The Bird Is Gone: A Manifesto

by Stephen Graham Jones

  He smiles.

  Do you recognize him? The moustache? Blue eyes?

  You offer him a free haircut to look closer but he twists his limp handlebar and declines, politely, so politely.

  This was the year the southern herd was supposed to disappear, you tell yourself. And it hasn't. And that's good.

  But then.

  The soap peddler buys a warehouse to better serve the unclean, the compulsive handwashers who remember the flies, and when his New York suppliers miss a delivery, he looks elsewhere. To the Plains.

  ‘No,’ you say, trying to get a customer's cowlick to lie down with saliva, but the soap peddler's already seen a new supplier.

  What he needs as a base for his soap is something chalky and fine, available in limitless amounts.

  What he gets are buffalo bones.

  In the paper he explains how it's Native ingenuity—using the whole beast, wasting not—but he's no Indian.

  ‘It won't last,’ you say to the next customer, and when he doesn't agree you snip the top of his ear accidentally on purpose, but it's already gone: he's the sailor from the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, whichever one you were on. The one who ate his own ear. And then you.

  There are ways to die where you still walk, talk, shave people, your straight razor so close to their uneven throats.

  In a matter of weeks the plains are black with boneless hides and wasted meat. Now the flies are there, the buffalo on silver trays in the bathrooms. You collect them for weeks, sing to them at night, and finally, as has to happen, you start washing your hands until they crack open and bleed, and then you try to wash the blood off, and then a man sits down in your chair, his hair reddish-grey and shaggy and down to his belt. Like he's made of it.

  ‘Just a little off the top,’ he says.

  And you do it, and somewhere in there he asks if you've heard about the Conservation projects, the reintroductions. That the wolves are coming back.

  It's so silent you can hear his sharp teeth touching each other in a wide, blacklipped grin, a coyote smile.

  You cut the rest of the hair, and it's Him.

  He removes the dropcloth, folds it over the back of the chair.

  Past the plate glass is modern Wahpeton, the truck nosed up to the curb, windows down.

  ‘Where to now?’ he says, leaning over the wheel again, waiting for the lighter to pop back into his waiting hand.

  ‘Just drive,’ you tell him.

  On the way back into the Territories he breaks his cigarette open, trails it out the window like you're supposed to. His hair is perfect. It's the only thing.

  keep off the grass

  no.

  BIRDS OF A FEATHER

  PINK EYE was all the rage. It was a heathen condition, the second since Conservation. The first had been teeth, because Indians have a different kind of root, don't come from the same place as Americans. I remember my uncles all wearing one of their incisors on a string around their necks. It was an ID badge; they talked like the sixth grade. The women, though—my aunts—they bought molars and canines in bulk from winos and wore them dangling from their ears, and still flash their white smiles to the toothless men huddled in front of the liquor stores, the blood from their dry sockets blooming in their brown bags like grenadine. We used to call them in as Bleeding Gums and No Teeth and Whistler, remember? And it was funny then. Before Trans-Annie. All of her teeth had been in a china bowl on the coffee table, though, Blue Plume. Because you can't tell without pulling them.

  She wasn't Indian. Neither was her son. And my eyes were so white after seeing her; I was bleached on the inside. But there are ways. There are always ways.

  On the edge of the bed were Back Iron's diva sunglasses. The ones he wore on bad make-up days. Like today was going to be, after driving all night. I didn't chase him down, though, even though I could hear that he'd found the basketball rolled up against the trashcan, was trying to dribble it out the window as he backed up. It would take him all day to get to his trailer. And he hadn't really left them, anyway. I had just wanted them; stole them.

  This is when I quit being a cop, I guess, out at the edge of Two Burn Flat, on the way back from America. There had been a borrowed car upside down in the ditch, still trailing streamers and beer cans, just married smeared across the back glass. It was the only thing not broken. I already knew I wasn't going to call it in, too. It was the way Back Iron was slowing, lowering his sunglasses to see if it was anyone he knew. A shimmery white veil clung to the torn exhaust and he whimpered once with desire, and I nodded, and that was when he rested his sunglasses on the dash and wiggled out of his skirt, into the grassland.

  He approached the car from upwind, feinting, bobbing, flirting, and just as he was reaching his long arm across the smoking chassis for the impossible veil, a doe looked up at him over the passenger side of the car, stared at him with her eyes and with her ears, and he smiled back with his whole face, looking from her to the white fabric, billowing out longer than any manufacturer could have guaranteed. His lips moved after a while but I don't know in what language, just that he wasn't reaching for the veil anymore.

  ‘Why didn't you get it?’ I asked him when he was back.

  ‘It wasn't mine,’ he shrugged, shouldering into the flimsy straps of his halter top. The sun was so bright on the hood, too, but he didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything. Not out loud. We just squinted ourselves closer to the tectonic parking lot of Broken Arrow, 219b, and he deposited me onto the asphalt plate by my room, and we were already drifting apart. The next place I would see him would be on the postcard everybody probably knows about by now, the holographic one of him in a black wig and Denim Horse's manclothes, standing in the open door of the fugitive red truck, arms crossed, the heel of one of his boots hooked up onto the running board. In the picture the truck is parked in the silvery tall grass and he's waiting for you to walk closer, get in with him—leave, like a father with visiting privileges for the weekend—but when you tilt it, it's not him in the hologram anymore, but an Old One on his chrome horse, the butt of his spear on the ground, a fist made around the middle of it. They're the same person, though.

  I figured this all out too late, too. In the laundry room with Cat Stand. It was the first place I'd worn the sunglasses. Instead of harsh whites, the place was tinted grey like the afterlife, the sandhills. Like looking through the veil Back Iron didn't have. Enil Anderson and the other thirty-nine were crowding close to me; the washers all clicked into dirge cycle. I stuffed the reds and the whites in, unable to distinguish, and slammed the door down over them, held it closed with my forearms, my face in my hands. I hadn't slept in I don't know how long.

  Cat Stand was dipping her flannel into the soapy water one piece at a time. And watching me like she wanted to say something.

  This is the interview, yes. But not yet.

  First, the tape I listened to at the liquor store the day before. It had been Owen82's last game. Back when he wasn't Owen82 yet. Which isn't where it started—this: Nickel Eye, Fool's Hip, LP Deal—but it's one place, anyway.

  The tape.

  I pushed it in and it came back out. Twice we did it, and finally I slapped it on the dash and made the face you're supposed to make. It was padded, though—the tape—insulated with names, four layers of adhesive labels stacked like stairsteps. The outermost was The Bad River Band: Hoopin' it Up, then right under that Naming Ceremony: 38.R-934b, then Algonquin Phonics: Getting Primitive, and then the original, a handwritten Trading Buckets, with the date.

  Hoopin’ it Up was just a smuggler's pun—Back Iron laughing inside that it really was about basketball, then easing back into the Territories, one hand over the wheel, eyelashes curling up into the headliner. And the Phonics-one, no tollbooth guard would ever confiscate that unless you were going into the Territories. Under it was the real one, though: Trading Buckets, which had at one time—for a few years, probably—become 38.R-934b.

  Which is what made me double-dribble t
he tape into the floorboard.

  The files we used to trade the Hotline for had the same hierarchy of numbers and letters, right? Meaning the anthropologists had wanted this tape—how Owen82 got his name. And somebody had rubbed that Phonics-label on and carried it across to them. Some tomato. And then Back Iron had dropped down into their data warehouse on the narrow beam of a penlight, done his thing.

  How did he know, though?

  And who was he protecting?

  I listened to the tape and watched him move ahead in line one Indian at a time, in fits and starts. He knew I was listening too, but I couldn't stop, was into it already. It was his and Denim Horse's last chance. The hardwood floor, the crowd, winter just outside the gym, fry bread warm in the air, with a song.

  The old-time Indians never had this.

  I turned it up just as Eddie Dial drifted out onto the court, his champion Diné in a ragged V behind him, passing a ball back and forth like weaving a rug. He was their point guard; it was his second senior year, even, according to whichever announcer wasn't eating or in the bathroom. His main post was a lanky tall white kid, number 32, only he'd had his mother or sister sew in an n and a d after it, which made him a 32nd, which meant that back in the 1840s or sometime one of his grandparents had been Indian, the other just tall.

  And the Warriors, the twin towers, Denim Horse and Back Iron, still mirror images back then, interchangeable in Owen82's offense. In the pre-game warm-up Denim Horse jogged in for a lay-up with Back Iron on the rebound, and for a moment, as they passed under the basket, they were one person and everyone saw it and one woman almost cried (me).

  The first quarter was just what the tape said: trading buckets. Up one end, down the other, Owen82 giving the crowd all the sideline theatrics they could ask for. Twice Back Iron had the chance to slam on a loping breakaway, and twice he tucked his feet up under him, finger-rolled. All the announcers could talk about was the 32nd, though, lighting it up from long range, inside, kissing it off the glass Indian style. Once he even threw one up from the bench, and it would have slashed through the net and brought the house down if Denim Horse hadn't goal-tended on a reluctant nod from Owen82.

  He was wearing his hair down even then, too, Denim Horse, carrying his head the same way—like his hair was a hood he was looking out of—Back Iron consciously imitating him, setting the Dine up for their fourth quarter soap opera move, where they would switch twins, put the one who could handle the ball at the top of the key instead of down low, let him crossover on the 32nd and float it into a sea of flashbulbs, drawing all the contact he could.

  It would have worked, too, except for Eddie Dial. But that was later, in the fourth quarter. With fingernails. This was the closing seconds of the second, though, the drums under the stands pounding, making you want to dribble, focusing everything on that one hail mary from the Diné, the first announcer rising from his chair, scraping past the microphone, mumbling sorry to the second announcer on his way up.

  Sorry.

  I don't know if that ball ever made it.

  Sorry.

  It was like in one of the old black and white ethnology documentaries, where they're in some elder's house, and he's playing wise and savage all at once for them, but then, as he's walking out the door, he stops to straighten the rug with his cane. And the camera lingers, unsure.

  I rewound, rolled the volume to the right, relistened: again, sorry. But now there was something just before that. Like the clattering of a wire, or glass; sunglasses. The first announcer had knocked the second's sunglasses off. And it was winter, and indoors, and then I saw it, heard it: hail mary. Not a thing you could get away with saying those first years, especially over a loudspeaker. That's what the first announcer had called it, though, giving himself away. And I should have recognized him all along, I was just so used to him talking about cheeseburgers and open lanes over the system at Fool's Hip.

  Mary Boy, the red Catholic. The crowd trilling all around him.

  Maybe this wasn't about Owen82. And maybe they had all been there—Courtney Peltdowne a Charity Striper at halftime, with their peekaboo kickline; LP Deal the tollbooth guard who scuttled out after them, lowering his head to the ground to listen for the approaching teams, then nodding to the crowd yes. They were coming. Cat Stand working concessions, Naitche unborn. Nickel Eye standing by the door, or shuffling through the round dance. Or maybe the other announcer.

  I fast-forwarded over the rest of the game: Eddie Dial rising to mark Denim Horse's face in the fourth quarter, Back Iron trying to scratch his own the same way; the crowd chanting Owen82, Owen82; the Warriors cutting off another half inch of hair; all the elders sighing out into the snow, not looking at each other.

  ‘I don't know why they were there, even,’ a voice said.

  It was Owen82.

  I closed my eyes, didn't want to see him, didn't want him to be there. Didn't want his hand to settle over mine on the glove compartment, tell me it was alright.

  ‘Please…,’ I started to say, shaking my head no, trying to swallow, breathe, do something with my throat, but then he went on—gruff, defeated. Coming out of the speakers, off the tape. I didn't touch it. This was years later. He was on the phone it sounded like. ‘…thing about wanting to see if one was better than a half, if the FBI was going to win this time, or the Indians. Bullshit if you ask me. They were all Indians, I mean, even that white kid.’

  ‘…’

  ‘No. They're not related. They were Lakota, he was, I don't know, Navajo a long time back.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Diné, then. Whatever. He could shoot, I mean. Not like Michael, but still.’

  ‘…’

  ‘No, Michael. And Thomas.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Far as I know Michael's still got leukemia and all that. Thomas, though, him. That one never left the gym, you know. Some kids just get addicted like that, can't get enough. That one he just traded in his shoes for some regalia—’ and then the tape stopped. I nearly fell into the dash. Back Iron was standing at the end of the hood, holding a bag on his hip, the neon lights of the liquor store behind him hazing his hard edges, like radiation. Like leukemia.

  I looked away, to Denim Horse back then, while Back Iron—Michael—had been in the hospital. Owen82 was right: he never left the gym, won every fancy-dance trophy there was, until they started to model them after him. And Back Iron, he had to shave his head in physical mourning for his own bones, see his face in the newspapers after every pow-wow, in the shroud of Denim Horse's hair, then rub his hand over his own smooth scalp, look down the hall.

  And I couldn't tell Cat Stand any of this.

  That I stole Back Iron's sunglasses mostly because I couldn't steal the tape.

  That I knew Naitche was watching us through the plate glass of the laundry room, his hands on the sill like it was a console, like this was all a big video game; like we had that many lives.

  That Back Iron was still standing in the doorway, looking down the hall.

  That it was the same hospital she'd been at.

  He was fresh from treatment, walking down the hall to the duffle bag or closet or wherever he found the fancy-dance regalia. Or maybe he was holding it for Denim Horse while Denim Horse was in town, at the bar, in a motel room, with a nurse. Back Iron's room was a locker.

  He put the leggings on, the bustle, the roach, tied them all down.

  You couldn't tell his skin was crawling with heat, his cells writhing, his pupils blown wide with anticonvulsants.

  He was Denim Horse; Denim Horse was him. It was what coach had always said: that you could trade them. You could, when you had to, when your body hurt too much to stay in it.

  He looked down his long arms, turned his forearms up then down. Moved the toe of a moccasin. Breathed out through his nose.

  Denim Horse.

  The one who didn't have leukemia.

  He stepped out of his room, pushed himself from wall to wall down the hall, an apparition. People leaned
on their walkers and watched him pass, and he flashed his teeth, stumbled on like he knew where he was going. Where he had to go. He was Denim Horse; he found her room without any help. Second floor, the sheets changed daily for however many years already. She'd grown since Arizona, too. Since the rodeo, the bad luck bleach he'd found in some livestock show kit.

  It was going to be funny.

  Standing in the doorway, he laughed, stumbled into the room, shook his head no: he wasn't that boy anymore. He was Denim Horse. She was Cat Stand. They belonged together.

  This is how things happen. Dyed feathers on sterile sheets, leaving a painted outline of him on top of her, like she had been standing in the way of a powerful radiation, and it had left a white shadow behind her.

  God.

  One of the things I didn't tell him after he left that veil for the doe was that the doe had had one blue eye, one brown, like Naitche. That I understood.

  But I didn't, either.

  And the sterile sheets of the hospital were tumbling linen now, in the dryers all around us, me and her. Cat Stand.

  She was draping her flannel into the soapy water one piece at a time. And watching me like she wanted to say something. And I was terrified of what her voice might sound like after all these years.

  On the other side of the plate glass Naitche scraped away. We both watched him.

  ‘Game over,’ I said, almost to myself, but she heard, almost smiled. Started in the middle.

  Her voice was perfect.

  ROSES ARE RED