Wayward Island (Part 19) How Manitou revealed Himself and virgins made much of time By Jake Preston
Reader restrictions: no minors, no readers who are offended by explicit descriptions of gay sexuality. The story as a whole is a psychological study of gay athletic hunks who love nerds, and the nerds who love them in return. The story also deals with the problems faced by gay guys who live in rural areas. If these themes don't interest you, there are many other great "nifty" stories to choose from. Send comments and suggestions to jemtling@gmail.com. Jake will respond to all sincere correspondents.
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Summer semester had started at Bemidji State College. Henry Hasek, Red Hawk, Drew Fox, and Göran Svenson made the three-hour drive for a campus visit. Henry and Drew were invited by the hockey coach, who agreed to sponsor their buddies. It was a two-day "freshman orientation" event, beginning at noon on a Wednesday. When they got to the registration desk, Henry and Drew received dorm passes for two double rooms, and cafeteria meal-tickets for four. The rooms were on the edge of campus in Pine Hall, in a wing reserved for varsity athletes. The cafeteria was in an adjacent dorm, Birch Hall, just across Campus Avenue from the football field and a city park, a point with a beach on Lake Bemidji. Parents were invited, too, but the guys were confident that they could negotiate freshman orientation on their own.
Much of the afternoon, they were occupied with a walking-tour of the campus, and a student-parent assembly in which Student Life officers and a faculty member gave nuts-and-bolts advice about campus services and how to make it to graduation in four years. Most of the advice was practical, and therefore useful, although, to be sure, it duplicated the information already given in catalogues and leaflets that they received. The Student Life officers assured the parents that by noon the next day, class registration for their daughters and sons would be complete, and they would have their dorm-room assignments. (This, of course, did not apply to Henry, who wouldn't start college until the following year.)
The first day's orientation was finished by 3:00 PM. As the guys wandered through campus toward Birch Hall, they encountered a football team working out in the field. They joined a group of spectators who watched from the sidelines. "Is this the varsity team?" Drew asked a man on the sideline. "No. It's the Vikings. This is their first week of summer camp. The Vikings use BSC for their summer camp every year." The guys stayed to watch for an hour. It was their first time to watch professional football players in action, in the flesh. It was eye- candy for all of them, but Drew and Henry shared a technical interest in the tactics that the Vikings were rehearsing.
The Birch Hall cafeteria opened for dinner. The guys got in line with students and parents. The line stretched down a long corridor, but through plate- glass windows they could see the entire cafeteria. One section was cordoned off the Vikings: it was in the far corner by exterior windows. The footballers had their own mini-cafeteria, loaded with fresh vegetables, chicken and roast beef, and a glorious salad bar. In groups of two or three, Viking players walked past the line of students and parents and found their way to the football section of the cafeteria. The boys weren't jealous. Coming from the Iron Range or Lake Ashawa, they were accustomed to simpler fare, a choice between beef stew and macaroni and cheese, but it was obvious that the footballers got special treatment. Of course, the Minnesota Vikings organization was paying for extras.
They stood in line: Henry and Red Hawk, Göran and Drew. "Henry Hasek! You're Henry Hasek, aren't you?"-a husky voice caught Henry's attention. It was one of the Vikings. "It's Tom Flack, the first-string quarterback," Göran whispered to Henry. "Oh yeah," Henry said. Thanks to Göran's quick thinking, Henry was able to greet him by name.
"I've seen clips of your games on the news," Tom said. "I've been meaning to drive to the Range to see you in action."
"I've seen clips of your games, too," Henry said. "We watched your afternoon workout. It occurs to me that a hockey player could benefit by the study of tactics in football. By the way, this is Drew Fox, our goalie. These are our friends, Göran Svenson and Red Hawk." Henry didn't need to mention that they were on campus for college orientation. The Vikings knew the campus drill.
"You're an aggressive forward and a good hockey tactician, from what I've seen," Tom said.
"Tactics is teamwork," Henry said. "Any tactic you've seen has been rehearsed by the team, and especially by me and Drew. When it counts, he's the best 'extra attack' man in the league. You'll be seeing him in next year's BSC hockey season."
Tom was astonished by Henry's reply, his deft deflection of stardom onto Drew. He recognized in Henry the noblesse oblige that in football is reserved for quarterbacks. "I'd like to hear more about that from you guys." He said that to all four guys, but it was meant for Drew.
Tom surveyed the long line of students and parents. Many of them gawked at the guys, or rather, at the star Viking quarterback engaged in conversation with four beginning students. "Tell you what, boys," he said, "Just follow me. We'll have dinner together." They hesitated. "It's OK, guys. We're allowed to bring guests." The guys followed Tom to the Viking section of the cafeteria, and loaded their trays with a footballer's dinner.
Tom led his new friends to a round table, some distance from the other Vikings. "Tell you what, guys," he said when they were seated, "There's someone else here who would like to meet you." He approached a table crowed with players, and spoke to a Black man who followed him and sat between Göran and Red Hawk. It was Terry Brown, a forward. After a day of football, Terry and Tom wanted to hear about tactics in hockey instead. Conversation was animated. Göran gave a detailed account of Henry's sudden-death score in the Mountain Iron game, and of Drew's part in it, as extra-attacker.
"Those pivot-moves you're heard about, coming from me and Drew," Henry said, "They're adapted from figure-skating. We practice figure-skating on Lake Ashawa. We maintain a rink there, and we spend as much time on figure- skates as we do on hockey-skates."
"Rather like football players taking up ballet," Terry quipped.
"More like gymnastics, I should think," Drew replied. "Figure-skating is difficult. It's only the best skaters who make it look easy."
"Ballet moves are hard, too," Terry said. "The first time I tried it, I fell on my ass."
"I had the same experience, when Henry first introduced me to figure- skates," Drew replied. He realized that Terry's ballet-comparison was an exact description, not an attempt to minimize figure-skating.
"You guys are giving away all my trade secrets," Henry laughed. "I'll be in trouble next season if my opponents on the Range take up figure-skates."
Tom changed the subject with questions meant for Red Hawk and Göran: about their intended majors, their goals, their lives on the Res and the farm. It turned out that Tom and Terry were interested in the guys, what their lives were like on the Range and in Ashawa. Their interests ranged beyond tactics in hockey, and they didn't want to talk about football at all. They talked about their college backgrounds, their college careers in football, how they came to be pros for the Vikings. As the conversation turned personal, six gaydar units buzzed around the table. Tom and Terry figured Göran and Drew as an item-they made no attempt to conceal it. If Göran and Drew were lovers, then by logical deduction, Henry and Red Hawk must be, too. If gaydar were audible, fire-trucks would have shown up with sirens blaring below the windows of the cafeteria in Birch Hall. The cafeteria was almost empty.
Tom invited the foursome to his room in Pine Hall. It was adjacent to Terry's room, on a floor reserved for Vikings. "Most of the players have apartments off campus," Tom said. "The floor is fairly deserted, especially in the evening, when most guys are out on a date." Tom's dorm room was rather Spartan, with two single beds and a couple desk-chairs. The boys got comfortable, as best they could. Tom produced a bottle of Wild Turkey. It made the rounds, several times, as each guy took a swig. Terry joined the group, a barefoot, shirtless Black stallion. Going commando, the tracery in his sweatpants disclosed a half-hard cock that shifted as he moved. He crowded between Göran and Red Hawk on one of the single beds. His attraction to the strapping Swedish farm-boy was obvious.
"I wouldn't want to make Drew jealous, but...." Terry said as he put an arm around Göran. Someone had to break the ice. This was Terry's way of doing it. Göran did not turn away when Terry kissed his lips. Terry's sweatpants moistened with pre-cum. Göran fondled Terry. Göran pulled the sweatpants down to Terry's thighs. His nine-inch cock boinged upward. Red Hawk pulled the sweatpants off, getting Terry naked. Modesty was swept down the flow of Testosterone River. Red Hawk and Terry helped Göran get naked. Henry and Drew stripped Tom, who returned the favor. Göran and Terry helped Red Hawk out of his clothes. The guys thrashed on two beds and took turns in combinations of three, but Terry always managed to get back with Göran. When Göran offered to rim Terry, Drew stopped him. "If we're gonna kiss ass, we'd better hit the showers first," he said.
Pine Hall was an old-fashioned dorm, without private bathrooms. One lavatory served the entire floor. In the common shower-room, Tom, Drew, and Henry huddled under one shower-head. Terry, Göran, and Red Hawk huddled under the next one. They caressed each other's bodies with soap, and fondled ass with sudsy fingers. On occasion, Terry's partners copped a feel of Tom, and Tom's partners copped a feel of Terry. Huge sword-fights occurred: duels and trios under running water. Hairy pits were nudged open by toothy jaws. Nips endured sharky torment. Navels and clefts were invaded by unceremonious fingers and intrusive tongues. Cocks throbbed in the grip of fingers. Testicles were suctioned into sperm-hungry mouths. Assholes were probed by wriggling fingers. Göran and Red Hawk, the only uncut guys in the group, were prevailed upon to share their foreskins with others, by docking all the other cocks in the showers. They completed their anatomical curriculum, and prepared for love- making by toweling each other dry.
Terry wasn't Mr. Good-Looks, but he had a rugged appeal, and he was considerate as a partner in sex. He gave as much as he received, quite unlike a Black thug in gay porn who fucks white ass without touching or even looking at the cock of the partner who groans below his thighs or is hoisted atop his abdomen. He kissed every inch of Göran, and beat him to the punch with an energetic tongue in his cleft and his hole. This was supposed to be group sex, but everyone deferred to Terry's frenetic interest in Göran. As Göran prepared to return the favor of a rim job, Tom gave him poppers to heighten the action.
Göran was a virgin. He wouldn't let Terry fuck unless Drew fucked him first. Group sex turned into a demonstration. Göran frog-legged while everyone took turns lubing his asshole. He howled and yelped at the penetration of Drew. Groans became moans when Drew missioned him, then sidled him intercursally, and oozed into him while he lay flat on his abdomen. Terry lay on his back. Göran straddled his abdomen and sat on his nine-inch dick. Semen from Drew dribbled down Terry's black cock as Göran pistoned it. Lust came to Terry. He flipped Göran and missioned him. They sidled for intercursal action. Bull-milk flowed into Göran.
Tom lay stretched on his belly on the other bed, enjoying the spectacle of Göran, Drew, and Terry. He barely noticed when Henry stretched over his backside and nestled his well-lubed cock in his cleft. He yelped when Henry jabbed his cockhead past the sphincter. Tom wanted to fuck Henry, but it was too late for that. He arched for Henry, and accepted the full length of his shaft. "I've always wondered what it would feel like to crack a quarterback," Henry said. Tom yielded to Henry's demands. They experimented with a variety of positions. Red Hawk tapped Henry on the shoulder, and took his turn with the quarterback while Göran and Henry took turns fucking Terry.
After another round in the shower, Red Hawk and Drew retired to Drew's dorm room. Henry spent the night with Tom, who returned his favors with quarterback spooge. Terry slept with Göran. The Viking forward discovered, much to his surprise, that he liked getting fucked by a strapping farm-boy. When they regrouped at the cafeteria in the morning, the four boys enjoyed the privilege of breakfast with the Vikings. The next night, they slept with their new partners. Red Hawk and Drew didn't feel left out. It was the first time they had a chance at sex together.
Red Hawk, Drew, and Göran stood in line at a registration desk to get dorm assignments for their freshman year. As an athlete, Drew was assigned a room in Pine Hall, while Göran was assigned to Birch Hall. "We want to be roommates," Drew protested to a rather rotund man at the desk.
"That's not possible," the man said. "Pine Hall is reserved for athletes. I can't assign Göran to Pine Hall."
"Then put me in Birch Hall," Drew said.
"That's not possible either," the registration clerk. "Birch Hall is for non- athletes."
Drew looked at the roster of dorm assignments. There were plenty of blank spots, indicating unassigned rooms. "Why not put us in here?" He pointed to an unassigned room number."
"What, are you guys queers or something?" The clerk sneered.
"Are you discriminating against me because I'm gay?" Drew asked. "Are you gay-bashing me?" He didn't care who heard it.
"You're an athlete on scholarship," the clerk said. "That means you have to live in Pine Hall. "This other guy, what's his name?" (He looked at his paper.) "Oh yes, Göran, he has to stay in Birch."
"I won't accept that," Drew said. "Just keep my name off your list while I decide whether or not to come to BSC at all!"
"The same goes for me," Göran said.
"Who needs a couple of fags at BSC anyway?" the clerk said. It wasn't a question.
At lunchtime, the boys regrouped with Terry and Tom, and told the story. They accompanied Drew and Göran to Coach's office. He was flattered to meet a star Viking quarterback and a forward. "We're friends of Drew, and of Göran," Tom said. "But we need your help with a problem, Coach. Drew and Göran have always planned to come to Bemidji as roommates. But the registration clerk won't let Göran into Pine Hall, and he won't let Drew into Birch Hall."
"It sounds like an episode in Kafka, or a short story in Gorky," Coach said. Later, when Drew told me the story, I wasn't surprised at Coach's allusion to Kafka, but I was impressed that he was literate enough to know about Gorky.
"There's something else you should know, Coach," Drew said.
"No there isn't," Coach cut him off. "Just let me do my job, and return to the registration desk in an hour." Coach knew he had stumbled into a circle of gay friends that included two Vikings, his next best goalie, and probably Henry, too, his future star forward. His job was to manage a hockey team.
To shorten a long story, Coach went to the Dean of Student Life, and obtained a dorm room for Drew and Göran in Pine Hall. Between themselves, Drew and Göran decided to forget about the gay-bashing incident. I approved their good judgment. You have to pick your battles.
In case you're wondering, Tom Flack's friendship with Drew Fox continued for years, and so did Terry Brown's friendship with Göran Svenson. Over the next five years-as long as Drew and Henry played on the team-Tom and Terry were generous in their donations to the BSC hockey team. They attended BSC hockey games often, for reasons that can be imagined by any gay reader.
Henry, Red Hawk, Drew, and Göran were visiting BSC on the afternoon of a wild thunderstorm on Lake Ashawa. The storm caught Willy Elbo and Dorothy quarreled about her fourteen-year-old son. Willy wanted to send him to a military academy. Dorothy wanted him to attend school in Ashawa, so he could live with her at home. Willy started beating Dorothy with the butt of a rifle. To get away from him, she ran outside in the rain. Willy followed her, and her son followed him. Willy and his stepson struggled for possession of the rifle. A rifle- shot resounded, barely audible amid thunder and lightning, and Willy Elbo fell dead to the ground. Dorothy called 911. Deputy Nelson arrested her son. When Detective Matthews got involved, Dorothy told him about Willy's heroin use, his drug dealing and insurance frauds. She didn't know anything about the arson fires, but she suspected him of those, too.
Detective Matthews wasn't persuaded. He suspected that Dorothy shot Willy to protect her son. I knew Gary. He stood for the truth, whatever the outcome. If he had evidence to work with, he would have pursued the case further. "Another suspicious death in the North Country that will never be solved," he sighed. Since the boy confirmed Dorothy's story, the detective signed the police report.
With the exception of Deputy Nelson, no one in Ashawa regretted the passing of Willy Elbo. Nelson was the only mourner at the funeral. Six Chevy dealership employees served pall-bearers, respecting his rank as their boss, although he wasn't a very nice one. Dorothy and her son were absent. Mrs. Ravitch dispatched Red Hawk with a camera, to make a record of the funeral. His photos appeared in the Ashawa and Hibbing newspapers. "It's a bit of credit for your resumé," she told Red Hawk. The photos were a virtual essay, disclosing the absence of mourners at Willy Elbo's lonely funeral.
On the morning after the storm, Red Feather, Chaim, and Olaf went for a walk in the woods on my farm. They wanted to survey the damage done by lightning and high winds. Some of the old Norway pines had toppled: they were already dying or dead in the marshy land by Rice River. One of them was uprooted. Its ruined trunk, 140 feet tall, stretched like a bridge across the river. When they examined the base of the fallen tree, Chaim noticed a large granite rock entangled in roots. It appeared to have manmade markings. When they removed roots and soil, they saw that the stone was engraved. Just a few primitive markings, they thought. Markings on stones have been found before, though not on a large stone like this one. They tried to lift the stone from the root-hole, but it wouldn't budge. They cleared away handfuls of dirt and sand, and discovered a granite monument, filled with engravings of Ojibwe symbols.
Red Feather called me on my cellphone: "You must come to the farm at once. We've found the meaning of the 'Manoomin agonde' oracle. It's a granite monument on the Rice River. It's too heavy for us to move. Maybe the lumberjacks can do it."
No one was more excited to see the Ojibwe engraving than Mrs. Ravitch. "Leave it in place for now," she said. "We should take photographs at every stage of the recovery. That's a good job for Red Hawk, when he gets back from Bemidji." She was thinking about Red Hawk's future as an artist. "It would be good to get his name attached to photos destined for wide publicity."
In Crane Lake and Orr, word spread about the monument. The Ojibwe said that Manitou sent a thunderstorm to topple a pine-tree, and freed the monument from its rooty grave. Like Zeus in Greek mythology, and like Indra in India, Manitou is fundamentally a storm-god who assumed a more abstract divinity as Ojibwe culture developed. The same can be said of Yahweh, the storm-god of Mount Sinai who gave engraved tablets to Moses during the thunder and lightning of a storm. As the Hebrews' faith matured, Yahweh became the focus of monotheism, but the Ten Commandments remain as a reminder of His origin as a storm-god. So it was not naiveté on Red Feather's part when he told Chaim and Olaf that the discovery of the Ojibwe monument was a sign that Manitou had restored him to the condition of virginity.
"Now that you've got it back, it's time to lose it again," Chaim said. The three youths had talked about cherry-busting for weeks, and now that Red Feather's qualms had eased, Chaim and Olaf were eager to get on with it. I gave them the use of my cabin for privacy, and took Ma'ingan and Daisy to the farm. With Willy Elbo no longer a threat in the neighborhood, the dogs were relieved of guard-duty and free to roam on the homestead.
Red Feather, Chaim, and Olaf helped themselves to Cialis, washed down with whisky. They observed the ritual of the sauna: soaping and cleansing each other amid horseplay, balsam-bough massages, and sporting in the lake for relief from the heat of the steam-room. Red Feather stood supporting his weight on the sauna-bench, and invited Chaim and Olaf to fuck him. They took turns inside Red Feather. Overheated in the steam-room, they moved the action outside on the grass. Chaim and Olaf missioned him, sidled him intercursally, and flattened his abdomen to the ground while they rode his backside. Red Feather could not complain about the sweaty energy with which the new holders of his virginity (no longer Gary and me) had creamed his newly broken cherry.
Chaim and Olaf were spent. While they waited for renewed lust, they raced in three kayaks across Wayward Bay and around Wayward Island. Mrs. Ravitch was working in the studio, applying final touches to the "Alcibiades and Socrates" paintings, when she saw the boys racing furiously around the Resort side of the island. It was, indeed, a contest: between Olaf and Chaim, the last man to get back to the dock was to be the second object of cherry-popping. Olaf was a seasoned kayaker, but Chaim paddled to home base inches ahead of him. The contest concluded with a sweetly romantic scene.
In many ways, Olaf resembled Göran: a tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, smooth-skinned athletic lad with a nicely curved butt and a generously endowed uncut cock. His Scandinavian features were brought out by contrast with Chaim: curly brown hair, broad forehead above a prominently Jewish nose, searching brown eyes; a gracile body, like many Mediterranean men, but rich dark hair on his chest, ass and thighs concealed his skeletal slender. It would be conventional but unjust to classify Olaf and Chaim as "twinks": notwithstanding the commonalities of a slender frame, their shared eroticism was magnified by contrasts. Differences attract, within a certain range.
Chaim's intense Israeli gaze told the story. He had won Olaf's body in a contest fair and square, and nothing would keep him from his prize. At an abstract conceptual level, Olaf was willing to submit, but he grew fearful and anxious knowing that the time was approaching for Chaim's penetration of him to become a material reality. Chaim sensed his trepidation, and helped him prepare his body with loving caresses. Kisses abounded, and the liquefied application of lips and tongue to Olaf's crannies and genital protrusions. Chaim explored Olaf like newly discovered terrain. He reassured Olaf, sweetly whispering that the rights of conquest would not be unaccompanied by the rites of love.
Penetration was another matter. Chaim's tender endearments did nothing to alleviate the torment that came to Olaf, especially the sharp burning pain when Chaim's shaft invaded Olaf's virginal inner sphincter and stretched it to match the volume of his demanding cock. Olaf clenched his teeth. He had promised himself that he wouldn't cry out, but he couldn't silence a wild howl that came from the soul and passed through his lungs and his lips. For some guys it hurts a lot, the process of transforming an anal canal into a love canal. The problem for a virgin is that he doesn't know if the transformation will be easy or difficult. For Olaf it was difficult to the max. Olaf would have suffered a total melt-down, were it not for Chaim's intense Israeli gaze, which was resolute and stern, but loving. He concentrated on that, and their physical bond was matched by the complementary emotions of a bottom and a top. Chaim kept quiet and still while Olaf adjusted to internal alterations in his anal canal. Olaf's pain gave way to an unfamiliar feeling of fullness, and eventually to pleasure when Chaim missioned him and his body slid into sudden surrender-not without occasional jolts of pain, just to remind him that Chaim was conquering his ass. The liquefaction of Chaim brought relief. When Red Feather flipped Olaf and fucked from behind, his strongest sensation was the weight and full-body contact that warmed his back.
Late in the afternoon, Chaim got his butt cracked. Olaf's revenge was brutal but brief, his heart melted by Chaim's "intense Israeli gaze." When Chaim was a top, the gaze spoke of stern resolution. As a bottom it was a look of endurance, no less intense, inherited from ancestors who suffered in every generation. Olaf's cock was strong in him and his pain was no less, but unlike Olaf or Red Feather, Chaim neither groaned nor cried out during first penetration. Still, when Olaf brought the joy of sex to him, Chaim dropped his stoic guard: he expressed his feelings in moans and wild praises for Olaf. Red Feather's turn to fuck Chaim was no afterthought, but when the time came for that, Chaim was prepared and well-lubed. For Chaim and Red Feather, virginal intercourse marked a new beginning. Olaf would be a lifelong friend, but Chaim and Red Feather were lovers.
Early Saturday morning, the four Chippewa elders hoisted the Ojibwe monument from its rooted grave. Dark Eagle supervised and Red Hawk took photos and made sketches of the engravings. We cleaned the monument and mounted it on a platform constructed for that purpose in my barn. Dark Eagle brought his chest of Ojibwe scrolls, and began the painstaking process of transcribing and identifying each symbol on the monument. Red Hawk served as his assistant: he photographed each step in the analysis, and helped Dark Eagle search the scrolls for clues about difficult symbols. Dark Eagle said there were 120 to 130 symbols; in some cases, it wasn't clear whether one symbol was meant, or two.
As any Steve Spielberg fan knows, Indiana Jones could have translated the Ojibwe monument in five minutes, fluently but for a correction or two; but that measures the attention-span of moviegoers, and bears no resemblance to an anthropologist's task transcribing and deciphering ancient inscriptions. Years of study would be required to produce an initial, tentative interpretation of the monument. Still more years would be needed to produce an English text worthy to be called a "translation." We didn't even know the date of the monument. I invited a dendrochronologist from Bemidji to estimate the age of the fallen Norway pine. He said that the tree was 220 to 240 years old, but he noted that it probably stood dead for twenty to forty years before it fell. This meant that the monument was under the tree for 240 to 280 years. No doubt it was much older. Other scientists visited later, and confirmed the age of the tree.
Even without a translation, the Ojibwe monument had multiple meanings for those of us who knew the circumstances of its discovery. For Red Feather and his friends, it signified the restoration of Red Feather's virginity, a miracle wrought by Manitou. For Ben Hasek Bluejay and Sam Black Bear it signified Manitou's blessing on their marriage, and confirmed Summer Solstice as the prescribed date for the wedding. For Dark Eagle, the Chippewa elders, and me, it signified that Manitou had revealed Himself to the Ojibwe. More would be revealed in the future, with increased understanding of its symbols. For us and for the Ojibwe as a whole, the monument had significance equal to the Ten Commandments for the Hebrews; it meant that the Great Spirit's divine revelation must be memorialized each year in a Summer Solstice powwow. For Mrs. Ravitch, it was an opportunity for Red Hawk to apply his observational and artistic abilities to an artifact that assured him a future.
Dark Eagle called a council in the ceremonial wigwam. He invited the four elders, Red Hawk, Mrs. Ravitch, and me to discuss what to do about the monument in the weeks ahead. We repeated the ritual: gifts for Dark Eagle; an informal time in the sweat-lodge (this time wearing shorts); prayers to Manitou; peyote-chips; passing the calumet. We decided to keep the monument in my barn until a permanent site could be built for it. A birch-bark wigwam would be built on the site, and other Ojibwe cultural objects would be brought, so the barn would serve as a makeshift museum. The museum would be open to the public for the first time on June 21, at the Summer Solstice powwow, just after the wedding of Sam Black Bear and Henry Hasek Bluejay. An archeological dig would be established at the site of the fallen Norway pine. The junior Shaman (me, Jake Two Spirits) was named as the monument's curator. Red Hawk was named as the monument's official photographer and scholar. This was Mrs. Ravitch's idea. "He's young, I know," Mrs. Ravitch said, "but our knowledge of the monument is young, too. He'll be studying art and anthropology in college, so his ability will increase along with our knowledge about the monument." Dark Eagle praised Mrs. Ravitch for "wisdom equal to Socrates," an ancient Greek philosopher about whom the Shaman had a unique understanding. It didn't escape my notice that Mrs. Ravitch had already selected Red Hawk's college majors for him.
Our clan cast a protective shield around the Ojibwe monument and Red Hawk: only he could make photos and sketches. He alone was authorized to write its official "biography." Dark Eagle concluded our council with a unique benediction: "Many of the Ojibwe people, and white people too, have wondered why Manitou would transform Jake Preston into Two Spirits, and why he would bring a white man to us as Shaman. I myself have wondered, but never doubted, for Manitou has spoken through him in my presence. Now I understand the greater wisdom of Manitou. Sooner or later white men will come to lay claim to the Ojibwe monument. It was meant for us. Anthropologists will say that we lack the ability to understand it. Politicians will say it belongs in a museum in a big city. Who better to protect us from white man's greed than a white man as Shaman, one who knows their ways and knows how to beat them?"