Calendar Mystery 8: ETHNIC APPROPRIATION
Characters:
Chris Josephson, 29, professor and creative writer, owner of Sandy Point lighthouse
Frank Zanetti, 24, detective sergeant
Vera Ericson, 60s, owner of Vera's Cabins on the North Shore
Amik Ziibaang, 42, also known as Jimmy Carlson; Ojibwe shaman of the Waabooz (`Rabbit) clan in Orr
Peter Red Crow, 24, Ojibwe farmer in Orr. His brother Simon is `Mr. August' in the gay calendar.
This one's for Jim in Wyoming, with thanks for moral support! Our first deep foray into the wisdom of the ancients marks the start of a transformation for Chris. He's something of a mystic compared to Frank, who, as Amik Ziibaang says, is Reason personified. Will Chris find a new identity, or simply expand the one he has? Goran: goranbixo@aol.com
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How does an Ojibwe elder become a shaman?
First things first. Before a man can become a shaman, he must be qualified. He must be two- spirited, open to masculine and feminine aspects of Nature. His second spirit manifests in gender and sex. Some shamans are transgendered. Others are cis-gendered and bisexual, or gay. Others are hetero, and practice same-sex relations only in peyote rituals.
The shaman must know the historical and sacred writings of the Ojibwe, preserved in birch- bark scrolls. These tell how the Ojibwe people migrated from the north Atlantic their homeland in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ontario, and Manitoba, which is named for Manitou. The scrolls tell how Manitou preserved their nation during encounters with French voyageurs, British soldiers, and American and Canadian settlers. The Ojibwe take pride in their ability to keep peace. The only `First Nation' that never engaged in military conflict with European hordes, and yet, their nation ranges over a vast geographical region. Manitou taught them how to avoid war while preserving their culture. But the shaman's task is to preserve Ojibwe traditions. He must memorize the rituals and copy the sacred writings on new scrolls.
Only then will Manitou choose a two-spirited man for a shaman. The Great Spirit must come to him, not he to the Great Spirit.
Amik Ziibaang explained these things to Chris Josephson that evening in the Victorian farmhouse on Sandy Point. Nothing `Victorian' about the farmhouse except the architecture. They sat together on an Ojibwe blanket on the floor by the hearth, warmed by a fire in the fireplace, passing a ceremonial pipe between them. Amik placed a small basket of peyote chips between them.
"Shouldn't we be doing this in the wigwam?" Chris asked, alluding to the ceremonial wigwam nestled in a sand dune between the house and the sauna.
"That would be customary," Amik replied. "But Manitou requires us to adapt to modern times. The least the Great Spirit can do is allow us our modern conveniences," he grinned. "Peyote isn't native to the Ojibwe. It was borrowed from the Navajo, more than a century ago. Since it's not aboriginal, we can be flexible about where we hold the ritual."
Argued like an attorney. Amik must have had this discussion before.
Chris noticed that Amik never uses a pronoun to refer to Manitou; neither he' nor she'. Instead, he refers to Manitou'; and then the Great Spirit'. That's because Manitou is gender- free, although Nature is endowed with masculine and feminine principles.
"Manitou exists on the rim of Nature, just like the God of the Jews and Christians," Amik said in a moment of contemplation.
Chris replied: "God has many names in the Bible, and others not in the Bible."
Amik Ziibaang and Chris sat in silence. Part of the ritual; like Quakers sitting in silence until one of their members is moved by the Holy Spirit to speak.
Chris asked Amik about his name. He explained: "Amik Ziibaang means Beaver in the River'. Ziibi' means river'. Ziibaang' means `in the river'."
"A grammar lesson," Chris said; "-aang' is a locative inflexion'." If he had been Terry Goodhue (whom neither Chris nor the Reader have met yet), he would have written the observation in a notebook.
"Manitou demands a choice," Amik said. "The Great Spirit will reveal clues to find Simon Red Crow, or, alternatively, will grant you shamanic powers that may or may not make it possible for you to find Simon on your own. The choice is yours."
"I choose Simon," Chris answered. "His safety outweighs any psychic insight that I may or may not have."
The shaman nodded. He inhaled nicotine from the ceremonial pipe and passed it to Chris.
"Was it peyote that made you a shaman?" Chris asked.
Amik approved the question; not framed in the Ojibwe way, but close enough. "The man of two spirits must descend to the Underworld. There, he suffers death in the claws of chaos and is resurrected as a shaman."
"How did this happen with you, Amik Ziibaang?" Chris wondered.
Amik put a peyote chip in his mouth and chewed slowly to moisten it. He handed the basket to Chris, who followed his example. Chris managed the taste stoically, betraying no sign of its bitterness.
"I had a friend by that name. Jim Carlson," Amik Ziibaang said. "He was a Vietnam vet. Twenty years older. He saw bad things in Nam. Suffered PTSD. It made him careless of life, but I knew how to settle him down. Deer-hunting. Duck-hunting. Harvesting wild rice on Little Fork River. Ice-skating on the lake. Fishing for walleye, the world's most boring sport."
"Evidently you haven't played golf," Chris laughed.
Amik Ziibaang continued: "We had our adventures. Afterward, we held peyote rituals for two. One Thanksgiving Day, Jim and I went deer-hunting with two other Swedish farmers. We traipsed in the woods around Lost Lake. One of the guys fell through an ice-slick made soft by an underwater spring. Our effort to save him failed. We slid across the ice, into the widening hole. The cold water immobilized us. I managed to crawl out of the lake. When I looked back, they were gone. Driven under the ice by some demonic current."
Silence. Chris waited. Amik Ziidaang hadn't finished.
"We were lovers," he said. "No one knew. He was the joy of my youth."
"You kept your romance a secret while he was alive," Chris mused. "Then, at the Ojibwe funeral, you let everyone know by taking his name"
"It was the only way I knew to keep his memory alive," Amik said. "At that time, I was called Beaver in the River'. Jim was the only Yankee who knew me as Amik Ziidaang. He took the trouble to learn Ojibwe. A massive search began at the end of Thanksgiving Day, and continued the next day. Ojibwe and Yankees together. There was no road going into Lost Lake at the time. The search was in all the news. Two days later, the Sheriff's office in Duluth sent a cop who had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. The game warden sighted the bodies from the helicopter. Jim's folks held a double-ceremony. A Christian funeral at the Mission Church in Cook. An Ojibwe funeral in Orr. That's when I started calling myself Jimmy Carlson'. The ground was too frozen for burial, so they kept his body in the cemetery toolshed. On Sunday mornings, I went there to be with him. I broke into the toolshed to recite an Ojibwe prayer. At the end of March, I was the only mourner when the grave-diggers buried him."
"I see a biblical parallel," Chris observed. "David and Jonathan. They kept their love affair secret, although Jonathan's father knew, and he was convinced that other people knew, too. Jonathan was killed in a battle against the Philistines, along with King Saul. David presided at the royal funeral, and declared his love for Jonathan in an elegy. It's called The Song of the Bow', because Jonathan taught David the art and science of archery. David declared that Jonathan's love surpassed the love of women'.
"There are other parallels, too. After the death of Patroklos during the Trojan war, Achilles declared his love for his friend at the funeral, even though he was telling his warriors something they already knew. Alexander the Great did the same for Hephaestion, after he died during the Macedonian war against Persia. Centuries earlier, Gilgamesh declared his love for Enkidu. He refused to give up his lover's body until worms started crawling out of his nose.
"That'sthe pattern: Two heroic lovers take the road to adventure. Their love affair is an open secret. When one of the lovers dies, the survivor declares his love openly, at the funeral Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Achilles and Patroklos. David and Jonathan. Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. So, you see, Amik, you followed an ancient tradition when you honored Jim Carlson at his funeral. It's a tale that belongs in the annals of Ojibwe history."
"There is truth in the repetition. Now I understand why Manitou wants the Ojibwe to blend their culture with antiquity," Amik replied. "That's the deep reason why the Great Spirit has chosen you. Perhaps no one but us will understand."
"Ethnic appropriation," Chris said. "You suffered a tragic loss, Amik Ziibaang."
"Even more tragic for Jim. I have a recurring dream. Jim and I are alone on Lost Lake. We fall through the ice and sink to the depth of a walleye-hole. We return as two spirits in one body," Amik said.
"It's real, in the world of Spirit," Chris said.
"It's the way to become a shaman," Amik said. "A man must descend into the Underworld, where he comes face to face with the monster of chaos. Only then can he return as a shaman. For Jim, the Underworld was Vietnam. For me, it was Lost Lake. I wasn't a shaman until then. But Chris, you must the question you're reluctant to ask."
"I meant to ask if you would be shaman to me," Chris said. "If I can be what Jim Carlson was to you. He would want you to cease your mourning and go back to being Amik Ziidaang."
"When I saw you in the sauna, I knew you were a man of two spirits," Amik said. "That's why I put a hand on your naked butt. Skin to skin, our contact confirmed it. For as long as you can remember, you've had moments of insight."
"I call them vibes'," Chris said. "Frank calls it uncoply intuition' and says I'm a psychic."
"These are signs of a second spirit. Do you feel called to be a shaman?" Amik asked.
"Many are called, but few are chosen," Chris said.
"That's true," Amik said. "Your young friend Sebastian is a man of two spirits, too. Hermaphroditic. The second spirit is strong in him. He's called to be an artist. He must not be diverted from this path."
"And Frank?" Chris asked.
"Smartest man I know. Reason personified," Amik said. "He applies logic to mystery and makes good guesses.
"Coply intuition," Chris interjected.
"This, also, is a gift from Manitou, but every man is different," Amik said. "Frank is already grounded in his path."
"And Peter Red Crow?" Chris asked. "He's smitten with Sebastian, but Sebastian is smitten with Frank."
"Red Crow is blessed with a good farm, but burdened with the task of finding his lost brother," Amik said. "The ways of Manitou are to be admired, not understood. Maybe that's why the Great Spirit calls you to shamanism. For some reason that is unknown to me, your primary task is to find Simon Red Crow."
Chris felt the initial effects of peyote: a sense of unsteadiness and glimpses of color in his field of vision. "We need Peter Red Crow," he said.
Was this another one of Chris's `vibes', or was it insight inspired by peyote? In a way, it didn't matter. Amik called Peter Red Crow on his i-phone; one of those modern conveniences that he had mentioned earlier.
"No need for smoke signals," Amik grinned. It took less than five minutes for Peter to join them in the parlor. By that time, Chris was on his cellphone reserving a house at Burntside Lodge.
"No peyote for you, Red Crow," Chris said. "You're driving us to Ely tonight."
Chris asked Red Crow if he owned a gun or a rifle. He didn't, but he was an archer, and had a crossbow at home. Chris told him to call his mom, Maggie Red Crow, and ask her to transport his crossbow to Burntside Lodge. "We'll meet her there, he said. "I've rented the house with the antlers over the front door. There's enough room for four."
While all this was going on, Vera spent the day in Chisholm, tracking down the family of Neill O'Brian and his older sister Patricia. Neill was Mr. May' in the gay calendar. She carried copies of the nude photos in her oversized bags, in case they were needed. Instead, she depended on Sebastian's charcoal portrait of Mr. May'. She visited three O'Brian families, their top three candidates in Chisholm. None of them claimed Neill as their own.
At the high school, Vera visited the principal's office. She realized quickly that the secretary would be more helpful than the principal. The secretary recognized Patricia and Neill at once.
"I heard a rumor that the family moved to Seattle, or maybe even Alaska, like other folks after so many mine-workers got laid off," she said. "The older sister, though, Patricia, she married a classmate named Price." She looked it up. "Larry Price, see?" She showed Vera his yearbook photo.
"We think that Neill O'Brian lived in Duluth, possibly last year and the year before," Vera said. "Did he move to Duluth when his family moved out west? Or did he leave home and move earlier?"
"I think you'll have to ask Patricia Price about that," the secretary said. "Anyway, he might have moved to Duluth earlier, if he knew that the family had decided to go west."
"That's true," Vera conceded.
"Neill O'Brian," the secretary said as if thinking out loud. "A boy with vivid red hair, very remarkable. Other kids teased him for that, especially the boys. They teased him for his red hair and for ..."
"For being gay, I know," Vera completed the secretary's sentence. "That's why we're concerned that Neill has gone missing for months, maybe a year. We're hoping to confirm that he's still alive."
Vera's visit with Patricia O'Brian Price was helpful in its own way. The woman was unwilling to talk about Neill. If she was concerned at the news that her younger brother was missing, she concealed her emotions.
"Did Neill have a job when he was in high school?" Vera asked.
"Carry-out boy at the Red Owl," Patricia replied. "He started out as a butcher-boy, but he wasn't good at it, so he ended up carrying out groceries for customers."
Vera departed Chisholm in an unhopeful mood, but Frank assured her that she wouldn't have learned much more about Neill, even if his sister had been more sympathetic. Frank summarized the profile: "Good-looking kid, but his classmates razzed him for being too Irish, and bullied him for being too gay. Got no support at home. Worked in a grocery store. That's probably how he supported himself in Duluth."
On his daily movements around town, Frank showed the portrait of Neill to grocery store managers and employees. The manager of a store in East Fifth Street identified Neill as an all- around helper who fell off the grid one day. "Didn't even come for his paycheck," the manager said, and produced it. From it, they determined the approximate time when Neill disappeared. Last week in May, or possibly the first week in June, 2019. Frank also got an address. It was the same boardinghouse where Sebastian lived on the westside.
Shamanism can't reveal everything. It was Frank, the man of reason, who first concluded that the boardinghouse was a very dangerous place.
What happened between Chris, Amik Ziibaang, and Peter Red Crow in a peyote-ritual meant for two? My Reader wants me to get on it, so I won't digress with the tale about how Red Crow and Sebastian learned, from Simon Red Crow's letters, that he worked as a stevedore in a Lambert company warehouse near the harbor, that he befriended a fellow stevedore named Rick, that he frequented a disco joint near the harbor called Lambda House, and that he lived in the same boardinghouse as Neill O'Brian— where Sebastian lived on the third floor, and Jesse Kovich on second floor. (The tale of Jesse and Frank will have to wait.)
To pick up where I left off in the Sandy Point farmhouse, Peter Red Crow found Chris and Amik Ziibaang by the fireplace in the parlor, just getting started on peyote. They reclined on the Ojibwe blanket, with Chris in the middle.
Chris felt a trance coming on. Wooziness and myriad colors. He complied when Peter Red Crow helped him out of his clothes. Peter and Amik fondled him, one on each side, with special attention to his eight-inch dick (for them, a monster), his scrotum, and the region behind, no longer hidden. Red Crow stimulated Chris's nips and pits while Amik probed his hole with a lubed finger. Chris squirmed and allowed his Ojibwe partners to part his legs. Then Amik nibbled his nips and Red Crow fingered his hole.
"I want this," Red Crow said. Chris tightened his sphincter. Was he closing the garden gate, or signaling the gardener?
Red Crow got naked and knelt with his cock near Chris's mouth. "Ojibwe cock," he said while Chris sucked. "Ojibwe balls," he said while Chris licked the scrotum, and surprised Red Crow by kissing his butt-hole. Red Crow straddled for action.
Amik Ziibaang let the younger men have their fun: `fellatio number 69'. Chris forced Red Crow's face. "Rim my ass, if you want it so much," he said. For everything there must be a first time, and this was a first for Peter Red Crow. He got his revenge by fucking Chris doggy-style. He lay on his back and let Chris envelop his cock while straddling his midsection. Amik stepped behind Chris and drove his cock inside, parallel to Red Crow's. Initial penetration was bitchy karma, but Chris toughed it out. Amik and Red Crow orgazzed in sync. A double dose of Ojibwe seed propelled Chris on his quest for Simon Red Crow.
"How's that for ethnic appropriation?" Chris quipped. "My postmodern critics forbid this. Not sex, but the mixing of what they call `races'. But they're feminists. The new Victorians. Very puritanical."
"Your postmodern critics speak of `dead white males', Amik said. "They reject antiquity, and with it the wisdom that Manitou gave to civilization."
"Well, as for that," Chris replied, "I renounce postmodernism and all its works."
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