That doesn’t seem like long ago. Imprinted still are mental pictures of events and the capricious manner in which they unfolded. Ted’s loss didn’t engulf me until I had had my bitter fill of county law enforcement agencies. I learned even the most insignificant detail, like the lettering on a can of oranges or the graphic minutiae of a kitchen tablecloth, languished in this hideous timeless state, the gradual realization of a traumatic loss.
Maybe that’s why recollections seem vivid and nearby.
Upon receiving news at home that Ted had been killed in a vehicular accident, I took a shower to clear my senses. There, in the steamed reflection of the bathroom mirror, I asked whether he required my involvement. And when Selene’s brother, Octavius Buffalo Husband, replied in the other room, sounding amazingly like Ted, I took it as a paranormal signpost. Thrust upon a catlinite surfboard that was hydroplaning over unearthly waves, I pulled down the navigator’s goggles and crouched low behind the watchdog effigy masthead before rationality returned. But the fact of the matter was, and this is how revelations conceal themselves through coincidence, Octavius—at that very second—was giving advice through Selene who was on the telephone with their younger sister. He thought it was best to “pull her kids” from an ineffective bilingual/bicultural curriculum.
A week afterward, under duress, I donated Hawaiian Punch at the tribal health clinic. A month later I was traveling on behalf of the Facepaint family to Minneapolis to meet with Junior Pipestar. I remember being in that motel room with my parents. It was on a Superbowl day, and I was perspiring heavily between the fingers. In the blue flickering light of the RCA television set, Pipestar’s teenage apprentice was unraveling the bundles of dry goods and purifying them with cedar bough smoke a small cord of muscles below the thigh bone began to shake. Regardless of the fact that it was also a long-awaited reunion, there was every reason to believe the realms of perception would somehow be altered. As with everything imperfect, revelation would arrive in a bungling “Keystone Cops” manner. Sure enough, at the height of the psychic inquisition there was a disturbing blast of humor at the thought of grown men, the infamous “Hyena brothers” wearing dresses and masks. Is there such a thing as a comedy-riddled death? I asked.Or is this all a delusion precipitated by mourning postponed? Why this sarcastic urge to smile back at the Kansas City Chiefs football player, another insignificant detail, on the surreal cereal box ad? Whatever the origin of these thoughts I quickly shook myself free of them, blaming the purported fathers of the Hyenai. Even when they were told their children had non-Indian features at birth, they Signed the paternity and enrollment papers. As a result, the cross-dressing Hyenai were considered legitimate members of tribal citizenry in the eyes of Black Eagle Child government.
Late in their life the Hyena brothers, a.k.a. Mathylde “Patty Jo” Hi-na’s sons, were urged by Brook Grassleggings, the photogenic hermaphrodite, to stop fighting their effeminate desires. The brothers found solace in Brook but they misinterpreted her messages. They took her sympathy as a blessing to victimize those who didn’t understand the full ramifications of their enigmatic sexual discovery.
A group of Settlement winos known for their homegrown intellect once theorized these “mixed-bloods” were so paranoid, thanks to their illegal bloodline, that Other personae took over. Especially when they gathered into a mangy pack, downing gallons of Mad Dog 20/20 and popping “speed.” The winos predicted a flesh-taking transgression was in the offing. With their translucent marble eyes reflecting in the car headlights of all-night parties, lectured Dr. Crockston, they’ll subdue anyone who hints at their biological shortcomings. Documented full-bloods, especially those they had had run-ins with, like Ted Facepaint, became priority targets for their wrath.
Sketches of their shape-shifting were drawn on shoebox lids by wino-artists and passed around for all to study. The Hyenai were graphically depicted in werewolflike transformations by Professor Crockston and his graduate assistant, Dean Afraid, the daytime robber of the only Italian-owned grocery store in Why Cheer.
The shoebox lid sketches thumbtacked to the door held back little: Their bladders bloated up like balloons and grew from within, distorting and enlarging their exterior appearances until the predominant feature was a froth-speckled sneer that had yellow teeth protruding through grape-colored nostrils.
The winos, under the guidance of Professor Crockston, were never far from being correct. Amid the picturesque crown of hills, the Black Eagle Child people were surrounded with the pounding waves of an invisible ocean called eventuality. Not only did lives occasionally lose their footing and tumble headfirst into the surf, but personalities were ostensibly altered. Brook Grassleggings, as a prime example, single-handedly made Junior Pipestar go on a religious quest twenty-one years ago. While Brook wasn’t quite a woman, biologically speaking, she/it convinced Pipestar to become an apprentice to Jack Frost, a legendary Canadian Indian medicine man. Abstinence, of course, was a requisite, as were sobriety and an unwavering diligence to learn paranormal skills.
But on occasion I would ruminate that if Pipestar’s life had been predetermined all along, then a womanless devotion to God was inevitable. In other words, it would have evolved eventually, but who would have figured that it would happen prematurely and under compromising conditions?
The most embarrassing thing that could happen back then was being pushed by a clan priest down a rocky hill for being a belligerent drunk inside the ceremonial earthlodge. But not for Junior Pipestar. For him, the world vanished the night he met an Indian equivalent of “Lauren Bacall.” Possessing a rock-stippled face that would remind tribal members one had attended a feast under the influence was a minuscule burden compared to Pipestar’s misfortune.
Ted Facepaint and I, as it turned out, were indirectly involved in that encounter. Yet Pipestar never attributed blame to anyone other than himself. Nor was he angry. And how could he be? Too much happened from one reckless, isolated decision. His. Like a shiny plump fish he swam willingly toward the long beak of a calculating, androgynous heron. The “Brook person” in spurious minxlike mannerisms retreated into the shadows with a lit cigarette in its lipsticked mouth. The motions of a harmless firefly were imitated, and unsuspecting passersby, like Pipestar,! mistook it for such.
In making the arrangements for our meeting with Pipestar, his young apprentice specified over the telephone that it would be impossible for him to visit the Black Eagle Child Settlement because of his schedule. But Minneapolis was fine. “The Ramada Inn wherecrime-conjuring phantasms were part of the accommodations,” I later recorded in my journals.
There, in the cafeteria, Pipestar explained: “The past is always near. It is as near as the presence of someone sleeping beside you in bed when you know you are alone! Memory has a breath. In the strangest hour it decides to leap atop your chest to breathe in syncopation with you. Conjoined, so to speak. Inseparable and mimicking. And then you recall—in every sensor detail.”
We did, on different levels.
It was 1968. A humid summer night with a couple of cases of Leinenkugel’s long-neck beers. We were all on a hunt, like honorable American presidents, in a divining rod kind of pose, organ-led and not heedful of the rapacious flame that raged within and warmed the recesses of our bellies. Facepaint and I were there being hosts to Junior Pipestar and his sister Charlotte. Because of our careless adolescence, Brook Grassleggings, a young and attractive half woman and half man, was able to hoodwink Pipestar into a near-sexual encounter. Captivated by Brook’s husky but enticing “Lauren Bacall” voice and a slim physical stature to match, Pipestar had been lured away by a giggling group of cigarette-desperate girls. Someone who was courteous, accommodating, and curious was all Brook needed to initiate the public embarrassment that would make Pipestar split Tama County forever.
Originally, Facepaint and I commiserated with his despair, but we also advised him that people would forget about what happened at the old Grassleggings log cabin. He argued he had survived “the shenanigans of a deviate and gunfire from the county sheriff, some deputies, and assorted vigilantes.” No one will care, we pleaded. “I was the one who was there with Brook,” he protested. “Factor that into the dreadful equation.” It was true. How could anyone who only seconds before was caressing a firm nubile breast in one hand and the shocking male protuberance of Brook in another survive after coming to under a volley of bullets and photographers’ flashbulbs?
The last discussion before Pipestar’s exodus ended in hysterics.
“Jesus Christ!” he cried. “Just put yourself in my place. Would you even go anywhere and show your bloody face?”
For the sake of argument we nodded yes but later concurred in secret it would be difficult to live an event like that down. From any perspective. The photograph taken of him in underwear after being roused by the posse, however, made the incriminating maple sugar pie calcify. No Houdini, not even in resurrection, could escape the award-winning newspaper photograph with a caption that read: “A BUCK BUCK NAKED.” With mud-stained arms raised up to the night-sky as if in homage or surrender, Junior—hoodwinked by an oddity— participated unwillingly in his own despicable representation. This near-sexual encounter compelled Junior Pipestar to bid his Claer, Iowa, family members adieu and hitchhike northward to Canada in search of identity. Most forgot about him, as Facepaint and I predicted. In a way, everyone became an infinite part of the process, of moving on, forgetting.
Today, in the strangest irony of all, we were insignificant next to what Junior Pipestar had become under the tutelage of Jack Frost, the legendary medicine man of Horned Serpent Lake. We, those living and deceased, were dependent upon their supernatural seeing powers.
In the company of saviors, to whom and to what do you humbly give thanks? Unbridled lust, maybe? A pack of Camel cigarettes? Three thousand American dollars?