems, Greek tragedies have nothing on the creations of the first Americans. Oh Red Man, how inspired you were in the naked days before we brought you smallpox, measles, syphilis and gold.”
Miss Luptik upped her voice an octave. There was something in her manner that made me twitch. I could feel her accelerating. A vessel in her neck swelled with pressure. My left eyelid jumped in response.
“Children of the land, what have we done to you? Today, the holy Shaman watches Ed Sullivan before conducting his rites. Our cancer culture presses in like fingers on a throat. Rice Krispies and insecticide stifle the Star Maker and the Animal Wife.”
“Who?” said a note taker. “Animal who?”
“Shoosh,” a neighbor whispered.
“Think back!” Miss Luptik said, in her “Make rain!” tone. She conducted with her free hand.
“Think back,” we said. “Think back.”
“Think back many moons.”
“Think back many moons,” we said, an obedient philharmonic.
“Think back to the time of rich earth, clear streams, pure sky, steaming beasts, sharp teeth. Think back to the time of strong medicine.”
“Strong medicine. Strong medicine. Strong medicine.”
“Medicine made from the human heart and the human head. Not cheese mold. No hypodermic remedy injected into the tushy. Medicine catapulted into the bloodstream by lightning in the navel, by the shaft of fear.”
Miss Mayberry dropped a plastic needle. It bounced, rolled and ended up at my feet. I let it lie.
“Medicine of flesh and for flesh. Medicine to make vegetables grow. Medicine to fill squaw belly with kicking sons. Medicine to rip the enemy. Medicine to chase blood-drinking ghosts. Medicine for fire, for water, for sunrise. Medicine for resurrection. Think back to the time of magic. Back, back, back. Let your brains be the land in a world of Wakonda.”
&nb
sp; Miss Luptik dropped both arms to her sides and stood rigid, like a palace guard. She began to chant. Then she moved in a kind of religious box step. With a quick wrist motion she told us what she wanted, and we gave it to her. We stood in our places, duplicated her sounds and moved our feet. It was like singing a national anthem for a faraway flag.
Again she stopped suddenly and covered her face with her hands. Then she kissed the little doll, and held it to the girl sitting nearest to her desk. The girl kissed the doll, and passed it along. We all kissed the doll and it was returned, smudged with lipstick, to Miss Luptik’s right hand.
By the last and final kiss, we were had. With glazed eyes and open ears we entered the time of magic. Like a dentist tests his Novacaine, Miss Luptik tested our involvement by dropping the doll. Nobody moved. The doll, a plump fellow, took a short journey and came to rest two inches from Miss Mayberry’s knitting needle, an arrow pointed at its nose.
The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology] Page 25