As Poowasan spoke to Glixtan, we sat silently and watched the sun continue to rise above the treetops, the shade receding from the village by the second. Three small children kept peering curiously out from around a tepee. A woman appeared and uttered some words in Sawnay. She chased them off with a tree bough into the maze of tepees where they disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later from around another one. Their inquisitive eyes took us in, more determined than before, it seemed, to learn what was afoot in their village with the strange travelers in strange clothes who’d shown up the night before, the ones from Mother Earth.
“Why don’t you move, just move to new land?” said Simon, tossing his head in a random direction. “Just leave and start over somewhere else?”
“Aren’t there other places the Sawnay can settle?” I added.
Poowasan looked at me and I felt tiny again, like the night before when I was first brought into his presence. “I promised our people we would never leave. We have called this land home for eight generations since we left Mother Earth. This land we now sit on was picked by the elders of our village. This land has given the Sawnay all they need to grow. We have respected it like our own. Those Sawnay who have traveled on to the Spirit World are part of this land. We lose all of this if we leave.”
I took in the awakening village, the cheerful voices and laughter. Somewhere, a baby cried, looking to be fed. The young, the old, and the in-between carried on with their daily routines. It was a living, breathing community. It was a place where people were born, where they grew up, where they fell in love, where they raised children and shared time with family and friends. And it was where they celebrated life, and where they mourned death.
All of it would be destroyed if a cure for Cootamain wasn’t found. I could remember watching the stories of oil companies that owned and operated oil rigs in third-world countries in Africa and South America. Pipelines would often rupture and bleed their oil into pristine rainforest rivers near villages that’d been there for hundreds of years. The villagers would continue to fish, drink, and wash from the toxin-filled water out of necessity. What about Alberta, Canada, to the north? I remembered the story I’d watched about toxins from tailings ponds leaching into the Athabasca River. A river that First Nations communities relied on for sustenance, and I remembered fish with filmy eyes, people getting sick. The poison in Cootamain, like a metastasizing cancer, would slowly kill it, like the lung cancer that ate my grandfather away to nothing, before taking his life. Unless Glooscap and the others discovered what was causing the poison and found a way to stop it, the Sawnays’ way of life would end. It was just a matter of time.
I tried to think what it would be like if I had to leave a place that I lived my entire life, a place my family had been for eight generations. But then I’d never known life at one spot. I’d never been able to plant myself in one location and root some roots. For the majority of my life, I bounced from one place to the next. The longest my mother and I stayed anywhere was at Vince’s ranch, and that was only two years. After my father left, we lived in low-rental apartments or highway motels on the outskirts of small towns I could no longer remember the names of, towns that blurred together like the miles of dusty, tumbleweed-strewn highway my mother and I had driven along. Towns where I attended school for a few months, always trying to fit in as the new guy, while my mother worked some dead-end job as a waitress at a café or a cashier at a drugstore. Then when a tornado swept across some place like Texas or Oklahoma or a hurricane hit Florida or Louisiana, my mother’s phone rang, and she always, always answered and made plans with whoever it was on the other end of the line. I tried to recall what I’d seen more of vanish on the horizon––the rear end of my mother’s Ford Mustang as she drove away on one of her storm chases, or those indistinguishable towns as we hit the road again, striking out for a new destination, uncertain of our future, poignantly aware of our past.
I always thought that I ought to be sad as we were leaving, but I never was. I guess we did so much of it that I got used to it. Standing there, I understood why the Sawnay couldn’t simply uproot and move somewhere else, but I couldn’t feel why.
Glooscap appeared, walking with the older, round-faced woman from the previous night who’d handed us the berries and juice-skin in the longhouse. And like the previous night, she smiled warmly as she approached us, friendly and inviting; I could even say motherly.
“Weesan will help you prepare for the journey,” said Glooscap.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Anna and Tabby coming toward us. Anna no longer looked upset. I wondered what Tabby had said to soothe her: Don’t worry we’ll come back for him? If we can’t, he’ll follow as soon as he can travel? These were the types of things that I’d probably say. Weesan approached the girls and began gesturing for them to follow her. When she noticed us boys weren’t coming, she stopped and said, “You come with.”
We got up and went to follow.
“Tanner, stay back a minute,” said Conroy, gesturing his head to the seat beside him.
The others didn’t seem to hear. They kept walking without glancing back. I sat down. As the others rounded a tepee, Anna turned back to give us a wave before disappearing.
We sat quietly for a minute as the noise of the village steadily increased, like an awakening heartbeat, voices and barks echoing off the hides. Then Conroy locked his gray eyes on me, that serious look he gave when he passed on advice. “I want you to know that I trust your judgment fully, completely. You’re going to need to rely on it now more than ever before, Tanner.”
“We can bring you with us. We’ll just ride slower,” I said, not liking where this was going. That rift I imagined opening up between him and the girls earlier started to open between us.
“Tanner,” he said sighing, shaking his head. “If something happened and you needed to hustle . . .”
Hearing him so openly admit his weakness was upsetting. To see him physically broken was hard. At the same time, it gave me an even deeper respect for a man who I knew was capable of pretty much anything. A lump started to build at the back of my throat.
“Watch over them like your brothers and sisters,” said Conroy. “You’re all in this together. You’ll need each other. They’ll listen to you.”
“They’re not going to listen to me. What I say doesn’t matter.”
“Give them friendship, something they’ve been missing most of their lives––even my nieces. They’ll listen then. Being a leader isn’t commanding––”
“It’s inspiring,” I said, finishing a quote that I’d learned from him. “But we have so many differences.”
“That’s a strength. Those differences are a strength. See the possibilities, not the limitations. If the opportunity to go home arises, make sure you take it.”
“We’re not leaving without––”
“Tanner, you go if you get the chance. Don’t let Anna or Tabby talk you out of it––you all go, you hear me?”
With those last words, I felt like the tie holding us together had been severed. What was ahead for us? At that point, I had no idea. I couldn’t begin to imagine, with everything that had already happened. Who could? I knew what was in the past. I spent my entire life thinking about it, wishing I could somehow turn around and change those things that seemed to define me, make different choices with those ones that I knew had been wrong, and try to get my parents to make different choices, too.
I looked at Conroy, and knew an oath, a vow, a commitment had been made between us.
I spotted the others coming back. They had changed into deer hide clothing, which took away their modern American look. If I saw them at a distance, I would’ve thought they were Sawnay, except maybe for Colby, as dark as he was. He and Tabby had hide bundles slung over their shoulders. Anna had her Gucci purse instead, Simon his gym bag.
“What do you think?” said Anna, turning sideways to strike a pose.
“I think you’re having way too much fun,” said Tabby. She stuck her finger in her throat. Anna backhanded her shoulder.
“What?” said Tabby. “You tried on like ten pairs. Then you tried to change again before we left. Then you wanted my shirt––that’s why I don’t shop with you or Mom. That’s why I get up an hour before you to use the bathroom. You’re a prima donna of the highest order.”
Anna ignored her sister and sat down in between Conroy and me to put her hair in a ponytail. I pictured Anna in the bathroom for hours, door locked, applying make-up, and straightening her long shiny brown hair with the straightener that she always packed around everywhere in her purse with all the other girly stuff.
Over one of Glooscap’s shoulders was a bundle. On the other, he carried a sheath full of red-fletched arrows and an unstrung bow made of rust-colored wood. Following him were Cawop and Broden, both carrying their own bundles, bows and arrows. Glooscap’s fierce eyes had returned as if he was again possessed, like he eagerly awaited what lay ahead, whatever it may be.
Those three mischievous children reappeared around a tepee. They watched me a moment, then they smiled and waved. Smiling, I waved back and they darted into the maze of tepees, shouting something out in Sawnay as they left. All of this would be gone––long gone––if Glooscap and the others weren’t successful. Right then, a part of me wished I could join them, help them in some way. But what more could I offer? I was just a kid from another world, without any idea of how this new world worked. Heck, I barely knew how my own world worked. I’d be more of a hindrance than a help.
We were all sitting on the benches around the fire, outside of the longhouse. Poowasan and the other Sawnay were in a heated discussion, gesturing with their hands, as if they were going over plans of great importance.
“Girls, this is for the best,” said Conroy softly.
“We’re not going home without you,” said Anna.
“Now listen, I want all of you guys to stick together,” said Conroy.
“No way, we ain’t leaving you, Mr. C.,” said Colby.
As Conroy nodded his head, his mouth stretched thin and he shut his eyes like he did when he heard something he didn’t agree with, but knew it wasn’t the time or place to argue.
“You just did that thing you do when you don’t agree,” said Tabby, pointing a finger at him.
“He did too,” said Anna.
Conroy reached out a hand to Anna, but she leaned away and then she looked at me accusingly. “You two already talked about this when we were gone,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
My face flushed. She huffed like she was disgusted.
“If we do find a way home, he can follow us later,” said Simon, trying to help out.
Anna whirled at him, and yelled, “How do you know?”
He didn’t respond.
“Exactly, you don’t know. You don’t know anything, Simon––so don’t even butt into this.”
“Like I said before, I’ll only be a burden,” said Conroy.
“He’s right,” I said quietly. I didn’t like it, but it was the truth. “If the Sawnay hadn’t found you guys on the slope yesterday, you’d all be dead.”
“But his leg feels better,” said Tabby, looking at her uncle. “You said so yourself last night.” Her voice was pleading.
“Not better enough,” he said.
Tabby stood up and looked to Poowasan for support. “Tell them it’s safe. You said it’s safe, the trip to see your friend. It’s past the swamp that’s not safe, right?”
“Tabby, please listen to me,” soothed Conroy, reaching for her hand. She backed away out of range.
“The journey is safer the faster one travels,” said Poowasan. “Your uncle will be a guest of the Sawnay until he returns to Mother Earth.”
“What if he never returns?” said Anna. “What then?”
No one spoke.
Sniffling, Tabby wiped a hand across her eyes. That was the second time I’d seen her cry since we arrived. Carol’s death, now this. In fact, I never thought she would. She seemed so much different than Anna, who I’d stumbled upon crying twice before. Both times while she’d been talking with someone on her iPhone, once in the hay barn––and I mean bawling––and another time when we were all shopping at Walmart. I’d went back out to the van to grab the coupons Carol had forgotten and found Anna inside, wiping tears from her eyes with a Kleenex, her phone pressed to her ear. I thought it was boyfriend trouble with some guy from San Francisco, the one she always gabbed about, and who Tabby always poked fun at, saying he had short-man syndrome. It all made sense now, with those text messages that I read on the bluff. I couldn’t help but glance at her stomach, but just like last time, I couldn’t find any sign of her unborn baby.
“What if he can’t follow us? What if he never returns? What then?” said Tabby, repeating her sister’s questions.
This statement caused Anna to wrap her arms around her uncle, bury her head into his shoulder, and begin to cry.
“What if all this just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo?” said Colby.
I figured every one of us was aware that it was a real possibility we might never return to Earth, never see Halton House again, never see Hena’s colt, never watch movies, never eat pizza or enjoy ice cream. We might never hear our favorite bands––no iPhones, no Facebook, no YouTube, no Levis, no cars, no trucks, and definitely no bookstores or libraries. And what about our family? Nothing at all. Without it, what would life be like? Like the Stone Age, that was what it would be like. Simple or difficult? Who knew for certain? The farthest I’d been away from civilization was those two years I spent at Whispering Cedars. But during that time, there’d been trips to town for shopping, school during the weekdays. There’d been the amenities of modern society, playing Xbox with the ranch hands, watching movies on weekends, listening to classic rock on my iPod or blaring from the Kenwood house speakers in the big shop. There’d been all of that, and then some.
Tabby dropped her bundle and rushed forward into her uncle’s arms. He wrapped both his nieces tightly in an embrace. It dawned on me that this could very well be the last time Conroy, Anna, and Tabby would ever hold one another, could be the last time they would ever see one another.
Poowasan started chanting softly, and the other Sawnay joined in, as if it was a song they all knew well. It was simple, and soon Simon also joined in and then I did too, and finally even Colby. We all chanted along. It felt like a song that I’d known my entire life. I tried to place it but couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Being there with everyone and chanting like that, it was beautiful. I’d never done anything like it before, except maybe Christmas caroling once or twice. But this was different. How? I don’t know exactly. It brought us together there, and it was soothing. After a few moments, neither I nor the others had any difficulty keeping rhythm. And when it did start to fade, everyone seemed to be calmer, as if they all begrudgingly accepted the decision to leave Conroy behind while we journeyed north to see Ambrose. The girls released their uncle, both gazing up at him as if he was at the top of some great height.
Could there’ve been more to our final hour before embarking on that journey? Maybe, people waving to us as we left the village, more round faces like Weesan’s, more kind words, words of encouragement in English or Sawnay or both. Maybe like the romantic images that I’d seen of young men as they prepared to head off to fight in WWI or II, or like the townsfolk wishing good luck to hired guns who were riding out to hunt down a gang of outlaws in those Western novels that I’d been reading since I was a boy. For us, there was none of that. There was no pomp, no extravagance, no type of going-away ceremony.
Colby handed me a bundle and a set of deer hides. I went into the longhouse to change, a place that still felt safe and welcoming. A part of me wanted to curl back up under the fur to sleep the morning away, forget everything for just a while longer, perhaps wake up from this dream, if it was a dream.
I changed into the hides, leaving my torn, mud-stained clothes near the cushion I’d sat on. They weren’t a bad fit. A little heavy and constricting, not what you’d want to play basketball in, but they were somewhat comfortable, in a frontiersman-like way.
Outside, Poowasan spoke with Glooscap. The others were in a half circle around Conroy. I walked over and slung the bundle Colby had given me onto my shoulder, like it was the gym bag that I’d been carrying to all those basketball games against St. Michael’s, only this wasn’t a game. There were no referees, no penalties, no buzzers, no scoreboards, no Mr. Wilkes standing on the sidelines, and no fans cheering or booing for that matter. This was as real as it could get. More real than I wanted it to be.
“Not a bad fit,” said Simon, nodding.
Cawop pointed at Colby’s Nikes, which clashed against his hide pants, and said, “Those moccasins––powerful medicine.” And with those words, I noticed for the first time how guttural his voice was, as if his voice box was more animal than human. The skin on my neck pricked. “You want to trade?” said Cawop. He put his foot forward and lifted his pant leg to reveal a tan moccasin that looked about a thousand miles overdue for a change.
“Man, these are the finest shoes I ever owned,” said Colby. “Only way someone getting them is by taking them off my dead body.”
A solemnness swept through the group. Then Anna’s chin started quivering, on the verge of another crying bout. The girls had never known the deep hurt from profound loss to the degree that we boys had, the degree that burns your nerve endings dead, makes it so you doubt the world around you and don’t expect a whole lot of good to come your way ever again. Like when my father left, leaving me with all those unanswered questions. Some of which my mother knew the answers for but would never get a chance to reveal, because she took them with her to Oklahoma, where that F5 tornado took her away forever.
Then it hit me. My father had been gone for ten years, almost to the day. What were the chances both of us vanishing from our lives around the same day? There’d been so many changes after he left, with all of the confusion, uncertainty, grief, chaos, and turbulence in my and my mother’s life––all that and more. She and I had driven down lonely, dusty highways, searching hotels, motels, and honky-tonks, both waiting––and praying to a god who never seemed to listen––for her cellphone to ring, for that spark of hope that never came, a spark we so desperately needed for our lives to be complete again, for that void to be filled or at least the hope of it to be. A spark that would’ve stopped her tears from soaking her pillow every night. Because we were incomplete after he left. Although I was only seven at the time, I knew a vital piece had been torn from our lives, and that made it impossible for us to be complete. And my mother, well, my mother started spending more and more time away from home, more time away from me. Different men came and went. Or maybe we came and went, would be more accurate. It was like she was as restless as the storms she spent her life chasing. Just when I found myself getting comfortable with one of her new boyfriends, she packed us up and we moved again. The fighter pilot, Chip. Brad the ironworker who walked steel beams fifty stories in heavy winds above cities like New York and Dubai. Will the park ranger who watched over Colorado National Park, saving animals, arresting poachers. Even after my mother met Vince and we moved to Whispering Cedars, her cellphone would ring and she’d take off to storm-chase in some other state. I’d arrive home from school to find Vince preparing dinner by himself, usually medium-rare steak, baked potatoes, and Greek salad, his favorite meal which had become my favorite. Vince would pat me on the back, ask how my day went, then say something like, “Sorry, bud, she couldn’t wait until you got home. She’ll be back in a few days though. Maybe sooner.” But he and I both knew it never ended up being just a few days, more often like a week, sometimes two. It happened so many times over the years that I got used to it, as an aging athlete got used to defeat. Then, that previous March, she never returned home.
As I came out of my thoughts, Conroy kissed Anna and Tabby’s foreheads and whispered to them. Glooscap and the other Sawnay stood by the fire, gazing at the brilliant alien sun in the north, as if they were eager to leave.
“We’ll find a way home,” said Simon. “I know we will.”
“I bet my bottom dollar on it,” said Conroy.
I thought maybe Anna or Tabby might start pleading with their uncle again, but they didn’t. Conroy let go of the girls and shook Colby’s hand, then Simon’s. When it came to my turn, his jaw muscle knotted and then he took my hand with the firmest handshake I’d ever felt. We didn’t speak. There was no need. We’d discussed all there was to discuss. He nodded and let my hand go.
Glooscap and his men were patiently standing in a circle, speaking in hushed Sawnay to one another like they were worried the sound of their voices might interrupt our farewell. That was it. We were leaving. What did I feel? At the time, a tempest of things, I guess––fear, excitement, hope, boldness, and adventurous and of course trepidation. All of that and more, I was sure. Something that seemed so distant a few hours ago, and something that would’ve been totally unbelievable a few days ago, was happening right then and there.
We were about to embark on a journey that was like a quest in a novel or movie. Sure, I’d been along for an imaginary ride on more times than I could count, but then that had been fiction, with no real chance of injury or death. Wondering what the others were thinking, I took a moment and studied the party. We were all from different walks of life. Three boys who’d had a fling with the law, two rich girls, and three real-deal Sawnay right out of the sixteenth century––what a motley group we were.
“This is for you,” said Glixtan. He’d come right up beside me without a sound. He reached out his hand. When I put my hand out, he ceremoniously placed a tiny black stone in my palm. I was hit by déjà vu. Touching my chest, I felt the medicine pouch that the old Indian had given me the night before at the Shell. It held the stone that heated up yesterday and last night, warning me of danger.
I clutched the leather thong and removed the pouch from under my hide shirt. I loosened the drawstring and dumped the stone into my hand. They were identical beside each other. Glixtan nodded, giving me a mischievous smile, his eyes twinkling.
“Wait, where . . . how do you have the same stone?” I said mystified, shaking my head, trying to make sense of it all.
“Life is full of unknowns, of mystery,” he whispered. He touched his temple with a finger, then his heart, then his temple again. “Believe in yourself on the longest journey.” And like the stone, the gesture was also the same from the night before. Perplexed, I waited for him to say more, but he turned and hobbled over to Poowasan. I took a final look at the stones, then rolled them into the pouch, and dropped it back down my shirt.
“Hang on a sec,” I said to Glixtan. I rushed over to Simon and went into his gym bag while he was talking to Conroy. All the Pretty Horses was still inside. I picked it up and headed back over to Glixtan, handed it to him, feeling a trade was due, like two nights before at the Shell, the Root Beer for the medicine pouch.
He examined the book cover. “All the Pretty Horses,” he said slowly. “Thank you, Tanner.”
“Are you ready?” said Glooscap to all of us.
Conroy gave us the thumbs-up. When his nieces stood from the bench to pick up their bundles, he dug inside his pocket. “Here, Tanner, might come in handy.” He removed his Swiss Army knife.
I went to take it but he held on for a second. “This was my father’s,” he said. “I’d like it back. Tanner, remember––what anger wants, it buys at the price of soul.” Then he let the knife go, and I slipped it into the kangaroo pouch on the front of my shirt.
“Man, you gonna lose that knife just like her phone,” said Colby.
“Well, we better get a move on,” I said, changing the subject.
“Where’s these thunder horses at?” said Colby. “Better be some fine animals, no broken-down old mules or ponies.”
“The way you ride, it won’t matter,” said Simon jokingly.
Glooscap pointed toward the sun, which had risen fully above the treetops, bathing the village in light. “We need to go to them. We will arrive before night falls.”
Everyone was silent. I guessed there was nothing more left to say. And so that was how we started off on our journey, walking in a single file through the village like we had the night before, only this time we weren’t prisoners. This time, we were equals.