Several months later, inside an auditorium in upstate New York, Fred Loud Owl was looking down on another graduating class. My new spiritual warriors, he thought.
Snowfeather was standing at the back of the room as her mentor began. She was slightly distracted because she would be meeting up with Roberto Kahn in a few minutes; and she had just heard his terrible news.
This was Fred Loud Owl’s “The Great Spirit-as-Raccoon” speech, a warning about Gaia as the latest ploy of the Trickster.
Loud Owl smiled. “One fine morning the Great Spirit came to me in the form of a raccoon. ‘I am the Great Spirit,’ she said. Human vocalization is a real challenge for a raccoon, so I had to listen very carefully.”
“‘Did you just say you are the Great Spirit?’ I asked.”
“‘Fred, you are kidding, right? When is the last time a raccoon talked to you?’” The students laughed.
“‘Okay, I just had to ask.’”
“‘Yes I am the Great Spirit,’ she said, ‘but you already know my voice. This is the last time I will repeat myself.’”
“‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I am listening.’”
“‘I am the distributed voice of Creation. Your people used to see and hear my voice everywhere. Now they are deaf.’”
“‘I suppose many of my people are,’ I said, ‘along with most modern people. May I ask a question?’”
“‘You want to ask me about Gaia.’”
“‘Yes.’”
“‘There is no Gaia, separate and apart from nature. Gaia is a system. I, the Great Spirit am Person, Creator: the One with many voices but One Being. The apostles of Gaia are following a false deity. Witting or witless, they are the enemies of life and creation. They are my enemies. And yours.’”
Snowfeather quietly slipped out of the building.
A handful of the deciduous trees on campus had begun to show color, stray red leaves among the oaks, and a few glittering gold spots among the birches, but the grass was lush and the sun warm in her hair. Snowfeather winced in the brilliant light; then she saw Roberto Kahn near the sidewalk, waiting for her.
Roberto was standing alone, a solemn figure in black.
“Oh, Roberto,” Snowfeather said softly, “I got your message. I am so sorry.” She hugged him. There was nothing else to do. Roberto motioned to the park across the street. They walked for a moment while Snowfeather held her silence. It was Roberto’s story to tell.
“That call from Columbia stopped my life,” he said, staring ahead. “‘Your son, Isaac, is gravely ill.’ I could hardly hear the next words. Something about TB 6 and the short supply of antibiotics.” He stopped at the edge of the park. “I don’t even remember the flights. I got to his room at three in the morning.” Roberto choked, and began sobbing. “I was too late. Isaac never woke up…”
He pounded a fist against a large tree trunk. “How can a father say the Kaddish for his own son?” He looked away, his chest heaving silently.
Snowfeather put her hand on Roberto’s shoulder. She tried to say something but the words stopped in her throat. Roberto turned, tears burning down his lined face. “It’s the wrong order, you know. It’s the perverse sequence. Isaac was supposed to bury me.”
Snowfeather hugged him again for a long time, his face hanging over her shoulder, eyes closed, forehead creased in pain.
“Roberto. I should have been there.”
“Not practical,” Roberto said, gently breaking the hug.
——
Fred Owl was continuing his speech inside the auditorium. “‘Gaia is part of nature’ the raccoon’s voice said to me. ‘But no part of nature is my real voice.’”
“‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you part of nature?’ The raccoon stood on her hind legs and looked directly at me. It was very disconcerting. ‘Loud Owl, now that was a silly question. Nature is part of me. And you know that raccoons don’t talk. Didn’t you recognize my voice?’ Suddenly, the raccoon’s animal-self was released; the intelligence left her eyes and she left to join her mate at the creek. Point taken.
“As you can imagine, I’ve thought about this encounter many times. I think that God, the Great Spirit in my old tradition, is vastly more comprehensive than any earth deity and far more subtle that we humans first thought. But this subtlety is coupled with persistence so powerful that the rise and fall of an entire universe is a bump on the trail. The idea of Gaia as deity is a fraud.
“Last semester, one of my students asked me if I could prove this.
“I said that this part is slow. We must wait and watch. Proof is as subtle as the track of a deer over moraine.
“He challenged me: ‘You just wait and watch?’
“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘After all, waiting and watching is the game of the hunter.’”
——
Outside the auditorium, Roberto took a deep breath. “Actually, I came to see you for a different reason.” They sat down on the park bench. “In your last letter you said you are impatient.”
“I just want to help people. I don’t need to be a priest or a deacon or a shaman or anything like that.”
Roberto’s face suddenly changed. “I have something to show you.” He reached into his coat pocket. “Isaac wrote it for me when he first got sick. Here.” He fought back the tears again as he fished out the worn envelope. “It was in his room, after…” He handed it to Snowfeather and she regarded the wrinkled paper with the shaky handwriting.
Dad. I will miss our talks.
Is this the next Shoah?
Fight them for me.
I love you,
your proud son,
Isaac
“Oh, Roberto!” she said.
“He knew I’d find it.” Robert began crying again; then he fought his way back to control. “I am so raw, Snowfeather. I know this Gaia attack on all our medical defenses is the next holocaust. Unless we—”
“We? Do we have a plan?”
“The Human Conspiracy has a program.”
“Yes, Fred Loud Owl told me to wait…”
“The waiting time is up. They’ve just recruited me. Now they want you.”
“Me?”
“You. I’m to meet an underground Catholic Bishop in New York.”
“Sure you are.”
“I am. Bishop Gardiner evidently launders all the Conspiracy money from secret benefactors like John Owen.”
Snowfeather sighed. “What’s next?”
“We are to meet Fred this afternoon for a sendoff, if you are in. And then you are to come with me to meet Bishop Gardiner Saturday. We’re expected to make trouble. Are you in?”
Snowfeather smiled. “All the way.”