People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past) (3 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: People of the Owl: A Novel of Prehistoric North America (North America's Forgotten Past)
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Arnold cocked his jaw, considered, and asked point-blank. “What is your interest in our farm. So far as I know, this site is on private property.”
Umbaugh nodded. “Yes, Mr. Beauregard, it is. Louisiana has over seven hundred mound sites that we know about. Hundreds more that we don’t. Perhaps thousands have been destroyed by field leveling, and others have been hauled away over the years for highway fill, causeways, and levees. We would like to work with you in the preservation of this site. We have programs—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know about government ‘programs.’ It sounds so good. ‘We’re from the government, we’re here to help you.’ Next time you turn around, you’re in noncompliance with some damn thing. That, or some EPA or OSHA asshole is poking his nose up your bohungus to certify your fertilizer, or check the green cards on the hired help, or the frogs are being born with too many legs, or some damned thing.”
“I know, but our program—”
“With all due respect, Ms. Umbaugh”—he gave her the ingratiating smile again—“we would like to politely refuse your help.”
“Well,” she said with a sigh, “thank you for at least letting me come and see the site. I’ll leave you a card, and if you ever have any questions—”
“Yeah, right, I’ll call.”
Anson turned, head tilted. “Mr. Beauregard, I can sure understand your attitude about the government.”
“You can?”
Anson nodded. “Out of fear of the government, some of the most important mounds in the state have been bulldozed by worried landowners.”
“They must have snapped those guys’ butts right into court before they could grab their hats.”
“It was private property,” Anson replied laconically. “Just like your farm here. I’d hope that we’ve all learned our lesson. You see, the reason we’re here is that you are the legal owner of this site. We want to let you know what you have here, and why it is important.”
“What’s it worth?” he asked absently, squinting at the mounds of dirt. Just at rough guess, he figured it at about ten thousand cubic yards.
“Worth?” Anson shrugged. “In dollars, not much. But when it comes to information—to the questions we can answer—it’s priceless. This is a satellite site, an outlier tied to the Poverty Point site a little ways up Bayou Macon.” He pointed to the thicket of trees that dropped off toward the muddy bayou no more than fifty yards beyond the brush.
Patty Umbaugh said, “We have a registry of sites—”
“Nope!” Arnold shook his head categorically. “First you register it, then every tourist in the damned world wants to trespass on your property to see it, and some government bureaucrat wants to tell you how to run it.” He waved a finger. “The answer is no. Period.”
She looked pissed, but he had to hand it to her, she did a good job of covering.
Anson rubbed his jaw. “If you don’t want to work with the state to preserve the site, that’s fine. Would you mind, however, if we brought field schools, students, up from time to time to dig here? Everything that we find belongs to you, of course. You can keep the artifacts here, or at your corporate headquarters, or we would be happy to curate them at the university.”
Arnold rolled his lip over his chew, and slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so, Dr. Anson. First off, there’s liability to think about. What if one of your students fell and broke his neck, or some such thing? Or they snuck in at night to dig for arrowheads? And third, sure, BARB might own this site free and clear now, but who’s to say what’s gonna happen in the future? I heard tell of folks got taken to court over down by Lake Charles by some Injun group over a burial ground. We don’t need those kinds of headaches.”
Anson looked as if he were about to throw up. “But, you will preserve the site, right?”
Arnold smiled. Hell, cowboys and Indians never did get along together. “Yeah, well, we’ll take it under consideration. Like I said, either we’re efficient, or, well, just like your Indians. Extinct.”
A
rnold squinted in the midday sun. The soft Gulf breeze blew up from the southwest. It sent puffy clouds sailing across the sky and brought the promise of afternoon rains. The big yellow Caterpillar growled and roared as it dropped the rippers and rolled a sweetgum stump out of the damp black soil. The roots popped and snapped like firecrackers.
The Hoferberg farm was unrecognizable now. The old oak trees that had shaded the lane had been cut down and sold for lumber. The house and barn, the foundation, the cisterns, and outbuildings had been flattened or plucked up with the backhoe and trucked off. Where the trees had somberly guarded the archaeological site, now an unrestricted view of the Bayou Macon could be seen; only the cane brakes under the slope of Macon Ridge remained standing.
Arnold had made a special effort to be here for the leveling. He’d never seen an archaeological site until Dr. Anson brought him here. And he sure as hell had never seen one scraped flat before. So he was curious. As the Cat cut great swaths through the mounds, he walked along with his cup of black coffee—because real cowboys drank it that way—in his hand. He spat his Copenhagen every now and then, and looked at the black dirt.
Most of Macon Ridge was a tan-brown loess, a silt blown clear down from the last glaciers up north. But the dirt in and around the mounds was crankcase-dripping black. Every now and again he had picked up one of the oddly shaped clay balls—finding them the perfect weight to fling out into the bayou—and wondered what the Indians had used them for.
Little flat flakes of stone came up, and yes, he had even found a gray-stone arrowhead a while back. He had wanted to find an arrowhead just as much as he wanted to see Indian bones come rolling out of the ground, but the rich loamy soil seemed against him on that one. All in all, there wasn’t much exciting to see. So how, then, could that Dr. Anson have spouted all that nonsense about ideas, and trade, and all the rest?
Out by the highway the big John Deere 9000s, brought in on
flatbeds, were already starting their runs. By noon tomorrow, the whole of Hoferberg farm would be disked, harrowed, fertilized, and ready for the trucks bringing the seed drills.
Arnold shook his head, disappointed at the bulldozing. He had expected something a bit more entertaining than featureless black dirt rolling under the blade. He looked again at the gray-stone arrowhead—a big thing, as long as his finger—and slipped it into his pocket as he turned to walk back to his truck. Glancing at his watch, he could still meet Harvey Snodgrass at the Delphi café and show off his arrowhead.
He was watching his razor-toed cowboy boots as they pressed into the damp black earth. The light brown polish looked so clean and fresh against the dirt. That’s when the gleam caught his eye. He bent, reaching down past some of the endless, oddly shaped clay balls, and picked up a little red stone.
With his thumb, he cleaned the clinging dirt away and stared in surprise. It was a carving. A little red potbellied stone owl. Something about it reminded him of a barred owl.
Arnold was more than a little intimate with barred owls, having shot his first one when he was fifteen. Not content just to leave it lay, he’d dragged it home to show off to his friends. Someone called the warden. But for quick work with a shovel, they’d have caught him with that owl. It had been closer than a’skeeter’s peter.
Turning the little red owl, he could almost believe that the craftsman who’d made it had carved a mask on the face. A masked owl? What did that mean?
Thing was, he couldn’t call up that Dr. Anson and ask. It wasn’t as if they’d parted on good company.
“Sorry,” he told the little owl. “Reckon your home had to go. Trees got to go down and crops got to go in. People can’t live without farming. It’s the future, little guy.”
He opened the door on his shiny new pickup, and paused, studying the little owl one last time before he put it in his pocket. “It’s not like your Indians are coming back.”
Thunder roared so close it was deafening. Arnold jerked his head up to stare at the sky.
T
he lightning bolt flashed white-blue, the
clap-bang!
startling the soul half out of José Rodriguez’s body where he sat at the Caterpillar’s controls.
“¡
Madre de dios!
”
With the afterimage of the flash still burning behind his eyes, José leaped from his idling Cat, and ran. He reached Arnold within moments. Rolling him over, José got his second fright for the day. The lightning bolt had done horrible things to Arnold’s head.
“Blessed Mother,” he whispered, and backed away.
José glanced at the tiny red owl that lay in the soil inches from Arnold’s fingers. It glinted in the storm light like a glaring eye.
José crossed himself, then he stumbled for the open driver’s door of Arnold’s pickup. The cell phone was fried. He had to get to a phone. Fast! As he cranked the wheel and sped away, the rear tires pressed the little red owl back into the rich black soil.
F
rom the shadowed mouth of her cave, old Heron stared out past the Tree of Life. Another in the endless cycles passed as the winter broke and the old Dance started again.
In the far north, the strengthening spring sun released moisture from the winter-banked snows. At the same time, warm winds blew glistening silver bands of rain up from the gulf to fall on the awakening forests. Freshets added their contribution to the flood as it swelled, rippling like flexed muscles along the great rivers that fed the Father Water.
The waters flowed, draining the continent, swirling and breaching the banks, cutting crevasses through the levees. In places it rerouted the wide span, changing its course, dissecting backswamps and meanders. Where it rushed, soils were scoured and old glacial gravels were lifted and carried along, pattering like hail along the worn channel. In other places the water slowed, dropping its load of fine silt. It was ancient—this dance of movement and renewal—the majestic pumping heartbeat of the continent.
As it neared the gulf, the great river slowed and spread its bounty over the wide, tree-choked floodplain. There, hemmed by a ridge of glacial dust on the west and ancient eroded hills to the east, the waters disgorged their final rich bounty of silt and sand before filtering down to the crystal blue gulf.
Limpid brown water inundated the backswamps, rising around the trees. Silt settled slowly. It swirled when churned by silver-sided chad, suckers, and long gar; aquatic insects burrowed through its brown blanket. Crawfish hunted those still depths, picking through the muck with delicate
claws—alert for the ever-prowling catfish, heron, or bass. Cypress and tupelo swelled, their leaves lush, while prop roots sucked nutrients from the renewed mud. The flood was life, rebirth.
The old woman sharpened her gaze. She tilted her head, hearing the faint voice rising and falling. “Yes, I hear you. Where are you, boy?”
Extending her hand, she could feel tendrils of Power being gathered, manipulated.
“The Brothers,” she whispered. “They’re at it again. Always fighting.”
They were old adversaries, those two. Day and night, order and chaos, they remained inextricably bound yet opposed, creations from the dawn of time. In this place, for this latest duel, they had taken the form of birds: one white, a silent hunter of the night breezes; the other black, a raucous creature of the sun-drenched sky.
She could feel the tension between them rolling out of the future. A lonely boy’s voice called out, caught at the point where their lines of Power collided.
Another of their endless contests was approaching, borne across the still evening waters on four slim canoes. How would it end this time?
D
ark clouds slipped soundlessly across the sky as night fell. The faintest glow could be made out in the periodic breaks between the flooded trees. The lead canoe sailed silently forward, driven by the fatigued strokes of two young men. Unease reflected in the youths’ dark eyes. Behind them brown water rippled in the expanding V of their wake. It licked at the trunks of bitter pecan and water oak, then lapped against pioneer stands of sweetgum, hackberry, and ash that rose above the backswamp.
In the dusky shadows, three more slim vessels followed, the occupants silently paddling their craft. On occasion they glanced warily about at the hanging beards of moss, at the silvered webs spun by hand-sized yellow spiders, and at the clinging mass of vines. Occasionally a copperhead draped from a water-crested branch.
“White Bird, are you sure you know where you are going?” a young paddler called from the second boat. He spoke in the language of the river—a Trade pidgin that had grown over generations.
“I know these backswamps as surely as you know the twists and turns of your forests back home, Hazel Fire. Trust me.” White Bird blinked his eyes where he sat in the rear of the lead canoe, his back pressed hard against the matting that cushioned the concave stern. He had hoped to be home by nightfall. Ahead of him, Yellow Spider’s paddle moved mechanically, his arms as tired and loosejointed as White Bird’s own.
“I don’t blame them for being nervous.” Yellow Spider scratched
at a chigger bite on his calf. “It is a frightening thing, being cast loose in so much water, never knowing which way you are going. Remember how we felt in their country?”
Twelve long moons had passed since they had struck north, following the winding course of the Father Water, keeping to the backwaters, avoiding the river’s current as they battled their way upstream. By the fall equinox they had landed their canoe in the far northern country of the Wolf People.
Trade was old, but it was mostly conducted between peoples, or by solitary Traders in canoes who traveled the rivers. The key was the river system that linked the huge continental interior. Copper from the great northern lakes, special chert from Flint Ridge in the northeast, soapstone from the eastern mountains, and hematite from the northwest were but a few of the exotic Trade items prized by the Sun People. But goods moved slowly and in a trickle. The farther a person traveled from the source, the more valuable the Trade was. The farther a Trader traveled, the less likely he would have the items he started with. The Power of Trade was that items be Traded at each stop.
White Bird and Yellow Spider had tried a different tack. They had carefully avoided the River Peoples, often traveling by night, on their journey northward. Upon their arrival, with their Trade intact, they elected to spend the winter. That meant freezing and shivering in the Wolf People’s thatch-sided huts while snow twirled out of the cold gray skies, and frigid winds moaned through the naked trees. In that time they had traded judiciously, offering their beautifully dyed textiles, their basswood rope and cordage, small sections of alligator hide, and necklaces made of the beast’s teeth and claws. They had pitched in with the hunting, packing firewood, and generally making themselves useful. Both had struggled to learn as much of the language as they could. As honored guests, each had been provided with a young woman, and by the time of their departure, their wives had begun to swell with children.
“These women,” the chief had told them, “they do not wish to go south and live with strangers. Their families, clans, and people are here. They will be here when you come back.”
Their Trade had been wildly successful. So much so that the piles of goods stacked in their small hut would have overflowed their single canoe. In the end it had taken all of White Bird’s guile, the promise of immense wealth, and the gift of half of his profits, to talk three additional canoes into accompanying them south.
With the breaking of the river ice, White Bird, Yellow Spider, and the Wolf Traders had loaded their canoes and slipped them into the
frigid current. The descent of the river had taken but two moons, a third the time needed to paddle upstream. Nor had the journey been as dangerous, their travel time through potentially hostile country being shorter, their numbers larger and more threatening to potential raiders.
As they neared the end of the long voyage, their narrow craft were stacked gunwale high with fabric sacks that contained the winter’s Trade: chipped stone blanks, copper beads, thin sections of ground slate, polished greenstone celts, and adzes. In addition they had large winter hides from buffalo, elk, and a highly prized hide from the great silver bear. Smaller prime hides came from beaver, northern bobcat, mink, and marten. One hide, traded from the far north, came from something called a carcajou—an animal they had never seen—but the fur was black, lustrous, and soft. Other pouches contained herbs and medicinal plants: wild licorice for sore throats; alum root for diarrhea; gayfeather for heart and urinary problems; puccoon for wounds, menstrual problems, and to stay awake; mint for tea, the relief of gas, and stomach problems; yucca root for joint soreness and a laxative; and coneflower for toothaches.
But in White Bird’s mind the most important thing he carried was the fabric sack of goosefoot seeds that rested between his feet. That was the journey’s greatest prize. And for that, he would gamble everything. What would the People do for a man who offered them the future?
“I thought we would be there by now,” Yellow Spider muttered, banking his paddle long enough to roll his muscular shoulders.
“The cut across from the crevasse is longer than you remember.” White Bird smiled. “Besides, if you will recall, we were fresh and excited when we left here last spring.”
“And the backswamp is deeper,” Yellow Spider added. “Look at this.” He gestured at the high water ringing the trees. “Fishing must be more difficult this spring with such deep water. People will be adding on to their nets. We should have gone northwest for ironstone. Given the depth of the water and the size of the nets needed to fish these currents, net sinkers will be in demand.”
“We did fine.” White Bird tapped the sack of goosefoot seed with his foot. “Besides, had we gone northwest, the mountain people wouldn’t have provided their women. Not like those Wolf People.” He paused thoughtfully as he stroked with his paddle. “I, for one, will miss Lark. She kept the robes more than warm.”
As Yellow Spider picked up his paddle, White Bird rested his across the gunwales and rolled his weary shoulders. Fatigue ran from his fingers, up his arms, and into the middle of his back. His
belly had run empty long ago, as though nothing but hunger lay behind the corded muscles. An image of Lark flashed in his head. He remembered the sparkle in her eyes that first night when she had crawled into his bed. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel her hands tracing the swell of his chest and the ripple of muscle that led down past his navel. Her gasp of delight as she reached down to grip his manhood lingered in his ears.
“Yes,” he whispered into the stillness of the swamp, “I shall miss you, Lark.” In his nineteen turning of seasons he had never had a full-time woman before. The notion that she had been waiting every time he returned to their cozy home had grown on him. She was a strange one, true, raised as she was by a different people with different gods and peculiar beliefs, but she had been pretty, devoted to him, and always there. Rot take it, a man could get used to living like that.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Yellow Spider said smugly as he ducked a clump of hanging moss. “Your mother probably has a whole string of women lined up for you. Not only are you worthy—as our return will prove—but you’re in line to replace your uncle.” He hesitated tactfully. “If you haven’t already.”
“Uncle Cloud Heron will be fine. Owl help me if he isn’t.”
Yellow Spider laughed. “Oh, stop it. You’ll be a better Speaker for the clan than anyone I know. You have a way about you, White Bird. A calm assurance that no one else has. People can’t help but like you. Look at how we did up north. Look at the return we got. How are you going to explain that you gave half of your Trade to these barbarians?”
“Watch your tongue.” White Bird shot a quick look back over his shoulder. “You never know if any of them have been learning our language. Lark and Robin were learning it quickly enough.”
“I was just thinking how much I miss that Robin.” Yellow Spider sighed. “Somehow I think the clan is going to marry me off quick as a snap. Who knows whom they’ll pick for me.” He paused. “Unlike you. Or are you sorry that Lark isn’t in your canoe instead of me?”
“Come on, Cousin. Think! Lark and Robin belong up there. That’s where their families are. They’d be strangers here, cast loose without kin of any kind. And, you’re right. The clan will have you married to at least one other woman, perhaps two, within the turning of seasons.”
Yellow Spider lowered his voice. “Do you think Spring Cypress is a woman yet?”
White Bird shrugged. “If she is, she may be married already.”
Did his voice cloak the sudden sense of worry? She’d begun her fourteenth summer when he and Yellow Spider had left for the north. But for a late menstruation, she’d have been married—most girls were by that age.
“I talked to Spring Cypress before I left. It was a risk we had to take. Even if she passed her moon, her uncle, Speaker Clay Fat, could have been persuaded to wait.”
“Or not, as the case may be.”
“Are you always so gloomy?”
“No, I’m just connected to this world. You, my cousin, live in another. Take those seeds you’re so enamored of. Goosefoot is goosefoot. We have our own. Why invest in someone else’s?”
“Because these seeds are twice as big as ours.”
“If they’ll even grow here.” Yellow Spider smashed a mosquito that managed to penetrate the grease he’d smeared on his skin. “The dirt’s different.”
“Dirt’s dirt.”
“Shows what you know. And the seasons are different. It doesn’t get as cold here. Maybe those seeds are just like ours and … and it’s the cold that makes them get that big?”
“Trust me.”
Yellow Spider nodded in the shadowy half-light that penetrated the canopy of trees and filtered through the hanging moss and vines. “To be sure, Cousin. I’ve trusted you this far, and look where it has gotten me. I am coming home with the most successful Trading venture ever. Not just a canoeful of goods, but four! We own the world, Cousin!”
White Bird smiled into the increasing darkness. They did indeed own the world. No matter that the Wolf Traders considered half of their canoes’ contents to be theirs, the fact was, it would all end up being spread among the clans. The credit would be his. People would listen to him. His influence would maintain his clan’s position, and if anything, add to Owl Clan’s prestige. The seeds at his feet were the next step in changing the people, making them greater than they had ever been.
Suffused with the glow of success, he barely heard the whisper of wings in the darkness as an owl circled above, charting their progress.

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