Fishbone's Song (8 page)

Big one. No. Just clean bite your head off. Wouldn't even have time for that last thought about how stupid you were to shoot a sharp stick into a bear. One bite. No head.

Fishbone said before they sent him to Korea to get shot some they sent him to a place called Fort Sill in Oklahoma for training. Said it was about artillery, big guns which he never got to use because he got shot and took that ride between the two frozen
dead men on the jeep hood before he got to shoot back even with a small gun, let alone the big ones. But they took him out in a kind of mountain-hilly country with other men where they watched the big cannons fire to learn how artillery works. Then farther out, miles out in the same kind of country, to see how they exploded when they hit. Place with old tanks and car bodies for targets and they just blew them all to pieces.

Had chiggers there. Mean little things that got under and inside his boots and underwear and ate on him, he said. Sores all over that itched worse than anything. Worst. And snakes, rattlers and water moccasins, in and around any pond or big puddle, and spiders all over as big as your fist.

Just not a good place.

Said he hated Fort Sill. Hated all of Oklahoma because of his time at Fort Sill. Said it was where Geronimo, the famous Apache warrior, was held prisoner until he died. Fell off a wagon that drove
over him and broke his neck, they said, but Fishbone said he probably died just to get out of Fort Sill, take his spirit back to the deserts in Arizona where he was from. Like Jimmy Applecore. Where there were no chiggers and not as many snakes.

But near where they trained on the big guns was a kind of huge park, Fishbone said, where they kept animals in a kind of refuge, about as big a place as some small eastern states. The soldiers were put up in this animal refuge area in small tents, called pup-tents, sleeping on the ground, some of them said, so the chiggers could get at them and eat on them better, and make them into tougher and meaner soldiers.

Probably not quite true, Fishbone said, but it seemed to work that way just the same.

Soldiers got tougher, and maybe meaner, and hated Fort Sill a little more than they would have if they'd been inside clean buildings.

But where they were camped, near the artillery
range, there were other animals. Elk, deer, coyotes, and some buffalo. Thing is, Fishbone said, they had a lot of free time. Lower-rank soldiers weren't allowed to have strong liquor, like 'shine or whiskey, because they were told they couldn't handle it. Only officers were allowed what they called strong drink. Lower-rank soldiers were allowed beer.

That's where the trouble came from, Fishbone said. 'Shine would set you to singing, maybe, foot shuffle dancing, telling good stories, but it was too fast, hit a little too hard, for much else. Man would get a little tooted on 'shine, Fishbone said, and he was happy. Or sleeping. Or just quiet dead.

Beer was different, came on slower. Gave a man time to think on being crazy, mean, lead to fights. Led to stupid.

Something the army never understood, Fishbone said. Had all these men in tents on the ground mixed in with animals in this refuge with a lot of free time.

Brought in beer for them.

Cases of beer in brown cans. Free beer. Just no way, he said, any good could come from it.

So one afternoon, they were sitting by their tents, getting wetter and wetter on beer, when one of them pointed at a big bull buffalo standing not so far away, covered with dust and flies in the hot afternoon sun. He said that way back, before they had horses, the Native Americans would sneak up on a buffalo on foot and push a sharp stick into it and kill it for food. Either a spear, or an arrow from a bow. Still. A sharp stick.

Well.

Beer being free and what it was, sitting in crates of army-issue olive-drab cans with the word BEER written on the side of each can. Like you wouldn't know what they were if they hadn't spelled it out. And soldiers being bored and what they were, what Fishbone called the worst part of a know-it-all or thought they were, especially when they were
drinking beer, nothing good could come of it. Too slow a drink to end fast, too tough a drink to end good . . .

Somebody, nobody quite remembered who, decided it would be a good idea to sharpen a stick, stagger drunkenly over to the buffalo, and try to push the stick into his side. Like the natives did, or the soldiers thought they did, before they had horses. Big old bull. Fishbone said it probably weighed just under a ton. Close on to two thousand pounds. Bull standing there, covered with dust and dirt and flies. Fishbone said he was amazed along with everybody else that the buffalo just stood there while the soldier walked up beside him. Hardly even looked at him.

Stopped there, the soldier, turned around and looked at the rest of them, and they waved him on. Drunk, all of them, drunk as lords, Fishbone said, they waved him on and he nodded, turned slowly, and jabbed the stick into the buffalo's side.

Or tried to.

Fishbone said he'd never seen anything move so fast. Faster than a striking snake, faster than a cat rolling onto his feet when he's dropped to the ground. Fast as lightning. Fast. The bull wheeled in place, just a blur, and went to hook a horn in the soldier's belly. Something made the soldier suck his stomach in, without thinking, and the hooking horn missed his gut—would have pulled it all out of him, Fishbone said, like fifteen feet of worms—and instead caught the belt. Heavy canvas ammo belt, part of his uniform, strong as iron. It wasn't about to break, and the horn twisted into it and locked it in place.

The bull took off at a dead run, slamming the soldier back and forth and up and down into the ground until he didn't look like a person anymore. Like a rag, Fishbone said. Shaking rag of loose meat and broken bones and blood and torn pieces of uniform. Just rags.

Hundred and fifty, two hundred yards the belt held, and the soldier slammed back and forth, up and down and finally shook loose. Laid there like old dirt, mucked with blood. Looked dead. The bull went back to just standing, in the dust and heat and flies. Wasn't even breathing hard.

But the soldier didn't die. They called for medics and three of them came with an ambulance and took him away, and Fishbone said he lived. Kept him in the hospital for months with pulleys and ropes and plaster casts holding everything together, and Fishbone said his brain quit working right. Went so sideways that they took him out of the army, which wasn't so bad because most of the men in that class got killed or frozen or shot some like Fishbone when they got sent to Korea.

Didn't know his own name.

Fishbone said he couldn't remember his own name for a couple of months and only then because the army doctors told him what it was and made
him memorize it before they let him go. Sent him home to his family with his memorized name, and they had to feed him with a spoon. They said he couldn't hold a spoon in his own hand. And he never did remember the buffalo. All of it wiped clean out of his thinking like shaking dirt out of a rug.

Didn't happen much, but this time it did: Fishbone was wrong.

Said nothing good could come of the drunk soldier poking that buffalo with a sharp stick, but he was wrong.

Something good came from it. He told me the story and after that there was no way in god's green earth (which Fishbone said all the time: god's green earth) that I would try to shove a pointed stick—like a cane arrow—into a bear. Or a wild pig. Which brings up another thing: how can it be god's green earth when part of the earth is white, at the north and south poles, and blue in the oceans? So
I could ask Fishbone about that; aren't they part of god's earth? Of course I wouldn't. Ask him, I mean. That would just add to his thinking that I was being the worst part of a know-it-all. I didn't need that.

Saved me a lot of problems later, though, so that was some good from it. Not for the soldier. Fishbone said if the man was still alive, he was probably also still being fed with a spoon. But for me there were lots of times when I raised the bow, looking at a wild pig or a bear up in a tree where one of the Old Blue dogs put them. But I never pulled it back, never shot the arrow. And I could have, but didn't. Maybe saved me so I didn't have to memorize my name and be fed with a spoon.

Must have been tough, those natives in the old times. Fishbone says they had to be tougher than corrugated iron. And smart. He says they've found mammoth bones fifteen, twenty thousand years old, fossils big as elephants, with stone arrow and spear points stuck right in the bone. 'Course we
don't know how it turned out. Maybe the same as that soldier at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. But they tried, just the same, and I don't know if I'd even try shooting an arrow into a hairy elephant.

Maybe if a person is starving.

Nobody bringing boxes of food back then.

No stores to get food from.

You shot the mammoth or bear then or you didn't eat. Sometimes I get pretty hungry. Seems like I'm always a little hungry. But there's always enough bacon grease and flour to make biscuits and gravy, always a can of beans. Always something. Fishbone said he knew a family even more back in the hills, so poor . . . dirt poor. Lived in the open under old tarps. Not tents, just open tarps. Had eight children and two grown people, he said, had nothing every day but gravy, sometimes with biscuits if they had flour, but most often not. Nothing. Just burned gravy. Ate off two planks tied to elm trees, ate standing up from plates that were old metal pie tins nailed with one
roofing nail for each through the middle holding it to the plank. Had three spoons they passed around. Most of the young ate with their hands because the older ones got the spoons first. Said they were so bad off they wouldn't brush the flies off the gravy before they ate. Just scoop them up with the gravy and eat it all.

And still, with all of that, Fishbone said it was better than back in time when they might have to sit and eat bugs and be glad they had it. That back thousands of years ago, if you didn't grow it and you didn't shoot it, you didn't eat, unless you caught something crawling by.

Rough way to live. That's what Fishbone says. Rough way to live and probably nobody alive now could live that hard. But he said that with a lift in his voice, shuffle-pat of the foot, and a lift with an up-tone kind of crack in his voice so you thought . . .

You thought maybe . . .

You thought maybe if you worked at it and
thought on it and did it all just right . . .

Maybe you could live that way. Live rough.

Because . . .

Because Fishbone said.

Because when he said things that way, said them up instead of down, so your thinking went up instead of down, just that way, you thought you could maybe do anything.

Because Fishbone said.

Fifth Song: Dust Flower from a Soldier

Nothing around me but whirling dust,

nothing ahead of me but silver must.

Must come home to you.

Think of you each morning-night,

think of you wrong or right.

Must come home to you.

Think of you each live long day,

think of you when I stand and pray.

Got no home but you.

F
ishbone says . . .

Was everything to me, what it meant. Just that. Fishbone says. Even when it didn't seem like he might be saying very much, was still something there. Could be like the seed in the center of a wild plum. They get ripe and sweet and you eat them, same with his talk, his songs, his shuffle-pats on the wooden porch. Good to listen to, whether or not it's sweet. Might be about a lady with a snake tattooed on her; or a fast car; or deep cold in Korea; or just a bird sitting on a limb, the way the light hits his feathers, his eye. Might be the
color on the side of a fish, darting, there and gone. Stories there and gone.

Maybe just stories. But inside each of them was a seed, a pit, meant more than the story. More than just the sweet on the outside. You might not see it right away, might be thinking about the tattoo or the fast car and miss the reason, miss the part of the story-song that really counted.

Center.

It wasn't the tattoo, it was the beauty of it, what it meant. It wasn't the fast car, it was the story of Jimmy Applecore. How short his life turned out. How the money counted, and then didn't count at all. How there was a Jimmy and a Charlene and then there wasn't. Just gone. Didn't matter about the car or the money or the white lightning. The center was Jimmy just like the center was the woman, not the tattooed snake around her neck.

Had to see that. See the center of his story-songs.

That's how it started, how I started.

Started to think that way.

It wasn't the dream about the room getting bigger and bigger. Same dream over and over. It was the edge of the dream. Fishbone tried to help me see that and in the end he did. I'd see past what I was looking at, or over it, or through it, inside it.

Saw in a book the blue-haired woman sent me about Native American people in the Southwest. Hard to read, full of ideas that were just that, ideas. What this man thought or that man thought, but just that. What they thought. No real answers in the writing of the book. But there were some pictures as well, drawings that the natives had done on flat rocks, kind of scratched-in line drawings. One was a deer, easy to tell, sideways drawing of a buck deer. But on the inside of the lines of the drawing were more drawings, almost like doctor drawings of the guts of the deer. Plus it showed an arrow in the center of the chest, front shoulder, where the heart was. Arrow through the heart.
Then all the rest of the guts. How they went from the throat down into the stomach and then around and around and out the rear and at first it seemed like just that. Drawing of a deer. Somebody had taken one—with a pointed stick or arrow—and when they opened it up, they saw the guts and drew them.

Saw inside the deer.

That's what I thought at first. Just drawing the inside. But then I thought—talked to Fishbone about it—what if it was more. A deer would have been almost impossible to kill then. Too fast to run down, too quick to spear. Have to sneak up to get close before shooting it with an arrow. Anybody who got one had to be really good or really lucky, and for anybody living on roots and small rodents and maybe even snakes and lizards, like Fishbone said, a deer would be an almost unbelievable amount of food. Don't think I could eat a lizard. Maybe a snake. But not a lizard.