Avram Davidson - Or The Grasses Grow

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2024-11-24 0 0 13.45KB 5 页 5.9玖币

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Or the Grasses

Grow

AVRAM DAVIDSON

About halfway along the narrow and ill-paved county road between Crosby and

Spanish Flats (all dips and hollows shimmering falsely like water in the heat

till you get right up close to them), the road to Tickisall Agency branches

off. No pretense of concrete or macadam-or even grading-deceives the chance or

rarely purposeful traveler. Federal, state, and county governments have better

things to do with their money: Tickisall pays no taxes, its handful of

residents have only recently been accorded the vote, and that grudgingly: an

out-of-state judge unexpectedly on the circuit. Man had no idea of the problem

involved. Courts going to hell anyway.

The sun-baked earth is cracked and riven. A few dirty sheep and a handful of

scrub cows share its scanty herbage with an occasional sway-backed horse or

stunted burro.

Here and there a gaunt automobile rests in the thin shadow of a board shack

and a child, startled doubtless by the smooth sound of a strange motor, runs

like a lizard through the dusty wastes to hide, and then to peer. Melon vines

dried past all hope of fruit lie in patches next to whispery, tindery

cornstalks.

And in the midst of all this, next to the only spring which never goes dry,

are the only painted buildings, the only decent buildings, in the area. In the

middle of the green lawn is a pole with the flag, and right behind the pole,

over the front door, the sign: U. S. BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. TICKISALL

AGENCY. OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

Before Uncle Fox-Head sat a basket with four different kinds of clay, and next

to the basket was a medicine gourd full of water. The old man rolled the clay

between his moistened palms, singing in a low voice. Then he washed his hands

and sprinkled them with pollen. Then he took up the prayer sticks, made of

juniper (once there had been juniper trees on the Reservation, once there had

been many trees) and painted with the signs of Thunder, Sun, Moon, Rain,

Lightning; with the feathers tied to them-once there bad been birds, too . . .

Oh, people-of-the-Hidden-Places,

Oh, take our message to the Hidden Places,

Swiftly, swiftly, now,

the old man chanted, shaking the medicine sticks.

Oh, you Swift Ones, People-with-no-legs,

Take our message to the People-with-no-bodies,

Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The old man's skin was like a cracked, worn moccasin. With his turkey-claw

hand he took up the gourd rattle, shook it: west~ south, up, down, east north.

Oh, people-of-the-hollow-Earth,

Take our message to the hollow Earth,

Take our song to our Fathers and Mothers,

Take our cry to the Spirit People,

Take and go, take and go,

Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The snakes rippled across the ground and were gone, one by one. The old man's

sister's son helped him back to his sheepskin, spread in the shade, where he

half sat, half lay, panting.

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