IGMS - Issue 25 Page 10

  "I am also a father," said Otter.

  The older white walked to the chikhee steps and gestured to the younger one, who was still crouched on the floor with his bowl. "Come, Drifting-cloud, we will leave this man to his folly."

  The young man, Drifting-cloud, looked at Otter, then looked at the older man and shook his head. "I will teach him what he needs to know," said Drifting-cloud, and Otter wanted to hug him. He was not much older than Whiteface, and that was the kind of thing that Whiteface would have done, Otter was sure.

  The older white threw the clean breechcloth he'd been carrying onto the floor and left.

  "Thank you," said Otter to Drifting-cloud, and the man nodded.

  After that, Drifting-cloud walked Otter through how to care for Whiteface. Every few hours, his son had to be repositioned. "Otherwise, he will get blisters," said Drifting-cloud. He also had to be fed, and washed. There were herbs to burn in bowls, ointments to rub into his muscles, and poultices to apply to the great wound in Whiteface's forehead.

  It was Drifting-cloud too, who told Otter what exactly had happened to Whiteface. "There was a man, Black-on-his-palm, do you know him?"

  "A hunter-warrior," said Otter.

  "Yes," said Drifting-cloud. They were sitting on the chikhee steps while Whiteface dozed. "He was a brutal man. One of the foreign women who helps us with the unclean work was pressing the dung into the soil, when Black-on-his-palm took hold of her to rape her. Whiteface must have been nearby, for he came to her aid. He attacked Black-on-his-palm and they fought while the woman ran away. It was Black-on-his-palm who took his club and bashed in Whiteface's head. It was he who dragged Whiteface's body north to make it seem as if the Sopatke had attacked him."

  Pride welled up in Otter, fighting the sadness. "He . . . died a warrior then?"

  Drifting-cloud nodded. "A warrior and a servant both. He was a good white. He did the work that nobody else was there to do and he took the penalty for it."

  Otter looked back inside the chikhee at his son, sleeping on his back. His dear boy, his noble boy. Otter-in-the-grass had thought that Whiteface had thrown away his dignity when he chose the white, but Otter saw now that the dignity was still there. He had been willing to die rather than back down to Black-on-his-palm. Whiteface had never been a great fighter either, and he hadn't been armed. He fought that man knowing he would lose.

  "And what of Black-on-his-palm?" asked Otter. If he hadn't been killed already, Otter himself would do it himself. He would start by castrating him.

  "We believed his trick at first. We thought it was the Sopatke. But then somebody searching for the killer found the woman who had run away. She explained what happened and the tribe found Black-on-his-palm and set him before the chiefs. They had the Curers cut off all of his tattoos one by one, for he no longer deserved the honor of them, and then they killed him with a club as he had sought to kill Whiteface. After that we fed him to the boars. His bones are scattered in their bowels now."

  Yes, that was proper. But there was no joy in it either. It didn't heal Otter's boy. That night, though, Otter asked for some black dye. He mixed it and, with a blunt twig, painted the tattoos of a warrior on Whiteface's skin. Otter couldn't actually tattoo him. The pain would be too great. But he put the dye on his skin, and when it dried it looked much like a tattoo. The ink would fade of course, but when it did Otter would just reapply it. Whiteface had earned that. He watched Otter paint the symbols on him with interest but little comprehension.

  For many days, Otter-in-the-grass rarely left Whiteface's side and the only person that came to help him was Drifting-cloud. Then, one morning, Otter awoke and Lake-bloom was there, sleeping on the floor at the other end of the chikhee. Otter stared at her for a time. She was lying on her side with her head rested on her outstretched arm. Her face was lined but still beautiful, and she had taken her hair down for the night as she always did so that it pooled around her arm. There were some grey hairs among the black. Her hands and forearms were stained from decades of working with dye, for she was a crafter, a blue, and that was her task.

  Otter had driven her away. She had divorced him. Even so, here she was.

  He decided not to wake her, mostly because he didn't know what to say. Instead, he woke Whiteface and started cleaning him. Whiteface let out gurgled cries this morning as Otter turned him over, and he held his son and whispered to him until he calmed down. "I'm here," said Otter. "Your father is here." He spoke soothingly as if everything was well.

  When Whiteface quieted down, Otter started the task of changing his son's breechcloth. Whiteface wept again, and again Otter held him. When he had calmed him down a second time, Otter reached for one of the baskets of leaves and found Lake-bloom there. Silently, she handed him leaves and watched him work.

  For the rest of the day Lake-bloom stayed with them, but still they did not speak. Otter wanted to tell her he was sorry for abandoning them, but there seemed to be no words big enough. I should have listened, he wanted to say. I should have listened when you told me to make things right with our son. The words just wouldn't come out. It wasn't until nighttime that he and Lake-bloom spoke to one another. Otter lay down on the chikhee floor and Lake-bloom wordlessly tucked herself into his embrace as if they were husband and wife again. For a time they said nothing, just watched the dim silhouette of their son breathing.

  "I'm sorry," said Otter. The words hung empty in the damp, dark air.

  "I know," said Lake-bloom

  Otter didn't know what to say then, and Lake-bloom was quiet too. Otter was drifting off to sleep when she spoke again. "Today was the first time I saw him since it happened," said Lake-bloom. "I just . . . I saw his face right after he was attacked and then I couldn't bring myself to see him again. It was too awful." Her back was pressed against Otter's chest and he felt her take a shaky breath. "I heard you had come back, that you were here among the whites, doing the work of a white. I heard and I came because I didn't want to bear this alone. I couldn't bear it alone."

  Otter put his arms around her then. "You don't have to," he said.

  Lake-bloom and Otter lived in Whiteface's house after that, made it their own. When Otter and Lake-bloom were not helping their son, they helped others among the camp of the unclean, rarely leaving the confines of the small ring of houses.

  They had lived like that for nearly four moons when Otter started getting requests to meet with the council. Otter ignored the requests until the Eldest chief came to visit him. Otter was feeding his son when he arrived, Whiteface sitting up with his back to one of the large wooden poles that held up the chikhee roof. The braided mats that were usually down for privacy had been rolled up to allow the breeze to come in, and to allow Whiteface to watch the goings-on of the people around them.

  Eldest stood outside as he spoke. "Otter-in-the-grass," he said, "you cannot continue to ignore our summons. We need our ambassador again, for one of our hunters has seen the Sopatke moving into the land just east of here, and we fear they may be planning to surround us. Their leader is a man named Jaegar, and he has no love for peace."

  "I am busy," said Otter, and he spooned some ground beans into Whiteface's mouth. Some dribbled down his chin, and Otter wiped it off with his hand and flicked it onto the ground beside Eldest. Let Jaegar attack.

  "Otter, by ignoring us in this you are disobeying the ancestors. We need you to speak with this man Jaegar. You are the only one who can do such a thing. There are others to do the work of caring for your son."

  Otter was tired of hearing such words. "Send someone then to be my student. I will teach them what to say."

  "There is not time to teach someone their strange tongue, Otter, and you know this."

  Otter looked away from Eldest and back to Whiteface, fed him another spoonful. "The only thing I know is that I am not leaving my son."

  Eldest promised he would be back, and then left Otter to his work. When Eldest returned a few days later, he brought with him two other chiefs. Otter had
expected them, for some Ka-akin warriors had been killed and earlier that day Otter had helped bury them with their ancestors.

  Chief Butterfly-on-a-thorn was one of the people Eldest brought. She was well known for her persuasive speech. "This is serious now, Otter. Some of our people have been killed. If we do not stop this, we shall have to go to war."

  Otter had been sitting on the chikhee steps when the three arrived, but he didn't stand to speak to them. "I saw the bodies," said Otter.

  "Then you know that you must help us," said Butterfly-on-a-thorn.

  "I am helping," said Otter. "I put their bodies in the ground."

  "You know that is not what she meant," said Eldest. He was angry, his face a darker brown so that the old scalping scar on his forehead stood out all the more.

  Otter nodded. "Nevertheless, I will not help you." He wasn't going to leave his son, couldn't they see that?

  "What good is caring for your son," said Butterfly-on-a-thorn, "if Jaegar's men burst into this hut and kill him? What have you accomplished with your labor then?"

  Otter stood up abruptly. How dare they try to manipulate him with such an imagined scenario? "I will help you on one condition," he said. "Heal my son. Make him whole again. Give him back his clever mind and his strong arms and his smile. I will help you then. Otherwise, leave me alone. I have lost enough time with him, and I will not sacrifice one more moment." Otter didn't try to disguise the venom in his words.

  "We did not do this to your son," said the third chief, Sun-bird.

  "And the man who did has been punished," said Eldest.

  They didn't understand. "Justice is a small thing," said Otter. "I want my boy back." Sadness and anger and despair overwhelmed him then. He couldn't talk to these people any longer. He turned his back to them and walked away. He didn't know where he was going until he arrived at a clearing in a far wood, the spot in the forest where he had trained Whiteface in the bow and the spear.

  Suddenly it seemed very important that he find the weapons he had hidden. He frantically looked for the oak tree where they were kept up in the branches, but when he found the tree, the weapons were all rotted. The wood of the spear had gone so soft that when he picked it up, it fell apart in his hands. The only part that was still intact was the spearhead, and he sat at the base of the tree and gazed at it, turning it over and over in his palm.

  He remembered what it had been like to train his son. Such hope. Such joy. But the other chiefs were right. Otter was being selfish. The tribe needed him and he refused to help. But wasn't he due some selfishness? Wasn't that his right after all that had happened?

  He heard rustling and looked up to see Lake-bloom picking her way through the palmetto bushes. When she drew close, he stood up and she hugged him, putting her head to his chest.

  "They sent you here to convince me, didn't they?" asked Otter, and she nodded against his shoulder.

  "They called a meeting for tomorrow," said Lake-bloom. "They will send hunter-warriors to make you come." And what else could they do? Otter would have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed.

  "I will go," said Otter.

  "And what shall you do? What shall you say to them when they ask you to leave?"

  "I do not know," said Otter.

  The next morning, while the ground was still wet with dew, the hunter-warriors came for Otter. He went with them. They were all older men, men whom Otter had directed in battle before. A subtle reminder of Otter's duty. At the meeting place there was another reminder, less subtle. The chiefs, all eight of them, stood in a line beside a circle of dyes, laid out exactly as if it were a naming ceremony. The chiefs were dressed in their best garments, some of alligator skin, some the speckled hide of a fawn, some an elaborate weaving of palm-fronds and moss. Eldest stood in the center of the line wearing a sash made of black panther fur, faded and scuffed with age.

  Many people were gathered at the meeting place, a great crowd from all the villages. Some looked at Otter hopefully, others with malice. Behind Otter walked Lake-bloom, for Drifting-cloud had stayed with Whiteface so that she could come.

  When Otter drew up opposite the line of chiefs, Eldest spoke. "We will not waste time with formalities," he said. "We understand your heartache over your son, but the tribe needs you. Speak with the Sopatke. Stop the bloodshed. This is your place in our tribe, and we need you to take it. In front of all the people I put this charge to you."

  "And what of my son's needs?" asked Otter. Others could care for Whiteface of course, but it wouldn't be the same. Whiteface recognized Otter now, he was sure of it. And, when his son saw his face, some part of him had to know that Otter loved him. What would Whiteface think if he looked up and Otter wasn't there? That Otter hated him? That he'd abandoned him once again?

  "Your son will be cared for," said Eldest, "but the tribe needs you more than your son does right now. The burden is great, but it must be carried. You must fulfill the calling the ancestors have placed upon you. You chose the yellow, the red, and the purple, and we need you to honor those colors, Otter-in-the-grass." As he said the names of the colors, Eldest gestured at each pile of dye in turn. "We need the peace-chief to lead us, the sage who knows the foreign tongues, and the war-chief who understands how to stave off the enemy with promises and threats."

  The words piled on Otter like so many heavy stones, pressing him down. It was not fair to do this, not right. He should be with his son for however many days Whiteface had left. He shouldn't have to try to explain to him why he had to leave.

  But he couldn't let his people die either. If he could negotiate peace, then he had to do so. His son would want him to. Whiteface had let himself be dressed as a monster, after all, even though it hurt him, shamed him. He had done it for his people, just as he had protected that woman from her attacker.

  Otter felt a hand on his shoulder. Lake-bloom. "Courage," she whispered, and he knew then what to do.

  Under the eyes of all the people, he walked over to the circle of dyes and stepped into the middle. There he turned, looking at everybody gathered, scanning the faces of the people he would save. He went then to the pile of white dye, wet with dew, and plunged his hand into it. He stood up and held the wet mess above his head for all to see. There was no sound but for the buzzing of the cicadas and crickets.

  He took a deep breath and then brought the clumpy paint down, smearing it across his face in a slash, feeling it slide down his forearm and drip from his chin. "I will serve you," said Otter. "I will serve you as my son Whiteface served you."

  There was a great stirring in the crowd, but Otter was not done. "Know this though, if you lay this task upon me, then you take the care of my beloved son into your hands. If you wish me to stand for you, then all of you must stand for him. You must put the white on your face. You must be the offspring that he can never have. You must make him your ancestor, so that his soul lives on. You must honor him to take away the dishonor of this color."

  His words echoed in the morning air and he again lifted his hand, the one covered in white dye. The people were silent. Otter turned to Eldest, and for a time they looked each other in the eyes. Eldest's eyes were misty with age, but they were still full of force.

  Then Eldest stepped forward. He walked into the circle, stood in front of Otter, and tilted his face upward, looking at Otter's hand. Otter brought down his hand over Eldest's face, painting a wide streak that started at the scar on his forehead, went over his nose, and stopped at his chin.

  "In the name of the Ka-akin," said Eldest, "we accept."

  Otter stood in the circle as all the chiefs came to put white on their faces, Lake-bloom beside him. That very evening, Otter left for the Sopatke. He did not go to the clan to the east that had been attacking their hunters, Jaegar's clan, butinstead went north to all of the clans he had visited during the time of his wandering. He did not go alone either, but took with him several Sopatke war widows who had served along with Whiteface, including the one Whiteface had saved f
rom being defiled.

  While Otter-in-the-grass spoke to the chiefs of each clan, the war widows talked to the people, telling them of how Whiteface had honored the Sopatke by protecting one of their own. In this way Otter tugged on the compassion of many, and even when the chiefs remained unmoved, Otter always left a village with more people than he arrived with.

  When he had amassed eighty warriors from the clans that were friendly towards him, he went to the more hostile ones. To these chiefs Otter spoke with all his cunning, playing upon their greed and their lust for power. To some he groveled to stroke their pride, and to others he blustered about the strength of the Ka-akin and the ferocity of their spirits. He tantalized them with promises of trade, and scared them with talk of Jaegar setting himself up as a Chieftain above them.

  In three moons, Jaegar had such a force of Sopatke arrayed against him that he laid down his war-club and retreated far north. The rest of the Sopatke followed -- the greedy in order to watch each other, and the peaceful back to their families.

  So it was that Otter-in-the-grass finally returned to his village and found it greatly changed.

  No longer did the whites live in their own separate place, but there were new houses for them right there in the village. The people too, had changed, for each one wore a small smudge of white dye upon their foreheads, and the people that had chosen white as infants had their entire faces painted as if it were a badge of great honor.

  Otter found Lake-bloom and Whiteface in their old home, and he embraced them warmly. Then, and every day thereafter, Otter told Whiteface of all that had been done in his name, of how his bravery had moved many men to come to the aid of the Ka-akin.

  And though Otter did not know how much Whiteface understood of the tale, when Otter reenacted stepping into the circle and putting white on his face, as he often did, his son smiled in delight.

  This was how Otter-in-the-grass chose his last color, his true color, and saved his tribe. He is a great man, and nobody has any qualms about saying it, even his enemies. He cares for his son in the same chikhee even now, Lake-bloom by his side, and he cares for his people in a way that is similar. It is said that he is often seen at the corn mounds too, pressing dung into the soil with his hands, or at the tanning pits, working the skins into the putrid water to cure them into leather.