Remnants of the First Earth

by Ray A. Young Bear

  Not wishing to plunge earthward with a bad hangover, I leaned over slowly to gather my blankets into a loose bundle. It was a mistake. When I caught a glimpse of the ground below through a large crack on the cabin floor, nausea settled in. I had every intention to stumble forward to the open window and throw up, but the hot, dry wind made my body fluids evaporate before I got there. It caused the eyeballs to shrivel up. Whatever anatomical moisture there was hardened. I doubled over, oinked like a piglet, and wobbled on my bell-bottomed hocks. Racked with intestinal muscle spasms, I clutched my belly as the sickly fumes ofj alcohol filtered up my throat, shimmying its loose particles into my nose. Through the cabin’s gray floor I saw white, jagged boulders below and even the shimmering tops of pine trees. The boulders resembled thick, deadly onions made of rough concrete, sticking out from a green hillside. On weak legs and with a mouth that failed to produce saliva, I stuck my head out the window. Eventually, vertical blanketlike patches of stripes overtook my field of vision within the cabin’s interior, creating the effect of distant rain. The exception was, these were miniaturized and pulsating less than ten feet away. From across the room the small clouds quietly flashed, reminding me of the thunderstorm I saw as a boy at Horned Serpent Lake, Canada. Before the sound of falling rain began, lightning shot through the cabin floor. The booming thunder traveled across the rocky landscape in the voice of a mortal, Alfred Potato, a well-known musician and war veteran.

  When the abandoned cabin on stilts began to tremble and weave on the mountainside, my throat began to fossilize and my lungs palpitated to the emergency of body fluid depletion. Without vital lubricants asphyxiation of self was imminent. Instantly there was melancholia and unconsciousness. ...

  In my thoughts was automatically recorded the poetry of what would be a largely unnoticed death:

  Grandfather of the Grandfather World

  thus was the reason you taught

  our old people to weep

  at the oddest

  inopportune moments

  In our naïveté

  we never knew they openly

  mourned and in advance

  of the turmoil that we

  your youth

  would undergo

  We the future generations

  the unsuspecting

  and subjugated grandchildren

  who will never know

  our rightful home

  why we even

  exist

  As soon as I heard what sounded like the ringing of glass, I came to. Groping, I felt nothing. Outside, the flies were silent. . . . Gone was the Lee Harvey Oswald insect whose skin-burning song transported the fingertip-size piece of obsidian from the window of the Dallas book depository, blowing the Fox Squirrel King s brain to smithereens ... in the limousine, in Jacqueline’s hands. I remembered the miniature thundercloud’s rain and swallowing whatever had collected. It wasn’t much but it jump-started the system; I took a breath, stood erect, and made my way gingerly across the dangerous floor in short, deliberate shuffles. Once I was up against the wall, standing over unseen log beams, I nearly gasped and shuddered at what could have transpired; I was grateful the invisible, swirling sentinels kept me from rolling down the treacherous mountainside.

  In the adjoining room my companions began to snore louder and in unison. Along with the stifling rock-heated air, the smell of stale alcohol was emitted from deep somewhere within the human bellies. Fermentation continued. The putrid odor of Chianti and Brew 101 beer remained like a rude, uninvited visitor. Looking out across the pine-filled valley, I took note of the reddish brown haze—the sweet but toxic exhale of Los Angeles—ascending through the trees of Mount Baldy.

  During days when the smog came to a standstill over the quaint town of Claremont and the Claremont Colleges, it hid the lovely snow on the mountaintop. Because of its geographical location and shape, Mount Baldy served as a “dead-end” alley for the Pacific Ocean. Its swift winds whisked the potent industrial and mass traffic emissions all along the thirty-mile stretch from downtown L.A. The only trouble was, the industrial stench became lodged at the base of the mountain and its unfortunate populace. Below, the red-eyed and raw-throated citizens adjusted uncomfortably to a valley that experienced night an hour or two early.

  Today’s smog level, I thought, would surely be reported as an alert. Elderly citizens with respiratory ailments would be advised to stay home. It was ludicrous to issue these warnings when breathing alone meant inhaling the same unavoidable shit. I then made my way to the moldy table and sat down for a Marlboro cigarette, braintalking still:

  Instead of being ejected from the cockpit of the meteorological craft, parachuting to safety on iridescent butterfly wings, I would drop from the cabin like a buffalo calf ejected out of its standing mothers womb.There’s nothing more depressing than a Suicidal Phase Village hangover. World squalor on a day-to-day hasis embeds itself and crystalizes over my malnourished and jaundiced tissue. A wobbly legged pursuit ensues for the buffalo mothers cool but elusive shadow. . . .

  That’s when I began recalling sketchy details of the previous night’s events. Foremost was the earth tremor, the Initial Messenger, and the chilly, Wandering Spirit, coyote cries that prompted everyone to pray. I also remembered the person who knocked at the doorless cabin, claiming to be Jim Morrison of the Doors.

  “Now that you guys know who I am, may I join you?” he asked.

  I wondered why a black-leather-clad, bedazzling hippie would want to translate into English word for word the Star-Medicine song Ted and I were singing on the octagon-shaped hand drum.

  “May I ask also what the song is called?” he asked. “What? ‘Riders on the Storm’? Cool, man. Real cool.”

  But later when the hippie started to sing along, the mountainside began to rumble. Impressed with what we thought we had produced, we drunkenly egged one another to participate more. Say this, say that. Pass the wine and the smoke. Soon an unholy reverberation shook from deep within the base of the mountain, and its tremor coursed through our delicate bones, making us scream.

  That’s how it all started.

  I concluded no one chose to wake up right away that morning due to profound embarrassment. A crying face, after all, is imprinted stronger than a drunken face, which smiles and laughs. Except for the wild-eyed Jim Morrison look-alike, we had all wept like three-year-olds dreaming of monstrous serpents, and we clung to each other as tightly as we did to our mothers. In the deafening din of an earthquake, Jim Morrison sank into the corner and blended perfectly into the candlelit room.

  As I puffed the Marlboro cigarette, thinking through currents of fear, I felt horrible for having helped Ted Facepaint provide “Jim” with an English translation of the Star-Medicine night-dividing song.

  THe Milieu of Forgetfulness

  Midway up Ridge Road, on the blacktop road now marked “SETTLEMENT TRAFFIC ONLY,” is where I first embraced the moonlit face of Selene Buffalo Husband. It was the summer of 1974. I was twenty-three and she was sixteen. Near the area known as “Doc’s Driveway,” where “the butterfly enchantress” and I held each other closely in romantic admiration, there are now new houses. Twenty-one years have passed; my love for Selene remains strong. Sometimes as we pass this area by car, I gaze at her secretly and marvel that the girl who captured my heart so long ago sits next to me as a beautiful woman. For young and old alike this place is no longer a party place, however. Lots of memories, good and bad, were made there. Today, from the benefits of the tribal gambling enterprise, new houses dot the hills to the north on newly bought tribal land.

  There have been extensive changes—in our lives and that of the tribe.

  Located less than a mile from “Doc’s Driveway,” over what used to be cornfields, is the Black Eagle Child Casino and Bingo Extravaganza. Because of the twenty-four-hour casino-related traffic, Ridge Road no longer intersects with Highway 30. What was formerly the northern Black Eagle Child Settlement entrance is now an elaborate highway mixmaster t
hat orchestrates traffic toward and away from the casino.

  To look at this place today in terms of people and geography is to realize things have been radically altered. Having endured cataclysmic misfortunes in the progress and resistance modes of a tribal society, we are about to be rolled down the hill physically, so to speak, by a greater nonhuman priest. We have been overswept by greed and hypocrisy. The land is a barometer of our own mortality.

  A question therefore arises: In one’s short lifetime how can geographical markers—such as gravel roads and whole countrysides— be razed and replaced by something as audacious as “income-generating architecture,” complete with gigantic parking lots and sparkling neon-lit highway billboards? According to the most sagacious Earthlodge clan elders, we have entered a critical stage that is infused with apocalyptic themes. They are far from being wrong when vivid indicators sprout up around us.

  In any other world where there “ain’t a damn thing wrong” with capitalism, everything “would be cool.” There, not only do the real remnant groups sell themselves but they relinquish their status as nations, jeopardizing ours in the process. Or so it has been argued. Convincingly. In the eyes of Big Brother they have the authority. In the eyes of their own particular Earthmaker—I’d wager as someone who disagrees 100 percent with this “we are one tribe” slogan—they must be a nightmare.

  For an ancient Woodlands tribe like the Black Eagle Childs whose culture is still intact, these electronic highway billboards that bear the name given us by the Well-Known Twin Brother contradict the very practices of tribal isolationism. They are, in fact, foreboding. You wouldn’t think so, however, by the long lines at the tribal center for bimonthly per capita checks. The Black Eagle Child gambling and recreational complex is more reflective of where we are going than who we are and were.

  Change is either inescapable or controversial here.

  Toward the latter part of summer 1990 a message that many tribal members thought originated from the Holy Grandfather came down from the dark gray central Iowa sky, using the exact path taken long ago by the aged but menacing Arbie’s Pig Feeds Ford. In the guise of inclement weather the Holy Grandfather unraveled a rare whirlwind on land that was long heralded by the Earthlodge clans to be tornadofree. Although it couldn’t quite be classified as a twister per se, it had the same heart-pounding effect.

  On the northern tier of the Black Eagle Child Settlement the whirlwind swept down from the clouds “like a goddamned seagull,” jumping Highway 30 and causing a semi-truck loaded with chicken eggs to jackknife into a ditch. After demolishing the monolithic neon-lit casino sign and a new utilities power substation, the scornful wind headed straight toward the Black Eagle Child Recreation Complex, where a tribal celebration was in progress. Amateur video captured the path the invisible force took, choosing its victims and their vehicles indiscriminately. The KRCG television crew that was there also documented the pandemonium from the press box before it collapsed. From under the debris the camera operator continued to film for the ten o’clock news. Blinded by the dust and electrical sparks, a “stretch” limousine collided with a BMW. Over the parking lots, casino security guards scattered about aimlessly looking for their posts that were no longer there. A charter bus that was loaded to the max was headed toward a soybean field. Inside were passengers who were oblivious to the fact they were driverless. No different from a jet-plane movie disaster, the bus driver had been sucked right out of the cab.

  Upon reaching the recreation complex, where the Black Eagle Child Field Days and Chautauqua had been forced indoors, the whirlwind began rattling the aluminum panels of the circus tent-like structure. Huddling inside the giant skeletal framework were two thousand wide-eyed powwow goers and their families. As the panels flapped violently, the casino goers who had been asked to evacuate the gambling hall could see the powwow goers. They were running in circles and trying to determine which panel would stay open long enough for them to exit the controversial prefab building. Inside, it was later reported, it sounded like an abominable, hellish rattling of hail on a tin roof.

  Elsewhere, the giant Chia Pet-type buffaloes who stood at the casino entrance were sandblasted into nothingness: The revolving floodlights that illuminated the night skies were lifted to the cloudy vortex and spun until the gear came down as a heap of crumpled stainless steel and shattered glass.

  * * *

  As it traveled down Milkman Ridge, the whirlwind could have killed many people but instead it injured, leaving people scattered over the artificial turf gymnasium floor. Within minutes the earthlodge elders, along with the agnostics and the good-for-nothings, issued aspersions amid the eagle plumes and cotton candy that were still airborne. All the more reason, they ranted, to disenroll all known and suspected disbelievers and their mixed-blood cohorts. The dissenters, those who didn’t have it their Burger King way politically, pounced upon the tragedy, crying, “There should have been a referendum!”

  Selene and I were home when it happened, loading the PA system into the truck for the Young Lions, our singing and drumming group. We quickly ran to the safety of the trailer and soon freaked out on the trees as they bent halfway toward the rain-saturated yard. Next thing we knew, a caravan of powwow goers cruised by like a funeral procession.

  Within a week a videotaped segment was broadcast nationally on NBC’s “Eyewitness Extra.” Horatio Plain Brown Bear III, a fourteen-year-old boy who volunteered to hold down the elaborate, modern big top made the front pages of the Central Plains Register. He was suspended twenty feet in the air, holding on to the cables and being lifted by an aluminum panel. Behind him a banner of the powwow’s theme read “GOODWILL & HARMONY FOR YOUTH.” This photograph was then picked up by the New York and Los Angeles Times Sunday newspapers. The London and Sydney newspapers reported that “Mongo, the Texaco Man,” the powwow chairman who also served as an emcee, kept repeating, “Sing and say the Indian way,” in a state of delirium.

  With the world as audience at their punishment, the elders were devastated. Before, the tribal celebration had all the makings of a fantasy powwow—one hundred dollars a day just for dancing and fifty dollars for children under twelve. The organizers were an unlikely crew: veterans, some of whom had been kicked out of the service, and the tribal casino personnel. With financial backing from the casino’s management firm, GSIA, Gambling Says It All, the celebration created community excitement. Famous dancers and singers arrived a week early, and the local hosts who made out as if they were friends of the comely professionals were stuck with motel and restaurant tabs.

  On that same day of the whirlwind, a young white woman who had moved from southern Iowa to be within proximity of the casino fatally shot herself due to meager gambling debts. Out in the country roads an old white man was robbed and beaten to death, “a random crime,” with tire irons after winning at the casino. The deaths of these two white people occurred for less than six hundred dollars. (I asked: If the old white man and the girl hadn’t come here to gamble, wouldn’t they still be alive? F. A. right!) Because the media toned down the connection between the casino and crime, GSIA bought lots of space and key time slots to advertise the Black Eagle Child Field Days and Chautauqua: Five thousand dollars was offered to adults in all dance categories—traditional men’s and women’s, men’s grass dance, jingle dress dance men’s fancy feather, and women’s fancy shawl.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  The whirlwind hovered directly over the gambling hall before slamming down on the powwow after Grand Entry and during the introduction of the visiting dignitaries. A Native American Hollywood actor who made an asshole of himself by admitting he couldn’t “talk Indian” started everything through his rendition of a Christian prayer in sign language. The aftermath was a sad, shocking scene. “Mongo,” in his Texaco service man outfit, emerged from a nearby cornfield and staggered out on the giant big-top panels. On his head a crumpled war bonnet. All around paramedics, stretchers, wailing ambulances, and a severed microphone in h
is muddy and bruised hand. Under what was once the big top’s arena, the Rocky Raccoon Singers could be seen in the video clips. In their zeal to be A-i dependable, they had remained steadfast in their chairs. Many remarked they were stupid not to run. Trying to be cool guys, they were videotaped humming a song together while being cut out from the cables and basketball court partitions by the emergency crews with acetylene torches. In graphic slow-motion “Eyewitness Extra” footage, an aluminum harpoon shot out from the skies, puncturing Rocky Raccoons’ concert bass drum, missing the singers by inches. The powwow music disemboweled.

  Rumor, like the whirlwind, spun out of control.

  Blame the casino, decried the traditionalists.

  Blame transgression and taboo, said the priests.

  Blame the family who failed to isolate a girl in her initial menses, whispered the innocent women at the Gracious Senior Citizens’ Center.

  Shit, blame yourselves, countered the girls with maximum cosmetics plastered on their faces. Did she open the curtains, churning the winds with her fiery eyes? the tight skirts added sarcastically. Hey, old fogies, why don’t you guyses blow a Trojan and float away, okay?

  The cheap aromatic smell of the girls’ perfume, “Bobbie Sex,” mingled in an undesirable way with everyone’s cigarette smoke and politics. All of the buffoons pointed to each other accusingly. Others double-barrel-fingered.

  Ah, what the hell, blame youth, debated the old men playing cards. Blame woman for the downfall of man. Fists were pounded atop the green table. Cards flew and the coins chimed in agreement.

  Hey, wait a minute . . . you guys aren’t Pine Sol clean either! shouted their grandsons dressed in baggy clothes, baseball caps, and heel-lit tennis shoes.

  Alright, you yellow-shitting punks, challenged the elderly com-, bat veterans, you come here and say that!

  A bold-faced high school Explorette Scout leader stepped between the two groups and gave her opinion: I blame the ignorant traditional dancer who carried another tribe’s ceremonial staff into the arena. Blah, blah, blah.