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Ghost Dancers -- Bill Carney That was the year I did not feel so much out of my mind as too much in my mind. The kind of time when you couldn't sleep. I was hoping to lose my mind. I wouldn't have minded so much if only I knew what was on the other side. It seemed like every day it was sunny and raining at the same time. I spent my time slowly chewing on my craziness and closely watching the scientific community's mapping of the human genome, because it seemed my own mental landscape was getting smaller too. The man on the street eating his tie. The woman on the subway cooing like a pigeon. The Roy Orbison imitators at the shopping mall. It was like that movie with Raquel Welch where they travel into the human body except without Raquel Welch. My pleasures were of the antic "Peter-I-think-I-can-see-my-house-from-up-here" variety. It turned out, though, that all I needed was a kick in the ass. So when Nada told me she was leaving me and running off with a co-worker to go work in a copy shop in the Midwest, it was just the kind of disruption I had been looking for. The big city was making me a little squirrely. The suddenness of the break-up really destroyed me, but I had enough wits about me to suggest we screw one more time for "old time's sake." "I will never again sleep with you," she declared flatly. It all seemed so terribly definitive. "Never?" I knew there was a parallel version of this entire scene where I was reacting with dignity and self- respect, but this wasn't it. "You're just not my type," she said, heading for the door. I decided not to pursue what she meant by her type. "Maybe not in this world but in a better world," I told her. "In your dreams," Nada said, walking down the hall. "My dreams are a better world than this one," I said when she was too far away to hear. Black Elk said that life was a circle beginning and ending in childhood, but mine seemed to be proceeding in a straight line with no possibility of change. Confucius said that it was either the very stupid man or the very wise man who never changed, and I had a feeling which one I was. So I took the Mormon approach and kept heading West. The first place I thought people would not beat the shit out of me on sight I said, "this is it." The town was called Mott, situated on the edge of the Snipe nation's reservation. They were the biggest game in town and I got work selling "dream catchers," a kind of feathery basketball hoop supposed to put you in touch with the spirit world, on the edge of the rez. I still believed I was a child of the cosmos, that my soul had a destiny, but I was almost certain that I hadn't found it. I sat in my little roadside stand with my dream catchers and their attached "certificates of authenticity." I was dressed in moccassins and buckskin, with a headband and black wig, and I looked like Eli Wallach in an old western. Nothing was fixed, and I was determined to flow like liquid into my destiny. I had lived long enough and been around enough successful people to recognize that life did not reward the most talented or the most deserving. It was just a matter of getting results. My philosophy heretofore, "things could be worse," was getting more sophisticated. If I was among the undeserving, it only meant that there was a place at life's great banquet table reserved for me, if I could muster the nerve to sit there. There were no bars on the reservation, but there were twenty-five just outside the front gate. I floated into a place called The Iron Lung. It was home to a focused, determined group, the kind of people who had the willpower to stay in a dark, smoky place even on really nice days. I got to know some of the regulars, Black Chicken and Alfred Young Man, and we'd buy each other shots of Jim Beam and play the name game. Black Chicken would say a word like "ooky" and we'd come up with all of the derivations like bookie, cookie, dookie, fookie, gookie, hookie, jooky, looky, mooky, nookie, pookie, rookie, and wookie. Alfred said he knew some girls named Sookie and Tookie, hippies who lived in town in the 60's. The phone rang and the bartender, Goose, said it was for me. I said "hello," and there was a woman's voice on the line saying that she was "my angel." She said her name but I didn't get it. I don't know what you are supposed to say in those situations, but I asked her what she wanted. She said that she was just calling to tell me I was going to be "all right" and hung up. People were always talking about the end of the world, but I didn't put much stock in it. It was pretty easy to claim that the world was coming to an end, because there were a lot of floods, drought, famine, earthquakes, war, pestilence. A child could make that stuff up, even if one was not privy to divine knowledge. It didn't prove anything and hardly constituted a sign. On the other hand, had the Bible mentioned "tattoos," say, I would have been alarmed. Anyhow, I was going to be all right. Prior to embarking on any new plan, I used to roll a wooden nickel to see if it came out Buffalo or Indian head, much as the old Snipe warriors used to roll their shields to determine a course of action. When it landed heads, I decided to enter the Kickapoo beer "Win a Pub in Mott" contest, even though I had never won anything. I drank a lot of Kickapoo brew but had a hard time describing in 25 words or less what I liked about it. "Kickapoo is always where it belongs in a world where nothing is where it belongs." "Kickapoo puts the joy in juicing." "Kickapoo for when you are otherwise feeling pretty down and need a good kick." They were all decent. I submitted my entries to the bartender, Goose that Honks. "These are all pretty good, Hank," he remarked before putting them in the Kickapoo box. I was kind of friendly with Goose, the owner, from all the time I spent in the bar. I knew the bar was losing money, and Goose was losing his shirt, but he didn't listen to any of my suggestions for improving the place. Goose was a ghost dancer, trained in the old Indian ritual which the United States government had suppressed many years ago, when they used to give a fuck about the Snipes. Now, they didn't care, just so long as the Snipes didn't smuggle too many cigarettes. Goose and some of his Snipe pals got together in their sweat lodges and went on their vision quests, looking for vertical integration with their ancestors and the old ways. Whatever. They did a lot of storytelling, dancing, and singing. Supposedly, if they did this a lot, the old prophecy would be fulfilled: the buffalo would come back, the people would be able to feed themselves again, the ancestors would return, and, most importantly, the white man would leave. I asked him, "What's the big deal? The buffalo are back and you guys got a casino." Some of the tribe looked overfed if anything. Three months later I got an invitation from Kickapoo, Inc. to go to the brewery in Micmac and compete in the "skills" competition, which consisted of three categories: pouring, drinking, and endurance. There were nine other finalists, but, as I anticipated, I smoked them all. I was a fast drinker, had endurance, and since the pouring was not until after the speed and endurance competitions, everyone made a mess. I won a pub in Mott, but was slightly chagrined to learn that I had won The Iron Lung, of all the gin joints in this crazy town. Goose's debts had been his downfall and the Kickapoo Brewery (which also ran the Snipe Casino) took it away from him and gave it to me. I felt kind of bad when Goose handed me the keys to the bar. I offered to let him take over my little spirit catcher enterprise. But he just gave me one of those cigar store Indian looks and walked off. Ultimately I didn't care. There were more important things in life than friends or even bartenders. I had ideas and I had plans and this was my moment in the sun. Hey, I was going to be all right. Was I a sport utility driver or a mini van driver? I started with the sing-a-long Sound of Music nights and opened a little Japanese-style jazz kiska coffee shop addition, where the young folks could listen to their hard bop records, bang their bongos, and recite poetry while amped on coffee. A few months later, Goose walked in and shook my hand saying there were no "hard feelings." "Heck, Goose, all feelings are hard," I told him. We laughed and agreed it was my good fortune to win the Kickapoo competition, and it was his bad fortune to have gambled away his pub. He told me that he had taken a job at the spirit catcher shop, and I wondered if he had found the little Nerf basketball that I used to throw at the dream catchers fixed to the wall. I wondered about life's crazy reversals when Goose took to drinking at the bar. Now I was seeing him from the other side. He'd get drunk and bust my balls, threatening to enter the next Kickapoo contest and win back the pub. He didn't approve of any of my innovations. Selling spirit catchers had made him a bad drunk. Business did finally pick up -- even the Oscar Wilde Appreciation night was packed. It was funny because the old regulars drifted out. Instead, there was a large new crowd, a bunch of Snipe old- timers who looked like they were straight off the wooden nickel with their stone-carved faces -- redskin Rushmore faces. Goose said they were from the reservation and had been customers at the War Path. It seemed odd to me though that I didn't recognize any of these faces from the Shop Smart or Union 66 station. But it made sense that the white guys didn't feel comfortable in a bar crowded with Snipes. So it was crazy the night when no one came into the bar. I had the sing-a-long Sound of Music going and amused myself yodeling loudly along with the "Lonely Goatherd" song. At midnight, the door burst open and the whole tribe of Goose and his Snipe pals came strolling in. They were completely unruly, singing "Edelweiss" during the Goatherd song. It was intolerable. They just started grabbing booze from behind the bar, pounding on their drums, and dancing, while they waved those spirit catchers in the air. I told them all to get out. They refused to leave and told me that I had to get out, since this was the only way the ghost dancer prophecy could be fulfilled. Goose put it to me very calmly. He said his friends were his ancestors and they had come back to restore to the Snipe people everything that was theirs. This bar belonged to the Snipe nation. If I didn't leave, he wasn't sure that he could control the others. They were vengeful spirits after all, and it was only so long that they would be amused by playing with their spirit catchers and watching "The Sound of Music." I pleaded with him. "Goose, you're my friend and this bar is all I've got. I can't go back to selling spirit catchers. I won the place fair and square." Goose listened to me and said he was gonna give me a break. "All right, Hank, I'll roll this wooden nickel, and if it comes up heads you can keep the bar. But if it's tails, you gotta go." He rolled it and it landed tails. I couldn't really be sure if those guys were his ancestors. They seemed to drink a lot for spirits. But I figured it was time for another change. Easy come, easy go. I figured I would be all right in the end. |