Gutbucket Quest (12 page)

“Don’t bother to argue,” she said. “Daddy does just what he wants. And he’s right, so just sit back and enjoy it, because it’s going to happen anyway.”

“Okay, okay,” Slim said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’ll go.”

11

As a poetic vehicle astonishingly free of the excess moral baggage of
“
civilization
,”
the blues provides us with exemplary criteria, requiring total candor, a willingness to assume risks, an unfettered expression of the inner personality, an unreserved fidelity to one’s deepest aspirations, an enthusiastic readiness for inspiration at all times. By the same token, the blues is absolutely incompatible with puritanism . . . piety dogmatism, smugness, classicism, artifice, fascism, masochism . . .

—Paul Garon,
Blues and the Poetic Spirit

I
t was another day with breakfast. Nadine was the best cook Slim had ever known, but he was kind of surprised at the menu. Today’s breakfast consisted of refried beans, potato and egg and cheese burritos, and chiles rellenos. It wasn’t the kind, or the amount, of breakfast he was accustomed to, but as long as Nadine cooked it, he was sure he could adapt.

For a moment he reflected on the prior meal, when the Glory Hand had shown up again, and he had almost grabbed it. Someone must have dropped it in the chair while Slim was in animated conversation with Progress, and used magic to light it. He was sure it wouldn’t return again, because Mitchell had clearly intended to destroy
it. But it had been one close call. When they returned home, they had found the hound dog lying in a far corner, and the box with the hand gone. They dog had been beaten unconscious, but would survive. Obviously he had tried to defend the house, but couldn’t stand up against a metal pipe.

“Chillen,” Progress said, once the eating was done and the table was cleared. “Today we splits up again. You got the van now, Slim, so that should be no problem. We’ve still got to get Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Willy G., Sonny Early, Spider John Koerner, and Earthman Jack. I can get those folks, they should be easy.”

“What do
we
do, Daddy?” Nadine asked. “Who do we get?”

Progress seemed very reluctant to answer and, when he did, he didn’t look at them. “I want you two,” he said quietly, “to go get Heap of Bears.”

Nadine stiffened and whipped her head around to look at Progress. There was a look of astonished rage on her face. Her eyes were narrowed, the pupils almost pinpoints. “
What!
”
She nearly screamed it. “You can’t mean that, not
him.
”

“Nadine,” Progress said sadly. “We needs him for this. I thought maybe we could get by without him, but when they got that Glory Hand into Mitchell’s without none of us noticin’, I knew we had to step up the power. And it’s time you made your peace with it. We’ve all three got to go to Elijigbo’s tomorrow. You know how he and his people are. You gots to get this out of your system.”

Nadine sighed. “I’ll go,” she said. “But don’t expect anything. You know how I feel.”

She stood and stalked out the door, without saying a word or letting any one else, slamming the door behind her. Slim was puzzled. “Who’s Heap of Bears?” he asked. “And why’s Nadine so pissed about it?”

“Well, son,” Progress said, “you know how hard Nadine is on men. Or maybe you don’t, she’s been easy on you. But she’s a total
bitch sometimes. I’ve seen her cut a man down to nothin’ and leave him bleedin’ on the floor without a thought. Heap of Bears is the man made her that way. He was a cousin of her mama’s, from the Indian Nations. A Shaman, medicine man. He come to stay with us when Nadine was about sixteen. He wanted to get to know her mama. Nadine, she fell real hard for him, and he seemed to take to her, too. They was together constantly. I s’pect he was her first lover. One day he just up and left, went back to the Cheyenne to finished his training. Embarada, that was my wife’s name, she tried to explain to Nadine that since he was a Shaman, he couldn’t marry. And even if he could, the rules the tribe has to live with are hard. He could never marry blood kin on his mother’s side, which Nadine was. But Nadine, she took it hard. That was when she moved out on her own and started singin’. She never had much to do with any man after that. Until now, with you.”

Slim was surprised. He would have expected Nadine to be sought after, the kind of woman who would enjoy her pleasures, whether she respected the man or not. But for him to be the first man she’d been involved with since she’d been sixteen, that’s not what he would have suspected. Nor was he entirely sure that was what he wanted.

“A few years ago,” Progress continued, “Heap of Bears moved back to Tejas. Nadine ‘bout went crazy. Wanted to track him down and kill him. Now, I’m sendin’ her right to him.”

“But won’t she—?”

Progress shook his head. “No. Her hate’s gone too far and too old for nothin’ but pain. But you listen, son. She’s gonna need you. No matter what she says or does, you hold on tight to her, hold on tight to your love for her. I know how you feel it. I can see it in your
eyes
every time you look at her. I can hear your heart achin’ with it when she smiles at you or holds your hand. Now, you’re the first man she’s ever let herself down with, and I wants you two to be together. I know I’m only a foolish old man, but you’re right for each other. So you hold on to it all, today. She’ll need you.”

“Okay, Progress. I’ll try my best.”

“I knows you will, son. I knows you will. You best get movin’ now. I knows Nadine, and I’d bet she’s sittin’ out in that van waitin’ for you.”

Nadine
had
been waiting in the van, an evil look on her face. Other than succinct directions, she hadn’t said a word as Slim drove. She just turned on the stereo, lit a joint, drank a soda and rode. Slim wanted to talk to her, wanted to say something, anything. But he couldn’t think of anything to say that he didn’t think would make things worse; or bring her anger down on him. She seemed to him, at that moment, so hurt, so small. He was used to her strength and spirit. He didn’t like seeing her like this. It bothered him a lot.

They drove in comparative silence for three hours. The van was comfortable and had a good-size motor that made driving a pleasure. But Slim was nervous and uncomfortable because he knew Nadine hurt and he didn’t know what to do, what to expect. He knew it was at least partly his fault, because the Glory Hand was after him, and its appearance had made Progress decide that they had to enlist this Heap of Bears character.

Finally, she pointed down a dirt road and he turned on to it. They went a mile or so through the scrub and mesquite and pulled up in front of a grouping of wickiups and hogans.

They got out of the van and Nadine walked around to Slim. She looked at him oddly, her eyes soft and deep green. Then she pressed him up against the side of the van and kissed him, hard, molding her body to his. Slim’s brain almost exploded as he put his arms around her and returned the kiss. When she released him, he nearly fell down from the sudden weakness in his knees. Talk of mercurial changes! He had thought she was mad at him all this time. If so, she had a funny way of showing it. And maybe she
was
mad, and doing this to set him up for a hard fall. If so, her effort was wasted; he had already fallen. For her.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand. He followed, in a daze, trying to keep his head. They walked through the clean, bare dirt compound to the largest, most heavily decorated tipi, through the tented door to the dim light of the interior. Inside, it was furnished with corn husks, animal skins and feathers. There were sleeping benches against the wall, and branch constructions whose function wasn’t clear. A half-naked man sat, eyes closed and peaceful, before a smoldering fire pit in the center of the floor. He heard Nadine gasp and felt her hand tighten almost painfully on his. The man’s face and body had been cicatrized: he had been cut, and flesh had drawn together around the wounds, rendering him into something strange. The pain of it must have been unbearable by any but the most truly dedicated disciple of the ritual. The scars stood out as dark black patterns against his bronze flesh.

“Heap of Bears,” Nadine said, almost whispered.

The man looked up at her. There was a faraway pain in his eyes. He didn’t smile.

“Welcome to my home,” he said. “Sit.”

They sat together on a buffalo skin, across the fire pit from Heap of Bears. The man studied them closely as they sat. Nadine put her arm through the crook of Slim’s elbow and held tightly to him. He tried very hard to be strong, and to make Nadine feel his love for her.

“It has been many years, Little Wing,” Heap of Bears said, and Slim felt her body tighten at the sound of the name he called her. This man had not lost all of his power over her. “Are you well?”

“I’m okay,” Nadine replied curtly, sarcastically.

“Who is this man you bring to my tipi?”

Nadine’s hand tightened on his arm. Her short nails dug into his skin. “This is Slim,” she said. “My lover.”

Slim almost jumped. Then he remembered what Progress had said.
No matter what, hang on tight.

“Is he a good man?” Heap of Bears asked.

“He’s trying to be.”

“You are angry with me?”

Slim could feel Nadine tremble. “Shouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I loved you. You left me.”

“No—you do not remember right. And there are things you do not know.”

“What don’t I know?” Nadine’s voice was venomous.

“Little Wing, you were so young. I know that you thought you loved me. But I could not love you. You were not the woman for me. No woman is the woman for me.”

Nadine pulled Slim’s arm around her and pressed his hand against her small breast. He could feel her heart beating wildly and, at the moment, he would gratefully and gladly have died for her.

“Then why?” she asked.

“When I came to renew my kinship with your mother, my cousin, she asked me to initiate you into womanhood. It is our way, you see, for a relative, especially a Shaman, to initiate kin. I enjoyed you, and I cherished you, but I was not, and am not, allowed to love, not in that manner.”

“My mother asked you to fuck me?”

Heap of Bears grimaced. “Do not be crude, Little Wing. There was no intention to harm you. And, truly, would you still want me, now, with the Shaman’s marks covering my body?”

“I don’t know,” Nadine said, pressing Slim’s hand more closely to her breast. “I was never given a chance to find out what I wanted. How could my mother do that to me?”

“It is the way our people live.” Heap of Bears shrugged. “I could not refuse your mother’s request to teach you love and the pains of womanhood. She was Cheyenne. I am Cheyenne, and Shaman. She wanted you to know.”

Slim felt Nadine relax suddenly. “Yeah, well, fuck it,” she said. “Who needs it. Let’s go, Slim.”

To his surprise and confusion, with his arm around Nadine, with her nipple burning into his palm, he said, “No. We came here for a reason. Maybe you hate him. I can understand that. But we gotta do what Progress wants us to.”

“Shit,” Nadine said. “You’re right.”

The Shaman’s gaze played across Slim with disturbing awareness. It was apparent that this man could jerk Nadine around emotionally in much the way she jerked Slim around, but he was no jerk. He made her look like a petulant child. “Your man has strength and courage, Little Wing.”

“I guess he does,” she said, looking at Slim with a new softness in her eyes. There seemed to be a force beyond their control, one that everyone but them conspired with, drawing them together.

Nadine told Heap of Bears the story that they were both getting tired of telling, a story that grew with each recitation.

Heap of Bears didn’t react to it. Instead, he said, “Will you make peace with me, Little Wing? Will you and your man smoke the pipe?”

“Oh, I guess,” Nadine said. “The hate hasn’t done me any good.”

Heap of Bears stood and took a long stone pipe from a feather-and-corn-bedecked rack against the wall. It was intricately carved with the interlocked heads of eagles, painted, and already filled with a rough, musky-smelling tobacco. He plucked a small glowing coal from the fire and laid it in the bowl of the pipe. He then held the pipe up to the North, the South, the East and the West, letting the smoke drift in all four directions, toward the differently colored stones that were set in the floor at each compass point. Then Heap of Bears drew in a deep lungful of the sweet smoke and handed the pipe to Nadine.

Nadine held the pipe in her hands for a few moments as the smoke curled up into her face and hair, limning her with a blue haze. She looked at the pipe, and at Heap of Bears. The she lifted it to her lips and drew in the smoke. She exhaled slowly, softly, and passed the pipe to Slim.

He held the pipe gently in his hands. He could felt the power in the stone. It almost seemed to vibrate, and he knew the pipe was a serious matter. He had held it, thinking, for a while when he felt Nadine elbow him in the ribs. He lifted it and sucked in the smoke. It tasted like no tobacco he had ever smoked, and felt as if he’d drawn much more than simple smoke into his lungs. He coughed and handed the pipe back to Heap of Bears, who lifted it once again to the four directions, then placed it, still burning, back into its rack.