Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [47]
“But tonight Coyote will tell stories,” she said.
An elderly white-haired American Indian man stood up next to Troi. It was clear to her that in spite of his age, he was youthful and strong in mind and body. He reminded Troi of a picture she’d once seen of Red Cloud, the great leader of the Oglala Sioux many hundreds of years ago. In fact, both he and Gunabibi, the two oldest people here, gave Troi the impression of quiet power held in reserve.
Troi had noticed him earlier at dinner. She had caught him staring fixedly at her, as though he were trying to determine her true character. But now he was smiling at her, and Troi felt as though he had accepted her. He spoke.
“For our newcomer I will explain that I am a Miwok Indian. My ancestors lived in California, and many of them were utentbe, professional storytellers, long before the Europeans came. You might say I’m an utentbe too. I’m named after a hero of many Native American stories, and I’m going to tell some of them now.”
He wove several stories with grace and artistry.
The mythical Coyote in these stories was a Trickster, but often for the benefit of mankind. He gave people fire, like Prometheus, and the power of words.
His trickery was often eloquent. In an Apache story he showed the invading white colonists how greedy they were, convincing them to buy a burro which defecated money. He even showed them how the burro “worked,” how it had to be fed first. Of course it was one of Coyote’s tricks, he’d created an illusion, and when the excited colonists got the burro home they fed it and prodded it, and waited for money to come out the other end, but all the burro would do was break wind.
When the stories were concluded, Troi asked if the mythical Coyote was an animal or a human, or something beyond either.
“Each person may interpret the stories as they choose,” the white-haired Indian said. Troi liked that answer and thought to herself how different these people were from the Rampartians above ground.
Troi asked if someone could explain more about the Dissenters and their chosen stories. Gunabibi stirred up the embers with a stick and began to talk.
“My own culture was forty thousand years old when the white colonists came to Australia and tried to stamp it out. I’m sustaining it in my stories of the aboriginal Dreamtime, as the others here are sustaining their own stories. The people who follow the Rampart way, all facts and regulations, will never have the connection with life, nature, universe, however you want to put it, that the people with stories have. The Rampartians haven’t the imagination to see worth in a tree or a mountain. The universe is just so much meaningless stuff to them. They are worthless in their own eyes, just a lot of pitiful animalcules who will work, buy lots of things, grow old and die, while their facts and regulations won’t ease their loneliness or their suffering. If old folks like Coyote and I were up there now on Rampart, we’d be regarded as just some useless senile nobodies waiting to die, and if we were like the other old Rampartians, that’s just how we would feel.
“But, see, in a culture with imagination, old people are respected—they’re the ones with the most understanding, the most stories. They’ve had the time to use the stories and metaphors to identify themselves not with the greedy ego that clings to life yet must die, but with the infinite living universe.
“The Rampartian Bible claims as an objective fact that the infinite is some real man with a white beard sitting up in the sky, separate and distinct from us. But that is such a sad misunderstanding, such a cause of needless alienation. Infinity is here and now, all around us, and we are part of it, from moment to moment.”
Gunabibi made an expansive gesture with her arms and hands, taking in her surroundings.
“And stories can bring one to that feeling,” she concluded.
Troi watched the embers. She began to understand why there was a feeling