The Victor and the Vanquished

Markwildyr.com, Post #157

 Photo Courtesy of iconsdb.com

 

Got several comments on “The Tortoise,” last week’s post. You seemed to like it. Thanks.

 

J M Snyder Books is reprinting The Victor and the Vanquished, one of my non-historical novels. Vanquished is the story of eighteen-year-old William Greyhorse, a talented Native American wood carver trapped in a family with alcoholic parents as the caretaker for his two younger sisters. He’s commonly called “Wilum” because the youngest girl, little Junie can’t pronounce William. On October 1, 2020, I gave you a look at Chapter 1 of the book. I’d like to take a look at Chapter 2 this week.

 To recap, in Chapter 1, Wilum’s father stabbed a man while on a drunken binge and abruptly uproots his family from their reservation home in order to flee to New Mexico. As they stop at a filling station before leaving the reservation, James Longhunter, a contemporary of Wilum’s, confesses he is in love with Wilum, and claims he will wait for him to return if asked. Wilum is stunned and makes no such request. In the following excerpt, the Greyhorse family is traveling south, bound for Albuquerque. Let’s see what Wilum is thinking and feeling.

                                                                      * * * * *

                                          THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED

                                                                    Chapter 2

 As we sped south on the blacktop, I lay on some of our things in the back of the pickup and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even Junie’s cute tricks could get me out of my blue funk. I kept thinking of James back at the store. Of course, I’d heard the stories about him. How he didn’t like sports or hunting or roughhousing. And how he looked at guys in a way that made them queasy.

He used to hang around our place all the time, but lately my mom didn’t even try to hide the way she felt about him. When my old man, Woodrow—his friends and drinking buddies called him Woodie—came home, he’d chase James off by shouting curses and slinging rocks at him. James wouldn’t show his face if the pickup was parked beside the house.

We pulled off into a roadside park sometime before nightfall and ate some of the bread and lunch meat we’d brought with us. Actually, with the potato chips and pickles and sodas and things, it was probably a better meal than we’d had in a while. I always liked baloney. Liked the way it smelled and how it felt on my tongue. And the taste too, of course.

My brother’d done most of the driving because the old man was suffering from a hangover, and that was a dangerous time for everyone. It was all right if he passed out, but if he was conscious, he made sure everyone shared his pain. Mom wasn’t doing too good either. I couldn’t tell if it was a dry drunk or her way of isolating herself from the rest of us. Anyway, it was up to me to make sure Nola and little Junie were tucked into their blankets in the bed of the truck that night.

I had trouble sleeping even though I was tired. I kept thinking of James and what he’d said. And about the things he wanted to do with me. My thing got hard again, and I put my hand down on it, but with the girls in the truck with me, all I could do was turn over on my side and try to ignore it. It took an awful lot of ignoring.

I remembered another camp-out with James on the Beaver a few years back. We weren’t more than fifteen, and that was before they started saying things about him. After we’d eaten scraps of fried beef slapped between slices of light bread, we sat around our little campfire and talked in the dark. We’d opened up and revealed things we probably wouldn’t have in another time or place. I told him some of the bad stuff my dad had done and how I felt about things.

He’d let me know how it was with him and his mom. His dad and both his brothers were gone, lost in a bad wreck that took them all at one time. Two uncles and a cousin died in the same accident. James Longhunter was one of the few kids on the rez who didn’t have a male relative he could look up to. Unless you counted me, that is. Mine was living and breathing, but he was dead to me. That night, like it was bound to happen, the subject had turned to girls.

“You like them?” James had asked.

“Sure. You?”

“They’re all right. But I ain’t sure they’re worth all the trouble.”

I thought that one over. My dad put my mom through all kinds of hell, but she gave it back to him sometimes when she had a hangover or didn’t like the way things were going. Matthew was always sniffing around one girl or the other. So I tried to act grown up about it.

“Piece of ass is worth a little trouble.”

“You know that for fact?”

I hadn’t expected him to call me on it.

“You ever had any?” he pressed.

“I guess not.” I admitted.

“You guess not? Seems like that’s something you oughta know for sure.”

“Mary Pilgrim felt my thing in the coat closet at school.”

“Mary feels all the boys’ pricks.”

“She ever feel you up?”

“Tried it.”

“You ever…you know, done it to a girl.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh.” Then he got real quiet for a second, and I was scared about what he was going to say next. “Don’t know if I want to.”

“Why not? Man’s gotta get a little relief,” That sounded more like Matthew than me.

“There’s other ways to take care of that.”

“Like what?” Right away I wished I could call those words back.

“Like doing it to yourself or with a good friend. You know, a special friend.”

I’d been guilty of the first, so I scooted over to the second and started babbling. “With a friend? A friend’s not built like a girl. Well…uh…unless the friend was a girl. But then she’d be a girl, and that’s not what you meant.” I ground to a halt and shut up. I was glad it was dark so he couldn’t see me blushing.

Suddenly uncomfortable around my best friend, I stood up and stretched. That wasn’t the smartest thing to do because my cock had got hard, and by the firelight, I could see where he was looking. Ashamed, I rolled up in my blankets with my back to him. After that, he went off to take a piss or something and didn’t come back for a long time. When he did, he spread his bedroll on the other side of the fire.

Had he been thinking those things about me way back then? Inside my head I heard his voice. “I love you, Wilum.”

I shivered in the dark night. Nobody’d ever said that to me before—except little Junie.

* * * *

I hope this is teaser enough to interest you I the novel. I do not have a copy of the new cover, so have picked something out of the air to represent the book… the silhouette of a gray horse.

 

I continue to ask for reviews of Wastelakapi, on Amazon. I need stars, guys.

 My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

 Now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

See you later.

 

Mark

New posts the first and third Thursday of the month at 6:00 a.m., US Mountain time. 

Excerpt from the Novel The Victor and the Vanquished

 

markwildyr.com, Post #134

 Hope everyone enjoyed the Curt Huntinghawk story that ended last week.

 I’ve recently done a couple of guest posts for fellow okie Don Travis (dontravis.com), and it got me to thinking about some o the older books I’ve done. Some of you know I wrote a series of books I call the Strobaw Family Series, starting with Cut Hand, and followed by three others that take place in the late 1800s. My guest posts were of an unpublished fifth in that series called Wastelakapi… Beloved.

 But I’ve also published some cultural tales not connected with that series. One of them is The Victor and the Vanquished, about a young Native American who grew up in an alcohol-abusive family setting and pulled himself out of it by applying his ability to whittle small figures and turning it into a successful career as a sculptor… despite coming to grips with the fact that he was gay. The following is part of the first chapter of the book.

 * * * * *

THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED 

Chapter 1

 The Native American Settlement of Rolling Hills

“Wilam!” Matthew called from the sidelines.

I waved him off and got set as the pitcher whipped a fastball over the plate. Hitchcock, a chubbo whose belly moved slower than his hips, whipped thin air—with the bat and the belly. I rolled my shoulders and pounded the glove with a fist to loosen up, hoping my brother would go away. I didn’t get a chance to play ball with the other guys very often, and I didn’t want to be pulled off the field. Besides, I’d really come down to the tribal rec center to find James, but he wasn’t around. I planned to go looking for him pretty soon.

“William Greyhorse!” Matthew yelled. “Hey, man, you need to get your butt home.”

“Not now.”

“Okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. The old man’s on a rip-snorter, and he sent me to get you.”

I spotted the kid whose glove I’d borrowed and motioned him over. Then I ran to catch up with my brother and fell into step beside him, which wasn’t easy. Matthew’d turned twenty-one this summer. All that meant to him was he could get into the bars over in Mapleton without sneaking around, but it also meant he stood six-one, and had legs to match. They ate up the ground a lot faster than mine. I was a little better than five-nine but considerably short of five-ten. I’d already accepted the fact I was the runt of the family. My dad was an even six feet. Something I’d never match.

“What’s going on?” I was panting because he hadn’t shortened his stride for me like he usually did. A bad sign.

“We’re leaving.”

“What do you mean?” I asked between gasps.

“Just that. We’re leaving. Got almost everything packed. We’re pulling out soon’s we get home.”

“Why? What happened?” I asked the question from long experience. This wouldn’t be the first time my dad—or my mom, for that matter—got drunk and pulled something so bad we had to pick up and leave. We’d already moved half a dozen times, always ending up back on the reservation after a period of exile. That’s why I was eighteen and still had another year to go in high school. Or that’s what I told myself, anyway. But I think it was probably true.

“Old man got in a fight last night…or maybe it was this morning. Cut up Brewster Whitetail pretty bad.”

“Drunk?”

Matthew’s laugh was almost a snarl. “Both of them.”

“Kill him?”

“No. But he’s cut up pretty bad.”

“Where’d it happen?”

“Not on the rez, thank God. Else the FBI’d chase us all over hell and gone.”

“How come the cops didn’t pick him up?”

“Him and his buddies were partying out in the boondocks somewhere. He hightailed it home while the others took Brewster to the hospital. The cops’ll be along soon enough. That’s why he’s in a hurry.”

“Where’re we going?”

“Dunno. He got some money from Uncle Dulce. Said something about New Mexico.”

Our place was a rundown affair sitting right at the eastern edge of the little settlement of Rolling Hills. The big barn behind it was usually empty except for junk. Now, our twenty-year-old pickup was hidden in the middle of it, half loaded with our belongings. The truck had been black once, but the Bondo smeared all over it rendered the vehicle two-toned. Black and gray usually looked pretty good together, but not on a beat-up Dodge half-ton. The barn already smelled of rubber, gasoline, and burned motor oil.

Dad lurched out of the back door loaded down with his hunting rifle and fishing tackle. He was sweaty and wild-eyed from his drinking, but he didn’t seem drunk. Cutting up a man must have sobered him some.

“Where the hell you been?”

“Rec center.”

“Well, get your ass in gear. We’re out of here in ten minutes.”

I headed for the room I shared with my sisters, Nola and little Junie. There wasn’t much I wanted to salvage except for my carving knives—and my clothes, for all they were worth. Mostly Matthew’s hand-me-downs cut to size.

But my knives were something else. Because I never knew when Mom would pass out for the day or when Dad would come home mad dog drunk, I was practically house bound all summer on account of the girls. And during the school year, I’d rush home as soon as class was over. So I whittled to keep busy. Got pretty good at it, too. I made all the toys the girls ever had, including their dolls.

The last couple of Christmases I’d even sold a few carvings. I put the little money I made right back into better knives. Mom said it was a waste of good money buying up different carving knives, but if it was, it was the only wasting I ever did. I never bought candy or soda pop like the other guys. But sometimes I stood sweets for Nola and little Junie with money I made from doing quick chores around town or selling a carving.

I liked to whittle animals mostly, but I did a head of Nola once that looked pretty much like her. Or at least the way she looked when I carved it a couple of years back. Never been able to capture little Junie, though. It always came out bland like a baby’s face. Nola said that's because Junie had a bland baby’s face, even if she was walking around and jabbering hard enough to raise a dust devil.

I passed Mom in the living room. She was folding some sheets and towels and looked sober. Tired but sober. Her cheeks were sorta mashed in—you know, sunken. She’d been over at Uncle Dulce’s and Aunt Aurora’s last night, and she usually didn’t drink around her youngest sister’s family. They were born-again people. That was why I’d been able to get away for a ball game down at the rec center this morning.

Nola, thirteen and big enough to know what was going on, seemed scared. Little Junie wasn’t yet three, and she just looked excited. Of course, every day was an adventure to her. She was a happy baby except when my dad was in the house raising hell.

“Wilam!” she yelled when I came through the door. She called me that because she couldn’t pronounce William when she first started talking. The rest of the family fell into the habit of using that label, and pretty soon I was Wilam to the whole reservation. I patted Junie on the head and gave her a kiss on the cheek before rushing to our room and slinging my things into plastic grocery bags.

We abandoned all of the furniture; it was mostly junk, anyway. That left enough room in the bed of the pickup for the girls and me. Matthew kicked over the motor and made straight for the Mini-Mart at the south end of the reservation for gas and food to take on the road. Dad and Mom went inside while he filled the gas tank and a couple of Jerry cans. I bailed out of the bed of the pickup when I spotted James walking down the road on those long legs of his. I knew he’d seen me, but he veered off around behind the store. I found him sitting at a little picnic table they put back there for customers.

“I heard,” he said.

“Yeah, looks like the Greyhorse family’s off and running again. Man, I get tired of it. I wish we would just settle down somewhere.”

He didn’t have an answer for my wishes, so we went quiet. The loblolly pines flooded the clearing with the sharp smell of resin. Somewhere a woodpecker tapped out a message only he understood. It got a little awkward after a minute. I put it down to the way our leaving.

I sat down on the table across from him and waited. Finally, he said something I didn’t catch.

“What?” I looked over at him. He had on his usual blue jeans, gray muscle shirt, and home-stitched buckskin moccasins. He’d worn those moccasins ever since his feet quit growing. He looked good. That thought was off and running before I could grab hold and pull it back.

“Wish I could figure out an easy way?”

“To do what?” I asked.

“Letting you know how I feel. About you.”

“I know how you feel. We’re friends. We’re about the only friends each other has.”

“Yeah. I guess.” His fingertip traced a set of initials carved into the rough oak table. “We’re both loners.”

“Just a couple of oddballs.” Why the hell did I say that?

“You’re just different because you act like the man of the family and take care of your sisters” There was bitterness in his voice. “Me, I’m a certified oddball.”

“That’s trash talk, James.”

“Okay, here’s some more. I’ve been wanting to do it with you for a long time, but I was scared to let you know.” His voice faltered. “Every…every other guy on the rez who don’t have a girl for the night comes knocking, and I do whatever they want. I do it even when I don’t like them. But you never came around like that. So I just kept my mouth shut, afraid of chasing off my best friend.”

I sat there with my cheeks flaming.

He fixed me with dark, haunted eyes. “Go ahead, say it.”

“S-say what?” I stuttered.

“Whatever you’re thinking. Call me a queer or a faggot. Tell me you don’t want anything to do with me anymore. Or tell me it’s okay, and we’re still friends. Or tell me you’ve been wanting us to do it too.”

“Why’re you saying this to me?” I swatted at a wasp buzzing around my head.

He shrugged and glanced off into the trees over my shoulder. “Because...because I like you. And I thought you liked me.”

My face felt hot. “I do, you know that. But…but….”

“But not like that.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I do. Or could. But we’re leaving. Going away. Probably forever.”

“No, you’ll comeback someday. But I know you’re leaving for right now. Else I wouldn’t of got up the nerve to tell you.” He looked at me again. “You’re taking off in a few minutes, so I can’t chase you away. I can say anything I want.”

“Okay. Now that’s out of the way, is there anything else?” Where’d that stupid question come from?

“Just that you’re the best-looking guy around. That your’re fun and a good friend. And that I want to touch you and do things with you.” He shut up for a moment while he studied those initials enshrined in the picnic table. “That’s all there is, except….” He swallowed hard. “Well, except to say I’ll wait for you if you ask me to. I won’t get with no one else as long as I know you’re coming back for me someday. I can do it. I know I can.”

A shiver went down my back, and my thing started to get stiff in my pants. I couldn’t get my voice past my throat.

His puppy dog look changed to one of anguish. He dropped his gaze to the table again. “That’s okay, I understand. But I gotta let you know something. No matter what happens, I gotta say it.” He lifted his head and met my eyes. “I love you, Wilam.”

I’d have said something to that, all right, but I don’t know what because right then Matthew poked his head around the building. My brother’s glance swept James and then fixed on me.

“Come on, Pissant. The old man’s ready to go.”

 

* * * * *

 Hope that makes you hungry for more. I might even read the book again to see how I handled things back in the day.

 I will now revert to my usual schedule of posting on the first and third Thursday of each month. And before you ask… I have no idea of what comes next.

 My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

 The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

 DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

 And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

 Until next time.

 

Mark

 New posts at 6:00 a.m. UA Mountain time every first and third Thursday of the month.

Interregnum, A Curt Huntinghawk Story, Part 5

 markwildyr.com, Post #131

So the kid who’s first words to Hawk were “Don’t rape me,” found some pleasure in bedding with the big Indian. But he fled to his own room immediately thereafter, and Hawk doesn’t know how Luis feels about what they did. Let’s pick it up from there.

* * * * *

INTERREGNUM, A Curt Huntinghawk Story, Part 5

 Awake with the morning star, Hawk took his coffee on the porch and thought about Luis. About last night. The kid was lonely… and he was lonely. They’d fed a mutual need. So what? What they’d done was in keeping with what he and Grove had worked out. The boy reminded him of Ramon in so many ways, yet he had the insolence of a Wolverine. He was a powerful physical draw.

Hawk ate breakfast, and still Luis had not come out of the bedroom. Ashamed, most likely. It was Saturday, so Hawk went shopping for groceries as usual. As an afterthought, he picked up a few clothes for the boy. Luis was in the kitchen eating, dressed only in his shorts. Before he could flee to the bedroom for clothes, Hawk tossed a package at him.

Hawk had a good eye. The boy pulled on a pair of jeans that hugged his hips snugly. The T-shirt looked form fit. The dark blue button-up could have been custom-made. The kid looked like a million dollars, especially when he smiled his pleasure. He frowned suddenly.

“I don’t have money to pay for these.”

“Nobody leaves empty handed,” Hawk said. “You’ll need clothes when you go.” The boy looked up at those words but held his silence.

In order to get Luis out of the house for a little while, Hawk coaxed him into the pickup for a drive. Hawk gassed up, bought some other supplies, and they finished the afternoon off with cheeseburgers at the town’s only park. Hawk saw a number of federal officers, including some INS, but they paid the two men no mind. There was an advantage to having a badge.

That night Luis stopped him as he was headed to his bedroom. “I can come in with you, no? But—”

“Yeah, I know. You don’t want to be raped.”

The kid blushed but followed Hawk like a puppy, standing and watching as he disrobed. “You always sleep al fresco?” he asked as Hawk slipped into the bed. “I can too, no?”

The boy snapped off the light before shucking his clothes, but Hawk caught the flash of a pale thigh and a mysterious darkness between Luis’ legs. He reached for the boy as soon as they were settled. Luis tensed.

“Cool it, kid. I’m not going to rape you. If you ever feel me inside you, you’ll have to ask for it.” A shiver passed through the teen’s body as Hawk slowly fingered the brown aureoles until the nipples stood up sharply. He traced the chest, feeling the hard muscles and deciding the kid had worked hard on his father’s ranch. The belly fluttered at his touch, betraying excitement. Hawk sucked a nipple, and Luis jumped like he had been shocked, but his hand clasped the back of Hawk’s head, holding him in place.

“Aieee!” the boy cried, thrusting his chest up at Hawk. “The other one!”

Hawk lay back on the bed. “Your turn, kid.”

Trying to show a little reluctance, the youth rose to his elbow and placed his lips on Hawk’s smooth chest. “You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen,” he whispered. “I have never seen skin like yours…almost like ours, but not quite so. There is some red in it, I think.” He chuckled. “That is why they call you redskins, no?” The movement of Luis’ mouth against his chest tickled and excited him. “You smell so clean, yet like a man, too. You are muy macho, Hawk.”

“And my macho’s about to pop a cork, kid.”

Luis came up to look Hawk in the eye. “Luis gets you hot, no?”

“Yes,” Hawk said, placing a hand behind the kid’s head and forcing their lips to meet. Startled, Luis panicked. His hands pushed roughly against Hawk’s shoulders. His mouth clenched. Hawk held him, moving his head slightly from side to side. The boy held his breath as long as possible and then exhaled. With his gust of breath, he expelled his resistance. His mouth went slack. Hawk’s tongue slid between the enamel of the boy’s teeth and explored the warm, moist cavity. Watching, Hawk saw his eyelids flutter and close. Long black lashes lay against the boy's cheeks. Gently, then with growing urgency, the youth sucked the tongue invading his mouth.

When they parted, Luis swore something quietly in Spanish and buried his head in Hawk’s neck. Still without speaking, he slipped down the Indian’s muscled torso. Hawk pulled him up so that they were eye-to-eye.

“There’s something you should understand, Luis. No matter what you do for me, I can’t do anything beyond what we did last night. Understand?”

“Yes,” the boy whispered, his eyes flaming with lust. “What… what do you want me to do for you?”

“Whatever you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.” Luis’ voice held a plaintive tone. He sat cross-legged beside Hawk as a grin claimed his features. “I excite you? You like Luis, no?”

“Yes, or I wouldn’t do this with him.”

“I like Hawk too. You make me feel…different. Like doing things with you is all right. Not dirty. Not…wrong.” The boy licked his lips nervously. “Like this,” he said, bending to Hawk’s groin and finding a rhythm.

“Kid,” Hawk said in a strangled voice. “You’d better stop …now!”

Too late. Hawk spewed like Old Faithful! Luis came up gagging and choking.

Without bothering to clean himself, Hawk pushed the young man flat on the bed and reciprocated, slowly but surely drawing Luis to a climax.

Afterward, Hawk went for a pan of warm water and a cloth to wash them, aware of the puzzled brown eyes following his every move, studying him as if seeing him for the first time. When they were clean and dry, Hawk covered them with a sheet and turned on his side. After a few moments, the boy fitted his body to Hawk’s. He lay for a long time without sleeping conjuring visions of Grove Whitedeer as they worked and played and made love. In the afterglow of the night’s sexual release, Hawk was grateful to this stranger sleeping against him. He’d gone beyond what he’d promised, putting his mouth to the kid. That didn’t bother him, but he nonetheless suffered the loneliness of one separated from his enamored.

 

 Luis slept in his own room for the rest of the week, wrestling with feelings that were foreign to him. On Saturday, he found himself standing naked beside Hawk’s bed. Not quite understanding his raging emotions, he threw back the covers and straddled Hawk’s groin. “How come you did not take me to sleep with you again?” he demanded. “You want me, I know it. I can feel it!”

“Luis, your body is yours to give or withhold. I don’t have a right to it… nobody does. If you want to give it to me, then I will accept, but you must decide.”

“I decide I want to give it,” the boy said, sliding down to cover Hawk’s mouth. Luis knew what to expect this time and put everything into, doing the things he had done with the girls when they kissed behind the barn on the ranch. It inflamed him.

Urgently, he sucked his way down Hawk’s smooth, hard torso and did what was unthinkable before this disastrous trip. As before, he he set up a rhythm what soon had Hawk gasping. He did what Hawk had done to him, slipping his hand between the strong legs to tease the sphincter, triggering something in the Indian. Hawk thrust with his hips, setting off a feeling of triumph, as Luis excited the handsome man to greater effort, wondering what it would be like to be raped by him. Without warning, Hawk came.

Thrilled at drawing such a reaction, Luis exploded almost as soon as Hawk touched him. He pulled the Indian to his breast, thrusting against the man’s hard belly until his jism ceased to flow and professing endearments in rapid Spanish, loving the man in his arms for whom he joyously abandoned the teachings of his church, his family, and his culture, all without once thinking of himself as a maricon.

 * * * * *

 What’s going on here? Clearly, Luis is beginning to enjoy his romps with Hawk a little too much. In this week’s reading, we’ve had an opportunity (in the latter part of the installment) to understand things going on in the kid’s head because we switched to his viewpoint. Something I don’t often do in short stories.

 Don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait for the next installment. I want to see what happens then.

 My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

 The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

 DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

 And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

 Until next time.

 

Mark

 New posts at 6:00 a.m. every Thursday until the story is completed. Then we’ll revers to the first and third Thursday of the month.

BLUE STONE AND RAVEN (Part 1 of 3 Parts)

markwildyr.com, Post #95

Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Got a fair number of hits from my last story, “Six-Shooter Sex.”

Courtesy of Publicdomainfile.com

Now we go from cowboys to Indians. Hope you find it interesting. Here’s the first installment.

*****

BLUE STONE AND RAVEN

          Blue Stone hurried through the chore of tending the Pueblo’s cornfields huddled along the gullies that carried rain and snowmelt runoff through the small canyon. He weeded and turned the soil and moistened dry places from a jug of water. Afternoon had fallen before he darted west into a deep, rocky, forbidding canyon known to his people as the Devil’s Pipe. Few came here even though there was a water source at the far end. It was a place of supernaturals, the shamans claimed. But Blue Stone, a true son of the West Region, was as bold and single-minded as Black Bear, his totem and guardian.

          A lunation ago, Blue Stone found a tiny Stone-of-Health-Happiness-and-Good-Fortune on the floor of the pipe. The blue stone that gave him his name—called turquesa by the brown-frocked Spaniards who visited occasionally—excited greed among the outsiders, so his discovery must be handled carefully. Reasoning all earthly objects eventually move downhill, Blue Stone scoured the upper reaches of the canyon until he found other small stones. And then he discovered an outcrop of the blue-green rock that often contained the precious stone. Although what belonged to one belonged to the entire community, he dug out several pieces, which he polished as gifts for his mother. Soon, he would advise the chief priest and council of his find so a decision could be made over what was best for the People in the matter.

          Upon arriving at the far end of the great ravine, he froze. Something was in the canyon with him. A supernatural? Which one? Bent on good or evil? Cautiously, he moved forward. Beyond the next fissure in the towering rocks was the sheltered waterhole. Blue Stone crept around a curtain of stone, gasped audibly, and fell to his knees.

          In is fourteenth year, he had undertaken a vision quest in order to be admitted to his clan’s society. He remained deep in the desert mountain canyons without food or water until his mind sought the wisdom of the gods. His Vision, as clear to him today as it was four summers back, had been a tall youth standing naked on a rock shelf, his long hair unbound. His flesh had not been rose brown like Blue Stone’s people, but a deep bronze. Great brown eyes peered into his soul. The broad, laughing mouth uttered mystical, unintelligible words. The Vision—almost assuredly Thunder Boy, one of the Holy Mountain Twin Gods—wore a physical beauty that surpassed any man’s. His long limbs were sculpted by the Creator-of-All-Things in his own image, had He chosen to take a shape.

          Now Blue Stone moaned aloud in fear and joy. His Vision, whose intent had not been revealed to him, stood majestically at the edge of the small waterhole in the midst of his bath; water still running across unblemished flesh and dripping from perfect limbs. Blue Stone shuffled forward on his knees, unmindful of the jagged edges of sharp stone. As he slowly closed the distance, the spirit turned to him and stood motionless.

          At the feet of the perfect, immobile youth, Blue Stone removed his headband and wiped water from the powerful thighs. Overcome, he clasped the strong limbs in his arms and buried his face against them. He licked away drops of water his headband had missed. Intent on performing this small service, he moved his tongue across the smooth flesh.

          Timidly seeking to please, he took the other youth and performed a ritual that would have been unthinkable except as an offering to the supernatural. Broad hands clasped his head as the Vision thrust powerful hips with increasing urgency until delivering his white nectar with a loud groan.

          Strong arms pulled him to his feet on a level with huge, brown orbs that seared his essence. The force of the look was so powerful Blue Stone’s knees grew weak. The Specter spoke in a deep voice, uttering the language of the gods. Why did this Being not touch his forehead so Blue Stone would understand the holy words? But it was not his place to criticize. The Spirit would find a way. Then in a rush of guttural sound, Blue Stone caught two or three words in the language of the Spaniards.

          “Spanish?” Blue Stone asked in that foreign tongue. “You speak Spanish?”

          “Yes,” the Vision answered in a voice so deep it reverberated off the rocks. “I speak some of that devil tongue.”

          “Why do you not speak to me in my own?” Blue Stone asked with more bravado than he felt.

          “Because I don’t understand it,” the other snorted.

          “But…but don’t supernaturals speak all tongues?”

          “Supernaturals?” the perfect youth exclaimed in imperfect Spanish. “You think I am a supernatural? I am Raven of the Cotanee!”

          Blue Stone took a step backward. The Cotanee were almost as feared as the gods. These lords of the plains appeared out of the grasslands of the east to kill and plunder and take what they wanted. In this they were little different from the Spanish except they went away; the Spaniards did not.

          Raven laughed. “Have you never seen a Cotanee before?”

          Blue Stone tried to look angry as he remembered what he had done for this young man but couldn’t manage it. “The only time I saw a Cotanee was a time of death and destruction.”

          Raven shrugged. “That is the way of the world.” The beautiful youth examined him closely. “You believed I was a god? Is that why you did what you did? I thought it was a strange way of greeting strangers, but then I do not know your ways.”

          “Why did you permit it?”

          “Because it pleased me,” the youth said haughtily. “At first, I thought you were a girl, a bony one maybe, but you’re pretty enough. Anyway, I’ve been away from home for two moons now, so I felt the need of relief. Did you like doing it?”

          “It wasn’t unpleasant, but if it pleased you, I liked it.” Suddenly, Blue Stone realized he stood in the presence of an enemy. “You are a scout! Your people are coming to attack us.”

          Raven held up a hand. “Nay. I told you, I left my lodge two months ago. There was this girl I wanted for a wife, but her father sold her to another who paid more horses than I could afford.”

          The four-leggeds! The Cotanee went nowhere without their four-leggeds. Raven read his face.

          “Back there in the draw where he can find a little grass in this barren place! His name is Whisper, because he answers to my whisper, and he runs quietly like a whisper.”

          Finally facing the fact he had performed a forbidden act for this Cotanee, Blue Stone searched inside himself for feelings of shame or mortification. He found none. In fact, the presence of the powerful, handsome male was disturbing in another way. He wanted to be touched.

          The two young men, approximately of an age, sat at the edge of the waterhole and talked in the strange language of the Spaniards. When Raven had not accepted his beloved’s betrothal to another, causing trouble in the camp, he was banished into temporary exile. Since that time, the young warrior had worked his way steadily westward, hunting for his food and communing with nature. He had avoided all human contact until this day.

          “And what will you do now?” Blue Stone asked, flushing under the other’s examination.

          “I will go west to the Beyond yet another few suns.”

          Blue Stone tapped his lower lip in thought. “They say the mountains give way to a great stretch of parched earth where humans cannot live. Most perish before even reaching it, lost and starving in the great mounds of rock. Some say there is a lake beyond the desert so vast that none have ever crossed it. How can that be? A desert beside a lake?”

          “It will be as the Creator-of-All made it,” Raven pronounced solemnly.

          The two youths dallied while they opened a fragile friendship. Finally, Blue Stone could delay his return home no longer. Raven refused his invitation to overnight at the stone and stucco Pueblo and swore him to secrecy about his presence. Blue Stone gave directions for the easiest passage to the west and reluctantly prepared to take his leave.

          As Blue Stone rose, Raven spoke. “I will travel west for two more suns, then I will turn back. I will be here at this place four suns from now, five at the most. It would please me if you came. But be warned, Blue Stone, if you do, you will spend the night with me, and I will lie with you. I will cover you as a man covers his woman. Think on it, because your life will not be the same after that.”

          The beautiful youth remained in Blue Stone’s mind all the way home, and he became halfway convinced one of the Holy Mountain Boy Twins had played a trick on him. Surely no human could be so faultless in looks and form. Life would have placed scars or imperfections on a human, yet in his close examination of the mysterious youth, he had found none.

          Blue Stone climbed to the second floor of the three-story building and entered his apartment through the entryway in the roof. His mother clucked at him impatiently for being late. He ignored her, chewed his meal, cleaned up, and retired to his bedroll to puzzle over things. Instead, he fell asleep.

*****

Wow! The plains warrior sure shook up the Pueblo farmer’s world. Will Raven return as promised? If not, will Blue Stone turn to his boyhood chum, Ram Horn, for consolation? Tune in on September 19 to find out.

Don Travis’ next BJ Vinson mystery series novel, The Voxlightner Scandal has been scheduled for release on November 19, 2019. You’ll remember he’s my fellow Okie author. The following is a buy link to Voxlightner:  http://www.dsppublications.com/books/upcoming-releases-c

Now my continuing plug (read plea) for my own work. Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from readers to get Dreamspinner interested.

My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:

Website and blog: markwildyr.com

Email: markwildyr@aol.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr

Twitter: @markwildyr

The following are buy links for CUT HAND:

DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

And now my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

Until next time.

Mark

New posts at 6:00 a.m. on the first and third Thursdays of the month.