faller: the whole thing so far….

 faller: the whole thing so far….

faller

Chapter 1

Ohkwá:ri - The Bear

by

Jules F. Delorme

There was this bear. 

This ohkwá:ri

A long time ago. 

Way back. 

Before there was too much of everything.

This bear. 

Not a good bear or a bad bear. 

Just a bear.

For most of her life this ohkwá:ri had it alright. 

She was the only bear around. 

I don’t know if she was the only bear in the whole world or anything, but she was the only one around in those parts. 

Nothing messed with her. 

She just went around doing her thing. 

Being a bear.

But then one day people started to show up. 

Everybody knows how that goes. 

Just a few many at first. Then a few more. And then more and more until there are so many you can’t even keep count. 

The way it always goes with people. 

At first the people just did their own thing. Hunted and fished. Planted some corn. 

Stayed away from the bear. 

But then, when there was enough of them to do something they started to talk about the bear. 

She was dangerous they said. She was stealing their food. 

They said all kinds of things because they were scared of her. She never did anything to them but she was an ohkwá:ri and they were just people. 

Ohkwá:ri don’t exactly have to put up with a lot of crap.

The people got together and made their plans and then they went after the bear. They went out into the woods and tried to kill her but she fought and she was a bear. 

The ones that survived ran away. 

Now the people had a good reason to be scared of the bear. 

They made more plans. New plans. 

They dug a pit and managed to trap her in it. 

She put up a hell of a fight. Dragged some of them down into that hole with her. But in the end once the bear fell down in that hole it was over.

People came from miles around to look at her. Stare down at her. 

She put up a big fuss at first. Kept trying to get out of that hole and fight. 

But after a while she just gave up. 

Whatever it was that made her an ohkwá:ri went away and all she could do was wait down there in that pit to die. 

They threw down food but she wouldn’t eat. 

They threw rocks at her and she wouldn’t move. 

After a while the people stopped coming to look at her. 

Everything about her that was ohkwá:ri everything that used to scare them was gone. 

So they just left her in the pit to die.

It took a long time. Even bears that don’t remember how to be bears don’t die too easy. 

She rotted there in that pit for a real long time. 

When she finally did die the people barely noticed. 

She was so skinny by then they couldn’t even get any meat off her so they just piled dirt to fill in the hole to cover over the smell and got on with their lives. 

They forgot what it was like to have an ohkwá:ri around. 

To be scared. 

To be in awe.

To have something be bigger and stronger than them.  

The people didn’t know it but they lost something when they dug that hole and trapped the bear in it. 

They never even knew what it was they lost or why they lost it. 

They never knew anything got lost. 

Just some dead skinny bear stinking up a hole in the ground. 

Far as they could see the world was a safer place a lot easier place without that ohkwá:ri lurking out there in the woods. 

They slept better at night. 

They didn’t have any more nightmares. They didn’t jump at every sound. 

They felt safe. 

That’s all that mattered they thought.

It’s not like their lives fell to pieces or anything. 

The sky and the sun and the stars stayed right up there where they always were. 

The world kept right on moving. 

But they lost something. The people. 

Something that was supposed to be a part their lives. 

Their dreams. 

Their nightmares. 

When the people trapped that bear they lost that thing whatever it is that makes stories worth telling. 

Maybe stories don’t seem too important. 

Maybe dreams don’t seem important either. 

Not as important as being safe or maybe living a little bit longer. 

Not things you can hold in your hands or trade or sell. 

Add up in some book. 

Figure out on some computer. 

But that ohkwá:ri belonged. 

She was supposed to be there. 

When she was gone everything was different. 

Cleaner maybe. 

Brighter. Safer. 

But not nearly as…

Not nearly so…

What?

I don’t know.

I can’t remember that part.

I can’t remember it. 

The ending. 

How it ends.

 I can never remember the whole story. 

It happened a long time ago. 

Just some story that happened a long time ago.

I still remember bits of it though. 

I don’t know why. 

But I remember little bits of that story all the time. I can’t tell it all the way to the end not the way that I heard it.

But I remember pieces of it.

I forget a whole lot of things but I’ve still got pieces of that story stuck inside me. 

I don’t know why.

I don’t remember why.

Just those pieces stuck inside of me.

It means something. 

I used to know it all the way to the end but I can’t remember enough of it to put into words anymore. 

I used to know all the stories and now I don’t know any of them all the way to the end anymore.

I remember them being told. 

The way that people told it. 

But chunks of them keep rotting away. 

Decomposing.

That bear though.

Something about that ohkwá:ri.

I never forget about that bear…   

Chapter 2

silence

there is the story.

the telling of the story.

there is the listening.

and there is the silence. when no story is being told.

there is the making of music.

there is the dancing and the singing and the listening.

and there is the silence. The silence that lies beyond the reach of any music or any voice.

this thing, this third thing is not known to many. 

it is forgotten by even more. 

and that is what gives it its power.

sometimes it lives in the light.

sometimes it lives in the darkness.

some are born with the darkness of this thing, this shadowed silence, swimming with them inside the womb. and when they are born their spines do not straighten up as easily as others and they find it harder to walk and when they do walk they fall down again and again. if they find the strength to stand then this thing, this thing that even they cannot see or know that it is there, but they suspect is there, has always been there, they have some hidden thought that perhaps this is the way that the world must be, that this thing would knock them down or drag them down and if they crawl back up then it will do the same thing again and again.

and again. 

and again.

this dark silence.

for some of these people if they open up their mouths to speak then they will find that the words have been strangled. smothered. buried. deep deep down inside of them even before these words could be given birth. and so they, these people, most of them, fall silent, remain silent, for this hint of a feeling inside of them tells them that it is useless and fruitless to even try, because the words will never be able to leave their mouths fully alive or alive in any way that matters.

when the black robes came they had with them a book that said that the word was the beginning. and yet this book also said that their god was too large, too vast and unknowable for mere words to encompass.

there are some things that are too large for the minds and mouths of mere human beings to grasp.

the black robes had that much right.

but it is not just their god or anyone else’s gods that live beyond the words. it is other things too.

it is those things that make us silent. not in awe or in reverence, but because the silence is so much larger than we can understand and because the words and the music have been taken away, strangled stillborn inside of us, and we fall silent because we have no other choice, because we have nothing at all to offer the world that has not already been offered in a better and more truthful and more substantial way.

that emptiness also is too large for words or understanding or meaning.

we stay silent. we fall down or we do not even ever rise up, not because we feel the power of things moving through us but because we feel nothing at all, because our throats and our legs and our hearts and our stomachs are numb and frozen and horribly unspeakably empty. 

i know.

i know.

i can feel it just out of reach, too large for any words. and my thoughts can form but they will not survive. they desperately seek some kind of shape, but the shapes that will not hold in fullness or declination, mere ghosts of the stories that desire so very much to be told. 

i know.

i cannot speak these things.

but i know.

i try to stand and i fall down again and again because my body and my brain have been beaten down by men. 

but also because i was born to fall down. 

i was born with part of me already long ago dead and i can wrestle down these dead words, but they will never be enough.

they will never be the story.

not the whole story.

i know.

those others see only the mangled form, the scarred and wordless form that is called the body today, a body that stumbles and stutters and falls down on the ground frothing at the mouth. but they cannot see the rest.

they cannot see me and they cannot hear me.

they cannot hear the hidden me or see the hidden me because he was strangled mute and contorted in the womb and so he lurks so deep down inside of this scarred, stumbling and stammering shell. 

this is not the telling of my story.

this is not the music, the song or the drumming of my song.

this is what is left of me when everything else, all the stories and all the music have gone silent, have been taken away from me.

this is the dark silence.

this is the voice of a dying animal in its cage.

strangled.

numb.

too small and starved and desiccated to be anything like the real thing. 

this is not the telling of my story.

it is dead words on a dead page, perhaps on dying leaves of paper, just dying dead bits of shadows, with the stink of death still upon them.

this is all that there is left to my story.

there may be no one out there to listen.

there may be nothing left inside me to be worth the hearing of it.

but i will tell what i can.

i will stumble and i will fall and i may never escape the confines of this nothing, these fragments of a trapped and bitter mind. this black silence,

but i will tell it.

i will try to tell it.

i will try again and again and fail and fall again and again, hurl my body against the walls of this cage that i am trapped in, until this dead or dying thing has been told.

it may signify nothing at all.

in the end, after all the sound and the fury, it will almost certainly signify nothing.

but i will tell it. 

i will try to tell it.

it is not the telling of my story.

but it will be something.

it will be something like the telling of a story.

and that, even that, will be better than the silence.

anything, anything at all, will be better than the silence.

Chapter 3 - the boy

I see him walking across the field, through the patches of dried out tall grass, the rotted out rusted corpses of cars and tractor parts that have been there for as long as I remembered, for what seems like as long as anybody remembered. I’m not sure he’s real. I’m not sure he’s human. He looks like some kind of monster, like some kind of beast from an old TV movie the old people’s stories with the strange shuffling limp and scarred shaved bald head, bare in the hot summer sun, shining in some places and dull in others. 

Nobody on the Rez walks around with a bare head in the middle of summer. 

Sometimes old Pieface Tim comes wandering over from next door, forgetting where he lives, but he has all his hair except for in one spot on the side of his head where somebody hit him with a rock from a campfire and he always wears a Canadian Tire cap. 

This one’s definitely not old Pieface. 

Even old Pieface looks like a human being at first look. 

I don’t have any particular feeling about this not stranger or about what he might do. 

It’s hot and I’m bored and I’m tired. 

I’m always tired. The doctors said I would get tired.

I don’t think that he’s going to ease my boredom or make me not tired in any way that matters, even if he’s some kind of real monster.

When I tell the story later on if I live I’ll probably say that I felt his presence as I stood there and knew that he was going to have a profound effect upon on my world. But it won’t be true. It’ll be a Rez truth. Sort of the truth but with a better story. It’ll make the story a little more interesting and more fun to tell, but it won’t be true. I take less notice of him than I might a crow or a mockingbird setting down on one of those rusted skeletons. It’s the nature of my world that people, even if they bring trouble, and they almost bring some kind of trouble on the Rez, are just one more drip in the monotony of exhaustion and pain that makes up my childhood.

The sad truth of it is that even him looking like some kind of monster, that strange limp, the way that he shuffles instead of walks, the wildness and woundedness of his appearance, isn’t remarkable in this place. Bad nutrition and drink leave so many people looking that way. Some were born that way because their mothers or their fathers or both had drunk too much and eaten too little and everything that they did eat was made of sugar or corn or bleached white something. It’s not all that unusual to see people without arms or legs because of diabetes or because they passed out drunk on the train tracks.

Even with the money from casinos most of us don’t take care of ourselves the way white people do. Maybe because we’re still raised by people who got beat down by the kihnarà:ken, by the white people, till they believed their lives didn’t matter.

I pretty much assume that the man’s going to hurt me.

I mean I don’t think he’s a Wendigo or anything like that. Just something about him like he just gave up on being human.

He’s in jail again. My rake'níha. My father. I’m all alone except for Goat, and she’s too old to do all that much damage to a stranger. I’m too small and skinny and weak to put up much of a fight. 

I fight back most of the time anyway. I never seem to have the sense to sit still and just take it the way that other kids on the Rez have figured out to do, to just take it until it comes to a stop. I keep getting up until I can’t get up anymore. I almost always make it worse. 

I know that sooner or later someone’s going to kill me. 

Maybe I hope that sooner or later somebody will kill me.

I don’t know.

I don’t want much to be alive. I don’t want much to be here. I just don’t have the energy to kill myself. I’ve thought about all the different ways to do it but it’s too much work.

It’d be so much easier if somebody kills me.

Maybe this strange monster looking limping man will be the one.

Even if he isn’t a Wendigo. He’s probably some kind of monster.

I don’t honestly know any more if I actually want to die or if it’s just not in me to lie down and stay down, that I’m just too stubborn to die. 

The doctors say I’m going to die. But that’s going to take a while.

And it’s going to hurt.

A lot.

People keep saying I’m brave. I’m not brave.

My brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Even on the Rez people think I’m strange. Some of the older kids compare me to the character in that old movie Cool Hand Luke because they beat on me and I keep getting back up. I love that movie. I thought maybe it was meant as a kind of compliment. But later, when I watched that movie again, when I saw the sick look on the convicts’ faces when Luke wouldn’t stop getting up, couldn’t stop getting up, even when he knew that he’d been licked by George Kennedy. I knew then it’s not a compliment. I figure I might end up like Luke did at the end of that movie. Lying dead on a dirty floor with a big stupid grin on my face. 

The beatings from him, from my rake'níha, from my father, and my mother when I see her, and strangers when I see them, are just one more tributary of the monotonous suffering that is the stinking river of my childhood. This monster looking man will probably hurt me and root through the house, the burned out ruin that passes for our home, my home, in search of something that he can take. He might even kill me. 

I’m so dulled to pain, so tired, and the possibility of death that I can’t even find a way to care about that. 

I’ll miss my Grandmother. And my friend, Roger. My only friend. He’s older than me but he takes the time to teach me to fight and hunt. I don’t know why. Probably pity.

I’ll definitely miss Goat. She’s as close to a good friend as I’ve got besides Roger. 

And I guess I’ll miss my cousin Dianne too. She checks in on me and brings me food. Probably because she feels like she has to. She’s nice. She’s pretty too. 

I might miss them if there’s some place you keep being after you die. But I won’t miss my life. I won’t miss waking up every single day weak and sick wondering out what bad thing will happen to me today. 

If this bad thing will finally be the last bad thing that will ever happen, that wouldn’t be so terrible. 

He won’t find anything in the house. 

He sold or traded anything that mattered. My rake'níha. My father. He almost burned down the house and even when they gave him money to rebuild the house he spent it on booze and drugs and just left the house the way it was. They even gave him a trailer and he sold that. What he didn’t sell or trade somebody else came and took. I buried some raccoon and squirrels that I caught. Deep down in a plastic bag with salt. Some nuts too. But he won’t find any of it. I learned how to hide things so well that even a coyote or a badger couldn’t find them. And Goat’s a better guard dog than most dogs when it comes to that. If anyone gets too close to the house she’ll raise a racket, even if she can’t stop them.

She’s raising one hell of a racket right now.

The monster man’s head is down and his shoulders are hunched forward in a way that reminds me of the boxers that I saw when Roger took me to his gym. He doesn’t look up. Not even once. No sign that he sees me, or even notices Goat, except that he’s walking straight towards us. Every few steps he stops like he’s lost and mutters to himself. Then he kind of sways, like he’s struggling to get going again, and he keeps coming. 

I just stand here leaning against the old fence post watching him. 

I’m too tired to try getting away.

I could probably outrun him, slow as he is. But trying to get away just isn’t worth the effort. Besides, running would only put off this particular bad thing. If he doesn’t do something bad to me someone else will probably give me a beating today. Or tomorrow. 

Maybe I just want it all to come to an end. I don’t know. Maybe I’m hoping this stranger, this strange scarred up hollow of a man, might be the one that finally finishes it. 

He’s close now. I can make out all the scars. There’s a lot of them. All over his head and all over his face too. He mostly keeps his head down. I can see his hands and knuckles are all scarred up too, and I’m thinking maybe I was right about him being an old fighter. 

Or maybe just someone who’s as stupid and as stubborn as I am. 

If I lived long enough I’d probably end up looking an awful lot like him.

I won’t live that long.

Either way this stranger is probably dangerous. 

Maybe he will be the one to finally end it.

He stops when he’s about twenty feet away and looks at me, blinks, and then looks past me as if he doesn’t actually see me. 

I’m used to that look. Lots of people look past me like that. 

Mostly just before they hurt me.

He looks around at the yard, at all the garbage and dirt and dried up patches of grass and then up at the sky and then down at the ground. Then he looks at Goat, which gets her raising even more of a racket. If she wasn’t tied up she’d probably go after him. 

She and I have got that in common. 

It doesn’t make much of a difference to either of us that we can’t win the fight.

He just stands there for the longest time.

And I just stand there too. 

Waiting.

Neither one of us looking at each other. 

People don’t look right at each other on the Rez anyway. That’s asking for a fight.

We stand there, watching what we can out of the corners of our eyes. 

Even Goat gets quiet and just stands there.

Waiting.

I’m used to waiting. 

I’m pretty good at waiting.

Waiting is one more thing you get used to on the Rez.

The stranger’s face is all scars and lumps. One eye’s so scarred over that it’s barely open and both his ears are like raw cauliflower. 

He doesn’t look like an Indian. 

But then again, neither do I. 

Not really. 

I’ve got dark hair and dark skin. It gets real dark in the summer and never burns. But there’s enough of my mother in my features that those kids on the Rez who do look Indian, even though a lot of them have got less of the blood than I do, beat on me for not being Indian enough. And the kids in the city beat on me because I’m not white enough. 

This guy’s skin is pale. Not the kind of pale that looks natural. The kind of pale that comes from spending too much time inside. 

Prison. 

He gets that look when he’s been in for a while. My rake'níha. My father.

The man doesn’t have all the tattoos that most men who spend time in prison have got. 

Men like him. My father. My rake'níha.

This guy looks like he can’t remember what it’s like to have freedom. He looks like he’s used to being in a cage. 

He has high cheekbones the kind of shape to his face that might make you think that he had Indian blood, but you would have to look closely to see it, or to see that he seems to know this place in a deep way, in the way that comes from growing up in a place like this.

We’re not supposed to call it Indian. 

I can’t remember what we’re supposed to call it now.

Kanien'keha:ka for our tribe.

But I can’t remember for the rest of them.

-Much chance you got any water around, I suppose. - He doesn’t say it like a question. More like a fact that he’s already figured on.

His voice sounds tired. Dry and full of gravel. The tips of two of his fingers are nicotine stained. Like he smokes rolled up cigarettes instead of store bought. 

-No. - I say.  -I emptied the jug last night.

That’s true. I would have said it to him even it wasn’t, but I used up the last of the water and didn’t get around to filling the jug back up yet.

The man stands there staring at the ground. He keeps his thumbs straight on the outside of his hands the way old boxers do. I’m starting to wish he’d get it over with. I also hope that he’s not one of those that like little boys. I’ve had that tried on me a few times. They always start by telling me how pretty I am for a boy. Up until now I always managed to put up enough of a fight to make them decide that I wasn’t worth all the trouble. I’m not expecting to get away with that forever. But I’m not looking forward to what happens when I don’t.

-Didn’t see no pump. - The man says -Guessing that place of yours got no running water anymore.

Again it was more like he’s stating what he’s pretty sure is a fact than like he’s asking a question.

I think for a moment about lying about where he is. Where my rake'níha is. 

But it doesn’t seem worth all the effort. He won’t take long to find out that I’m all alone if that’s what he wants.

-There’s a creek back in the woods. - I say -I usually get my water from there.

I don’t know why I said that. I know better than to give anything to a stranger. Even information. Giving anything away that you don’t have to never works out for anything but bad on the Rez.

-It ain’t too clean. - I say.

We stand there for a little while. 

I’m already getting bored.

Mostly people hurting each other is just one more way of not being bored in this place.

I figure he’s coming due to hurt me soon though.

He just stands there though. Looks around. Looks up at the sky. Then back down at the ground.

It seems to me like he does that a lot.

-I don’t have money. - He says -Don’t... Don’t have too much of nothin.

He shuffles his feet. Something in the way he’s standing there gives me the feeling that he isn’t going to hurt me. 

But I know better than to trust anything in this place.

Or maybe I just hope that he’s going to turn out to be a lot worse than he’s looking right now.

-Don’t suppose you could point me to the creek. - He says -I can’t give you anything for it.

Despite all the scars and the look of somebody who spent a lot of time in prison, there’s something about him that feels kind of gentle. Not kind maybe. And not towards everybody. But towards me and those like me. And he doesn’t talk like most of the people on the Rez or any of the bad ones who spend most of their time in jail. 

He isn’t going to hurt me.

Because I’m just a boy. Maybe because I can’t hurt him.

-I could bring you there I suppose. – I’m as surprised at having said it as he seems to be at my having said it.

He looks straight at me for just a brief moment, as if he was seeing me for the first time and then looks back down at the ground.

We stand there for a while just not looking at each other.

I can tell he isn’t going to hurt me. There’s violence in him. A whole lot of rage and violence. He still seems very dangerous. Even with all the damage I can see that’s been done to him, he still seems like someone who can take care of himself in a pinch. That violence is probably not going to be turned on me. He would probably never use it on someone like me. 

I still don’t trust him. 

I don’t trust anybody. 

That part of me that won’t and can’t believe that even the people who have been good to me, won’t hurt me sooner or later. Maybe he would never hurt someone like me. I still can only see being hurt as something not very important, and not being hurt as a kind of disappointment. 

Maybe I’m a little bit sorry that it’s not going to end for me today.

He licks his lips, and the sound that his lips and his mouth make when he does that tells me that he has gone without water and been in the hot sun for way too long. 

-If you don’t want me to take you. - I say. -That’s fine too. 

I want him to know that I don’t care one way or the other. 

I don’t care one way or the other. 

But I want him to know that I don’t.

He licks his lips again. They’re dry and chapped, and the inside of his mouth sounds dry and chapped. I can hear it from where I am. 

-If it won’t be too much trouble. - He says -I guess I’m pretty thirsty and I could use some water. If that won’t be too much trouble.

I shrug my shoulders. 

Then I turn and start to head towards the creek. 

I stop when I realize that he isn’t following. He’s just standing there with this lost look on his face, like he’s confused or just can’t figure out if he wants the water after all.

-Mister. - I say -This is the way if you want some water.

He gives me a kind of startled look and then looks back down at the ground and nods his head. The gesture’s so small and so slight that I barely see it. -Don’t you want to grab your jug? - He asks me. 

This time a real question.

I stare at him. Then I go into the house and get my jug.

Goat looks at me when I come back out.

I go over and untie her.

-She won’t hurt you. - I say to the man. Just in case he’s scared of goats. Some people are. -She needs water too.

I lead them down to the creek.

The monster man follows me with that strange shuffling limp of his.

I’m not all that sure he’ll be able to make it to the creek.

And I’m not all that sure, if he doesn’t make it, if I’ll try to help him make it or not.

I’m not sure if I care one way or the other.

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