The Years of Rice and Salt (38 page)

“You need a good partner now,” she murmured as she crouched beside him. “No one can finish alone.”

He looked at her, surprised. She pointed with a gesture of her head at her nephew Doshoweh, Split the Fork. “He's your man,” she said, and was off.

The players regathered at midfield for the drop, and the Bear-Wolf-Beaver-Turtle team left behind only a single man to defend. They got the ball, and pressed west with a fury born of desperation. Play went on for a long time, with neither side gaining advantage, both running madly up and down the field. Then one of the Deer-Snipe-Hawk-Herons hurt his ankle, and Fromwest called on Doshoweh to come out.

The Bear-Wolf-Beaver-Turtle team pressed forward again, pushing at the new player. But one of their passes came too near Fromwest, who snagged it out of the air while leaping over a fallen man. He flipped it to Doshoweh and all converged on the youngster, who looked frightened and vulnerable; but he had the presence of mind to make a long toss downfield, back to Fromwest, already running full speed. Fromwest caught the toss and everyone took off in pursuit of him. But it seemed he had an extra turn of speed he had never yet revealed, for no one could catch up to him before he reached the eastern gate, and after a feint with body and bat he spun and fired the ball past the guardian and far into the woods, to end the match.

The crowd erupted with cheers. Hats and bags of tobacco filled the air and rained down on the field. The contestants lay flat on their backs, then rose and gathered in a great hug, overseen by the referees.

Afterward Fromwest sat on the lakeshore with the others. “What a relief,” he said. “I was getting tired.” He allowed some of the women to wrap his head wound in an embroidered cloth, and thanked them, face lowered.

In the afternoon the younger ones played the game of throwing javelins through a rolling hoop. Fromwest was invited to try it, and he agreed to make one attempt. He stood very still, and threw with a gentle motion, and the javelin flew through the hoop, leaving it rolling on. Fromwest bowed and gave up his place. “I played that game when I was a boy,” he said. “It was part of the training to become a warrior, what we called a samurai. What the body learns it never forgets.”

Iagogeh witnessed this exhibit, amd went to her husband, Keeper of the Wampum. “We should invite Fromwest to tell us more about his country,” she said to him. He nodded, frowning a little at her interference as he always did, even though they had discussed every aspect of the league's affairs, every day for forty years. That was the way Keeper was, irritable and glowering; but all because the league meant so much to him, so that Iagogeh ignored his demeanor. Usually.

The feast was readied and they set to. As the sun dropped into the forest the fires roared bright in the shadows, and the ceremonial ground between the four cardinal fires became the scene of hundreds of people filing past the food, filling their bowls with spiced hominy and corn cakes, bean soup, cooked squash, and roasted meat of deer, elk, duck, and quail. Things grew quiet as people ate. After the main course came popcorn and strawberry jelly sprinkled with maple sugar, usually taken more slowly, and a great favorite of the children.

During this sunset feast Fromwest wandered the grounds, a goose drumstick in hand, introducing himself to strangers and listening to their stories, or answering their questions. He sat with his teammates' families and recalled the triumphs of the day on the lacrosse field. “That game is like my old job,” he said. “In my country warriors fight with weapons like giant needles. I see you have needles, and some guns. These must have come from one of my old brothers, or the people who come here from over your eastern sea.”

They nodded. Foreigners from across the sea had established a fortified village down on the coast, near the entrance of the big bay at the mouth of East River. The needles had come from them, as well as tomahawk blades of the same substance, and guns.

“Needles are very valuable,” Iagogeh said. “Just ask Needle-breaker.”

People laughed at Needle-breaker, who grinned with embarrassment.

Fromwest said, “The metal is melted out of certain rocks, red rocks that have the metal mixed in them. If you make a fire hot enough, in a big clay oven, you could make your own metal. The right kind of rocks are just south of your league's land, down in the narrow curved valleys.” He drew a rough map on the ground with a stick.

Two or three of the sachems were listening along with Iagogeh. Fromwest bowed to them. “I mean to speak to the council of sachems about these matters.”

“Can a clay oven hold fires hot enough?” Iagogeh asked, inspecting the big leather-punch needle she kept on one of her necklaces.

“Yes. And the black rock that burns, burns as hot as charcoal. I used to make swords myself. They're like scythes, but longer. Like blades of grass, or lacrosse bats. As long as the bats, but edged like a tomahawk or a blade of grass, and heavy, sturdy. You learn to swing them right”—he swished a hand backhanded before them—“and off with your head. No one can stop you.”

Everyone in earshot was interested in this. They could still see him whipping his bat around him, like an elm seed spinning down on the wind.

“Except a man with a gun,” the Mohawk sachem Sadagawadeh, Even-tempered, pointed out.

“True. But the important part of the guns are tubes of the same metal.”

Sadagawadeh nodded, very interested now. Fromwest bowed.

Keeper of the Wampum had some Neutral youths round up the other sachems, and they wandered around the grounds until they found all fifty. When they returned, Fromwest was sitting in a group, holding out a lacrosse ball between thumb and forefinger. He had big square hands, very scarred.

“Here, let me mark the world on this. The world is covered by water, mostly. There are two big islands in the world lake. Biggest island is on opposite side of world from here. This island we are on is big, but not as big as big island. Half as big, or less. How big the world lakes, not so sure.”

He marked the ball with charcoal to indicate the islands in the great world sea. He gave Keeper the lacrosse ball. “A kind of wampum.”

Keeper nodded. “Like a picture.”

“Yes, a picture. Of the whole world, on a ball, because the world is a big ball. And you can mark it with the names of the islands and lakes.”

Keeper didn't look convinced, but what he was put off by, Iagogeh couldn't tell. He instructed the sachems to get ready for the council.

Iagogeh went off to help with the cleanup. Fromwest brought bowls over to the lakeside to be washed.

“Please,” Iagogeh said, embarrassed. “We do that.”

“I am no one's servant,” Fromwest said, and continued to bring bowls to the girls for a while, asking them about their embroidery. When he saw Iagogeh had drawn back to sit down on a bit of raised bank, he sat on the bank beside her.

As they watched the girls, he said, “I know that Hodenosaunee wisdom is such that the women decide who marries whom.”

Iagogeh considered this. “I suppose you could say that.”

“I am a Doorkeeper now, and a Hawk. I will live the rest of my days here among you. I too hope to marry someday.”

“I see.” She regarded him, looked at the girls. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“Oh no!” he said. “I would not be so bold. That is for you to decide. After your advice concerning lacrosse players, I am sure you will know best.”

She smiled. She looked at the festive dress of the girls, aware or unaware of their elders' presence. She said, “How many summers have you seen?”

“Thirty-five or so, in this life.”

“You have had other lives?”

“We all have. Don't you remember?”

She regarded him, unsure if he was serious. “No.”

“The memories come in dreams, mostly, but sometimes when something happens that you recognize.”

“I've had that feeling.”

“That's what it is.”

She shivered. It was cooling down. Time to get to the fire. Through the net of leafy branches overhead a star or two winked. “Are you sure you don't have a preference?”

“None. Hodenosaunee women are the most powerful women in this world. Not just the inheritance and the family lines, but choosing the marriage partnerships. That means you are deciding who comes back into the world.”

She scoffed at that: “If children were like their parents.” The offspring she and Keeper had had were all very alarming people.

“The one who comes into the world was there waiting. But many were waiting. Which one comes depends on which parents.”

“Do you think so? Sometimes, when I watched mine—they were only strangers, invited into the longhouse.”

“Like me.”

“Yes. Like you.”

Then the sachems found them, and took Fromwest to his raising-up.

Iagogeh made sure the cleaning was near its finish, then went after the sachems, and joined them to help prepare the new chief. She combed his straight black hair, much the same as hers, and helped him tie it up the way he wanted, in a topknot. She watched his cheery face. An unusual man.

He was given appropriate waist and shoulder belts, each a winter's work for some skillful woman, and in these he suddenly looked very fine, a warrior and a chief, despite his flat round face and hooded eyes. He did not look like anyone she had ever met, certainly not like the one glimpse she had had of the foreigners who had come over the eastern sea to their shores. But she was beginning to feel he was familiar anyhow, in a way that made her feel peculiar.

He looked up at her, thanking her for her help. When she met his gaze she felt some odd sense of recognition.

Some branches and several great logs were thrown on the central fire, and the drums and turtleshell rattles grew loud as the fifty sachems of the Hodenosaunee gathered in their great circle for the raising-up. The crowd drew in behind them, maneuvering and then sitting down so all could see, forming a kind of broad valley of faces.

The raising-up ceremony for a chief was not long compared to that of the fifty sachems. The sponsoring sachem stepped forward and announced the nomination of the chief. In this case it was Big Forehead, of the Hawk tribe, who stood forth and told them all again the story of Fromwest, how they had come across him being tortured by the Sioux, how he had been instructing the Sioux in the superior methods of torture found in his own country; how he already spoke an unfamiliar version of the Doorkeeper dialect, and how it had been his hope to come visit the People of the Longhouse before his capture by the Sioux. How he had lived among the Doorkeepers and learned their ways, and led a band of warriors far down the Ohio River to rescue many Senecan people enslaved by the Lakotas, guiding them so that they were able to effect the rescue and bring them home. How this and other actions had made him a candidate for chiefdom, with the support of all who knew him.

Big Forehead went on to say that the sachems had conferred that morning, and approved the choice of the Doorkeepers, even before Fromwest's display of skill in lacrosse. Then with a roar of acclamation Fromwest was led into the circle of sachems, his flat face shiny in the firelight, his grin so broad that his eyes disappeared in their folds of flesh.

He held out a hand, indicating he was ready to make his speech. The sachems sat on the beaten ground so that the whole congregation could see him. He said, “This is the greatest day of my life. Never as long as I live will I forget any moment of this beautiful day. Let me tell you now how I came to this day. You have heard only part of the story. I was born on the island Hokkaido, in the island nation Nippon, and grew up there as a young monk and then a samurai, a warrior. My name was Busho.

“In Nippon people arranged their affairs differently. We had a group of sachems with a single ruler, called the emperor, and a tribe of warriors were trained to fight for the rulers, and make the farmers give part of their crops to them. I left the service of my first ruler because of his cruelty to his farmers, and became a ronin, a warrior without tribe.

“I lived like that for years, wandering the mountains of Hokkaido and Honshu as beggar, monk, singer, warrior. Then all Nippon was invaded by people from farther west, on the great island of the world. These people, the Chinese, rule half the other side of the world, or more. When they invaded Nippon no great kamikaze storm wind came to sink their canoes, as always had happened before. The old gods abandoned Nippon, perhaps because of the Allah worshipers who had taken over its southernmost islands. In any case, with the water passable at last, they were unstoppable. We used banks of guns, chains in the water, fire, ambush in the night, swimming attacks over the inner sea, and we killed a great many of them, fleet after fleet, but they kept coming. They established a fort on the coast we could not eject them from, a fort protecting a long peninsula, and in a month they had filled that peninsula. Then they attacked the whole island at once, landing on every west beach with thousands of men. All the people of the Hodenosaunee league would have been but a handful in that host. And though we fought and fought, back up into the hills and mountains where only we knew the caves and ravines, they conquered the flatlands, and Nippon, my nation and my tribe, was no more.

“By then I should have died a hundred times over, but in every battle some fluke or other would save me, and I would prevail over the enemy at hand, or slip away and live to fight another time. Finally there were only scores of us left in all Honshu, and we made a plan, and joined together one night and stole three of the Chinese transport canoes, huge vessels like many floating longhouses tied together. We sailed them east under the command of those among us who had been to Gold Mountain before.

“These ships had cloth wings held up on poles to catch the wind, like those you may have seen the foreigners from the east use, and most winds come from the west, there as here. So we sailed east for a few moons, and when the winds were bad drifted on a great current in the sea.

“When we reached Gold Mountain we found other Nipponese had gotten there before us, either by months, or years, or scores of years. There were great-grandchildren of settlers there, speaking an older form of Nipponese. They were happy to see a band of samurai land; they said we were like the legendary fifty-three ronin, because Chinese ships had already arrived, and sailed into the harbor and shelled the villages with their great guns, before leaving to return to China to tell their emperor that we were there to be put to the needle.” He poked to show how death from a giant needle would take place, his mimicry horribly suggestive.