Michael Shorb

Gathering of the Tribes

The next afternoon Mark found himself walking jauntily down a row of pines toward the high ground of the park in Tucson that was home to the annual "Gathering of the Tribes." Perfect timing, he thought. Tribes from all over the west gathered here for dances, exhibits, shows. His idea of some sort of exchange of brotherhood was dimmed somewhat by the hard stares he collected as he made his way past a row of house trailers where young Indian men stood around on canopied porches and sat on the running boards of their trucks drinking beer. He thought of Keller's recent urge for dialogue and shook his head. You can't really tell people what's inside you.

"Hey you with the beard, over here!"

He swung around in concern to see a group of assorted law enforcement types lounging near a small recreation room and bathroom combination beside an oak tree at the end of the row of trailers. With a dull terror gnawing in his belly, he walked over to the group as casually as possible.

"Yes, sir?"

There were five of them. A sheriff's deputy, two Arizona Highway Patrol guys and two city cops. They formed a half circle around him.

"Get him, 'Sir' is it?" one of them said darkly.

These guys are hard core, he thought dully, pissed because you call them 'Sir' is not a good sign. Oh shit, he remembered the small blue capsule of mescaline secreted inside his Army Surplus mess kit. Can't make a shadow of a mistake or I'm fucked. The leader of the group, a man with short cropped blond hair and intense blue eyes, folded his arms and stared aggressively at the befuddled traveler.

"Where in the hell you think you're going?"

Mark was flustered. "Just, uh, to see the exhibits."

The men laughed at him. "Shit," said one of the city cops, "the exhibits, is it? This guy a hippie or a fairy?"

"How long you been in town, hippie?" the man with the blue eyes snapped.

"Just got here, from Grand Canyon."

"You do any rapes or robberies yet?"

Good God, thought Mark. This guy's in the Twilight Zone. He doesn't even see me. What he sees is mythology, symbolism. Guy off the road. Gypsy scum, rapist and murderer. Lock up the women and children. And me holding a fucking cap of mescaline. He felt as though bottle caps were sliding around inside his stomach.

The blond man pressed his face close to Mark's.

"You know, boy, vagrant assholes like you go to jail in this town."

"I'm no vagrant," Mark concentrated all his strength on meeting the man's steady gaze.

"How much money you got on you, then?" asked the deputy.

"'Most a hundred."

"Shit you do."

Mark dropped his duffel bag and drew his wallet out. He showed the four twenties and assorted smaller bills to the group. He could see a group of nearby Indians regarding the scene with bemused expressions.

"Well if you've got that much money on you I know you're holding some marijuana," the cop said, grinning in predatory anticipation and giving a melodramatic emphasis to the last word.

"No, sir, I don't use any drugs at all."

"Let's just set his shit over on the ping-pong table and go through it," drawled one of the AHP officers. "We'll see what he's got."

"Just some clothes and camping gear, honest."

One of the cops sneered. "Camping gear, my ass. Where the hell you going camping?"

"Colorado."

The five of them seemed to weigh this possible destination suspiciously.

"One chance, you hear?" his chief tormentor nearly spat the question at him. "I want your sorry ass gone. We don't take no drifters here. Now you get the fuck out of town. I see you again you're going straight to jail. Got it?"

He struggled to keep from grinning in relief. "Yes, sir."

The incident disoriented him. He wandered about the Gathering for the rest of the afternoon, idly watching tribal dances and exhibits of paintings and handicrafts. He was surprised to see twilight descending over the campgrounds. Suddenly ravenous, he found himself standing by the side of a brightly lit, warm wagon from which hot dogs and popcorn were being dispensed. He ordered two chili dogs and a coffee and sat down at a small wooden picnic table to eat.

"There's nothing to that religious trip, man," a scrawny young man with dirty brown hair past his shoulders was telling a clean cut man who wore a serious expression and a red and black checked sports coat over his black tee-shirt.

"How can you say nothing?" the man behind the counter demanded.

"Because I am God, man, you dig? It ain't this burning bush or off in space or any of that shit. It's the protoplasm and all that stuff that wiggles around in a microscope and I am the creator of all of it."

The studious man leaned forward. "But something had to create you, now you can't deny being created."

"I fuckin' created myself," the hippie retorted.

"Well, I'll take you over to the biology lab at the college right now and show you in the microscope where sperms and eggs meet right there under that glass, then you tell me if you created yourself."

The hippie shrugged and smirked. "Sounds too much like a porno flick," he said with a sneer, turning to go. "Just a bit of the old universal in and out and up and down."

"You may not be as smart as you think you are," the solemn man yelled after him, sullen at seeing the potential convert to scientific Christianity escape.

"Don't pay no mind to that character, Eddie," said the man behind the counter. "What's he know?"

"Guy's not as smart as he thinks he is."

"Hell, he don't know what he believes from one day to the next. Depends on what kinda drugs he's been shooting."

"Yeah, he thinks he knows everything. Well, he ain't no God."

Mark felt sure the two men were going to notice him next and demand to know what his religion was. I've got to get out of Tucson, he thought with an urgency verging on panic. He walked uphill along what seemed to be a service road. Suddenly, a bargelike white Pontiac came fishtailing around the corner and sped past him.

The car stopped abruptly and began to back up. "Jesus, now what?" Mark asked himself out loud.

The Pontiac lurched to a stop in front of him. An Indian with a battered face, wrinkled and pockmarked, peered up at him, grinning expansively.

"Hey, brother, where you going with that big green army man bag?" Mark's initial surge of anxiety abated as he recognized the goodnatured friendliness in the man's tone and made solid eye contact with him. Eye contact, always a key.

"Oh, uh, Colorado."

"Well, you can't get to no Colorado this time of night. But hey, climb in, buddy; we're going some damn place."

He hesitated. There were two other occupants in the front seat. A woman with her head thrown back, snoring fitfully with her mouth open and a big man who was bent forward mumbling curses as he struggled to open a bag of potato chips.

"Come on," said the driver, "get in the back seat, brother; we're headed for the big Pow Wow."

Risk it, a voice inside him said. He opened the back door and awkwardly pushed his duffel bag onto the seat and climbed in.

"Thanks."

"O.K. My name's George, you know. I got a white man's last name. Wilson. But my friends call me Arapaho George cause that's what I am. What's your name?"

"Mark. Mark McManus." His mind was racing. What the hell was this, some kind of Jungian synchronicity going on? He wanted to blurt out his vision of Coyote to this man but then thought better of it. He thought of the gang back at the Grand Canyon village. Coyote, hell. This guy's Coyote is in a brown bag.

"Mark. Mark McManus," he mumbled approvingly, "that's a good name. Front and back names sound the same and the word man's in there. All right. This here's Ugly Joe, he's a Comanche. And the broad's Little Sue, she's drunk as hell and she's Apache." The woman lashed her head around and made indecipherable noises as briefly glared at Mark. The other man turned and regarded him with a baleful glare. His nose was huge and there was a thick white scar running across his cheek and disappearing in his coarse black sideburns.

"Hell, is this fuckin' white guy doin' in here?"

"This guy's all right, Joe," said the driver firmly.

"You know how far I like a white guy?" the burly man asked, working up a wad of spittle mingled with potato chip debris and propelling it forcefully out the open passenger window with howitzer force, "about that far. Far as I can spit."

This statement struck him funny and he began to roar with laughter.

George turned off the service road and skirted the big trailer encampment and soon they were headed for the open country outside Tucson. He turned halfway back to address his new passenger.

"Now, Joe here don't like white people, I'll admit. I try to tell him, Joe, they are not all like Goldwater. You know this politician named Goldwater? He had his picture taken wearing a headdress once during a campaign. But the son-of-a-bitch wouldn't go onto the reservation. Made the shot in a studio with a blue sky backdrop. Now I always call him Senator Pisswater. Give this guy a drink, Joe."

Joe glared at Mark, then inexplicably reached out to shake his hand and stuck out a quart bottle of Jim Beam. Eager to please, Mark made a ceremonious show of tipping the bottle and taking a big swig, though he pursed his lips together to restrict the flow.

"Attaboy," George nodded approvingly.

They drove silently through the humid, cactuspunctuated night. Little Sue began to moan and thrash around in discomfort. Joe made a fumbling effort to make her more comfortable. She sat up for a minute, looked at Mark with a puzzled curl of her upper lip and passed out again.

"She drinks a lot," explained George. "She lives in a trailer with a big hole in the sheet metal side of it covered over by a piece of warped plywood to keep out the wind. She don't like to remember that. So she always gets drunk. You can understand that."

Mark nodded, moved by the revelation. "Yeah. Shit." His voice trailed off into silence. Christ, he thought, I used to be articulate. Now listen to me. Yeah. Shit. Two days ago I was lit up by the side of the Colorado like some junior medicine man talking to Coyote and now I can't even express myself. Maybe what they say about taking drugs is true.

They were speeding along the near empty highway outside town, weaving from time to time as George struggled to keep his eyes adjusted to the road. He pushed his black felt hat higher up on the back of his head. "Do you admire this hat? I won the sucker last night in a poker game with three Sioux brothers from Canada. Ever been there?"

"No."

"Yeah. They used to call it Grandmother's Land because of the queen of England? It's a fine country. Lot of places where the hunting and fishing are what they were a hundred years ago. That's cause it's so damn hard to get to. Keeps a lot of assholes with no business there away." He regarded Mark in the rear view mirror. "So, what you gonna do in Colorado?"

He liked this man. The timbre of sincerity in his voice made even this careening ride seem comfortable and ordinary.

"Oh nothing special, just wanted to see the mountains, I guess."

George laughed. "They've got mountains all over the west. You don't have to go to no Colorado to see mountains."

Joe also found this statement amusing and slurred out, "Yeah, all over the fuckin' west is mountains," before bending over in a spasm of laughter mixed with a racking cough and further expectoration into the warm darkness.

Realizing how fatuous his statement must have sounded, Mark joined in the laughter. He took a larger slug of bourbon the next time the bottle reached him.

"You're a good sport," observed George approvingly, "I like a man who can laugh at himself. Tell you what. You wanna come back to the motel with us? We got food there. Can get more booze. Hell, old Sue might even sober up enough to give you some pussy. Got any place to sleep?"

"No, well, sure." Mark struggled to think of something to say, then realized that noone was expecting him to say anything. They had no clue of any problem. Whether he was stupid as a fence post or a verbal genius who had just suffered a hard blow on the head or someone who had had the mythological history of the entire Southwest mashed into his face two nights ago at the bottom of the Bright Angel Trail in the Grand Canyon. Whatever. There was something profoundly comforting in that. They drove along in a silence broken only by Joe, who started to make a grunting, wheezing, chanting sound, oblivious to those around him.

George grew somber. "He's gone now. Off into his chanting shit. Pass me that bottle again; that's it." He took a big draw, causing the car to weave.

"Whoops. Tell you what, buddy. I'm heading for Montana day after tomorrow. You want you can come along. They got mountains up there in Montana good as any. Introduce you to some good people."

"Great, yeah, that'd be a trip." It was gnawing at him now, the knowledge that he wasn't saying a fucking thing. Just doing a lot of nodding and smiling. Christ, it was always that way after acid or mescaline. The gap between inner and outer. Like your real life was way down in that Jungian underbrush, creeping mythic onecelled creatures hunched at the bottom of everything and you were just floating along up on the surface, going through the motions.

"They really get you bit by bit," George was telling him now, "just like wind and rain tear down a mountain; you know what I mean?" Mark reassuringly touched him on the shoulder and murmured in assent.

"I mean a man can go through so much and it don't show. Like you, you don't say much but you listen to what a man says as though you give a shit."

He lit a Marlboro from his dashboard pack and stared down the road after the jousting, swirling head beams.

"I once had a daughter, on the reservation. She got sick and died and I couldn't do a fucking thing about it. I couldn't even bury her the right way. Hocked an old Martin guitar I had but it wasn't enough. So I just took her out wrapped in a blanket and buried her like they used to, under the night sky with a shovel and a dance. They put out a warrant for that shit. Took me in. You can't bury that way, they said, ain't healthy. Can you beat that shit? Healthy way to get buried."

The memory was shattered by the sharp sound of a siren. "Shit," said Joe, bolting upright in a second, "it's the fuckin' bluecoats." Mark looked back in anguish. A small circle of red light was beaming toward them from the darkness. They slowed abruptly and pulled to a stop by the shoulder of the highway. Joe nudged Little Sue with concern, trying to wake her up.

"Damn," said George, "where the hell did they come from?"

A cop approached the driver's side warily, hand resting on his revolver, a fact which riveted Mark's attention.

"All right, out of the car there, Big Chief," the cop said with mockery staining his voice. He was a thin man of medium build with a bushy mustache and darting, suspicious eyes. He seemed surprised to see Mark in the back seat.

"What you doing out riding with these fools?"

"Uh, just hitchin' a ride," Mark stammered nervously.

"Hitchin' a ride? Shit, ride like this could kill ya, boy."

George clambered wearily out of the now brightly illuminated car and the cop escorted him back to check his license and registration. The other cop, shorter and a little fat, peered in from the passenger's side window.

"You been drinking with these folks?" he snapped at Mark.

"No, sir, just trying to get a ride out of town," he said, turning his head toward the floor, so they wouldn't smell the liquor on his breath.

The cop began to scrutinize Joe, who was trying to get Little Sue to sit up straight without collapsing forward into the dashboard.

"So, whattcha been doing to her pussy tonight?" he demanded of Joe with a leering, patronizing smirk.

Joe spoke with a great effort at dignity. "I ain't been doing nussing to her pushy tonight."

"What year is this?" the other cop had come back to the driver's side and was looking on the steering column for a registration certificate.

"1968."

The cop shot him a dirty look but said nothing and walked away. "Damn," Mark said to himself out loud, "that's real cute. He meant the car. What year is the car? Keep it up and you're gonna be in some deep shit."

Back at the lights, George was attempting to walk a straight line. Then in an instant he started to run. Down into the ditch at the side of the road, clearing a fence with a surprisingly fluid leap, his black hat falling into the dirt, and loping off across the field like an overweight deer, bounding toward the cover of a line of pine trees.

"Stop, damn you," yelled the short cop, moving into the headlight beams, "Stop or I'll shoot!" He started to extract his pistol, then seemed to think better of it. The taller cop shouted after George a few times, but the Indian was gone, safe in the dark cover of the jet black pines.

"Oh, fuck it," said the tall cop, "let him go." He approached Mark, gave him a sobriety test consisting of repeating the word 'Mississippi' several times, made him walk back and forth along the highway stripe, and lost interest in him.

"You can get your stuff out of the car. These folks are going to jail. Tow truck's been called."

The couple from the front seat were both glaring from the back seat of the police car. Mark shouldered his bag.

"I'd watch who you take a ride with from now on," warned the taller cop.

"Yes, sir. Any chance of getting a ride back to town?"

Laughter. "The only place I can take you is jail."

"Can I sleep here in this field?"

"We don't give a fuck where you sleep," said the short cop with a dismissive tone.

Mark headed meekly for the field, stooping to pick up Arapaho George's fallen hat. I wonder where he got off to he thought, staring at the line of pines and the rising, boulderstrewn hills beyond. Hell, he probably knows a hundred hiding places, just like Geronimo's warriors, back of his hand.

After a while a tow truck came and hooked up the Pontiac and soon the road was quiet and empty under the moon.

* * *

That night he dreamed he was with the five cops who had interrogated him earlier. They were crashing through the bushes waving their flashlights frenetically. Each held a rifle with a scope on it. He seemed to be guiding them. The cop with the cobalt blue eyes was gritting his teeth, "Now, you better point it out, hippie, which way did he go?"

The grinning face of Arapaho George winked moonishly at him from behind an oak bough, like one of the faces he had seen in the cliff. He smiled and led the group in the opposite direction.

"Over this way," he told them with forced earnestness, "over here. See here's where he lost his hat."

He woke to a vague sound of bells. He was startled to find himself surrounded by a semicircle of sheep. They were staring at him as though at a creature from another planet, a few making bleating noises. He was laughing in delight.

"Top of the morning to you, Mr. Sheep."

He climbed back over the fence and took a position by the side of the road. After about an hour he got a ride in the back of a pickup truck with an old Indian woman. He sat there all the way back to town without a word. They reached the city and drove past block after block of closed stores towards the sound of a parade. It was Sunday. There would be music and food and dancing. Two blocks from the camp a sudden gust tore the black hat from his head, lifting it up and bearing it down the street with a skipping, sliding motion. That's that, he thought, almost laughing, you can't cling to anything in this world.

Michael Shorb has lived in California most of his life. His work reflects an abiding interest in myth, history, and the lyrical form, as well as a satirical focus on present day trends and events. He also writes environmental poems and poems that grapple with the grim political and social realities of our time. He has an abiding interest in the history of the American West and its attendant myths. The story, "Gathering of the Tribes" is taken from an unpublished work called The Bear Flag Revolt. His poems have appeared in over 150 magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, Rain City Review, Shakespeare Newsletter, Commonweal, Religious Humanism, Beatitude, and many others. He also writes poetry for children, some of which have been recorded for the audiocasette magazine, Shoofly.