Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  Nevertheless, enlightened by this nonordinary but affirmative message, I started the process by contacting Senator Dan Frazier, the Republican farmer. For years he sent form letters congratulating my “valuable artistic contributions to America as a native lowan—and a Poet.” But his “helping hand” to the various law enforcement agencies involved turned out to be bureaucratic brush-offs. Ditto with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you’re a prominent Iowa politician’s intoxicated teenage daughter who snuffed two people on a highway, folks around us said, paperwork for a lenient sentence would be pushed and passed. If you’re an Indian who happens to be a published author from a county of bigots, claiming “Murder! Not an unfortunate accident!” there will be—

  That’s how it all started. I theorized that Ted’s miniature catlinite pipe became lonesome for its owner and began transmitting distress signals through a steamed reflection in the bathroom mirror and a timely corresponding voice. Ted’s shadow began homing in, or it tried to. Knowing we would soon meet with buyers from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Ted had brought it to our home after working on it for a year. The intricately carved slab pipe had the distinction of fitting perfectly in the palm of anyone’s hand, large or small. The style was reminiscent of ancient mound-builder art. Since the dog effigy pipe was still technically Ted’s personal property, I contemplated, it must have transformed into a beacon, slicing through unearthly barriers with its mournful cry. Inside Selene’s jewelry box, the pipe had been wrapped in a reddish brown cloth with yellow figures representing Cambodian divinities. As Ted’s ghostly shadow visited the houses of those who might have openly wept for him, the beacon must have “locked on” to something the moment I walked into the bathroom.

  Disappointed with Senator Frazier and increasingly flustered by the special coroner’s persistent claims that the facial and body wounds came from the automobile impact alone, I urinated thick red blood one week later. In the same bathroom at home. I guess that’s when the emotional trauma of Ted’s violent end hit me. It seemed incredible that Facepaint could die from “being unrestrained by a seat belt and landing repeatedly on the knobless gear shift, which punctured his ribs and chest.” More so when new accounts gradually surfaced that he had been pursued and then rammed off old Lincoln Highway 30 after being assaulted by the three Hyena brothers. Although no names were given, this violent scenario was divulged a month later in Minneapolis by Junior Pipestar, the medicine man. To first be stabbed repeatedly by sharpened screwdrivers and then chased en route to the Heijen Medical Center was aggressive by any standard. Ted was found near the community of Suntour by a tribal member on his way to work at the Sherifftown pork processing plant. On the frozen portion of what was otherwise a soft, sandy hill, the front seat of the 1956 Ford with the Arbie’s Pig Feeds logos became Ted’s final bed. In broad daylight not one Suntour citizen had bothered to stop and see if anyone was in the smoldering wreckage on the outskirts of town.

  But we knew the reason why: Indians are viewed as inferior beings. According to the adage employed locally, better to let an Indian die than permit its regeneration. This attitude is a carryover from early colonists who authorized the killing and excoriation—skinning—of any Indian males above the age of ten for bounty.

  “Even when we dress better and are more clean in terms of hygiene, we are dirty by virtue of skin color,” Mr. Mateechna, the janitor, used to say as he herded us into the biweekly showers at Weeping Willow Elementary. “So do your best to surpass them, but always be aware they can shoot you from a very long distance. An act of cowardice, but you die anyway.”

  Mr. Mateechna would smack his lips against the Juicy Fruit gum before prodding us with a stiff bristle brush, indicating areas we needed to lather and scrub. We obeyed and listened earnestly. “White culture—its wicked otherness—is like a father and son rapist team, and we are a teenage victim who has somehow survived a night of torture, sodomy, and three unsuccessful attempts on our life: a drowning where we have untied the ropes turns to a beating with a tire iron as we emerge from the debris-filled river, gagging and spitting out mud, and when we fall back, bullets ricochet off our skull and into the water.”

  This is what was conveyed as we stood listening under the soapy showers. We were said to smell different, moldlike, and we had the diet and mating habits of a crippled but vicious animal. Further, and there was eyewitness testimony, Indian mothers openly “tongue-lapped their mutts” upon their birth and their nipples were communally shared by the litter.

  When the Why Cheer ambulance and fire crews finally arrived at Facepaint’s accident site, the tribal casino-donated “Mega Jaws of Life” were late. For amusement purposes only, the hydraulic-driven mechanical teeth pried open the door that bore the roller-skating pig.

  Making the case more difficult were the Hyena brothers’ relatives, who corroborated hour by hour their whereabouts that night. “He was home, like the others, sleeping,” said one relative of the accused half brother. Another family member in an abrasive alcoholic tone said, “Nobody went anywhere that night, except to the Bingo Hall, but we all came home. Together. He won three hundred dollars at bingo, yah-ha-ha-heh-heh!” Another relative of one of the accused—the main suspect—reported that their “good boy visited Mexican in-laws in Des Moines, drank with them, got mizzed.”

  These false statements, along with the sheriff’s hasty, noncom-prehensive interviews, stalled the investigation. Until that night, many in the tribe had let the brothers’ cross-dressing abnormalities slide. In hearing about the predatorial nature of the crime the community was appalled. More so when the accused Hi-na brothers had established what seemed to be indisputable alibis. Finding their weapons became a compulsive obsession. For the Facepaints, for us. We knew who the killers were, but there was an abysmal lack of incriminating evidence. At hours when we would be inconspicuous, risking danger, we searched areas where they might have fought, struggled, leaving behind particles of clothing or hair, or any clues. It was the one factor that postponed my bereavement, finding items that could tie the Hi-na brothers to the location. But the blood in the urine business, as aforementioned, changed all that.

  Life drained.

  Life unresolved.

  A child is made

  hack into what

  it once was: a replica, liquid

  in form, weary

  and torn.

  With toad-

  like fingers

  braced against

  the foggy mirror,

  a reflection that is not human

  queries if something

  that is gone can ever

  come back.

  Selene almost got into a crying scene at the tribal health clinic when the toilet stool turned Hawaiian Punch red after I filled the specimen jar and was unable to stop the flow. Of course, I should n’t have wimp-shouted out for help; I went into a state of panic. After all I had been through at the Heijen Medical Center and the funeral home where we dressed Facepaint in traditional regalia, I didn’t think I could get sick. Internally. From the red-splattered walls of the bowl and the seat cover, I wondered what could be so shredded apart in my body organs. My thoughts petrified.

  Later, with her pudgy Caucasian face near the specimen jar, the tribal health clinic nurse asked in a breath smelling of mustard, rye bread, and bologna if I had been unfaithful to Selene. From there the soap opera bolted into a full gallop. If it wasn’t unqualified tribal employees—some with sexual abuse records—giving over-the-counter medical assessments, it was the physicians and the nurses themselves who got into an authoritarian prance, trampling whatever bureaucratic trust we had to bits. Of course, maybe the question of fidelity was pertinent, but the way it was articulated was completely tasteless and bizarre.

  In any event, I asked the nurse rather sternly, “Just what in the fuck does this have to do with this bloody fruit juice?” Selene moved next to me and lightly touched the inside of my elbow. Through her tear-reddened eyes she pleaded that I settl
e down.

  The nurse ignored the profanity in my question and skipped over to the laboratory like she was—excuse me, weight-conscious people— one of the gargantuan dancing hippos in Walt Disney’s Fantasia. When albino-complexioned cellulite protruded through her blouse, Claude Youthman’s quote about hefty women dawned. It was inappropriate and offensive. But considering the nurse’s insinuation, I found my creativity operating like a popcorn machine. Rambling but pertinent items suddenly revealed themselves at just the right temperature over the flame, popping open in the sizzling lid-covered sausage grease: Before Claude Youthman’s infamous cantaloupe attack on state dignitaries, for which he served prison time, he suggested that large women whose “blouse buttons were stretched to the max” could “sexually and anatomically vacuum” a man in bed better than bespeckled toothpick types. His commentaries were unbelievable and thought-provoking. But Pat “Dirty” Red Hat—all 290 pounds-plus—preferred Twiggy-type Settlement women. Red Hat, in turn, theorized that Youthman languished in infantile depravity, a mother hang-up, associating Jell-O-y breasts with pillows, food, and other such stuff.

  “Follow me to the laboratory-y-y, plee-e-e-z-z-zeee,” sang the hippo nurse while issuing furtive looks as if I were guilty of sexual indiscretion. Selene became eyen more distraught. Numb and insulted, we followed her anyway. “The laboratory” consisted of a single microscope, three quart-sized plastic bottles of alcohol, used tongue depressors and gauze, and a small refrigerator next to the two chrome faucets of a rusty countertop sink.

  With her enormous belly propped on the wet countertop, the nurse adjusted the eyepiece of the antique microscope and musically remarked, “Wee-e-e-e are not-t-t-t go-o-o-ing to overlook any possi-i-i-billi-i-ity! Isn’t that right, Dr. Wright?”

  “Well, about your suspicions of infidelity, hell no,” I promptly returned, with eyes fixated on the doctor s noncommittal gray eyes.

  We turned again to the hippo nurse who was still craning her sparsely haired neck over the microscope. “Why that’s re-e-e-ass-s-s-suri-i-ing!” she retorted as she synchronously tapped the glass slides together with her six stubby hippo fingers. The last taps made my teeth grind into the jawbone. I, wanted to ask sarcastically if she’d like a real punch.

  And these were the people who bungled the handling of Ted’s body, I later complained to Selene on our way out. Dr. Wright, “Goofy,” sent Ted’s body to the Sherifftown hospital where Dr. Plees eventually saw it by coincidence inside the glass doors. Dr. Wright averted blame by admitting “a grave nontypical error had been made.” He also mentioned hearing reports that Dr. Plees, special coroner, genuflected and made an upside-down cross sign over Ted’s sheet-covered body before telling Ted in Black Eagle Child to vacate the human body. “Well, go home then, Man Squirrel,” he was said to have instructed at the Heijen Medical Center entrance.

  In traditional belief, Ted’s shadow was instantly catapulted from his body into an adjoining nonhuman realm. There, it awaited his shadow’s ceremonial transference to the Afterlife. Since Ted’s family were former Star-Medicine eaters, a gratuitous effort was made to include these precautionary arrangements, but it wasn’t enough.

  A collision of values and prejudices was inevitable.

  The former Star-Medicine eaters distrusted traditional mortuary customs; the special coroner was on a vindictive wavelength; and Dr. Wright, who replaced Dr. Plees for our Indian health care, kept up the calamitous atmosphere The aged widower did the minimal amount of work as required by whatever guidelines the tribal administration had instituted. Everyone who had been a patient of his knew he was a screwup. Behind the drawn curtain Dr. Wright imposed the same kind of sickness on others that plagued “Kensey” Muscatine, former Tribal Council chair and now a convicted sex offender.

  But there was no recourse. We could either pay for our own medical care or go through Dr. Wright. Even with the tribal gambling enterprise, no one could yet afford a second, specialized medical opinion. The sick would therefore wait until it was too late, knowing Dr. Wright would have failed in his diagnosis to begin with. To keep costs down, he proclaimed the tribal health clinic as “the disease stopping point.” When he wasn’t fondling teenage breasts, rolling around someone’s testicles without purpose, or inserting his gloveless, long-fingernailed fingers in undesirable areas, the doctor thought he had a cure for most New World diseases.

  Regarding the belated discovery of Ted’s lifeless, car-encapsulated body in Suntour, the doctor was reprimanded for not contacting the Facepaint family for instructions as to whether a “shadow-releasing” ritual was to be done first, along with an autopsy. The way it turned out, Dr. Plees pounced upon Ted as he lay breathless on the ambulance stretcher, committing sacrilege through Black Eagle Child words spoken without even lifting the bloodstained sheet, then saying “a cursory autopsy was performed.”

  It was pettiness on all levels.

  On the exterior it had the makings of a holy war: anarchist-wielding-a-torch-of-justice-for-a-deceased-friend versus the Earthlodge clan/Tribal Council. In spite of the cheap political power playing and maneuvering, the Outside World was undoubtedly present, but it was inconsequential in the overall spectrum of the nonordinary forces at work. Since the Facepaints were former Star-Medicine eaters, and I was an outspoken critic of a hobblelegged tribal government, there were vendettas that needed attending to.

  Horatio, “Grubby,” and “Kensey” long resented the involvement of Ted and me in the episode during which a photograph was taken by a boy named “Little Big Man” in the summer of 1969. Due to this picture, Ted Facepaint, Pat “Dirty” Red Hat, and myself became their enemies. With their lips interlocked and salivating, Horatio and “Grubby” tried to swallow each other like giant bullfrogs in a fight-to-the-death-for-the-harem ritual. Beside them, “Kensey” was playing “pocket pool” and cheerleading. Their explanation about the event was that it was a club initiation based on the practices of notorious motorcycle gangs. Making things appear cool was the quick impregnation of Elvia Plain Brown Bear, Horatio’s older sister, by “Grubby.”

  Although we alluded to the photograph, we never showed it to anyone. But now, twenty years later—through Ted Facepaint’s death, then the Tribal Council’s failure to support a proper investigation and the exhumation of the body for what would have been a first and only autopsy—resentment for the famous “Little Big Man Shoots Dragon-flies” escapade was still apparent. The tribal health clinic, under the auspices of the Tribal Council, supported the actions of Tama County law enforcement officers and the coroner with regard to Ted’s death. Many parties seemed oblivious to Indian-on-Indian crime. It appeared the whole tribe was implicated as coconspirators.

  Along the wooded, sheltering hills of the Black Eagle Child Settlement the prophetic warnings from the wiser elders resounded. Those who knew and heard prayed quietly with their families; and those who didn’t give a turd, ate it.

  Anyway, the Hawaiian Punch incident at the tribal clinic and the steps taken to circumvent and resolve Ted’s exhumation issue made me think of Dr. Plees. In particular, about who he was, the good and bad things he had done while in service to the tribe, and, most important, what he had become in the past ten years.

  These transmuted thoughts, beyond astronomical, also steered me to a question that had been festering in the subconscious for a decade: When would the literary canoe on which I so fiercely paddled upstream capsize from the boney weight of indecision, alcohol abuse, mild drugs, and general aimlesshess?

  After a stint at the University of Iowa, where I experienced campus claustrophobia for the academic year 1972-1973, I published a chapbook of poetry through the1 South Dakota Fine Arts Press. Dr. Plees, through a government-sponsored research grant on tribal health needs, was one of the first people in Tama County to buy a copy. For him, in those first years home from Southeast Asia, the Black Eagle Child Settlement was a healing ground. After two years away, he returned to our community in 1975.

  For me, back then, the S
ettlement signified emotional instability: Struggling to breathe and addicted to short-range solutions, I drifted from one campus to another. Although home was only an hour away, it felt as if I had entered the Twilight Zone, an unexpected stopover in a village called Suicidal Phase. Postcards from “Ed Parallel Yellow” were sent back to the Settlement from the University of Iowa and Grinnell College. On them were listed all the “ology”-suffixed courses the alter ego proudly had taken. I might have sent one to Dr. Plees himself.

  Whenever I reminisce about that period today, I jokingly equate myself with Diane Chambers, the bartender character from the TV sitcom Cheers. Like her, I was a professional student. It was embarrassing; I later ended up dragging Selene along for stints at the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University. Having failed at the most important lifelong goal, education, I withdrew into the earth-island’s underwing, stretching two Maecenus grants as far as possible. During my tenth year of living with Selene, most of which had been underwritten financially through her beadwork, I sought Dr. Plees’s help. By then his personality had dramatically changed. My verse likewise; I was writing “new stuff.”