Every night the shaman came out, an offering clenched tightly in his left fist. To watch him was to witness sheer willpower.
His head appeared first above the edge of the chasm. His hands came next, one a foot or so to either side. The right with fingers splayed for a grip, the left still clenched. He might as well drop his soul as drop his offering. With those fingers and his bony wrists he gripped the edge of the chasm.
Then his shoulders appeared and tensed, the wiry muscles contracting as he pulled himself up over the edge. Then all at once, his skinny chest and abdomen appeared.
Then in rapid succession his waist and hips appeared, and then his right knee. As he flexed that leg, his kneecap shone. Every night. It glowed in the moonlight when there was a moon, and in the starlight when there wasn’t.
And for a moment, that same moment every night, he teetered, balancing between eternity and fulfilling a simple human obligation. At the same moment, the same place, the same position.
I could almost feel his teeth grinding together as he tensed his jaw against failure. Mine ground along with his.
I was in plain sight, pampering myself with a seat in a soft canvas chair.
I had peered into that chasm several times. It and I were familiar with each other through the bond of my fear. I never ventured closer to the edge than was necessary to spy on his home, an ancient, shallow, rock-faced cave.
But each time I spied from the same place where he pulled himself up night after night. His hands and wrists lay where my footprints would be if rock could be impressed with footprints. I had marveled at his abode, but I had also studied what lay beneath. I knew it intimately, and that knowledge fueled my fear.
If the shaman’s knee should fail, if he toppled backward, he would land on his back. Even if he didn’t strike his head on the rocks first, he would begin a non-stop slide to a four hundred foot drop through cottonwood limbs and onto the jagged rocks below.
I watched, pulling for him. I could almost feel the muscles in the front of his right thigh burning right up to the point of fatigue. Hands, arms, shoulders and chest were no longer of use. Except as a counter balance to the one leg that remained beneath him.
Or as a death sentence if one muscle twitched the wrong way and suddenly forced all of their weight on that one leg.
I tensed, gripped the aluminum arms of my chair. “Lean forward,” I muttered in a waking dream. “Lean forward or you’ll fall.”
As if he needed my help. As if he could hear me on the other side. As if he hadn’t been performing this same ritual every night for ten thousand years.
I have no idea whether he heard me. But always, every night, he found just enough reserve to pull it off.
And when he straightened, he didn’t clasp his hands on his knees, gasping for breath and thanking the gods he’d made it one more time. He didn’t pause to raise his clenched offering to the moon or the river or whatever god he was coming to praise. He just went on about his business.
He danced away across the rocks with seemingly neither a desire nor a need to watch his footing.
At one point along his ritual path he turned. He passed so close I could have touched him. He looked right at me, or maybe through me, and seemed to almost pause for a moment.
Then he followed another turn in the path and continued to his destination. Wherever that was.
I met his gaze, but of course I didn’t attempt to touch him. And I didn’t say anything to him. Not to avoid startling him, but because I didn’t deserve to. I mean, that’s how I felt. For all I knew, he didn’t even know I was there.
He was simply living his life, going about his daily routine.
And just like that, the show was over until tomorrow night.
Or so I thought.
Always before, my buddy, the guy who showed me the chasm and the shaman’s dwelling in the first place, was away during the show. Some bird had caught his photographer’s eye or nature had called to him in one way or another, requiring a final constitutional.
But tonight he was back.
“Hey, so what’s shakin’?”
Still in my chair and facing the river gorge, still watching the back of the thin, short, wiry, sunbaked man as he fulfilled one more moment of his destiny, I started.
In an attempt to cover my surprise at the sudden reappearance of my friend, again I grasped the arms of the chair and adjusted myself in it.
My buddy grinned as he walked past. “Did’n scare’ya, did I?”
“Nah, nothin’ like that. I was just adjusting my chair.”
“Uh huh. What’s goin’ on?”
My buddy and I are different.
I’m always ready at a moment’s notice to walk halfway across a raging river that only moments ago was a dry wash just to determine how rapidly the sand is disappearing from beneath my feet. Yes, I test it with my 180 pound body to decide whether we can safely drive a 4000 pound vehicle across it.
I’m more than happy to change a flat tire on the side of an interstate highway as semi-tractor trailers rush by at 75 miles per hour. It doesn’t bother me to mosey casually toward an enemy emplacement with nothing but a firearm and a determined look.
In short, I’m game for anything that might result in me being fondly remembered by someone, at some time, for something. But there has to be a real purpose involved. Ritual purposes don’t count.
Everything about my friend, especially his zest for actual life and his desire to live forever, causes him, rightly, to eschew such nonsense. However, he is a true daredevil. He’s actually been in the shaman’s cave-house-abode.
Did I mention that directly below it is a pebble-strewn, slick, steeply angled slide-away chute to a four hundred foot drop?
Yeah. Doesn’t bother him.
I can’t go there because if I died in the attempt, I would have died for ritual. Which is to say I would have died of stupidity. I won’t do things to satisfy a dare, and I won’t do things to satisfy dead people.
I would dig up Johnny Ringo and move him to a new grave to rest in peace if his really cute great-great-great-great-granddaughter asked me to.
But I wouldn’t call him John just because he insists he hates being called Johnny. Hey, if it’s good enough for Wyatt, it’s good enough for me.
So my buddy says, “Uh huh,” which loosely translates “bullshit.” And he follows it with “What’s goin’ on?” which translates “C’mon, you can tell me. Or would you rather walk back to civilization?”
Of course, he’s joking. Probably.
So I pointed in the direction the shaman had gone. And I said, “Did you see that?” Which translates exactly as it sounds, but was actually me stalling for time as I decided how much to tell him.
He glanced in that direction, then back at me. “No. What was it?”
“I saw your shaman.”
This time he didn’t even bother to look where I’d previously pointed. “Huh. It was hot out here today, wasn’t it? Hey, you need some water or Gatorade or something?”
I pointed again, this time to the place where I’d peered down at the shaman’s house every time we’d been to this particular camping spot. “He came up over there. First his hands, then his head and shoulders. He heaved himself up and tracked right along there. And right over there,” and I pointed again, “he turned and came so close I could almost touch him.”
My buddy nodded gravely, then grinned. “Did he say where he was goin’?”
I frowned. “Yeah. He had a hot date.” Then I scowled. “No he didn’t say where he was goin’. An’ I didn’t ask. None’a my business. I was just glad for the opportunity to see him.” Yeah, that and that you didn’t see him.
But he didn’t bite on the privileged-me aspect. “Well, I ain’t walked out yet.” He glanced again in the direction I’d initially pointed. “Look like he was headed down to the river?”
I glanced in the direction the shaman had gone, then back at my friend. “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I guess.”
I don’t care for the path to the river even in full daylight. And this was not full daylight. It was more like full starlight with a slip of a moon off to one side for atmosphere.
The path is steep and long and narrow. At several access points you can go slip slidin’ away to the aforementioned four hundred foot drop. Did I mention I don’t do things to satisfy a dare? Well, the time-honored “double dog dare” has precisely the same effect on me. None.
But my buddy dropped into his zero-gravity chair (read “recliner”), unscrewed the top of a Gatorade bottle, and said, nonchalantly, “Okay.” He took what looked to be a very satisfying drink. “Guess we’ll never get to see the end of the show then.”
“S’okay by me.”
“Me too. Hey, no problem at all.” He took another drink. “I mean, you’re the one who saw him.”
Yep. And his inflection said a great deal more than was transmitted in his words.
Every time we’d been here, my friend had worked his way down the death slide and laid an offering of fine tobacco on the floor of the shaman’s cave. Then like a gymnast after a picture-perfect flip he’d said a little prayer or something and worked his way back up the death slide.
But only I had actually seen the little guy.
And every time I saw him, he’d gone in the same direction, followed the same path. There had to be a specific purpose. Right?
But maybe not. Maybe he was just going down to take a bath.
Or do ghosts bathe? Ghosts don’t bathe, do they?
Besides, he had something clenched in that left hand. Every time we’d been here. Every time I’d seen him. And unless that something was a bar of soap, he wasn’t going to take a bath.
Now I’m not completely devoid of a belief system or of a sense of ritual. I’ve just never seen a reason to go tilting at windmills when the windmills obviously don’t care whether I’m tilting at them or not and nobody I want to impress is watching.
But the guy had looked right at me. Every time we were here.
Maybe that was his way of inviting me along to take part in his ritual.
Or to at least observe it.
Aw crap.
I slapped the arms of my chair. “All right,” I said, trying to sound disappointed that I was giving in to my friend’s petulant, foolish demands. None of which he’d made. “I guess I’m ready.”
But my buddy didn’t move, except to hold up one hand to ward me off while he lit a cigar. When it was burning evenly, he took it out of his mouth, expelled a blue-white cloud of smoke and said, “Ahh.”
He even leaned back a bit farther in his recliner, as if settling in for a leisurely evening of satellite watching. Then he turned his head. His eyes were wide, innocent. “Ready for what?”
I gestured in the direction the shaman had gone. My voice practically a growl, I said, “To go watch Mr. Skinny take a bath or whatever.” I had to downplay my capitulation to some degree or he’d never let me live down. “You know, to go see what the shaman’s doing.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah I’m sure. C’mon.”
He made a big show of getting out of his chair. “Oh all right.”
I’ll spare you the details of our trip down the trail, the three times I slipped almost to my certain death and the head shaking and quiet laughter that evoked from my friend.
At least we didn’t have to make the whole trek. It’s only about a half-mile, constantly descending. Which means coming back it would be constantly ascending. So not making even part of it was a good thing. And the last bit is almost straight down and involves snake- and large-cat–infested tall grass and brush. But that’s the part we didn’t have to traverse.
We were ambling along when my buddy stopped and put up his left hand in that annoying way that makes me feel like he’s ordering me around. But he was in front. Among guys, whoever’s in front is the leader.
So I stopped, put my hands on my hips, and waited.
Meanwhile, my friend canted his head to one side as if listening. Quietly, he said, “Hear that?” That annoying hand remained elevated.
No, I didn’t hear anything.
Finally he gestured to the left and started moving quietly in that direction.
Off the trail. To the left. Toward the sheer drop. Which, at this point, was still two hundred feet if it was an inch. And it was an inch. It was a whole bunch of inches. All of them vertical. I’m not necessarily afraid of heights, but I do prefer the horizontal over the vertical. Especially when I have to walk it or fall it.
My stomach caught in my throat.
But I followed him.
Downslope about twenty feet, the ground flattened out. Well, a massive rock flattened out. And my buddy was flattened out on top of it. He’d removed his hat and was lying face down, with said face hanging over the edge of the rock.
I went belly down alongside him.
There, about two hundred feet below us, Mr. Skinny was kneeling next to the river alongside a grandfather cottonwood tree.
As we watched, he raised both hands above his head. The left was still clenched into a tight fist.
He muttered what sounded like a prayer, then rose to his feet.
He raised his hands above his head again and placed the inside of his wrists together. Then he slowly uncurled his left hand, pressing against it with his right to be sure he didn’t drop whatever he’d brought with him.
When his fingers were fully extended, his palms pressed together, he stopped, mumbled another supplication, then turned to his left.
I thought maybe he was going to address the cottonwood tree, but he continued to turn.
Finally, when he was facing directly away from the river, he lowered his hands so they were clasped in front of him, still at arm’s length. Then he looked up. Right at us. He focused on us. I could feel it.
A chill raced through my body.
The little man’s eyes were like coals, red-black and glowing.
He raised his clasped hands slightly, then opened them. As if he were making an offering to us.
And in the dim light—maybe from his eyes—we saw it.
My buddy whispered, “My tobacco.”
Just as quietly, I said, “His tobacco.”
It lay in his palms, leaf on perfect leaf.
I glanced at my friend and frowned. “Didn’t you shred it?”
He nodded. “I always do. So I can scatter it over the floor of the cave.”
I hesitated, then pointed. “Well it ain’t shredded now. Maybe from now on you should just lay a cigar in there whole. Minus the ring, of course.”
He turned his head to the left, looked at me. “Why? When they used tobacco it was in a pipe and—”
I extended my right index finger. “Watch.”
He turned back to look at the shaman.
Who was beginning to fold his palms together.
He opened them, then folded them together again.
He opened them again, then folded them together.
Twice more he repeated the gesture, then opened his palms again and held them up for our inspection.
Where there had been a stack of loose leaves was now the same stack, folded neatly four times.
With his left thumb and forefinger, he grasped one end of the stack and pinched it, then turned it so it lay across his palm. Then he placed the other palm on top and began moving one palm over the other, back and forth, back and forth.
As he rubbed his palms together, his hands worked from the center of what was rapidly becoming a roll of tobacco toward one end. When he reached that end, he pinched it, turned the roll over and centered it between his palms again. Then he started back in the other direction.
A scant moment later, he held aloft a perfectly rolled cigar, tapered on both ends with about a 54 ring gauge in the center.
He turned to his right and pinned the cigar against the cottonwood tree with his left hand. A stone knife appeared from nowhere in his right. And quick as that, he sliced through the roll of tobacco, slightly right of center.
He stuck the tapered end of the longer half in his mouth, then gestured toward us with one palm. As if asking us to wait. Or maybe saying thanks. Or waving goodbye.
We waited.
Then he moved away from the river, out of sight below us.
A long moment later he reappeared.
A young, naked woman followed him.
She sat cross-legged beneath the cottonwood tree, her right side toward us. He sat in similar fashion in front of her, then leaned forward and handed her the shorter of the two cigars.
She accepted it, then clenched the tapered end between her teeth.
He picked up a twig and mumbled over it. A small flame appeared at the tip.
He leaned forward and lit the woman’s cigar first, then held the flame to his own.
As the smoke from the two cigars rose into the night, the shaman raised one hand. This time there was no mistaking his meaning.
But we couldn’t move. Not yet.
At least I couldn’t.
And my buddy didn’t.
The thin, trailing columns of smoke were mesmerizing. They remained near each other as they rose, swirling lightly and intertwining. And as they passed the edge of our rock, they formed a heart.
Both my friend and I backed away from the edge.
He sat on his haunches, and I knelt on one knee.
He looked at me for a moment, then shook his head. “Did you see that?”
“Hell yeah! Are you kiddin’ me? That chick was totally nak—”
“Not the girl, you idiot. The guy. He actually lit a stick on fire by saying some words over it.”
I wagged one hand at him. “Parlor trick.”
I’d seen the heart, but I didn’t tell him that.
He’d seen it too. I know he did because I saw his eyes go wide.
We were mostly silent on our way back to the camp.
Just before we got there, my buddy said, “So— looks like maybe some clouds rolling in. You think we ought’a stay another—”
“Yeah, let’s head on back, y’know? I kind’a miss my wife.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean. I think She Who Rules is probably missin’ me.”
I grinned, playing my role as the crass one. “As if.”
But yeah, he saw the heart.
And we both told our wives about that part.
* * * * * * *