BOTH SIDES NOW: The Dream Bed (fiction)

“What do you think about mountain mysticism?” Felix asked Clare over coffee in her kitchen.

“You mean, could a person get high?” she joked.

“Would a person fasting up in the mountains really have a vision?”

He was serious. “Clive had quite a bit of information about all this, I think. He said there were dream beds all through this part of the Rockies and over in the Sweetgrass Hills. He took a few photos or his informants did, but they’ve never been published for fear modern people would either go up to destroy them or risk their lives trying to fast in them.”

“What did they look like?”

“Not much. A little wall about the size of a bathtub, enough to keep the wind off a person lying down. Sometimes the wall is shale on edge, propped along in a row, and sometimes it’s piled. Depends on what rocks are handy. But they don’t call these mountains “rocky” for nothing.”

“Then they’re all above tree level. The altitude where trees stop growing.”

“I suppose so. The idea is to be able to meditate while looking into the distance. There’s a story, you know. It began to be a competition among the parents to see whose son could fast the longest and bring back the most powerful vision. Opinions differed about which animal helper might be the most powerful, but competition is always dangerous when people are doing risky things.”

“Extreme.”

“What?”

“Today we’d call that extreme, like extreme sports.”

“Yes. Ordinary mountains are dangerous all by themselves. More tourists die falling off mountains in Glacier Park every year than the bears kill. They’re all afraid of bears, but they'll stand on the edge of cliffs, climbing over the guard rails to get there.”

“What’s the story?”

“A boy goes up to a dreaming spot. His father goes with him so he can come back and check on him now and then, as his people expect him to do. But the father wants his son to be tough, to excel, so he doesn’t go back until the third day -- maybe the fourth. When he gets there, the son is gone. Instead a little bird has taken his place.”

“What do you think REALLY happened to that boy? Do you think a predator dragged him off?”

“Maybe the vision he had was that he didn’t need such an unreliable father and he just left. Went to live with other people.” Clare emptied the dregs of her coffee. She ought to figure out how to make filter coffee without grounds getting over the edge into the plastic cone, but the truth was that she sort of liked biting the bigger particles of beans. “I’d best get to work.”

“I’m going on up the mountain today. I’m gonna look for a dream bed. Obviously my father won’t come looking for me since he can barely get himself across a room and I don’t want company. Snugs will stay with him. But if I don’t show up by this time tomorrow, will you call someone? If Snugs calls, they won’t pay attention. He’s just another unreliable Indian.”

“Who?”

“Snugs. My nephew.”

“No, I mean, who do I call?”

“Sheriff, I suppose. He must know about search and rescue. I’ll be in the Lewis & Clark forest. I’m going up the trail out of Heart Butte. I’ll draw a little map and leave it on my kitchen table.”

“Of course I’ll call.” But she stood in front of her studio and watched Felix’ retreating back until Goldie meowed to get inside. Then she went in to start a fire in the studio woodstove, thinking it was chilly, maybe this cold front might bring rain or even snow up high. Worried, she knew better than to interfere.


Felix left his map with a fork on top to hold it down and cautioned Snugs and his father not to move it. He threw some bologna and cheese into his backpack -- not a big pack with a frame but more of a day pack. Some matches in a waterproof holder plus a butane barbecue lighter. A quarter-inch map. A compass hung on his jacket zipper. Hiking boots. Half was thrilled and waltzed in a circle when Felix threw in some dog chow.

Leaving the car as far in as he could drive, he found the trailhead. Half an hour of walking before he began to hit his stride and remember what it was like to swing along this way. It felt great. The bull pines and aspen were damp from the last showers but it looked as though the clearing that always followed a cold front in fall was beginning to push the clouds back. The aspens had lost a lot of leaves this high. Sometimes he saw bear scat, loaded with the remains of berries, but it was all old stuff. He kept Half within eyesight.

Once up into the high ridges, he could see a lot farther. Long veils of mist were writhing and parting, slowly leaving. As they went they revealed the wall-like stone of the Rocky Mountain ramparts. It had eructed in sections, like a slab that had been broken from underneath -- probably that’s about what happened. When there was enough blue sky for the sun to warm the stone, he began to see eagles gyring on the rising air. Golden eagles -- not bald eagles. Wide strong wings and broad tails of valuable feathers. Now that eagles were protected, the feathers were worth even more. Anything forbidden is attractive.

Fweet. Marmots. A whole colony in the remains of an avalanche, bustling around stashing grass in their holes. Fweet. On the alert.

Up high in the cliff he could see a broken place in the rock and a white swash like paint beneath it. Eagle nest. When he looked more closely, he could see ends of sticks that he knew were from the piles and tangles the eagles made for nests. Scanning the long slope of scree, he looked for something that might be the remains of an eagle-catching pit, a place a man could hunker down with a kind of lid of leafy branches where he could put bait so the eagle would land on it. Then he’d grab through the branches and get the bird by the ankles. Have to be fast. Have to avoid those claws, as long as a man’s fingers and sharp as... Not edged like a knife, but more like a construction nail. Like metal. Black. Curved. How could the catcher evade the yellow hooked beak? Couldn’t. Bound to get hurt. Must’ve been worth it. Extreme but rewarding.

Warmed by exertion and the steady sun reflected off stone, he took off his jacket and stuffed it into the pack. He didn’t need the compass up here -- he could see for many many miles, the long slow slope of prairie off into a purple-hazed distance and little scribbles that were towns, easy to ignore. He took deep breaths, more than panting, a kind of exhaltation expressed as exhaling.

Half loped ahead, then doubled back, but he had slowed down some. Felix let him go. He’d see bears soon enough if there were any up this high. They’d be by the marmots maybe -- otherwise they needed bulk food this time of year and would more likely be lower. He was startled when Half came back barking and agitated. The dog had been higher and past a ridge, so he approached the ridge with caution.

There was no bear. Instead a pile of rock looked manmade, arranged rather than fallen. Something dark was in it. He approached carefully and Half stayed close.

It was a vision bed, a rock wall of piled rock, just big enough to outline a body. Felix nearly backed away, afraid of interrupting someone in the midst of a fast. He stood at a distance, watching for movement, but there was none. “Hello?” he yelled.

It seemed to be a man, on his face, under a blanket except for his head. He could see that the head had three dark braids, which is the way Blackfeet do boys’ hair. “Are you all right?” There was no response. He and Half went slowly closer. The body seemed flat. The blanket was discolored. He began to suspect that this person was not all right at all. Or maybe ultimately all right, if you wanted to look at it that way.

He threw a handful of pebbles onto the blanket but there was no movement. In a while he and Half went to stand beside the low wall and look directly down at the body. Clearly, this young (?) man was dead. Half’s back hairs were standing up in a ridge. They circled along the outside perimeter of the wall until they could see the face, where the head was turned to one side, and a hand stuck out of a jacket. That wrist had a Navajo-style bracelet, a cuff. The silver was oxidized dark but the turquoise was still pure. He had been dead a long time, mummified as dry meat by the sun, wind and low humidity. He had not turned into a small bird.

BOTH SIDES NOW 10/3

Michael Blowhard from 2blowhards.com compares screenwriting with novels: “Even from the point of view of the creators: At least a life in showbiz can have some amazing payoffs in terms of ego, money, blowjobs. What with fame, beauty, stardom, drugs, and the possibility of immense amount of dough, it makes some kind of sense for a certain kind of person to pitch-in heart and mind. Novel-writing, though ... Given that writing a novel is an unrewarding slog (few blowjobs, lots of loneliness, the publishing industry itself a pain in the ass), why would anyone volunteer to write one?”

As so many say in other places, for some it is NOT an unrewarding slog, not a slog at all but a venturing after an irresistible call, and very much rewarding in terms of visions, ideas, insights, and the opportunity to shape words into satisfying sentences. For me, retired, it’s almost a continuation of dreaming except for the pile of paper.

People who do yoga speak humorously but rather scornfully of “monkeyhead,” which means a brain full of ideas, pouring out, jostling each other for priority, insisting on expression, destroying order. And there’s another impulse reaching out for more ideas, new images, things never thought of before but possibly life-changing. Novels come out of those two. Not the pretentious kind of Manhattan-approved styling and moueing, but a long swath of world knitted out of life.

It takes me a long time, not because it’s laborious, but because it forms slowly in my subconscious, like exposing photo paper in the pan of solution in the darkroom. Then the work is to shape it by considering whether it compromises anyone, whether it is accessible to a reader who knows nothing about it, whether there are too many long complex sentences -- all of this is pleasant work, especially done at home with cats sprawled alongside and sun streaming in the window.

Following is part of “Both Sides Now,” which is what one might call filtered autobiography since it uses me (a 70 year old woman) but as a painter rather than writer, an Indian man (a composite of a dozen Blackfeet I know, often former students who are still friends), and a sort of archetypal anthro/professor who has more to do with my Unitarian world than rez life. This is an argument about the huge shift in academia that left not only individuals but whole disciplines high and dry -- a sea change entirely invisible to people on reservations and yet affecting them deeply in terms of how they think of themselves and what resources they might find. The painter is an observer, a conduit. “Clive” is an example of a type. These are all things I think about all the time. I do NOT think of publishers. They are indeed a pain in the ass.

CLIVE AND BUNDLE OPENINGS

The first time they had gone to a Thunder Pipe Bundle Opening, she had had no idea at all what to expect, what to wear, what to take along. Clive didn’t seem to have a very clear notion either, though he’d read a great deal about it. The accounts were all historical. No one in the Sixties seemed to be aware the ceremony still lived -- it was below the perception of even the anthropologists. She had taken a dance shawl, the kind with a long silk fringe on it, thinking that it might be like church where one was supposed to cover up, maybe even cover one’s head. But it turned out to be so very warm and humid -- late spring, which is a rainy season, and many people packed into a small house -- and they sat so long on the floor that she ended up folding it into a cushion. At least she was against the wall where she could lean her back and there was an open window with air coming in, but the drawback was that restless small children climbed in and out over the top of her, sometimes spilling their pop on her. Once a little girl reached through the window, patted her bright springy hair, then shrieked and ran off. Women sat on one side, men on the other.

They were the only white people there. Clive had been given a folding chair, since he was older, and he was clearly having a wonderful time. What she called his “James Willard Schultz side” was showing, though he usually tried to suppress it as too romantic for a professional anthropologist. Still, it explained his overwhelming love for this particular group of people and his deep desire to understand everything, no matter discomfort or resistance. She herself was not interested in being an active participant in such ceremonies, preferring to devote all her attention to absorbing the sensory richness of faces, light, smudge, drums and voices. She wanted to be what Emerson called “a transparent eyeball” -- seeing but unseen. But Clive would be taking mental notes and long into the night would be putting them onto paper. It was, of course, forbidden to write or draw during the ceremony.

The old people, in their eighties, were more inclined to be like her, just present and absorbing, than like Clive’s effort to be both “in” the ceremony and reflecting upon it. He would have loved to have “become” a faux Indian and could probably do a convincing job of it with his beak of a nose and tendency to tan easily, but he was also watching himself and everyone else, trying to be a camera/recorder. He wanted to be part of the “in-group” he was observing while still preserving his status as a professional, his refuge in an ivory tower.

After that first time, they knew to bring old sofa cushions to sit on, bowls for the berry soup, and lots and lots of dollar bills to hand out. Clive was careful to explain to her that these ceremonies were meant to distribute wealth from those who had it to those who needed it. This was not a matter of greed, but there were also elements of compliment -- one gave money to a particularly evocative dancer -- and competition -- the Canadians showed off by giving away more money than the Americans. Little rivalries developed where one man gave another a bit of money, only to have the second man give it back with interest the next time one of his relatives danced. The money exchange was accompanied by eloquent speeches, but they were in Blackfeet. Clive had not mastered Blackfeet so he get an informant to explain in the coming days. There was no way to find out how accurate the interpretation would be.