“Then, I think you do not like bullies more than you dislike fighting.”
For the first time since he’d arrived at the boatbuilding place, Manak-na laughed heartily.
“That, my friend, is a good observation. What’s your name?” he asked.
“I am Komus. I come from the far north near the big lake.”
“I am Manak-na. This is my nephew, Yomuk. My People are trekking toward the big lake.”
“Why are you here?”
“I long for adventure. And you?”
“First, I was supposed to do what my father did. Build boats and travel the sea. But more importantly, I wanted a woman, whom I loved, and who loved me. Her father gave her to someone else. It broke our hearts to see each other constantly and know we could never be together, so I left when I was young.”
“That is a sad story, my friend,” Manak-na said.
“It is not so bad. I finally found a woman to love. She lives there and waits for me. She knew it would be this way from the beginning. She is a good woman.”
Yomuk was drinking all the interaction in as if he were part of it.
“Have you traveled on the boat?” Manak-na asked.
“Many times. It is an amazing adventure but you have to be willing to work hard. Rowing is hard, but I enjoy it. It builds up great muscles.” He showed his biceps.
“My nephew and I want the adventure once. That’s why we’re here.”
Komus made an interesting face, as if he were studying Manak-na and Yomuk and, perhaps, didn’t understand them. He said nothing. He wondered how anyone could leave the life of adventure in boats after only one adventure. Each trip had so much different about it.
Another two men came over and said, “Good fight.”
Manak-na replied, “Fighting is never what I’d choose to do. But I will not be bullied.”
“That’s clear,” one man said. “I am Rokuk from the south of here along the coast. I came here to avoid the Minguat who are infesting the area. Gurst, the man you fought, is Minguat, as you probably know.”
“I hear you are hunters,” the other man said. “When the drum beats, come with us and bring your weapons, rope, and field knives. I am Mogil.”
“My name is Manak-na and this is my nephew, Yomuk.”
The drum beat and Manak-na and Yomuk got their spears, rope, and field knives. They left the bamboo structure to join the hunters. Hunters made it clear that they bled the animal but did not bring back the gut to boatbuilders’ camp. They needed to keep the bladder and the stomach. Upon their return, they should take animals to the back door of the bamboo structure, which they called home or the boatbuilders’ camp. There were hooks to hang the meat on near the back door. The hunters said that a single drum beat from the cooks would draw men and women from the hillside area, people who skinned the meat and did initial butchering of it for the camp. They got to keep the skins and whatever meat the cooks rejected. They also got the leftovers for their service. Those people also brought greens and fruit to the cook. It was a good relationship the boatbuilders had with local people—relationships that had lasted for many lifetimes.
One of the hunters explained further. “When someone at camp needs a garment or boots, the people in the area would make them or get them from their supply. Those people would also take coconut fibers from the trunks of the plant to make ropes for the boats. They trade the coconut people skins for coconuts. The coconut people are peaceful Minguat to the south. Our people travel there in numbers of small boats along the coast to reach the coconut people.”
Manak-na and Yomuk were storing all the new information in their mind webs for later use.
Manak-na and Yomuk trekked to the northwest for half a day with the group of hunters. Then the groups split up to enter different valleys. Manak-na and Yomuk decided to climb a hill to an elevated valley. Manak-na thought he’d detected some movement there, but wasn’t certain.
When they reached the top both were very quiet. There was a deer at the top not far from a stand of trees. The wind blew behind the deer towards the trees.
“Follow me,” Manak-na whispered. “Keep total quiet.”
Yomuk nodded.
They crept to the trees, and, using the strategy that had worked with the aurochs, they let out bloodcurdling yells and raced from the trees and speared the animal. Manak-na’s spear entered the heart and Yomuk’s the lung. They checked the animal, and it had breathed its last. They removed their spears and pulled the body to the trees and tied rope to each rear leg. They pulled the rope over a tree limb on the tree on the right and the other over the limb on a tree to the left to raise the animal. They bled it.
Then, they turned the deer to hang from its fore legs. Manak-na pulled out his knife from its sheath and slit the animal from neck to anus and around. The intestines fell out in coils. Yomuk was making every effort at self control. His initial desire was to vomit.
“Yomuk,” he asked, “Do you know how to grasp above the stomach so we can haul out the guts without leaking anything inside?”
“Yes.” Yomuk was glad he had studied the procedure.
Yomuk cut above the top of the gut so he had plenty of tubing to turn over and over to prevent spilling. Manak-na trusted the youth to do what he said he could. He took care of the other end. Some of the entrails were on the ground, so Manak-na and Yomuk pulled the rest from the body. The smell still wasn’t to Yomuk’s liking, but he was not as nauseated as he’d been around the aurochs. Yomuk pushed the stomach contents toward the intestine and tied off the intestine so he could harvest the bulging grouping of multiple stomachs.
The two men wiped the inside of the deer with wet grass from the treed area. They tied its legs around Yomuk’s spear, threw the stomach grouping and bladder inside the deer, and began to head back to the boatbuilders’ camp, as they’d learned the men called it. Each man had a portion of Yomuk’s spear held just above his left shoulder.
When they descended the slope they’d recently climbed, and were walking on flat ground again, Yomuk asked his uncle, “How did you know to fight the Minguat with no hair?”
“Well, first, when something like that happens, you have to know whether you’re dealing with a bully or someone rightly offended. When the bald man said he had no bedding, I remembered that Pah had said that everyone else had bedding. Then, a man in the bamboo structure said the man had bedding just before the fight. Which would you choose to believe?”
“Definitely, Pah. I’m not sure about the other man.”
“That’s what I thought. And then bullies tend to want to push others around. If they get by with that, they abuse them. The man seemed to want to fight. If I failed to fight, he’d find another reason to provoke me—or, worse—you. So I decided to get it over with. I hoped he was as unskilled in fighting as he was in knowing how to act towards others. You decide to fight when you cannot successfully avoid it.”
“Why did you avoid him for so long?”
“What I wanted to do was to make him tire himself. He’s a lot bigger than I am and he would tire faster. By continuing to swing at me and miss, he’d tire and he’d also become angered enough that his thinking would not be very clear. He’d leave himself wide open to attack, which he did. When I got a clear opening, I took it and gave it all I had.”
“Well, now it looks like everyone wants to be your friend.”
“Careful, Yomuk. They have simply sided with the winner. It takes a long time to know who your friends are. Be kind and thoughtful to all, but never assume a person is your friend until there is reason to believe so. Right now there’s no reason to believe that they have done anything but decide to favor the winner of a stupid fight.”
“Uncle, you are wise.”
“Yomuk, you need very much to understand one thing. I am not wise, I am favored by Wisdom. I understand things from our stories and from listening to your mother and to Emaea and Wamumur, Wise Ones before your mother. I make decisions based on what I’ve learned from them, a
nd, when I reason correctly, based on what I’ve learned from them, success follows.”
Yomuk listened in silence and did not respond. He still thought hunters superior to Wise Ones. He was young and simplistic in his knowledge of how Wisdom affected life. For some People, it took life-threatening events to make the need known, and sometimes People died just as they grasped it. Some never understood. There was a story about that, but it didn’t connect in the mind web of Yomuk.
“Yomuk, think on the story of Comargh-na and Elmindrid-na.”
Yomuk remembered the names but he could not connect them to a story. He walked in silence wondering whether he really needed to know what Manak-na was telling him about one of his mother’s stories.
After walking for quite a while, Manak-na said, “Once when I was young I made a fool of myself in front of Nanichak-na and all the hunters when I let it slip out that I thought Notempa in the Maknu-na and Rimlad story was a giant who exploded in anger, not a mountain that erupted. They corrected me and I spent many hours thinking on that story. If the elders hadn’t really understood that story, all of us could have been buried in the ashfall—and you would not have been born. Taking the stories lightly can cause you to fail to have information that can prevent your death. Interesting, huh?”
Yomuk was suddenly more aware that he had a serious lack. He’d listened politely to the stories, but they were just stories told by his mother, not something life critical. He shifted the spear on his shoulder. It was getting heavy. They still had far to go.
As time passed, Yomuk couldn’t shake Manak-na’s comment. Maybe the stories were life critical. He asked, “Manak-na, what is the story of Comargh-na and Elmindrid-na? I cannot remember it.”
“I can’t do it from memory, but I can tell you what the story is about. Two hunters, Comargh-na and Elmindrid-na were heading to grassland to hunt deer. They ran into a bear. The bear stood and clicked its teeth, shook its head, and issued a frightening growl. Comargh-na reminded Elmindrid-na not to run but rather to stand still and to make him look larger by holding his arms out like the stories tell, but Elmindrid-na got frightened and ran as fast as he could away from the bear. Of course, the bear chased and killed him. While the bear ate his friend, Comargh-na returned home with little desire to hunt for the rest of that day. He grieved for his friend who wouldn’t listen to the stories or to his wisdom from the stories that he shared while the bear growled.”
Yomuk listened carefully to Manak-na. He understood the words and the need to listen to the wisdom of the stories, but he didn’t make the connection that his mother was the People’s treasured storyteller and his father’s responsibility was to guard the treasured storyteller. He had fixed in his mind that his parents were somehow less than hunters—almost lazy—and that was the foundation upon which he placed the story of Comargh-na and Elmindrid-na. To him it was a life critical lesson in meeting with a bear. Yomuk was tall, looked like a young man, was responsible beyond his years, but he was, after all, only ten years old.
They continued on to the boatbuilders’ camp. On the back of the building there was a door, and they carefully hung the deer on one of the hooks near the door. At that point they went inside through the door on the other side of the building to eat. The table was laden with food that looked and tasted wonderful. Each wondered whether to return to the hunt or what to do, so they prepared to return to the hunt.
On their way out, they saw Komus and Fengren returning with another deer. Komus stopped. “Manak-na,” he said, “stay at the hunt until you have been successful or until darkness is about to come. Once you have brought meat, you do not return for more.”
“What do you do with the extra time, once you’ve brought your kill?” Manak-na asked.
“You take logs to the salt water and bring up salted logs to stack them,” Komus replied with a smile. “Oh, this is Fengren. You haven’t met him yet. Fengren, this man who fought Gurst is Manak-na and Yomuk is his nephew.”
Fengren nodded at them. Manak-na and Yomuk nodded at Fengren.
The two men took their kill to the back and Manak-na and Yomuk took their spears inside and placed them beside their sleeping places. They returned outside to meet the others who would also be taking logs to the salt water pens and bringing up others. Manak-na and Yomuk noticed that the logs this day went into the empty pen where they had removed the salted logs the day before. It became the salt water soaking pen for this day and the other became the salted log pen. Each day it shifted, so Manak-na concluded that it took overnight to salt the logs sufficiently to kill the pests inside. Yomuk understood the daily shift but neglected to tie that to the purpose of killing pests.
Day after day, as the weather became colder and colder, Manak-na and Yomuk followed the routine of hunting and, if finishing before the drum for the evening meal, moving bamboo logs. Surprisingly, one day Pah appeared at the boatbuilders’ camp and asked for Manak-na and Yomuk. They came out to meet Pah.
“You called for us?” Manak-na asked.
“Yes. We have been having a bit of trouble with the boat. I’m wondering whether someone who knows nothing about boats might see something we don’t. Maybe it would help to solve the problem we’re having.”
Manak-na was overwhelmed. He knew nothing about boatbuilding, but he certainly was willing to look. Yomuk assumed this was a normal thing that happened, so he just followed along.
Pah spoke in a quiet voice. “We are trying something new this time. Normally, we take two boats shaped somewhat like you see down there—bamboo logs attached into cylinders and pointed in front and back with both ends pulled upwards so they don’t sink. But occasionally we lose one of the boats. This time we are trying to pull the two boats together into one boat with the two main boats we have now for sides. We are having trouble getting the idea to work. The old boats function well enough, but losing one is not good. When we get there, take a look. You’ll see what we’ve been trying to do. There has to be a better way.”
When they arrived, Manak-na examined the boats from top to bottom and from front to back. He was dumbfounded at the work involved. The bamboo was lashed together in bundles, which were interwoven with vines that laced individual logs together. Each bundle was coiled with a rope. The bundles were attached together with more vines and rope. A larger sized rope was wrapped as a coil from end to end as the bundles got merged. He realized what they were trying to do and spent no little time running many thoughts through his mind web. He appeared to be sitting atop one of the boats and doing nothing but staring out at the sea, but Pah realized he was deep in thought.
Finally, Manak-na climbed back down the boat. He met Pah on the ground. “I can tell you what I’d do to solve the problem. Only you will know whether it might work. I have no experience at all with this. First, I would cut down,” he showed three fingers, “hardwood trees of equal height—trees that are strong but not very thick and about the length of,” he showed ten fingers, “men. At the end of each log, I would cut a hole and peg the hole with a branch about as long as a man. I’d reinforce the peg with rope. I’d do that to all three logs, making sure that the pegs point in the same direction at each end of each log. Then I’d lay the logs on the structures you have now, with the pegs up and down. I’d add girth and length to the current boat structures, enclosing the logs. If tree wood is not appropriate, you could use bamboo in bundles, I suppose. When you’ve laid some bamboo bundles to add to the girth and length of what you have now, peg the logs on the inside edges of the old designed boats, so that they firmly hold the boats they are designed to hold and will not squeeze the space between the two boats. Each log has,” he showed four fingers, “pegs one on either side of an old boat—all with pegs in the same direction on each log. Pegs should be placed up and down—perpendicular to the line of bamboo. It might help, after some bamboo bundles have been added above the logs, to use rope to loop over one of the tree projections outside the boat to loop over the tree projection on the other side of the log where it ext
ends beyond the boat to add extra sturdiness. It would make lines all over but might add strength.”
“Then, when the height above the bamboo flooring is just more than a man’s height, I’d add another,” he showed three fingers, “logs, done the same way. The lower logs could support bamboo flooring to store supplies in bamboo cases secured to the flooring. The upper logs could support bamboo flooring for the boat activity, whatever that is. Then those logs would be covered with bamboo bundles where they rise above the old boats, and you’d have a boat that is made of two boats with two floored spaces between them.
Pah looked up, clearly understanding what Manak-na had suggested. He thanked him for his thoughts. Manak-na and Yomuk returned to the hillside and began to carry logs to the salting pens and bring up salted logs. Yomuk was fascinated.
“Uncle, will they do what you said?” he asked.
“I do not know. He asked for my thoughts and I gave them. It was a way I could see to solve the problem. What he does with my thoughts is up to him. I am only guessing. I know nothing about building boats. It will be interesting to see what he does. Never expect anyone who asks for your thoughts to use them. Simply give the best you can and wait to see what happens. In this case he could ask,” he showed ten fingers two times, “men the same question he asked me. It’s possible that all of them would come up with something different. Whatever sounds best to him is what he’ll do. It’s what he should do.”
Despite the cold weather, Manak-na could not stand not being able to bathe. Finally he asked Mogil, “Where do men bathe here? I fear getting lice.”
“Some go to the salt water and go in unclothed. It’s cold for that with the wind, and I don’t feel clean from salt water. You can take a large scoop for water and go to the creek up the hill on the right and get someone, like Yomuk there, to scoop water over you until you’re clean, or just go into the creek to bathe. It is cold, but you’ll survive. That’s what I do. Some of the men never bathe. I’m guessing you’ve smelled them?”
Manak-na's Story, 75,000 BC Page 12