William Listener, a master plumber and former chair of the Tribal Council, made a significant impression upon me at Jake Sacred Hammer’s winter funeral in 1970. As a clan elder, William often had the difficult task of speaking the “Final Words to the Deceased before Their Journey West.” These words worked in tandem with those from the shadow-releasers.
It was during these grim circumstances at O’Ryan’s Cemetery that I first became aware of William’s oratorical skills. Whether in English or Black Eagle Child they were poetically embellished. Fundamental and ancient, the Final Words became a doorway to the Hereafter. Gaining passage, of course, was an entirely different matter. More than a few tribal members were willing to say in public that Jake—who spent half his life riling up Black Eagle Child people with his candor and insensivity to the Earthlodge clan ceremonies—was not deserving of these Final Words.
From the early 1930s to the late 1950s, Jake contributed voluminous information on the tribe’s religious infrastructure to academicians from Illinois, Washington, D.C., and Belgium. Jake Sacred Hammer was a paid cultural informant. Everyone in the Settlement knew that, but no one questioned his transgressions. Tribal members, as a tradition, were taught not to impose their personal views or actions upon other people.
William Listener, who was also taught one shouldn’t judge others, recited the eulogy in a tone that was at once forgiving and respectful. In addition to heing a person who assisted “shadows” and their bereaved families, William was, to quote Luciano Bearchild, “a living songbook.” When he wasn’t praying, he was singing and drumming. When he wasn’t running a complicated earthlodge ceremony, he was reading minutes at the Black Eagle Child Tribal Council meeting or installing plumbing in town. William was the first person to aptly demonstrate that one could educate himself in both worlds by first having a thorough command of their diverse languages. Possessing a shrewd, analytical but traditional outlook was also helpful.
William Listener was an older half brother of my father, Tony Bearchild. Although it could be said, judging by exterior appearances, that William and I were relatively close, we were rarely—for as small as the Black Eagle Child Settlement is—at the same places. That my parents didn’t live together until my tenth year was obviously a factor. Another reason, I must assume, was the division of the progressive and conservative factions in our families. In a sense, the question of who had the ultimate right to make decisions on the beleaguered tribe’s behalf kept us apart. Politically star-crossed, one could say.
As I mentioned before, Clotelde, my mother—who was raised in a traditional Bear King, or Principal Bear, family—was a Capulet of sorts; and from the Montagues, there was my father, Tony, a descendant of the Bearchild patriarch who long ago, under blackmail from white politicians, got himself recognized as chief and thus brought education to the tribe. Somewhere therein my supposed illegitimacy excluded me from the Bearchild family portrait.
Politics, like money, divides people. Who was it that said tribal nations would be destroyed by four things? Handsome Lake. In a speech made in 1799, he indicated the dangers were alcohol, the Bible, the culture around us, and a deck of cards. Handsome Lake, way back then, was absolutely correct. But he omitted a fifth: money.
William Listener was articulate when it came to being a progressive. He firmly upheld only those values that were dependent on religiousness. Since very few operated successfully within that margin, he was able to look upon all modern factors with a mirthful grin. “We can tolerate the whites,” he’d explain to his younger half brothers. “Well never get anywhere if we don’t make an effort—no matter how shameful or futile—to use them.” Before the advent of the gambling enterprise, he would expound on where we should be going. Through his toothless mouth, he’d discuss the future. “We’ve got to do better than the grocery store, barber shop, pool hall, and bread factory we now have.”
William Listener moved stealthily between the two worlds, in a more dignified way than Jake Sacred Hammer, to achieve his goals. Being a religious leader, master plumber, and tribal chair required both diplomacy and outright usurpation of authority. In Why Cheer he had lawyer friends who wrote up grants for tribal housing needs in return for subcontracting jobs for their own relatives.
Maybe this is why we rarely met. He was many things to many people.
On the occasions we happened to be in the same place, however, like funerals and the few ceremonies I attended, I perceived myself as a blurred movement, an indiscernible face that somehow stood out in the Bearchild family portrait as a flaw.
William was the exact opposite. He was the Earthlodge clan’s exclusive connection to the Creator and the Holy Grandfather. Without the slightest pause he would accept all requests to perform ceremonies. He sang, drummed, and recited prayers for each clan that called him. In that way was his presence powerful. Whenever he presided over these functions, something dramatic always occurred. Subtle but awe-inspiring manifestations were witnessed and experienced by all. Some unfolded elsewhere, like parking lots in faraway cities. In keeping with tribal humor these manifestations were referred to as gifts from spirits on a “need not be present” basis. Once my grandmother saw the eye of a crane wink as its lifeless hide was being unraveled. She stated the crushed feathers and fluffs expanded and trembled like prairie flowers in the wind as the crane appeared to come alive. Others reported hearing nonhuman voices that accompanied the men singing. And then there were the neighbors who saw sparks from the earthlodge fire shoot upward past the smoke portal, changing into balls of fiery light, lifting into the night sky like meteors in reverse.
Small but testimonial stuff like that made William credible as a spiritual leader. We were all affected in different ways. Sometimes it would even be extremely physical. Being pushed and rolled down a rocky hill by William at the clan feasts was a good but embarrassing thing, people would later attest. The shove prompted their sobriety. As for the gravel-stippled skin, it never healed. And then there was a case of how an alcoholic’s deceased aunt appeared in clothing other than what the original “dressers of the deceased” had chosen and used. These manifestations took place during words, songs, and prayers given by William, “the grandfather of all dream,” as I once poeticized.
. . . it wasn’t unusual for him to look out
his window and see families bringing him
whiskey, bright-colored blankets, assorted
towels, canned triangles of ham. His trunks
were full of the people’s gratitude. Through
the summer and fall he named babies, led
clan feasts, and he never refused whenever
families asked him to speak to the charred
mouths of young bodies that had died
drunk. He was always puzzled to see
their life seeping through the bandages,
the fresh oil of their black hair, the distorted
and confused shadows struggling to catch up
to their deaths. He spoke to suicides just as
he would to anyone who died peacefully.
He knew it was wrong to ask them to go on,
but he couldn’t refuse lives that were already
lost. Everyone counted on him. Each knew that
if they died within his time, he would be the one
to hand them their last dream.
Jake Sacred Hammer, a distant cousin of William Listener and the Bearchild family, saw the last daylight that winter while he was sleeping. Actually, no one knew he was gone until they found him a week afterward. The cold weather was said to have helped. His small-framed single room house acted like an icebox. The community said it was as if he had known all along, judging from the premortuary customs taken.
From the attic he had pulled down antique trunks containing items collected over a lifetime. On new blankets over the wooden floor he had laid out the traditional-style clothing and mi tta te si ye ni, beaded finery he would wear in the pinebox casket. Standing against a wall was an open suitcase with clothes his living replacement would wear at the Adoption Ceremony. Multicolored plastic hand mirrors, expensive Sioux-made tobacco bags, and extrawide yarn belts made his family belatedly grateful for how smooth everything would go.
Nearly every item used in the four-day mourning period had been personally preselected. Groceries in dry-good form and loads of firewood had been already bought and stored. Letters addressed to friends and relatives had been written and sealed. In a large glass jar beside the bed was a set of instructions for the funeral and five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills to pay for it. The instructions ended with a postscript: “There is more money in the bank and more will follow to my relatives for years to come. The institutions owe me. See attorney Samuel S. Plakoda for how it will be divided. It is yours, to use and to keep.”
Jake Sacred Hammer wanted his departure quick and trouble-free, the way it had been for centuries. Very little was known about Jake and his activities. When he wasn’t cavorting with non-Indian visitors, he led them as they flitted from house to house on the Settlement, flaunting their leather shoulder bags that contained notebooks, pencils, and agreements for payment in return for information on the social and religious structures of the clans. What they wanted was known, but according to tribal precept it wasn’t shared on a whim to strangers nor was it for sale.
However, all that secrecy changed one day.
From the earthlodge sanctums, rumors arose that someone had been providing numbingly detailed diagrams and descriptions of our ceremonies, prayers, songs, and stories. The recipients? Those aforementioned flies from academia. Thus was paved another inroad. Ironically, this purported transgression was discovered by a handful of Black Eagle Child academic types. While the elders generally had a low regard for educated Black Eagle Childs, calling them “degreed good-for-nothings,” they had decided to listen to them. Somewhere, they reported, were tens of thousands of pages collected at three cents a page in the late 1880s that had yet to be translated into English. Their nameless grandfathers were the main informants. In the 1930s another generation of informants, their sons, came onto the scene. These epic archival contributions rekindled the ancient fires of prophecy.
Jake Sacred Hammer, for being more than an endeared academic acquaintance, was suspected as the ringleader. Jake, along with a number of other notable clan informants, committed a major affront to the Holy Grandfather—and the tribe. Everything on the informant’s end was tranquil until someone figured out the rationalization of keeping food on the table for a family was also a foreboding sign that money could sway a person’s mind and values.
Finally, in 1962, the Tribal Council was forced to intervene when Jake began offering excursions to Cottonwood Hill for profit. Every four years in a miraculous cycle stretching back to 1911, lightning had struck the giant cottonwoods. They were not completely destroyed, but they always bore astounding burn scars, and branch splinters were embedded in the ground. 1911. That was the year Francis Marie, Jake’s fellow informant, allegedly sold a sacred mat, bringing the vengeful rains—and the historic flood of the Iowa River. Jake, along with an entourage of well-dressed whites lugging picnic baskets, cameras, and umbrellas, became a familiar sight. The trash, however, was a gut-wrenching eyesore. After thirty years of his profiting off the tribe’s name, a clear, indirect message was sent by the Tribal Council to Jake Sacred Hammer.
For over half his life Jake had served as an unofficial Settlement guide. His self-serving actions epitomized the coming-to-fruition of the Black Eagle Child apocalypse. To counter that overt threat, “NO TRESPASSING” signs were posted on the Settlement’s two thoroughfares. Everywhere the visitors had been taken, traipsing through the dark green valleys, frolicking over the golden prairies and along the sandy riverbottoms, huge gaudy signs hugged the path-riddled landscape.
Thanks to Jake the sixties proved to be a decade in which the traditional ethic of respect began to diminish. From the second generation of informants were born the first cases of public dissension and verbal confrontation in a tribal society that once thought of itself as invincible.
In retrospect it’s funny how we had nearly been inured by these so-called “demonstrations of neighborly interest.” That’s the term Jake Sacred Hammer used in his written reply in the Black Eagle Child Quarterly to justify the guided tours. It was addressed “To Whom It May Concern.” Meeting hordes of whites on a Sunday afternoon was pretty common. Like the noisy white fishermen who gathered at the Indian Dam on weekends to camp out or the nervy women from the Why Cheer Preservation Club, tourists could be expected.
As youngsters, some of us eagerly took part in posing for tourist photographs at twenty-five cents a flashbulb shot: Wearing a Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo mascot-type rubber mask at the annual Cherry Hill Mansion Halloween Ball, I once made seventy-five cents and later got photos by mail of myself in long johns and a black breech-cloth. Another time I was Joseph, clutching the pink plastic doll known as the baby Jesus Christ, for which I made three dollars. All this cash on our trek by foot to town. “Don’t be like Jake, Edgarsky Sacred Ham!” my uncles would taunt.
All along the hilly crowns of the Settlement, there were footpaths that led to hallowed and forbidden areas. When the spring and summer clan ceremonies were in session, the paths were congested with gleeful, unrestrained tourist chatter. If Jake was unavailable, white people slipped money under the door of his house for the pamphlets that were stacked on the rocking chair. The mimeographed pamphlets mapped out trails and shortcuts to places that were thought to be blessed—or cursed. And sure enough, you’d meet them with maps in hand bypassing the new housing areas and spying down upon the earthlodges from the hilltops. As the pamphlet instructed on the “Watching Indians,” they tried to “be as still as whitetail deer.”
Without fail we were rattled into remembering our local landmark every four years by a thunderous electrical display. The giant lightning-shredded cottonwoods stood smoldering under the black rainclouds. Precisely one week before the cataclysmic weather ensued, the tourists wound their way unaccompanied through the Settlement trails. Like the lightning that sent children under the table with hands covering their ears, they always arrived on schedule and Jake couldn’t keep up with the demand.
We always knew when to avoid Cottonwood Hill: whenever the nightly cattle bellowing began on nearby farm pastures. Rumbling and crackling over the valley, the thunderstorms held a stationary position over the valley until the fires were set. In school you always knew which classmates had been lightning-frightened by strands of copper beads they wore on their wrists.
Regardless of how many pleas were made through the Principal Religion ceremonies, the Well-Known Twin Brother kept sending earth-pounding thunderstorms. Among the elders it was believed sorcerers still held a victory dance for the sacred mat that once belonged to Me si kwi-Ne ni wa, Ice Deity. This mat was the one on display in an overseas museum in Belgium. Along the walls of the earthlodges the other sacred mats could be heard weeping for their “younger brother.”
According to our Creation rrtyth, after the War of the Supernatural Beings obliterated the First Earth, Me si kwi-Ne ni wa, Ice Deity, had agreed to put away the icy storms in a sacred mat. In the form of water his words were blended with a dark red herbal dye and drawn out as a picture. This was then rolled up, tied together with sinew in elaborate star patterns, and set aside for the Black Eagle Child people as evidence of their tenuous earthly standing. In it was a symbol of trust. As long as Ice Deity’s pictures were kept warm and dry by its earthlodge keepers, they would never know the wrath of earth-splintering hail and bolts of cottonwood-seeking lightning.
But even the grandest plans fail.
From a faraway, dingy, chandelier-illuminated Hall of the Aboriginal Collections of North America in Belgium, the Ice Deity began sending well-timed electrical storms—Tama County’s meteorological quirk.
Jake Sacred Hammer did not think these paid tours to Cottonwood Hill were harmful or intrusive. His stance, as he wrote in the BlackEagle Child Quarterly, was that if the tribe could tolerate the fenced-in memorial of the “cultural disfiguring barns,” where the 1890 runaways were jailed as a first step to ensure education, then he had every right, like the Why Cheer Women’s Preservation Club, to commemorate the past. “If the whites risk electrocution on Cottonwood Hill, then by golly let them do it!” was how he concluded the “RE: In Defense of Guided Tours” published letter.
The tourists came from all regions of the globe. Through their European connections they gloated over the pathetic history in old buildings and delighted in artifacts, like mossy-covered bridges, Indians, and things that went “moo” or “oink” while fouling the air, earth, and ourselves. This was prompted by the management of the Red Barn Premises the Why Cheer Women’s Preservation Club. In their homage to the virtuous past, they recognized their membership and dues could grow if they—the idea repulsed them—contacted every tourist who came to “see the Indians.” This started in 1928 with promotion of “HOME OF THE WHY CHEER INDIANS” via their absurd postcards, the ones that are now highly sought after as collector’s pieces.
The Preservation Club consisted of the wives of small-rural-community, middle-class society types who met once a month for tea and biscuits at Kling Kower’s Restaurant. They were one-half of whatever made Why Cheer and Gladwood function—law enforcement, the courts, medicine, schools, church, and properties. The wives’ husbands peered from the background, whispering on occasion guarded but fruitful instructions into their wives’ netted ears. In their straw hats, suspenders, and sunglasses, the influential men lagged behind their womenfolk and their guests on a hike to Cottonwood Hill. The sheriff walking like Barney Fife of Mayberry, with hands on hips near the revolver loaded with a single bullet. Behind him marched the county judge and attorney, doctors, teachers, school administrators, bankers, preachers, barbers, merchants, and a bevy of semisuccessful farmers. In addition to advising their wives, they cleaned the cabins and stalls of the Red Barn Premises, where haircuts, clothes, Jesus, A-B-C-D-Z, and Christ were introduced to our grandparents’ parents.
When Jake was laid to rest that winter at O’Ryan’s Cemetery, only then did the Settlement trails become noticeably quiet. Eight years had passed since the “NO TRESPASSING” signs were posted by the Tribal Council. Unimpressed by the signs and feisty, Jake continued his motley intercourse with outsiders by going underground and doing lectures in neighboring towns. Right up to his graveside Jake Sacred Hammer referred to his ill-intentioned admirers as people who intended only to “demonstrate neighborly interest.”
Around this period I became fascinated with stories Jake Sacred Hammer had helped collect years before. In terms of bolstering my interest in mythological intricacies, Jake was influential. At the University of Iowa, shortly after my return from Pomona College, I met a graduate student who was doing a dissertation on these “legends and folktales.” Naturally, since Grandmother had recited some in my youth, I could tell where changes had been made to hide the mysteries lurking within the words themselves. Even Jake was tribal law-abiding enough to reveal only the basic and not the whole. But no one knew that. Not even the expert team of linguistically trained ethnologists.
In a way, by being a “word-Collector” I had subconsciously followed the same diplomacy by choosing less intimate symbols for my poetry. Even in my naïveté I knew enough to incorporate misleading themes.
(Later, literary critics and experts would classify my cryptic work as the “most puzzling” among the pantheon of emerging or established tribal-affiliated writers. It would bother me that these self-appointed critics of Native American literature would overlook circumspection as the light source that refracted, rearranged, and hid me for reasons pertaining to safety. Essays were published to that regard: that I was one confusing mother. Ironically, flocking to my defense were writers whose claims to Indian blood later became questionable. There was never a doubt in my mind they were who they said they were, figuring there was a sense of honor in being Indian, never thinking people would go to deceitful means to claim my ancestors as theirs. Because of this duplicity I equated both critics and imposters as part of the master mouse-catching cat race that sadistically maimed its aboriginal prey for entertainment. Perverted romanticism, if you will, before decapitation.)
Anyway, the graduate student published his commendable but unsuccessful efforts in a book entitled Wolf That I Iz. In an era when Black Eagle Child society was perhaps in a semipristine state, a good portion of what was held most sacred had already been documented by academic flies. Like my own verse, it was cryptic. Once the codes were laboriously deciphered, I was thoroughly amazed at the fearlessness shown by the informants. For such acts of sacrilege, “there should have been repercussions—to self and the immediate family,” I noted in my journal. Except for Francis Marie, the person held accountable for selling the Ice Deity mat and whose children committed a string of mystifying suicides, there were none evident. Nor was there a succession of disappearances. No reports of vengeance. Enough for me to contemplate working with the graduate student to revise and update the old stories.
As the “maybe” answer edged closer to becoming an affirmation, my grandmother said, “Me tte na-ka ta-a se miiye ka ni nay. Ni ha wi ta ki-ke ko-i tta wi ya ni. You just as well not help him. So nothing will happen to you.”
She sensed my disappointment and right away gave examples of what had befallen informants. Something horrific happened to each family. In the past before I was born. There were different, often inconspicuous levels of retribution, advised Grandmother. Stray bullets fell from the sky, finding their mark in the unsuspecting eyes of spouses. Cars unbraked themselves and rolled over playing infants. People who were last seen mildly intoxicated were found hours later in unrecognizable mangled pieces strewn across the railroad tracks, packs of hungry canines defending mangled pieces of their flesh.
It was enough to make me reconsider my role as research assistant. I told Grandmother that I wouldn’t pursue the idea. Undeterred, I continued to read the Sacred Hammer translations. When I should have been painting for my neurotic art professor, I dove into the musty book stalls and read. Whenever possible, I would double-check the credibility of the contents with my grandmother and parents. More times than not the contributions bore a semblance of truth. When the art professor cussed me out for the few pieces I had completed, I didn’t mind it one bit, knowing his class time had been used wisely.
Jake Sacred Hammer, a self-confessed Christian, scooped up ceremonial secrets freely with the spoons of our ancestors, feeding himself and his relatives. His expertise provided transportation between the white and red worlds. But when the “living archives” came to a standstill that day at O’Ryan’s Cemetery in the chilly November wind, there were feelings of ambivalence. A question was asked among the Black Eagle Childs: What would the greater powers do with him for selling all those secrets to the whites? Some elderly priests seized the opportunity to pronounce him guilty on behalf of the Holy Grandfather and sentenced him to an eternity of floating nothingness. Others, like, my uncle William, treated Jake’s shadow no differently. He had been asked—over the telephone—by Jake’s kin to address their father’s brother. “The Final Words to the Deceased before Their Journey West” were instructions, a verbal mapping, on how to get to the Black Eagle Child Afterlife. As if existence itself had been easy, there were yet more trials replete with questions of faithfulness and compassion for humanity and nature.
It was during William’s eulogy that a long-legged, bald white reporter for the Why Cheer News-Herald began snapping photographs of Jake in ceremonial clothing and repose. Although many probably found the act objectionable, no one stepped forward, for this was a white-intermingling pattern Jake had already established. It seemed fitting.
William, however, grew annoyed at the reporter in the green turtle-neck and safari-type jacket. Like a large buzzing fly homing in on the sweet cemetery fragrance, the reporter measured light, calculated distance, and adjusted the camera’s knobs and dials. In a flurry of motions the baldheaded fly prepared to take pictures. Suddenly, the wings slowed down and he quietly knelt beside Jake’s moccasined feet.
At the most importune moments the large camera’s shutter clicked noisily.
So you can have a restful journey ...
Click! went the shutter. Buzz-z-z went the baldheaded fly.
Your family seeks only the gopdfor you. . . .
Click! The fly’s intrusive positioning began to grate William’s patience.
Don’t think about returning if they accidentally say your clan name. ...
Click! Click!
You will never feel this way again; it will never be like this again. ...
Click! Click! went the shutter. Buzz-z-z went the baldheaded fly.
In retrospect I now theorize that the reporter was subconsciously reacting to the eloquence and rhythmic timing of the solemn but stirring words offered. As William’s frustration peaked, however, the pauses between the sentences became protracted, as did the camera shutter clicking. Composure regained, William switched into the English language. Where there had once been a serene message, a set of crucial instructions for the deceased, the situation now drastically changed.
“Must there be a perpetual infringement of our lives? Can we not have the ultimate final moment of privacy?” he questioned, with his hand pointing furiously to the baldheaded fly.
William continued angrily, and in the bitterly cold wind the numb ears of the white entourage tuned in. “For those of you non-Indians in attendance who are friends of the deceased and who do not understand our language, I have just delivered a prayer for our dearly departed. In accordance to our ways this is a time of bereavement and deep sorrow. ...”
The reporter finally slowed down, froze in his prickly fly tracks, and listened with his bald head shining in the winter sun.
“We are not here to judge what he may or may not have done. That aspect rests with the Almighty God. It irritates me more than you can possibly imagine to have a represenative of the news media taking pictures as if this were a Women’s Preservation Club picnic, a circus, or a small-town Republican caucus!”
Inside I asked myself, Republican caucus?
Suddenly aware he was the subject of these words, the reporter slowly lowered the Yashica camera, forwarded the film by habit, and stepped back from the coffin in an effort to hide in the crowd, but no one gave room.
“This to me is the most flagrant form of disrespect! We do not take pictures of such in our society! If you are absolutely driven to take them, then please take them as we are breathing and conscious!”
After these words, which were delivered without the slightest pause or slur, an attorney who represented the tribe in state and federal courts made his way to the circle of bereaved relatives and viciously yanked the camera from the reporters neck. He then proceeded to pop the film out, unrolling it carefully in the sunlight. As if it could be read only when placed before light, he held it from end to end vertically toward the sky like a sacred miniature scroll. The long-legged reporter stood there in utter dejection with bloodred ears, looking down at the exposed frames curling up over the cold, hard ground.
I remember thinking as I saw this scene: “A small but symbolic victory over a newspaper that has been a disease upon our lives. One giant leap for Black Eagle Child kind.” The equation of an astronaut’s quote as he set his foot on the lunar landscape with the reprimand William had just delivered to the reporter was a caprice. Yet it seemed appropriate and righteous when the history of the American mass media’s treatment of the First People was considered.
William stood with his oversized woolen shirt and gray khaki work pants. Sensing all was back to normal, he squinted his puffy eyes. His small-boned frame tottered slightly as he regained his footing over the casket. William resumed exactly where he had left off in the same low monotone of the instruction.
No matter how strong the loneliness of your journey, make it easy for those who remain here. ...
It was difficult to perceive him as a man of tribal letters, but he was a consummate orator. With his soaring height, like the eagle, he was the closest any human could ever get to the Well-Known Twin-Brother, the Creator.
After the incident at O’Ryan’s Cemetery, I looked at William Listener differently. He represented a clan leader who was also self-educated. Of greater importance was the fact that he was bilingual. Aside from being on the Tribal Council and being a successful plumbing contractor, he was a drum-carrier for the Red Swan Society. The multitudes of prayers he knew and the songs he sang made young people like myself envious. Some even said he radiated when he sang.
Of course, there were certain individuals who could never duplicate or equal his talents, especially those who judged him on the basis of his politics. They had nothing good to say. About anything! From the day I was told by my playmates—Ted, Pat, Horatio, and the Muscatines—that “his wallet was fattened with money from the sale of maps to the lightning-struck hillside,” I made it a point not to visit their houses no matter how lonely I got; I knew their parents would make me carry back petty messages. For reasons of comfort I avoided these people like the woods when night first begins. Maybe this was the phase when I distanced myself. Maybe it wasn’t far enough. On long walks during my adolescent growth I rehearsed arguments with myself—before facing my friends—that William was far removed from the offensive antics of Jake Sacred Hammer. What William did on the outside was irrelevant, I surmised. Knowledge was the real issue, knowledge needed by the next generation to facilitate their spiritual passage. This was the real priority, not rumors of financial improprieties committed while he was chairman of the Tribal Council. Abuse of social service funds wasn’t a heinous crime, after all, not when criminals lived undetected in our neighborhoods. It mattered little to me if he told those assisted with food and fuel oil by the state not to deal with the grocery store where his wife’s check bounced. There were murderers and rapists whose acts couldn’t be proven in a courtroom, but everyone knew they were guilty. The parents of these criminals were quick to provide alibis. They maintained their innocence, and they remained silent accomplices right up to the end. Their conspiracies were the fiercest kind imaginable, the kind that vanished forever: a stabbing, a shooting, a beating somewhere in the dark before dawn, where all the participants through their claims of innocence break apart and drift away in an oblivion of eternal nothingness. . . .
Yet, in spite of this lawless vortex, charges were made that William had misused food and fuel oil orders. The Why Cheer business people complained, as did tribal members. His vendetta unnecessarily involved the tribe, it was reported. There was also talk of carpenters and plumbers being paid in outright cash. News of his exploits came to the supper table in succession.
Mostly, I came away not wishing to understand the function of a seven-man tribal government. It seemed a bad rendering of democracy, a mutation of a small-town Euro-American council system.
And so we ate the boiled squirrel in corn meal and pondered.
Would we ever be like William? Luciano Bearchild, my cousin— before he disappeared in 1966—used to ask when discussing our obligation-ridden futures. Despite having sung his way to prominence through the Earthlodge clans since childhood, Luciano was intimidated by William. Having no response to his own remarkable abilities, Luciano would tighten his necktie and shuffle across the concrete floor like James Brown. Regrettably, Luciano vanished near Liquid Lake, and no one since has known and worn hand-tailored suits, white silk scarves, Italian shoes, and perforated fingerless gloves.
It seemed impossible in my twentieth winter to shuffle away. For the most part, I felt that in the split second the Bearchild family portrait was taken, I was already a blurred movement. You can’t make him out too clear hut that’s Edgar Bearchild, esteemed member of the SRS—the Society of Repressed Storytellers—or another reason why the elite literary world is very much like the Immigration and Naturalization Service a.k.a. “the good old boy network,” in departmental exclusion of un-Americans.
In my total lifetime, if a miracle somehow changed my attitudes, I could be only one-sixteenth—maybe the part that belittled the white photographer—of whoever William Listener was.
Since William was not an ordinary person, I am inclined to believe his detached hand—or a phantasm thereof—made overtures to communicate with Selene Buffalo Husband and myself in 1979. In actuality, William was lying comatose at the Heijen Medical Center in Sherifftown fifteen miles away.
From this extraordinary event was born the story called “The Incorporeal Hand,” where the mystery guest signed itself in as “The Messenger of. . .”on the TV game show What’s My Line? Panelists Henry Morgan and Dorothy Killgallen, with oversized blindfolds, smirked as the excess lizard skin of their aristocratic throats rippled in the cold green light. ...