Each breath was of the earth and dry like it and hard. It made you cough—choke—and your eyes felt like paper. The dust rose thick into clouds that enveloped the actors, their thunder-feet fell like mountains onto the brittle grass and shook the rhythmic ground. There were wolf calls and howling. Eagles danced on the children’s heads—they were the sons of the coyote, born of blood mixed with water. They sang until their chests were tight. They sang until their faces dripped and their backs ached. It was hard to see where a man became ornament and his body ended, or if he was indeed not an ornament entirely. A flower of men. With bright petal eyes and a strong, straight body that leans into sun. A revolution in color, or an exploding palate whose clashing variety Eastern women would scoff. This flower does not know; but he is. He is bound like wind, and shameful as Eve. When the brown suits came from St. Louis they were struck in the face with life: one that danced and whooped and whipped the ground and shook spears and shook men, pounded hooves into mud and held red fish by the mouth. It was a Northern wind on rigid spines, and they became ashamed of their ancestral stoicism. Here were things that breathed. Here were things that spoke in nature’s poetry. Here were sons of Adam, behind strange feathers and beaded chests. They stood in defiance as much as in ignorance of the western societal canon.
What role did Jan Hus play in the war between Crow and Blackfoot? What effect does Mozart have on salmon? How could they live without our knowledge and influence and wisdom? It seemed too frighteningly real.
The sky settled back and a gloved-hand applause came up.
I wonder if they understood what was happening. If they knew how close they were to the end. For thousands of years backwards, they stretched yawning across the Palouse and river valleys, their cultural fingers stretching out into teepees and raincloud hooves. They were ancient men, with pebble eyes and angry noses. No one alive or dead could remember when they first came here. Perhaps it was never. Itsaya’ya was their name for Yahweh. But he did not hold them in his hands. He did not give them breath from his own mouth. There was blood before the beginning and they were the drops of violence shaken, scattered across nameless hills. Elohim did not shape us. And yet to look at them was to see the sun. An image that burned through the calloused retinas of the parasoled ladies. They seemed to rush forward from infinite chasms in time, black holes in history that bore out these strange dancers. They seemed lost in time, lost in space. They danced themselves into an uncertain future; unaware that this ritual would serve as the last, a funeral rite. They seemed beautiful. Beautiful and lost.
