Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

by James Welch

One day Mik-api asked White Man’s Dog to prepare the sweat lodge, and that was the beginning of the young man’s apprenticeship.

He hadn’t really noticed it until now, but the people seemed to respect him. He felt almost foolish with this knowledge, as though he had grown up and hadn’t noticed that his clothes no longer fit him.

It pleased him to know that Mik-api still lived in the world of men.

I began my death song,

He felt her fingers tracing worlds on his back, and then he slept.

Fools Crow drew a deep breath and sat back. He looked at the Beaver Medicine bundle, which lay not more than three paces away. His head almost hurt from his fierce listening. He had heard the story of the origin of the medicine when he was a child. It was one of his grandfather’s favorite stories. But this telling was different. It came from the lips of the man who was the keeper of the bundle, who had learned the ways of the medicine the same way Akaiyan had learned it in the long-ago. And there lay the bundle, filled with magic and power.

But when I ask for myself, he does not listen. I think sometimes that the keeper of the bundle is the only one who does not benefit.

“I can’t heal a man who doesn’t have the heart for it.”

The thought came into his mind without warning, the sudden understanding of what Fast Horse found so attractive in running with Owl Child. It was this freedom from responsibility, from accountability to the group, that was so alluring. As long as one thought of himself as part of the group, he would be responsible to and for that group. If one cut the ties, he had the freedom to roam, to think only of himself and not worry about the consequences of his actions. So it was for Owl Child and Fast Horse to roam. And so it was for the Pikunis to suffer.