Keeper'n Me (7 page)

What I'm tryin' to say is tradition gives strength to the culture. Makes it alive. Gotta know why you dance 'steada just how. It's tradition that makes you Indyun. Sing and dance forever but if you're not practicin' tradition day by day you're not really bein' Indyun. Old man told me one time he said, the very last time you got up in the mornin' and said a quiet prayer of thanks for the day you been given was the very last time you were an Indyun. Then he said, the very last time you got handed some food and bowed your head and said a prayer of thanks and asked for the strength you got from that food to be used to help someone around you, well, that was the very last time you were an Indyun too. And he told me he said, the very last time you did somethin' for someone without bein' asked, bein' thanked or tellin' about it was the very last time you were an Indyun. See, it's all respect, kindness, honesty and sharin'. Built right in. Do that all the time and boy, you just dance and sing up a real storm next time. Heh, heh, heh
.

That's what we gotta pass on. 'Cause tradition'll keep you goin' when you're livin' it. Us we need to remember these things
.
Keep 'em alive inside me. Live 'em so they stay strong. Lotsa kids comin' back nowadays really need to he shown. Tough thing to do when the kids are forty-four, twenty-five or whatever
.

Nowadays the whiteman comes in lotsa diff'rent ways. Oh, they still come with their schools and their foster homes, but we got some of our own teachers and social workers now, so kinda gettin' better there. But they still come for the kids. They come with their TV, money, big inventions and ideas. They come with big promises 'bout livin' in the world, with their politics and their welfare. They come with their rap music, break dancin' and funny ways of dressin'. All kinds of shiny things. Kids get all excited, funny in the head 'bout things, wanna go chasin' after all that stuff. Tradition? Ah, it's just borin' stuff for old guys like me can't rap dance. Somethin' you gotta do when you ain't got no other choice. That's how they come nowadays. On the sly. Harder for kids to come back from these things than from them schools or foster homes sometimes
.

That's why we gotta pass it on. Always gotta be someone around who knows. Always gotta be someone around to catch 'em when they land here all owl-eyed and scared, askin' questions, tryin' to find if they belong here still. If they wanna stick around. Always gotta be someone who knows the kindness built into tradition. Ease 'em back slow. Got the Indyun all scraped offa their insides, carryin' 'round big hurts an' bruises. Poke around too much you hurt 'em an' they run away. So you bring 'em back from the inside out. Nothin' in this world ever grew from the outside in. That's why I help the boy understand. He learned 'bout respect before he ever learned to sing or dance. Learned to be kind and share before he learned to tan a hide or
how to hunt. Learned to be honest before I let him be a storyteller. Learned about bein' Indyun, about himself. That way he'll survive anything
.

He looked funny enough when he got here wearin' all those strange things and havin' a head of hair looked like a cat been through the dryer, smellin' like fruit and talkin' funny. Guess if he could survive walkin' around lookin' and smellin' like that, learnin' to live an' learn off the land was gonna be simple. Heh, heh, heh
.

The first thing most people notice about us Indians is how we're laughing most of the time. It doesn't really matter whether we're all dressed up in traditional finery or in bush jackets and gumboots, seems like a smile and big roaring guffaw is everywhere with us. Used to be that non-Indians thought we were just simple. You know, typical kinda goofy-grinning lackeys riding out to get shot offa our horses by the wagon train folks. Or standing around on a corner in some city bumming smokes an' change but yukking it up anyway. But the more they stick around the more they realize that Indians have a real good sense of humor and it's that humor more than anything that's allowed them to survive all the crap that history threw their way. Keeper says laughin's about as Indian as bannock and lard. Most of the teaching legends are filled with humor on accounta Keeper says when people are laughing they're really listening hard to what you're saying. Guess the old people figured that was the best way to pass on learning.
Once you stop to remember what it was you were laughing at you remember the whole story, and that's how the teachings were passed on. Guess if it was thirty below and I was hunched around some little fire in a wigwam I'd wanna be laughing too instead of listening to some big deep talk.

Teasing's big around here too. You get lotta teasing from people on accounta teasing's really a way of showing affection for someone and like me at first, a lotta people have a hard time figuring that out. Get all insulted and run away. But once you figure that out it's a lotta fun being around a bunch of Indians.

When Stanley and me got to his cabin that first day I was expecting a big warm family kind of scene like on “The Waltons.” I figured there'd be a big spread on the table, maybe a little wine, music and a party happening. Instead there was about ten people sitting around drinking tea they were pouring out of a big black old-fashioned metal pot on a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. There weren't any decorations or anything unless you can call six or seven pairs of wool socks hung over the stove pipes decorations.

They all looked up as we walked in. The silence was deafening.

“Ho! Whatchu got there, Stanley?” said a big gap-toothed guy with a brushcut. “Not Halloween yet, is it?”

“Ho-wah!” said a large fat woman with gumboots, a kerchief around her head and smoking a pipe. “Thought he was coming from T'rana, not Disneyland!”

“Reee-leee!” said another woman. “Who'd you say adopted him? Liberace?”

“Ahh, he's just dressed fer huntin',” said an old man with so many wrinkles he looked like he was folded up wet and left overnight. “Wanna make sure he don't get mistook fer no deer.”

“Deer? Maybe get mistook for the northern lights but sure ain't nobody gonna be thinkin' he's a deer no matter how dark it gets,” said a tall spindly woman busy pouring herself another tea.

Stanley eased me into the center of the room with his hand on my shoulder and I could feel the pressure of it getting a little firmer the more nervous I got. Like he wanted to hold me from bolting for the door, which was exactly the thought going through my mind at the time. He smiled at me and waved at a large round woman leaning in the doorway and staring real hard at us both.

“Your sister,” was all he said. Or at least I think that's all he said because I got swept up in her big brown arms and disappeared for about five minutes. I could feel her breathing deeper and deeper as she hugged me and when she finally let me surface for air she was crying real quiet and smiling at the same time. She was a lot wider than me, but it's kinda spooky when you look at someone you swear you've never seen before and you can see your own eyes looking back at you. I didn't doubt for a minute that this woman was my sister.

“Hi, bro',” she said. “I'm Jane. Do you remember me at all?”

“No,” I said real quiet. “No, I don't think I do.”

“S'okay,” she said. “S'okay. I remember you real good. Little bigger than before but I remember you, all right.”

“Ahh, get the hell outta the way, Jane, and let us meet this boy kept us waitin' three days and twenty years anyway!” said an energetic little guy. “How you doin', T'rana? I'm yer uncle Buddy.”

Well, they all lined up and for the next half hour or so I was introduced to my uncles Gilbert, Archie and Joe, aunties Myrna and Ella, Chief Isaac McDonald and wife, Bertha, and the wrinkled-up old guy who said his name was Keeper and who left right away with Buddy.

Two things really got my attention that day. The first was the way they just seemed to treat me like I was someone they'd always known. Like the twenty years didn't matter to them or the way I was dressed, the Afro or anything. It was like I was already a part of their lives and let's get on with it all. The second thing was the absence of my mother and my other brother, Jackie. Of all the things I was scared of, meeting my mother after all that time was the biggest and I wondered why she wasn't there. Anyway, after all the introductions were over everybody just visited with each other and it was like the excitement was over and life was back to normal for them. Me, I was pretty confused.

“Take a walk, Garnet, you, me'n Jane,” Stanley said. “Only here's a pair of shoes to wear around till you get some of your own. Those heels'll kill you round here.”

I wasn't real surprised when they fit perfectly, Stanley being the same size and all. He waved to everyone as we walked out the door and they all just waved and went back to their conversations. I shook my head and fell in between the two of them.

“Okay, bro'?” Jane asked and put her arm around my shoulders.

The words sounded strange to my ears. I mean, up to then “bro' ” was just something you tossed around like pal or chum, buddy or dude. Now all of a sudden it had a whole different meaning. “Yeah. Yeah. I just feel weird about all this.”

“S'okay,” Stanley said. “S'okay. Ev'ryone's been waitin' for you and they all really want you to stay with us. Me too.”

“Me too,” said Jane. “Me too.”

“I don't know. I don't know whether I can get into all this, man. I mean, I been city all my life, y'know? I guess I'm not too sure I can handle it.”

“Nothin' to handle,” Stanley said. “Might be hard for you to understand, Garnet, but people been dreamin' 'bout this day for a long time and they held onto you all the time you were away. People been prayin' and makin' offerin's and that old government guy, Cary Stevens, who opened your file is like some kinda local hero around here now. So you don't need to handle yourself around us. Just be here, man.”

“S'right,” Jane said and held my hand. “Guaranteed you're a funny-lookin' Indyun right now, kinda look
more like a parakeet than a Raven, but this is your home, these are your people and your family. I held you when you were just a baby. I watched you learn to crawl'n walk. You belong with us. Settle in for a bit. Let us know you.”

“Know me? Hell, I don't even know me.”

“S'what I mean,” said Stanley. “Here you don't have to be anybody or anything. People gonna be feedin' you and spoilin' you just like you're a little kid for a long time. So be a kid. Look around, learn, let them take care of you.”

We stood there awhile in silence. The three of us taking turns glancing at each other before turning our heads to pretend we were studying something in the distance. The day was one of those bright, cloudless, windless days we get around here every once in a while and every day like that these last five years reminds me of that one moment my first day home. We started walking again without comment.

“What're you thinkin', little brother?” Jane asked finally.

“Thinking? Lots at the same time, I guess.”

“Me too,” Stanley said, stooping to pick up a flat rock. He skimmed it over the lake. “We used to do this.”

“What?” I asked.

“This.” He picked up another rock. “The four of us. You, me, Jackie'n Jane.”

He cupped the rock in his hand and with a spinning sidearm motion hurled it in a high, wide arc over the
water. The wild spinning of the rock continued right through its climb and down into its entry into the water. It hit with a dull plop instead of a splash. The sound made me laugh.

They were both grinning at me.

“You always did that,” Jane said.

“What?”

“Every time those rocks landed in the water you always giggled just like that. I remember. You always got a big kick out of that sound.”

“When was this?”

“You were only about three,” Stanley said, sending another rock spinning into the air. “We'd go for walks in the bush and wind up at this little creek had a big beaver pond in it. The four of us. You'd sit on a log and watch as we chucked rocks into that beaver pond. Jackie was the one who first made that sound and when you heard it you laughed just like you did just now. Cracked us all up. We rolled around on the shore of that beaver pond and laughed till our guts were sore. So we got into this kinda contest makin' them sounds to find out who could make you laugh the most.”

“Yeah. And Jackie'n Stanley even worked up a scorin' system. Had somethin' to do with height, I think. The higher you could make that rock go spinning up and still get that ploppin' sound, the more points you got. I think I won.”

“You never won,” Stanley said. “Was me! Losin' your mem'ry in your old age?” He ducked Jane's playful slap.

“Anyway, little bro', you just kinda sat there'n laughed all the time. Useta make us all real happy. Funny how you laugh the same way after all this time,” Jane said.

“You guys remember all this like it was yesterday or something,” I said quietly.

“Hey-yuh,” said Stanley.

“Yes,” Jane said, quietly too.

“Wish I could. I don't remember anything. It's weird. I believe you and everything, but there's this part of me that thinks there's some kind of scam going on here and I'm the patsy.”

“There's no scam, Garnet,” Stanley said. “Nobody here wants anythin' from you. We all want lots
for
you but nothin'
from
you.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Jane said, “we all kinda want for you to wanna come home. To be with us again. We all kinda want for you to be happy. And we all kinda want for you to want all that for yourself.”

“I don't know what I want, really.”