Говард Уолдроп - Them Bones

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘The Huastecas have quit playing by the rules.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, Yaz. Things are changing. Maybe the Buzzard Cult people are right.’

‘You better believe we are,’ said Hamboon Bokulla, the Dreaming Killer, as his people finished their song. ‘And you better get with it, or be left behind,’ he said to Took.

Tired, bruised, beaten, we picked up our heads all along the line and started home.

Over on the other bluff, the Huastecas were already gone.

Next day, three kilometers or so away from the village, I realized what I had done.

We were passing a small creek. Our wounded were leaning on other warriors. Almost everybody was gimped up in some way. I walked to the creek and stood on its bank.

One after the other, I threw the heads as far as I could downstream. The last one’s eyes stayed on me in its flight toward the water as if it were a ballerina and I were its turning point. Guilty, guilty , the air whistling past the head said. It hit with a splash a few meters behind the first and sank immediately.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Took, standing behind me.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘They were pretty good heads,’ he said, and rejoined the struggling file of the Woodpecker people.

DA FORM 11521Z 11 Nov 2002

Comp: 147TOE: 148

Pres for duty

142

Killed in action

3

Killed in line of duty

1

Missing in line of duty

for: S. Spaulding

1

Col, Inf.

Total 147Commanding

by: Barnes, Bonnie

Cpt, ADC

Adjutant

DA FORM 11402 Z 2 Dec 2002

Comp: 147TOE: 148

Present for duty

131

KIA

7

KLD

2

MIA

6

MLD

For: S. Spaulding

1

Col, Inf.

Total 147Commanding

by: Barnes, Bonnie

Cpt, ADC

Adjutant

DA FORM 11702 Z 24 Dec 2002

Comp: 147TOE: 148

Pres for duty

111

KIA

13

KLD

2

MIA

11

MLD

For: S. Spaulding

1

Wounded, hosp.Col, Inf.

9Commanding

Total 147by: Barnes, Bonnie

Cpt, ADC,

Adjutant

Smith’s Diary

Today we sent out an eleven-man patrol to try to reach the location of Baton Rouge and go far south from there, the only direction we haven’t tried.

I don’t know what they’re supposed to find. Help. Frenchmen. Some of de Soto’s conquistadors. Ponce de Leon? Maybe they can convince some other Indians to help us, or get a treaty with the ones we are warring with.

They continue to snipe at us. Two more wounded today, in spite of the bunkers. I never knew arrows could carry so far – they send them up out of the woods; you can’t see where they come from. By the time you see the arrow, it’s on the way down. You duck for cover, trampling over everybody else. One of the wounded today was already down flat, behind the bunker wall, against the sandbags, and the arrow came down straight and stuck him to the ground like a pin through a beetle. Fortunately, it only got him through the meaty part of the thigh.

Private Dorothy Jones wasn’t so lucky – she got one straight in the ribs, this one fired from the nearest clump of brush about a hundred meters away.

We returned fire in both cases. In the first, we laced the area where the arrow came from with small arms and LMG fire. We won’t know what happened there till we send out the usual patrol.

We do know what happened with the second. As soon as Jones was hit, two of the bunkers cranked up. They fired about 200 rounds each into the bushes the arrow was shot from, tearing them flat, destroying small trees and the ground.

When they stopped, an Indian stood up, dropped his breechcloth and mooned us, then jumped back flat to the ground.

Major Putnam ordered the heavy machine guns to cease fire after another minute. The target area was unrecognizable. There was nothing more than a few centimeters high in the beaten zone. It was like a photograph retouched by a clumsy person, like a picture of the woods with a blank swath taken out.

The Indian jumped up out of the middle of it and ran into the woods.

Putnam wouldn’t let anybody fire.

Spaulding, who fought on Cyprus, says there could be two Indians a day sniping at us, or a hundred, and we’ll never know.

The eleven-man patrol left at dawn after we laid down some grenades in the direction they’d travel. It must have been okay: we didn’t hear any shooting.

They reported in okay three hours later over the radio. They were twenty klicks south and had seen nobody. They would report every two hours. Not that we could help if they needed it. They had all volunteered.

Meanwhile, we’re all digging in further. Arrows go through tents. We can’t cut wood. So we’re digging in, like moles, making ourselves at home.

There are important things we should be doing, somewhere, sometime. Here we’re useless. We should be changing the world, not hiding from people with bows and arrows and spears.

We didn’t mean to kill them. It wasn’t our fault. We took precautions against bringing any diseases back with us.

The medic says it’s probably something we only notice as a sniffle or a sore throat. To them, it’s death in two days flat.

We tried to help, to let them know we’re sorry. They just don’t understand.

Meanwhile, while we dig, we have music. I find my body moving to the rocking rhythm of Roger Whitaker. We’ve been here too long.

There was a new sound on the River.

Part metallic clang, part wooden knock, it came from the bend of the River.

Guys with conch shells on the lookout mounds began to blow them. Everyone took off for the canoe landing.

Took was in the hut. Sunflower came around from the garden patch. She brushed dirt from her hands.

Sun Man and a delegation stopped outside Took’s hut.

‘The ones on the River are the ones you want to see,’ Took said to me.

He stood, pulled on a bright feather mantle, then picked up the rolled bag of pipes he had been working on all winter.

I went out with him, stood behind some of the minor nobles, then we all walked through the village, out the river gate and down toward the water.

Half the village was standing and waiting there already. A plume of smoke rose up through the trees downriver. I felt we were in the old Currier and Ives print, ‘Waiting on the Levee.’