Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [29]
Beatrice stepped out from the late afternoon darkness of the lodge.
“Well,” Grandpa began, “old Man gathered the people and showed them the buffalo. ‘You must go down to the Great Plains and hunt them,’ Napi told them. The people did, but the buffalo killed and ate them.”
“Ate them?” Lionel interrupted. “Buffalo don’t eat people.”
Grandpa skinned the thin bark from the slender branches with his knife and continued, ignoring Lionel’s question.
“Now, old Man, he’s a traveler, always on the move, so one day he came across the dead hunting party and felt bad. old Man decided that the buffalo should not eat man, but that man should kill and eat the buffalo.
“The old Man went out and found some of his people who were still alive. ‘I don’t understand. I created the buffalo for you to eat. why do you let them kill and eat you?’
“One of old Man’s children stepped forward. ‘we don’t have any weapons, and the buffalo does. He has horns to cut us down and is very fast and powerful.’
“Napi thought about it and realized that he must give the people something to even the odds against the buffalo.”
“Like you and the deer,” Lionel interrupted.
“So old Man went out and searched the land,” Grandpa continued, winking at Lionel. “Down by the river he found and cut some long thin branches of this here serviceberry bush.”
Grandpa held the branch out for emphasis.
“Napi took the longest, widest, strongest branches he could find, stripped back the bark, and strung a strong piece of sinew to the end. He bent the branch and tied the sinew string to the other end to create the bow.”
Lionel thought of his first encounter with Grandpa’s bow, hoping that his next attempt would prove to be a greater success.
“The old Man then took the thinner branches and placed them on the string. He pulled the string tight and saw that although the smaller branch flew, it did not fly with any accuracy. The old Man looked to the air and saw the birds and how they flew, dove, and darted. He called to the birds, and the birds gave him feathers from their wings. The old Man tied the feathers to the end of the branch and again placed it onto the bow. This time the branch flew with greater accuracy but wouldn’t stick when it hit its target. The old Man decided to tie some of the hard stones from his pocket to the wood. He did this and once again put the branch with the feathers and stone to the bow. He pulled back on the string, and the branch flew, hitting its target with great accuracy and result. The feathers gave direction, the stones power.
“The old Man turned to the people and said, ‘This is the arrow. You should put it on the bow and go to hunt the buffalo.’
“The people went out to look for the buffalo and found ’em. The buffalo also saw the people and thought, Here is our food, we should go and eat them. But this time the people did not run, and when the buffalo circled around them, they took the arrow and the bow and shot the buffalo.
“You know, they say that when the first buffalo was hit, he cried out, ‘A fly bit me.’ Then just fell over dead,” Grandpa said as he stripped the last small branch of its bark. “You two should scour the woods for some feathers from our flying friends.”
Lionel and Beatrice did as they were told, and although the feathers were more difficult to locate when one was actually looking for them, they returned with an assortment of discarded tail and wing feathers from a turkey, raven, and even a blue jay. Grandpa split the quills of the feathers with his folding knife and carefully tied them to the ends of the slender sticks.
“I think we can hold off on the arrowheads until you get a better idea of how this all works,” Grandpa said as he attached a sinew string that he had made from the deer that now hung in the smokehouse.
They spent the rest of the day, and in Lionel’s case into the early evening, practicing with their new bows and arrows. That night they roasted venison over the fire, and Grandpa sat smoking his pipe and carving an assortment of arrowheads