Cut Hand, a Historical Novel

markwildyr.com, Post #62

  

Artist: Maria Fanning

This must be nostalgia month for me. My last post was about Johnny Two-Guns, this one is a further look at Cut Hand. Note that in the title of this piece, I labeled it a historical novel. Some look at the book as a gay love story. To me, it is history as lived by two men who happen to be in love. Think about it. There’s a difference between the two approaches. Perhaps you’ll tell me what the book means to you.

The following takes place in Chapter 14 as Billy Strobaw returns to Teacher's Mead following a winter in Yawktown among the whites after he's lived for several years among the Indians. It is worth noting that Billy had labored endlessly to educate receptive members of the band, and Cut Hand had been his star pupil. We pick up the tale as Billy enters the stone house at Teacher’s Mead to find a note pinned with a knife to the inside of the door.

*****

                                                      CUT HAND

                                              A Strobaw Family Saga

Beloved. When I discovered your desertion, I was angry beyond all reason, and Morning Mist despaired of my sanity. Then I remembered my pledge that you were free to return to your people although you would rip my heart from my breast and take it with you. That you have done.

If you are reading this, then welcome home! You have returned, and perhaps my heart can be restored to its proper place, and a friendship bound by love and respect can be revived and strengthened. Know this—Cut Hand loves you always, William Joseph Strobaw. Even so, I recognize the strength of your reasoning and accept that we are divorced. Knowing I can never cover you again is hurtful, but if that is the case, I will endure. We will endure. Love, Cut.

I dropped my head to my arms on the planking of the table. How did I ever believe I could leave him? Whether or not there was a physical relationship, the object of my devotion was here, and here I belonged.

I reread the letter, noting with pride the beauty of his composition. While most of the people in Yawktown could neither read nor write, this wild son of the plains penned a hand the envy of Moorehouse College. Upon examination, the writing seemed somewhat fresh, leading me to hope the People were back from winter quarters.

This was affirmed when Otter sauntered through the door as though I had never left. He delivered the sad news of Yellow Puma’s passing during the winter, followed quickly by the death of the misco’s old friend, Spotted Hawk. Badger now served as shaman. The fate of the band was in the hands of a new generation of leaders.

My young friend also brought the welcome news that Buffalo Shoulder’s shunning had been lifted, even though he still indulged alcohol more than was seemly. Otter laced the sour amongst the sweet. Cut Hand was now a proud father. Morning Mist laid a great belly and delivered a boy-child named Dog Fox. Damnation! Cut’s seed was powerful! He must have lined her on his first covering.

Otter was coming fifteen now and looked the part. Gone was the baby fat from his lean frame. Fully as tall as I, his shoulders flared over ribs muscled with sinew and gristle. The light, genderless voice had broken, taking on an adolescent timbre. In actions, however, he was the old Otter, well named because of his playful ways and sudden bursts of energy. He spent the night with me, bedding down in the east side of the house while I crawled into what once was my marriage bed and the scene of countless beautiful couplings.

Lone Eagle showed up the next day, and the change in him was startling. Just shy of eighteen, he looked to be two years older. His deep, vibrato voice and self-conscious swagger announced to the world “here walks a man.” Arrogance rode his shoulders more comfortably now, mellowed by confidence, smoothed of the brash, uncertain edges. He, too, acted as if there had been no interlude since our last meeting. They both spent the night.

Cut Hand, Bear Paw, and Buffalo Shoulder appeared the next morning. All my jealousies fell away at the sight of Cut Hand’s magnificent bearing and physical beauty. Our handshake was long and endearing. Finally he stepped away and allowed the others to greet me with much pounding of backs and sly ribbings.

Cut and I sat alone at the kitchen table before the fire while the others inspected my new rifles. He told me of Yellow Puma’s last days and how his father spoke of me with affection. Toward the end, the ailing man complimented his son on his wisdom in selecting Teacher as his first mate. Then we both sat without words, working through fresh sorrow for the loss of a father and a friend.

*****

As I’ve said before, Cut Hand was with me many years before he became a book. At various times in my youth, he was a Mohawk, a Mohican, a Comanche… but eventually, he became his true self… a Yanube, a mythical band related to the Sioux.

Please take a look at the novel. If you’ve already read it, please post a review on Amazon. I really would like DSP Publications to bring out River Otter and Echoes of the Flute and Medicine Hair, as well as the unpublished Wastelakapi… Beloved. But we have to generate some sales in order to get it done. Amazon permits you to read a short passage.

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 some 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 adopted mantra (I stole it from Don Travis, but he doesn’t mind): Keep on reading, keep on writing, and keep on submitting. 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 each month.

Coming Attractions

I wish I had stirring or seductive (or perhaps stirring and seductive) music to play along with this post, together with control of the volume on your computer. Then I could do “Coming Attractions” like the movie theaters do … blast you out of the auditorium with teasers of things yet to come.

I don’t have sound, but I do have cover art for my next three books, thanks to the folks at STARbooks Press, and thought you might like to see what I’ve been working on.

Although it is not the next book due out, I wanted to feature the cover for Medicine Hair, as this is the fourth and final book of what I call the Cut Hand Series. I’ve had a lot of fun writing about the individuals who populate these four novels, and it’s going to be hard to turn them loose. But I think it’s probably time. I have had more great reader contacts on the Cut Hands books than all the other novels. Some of them are downright passionate about Cut Hand and Billy and Otter and John and Matthew. Just go to Amazon and check out the reviews and comments posted there. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate honest-to-God readers who’ve taken the time to let me know they enjoyed the books. Anyway, this is a copy of the cover art for this finale. Sorry, but the book isn’t scheduled for release until Spring 2015

Charlie Blackbear is the next book scheduled for release (Fall 2014), so it should be out soon. Because I don't have a back cover to show you, I'll tell you it's a contemporary novel along the lines of The Victor and the Vanquished. As a matter of fact, Wilam and Joseph from the V&V make a brief appearance in this novel. The following gives you an idea of what the story is about:

Charlie Blackbear is already a near-legend in his little corner of the world by the time he turns eighteen. He can hold his liquor. He’s chased down and caught most of the girls and a few women on the little reservation where his lives. The size of the package he carries has been whispered about since he was in middle school.

When he wakes up drunk in a motel room with a man going down on him, he shrugs it off as an alcohol thing and goes right back to chasing women. But when he takes a job with a logging crew and shares a room at the Boar’s Nest with his best friend, Daniel Warhorse, he fights a growing, unexpected, and unwelcome attraction to his childhood friend. When Moon Eyes, Daniel’s girlfriend, gets pregnant and this good-looking kid named Aden Jones starts showing up in Charley’s life, things get terribly complicated.

I sketched out the book, Johnny Two-Guns, a number of years ago in response to some event in my life. The novel still exists, while I can’t even recall what I read about or experienced that was the genesis of the story. Whatever the stimulus was, it likely occurred in Denver, as that was where I was living at the time I started writing about Johnny. This book, too, has a contemporary setting. STARbooks has not yet given me a date of expected publication for this one.

Anyway, these are the things traveling on down the publication road (where the speed limit is like a school zone, 15 mph), so I thought I’d share them with you.

By the way, I like the cover art for all three books. Let me know how you react to them.

Thanks for checking out the site.

Mark

New posts are published at the first of every month at 6:00 a.m.

An Interview by Albuquerque author Don Travis (or How the Guy Weaseled on Me)

Some months ago, fellow Albuquerque author Don Travis asked me to do a guest blog on his www.dontravis.com, promising to return the favor. I did the post as requested and then waited. And waited. Nothing. So I reminded him of his promise. What follows is an interview by an intrepid “seeker of truth.” (Note: The quotes are mine.)

###

 

Travis: Okay, Mark, I don’t think snarkiness is really appropriate. After all, this is a way of getting your November post done. Try posting weekly, as I do. Then you can be nasty. Nonetheless, I’ll consider the source and get started. Let’s concentrate on your first book. Why did you write CUT HAND?

Wildyr: As I say elsewhere on this site, I’ve been interested in Native American cultures since childhood. I haunted the library and read everything I could find on the subject. Then I began to build little stories around what I’d learned. Cut Hand has been around for a long time, but it was only a few years back that I introduced him to others.

Travis:  ¨Why was it important for him to emerge at that particular time?

Wildyr: By then, I’d found my own voice as a writer. I couldn't serve him well until I'd accomplished that. Many of my published short stories (and a novella) are peopled with Native Americans. Yet few of the stories were set in an era where the rich aboriginal cultural history was apparent or even relevant. As I say, Cut Hand was already there, but sometimes he’d been a Mohawk, a Comanche, a Blackfoot, an Apache.

Travis: So why did he end up a “Siouxan” of the Yanube Band in Dakota Territory in the 1830s?

Wildyr: The short answer is that’s who he told me he was when I actually sat down to write the book.

The longer one is that the Sioux are probably the most well-known and widely-publicized Indians of the 1800s. Their fight for survival has been told time and time again, usually from the white or settler’s viewpoint about fierce savages murdering peaceful Europeans as they proceeded to steal the Indians’ lands. I didn’t want Cut to be a member of the Council of the Seven Fires (as the Sioux referred to themselves), but there are several tribes related to the Sioux (the Mandan, for example), so I created a small band under the leadership of Cut Hand’s father, Yellow Puma.

As far as the 1800s, that’s the era that catches the fancy of many readers of historical fiction because it was a century of conflict and warfare with the tribes. Dakota Territory? Well, that comes with the “territory.”

Travis: That’s a terrible pun, but I’ll let it pass. If the young warrior, Cut Hand, was the motivating factor for the book, why does it unfold through the eyes of an American, Billy Strobaw?

Wildyr: Someone with a broader historical perspective needed to tell Cut Hand's  story -- someone so physically and emotionally close he could share Cut’s thoughts and feelings almost as if they were his own. William Joseph Strobaw seemed ideal for that purpose.

Travis: Why not a woman? Why did you make them gay?

Wildyr: Simple question, complicated answer. There’s a very practical one: STARbooks Press is one of the larger, more successful gay publishing houses around, and they had brought out a number of my short stories with a gay theme. (To see how I got into that business, please read the “About” page of this site.) To satisfy their readership, the book had to have a gay theme.

Likewise, I’d had a number of reader contacts expressing interest in how I handled the gay issues in my short stories. I wanted to bring this readership to my novel, so this seemed a good way to do it.

Finally, and this is probably the real reason, given the LGBT issues of today, I wanted to show how “deviants” were treated by some Native cultures. Sometimes, they were accepted and even honored. Sometimes they were treated with hostility. This was true even among member tribes of the Seven Fires. The Lakota were more understanding; their kinsmen, the Dakota, were dismissive. By the way, Cut Hand isn’t gay. He’s bisexual.

Travis: Okay, so why not make Billy gay right from the beginning? And why the Tory reference in the opening pages?

Wildyr: The answers to these questions mesh together to make the theme of the book. I wanted Billy Strobaw to be an innocent. Educated but inexperienced. He needed to be driven west in a manner that made it hard for him to give up and return home the first time things got rough. Making him the son of Tories still feeling the onus of prejudice gave him a greater empathy for the plight of the Indians he later adopted as his own. Novels, particularly long novels (and this one covers 30 plus years) need to show their characters developing and changing as men and women. Billy Strobaw is the individual who does the most changing, the most growing – the definition of a protagonist, right? – so I wanted him to discover he was not who he thought he was and yet make him big enough to embrace who he discovered himself to be. I have tremendous respect for the Native American Circle of Life concept.

Travis: Anything you’d change if you wrote the novel over again?

Wildyr: Yes. Despite all the advice to the contrary (and there was lots), I had Splitlip Rumquiller and Wild Red Greavy speak in heavy dialect. I did this for two reasons. Much of the book is told in Colonial or early American terms, so these two characters seemed to fit seamlessly into the narrative. Secondly, I wanted a sharp contrast to the three viewpoints: Cut Hand, speaking broken English; Billy communicating in educated phrases; and the other two showing their rough edges. There were other ways to accomplish this, of course, but I was bull-headed enough to use this approach. I regret doing so because some readers have told me it was a hard slog through the section where Splitlip’s presence was heavily felt. One local author, whose opinion I value and respect I covet, gave up on the book.

Travis: I think this is enough. Does this repay my debt?

Wildyr: Not even.

Travis: Okay, we’ll do it again. Maybe talk about RIVER OTTER next time.

 

Note: New posts are published around the first of every month.

Comments are welcome, not only on this post, but also about any relevant subject the reader wishes to discuss.

 

The Circle of Life

My blog of July 2 entitled Prejudice—the Human Condition, mentions my novel, CUT HAND  (STARbooks Press), in which the Native American concept of the Circle of Life is outlined. As I am now involved in the writing of the fourth and final book in the Cut Hand Saga, I often look back and see how a change in attitude— even on the part of tribesmen—toward this philosophy takes place over the years. (By the way, the title of this fourth novel will be MEDICINE HAIR, not Night Sky Hair as originally intended.) I’d like to reproduce the section of CUT HAND  dealing with the Circle of Life.

In the following scene from Chapter 4 (Pages 35 and 36) of the novel, Cut Hand and Billy Strobaw have left Billy’s two companions, Splitlip Rumquiller and Wild Red Greavy, on their way to the warrior’s village. They intend to build a life together among Cut Hand's people where their way of life would be more accepted than among the Americans. At the moment, they are discussing Billy’s difficulty reconciling a “win-tay” lifestyle with his upbringing. Let’s watch and listen.

###

We dawdled away most of the phase of a moon gaining fluency in one another’s languages. I shuddered to think I had been bound for the Santa Fe Trail where I would have missed him. But, even the joy of Cut’s presence could not purge the occasional guilt I experienced in private over my libertine practices.

“Don’t you understand, Cut?” I snapped once when he challenged my mood. “I love you, but my God says that is wrong. Men don’t lie with men!”

“This God of yours must be the same Great Mystery who made me. My creator gave me a hunger in the loins, so I can make children, but he never said there was only one way to enjoy the act. Why would he make it pleasurable if it was not to be used?”

“Even you said it was wrong for two men to lie together.”

“Yes. And it is wrong for two women to lie together, and two Win-tays to lie together. That is against nature.”

“But I am a man,” I cried in anguish. “I have a yard and stones like you! We are two men lying together, Cut!”

He went so quiet that I grew deathly afraid. “If that is true, I will leave you here and hang my head in shame. But a pipe and stones do not make a man, Billy. You are not a man because you were born with a penis. You are not a man because you are brave and strong and killed two warriors.” He tapped his heart. “Your spirit determines what you are, not your genitals.”

“That can’t be right!” I protested. “God makes you a man or a woman. There isn’t anything else!”

Then I learned one of the great differences between the Red and the White worlds. To the European, life begins, progresses, and ends along a linear. A man is a man and behaves as such or suffers for it; a woman travels an even narrower pathway. They are opposite sexes. The Indian perceives life as a Sacred Circle. There is no “only-man” or “only-woman,” no opposite genders, merely complementary ones.

Cut drew a hoop in the earth. Humans, according to his notion, might fit anywhere within the circle. A man was a man according to his spirit; a woman was a woman because of hers. A man became a man by accepting a man’s responsibilities. His sexual appetite had less to do with his orientation than his choice of responsibilities.

If a boy child selected a bow as his toy, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a man. If the boy chose a woman’s tool, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a Win-tay, a not-woman, a double-face, a human being with male genitals who accepts the responsibilities of a woman.

One male may appear more manly than another, or less so, but his spirit determined his lifestyle. So men or two-spirits or women fit at various places on that great circle according to choices made before the Soul Journey ever commenced. The point was that humans belonged wherever they felt natural, and one man’s “natural” was not necessarily another’s. It was a powerful philosophy allowing a person to live where he fit, rather than fit where he lived – a staggering concept that brought me some ease of mind.

###

Too bad that philosophy did not become the prevailing one. It would have alleviated a great deal of suffering in this world of ours.

Note: New posts are published around the first of every month.

Comments are welcome, not only on this post, but also about any relevant subject the reader wishes to discuss.

 

Homosexuality - Maybe the First Nations Had It Right

The Arrow, Symbol
of the Heart Line

On pages 35 and 36 of CUT HAND, Billy Strobaw and Cut Hand have a significant discussion of differing cultural approaches to the subject of homosexuality. The two young men are on their way to Cut Hand’s village where Billy will take up an unfamiliar role among a strange society as Cut’s male wife.

The passage is a little long, but in view of the change in the contemporary American attitude on the subject of same-sex marriage, I believe it is worth reproducing below.

###

We dawdled away most of the phase of a moon gaining fluency in one another’s languages. I shuddered to think I had been bound for the Santa Fe Trail where I would have missed him. But even the joy of Cut’s presence could not purge the occasional guilt over my libertine practices.

“Don’t you understand, Cut?” I snapped once when he challenged my mood. “I love you, but my God says that is wrong. Men don’t lie with men!”

“This God of yours must be the same Great Mystery who made me. My creator gave me a hunger in the loins so I can make children, but he never said there was only one way to enjoy the act. Why would he make it pleasurable if it was not to be used?”

“Even you said it was wrong for two men to lie together.”

“Yes. And it is wrong for two women to lie together, and two Win-tays to lie together. That is against nature.”

“But I am a man,” I cried in anguish. “I have a yard and stones like you! We are two men lying together, Cut!”

He went so quiet that I grew deathly afraid. “If that is true, I will leave you here and hang my head in shame. But a pipe and stones do not make a man, Billy. You are not a man because you were born with a penis. You are not a man because you are brave and strong and killed two warriors.” He tapped his heart. “Your spirit determines what you are, not your genitals.”

“That can’t be right!” I protested. “God makes you a man or a woman. There isn’t anything else!”

Then I learned one of the great differences between the Red and the White worlds. To the European, life begins, progresses, and ends along a linear. A man is a man and behaves as such or suffers for it; a woman travels an even narrower pathway. They are opposite sexes.

The Indian perceives life as a Sacred Circle. There is no “only-man” or “only-woman,” no opposite genders, merely complementary ones. Cut drew a hoop in the earth. Humans, according to his notion, might fit anywhere within the circle. A man was a man according to his spirit; a woman was a woman because of hers. A man became a man by accepting a man’s responsibilities. His sexual appetite had less to do with his orientation than his choice of responsibilities.

If a boy child selected a bow as his toy, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a man. If the boy chose a woman’s tool, he was allowed to grow into what he would become, a Win-tay, a not-woman, a double-face, a human being with male genitals who accepts the responsibilities of a woman.

One male may appear more manly than another, or less so, but his spirit determined his lifestyle. So men or two-spirits or women fit at various places on that great circle according to choices made before the Soul Journey ever commenced. The point was that humans belonged wherever they felt natural, and one man’s “natural” was not necessarily another’s. It was a powerful philosophy allowing a person to live where he fit, rather than fit where he lived—a staggering concept that brought me some ease of mind.

###

I am not saying that all of the indigenous peoples were tolerant of “deviants.” Like the white man, some punished such behavior with death. But many of the tribes not only tolerated what we term “gays” today, but gave them places of honor in the tribe or band when it was earned. As you can see from the passage above, such differences were considered as a normal part of life, and societies were unwilling to “throw away” people just because they fit somewhere else on the Circle of Life.

When I reached adulthood--at least in my part of the world--the mere suspicion an individual was gay brought condemnation, scorn, ostracization, police harassment, and the very real danger of physical beatings or death. Support for the lifestyle saw the end of political careers, changes in control of the federal government, and the overt and covert demeaning of a significant portion of the population. Marriage between gays was totally unthinkable...even among many members of the gay population.

Today, polls indicate the general public supports the legalization and social acceptance of same-sex marriage--and by extension--of gays as human beings and fellow citizens. Many individuals still object to the humanization of gays on religious grounds (and they are entitled to their beliefs), but many more are coming to see opposition to gays and their ability to share the benefits--all the benefits--of a formal marriage as a matter of the denial of civil rights.

Could it be the ancestors of our Red Brothers and Sisters had it right all along?

Note: New posts are published around the first of every month.

Comments are welcome, not only on this post, but also about any relevant subject the reader wishes to discuss.