AN ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY
(MOSTLY)
Something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it but something was definitely wrong. It wasn’t as if the People were ignoring us.
We stood with them, sang with them.
We knew the songs and our drumming was on the money, but something kept the People from approaching, kept them back. A reticence, a subtle moving slightly away between songs.
It was unnerving.
I stood in the parking lot with Miki, smoking a hand rolled cigarette.
It was the time between singing, dinner and presentations. It was a time of Protocol.
“I feel it too.” Miki said. “If we don’t get this resolved I’ll never feel comfortable about coming back.”
The Tribal Center and gym sat near the banks of a river in Western Washington State. The afternoon was clear and the sun shone down brightly through the boughs of the mixed forest that surrounded the complex.
Miki and I spoke softly.
There were knots of people standing about chatting.
Today the sound of sixty or seventy hand drums being played in unison and the sound of three hundred plus voices had filled the air when we pulled into the parking lot.
Everyone was inside so we grabbed our drum bags and hurried in to take part in the festivities.
Now, an hour later, we stood in the parking lot.
“Well, we can take off now and never know or we can go back in and hang around till someone takes pity on us or asks us to leave.”
“Yes.” Miki replied. “Besides, Bears are supposed to be brave.”
I finished my smoke, stripped the paper and scattered the remaining shreds of tobacco on the ground.
Inside the gym tables had been set up at one end near the kitchen.
Cooks and helpers were setting out trays of frybread, salmon, slices of beef and side dishes on the long buffet tables.
Some celebrants were already seated at the tables; others sat in the bleachers or stood together in small groups listening to the speaker at the microphone.
A group of dancers had just finished their presentation.
The speaker, a woman of middle age was wearing a button blanket of blue trimmed in red.
As she turned to confer briefly with a seated man I could see the Killer Whale embossed on the back of her blanket, outlined with mother of pearl buttons.
“It’s story telling time.” She called out. “All you folks send up your story tellers. You children listen closely to the words of the People. We want you to grow up strong, knowing of your old ways and beliefs.
We have always been here.
We have been here as long as people have been on this earth.
This is one of the important ways our ancestors taught the young, through storytelling.”
The first story teller came to the microphone. “A long, long time ago….” He began.
Midway through the story Miki nudged me.
We had been watching the story teller but we had also been seeing with our peripheral vision all that was going on around us.
“It’s your drum.” Miki murmured without moving her lips. “Whenever they look our way it’s always to glance at your drum bag.”
“Yes.” I replied. “That’s what I thought too.”
“Time to be brave.” She said, again without moving her lips
but with a ghost of a smile.
“I know how you hate it.”
In times past I had had the reputation of being a good man to have at your back and several times I had saved lives and rescued drowning children.
This situation, though not dangerous, put me in a very vulnerable position, speaking to a roomful of strangers.
I do hate it.
I got to my feet, picked up my drum bag and stepped to the end of the storytellers’ line.
I had hoped to be the last to speak, had hoped for time to think of what to say.
A young man came and motioned for me to step to the front of the line.
The first speaker finished up and relinquished the mike to the woman with the button blanket and cedar hat.
She thanked the speaker and smiled as she handed me the microphone.
I smiled back and lifted the microphone to my lips.
“All you good folks.” I began in a loud voice. “I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today and for allowing me to speak with you.
My name is Bear.
My fathers’ name was Bear also and my mothers’ name was Agnes.
My birth name was Arthur Junior. The name Arthur, in Middle English translates as Warrior King.
In Ancient Welsh Arthur translates as The Great Bear, those Peoples name for the stars that make up the Big Dipper.”
I paused, looking out at the audience.
Some were listening, but a number of the grown ups were speaking among themselves and lots of the kids were paying no attention.
“I have a story to share with you but I’m very nervous. I hope I don’t fart.”
The grannies smiled behind their hands and some of the men began to look offended.
For an instant the kids almost couldn’t believe what they had just heard.
Then a shout of laughter filled the room.
I knew that I had grabbed their attention and so began my story.
“A long, long time ago a man of middle age was sitting on the stump of an old black walnut tree way out in Nez Perce country.
He was smoking a hand rolled cigarette.
He was watching a flock of wild turkeys march along in a line on the side of a hill.
It was springtime and the grass in the yard behind him needed cutting and the bushes needed pruning.
Above him the afternoon clouds were piling up.
Sometime soon there would be a thunderstorm.
An old man came out of his house. He walked up and introduced himself.
“I hear you do odd jobs for some of the folks around here.”
He waved his hand in the general direction of the house and yard.
“I might have some work for you. How much do you charge for yard work?”
The younger man stood up and field stripped his smoke.
He let the flakes of tobacco come apart in the breeze.
He rolled the paper into a little ball between his hands and flicked it into the street.
“Sometimes I work for cash” he replied.
“But I really prefer to trade. Do you have anything you want to get rid of that I might like?”
The old man scratched his chin, thinking. “Why don’t we go out back to the garage?”
Younger Man found an eight foot plank of kiln dried Black Walnut.
“Nice wood.” He exclaimed. Where did you get this wood?”
That wood had come from the stump he was sitting on while he watched the Turkeys on the side of the hill.
The old man had harvested the Walnut tree many years before.
This was the last piece.
Younger Man found a Badger skin, very greasy and with the hair still on.
There was an Elk hide and an Antelope hide all rolled up together in a corner of the garage.
Three days later the yard work was done and the garage was painted
and Middle Aged Man had the hides and the Walnut stick in the closet of the apartment he had rented in the town.
Time passed and one day that man’s eldest son came to the Nez Perce town of Orofino
to take his father back to live in California, near the place where he had been born.
That man had been traveling for many years and had not seen his son for a long time.
Younger Man was Old Man now.
They lived in Santa Cruz for awhile, Old Man and Eldest Son.
They worked together in Eldest Son’s shop.
Old man took corn meal and rubbed it into both sides of the Badger skin.
He brushed off the skin and the fat came out with the corn meal.
Old Man fed the corn meal mixed with Badger fat to the birds;
the Blue Jays and the Sparrows
and he thought of the Turkeys on the hillside in Nez Perce town.
Old Man folded and sewed the Badger along two sides.
The head and shoulders of the Badger made a flap that folded over.
Eldest Son split and planed and sanded the Walnut plank and cut it into lengths.
He made two eight sided drum frames.
Old Man and Eldest Son each spoke about the things they had done during the years they had been apart.
They laughed and joked as they worked together.
Old Man cut two circles from the Elk hide. Old Man made lacing from part of the Antelope.
He showed Eldest Son his way of stretching the damp hides over the drum frames and how he tied them in a special way.
He stretched the wet cordage very tight (but not too tight)
before lacing the hide circles to the frames so that the drums would sound good even on cold days.
Old Man gave the Badger bag and one drum to Eldest Son.
Eldest Son gave his father a place to live until it was time for Old Man to begin traveling again.
Each treasured the gifts they had received from the other.
Old Mans’ travels took him to many places and now he carried his drum with him.
He painted the drum blue and,
remembering the blue skies of Idaho with its promises of coming thunder storms;
he called it the ‘Drum of All Possibilities’.
One night Old Man was dreaming.
Old Man had fallen asleep.
He was sleeping next to the water at his camp on Lummi Island.
First Teacher came to him in dreamtime.
“Old Man,” She said. “All Possibilities are too many. You will get lost.
Then how will you sing for the People?
Paint your Drum. I will help you.”
Old Man painted the Drum black. He left a large circle of blue in the center.
Now his Drum was painted blue with black borders.
Now its sound had changed.
Now the sound was contained by the black border.
Old Man waited a long time for First Teacher to return in Dreamtime.
He waited and played his drum on the beaches of Puget Sound and in the woods.
He played his drum with the People when the Canoe Families visited from Grandmothers Land. He played when the Children of the Duwamish sang and danced for the People of Seattle.
Old Man played his drum and he remembered Nez Perce country
and all of the people he knew there. He remembered the sky and the thunder
and all of his years of wandering.
He remembered his children and the women and men who had touched him on his journey.
He remembered his beautiful wife, Miki.
He remembered his children and their children as he played his drum.
He thought of First Teacher and wondered if she would ever visit him again.
One afternoon Old Man took out his paints.
On the blue circle he painted seven stars, the home of First Teacher.
First Teacher stood below and before the seven stars.
Old man could see the blue through her cloak.
First Teacher’s hair was white.
It was hard to see her face.
Sometimes she seemed to look straight at him.
Sometimes she seemed to be singing with her aged and wrinkled face uplifted.
That night she came to him in Dreamtime.
“Why didn’t you come to show me how to paint the drum?” Old Man asked.
First Teacher smiled.
“I was teaching you all the time.”
“Remember now,
the sound of the drum is the heartbeat of the People.
You needed to find me in your own heart before you could paint your drum.
Now the sound of your drum can make the hearts of the People sing.
You will call your drum “Dreamer”.
And that is all.”.
I looked out at the audience. I raised my hands up above the level of his shoulders, palms uplifted.
“We are strangers in your land. We raise our hands to you in appreciation. Thank you for letting us spend this afternoon with you.”
Then I picked up my drum and walked over to rejoin Miki in the bleachers.
And that is all.
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