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By Root 508 0

The ancient one from which the Indian elder got the water and a much less ancient one at the opposite edge of the land. In her dream the old man had patiently walked the perimeter of Hugh’s land, holding the jug of water in his hand, until he came to a small gap at the bottom of the fence. He slid through and walked some distance into the cottonwoods. Here he stood in the center of what had been the graveyard of his tribe and of people he and his more recent ancestors had known. He knelt to pray. After praying he rose and sprinkled the water over the ground and over himself. He was trembling with exhaustion and sadness, but he was weeping with love.

In the Circle

In the circle were two young aborigines from Australia. Both very dark, one with curly black hair, the other blond. Blond straight hair was natural among these very black people. Was this perhaps the reason the English settlers were so freaked out, wondered Yolo, when they came across them? What had they made of it? he wondered. They had been programmed to think all blacks were inferior. They had also been programmed to think all blonds were superior. Yolo imagined them, the British convicts and their guards, some of the most provincial folks on earth. They must have thought they’d landed on Mars.

The two men were young, in their thirties. They had come as guests of Aunty Pearlua. The shorter of the two, with the wide thoughtful “aboriginal” eyes Yolo had seen in photographs, took the talking stick, which happened to be a small shiny gourd, and turned it over and over in his hands, inspecting it carefully. After several moments, he spoke.

We are here to represent those who are coming back from the dead, he said. He gazed around the circle of men. In our country too, for many generations now, we have watched our young men die of despair. Not knowing how to stop them from hurting themselves, not knowing why they can’t pull themselves out of the depression they’re in; not knowing what to do to exhibit an example of life. In our country, not as rich as America and with distances more vast, there have been many cases of young men being found dead on the beach or in the outback or in the towns. Beautiful young men. Some of our best.

We ourselves, both of us, were, as younger men, addicted to petrol sniffing.

Yolo had never heard of petrol sniffing. He leaned in toward the center of the circle to hear more.

What is it to sniff petrol? asked the young man. It is to forget that once upon a time we were one with our land and with our sea. That we lived mostly on the coasts, in tropical plentitude. That we went inland into the vastness and great heat mostly on journeys of the spirit. And to keep the land company. We learned what the land and the waters loved: to be cared for, to be interacted with, to be sung to. We did not map the land as the English did, on paper, we mapped the land by singing it. There was no place unknown to us. No place that did not have its proper song. He smiled, a fondness for his ancestors suffusing his face with light. Some of our songs were so filled with what we learned from and loved about our land that they might take six months to sing.

He was quiet for a little while, turning the gourd over and over again in his hands.

What did we lose? We lost intimacy with our motherland. Mother, land, to us the same.

And so to sniff petrol is to try to avoid the anxiety of that loss. And as we exit our own time, which is now, a present we cannot bear to endure, we enter into the fake Dreamtime. Only now it is all nightmare, whether we are waking or sleeping.

Thank you, Aunty, for having us at this council. He placed the gourd back in the circle’s center.

Jerry was there; it was he who had invited Yolo. Also the brother of Marshall, the young man who’d died. At the luau following Marshall’s funeral Yolo had been approached as he sat in a wicker chair gazing at the moon and savoring a large plate of lau lau and a blob of pasta salad.

Howz it? asked Jerry.

Not bad, he’d replied.

Say, Jerry had said, leaning over him, his own large plate