Just North of Nowhere (11 page)

Damn place shriveled until it was the near the size (and almost the shape) of the bike. When it couldn't wrap itself around it any more, the house squirted the cycle at Bunch like a melon seed through pinched lips. Bunch ducked as the bike spun past his head and crashed onto the path near the creek.

Free of the bike’s steel shape, the house shriveled to the size of a good raccoon. The radio popped past Bunch's head.

At that point Bunch felt the urge to kick the damn thing. He wanted to drown it in the creek or stomp it, barefooted as he was, into the earth.

The damn thing sucked even smaller. It sucked slower, now, maybe because from all around, the late-blooming plants, the rotted stumps, all that stuff – the just for show stuff – sucked into the earth. Part of the critter, Bunch figured.

Now cat-sized, the beast let a stinking wheeze of breath as Bunch righted his bike. Like Bunch, the cycle was slicked over, something both oily and gritty – like MyOwne sandy-soap Einar kept by the sink at the Formerly Amoco. He and the bike dripped with the stuff.

The damn radio was bust, the plastic chewed, cracked and melted. Useless! Damn, if that didn’t piss him.

When the old strange place got to be the size of a good black squirrel, it pulled one foot, then another, then another, then three, four, a half-dozen more out of the ground. The little critter skittered its ugly ass out of the depression where the house had stood for the past nine months, and scooted into the forest.

By then it was no bigger than a really good-sized centipede. Bunch felt like grabbing a stick to whomp it but he didn't. Hell, it was just a critter like others. It didn't float in a galloping way, it didn't slip like a cat, sneak like a fox, not even flow like a thousand-legger might do shivering down a wall. It crashed and ripped through the bushes and the trees with one hell of a racket. It just bashed into the thicket. For a good two minutes after, twigs snapped and branches crunched before the sounds faded to nothing.

Little as it was, the damn thing probably weighed out about the same as a good cow. No wonder the noisy son of a bitch showed up during thunder season. No wonder the damn thing couldn’t catch a decent meal and just sat around all summer and stuck it out, stupid, into Fall. No wonder. Bunch just pitied the damn thing!

Some people saw Eagle Feather Proud just fine. Most did not. Bunch could not, and he saw more than most.

Eagle Feather Proud said he wasn’t there, though, and that was good enough for most people. Fact was, Feather Proud couldn’t see a lot of people, himself, so it was a standoff.

If you could see him and he forgot to let you know he wasn’t there and you got to know him, he’d tell you he’d been around, running or looking, for hundreds of years. Couldn’t say exactly because his people counted time different than the soft shirts did – that’s what he called people, “soft shirts.”

Why?

“Because your shirts are soft,” he’d say. Then he’d be off. Running. He wouldn’t say what he was looking for or where he was trying to get. And you'd be there feeling your flannel, cotton, or whatever.

Feather Proud was already there when Old Ken was just a little shit climbing Morning Bluff every sun-up to bag snake for bounty on the Amish lands. That was near the turn of the old century.

Feather could see Old Ken just fine.

Ken saw him, too, until he went blind, but that’s something else again.

Man-With-Box-That-Looks saw him and tried putting Feather in his box. Feather made a horrible face at Man-With-Box, who only laughed, and took the picture anyway.

Some people said the great photographer succeeded and that somewhere was a glass plate with a picture of an Indian with a broken feather; swore the image was plain as day and night. Some claimed to have seen it years before when photographer Burroughs was still around, making his pictures and having his parties.

Those people are mostly dead now up in the Lutheran churchyard or the Catholic cemetery across the way, or lying in graves in far off lands. Other folks, just as dead, had looked and seen only a pretty silvertone picture of the place where the rivers join, down at the place some old German had starting calling “Engine Warm.”

That’s the way it was with Eagle Feather Proud: sometimes there, mostly not. It depended.

Years and years ago, when Bluffton was a sawmill and a few crappy sheds on a muddy place in the river, back when there were 24 white men, a handful of whores and about three wives in the whole valley, Feather Proud used to come running, running, running through the settlement every morning at dawn, ignoring everything.

Only two could see him back then. One was a Scandahoovian chippy that washed her dirty parts in private every morning by the river. One day, Feather Proud came running past and the chippy stood to see him fly by naked and wonderful, trailing sun and flapping manhood.

“Oh, my,” she said in Scandahoovian. “Isn’t he a man of great promise?”

Rhetorical, maybe, but the view ruined her for being a chippy and she soon moved on and became a wife in Mankato. Until she saved enough to leave whoring, though, she made sure she saw Feather Proud every morning. “He inspires me. I will aim high,” she said.

The other one could see him was a little boy. He saw the naked native man run along the riverbank and off around the bend. Every morning, after, he was at that spot, and there’d be the naked Injun. Injun’s was scarce, his daddy’d said. Injun’s ain’t for years and years been around. Killed each other all, warring with each other. Then the white men came...

“White men's us, huh?” the boy said.

“'Course it's us. What'd you think?” his dad said.

“Injuns warring,” the kid said. “Warring with each other?”

“Yep, killing each other. Injuns are like that. Savage.”

“Injun warrin'“ the kid repeated.

“'Course some sickened and died, some went away, just. So, nope,” daddy said, “Hardly ain't nobody Injun no more ‘round here. Just as well, too! Savage folk, they are.”

Of course they said that in what was left of their German.

One morning, daddy and the boy were fishing the river when Feather splashed past. The boy laughed, pointed, said “there he is, there’s the Injun. Hello Injun!”

The father smacked the back of his son's head and told him not to ever again fib.

“Wasn’t fibbing,” the kid said, rubbing his head.

His father smacked him again. “What’d I tell you?”

After, the boy made sure he didn’t talk about the Injun to anyone. He continued saying hello to Feather Proud every morning he saw him – when he was alone.

Eventually, Feather Proud answered; told the boy to not speak to him. “Don't speak to me,” he said, “I'm not here.”

The kid didn’t believe that and laughed. Then he remembered the smack the Father had given him for fibbing and realized big people didn't lie. So the Injun really wasn’t there. Still...

The Injun splashed away down around the bend in the river.

“Hello, Injun,” the boy said to the river.

He soon tired of saying hello, and not being hello'd back. Soon after that, he’d grown. After that he got old. The Injun was still coming through. Still running. But he was running slower, running and looking around a little. The boy, who was now old, old, old still said, “hello, Injun,” but he was real tired of it and said it with little enthusiasm. A habit.

When he died and got buried at the Lutheran, the little boy in him came back to the river to wait for Feather Proud, very next morning.

“Why’re you running?” the little boy asked the Injun.

Feather Proud stopped. For the first time in he couldn’t say how long, he stopped. Dead. He looked at this new spook. He’d seen other spooks before, sure. This was the first time any of them bothered to ask Feather what he was doing. Spooks were mostly just interested in their own problems.

“I’m running for help,” Feather Proud told the little dead boy. “My people are being starved in the caves by the Animals Who Think They’re People.”

The boy nodded. “Figured it was something important,” he said, and watched as the Indian ran around the bend in the river. “Knew it was!”

After all these years, Feather Proud was disappointed. The Shadow Land wasn’t what he'd thought it might be. He'd figured it would be warm, at least. Figured there'd be a lot more ease being there: good hunting, fat fish, women greasy, wet and ready. Maybe he had been a not-good man. Maybe this was punishment, this running, running, running.

Feather Proud had slowed over the years. After talking to the shadow boy, he slowed even more. He’d run his run since before the soft shirts came, before their buildings and hard trails had cut the ground and wounded the forest.

All that stuff, railroads, highways, towns. Well, it distracted from the longness of death. Now, he took his time with the days, he strolled through town, looked at the stores, peered in windows. He looked at the colored magazines in the Rexall; tried to figure out the stuff in the wilderness outfitters store.

He still looked for help. Of course he did. Feather Proud figured help could be in this town of soft shirts as well as anywhere along the trail of the world. These shirts, they had warriors. He'd seen the small people in the TV box at the Wagon Wheel Tavern.

And what was along the trail and up the river anyway? He didn't know.

He'd found himself wearing clothes sometime during this hundred year. Gradual. By the time he first stopped at the American House—Eats he was in full dress, stiff jerkin, ribbed chest plate with shells and bones that rattled when he ran, skin leggings, hide moccasins. He looked like he was courting a chief's daughter.

He jogged down one side of the street, up the other, down various roads and back. He looked at people. Now and then he'd stop at the Wurst Haus. Karl, who ran the place ignored Feather. Probably didn't see him. Tourists, ones who saw him, figured he was a local character or, better yet, figured he was an actor from the Valley Tourism Board and was meant to be scenic.

From the first, Esther saw but couldn't tolerate him. Every day he'd poke his damned head, step in and stand like a doofus, sniffing. He never sat to eat or even order take-out. Couple years back, the skinny girl, hired for the summer, had come over, smiled at him, stuck out a menu like she’d been told and could she show him a seat?

He stared at her and said, “I'm not here. Don't speak to me.” Something like that.

She never! Anyhow it hurt the skinny girl's feelings and she was ever after a little spooked by customers. Never could get it right.

On the other hand, clientele at the American House—Eats, could be spooky even when they were alive.

It was winter, white, deep, and bear-snoozing. Feather Proud showed, opened the door, stood looking in. A 40-below arctic clipper roared around him and flapped the gas fires all the way in the kitchen, froze the stool covers to cracking right under customers’ perched asses.

“Crying out loud,” Esther yelled—she'd had it—“You don't like none of the pies-a-the day or what? And tell me you aren't here because what else is your butt doing but propping open that door, being here?”

Several patrons looked at Esther and said to themselves they’d better check the grub ‘cause Esther’s nuts for sure!

Eagle Feather Proud stepped in. The door slammed behind him. The blower overhead huffed heat, greasy dust snakes hanging off the vent above the grill flapped. The Eats warmed back up.

“I'm not...” Feather started to say, but it didn't seem right. “People are starving,” he said instead.

“'Murican House's been carrying food since 'bout 1900, sir. What c'n I getcher starvin’ folk?”

Feather wanted to tell the woman. He was running for help, not food, not exactly. He was running upstream to bring warriors, other warriors of the People, warriors to chase away the Animals Who Only Think They Are People. To bring warriors to the caves downstream where the People had hidden and were starving near the Warring Place where the two rivers joined.

“We have lemon pie and coconut cream, special today.” Esther said.

“Coconut,” Feather said. He said that because it felt like words he knew. Lemon did not. Coconut sounded good in his mouth.

“Excellent choice, sir,” Esther said, and shoved a piece of pie on the counter. Laid a shiny fork next to it.

Scented steam from a white mug rose into Eagle Feather Proud's face.

“Good smell,” he said.

“Gonna sit?”

He sat

“Finally gottcha to sit yourself and take some grunts, mister. Well good fer me,” Esther said, “good fer me,” again. State bureaucrats from back east didn't take a lot of crap.

Truth was, Eagle Feather Proud didn't know if he could eat this coconut. He tried and could. It tasted. He hadn't experienced taste since… It was long ago and the sun had gotten old many hundred times since he'd sat to eat. Never had he eaten with a silver fork, and never had he eaten coconut pie or tasted this steaming liquid heat and burnt nut smell that ran down his throat and chin – this hot coffee.

“Good,” he said.

“So I figure you're now going to tell me you got no way to pay and I'll have to tell you you gotta and we'll go round and round 'til Vinnie the cop comes by for
his
free pie and coffee and things get nasty so what can you do for me?

He thought. “I don't know,” Feather Proud said.

“You could clean up the kitchen, I guess.” She pointed to the open half-door in back.

Feather looked. In the kitchen were things. Stoves, sinks, tables, steaming pots, big pans hanging. He didn't know their names, but there they were. He calculated their use. And there was something else. Something Eagle Feather Proud didn't like. Someone or a something lived in there; something too old and too painful for him to go near, something cold that smelled long dead; it was as long dead as he'd been dead, still he didn't want anything to do with it. No. He knew it was moving in the light and shadows, among the pie plates and bowls and steel things. And he would not…

“I can't go there,” He said.

Esther traced his look into the kitchen: nothing there that hadn't been since she'd bought the place, nothing that didn't belong.

“You seem to don't mind cold. So how about you do some shovelin'? Clear that porch? Th' pavement—there to there?” she pointed through the window. “Do that, we're square.”

Feather looked out the frozen window into the snowy morning. It was the same as he'd run through a thousand times over the centuries.

“I will,” he said.

So many years ago it had been winter. The People and The Animals Who Only Think They Are People were to have war. It had been arranged, the ground prepared, the Warring Ground, a sky-full of running paces along the river from where he stood looking at the snow. The holy ones of the People had blessed the place. The holy ones of the Animals Who Only Think They Are People – if the Animals Who Only Think They Are People can truly have holy ones – had blessed the ground, as well. The time for the war had been consulted in the smoke and finally agreed upon. Some warriors would die. Most would live and all agreed this was the best way to resolve the matter: a fight on such and such a day on ground, sacred to the People and the Animals Who Only Think They Are People. The victory would decide. Would decide whatever it was that needed a decision of blood.

The woman's snow shovel was strange in Eagle Feather's hand. But it was good to lift the snow, move it, make a clear place in front of the woman’s American House – Eats.