Echoes of the Flute

 markwildyr.com, Post #139

Artist: Maria Fanning

As I indicated in my last post, JMS Books has contracted for the publication of Wastelakapi… Beloved, the fifth book in the Cut Hand Series. They have also indicate a willingness to publish the first four should I reclaim the rights to the books. So I have been working on re-editing those books. At the moment, I am working on the third book in the series called Echoes of the Flute. Thought I’d give you a sample of that one this week.

 The following scene takes place in the third chapter of the book. John Strobaw (War Eagle) has been lamenting the absence of his foster brother Matthew Brandt (Bear), when Matthew makes a surprise return and joins John as he swims in the Yanube River. Hope you enjoy the excerpt.

* * * * *

Echoes of the Flute

 “Rode in not half an hour back. After I got through saying hello, Ma told me to go put on some decent clothes.”

Ma didn’t permit breechclouts at the Mead. She considered them uncivilized.

“Rachel Ann told me you’d walked down the river, so I came here instead of putting on pants.”

“You back for good?”

He shrugged. His shoulders had filled out, but the part about being skinny was true. He’d lost weight, but he carried it well. He was leaner but harder. He probably looked more like a man than I did. Was that because of the year he had on me or what he’d been through while he was gone?

“Might stay a while,” he answered. “But who knows when I’ll have a hankering again and move on.”

“Good. One of the coach horses that pulled in Thursday’s still limping. You can doctor him.”

“That wasn’t the only place I was.” Something in his voice made me look at him. “I fought at the Rosebud with Crazy Horse. He’s a great man, Eagle. Never seen a man fight like him. We beat the War Chief Crook at Rosebud Creek.” He spoke as if remembering was reliving. “After riding all night to get there, we fought for six hours. Crazy Horse was everywhere. He talked to me—more than once. Said he was proud of me. We made the Americans turn back at Rosebud so they weren’t there to fight alongside Custer at Greasy Grass eight days later.”

Greasy Grass was what the warriors called Little Bighorn. I kept my tongue in my mouth, afraid of drawing him back from wherever he was.

“I was still with Crazy Horse in the Tongue River Valley in January of this year after what was left of Dull Knife’s band straggled in to join us. The soldiers had snuck up on Dull Knife’s village while everybody was asleep. They killed a lot of Cheyenne. Slit the throats of most of their horses and destroyed their supplies.

“After talking to Dull Knife, Crazy Horse decided to palaver with the Americans. But the Star Chief Miles’s Crow scouts murdered our delegation.” A shiver when through Matthew… Bear. “I was supposed to be one of them, but at the last minute, Crazy Horse said he wanted an older warrior to impress the Americans.”

Matthew looked at me, back in the present now. “Wolf Mountain wasn’t so good for us. Miles had artillery on the high ground and pounded us. When the weather turned bad, Crazy Horse withdrew. After that, some of the warriors started returning to the reservations to get allotments for their families.”

A frown tugged at the corners of his broad mouth. “That’s what the army’s doing now. Pushing the tribes onto reservations and hoping we’ll just lie down and die when we can’t roam free anymore.”

“Is that when you left?”

He shook his head. Leaning against the pressure of the current, Matthew told me he’d stayed with Crazy Horse until May. “Then the Shirt Wearer decided to take what was left of his people to Camp Robinson in Nebraska to surrender. He knew I had a home to go to, so he sent me away.”

“If that’s what the army is doing, it’s good you came back. The Mead’s a safe place for us. A good spirit home.”

He stared at my left earlobe and snorted. “It’s nothing but a little reservation.”

“Don’t look at it like that. We’re free to do whatever we want.”

“It’s better than some of the places they’re putting us. But we’re still Indians. You forget that sometimes, John. One of these days they’ll make you face up to it. Just wait and see.”

His words put an ache in my heart. “Can’t you see the warrior’s road is about gone. All of that’s come to an end.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Sitting Bull was called to the Sun Dance last year. While he was dancing, he saw things and predicted a great victory. And it happened too. We whipped the whites good at Greasy Grass.”

“Seems to me like you just made them mad. Got them all stirred up. I hear Sitting Bull’s gone to Canada.”

“To regroup. He’ll make medicine and plan things out. He and Crazy Horse will ride again, you’ll see.”

I swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say. What came out surprised even me. “I hear Crazy Horse has a win-tay wife.”

He met my eyes just like a white man. Uncomfortable, I turned away. He was on me instantly, wrestling like we did as kids. His arms gripped me from behind and pressed me to him. I managed to twist around to face him, intending to tumble us into the current. If he wanted horseplay, he’d get it. I froze. His lips were close to mine. His eyes looked deep down inside me.

“I thought about you,” His voice was a scratchy growl in his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I wondered if I’d live to see you again.”

Then he pressed his lips to mine. I froze, thinking of Timo and what he’d done and how I still didn’t know how to handle it. But now… now, I didn’t want to deny Bear. He was handsome and desirable and young and my friend.

His tongue pushed into my mouth. The heat of his kiss flowed down into my belly and my vitals. His yard rose and pressed between my legs.

Panicked, I shoved him away. “What are you doing?”

“What we both want.”

“You, maybe. But… but not me.”

He grabbed my thickening cock. “That’s not what this says.”

His touch was almost too much for me, but I squirmed from his grasp. “I’m not just a prick, you know. I have a mind and a heart.”

“Yes, but they tell the prick what to do. You want me, Eagle.”

Flummoxed, thoughtless words spewed out of my mouth. “Maybe I’ll give you my cock, but I won’t take yours. I won’t be your win-tay. You just want one because Crazy Horse has one.”

He stared at me for a long moment before wading to the shore where he wrung the water from his long, flowing mane. His manhood stood hard and proud, reaching for the sky, throbbing against his flat belly at times. It was big and strong and straight.

I wished to call back my words.

“So be it,” He reached for his loincloth draped over a tree limb.

I stepped forward, my legs feeling slow and leaden in the current of the river. “Wait!”

“Why? Have you changed your mind?”

I clamped my mouth shut, uncertain of what to say. Passages from Billy Strobaw’s journal raced through my mind.

“I thought not,” he said in Lakota. “Goodbye, brother.”

He turned and strode away, his manly form and easy grace robbing me of my wits. His high, hard buns dimpled as he walked, giving me an erection. I cried out in pain. “If you go, don’t ever come back!”

 * * * * *

Now John’s done it. He’s rejected Matthew’s advances out of panic because he doesn’t yet know his own mind. How will he correct what he immediately recognizes is a huge mistake?

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

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.

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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.

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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.