Panther in the Sky (27 page)

Lalawethika, He-Makes-a-Loud-Noise, had become good at making a very loud noise indeed with his bottom-hole. In fact, he had become a master at it. He was the only boy ever known who could blow sound from his bottom-hole whenever he wanted to. Other boys could make the funny sounds when, by chance, their bowels were full of wind. But Loud Noise’s bowels, it seemed, were always ready. Something in his little round distended belly was always at work, some kind of fermentation that produced the smelly winds all day and all night. He loved to eat corn and hominy and beans and breadwater. His belly was always audible, gurgling and burbling and growling and stuttering. Star Watcher once had said that everything he ate turned to beans. He could save up this smelly wind and let it go when there was a proper occasion. It had become like another language. He could modulate it, make it whisper, make it sputter, make it whistle, even make it speak in syllables. He could imitate a dog shaking itself. A grouse drumming. A quail flying away. A baby bird in a nest. Water boiling. A slow woodpecker on a hollow log or a fast woodpecker on a solid log. A horse blowing its lips. Sometimes he would squeeze his Thunder-Sucker while doing it and say he was letting loose some captured thunder. Of course all this was not a language for expressing goodwill or noble or tender sentiments.

So he used it this night at the stomp ground when Star Watcher scolded him. He turned with his brothers to leave, and when his back was turned to Star Watcher and the Mask Spirit Man, he arched his back, squinted tight his empty eyesocket, and blasted her with a raucous, malodorous retort that could be heard by everyone within fifty feet. It made many of the dance spectators laugh, and it embarrassed Star Watcher, which was of course what the boy had meant it to do.

At midnight, unaware of her little brother’s plotting, Star Watcher was hurrying around the line of warriors to take her place behind her chosen man. For so long it had been understood by almost everyone who knew them that Stands Firm would be the one for the beautiful Star Watcher. They probably would have been married by now, but he had always been away at war. Now
he was here, and she was in the greatest state of excitement she had ever known. This was the first happiness she had felt since her mother had gone. It seemed as if new life were starting.

The lines of paired couples shuffled to the drumbeats, heel and toe of the left foot, then heel and toe of the right, both lines facing away from the bonfire and a woman behind each man. Not all the dancers would be selecting mates this night; most were dancing just for frolic. Most of the people in the lines were already married.

The shell-shaker girl, with little terrapin shells full of pebbles tied to the calves of her legs, danced at the head of the line, and her chattering sounds were in time with the drumbeats, while the old man with the drum was also singing his chant.

Then the dancers chanted.

Then he chanted.

The dancers’ bodies grew warm and moist, and the rhythms moved their blood. Star Watcher admired the smooth, splendid brown muscles of Stands Firm’s strong back and shoulders, buttocks and thighs and calves agleam with sweat and oil in the dancing firelight, and she imagined her hands moving on those hard, shapely muscles. The heavy silver ornaments in his slit earlobes bobbed and glittered with every step. Stands Firm was wearing only a short, narrow, bead-ornamented loincloth, beaded moccasins, and a feather in his scalplock. Every line of every beautiful muscle was delineated under his fatless skin; she could almost see the muscle fibers themselves stretch and contract with such graceful power as he moved, and in her loins a delicious tingle of desire was building. She moved in a way to make the insides of her thighs slide together at each step, and this hurried and enhanced the excitement. All her skin was wide awake to every feeling. When her loose, light doeskin dress swayed around her, it caressed her hips and the tips of her breasts. The desire in her
loins was coming in waves now, seeming to flow down with every footstep and drumbeat.

Each woman and girl in the line danced with a cloth scarf in her hand. This scarf was the most important accessory in the dance, and the time had almost come to use it. They had been dancing for a long while, so long that each woman was aware of only the man in front of her and each man of the woman behind him.

And now came the Singer’s whoop that meant for all the couples of dancers to touch hands.

Stands Firm reached behind him. Star Watcher put her scarf in the collar of her dress, and when she took his hands, her hands were bare, with no scarf between the skin of her hands and his.

This was the sign of acceptance. It meant that their bodies should soon be touching like this, naked.

And so now it was known what her intentions were, and Stands Firm would have to let her know if he intended the same. At another whoop the line of men dancers turned around and faced the women who had been behind them, and the music and dancing continued. Most of the women held the men’s hands with the scarves between them. Only a few couples along the line held each other’s bare hands.

Stands Firm was most impressive as he faced her now. His chin was firm, his jaws were square, his skull was a beautiful shape, and his eyes were bright. All the muscles of his chest and belly were firm and agleam. He shuffled close to Star Watcher, so close the front of their bodies touched, and she felt an almost overpowering surge of passion as they pressed together their moving bodies. The region of her
massih
was growing very moist. The Singer chanted his syllables, and now, when the dancers were to chant, they spoke words to each other instead of the meaningless syllables. The impassioned couple spoke to each other of their bright eyes and beautiful faces. They took turns complimenting each other on the strength and symmetry of their bodies. Then Stands Firm said:

“I like how your breasts feel against my stomach.”

And she replied, laughing:

“Something stands firm against my belly.” He laughed, too.

Then they began caressing with their hands. Her palms slid over his hard shoulders and down his chest and belly muscles, and they felt as good as they had looked.

The two of them might as well have been dancing alone now; they were aware of nobody else. The skin between her thighs was
slick. The women in the menstrual hut often talked of this. If enough moisture came from your
massih
to drip or trickle down your legs, you could have no doubt that you were really in love with the man who made it happen. Sometimes men understood what this was or could tell by the smell of it that it meant yes. But there were always a few men who were so stupid about women that when they touched you between the thighs and felt it, they thought you had wet yourself with urine. Some men in fact were so stupid about all this, said the women in the menstrual hut, that their mothers had to come into the nuptial lodge the first night and help their sons get an erection and then help them guide it into the proper hole of the bride. For that eventuality there was even a passage in the Shawnee laws that told in detail about how a mother should help her son if he was naive like that.

It was quite plain that Stands Firm was not naive like that. He touched her in all the places where she told him she would like to be touched, and sometimes he knew where to touch even before she told him. They moved against each other, and it seemed that most of their power had flowed into their loins; here they pressed each other hardest, almost frantically, as they danced, and everywhere else they felt weak, especially in their legs.

And finally, near the end of the dance, very skillfully and at a time when they were shadowed and no one could see him do it, he slipped his hand in under her dress and between her thighs, and when his hand came out slick and wet he said in a voice almost choked:

“Neewa,
my wife. Come to my house.”

And she replied, her heart pounding, her face hot, her knees getting limber:

“Niwy sheena,
you are my husband. I come.”

W
HEN THE MUSIC ENDED, THE LINES OF MEN AND WOMEN
stood facing each other in the firelight, breathing hard. Most, who had danced with a cloth between their hands, said politely to each other, “That was a good dance.
Ni-a-we,
thank you,” and parted. But the ones who had danced with their bare hands touching went away in the dark. This was not the old way of marrying. But it was more exciting than the old way.

Star Watcher hurried to her family’s lodge, and while her warrior stood in the moonlit street outside, his blood rushing with desire, she slipped inside and gathered up a few of her personal belongings. She could see very dimly the beds of the triplets and
stepped carefully, not to awaken them. When her arms were full, she went outside, murmured to Stands Firm, and followed him through the moonlit village. Her soul was singing with joy, and her body was aquiver with desire. She did not notice that three stealthy little figures had come out of the
wigewa
door and were slipping along, following her in the darkness.

She went in the door of Stands Firm’s lodge, which would now become her own home. He did not waste time building a fire or even lighting an oil wick. The night was warm, and the couple were already burning. Enough moonlight was coming in through the doorway and the smokehole to see each other by. Star Watcher took the silver circlet off the end of her braid, ran her fingers down the braid to loosen it, and shook her hair free while he, almost moaning with each breath, shucked off his breechcloth and slipped out of his moccasins. She drew her dress over her head and laid it on the ground and shook her long black hair again and stood panting, naked, the moonlight gleaming on her forehead and shoulders and breasts, the musky smell of desire rising all around her. She reached toward him, and her hand found his
passah-tih
jutting up at an angle toward her, stiff as hickory and hot. A woman in the menstrual hut once had boasted that she could hang a shirt on her husband’s
passah-tih.
Now Star Watcher could believe that. She flung her arms around him, and he held her for a moment like this, almost fainting with his want, almost ejaculating at the touch of her belly flesh on his member. Then with frantic whisperings he eased her down, and they sank in the shadows onto the blanket of his bough-cushioned bed. He got over her on his hands and knees and sniffed her body from her neck to her ankles. Finally in the half-light he touched her in the musky place and, having found it, crawled tense-muscled upon her and pressed the end of his
passah-tih
into her, past the point of pain. Both were moaning now and pulling at each other’s hips as if by sheer passionate strength to forge their loins together forever, and they were blind with the inrushing of their passions, making two halves of the world become one, beginning with unspoken hope to rebuild the diminished People, too blind to notice three little figures creeping like lizards in through the doorway from the moonlight outside.

For a few moments the little figures were still, crouching in the darkness near the door, listening to the whispering moans and the quickening groans from the bed.

Then one of the little figures by the door got up and moved toward the bed. He turned his back on it, stooped over, gave a
little grunt of his own, then blew open the sweet sanctity above the nuptial bed with the loudest, wettest, longest crepitation he had ever produced, everything from the dog shaking itself dry to the growling bear. By the time it ended and punctuated itself with a few after-stutters and baby birds, all three of the little intruders were giggling and shrieking with uncontrollable hilarity. They barely had strength left to evade Stands Firm’s groping hands and escape out the door to race through the moonlit town, laughing and stumbling over each other all the way home.

T
HE BOYS POUNDED GENTLY ON THE GREEN ELM LOG WITH
heavy clubs. Every inch of the surface they pummeled, then they rolled the log over a quarter turn and pounded some more. While Tecumseh thumped the log, he did not talk much. His mind was upon his Vision Quest, which would be soon. His little brothers laughed and chattered as they worked. Sometimes Loud Noise would complain to his sister about how tired he was or protest that Cat Follower or Stands-Between, his brothers, had hit his stick with theirs. For once he kept his temper and his wind blowing under constraint; he knew better than to remind her of the prank he had done on her wedding night.

A few feet away, Star Watcher and two other young married women held a long pole up alongside a row of upright posts, measured it, then laid it on the ground and chopped it off to the marked length with a tomahawk.

“Now,” Tecumseh said, “let us peel the wood.” He ran his knife along the top of the log, scoring it from one end to the other. Then he inserted the knife point at one end of the cut, working it in under the outermost annual ring, raised that layer of wood grain far enough to get a grip on it with his fingers, and pulled up. The wood fiber, softened and separated by the pounding, peeled off in a long, pliant layer, which he then cut into strips as wide as his thumb. The young women, wearing only moccasins and short loin aprons, came and got the wood strips as he made them and strapped them skillfully, tightly, around the joints where the pole crossed the upright posts. These strips, made the same way as the material for baskets, were better than rawhide for lacing a house together, because they dried to make very rigid joints and because mice did not gnaw at them as they did at rawhide.

Thus, bit by bit, the skeleton of the new
wigewa
went up. It was to be a rather large house, because not only Stands Firm and Star Watcher but also her four young brothers would dwell in
it. In marrying Star Watcher, Stands Firm had at once acquired a large family.