Them Bones

Leake II

They were trying to feed my horse meat.

The man’s name, he said, was Took-His-Time, because of the extraordinary pains his mother had when he was born.

I asked him where he had learned to speak Greek. He said that when he was a boy, some mean Traders had taken him away from his people and made him interpret for them. He had escaped, but still spoke Greek because the Traders now, much nicer ones, still came back each year to do business.

He asked if I was a Trader or a Northerner.

‘No.’

‘We didn’t think so’ – he indicated the crowd who had come out of the stockaded village – ‘because your dong isn’t whacked.’

I blushed.

‘All our men are,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘So are the Northerners and the Traders, even though their customs are nothing like ours.’

‘Uh, where am I?’

‘Right here,’ said Took-His-Time.

‘No. I mean, what is that river?’

‘Mes-A-Sepa,’ he said. ‘That means Big River. That’s what we call it.’

I watched the skittish crowd putting down clay dishes of meat a few meters from my tethered horse. It was getting nervous.

‘Could you tell them it eats grass?’ I said.

He looked at me with his dark eyes a moment, then said something in his own language. They looked at him, then some of them ran back inside the walls.

‘They think it’s a big dog,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘A horse,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said, looking at it a moment. ‘So that’s what they look like! I always thought they had wings.’

‘You know what they are?’

‘I know of them, the name,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it was all the Traders talked about among themselves. All the time they talked of their homes across the sea, and their horses. But I’ve never seen one. They run fast?’

‘This one doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Would you like to touch it?’

‘Looks dangerous to me,’ he said. He said something in the other language. I noticed a subtle change in six or seven of the guys with spears and clubs. They began to watch me instead of the horse.

‘I have to ask you this, old custom,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘Do you mean us any harm, or are you a thief?’

‘Huh? No, I don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m lost.’

Took-His-Time said something to the others. They smiled and turned back to watching the horse.

‘If you’re lost, can we help you find the way?’

‘I hope so. Have you seen any others like me?’

‘Guys with their dongs not whacked riding horses? I’m sure you’re the first.’

‘Some of them might be women. But they’d be riding, too.’

‘That would scare the average guy to death,’ said Took-His-Time.

Somebody rolled the horse a cabbage-looking thing. It reached its neck out and began to nibble at the leaves.

‘Ooooh,’ said the crowd.

‘Have you fallen down recently, or anything like that? Excuse me,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘I forgot to ask your name.’

‘Madison Yazoo Leake,’ I said.

‘Yazoo is a name I can say,’ he said. ‘Well, Yazoo, would you like to come to my house for supper?’

‘Will the horse be all right?’

‘I guarantee nobody’s going to touch it,’ he said.

He took me to his wattle and lath hut, which looked just like all the others. A very pretty woman, about eight months pregnant, was cooking inside.

‘This is Sunflower, my wife,’ he said. ‘We are going to have a child soon.’ He said something to her, she answered him, and smiled. There was a pot cooking. In it was a stew, corn, beans, and meat of some kind. The pot wasn’t over the fire. Round clay balls, glowing red-hot, were heaped in the coals. Occasionally Sunflower would lift one and drop it into the stew. Soon it was boiling. It smelled wonderful.

The room was dark, covered with skins. Around the corners were various kinds of stone, sticks, carvings of some sort. I looked at one. It was a small raccoon with a fish in its paws – you could see each band in the raccoon’s tail, every scale on the fish.

Took-His-Time picked it up. ‘Not very good,’ he said. ‘Now, my dead uncle, he could really carve a pipe.’

‘Is that what you do?’

‘Carve pipes? Yes’ – he looked down at the floor – ‘they say I do.’

‘These are nice,’ I said.

He smiled and said something to Sunflower. She looked at me and smiled, then laughed.

‘Supper will be a little while,’ he said. ‘Would you like a walk around the town? Perhaps it will help you remember your way.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

The village, which overlooked the fields and the river, was laid out around a central plaza. On each end of the plaza was a large mound. On the rounded one was a hut, just a little bigger than the others. Opposite it across the hardpacked plaza was another mound, like a flat-topped pyramid. On top of it was a long low building made of big trees. On each end and in the middle was the carved effigy of a big crested bird with a long beak.

‘That’s our temple,’ said Took-His-Time. ‘Not much, but we like it.’

‘Who lives over there?’ I asked, pointing across the plaza.

‘Well, if we stay around a few more minutes, you’d see. That’s where Sun Man lives. He’s the chief. Every morning he yells the sun up, and he cries out in anguish every night when it goes down. All the Sun Men do that.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Oh, every town has one. Thousands, I guess, maybe more. We belong to this confederacy, most of it’s on the other side of the River. To the west, that’s where the Huastecas, the Meshicas, live. They speak a language in which their god’s name sounds like a bird fart. They’re mean people, but we trade with them and have a few ritual wars.’

‘What do your people do most of the time?’

‘Hunt. Fish. Raise crops. I make pipes, others tan hides, make spears, stuff like that. We trade with other Sun Villages. Bury folks, raise kids, the usual things.’

‘And trade with these Traders and Northerners?’

‘Once a year or so. You missed them. Have to wait till the spring, just before the crops, before you can see them. We spend most of the winter making geejaws and doodads. They trade us cloth, axes, knives, beads, things we’re too lazy to learn how to make ourselves.’

There was a group of people near one of the larger huts north of the plaza. Most of them, men and women, were tattooed heavily with weird designs. Like the ones on the three guys I’d seen in the afternoon.

In fact, Moe and Curly were in the group. Curly waved to Took-His-Time.

‘That’s one of the hunters I saw this afternoon,’ I said.

Another guy turned to stare at me. His face was a green design of lightning bolts and tears. A third weeping eye was tattooed on his forehead. He wore bear’s teeth earrings. His hands had outlines of hands incised on them, smaller and smaller in infinite regress.

‘Those are the Buzzard Cult people,’ said Took-His-Time, not looking at the man who stared back. ‘The man looking at you is Hamboon Bokulla, which means Dreaming Killer. He is their leader.’

‘Buzzard Cult?’

‘Our people, the Sun People, take death as it comes. We bury our dead in big piles of dirt, and put nice things in with them in death. But the Buzzard Cult people are something new. They worship Death itself, mourning, weeping, decay. All those hand and eye things. They don’t worship the Woodpecker.’ He nodded toward the temple.

‘But they’re still part of the village,’ he said. ‘They’ve sprung up everywhere. They think the world is going to end soon, and they dance a little dance to help it along.’

‘What do you believe?’

‘I believe supper’s ready.’

That’s how it started. That’s how I’m living in this village of two hundred huts on the Mississippi River, with people who worship a woodpecker, and who bury their dead in mounds.

I didn’t mean to end up living here, but it happened. I was conscientious. I was trying to find out where and when I was, and nobody seemed to know.

I moved the horse in near the plaza on my second day there. People piled food around it, and stood talking about it for hours.

In those first few days I checked my radio beacon locator every few hours to see if anything had happened at the time portal. Took-His-Time introduced me to Sun Man, a nice old thin guy, and his nephew, who is likely to be the next Sun Man. (When a Sun Man dies, all the women get together and choose a new one. The closest kin a new Sun Man can be to the old one is on the old Sun Man’s sister’s side.) I tried to find out what I could, which is the stuff everybody seems to know – how many Sun Villages there are, how long the River is, when the crops should be planted, the best places to fish, how to make babies. For all this, Took-His-Time, patient as his name, acted as interpreter. I was picking up a few words and phrases from him, and from Sunflower (‘kick,’ for instance).

The village is called the Village, the river is the River, the sky the Sky, and the people the People. The third day I was there, Took and Sunflower had a conference, and asked me if I’d like to stay as a guest until I found the people I was looking for.

I said yes. I began to help Sunflower around the hut, went on walks with Took, tried to see how he made pipes. I learned words and looked after the horse.

At first, I oiled my rifle every night, and kept my knife sharp. I checked the beacon every few hours, then once a day, every two days.

I put the carbine into an oiled skin, put it behind my place in the hut. I washed my fatigues in the River, learned the local customs. (On the second day, I’d asked Took about certain functions. He pointed outside the village to a bank leading down to the River. ‘That’s called Shit Hill,’ he said. ‘Watch your step up there. Piss anywhere past the crop lines.’)

So here I am, learning about pipestone. Sunflower just made me a breechcloth. I felt silly, but took off my fatigues (behind a skin frame) and bundled them away with my military gear.

I modeled the loincloth for them.

Sunflower said something. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘She says you’d never know your dong wasn’t whacked.’

I smiled, I blushed.

‘Thank you, Sunflower,’ I said.