THE AMERICAN STORYBAG

by Gerald Hausman

  “Okey-dokey, Doc, you hold Snail’s halter, but you better let go kind of quick-like when I git to that big fallen tree over yonder.”

  Off went Uncle Bill, striding like a fireman on the way to a burning schoolhouse. When he got to the fallen log, he called out, “Here, Snail, come to Uncle Bill!”

  Then he brandished the cabbage.

  At once, Snail kicked up his heels. Then his hooves pummeled the earth, and he took off like lightning. He made it across the pasture before Uncle Bill could lower his hand. In fact, Snail stole the cabbage right out of the air—because Uncle Bill tossed it for fear of being trampled to death.

  When Snail was finished chomping and the men were finished staring in amazement, Uncle Bill asked them, “Think we can get ten to one?”

  “I think we might git a hunnerd to one,” Jeremiah stated.

  “Them’s odds I like,” said Tom with a smile.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Uncle Bill.

  Doc Allen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’d say it’s time I mosey over to the Crow Indian camp and have a little talk with Plenty Coups. He thinks his buckskin can beat anything on four legs, and there’s no reason to disabuse him of that notion.”

  “We’ve had…how many races against that buckskin?” Jeremiah asked.

  “I’d say, ten for a guess,” Doc answered, “and we lost all of ‘em.”

  “That buckskin’s got spunk and fire for blood,” said Tom.

  “But Snail’ll take her in a stretch…long as I have a cabbage head in my hand,” Uncle Bill added.

  So Doc Allen drove his buggy over to Plenty Coups’ camp, and he asked his old friend straight-away if he wanted to run his mare in another race. It never occurred to Doc he’d say no.

  But he did.

  “To win is good,” said Plenty Coups. “To always win is bad.”

  “Well, the way I figure it,” said Doc, “to always think your gonna win is bad. To sometimes think your gonna lose is good.”

  “What makes you believe there’s a horse in the territory that can challenge my buckskin?”

  “Doesn’t matter what the horseflesh is, as long as we have our annual get-together. You know, every year when the leaves turn gold, we have a horse race. It’s sorta traditional.”

  Plenty Coups grinned. He knew tradition.

  “All right,” he said, “one more race. But after this…”

  He didn’t finish. He just looked off towards the Pryor Mountains and smiled, as if he were planning a trip there soon.

  “You mean,” asked Doc in surprise, “that this’ll be the last horse race?”

  And Plenty Coups nodded.

  Well, the day of the race came around as quick as the first Montana frost. In other words, it was right there before you knew it. Sourdough Creek was jam-packed with people—settlers and cowboys on one side of the road, and the whole Crow nation on the other.

  Plenty Coups came in on a white horse, but his son Ironeyes rode the great and gorgeous tan mare that everybody called Buckskin. Her color was soft as sand and brown as dirt. Plenty Coups let everyone admire her, too—her shining muscled coat, her sidestepping, softly neighing, prancing-hoofed beauty. All the Indians sighed when they saw her dance up a little dust. Then they laughed, when they saw what the settlers and cowboys and miners and trappers were going to run against her—pathetic little Snail!

  Poor, pitiful Snail had rolled in some mud that morning, and Uncle Bill had left the splotches sticking to his hair. Indecorous little nag that he was, Snail never looked up. Just kept filling his craw while the Crows circulated around him, chuckling and laughing and making fun.

  Plenty Coups shook his head. “This is worse,” he said to Ironeyes, “than last time.”

  Ironeyes smoothed the eagle feathers that were braided into Buckskin’s mane, and he stroked her lovely white-streaked nose.

  “I wonder why they like to lose so much,” he said.

  “Because it makes them happy to see us win,” Plenty Coups answered. “Anyway, we shall never know what strange things lie in the hearts of these people. They are as much a mystery to us as we are to them.”

  No one urged the Crows to place their bets. They did so willingly, even wildly. They dropped down treasure after treasure on the big blanket where the bets were laid. There were pelts and plews and beaded belts and moccasins of all shapes and sizes.

  To the Crows the race was already won, a mere formality awaited the dividing of the gifts. Their eyes were fixed on the goods laid out by Uncle Bill and the others: bags of flour, coffee beans, rock candy, ax heads, mirrors, beads, nails, cottons and flannels.

  Then the oldest wife of Plenty Coups came forward. She carried a huge white grizzly-bear skin, which she let drop upon the betting blanket like an armful of snow. All eyes—both white and Indian—were on that pretty bearskin.

  Doc Allen smiled. Not to be outdone, he dropped a brand new Pendleton blanket and a Remington saddle rifle on top of the white grizzly fur.

  Next, the horses were led to the starting rope. Snail trudging, as if to his death. Buckskin prancing, as if he might dance up to the sun. While the two lined up, Uncle Bill Wooten felt inside of his coonskin, which was laid across his arm. Then he walked down to the end of the track, and waited for the race to begin.

  Plenty Coups took his place beside him.

  Buckskin was reined to the starting rope by Ironeyes.

  Snail was walked up by the son of the owner of the Sourdough Trading Post, a light-boned youth that everybody called Wee Willy. Now, Willy was small. But he was also the best rider in the territory.

  Anyway, there they were, ready to ride the race of their lives—if, of course, the horses were willing. Well, one of them was…at least that was the way it looked.

  Plenty Coups peered into Uncle Bill’s coonskin cap.

  “What do you call that?” he asked.

  “Medicine,” replied Uncle Bill. “What do you call that?”

  Plenty Coups held up a string with some pale fur on it.

  “This is the white tip of the silver fox tail.”

  Uncle Bill asked, “You think that thing’ll win the race?”

  Plenty Coups chuckled. “It won’t hurt. Do you think your vegetable can defeat my fox tail?”

  “It won’t hurt,” Uncle Bill replied.

  Then the two of them smiled at each other, right up until the moment the rope was dropped and the gun was fired, and the race began.

  Uncle Bill held up his cabbage, so Snail could see it.

  Plenty Coups waved his fox tail tip.

  All eyes were on that little sleepy eyed Snail because, although he was behind by a length, he was catching up.

  Then, they were neck in neck.

  Buckskin, that magnificent sun-dancing mare, edged up by a head.

  Uncle Bill thrust out his head of cabbage.

  Plenty Coups swung his foxtail string in a circle, singing softly under his breath. The settlers screamed and the Indians wailed, and the two horses drummed the earth so loudly the golden leaves on the cottonwoods floated off their branches and rained down on everyone’s head.

  And the horses came on with a rumble that made the earth tremble.

  Their feet were striking now in timed precision. Buckskin snorting, Snail blowing froth. Both galloping for all they were worth. And then the mud-spotted, begrimed little Snail inched up.

  “By golly, that queery-eyed little Snail’s gointer win!” cried a prospector.

  “No chance,” said a tall, blanketed Crow.

  They were almost at the finish line when Buckskin came up ahead of Snail once again. On came Snail—the cabbage well in view. And, then, well, that little nose length of his might’ve won the race…

  It just might’ve.

  But who could really tell?

  You see, the race all happened so fast. And then the strangest thing of all occurred.

  A dust devil rose up off the plains. It spun a tower of white. It billowed u
p and dropped down; and it settled on the crowd and blinded them.

  Now when the dust cloud cleared, the people were fighting over who was the winner—Buckskin or Snail. The people were divided on two sides of the road. They were shaking fists at one another, and it looked as if a real battle was going to break out on Sourdough Creek.

  Amidst the dust and confusion, barking dogs, crying children, nickering horses, angry oaths and victory whoops, the people fell back into their separate camps to decide what to do.

  “Did you see the winner?” Doc Allen asked Uncle Bill.

  Uncle Bill said, “I saw it as a tie.”

  “They were neck and neck—‘til that dust-devil smoked us out,” said Tom McGirl.

  Doc Allen added, “Snail had Buckskin by a nose, as I see it or, or saw it, or the way it seemed to have happened. How about you Jeremiah, what’d you see?”

  Jeremiah looked a long way off into the smoky plains, and beyond them, to the far blue mountains. Then he surveyed the two warring camps of angry men and women alongside Sourdough Creek. If something wasn’t decided soon, he just knew the racetrack was going to turn into a battlefield.

  He ran his hands through his whitish brown, shoulder-length hair, and shook it out. It amused him to see that everyone was equally covered with alkali dust. Even little Snail and broad-chested Buckskin had gone from gray to white and from brown to white. But, as to the race’s outcome, he was as stumped as the rest, and he said, “Hells bells, if I know.”

  Plenty Coups showed up then, his face white as snow. “Who do you make the winner to be?” he asked Uncle Bill, who screwed up his face and smacked his lips and replied, “One or t’other, I suppose.”

  Then Plenty Coups grinned. “I thought Snail was a loser. But now I know different. Snail is a Thunder Horse.”

  Uncle Bill brightened, “So you have him as the winner?”

  Plenty Coups answered, “ I have him as a Thunder Horse.”

  Jeremiah, edging in, asked, “So you think Buckskin’s the winner?”

  “I think it shall soon be decided,” Plenty Coups said, his grin all gone.

  “I certainly hope so,” Doc Allen interjected. “Whoever wins is going to be rich as Caesar.”

  “Was he a great horse racer?” Plenty Coups asked.

  “No,” said Tom McGirl, “but he was a pretty fair gambler.”

  “I see,” said Plenty Coups.

  Then the five of them stood and looked at the treasure that was heaped up on the blanket, piled three feet high—the furs and hides, the jewelry, the store goods and foodstuff.

  Pitted against this was the crowd of cowboys and miners and trappers all arguing and shaking fists at the Crows, who were making hostile gestures. Any minute, a bloody fight was going to break out.

  It was at this moment that Plenty Coups stood between the two groups and raised his hand. It took a little while for things to get quiet, but they finally did. Then the only sound was the snorting of the two racehorses and the cry of the magpies in the golden cottonwood trees.

  Plenty Coups began by saying, “Listen with your hearts, all of you.” His sharp eyes found every face in the two crowds. The people grew even quieter, so that the breathing of the horses was all that could be heard. Lazily the wind raised some more of the white talcum dust and dropped some more leaves of sun-minted gold. But no one said a word.

  Plenty Coups spoke again.

  “We are all,” he explained, “as the Great Mystery made us, men and women, horses and dogs, birds and leaves, and grass and dust. These fine things spread out on the blanket mean little to us, those of us who have the life given to us by the Great Mystery. That life I speak of is all that there is, and all that there will be in this time. So, I say now, take these things, these bits of silver and gold, and keep them. This is my decision, and I have spoken.”

  “Who…who shall take them?” Uncle Bill asked.

  Plenty Coups answered, “Let those who have no dust on their face take away the winner’s blanket and all that lies upon it.”

  Now, the people hearing this looked from one to the other and all around, and up and down. But, of course, there was no such person unmet by dust. Each and all were dusted up and dusted down. And all were equals under the sun, including the two horses, who still pranced about the creek with their riders trying to rein them in.

  “Is there no winner then?” asked Uncle Bill to Plenty Coups, who answered, “We are all winners and losers from the day we are born.” The big grin was back on his face as he finished, “We are winners coming in, we are losers going out. In between, we are glad to be alive.” He made a motion for his people to pack up and leave, which they did, but no one made a move to collect the glitter on the blanket that lay in the sun.

  “Well, sir,” said Doc Allen, as he saw the cowboys lead off their horses and wagons, and the miners tramp back to the hills, and the trappers follow them on their soft moccasin feet. After a short while Sourdough Creek looked the way it always did, and the cottonwoods shivered and dropped fine coins on the blanket that lay in the September sun.

  It was time to say something, but the four friends who had wound up the race didn’t know what to say. They stood in the desolation of the road and looked at Snail. He looked the same--except a lot whiter--still munching grass and paying no attention to the men.

  Uncle Bill still had some cabbage leaves. He let them fall, one by one, and the wind took them to the four corners of the plains. The four friends watched the leaves blow away, but Snail never saw them. And the treasures on the winner’s blanket stayed untouched, until the first snows covered them that winter.

  And they are there, today, one hundred and ten snows later.

  The name of the village that grew up along Sourdough Creek is called Snail’s Pace, and it's still is a one-horse town, so they say.

  Curandero

  To be blessed by the healing touch is a thing that can't be described in words, and yet, in some ways, this story is all about words. Inexpressible words. Isn't that why we tell, why we write? To express that which cannot be said, cannot be written. In doing so, we find in ourselves the gift given to others -- the healing touch. The missing syllable that heals the hurt heart. Or perhaps relieves the stress in the lower back. I have told, but never written this story. I feel lighter for it.

  I was doing this thing called the kip.

  You’re flat on your back with your hands behind your head, and you snap up into a standing position. In my teens and twenties I could do this in my sleep. But in my forties it got harder and I got more brittle. One day while I was teaching my students the kip, my back went out and refused to come in.

  The class finished with me lying in the grass saying ta-ta to my students. They left the field and I lay there wondering how I was going to get up on my feet. Or worse – if I was going to get up at all. My lower back just wasn’t there anymore.

  Somehow, by miracle of mystic navigation, I slithered to the top of the hill, climbed into my old Volvo and somehow managed to drive myself to Dr. Santiago Aguilar's studio off St Michael’s Drive.

  When you hobble into Santiago's healing sanctuary, there is a sign over the door that says, “You are blessed coming in.” Above the inner lintel it says, “You are blessed going out.”

  I managed to get myself into the little room and Santiago who is blind stood in the space before me, and smiled. He could not see with his eyes. But with his heart, his hands and his mind he could see perfectly. He had only to be in your presence to know who you were and why you’d come. “The old kip, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “did it again, I’m afraid.”

  “How many times have I told you you’re not an eighth grader any more." Santiago chuckled, then, "Okay, get up on the table.”

  I lay flat, face down, while he ran his fingers along the knobby vertebrae that I call my backbone. “It’s not down here,” he whispered.

  “It’s in my lower back,” I told him. “Feels like broken glass.”

 
“It feels like it’s there,” he commented. “But actually, it’s up here-- and his fingers went up to my neck, and down a little, and paused. “Here,” he said softly. “What’d you do, put an apple in there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Feel for yourself,” he said. I heard his quiet feet moving away and then coming back. I reached up and touched the first vertebrae, or perhaps the last, of my spine. Santiago was right – big as an apple.

  What would happen next I knew.

  Splash of ice cold alcohol, then his kinetic fingers going after the apple, then his familiar, often repeated note of caution -- “Look out, hombre, here she comes!”

  Whammo.

  Lights out, lights on, lights out.

  All kinds of little lights in a variety of orbiting colors, and then --pain gone silence. After which Santiago's warm, affectionate, triumphant laughter, “Got it!”

  Happy to be free of pain, I sat up quickly and said, “Santiago, I feel like I know you.”

  “You do know me.”

  “I mean, I feel I know you better than I seem to know you. That make sense to you?”

  “I make you feel better? You like feeling better, so you know me really well.” He chuckled softly, sighed.

  I pressed him a bit more. “Would you tell me something about yourself? Maybe our paths crossed somewhere or other --”

  “ -- Maybe, hombre. You ever live in Las Vegas?”

  “New Mexico or Nevada?”

  “The second one isn't real,” he said. “First one, now, that exists big time, for me.”

  “I used to live there,” I told him.

  “You ever attend Highlands University?”

  “I did.”

  “What years?”

  “I was there from sixty-five to sixty-eight."

  “Maybe we saw each other,” he said.

  “Were you . . . sighted at that time?”

  Santiago laughed. “I've always been sighted, hombre. But I was blind then, as now. Did you take Chemistry with Dr. Amai?”

  “I did indeed.”

  “You remember the guy who blew up the lab?”