The Cutthroat Cannibals Page 8

  Late that afternoon, after he had had a huge bowl of corn soup and slabs of venison, and he and the dog were just stretching out for a little post-imbibing siesta, the pseudo medicine man showed up, with his usual rattling and snake dancing, to check on his patient. After the guards had rolled the two huge tractor tires back in front of the entrance he took off his headdress, an upside-down boot with a Dolly Parton wig hanging down over it.

  “Damn, this thing is heavy—you’d be amazed,” Nanhanke said, and as always Stone could hardly believe the almost New York accent that emerged from the purple lips.

  “I can imagine,” Stone said, sitting up from his prone position.

  “How’s the leg?” the Indian asked as he walked over, tucking his rattle in his belt and leaning his huge mop-handled scepter against the tire wall.

  “Not as bad as it was,” Stone answered, looking down at the appendage. “I don’t know if it’s healing, but it sure as hell doesn’t hurt as much as it did before you dropkicked it for a field goal.”

  “Good, good,” the medicine man exclaimed, bending down and pulling back the split sides of the pants leg. “Less pain is a sign that the bones are fusing more properly together. The body doesn’t like things not to fit right, so it lets you know. Pain is the language that it speaks.” He got down on the earth floor on his hands and knees and sighted up along the leg like sighting down a pool cue to see if it was straight before heading for the table.

  “Looking good, looking real good,” the witch man said, rising up again. “Couldn’t have done better if I was back in Union General and had a whole team of surgeons, an operating room, and malpractice insurance and everything. I think the damn thing is going to heal almost perfectly. You’re incredibly lucky, Stone. You came millimeters from being a cripple for the rest of your life.”

  “Well, I’ve already got mental problems,” Stone smirked, “might as well have the body to go along with it.” He looked hard at the Atsana. “Tell me, how’s it going out there? I mean as far I’m concerned. I can see they’ve been powwowing all day.”

  “Don’t know, man,” Nanhanke replied, leaning up against the tires and looking out as if trying to see what Stone had been gazing at. “The chief’s so uptight on this one that he won’t let any but his top two men in on the actual decision making. Me and the other four witch doctors ain’t even allowed in on the negotiations. I think the truth is”—he paused—“he’s scared shit of that damned dog and he don’t want no one to know it except his most trusted pals. Don’t want to look bad to the rest of the tribe. That dog plays an incredible role in the religious and historical background of the tribe. It’s sort of like Jesus Christ, George Washington, and Thomas Edison all rolled up into one.” The medicine man looked over at the dog, who was half asleep with one eye open just a crack looking straight back at the Indian. He swore it could see right into his brain. “And sometimes I wonder myself.”

  “Oh, he’s just a damned dog, and not a very good one at that,” Stone said, annoyed at the glorification of the overeating, overburping, and overfarting canine. He paused, and looked hard again at the witch doctor. “Listen, what about your helping me to escape, just even—”

  “Forget it, pal, no way,” Nanhanke said, waving his hands in front of him like a customer at a sales clerk who was holding a shirt five sizes too small. “I’m glad to help you with your leg and I sincerely wish you the best of luck. But I’m here for the duration. I ain’t going back out there. It’s only going to get worse. Here I’m a respected pillar of the community. Got me a good job—probably work my way to the top, Head Bullshit Talker—got me a squaw with tits the size of watermelons, own my own all-weather teepee. Are you kidding, I got it better now that I ever did in the old days. No mortgage, no alimony, no way.”

  Stone laughed at the completion of the man’s little rap. “Okay, I think I get the message,” he grinned. The guy should have had his own ad agency. Nanhanke fitted his headdress back on until it felt about right, the blond wig falling down over both sides of his face. He smashed the rattle against the tractor tires and screamed out in dialect for the morons on the other side to open it up before he used some magic on them, because the white man smelled and he wanted to get the hell out of there. Nanhanke winked at Stone just before he disappeared outside. The prisoner just stared at the door for a long, long time.

  Stone and the dog supped from more food-filled gourds for dinner but otherwise weren’t visited again. Everyone seemed to want to stay as far away as possible from the magic mutt, which for the moment at least was fine with Stone. It took nearly an hour for him to fall asleep, though the dog lapsed into blissful farting unconsciousness within seconds of eating its last bite.

  Stone wasn’t sure what time of the morning it was, or what the hell he was dreaming—probably something about April being sliced up by bikers. But all of a sudden he was bolt upright in the near darkness lit only by the two main campfires always kept going in the center of the camp about fifty yards off. Something was wrong. He heard a bizarre sound like someone coughing or perhaps trying to make a mating call but getting the sound stuck in their throat. Stone tried to trace the source of the sound in the flickering grayness and then heard something straight above him. He raised his eyes and saw the dog, or the lower half of it anyway, dangling straight down from the rubber-tire ceiling about ten feet above. Somehow the animal, deciding to take some four A.M. excercise, had gotten its head and right front leg and shoulder lodged into a small car tire that formed part of the roof, and couldn’t for the life of itself get out. The back legs kicked madly in the air, like an angel trying to get back up into its cloud before God made bedcheck. And the sound the animal was making was pathetic—a wail filled with fear and humiliation.

  “Christ, Excaliber,” Stone groaned, unable to stop his mouth from stretching into a wide grin as he pushed himself up from the straw bed he had made in the corner. “You must have watched too many Three Stooges films in your childhood,” Stone said smirking as he tried to figure out how the hell he could dislodge the creature. He didn’t want to call the Indians in, because if they saw the mutt in such a dumb predicament all of the dog’s godly and macho powers would evaporate like so many soap bubbles in the sun. No, this had to be kept in the family, to say the least.

  He looked around and saw the crutch with its crook at one end for his arm to rest on. Stone grabbed the thing up and half walked, half hopped until he was standing right underneath the dog. He balanced himself on one leg until he felt good and set.

  “Dog, this is going to hurt you more than me. Just grit your incisors and we’ll see what happens.” There was a whiny growl from above, the animal not very audible with its head on the outside of the tire building. Stone pulled the three-inch-thick branch back and whapped forward right at the animal’s flank. As he swung Stone found himself losing his balance, and he tumbled forward along with the motion of the blow. The branch hit the dog amidships and the animal swung up toward the rubber ceiling like a speed bag in a gymnasium. When it bounced off the rubber and back down again the sheer kinetic energy of the ninety pounds of dog pulled the creature with a loud pop right out of the roof of the vulcanized teepee, like a child popping a nipple from its mouth. Like some previously unsighted and hopefully never seen again meteor from the darkest nether regions of space, the animal came hurtling down, every one of its legs spinning in the dark air at once as if flight was possible if one just tried hard enough.

  The animal came down right on Stone’s shoulders just as he was toppling forward himself, and the struggling, shouting, growling pair crashed down onto the earth in a dusty pile of flesh and fur. When it was all sorted out and every appendage had been extricated from their pretzellike entanglement, Stone just sat back and tried to still his beating heart.

  “Oh dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog,” he said over and over again like some sort of insane mantra, as he slowly drifted back off to sleep again seeing lines of pit bulls jumping and biting fences.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER

  Nine

  ABOUT three hours later, that morning, when Stone awakened and saw that it was dawn, the sky a mass of dripped ink and spilled color, he looked out the tire slot nearest his face and saw that something was up. They were building a structure of some kind in the very center of the encampment, a cleared circle about a hundred feet in diameter where much of the tribe’s group interaction occurred. And it was as bizarre as anything out of Gulliver’s Travels. As the sun hauled itself up to the tree line like an old crow that can’t quite make it, Stone could make out the general shape of the structure. The shape—but not what the hell it was going to be used for. It was a rough box about eight feet long and three wide, with ropes and junk all over it. As one group of braves worked on that, testing ropes, tightening corners, another group was building a huge bonfire about twenty feet behind the structure, a mother of a fire that was already ten feet high and perhaps an equal size around. It looked like their work was only beginning as braves walked in long lines back and forth to the nearby forests, dragging more fuel.

  Stone watched throughout the day as they put up poles and banners, the women getting elaborate gowns together, their hair being put up and braided by each other. Something big was in the offing, that was for damned sure. Somehow Stone had the sickening feeling that he was going to be an integral part of the festivities. They fed him breakfast and then lunch, Excaliber so chagrined by the embarrassing episode of the evening before that the dog couldn’t even face Stone but just dragged its food off to the farthest corner and ate with its face to the wall. Then it went back to sleep, nose pressed deep into a crevice trying to suck in fresh air. Stone felt sorry for the stupid dog. Its macho image had been attacked and the dog had come out the loser. There’s something about hanging like an ornament on a Christmas tree, and knowing that you’d be there until hell freezes over if you’re not rescued, that does wonders for one’s tough-guy rep.

  Nanhanke never showed that day, which seemed like a bad omen to Stone. And as the sun fell blood red and bloated from the sky like a leech that had drunk too much, he still hadn’t gotten dinner. If they weren’t feeding him that was a bad sign. It meant they didn’t think it was going to matter if he was hungry or not, and who the hell knew what that meant. But as the twilight and then the night fell like the shroud over a coffin, Stone grew increasingly nervous. The dog, too, which had just been getting used to the three squares seemed skittish, testy, and it snarled out through the cracks at the activities going on around them.

  When darkness fell the festivities began. Stone didn’t know exactly what the hell was happening, but he watched fascinated. First the great bonfire that now topped thirty feet high, twenty wide, was doused with some sort of flammable liquid. Then at Chief Breaking Buffalo’s command, archers on every side of the square opened up with flaming arrows. The pyre caught in numerous places and sprang into fire. A great yellow funnel ripped up into the night sky like a flaming tongue trying to kiss the curvaceous clouds wiggling by above. A second curtain of sparks and smoke and sputtering, crackling drops of superheated resin followed behind the flames. The wall of fire lit up the low flying clouds above which reflected the yellows and oranges off their mile-wide stomachs back down to the earth below, so that it almost appeared that the sky and the earth and everything in between were on fire.

  After about five minutes, once the sparks had settled down, the braves began dancing around the fire. Stone couldn’t see clearly at first, as everything was alternately in shadows and then streaks of light. But as he strained his eyes he focused in on the scene. About forty braves were running and leaping around the flames as the chief stood back near the strange wooden contraption that had been built. They wore something on their heads that made them look huge and horned, and as he squinted Stone could see bison heads—mangy brown heads as big as beach balls, with curved horns. Some of the heads looked real, others perhaps made from leather and pelts. But it was all real enough for the Indians for they got into the ritual dance with increasing enthusiasm.

  Log drums pounded from the shadows around the bonfire. It sounded as if there were dozens of them, beating out an unstoppable rhythm that seemed to shake the very ground, the stars above, shake them and move them in rhythm to its syncopated tribal tempo. The buffalo-headed braves ran around the fire in all different directions smashing into one another, weaving intricate dances around one another. They pretended to gore one another and make screaming noises, throwing their heads back and baying at the flame-splattered sky as if they were in mortal agony.

  After about twenty minutes of this Stone noticed other braves sneaking up on them from the shadows, fake swords and bows in their hands. They suddenly rushed forward and into the ring of “buffalo,” attacking them with wild thrusts and screams of human dominance. But the buffalo fought back. Terrified at first, after a minute they seemed to gather their forces and in one great unit charged back. The humans were ripped apart and fell “dying” to the ground as the others fled back into the shadows.

  Stone wished he had a video camera to record it all for posterity, if there was any. He remembered his anthro professor back at college. Son of a bitch would have thrown a shit fit to witness this. He glanced over at Excaliber but the dog couldn’t care less about buffalo dances. The pit bull sniffed forlornly at the tire he had adopted as the most comfortable in the place and sniffed hard, searching for an errant scent of porridge or venison that meant dinner was coming soon. Stone turned back to his viewing slit with a grunt. The dog could use a diet anyway. Its stomach looked as if it could have been a life preserver on the Titanic.

  Suddenly there was a great pounding on the drums. From out of the shadows walked Chiefie, all decked out in his royal duds. Even from many yards off, Stone was impressed by what he could see. The great one had on an even longer feathered headdress than he had worn the day before. This one split up into two and came down each shoulder in front of him to the ground. The feathers were luminous and shining like jewels even from fifty yards off. Beneath it he was stripped to only a loincloth made of black bear fur, as shimmering as satin. The man was immense, huge arms and chest. Buffalo Breaker came up to the circle of dancers and held his arms high to the sky. Then he lowered them and waded into the beasts, fists flying. The buffalo fell to the dirt where they lay still. It was over in seconds. All were “dead.” The chief stood in front of the fire and raised his arms so Stone could see them by the flames. It was quite impressive.

  But not as much as what happened next. For Stone found out what the strange box they had been building all day was for. Out of the darkness was led a shape, and as he squinted, he saw it was a cow—no, a buffalo. A real honest-to-god bison. Somehow they’d manage to scrape one up way back here in the middle of nowhere. The animal looked a bit rib-sticking and motheaten. But it was real, that was for sure. No men could saunter around, could lower their head in charge gestures like that. The buffalo was led around the fire three times as the drums pounded and the braves let out high-pitched screeches, waggling their hands over their mouths so the sound came out like a siren. The bison was led by tether over to the wooden box that had been constructed. Stone’s guts relaxed just a notch as he saw that whatever horrible thing was going to happen was going to happen to a dumb beast—and not Stone and his fucking wonderdog.

  Stone shifted around to get a better position against the tires, as he didn’t want to miss a second. He massaged his leg, which had fallen half asleep, to make sure that the bandage around it wasn’t too tight and shutting off the blood supply. Then he turned quickly back, burying his face deep in the opening. The bison was pushed, with some trouble, backwards into the pen and Stone could now see that the wooden structure had been measured exactly for the beast’s specifications, for it fit the pen to a T when it was at last completely pushed inside.

  Chief Buffalo Breaker raised his arms again and addressed the sky half singing, half screaming out a whole litany of Indian promises, threats, prayers. At last when all th
e gods had been satisfied ritual-wise, the chief walked over and stood directly in front of the bison. He stared deep into its eyes as the ropes that had been thrown around it from each side of the pen were pulled tight, effectively immobilizing it in place so that it couldn’t move but a fraction of an inch in any direction. The chief seemed to be looking for something right in the center of the bison’s skull, dead center between its horns, because he stared down there for about five minutes, like he was searching for gold.

  Then he raised his right hand slowly, ever so slowly, like a guillotine being raised inch by agonizing inch, its slow ascent all the more terrible because of the speed at which it would descend, and the results of that descent. And when the hand was up over the chief’s head as if he were reaching for the very moon, he let out a great scream that dwarfed even the mass of chanting, the beat of the log drums that echoed for miles down the canyons.

  Then the hand came down and Stone saw why the chief was called He Who Breaks Buffalos’ Heads. Because he did. The hand slammed down like a cleaver right between the horns or that exact spot that the chief’s lifelong experience in killing the animals had shown him, the weakest spot, where the bone would give. And he was right again. This was his thirteenth buffalo, one a year for the last thirteen years. The buffalo’s head was cracked clean open, right down the middle like an egg broken to throw into the omelette pan. The bone of the skull just opened up and a geyser of muck gushed up several feet into the air, blood and miscellaneous slime under the pressure of the buffalo’s circulatory system.