Authors: Ellen Gilchrist
Everything was very quiet and orderly as the Wagoner family prepared to bless the union of their daughter with Bobby Tree, this time for good and this time for the making of children instead of for selfish reasons.
L
ITTLE
S
UN AND
his friend Kayo had gone to the spring at the back of the pasture to clean away debris and get it ready for the morning of the blessing. It flowed into a cold, clear pond that stayed full of water even during severe drought. Bobcats, mountain lions, deer, and many other creatures had come there for water in the first years that Little Sun owned the land. Now the surrounding woods had been thinned and not so many creatures could be found there in the early mornings. Watercress and mosses and mint and small blue wildflowers grew on the banks in the spring. Hickory, oak, and locust trees were all around it, their roots feeding on its underground streams.
“It is too cold for Olivia to bathe here because she is pregnant,” Little Sun said. “She can walk in up to her ankles and bathe her face and hands. Then Bobby can walk in beside her
and do the same. I have talked to Deer Cloud and he agrees this is enough. If it snows, it will be beautiful. I will not worry if it snows.”
“Snow would be good,” Kayo agreed. “Snow would be a blessing if it comes.”
They sat down on two large granite rocks that Little Sun had flattened many years before, and Kayo got out a pipe and lit tobacco and they smoked in peace, without talking. Then they got up from the rocks and shook the crooks out of their legs and began to walk back toward the house. It was still ten days until the ceremony, and already they had done almost everything that needed doing. Now it was time to sit quietly and think about all they would say to bless the union.
When they were almost to the barn, Little Sun stopped on a rise of land and turned back toward the pond. “Deer Cloud said it would be good to make a mound for Olivia and Bobby to sit on while the blessings come. He said it would be all right to make it with a tractor, since there was not time to make it by hand. What do you think of that idea?”
“The banks are above the pond already. It would not take long to raise part of them.”
“Deer Cloud said his father built one in the shape of a serpent when he was married. It is still there, on the land where he was raised. He says the rain does not harm it because his father planted grass seed that had been brought to Mississippi from North Carolina two hundred years before. He will send me this seed if I decide to build it.”
“We could not get grass to grow that fast. We would have to use sod. My nephew has a landscape company. He would bring us the best sod he sells.”
“You think we should do this?”
“I think we should begin this afternoon. Can you see this in your mind? Show it to me.”
Little Sun raised his hand and pointed to where the line of trees came to a point in his vision. “There, along the bank, before it begins to curve.”
“I see it. I will call my nephew and tell him to send two men to help us.”
“G
RANDFATHER IS BUILDING
us a ceremonial mound,” Olivia told Bobby that night. “It means he is worried about you. I am glad he’s worried. He has powerful medicine. It has kept me safe always, and it will keep you safe when you are gone.”
“I want his medicine,” Bobby answered. “I would not mind dying in a battle. But to be blown apart by a bomb—that is not a death a man can imagine. And I would not like to leave you alone with our child. It weakens me to know how much I don’t want that to happen.”
C
ROW AND
M
ARY
L
ILY
were helping with the construction of the mound. Spotted Horse Woman and her two sons were there, as well as Kayo’s nephew and two of his workers. Little Sun’s tractor had been equipped with a shovel, and
there was a smaller tractor Kayo’s nephew, Philip Whitehorse, had hauled over on a flatbed truck.
“It is the rattlesnake, Uktena,” Spotted Horse Woman was telling Mary Lily. “Very powerful for fertility and purification and for power. The earth island they build today will stand for many years. It will be a testimony to the power of the earth to protect those who love and serve the world.”
“It’s too long,” Crow said. “They should not have tried to make such a long one in such a short time.”
“More men will come in the afternoon,” Mary Lily said. “I think many people will be here soon to help.”
Little Sun and Kayo and the men continued with their work until afternoon. At four o’clock they stopped to eat the food Crow had brought to the spring.
As they sat on blankets eating corn bread and fried chicken and fried winter tomatoes, they looked back toward the barn and saw a third tractor carrying three men headed their way. Behind the tractor was a Jeep with four more men. The men included two of Little Sun and Crow’s sons and five of their friends.
“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.” Little Sun’s eldest son, Roper, climbed down off the tractor. His younger brother Creek got out of the Jeep and joined them.
“Why didn’t you call and tell us to help you?” Creek asked.
“Because we didn’t need your help at first; only now we need it because Kayo and I have made the earth island too long. I am very glad you have come.”
“Then let’s get started,” Roper put in. “There are two more hours of light. Let’s work while we can.”
“We can use the car lights when it’s dark,” Creek added. “We don’t have to stop when it gets dark.”
“We need to build up the tail to match the body,” Little Sun said. “Come and look at the plans Kayo made.”
Kayo had drawn his plans on paper, then built a scale model on the ground: a long snake of dirt with its tail curled where the bank curved around the spring. The younger men took over now, and Little Sun and his old friend Kayo watched as they began to measure and plan.
They worked until after twelve o’clock that night, and then all the men went home and came back in the morning. By the evening of the second day it was done: a thirty-foot-long serpent with a diamond on its head and black eyes made of stones Spotted Horse Woman said came from the mountains of North Carolina, stones that were very old and sacred. The diamond on the head of the snake was made of a piece of quartz.
“I
AM A SERGEANT
in the United States Marine Corps,” Bobby was saying to Olivia. “I have been called to duty by the commander in chief and I will go and do my work. There are five companies in my battalion. I might be in the infantry or I might be in the Headquarters and Service Company. I didn’t ask and they didn’t tell me. Even if I’m in an H and S, I could still be sent out as support for an infantry convoy. There’s no point in telling you I won’t be where there’s fighting.”
“When you come back, will you quit the reserves?” she asked.
“I can’t say what I’ll do when I get back. I’m a marine, Olivia. I take it seriously.”
“So do I, Bobby. So do I.” She moved her hand to his chest and kept it there. She vowed to stop talking about it to him. “Let’s have supper,” she said. “Let me cook supper for you.”
L
ITTLE
S
UN AND
K
AYO
were sitting on the porch steps, looking toward the pasture to admire the almost completed earth island. The serpent’s eyes glowed in the early morning light and the diamond on its head stood out in perfect proportion to the body.
“We have the sidewinder,” Little Sun said. “But we still must find a trickster. Who can we get to play the trickster?”
“No one wants to be it anymore. When I was young, we all wanted to put on the red and orange leggings and the bells, but no more. I have asked all the men who are working on the earth island.”
“We could ask the women.”
“I do not like it played by women. We might have to ask someone from Tulsa. I know dancers there from the powwow.”
“No. I want a local person. I will ask my lawyer, Mr. Horan. He likes to be in plays and he sings at his church. He might do this for me.”
“He isn’t Cherokee. How could he do it?”
“He would do it well. I have seen him in one of his plays.”
“The trickster is difficult to do.”
“Will you do it?”
“No. It is too much in my soul. I fear it too much to impersonate it.”
“Then we will go this afternoon and ask him to do it.”
T
HAT AFTERNOON THE
two men put on white shirts and bolo ties and went into town to talk to Little Sun’s lawyer, a forty-five-year-old Harvard Law School graduate who had settled in Tahlequah to handle oil and mineral rights for the tribe. Tim Horan had handled Little Sun’s money and investments for fifteen years. Only he knew the extent of Little Sun’s holdings and he never told. Little Sun lived in terror that his children would find out they were rich, and then would quit their jobs and start drinking, a fate that had befallen many of the young people of the Cherokee Nation.
The lawyer stood up when Little Sun and Kayo came into the room. He offered them coffee, and the secretary brought in a tray. Then Little Sun told him what they were asking him to do.
“I know about the trickster,” Tim said. “I have a painting of him by Charles King. Let me see.” He went to a wall of books and took down a book of Native American history. “Here it is.” He began to read: “‘Not only does the trickster defy the flesh-and-blood boundaries of animal identity, he also refuses to fit into the mental categories we use to understand the world. Stupid and wise, reviled and respected, dangerous and clownish,
the trickster reveals that the world is a confusing and mutually contradictory place. He is what we all hold in common—life itself.’”
“See,” Kayo said, “this is how it is. Olivia’s husband has been called to go with the marines to fight this war. Just when they have settled into their life. This is the trickster’s work.”
“I could play it,” Tim said. “I could make a costume like the one in my painting. Wait a minute. I have a photograph somewhere of my painting. I want you to look at it and see if this is a good costume.”
He found the photograph and the men bent over it, admiring the beadwork and feathers and crazy split headdress, half-black and half-red. Then the three of them went downtown and ate lunch and talked about oil drilling and whether the tribe should build another casino on the river.
“G
RANDDADDY HAS TALKED
his lawyer into being the trickster,” Olivia told Bobby that night. “Now our blessing ceremony is turning into a festival. He and his buddy Kayo are going crazy over this. I think everyone in Tahlequah is in on it now.”
“They love you there. They’re proud of you.”
“They’re proud of
you
. You were the athlete and the rodeo star.”
“I was thinking about the trickster the other day. I feel like this war is the trickster. I don’t mind going. It’s just the sand I dread. I dreamed the other night of trying to get sand out of a
goddamn truck engine. It was embedded in the grease and oil. Every time I would get a piece of the engine cleaned off enough to work, I’d look and another part would be wrapped in coils of grease penetrated with sand. We had lectures and drills about it all weekend a few months ago. Well, hell, that’s why they call it work. I got a letter yesterday about the pay. It’s better than I thought it would be. It’s based on the years of service and years in the reserve and rank. I’m a master sergeant now. I’ll actually be making some money and there’ll be things for you and a bonus for leaving. I don’t know what that will be yet.”
The telephone was ringing. It was the newspaper. They needed Olivia to rewrite the morning’s editorial because of some new developments in Iraq. She went into the room they used for an office and worked until twelve thirty, then fell into bed beside Bobby and willed herself to sleep. The trickster is here now, she told herself. I should write an editorial about the trickster. I’ll write it after Bobby leaves so he won’t have to know how sad I am and how scared.
T
HE
F
RIDAY OF THE
blessing ceremony, Bobby got up at dawn and kissed Olivia good-bye and drove to Tahlequah to begin his part in the rituals.
Olivia and her entertainment editor left at eleven that morning, a truck carrying the photographer and his assistant following them. What had started as a cover story for the living section had now become a feature of the Sunday magazine. The story had everything: Native Americans fighting America’s
wars; a young woman editor left alone while her husband goes off to war; an ancient blessing ceremony in Tahlequah with the Cherokee Nation in attendance.
The sweat tent was set up at the far end of the pasture to the north and east of the sidewinder mound, as people were beginning to call it, although Mary Lily kept correcting them and calling it the earth island.
The medicine man from Tunica, Mississippi, had the fire going by the time the sun rose on Friday morning and was feeding it cedar dust from time to time. Bobby and his friends would not enter the tent until almost dark that night, and the man from Tunica wanted the ground underneath the fire to be hard and packed when that began.
After he had the fire going in the sweat tent, he began to build the fire for the dancing. Little Sun had cleared a place in front of the earth island and had brought firewood and stacked it neatly in sections. His sons had gathered kindling and pinecones and sections of cedar and cedar branches.
Olivia’s father had called from an airport on the East Coast to say he would be there by dark and not to meet his airplane because he might have to charter one from Memphis.
“Even though I didn’t call him, I knew he would come,” Olivia said when she arrived at the house and Crow told her the news. “He has never let me down and he never will. I want him to be here for this. Well, let me see the deerskin gown. I have dreamed of it.” Crow and Mary Lily and the wives of her uncles led her to a room on the back of the house where the beautiful
white deerskin dress was spread out on the bed. It was beaded and embroidered with flowers and birds and animals, with stars and the sun and the moon and intricate designs and mandalas and good luck signs, and it had pleats in the side.