Red Earth White Earth. Will Weaver

suddenly the water around the mallard began to dimple and splash. The mallard fluttered once, then swam in a widening V toward deeper water. More splashes followed the duck.

      “Look,” Tom called, jerking his chin, pushing out his bottom lip to point down shore. Indians never pointed with their fingers.

      Down the shore stood a cluster of town boys. With slingshots. One of their stones splashed a hand’s length from the mallard, which scrambled into flight. It flew to the dynamite raft. There it perched on the highest papier-mâché log, ruffled its feathers, then settled down to stare at the crowd.

      “Wait—no—” came one or two voices from the crowd.

      “Holy shit,” Guy murmured.

      The mallard turned to peck once at a flea on its left wing, then sat motionless again.

      The crowd fell silent. Suddenly the raft and the duck began to balloon in size. The duck swelled into a rooster. Then a Thanksgiving turkey. It rode the rising silo of foam and shredded papier-mâché. At the height of the blast the duck reached sunlight. There it became a peacock in full spray. Then in a rainbow mist of meat and feathers it disappeared.

      The Big Blast crashed through the willow. It whipped the thin branch ends across Guy’s and Tom’s faces, and they grabbed each other to keep from falling. Below them the crowd let out a long cheer. The fireworks began.

      After the final red rose died away in the black sky, Guy and Tom stayed put. The crowd passed beneath their tree. Tom began to break off dead twigs and drop them onto the heads of the passersby. A man cursed and rubbed his head. When he looked up he saw Guy and threatened to bring back a chain saw, though his wife soon enough pulled him along.

      “Thanks, fuck-face,” Guy whispered.

      Tom’s teeth glinted white in the dark.

      Within ten minutes the beach was empty but for Tom and Guy, and a few of the town boys who poked along the riverbank looking for unexploded fireworks. And the powwow Indians.

      A steady drumming still came from among the dancers. The tourists had left, but the Indians still danced, six or seven of them now. The dancers moved clockwise in a jerky circle about the bright yellow eye of a gas lantern.

      Guy and Tom slid down from their tree. “Come on,” Tom said, jerking his head toward the shadowy town boys along the riverbanks.

      “Naw,” Guy said. He was tired. He had been in town all afternoon at the county fair. His mother had brought him. She was helping at one of the food shows. He was supposed to meet her near the powwow after the fireworks.

      “Let’s watch,” Guy said, staring at the dancers.

      Tom shrugged and followed him closer.

      They sat close by on the grass in the shadows and watched. “They dance different when the tourists leave,” Guy said. Now the dancers sang more. Couples crisscrossed hands and danced a dipping, weaving pattern. Sometimes women picked men from the crowd. Guy turned to Tom.

      “‘The Forty-Nine Song,’” Tom said.

      “Why forty-nine? Forty-nine states?”

      Tom laughed once and shook his head sideways. “Huh-huh. Lots of Indian men went off to fight Germans in the war. Only forty-nine came back to the reservation.”

      They kept watching. Many of the men dancers had taken off their shirts. Their skin glistened in the lantern light. On the chests of two older men bounced necklaces, thin gray tubes of something strung on a leather cord.

      “What are those?” Guy asked.

      “Rabbit bones,” Tom said. “Leg bones. You break off the longest leg bones, then poke out the guck inside and let them dry.”

      “We could make those,” Guy said immediately. “This winter, in old man Schroeder’s grove we’ll trap some rabbits—big ones.”

      Tom was silent.

      They watched some more. “What’s that, a gingerbread man?” Guy asked. On the wrist of an old woman dancer whirled a tiny doll-like man.

      “How should I know?” Tom said crossly.

      After a while Tom said, “Not a gingerbread man. Flying Man.”

      “Why Flying Man?”

      “Goddammit, I don’t know everything,” Tom said immediately. “Come on, let’s go look for bottle rockets.”

      “Can’t.” Guy looked through the darkness for his mother. She should have been there by now. He wondered where she was. His father was home unloading oats by tractor light. He was always working.

      They watched another minute until Tom said, “Fuck, this is more boring than school.”

      Guy didn’t answer. He was staring through the dancers to the far side of the circle. He was watching the drummer, old Zhingwaak. He suddenly realized that Zhingwaak was watching them.

      “Tom . . . ,” Guy whispered. Tom looked. Without missing a drumbeat, Zhingwaak lifted his hand and motioned them forward.

      “He wants something,” Guy whispered. He looked around the powwow. There were only brown faces, and far beyond, the silent white houses.

      “Us,” Tom said. “We better go over there.”

      They approached the dancers and Zhingwaak. Guy walked behind Tom. In the flickering light and shadow of the lantern, Zhingwaak’s long face all ran into his mouth. The deep lines across his forehead and around his eyes, the deeper furrows on his cheeks, the gullies and ravines along his nose all flowed downward over his thin lips and into the dark hole of his mouth. Zhingwaak spoke.

      “Young boys should dance,” he said. His voice was younger than his face. His words hummed.

      Tom looked behind to Guy. Guy looked at the dancers.

      “You, Ningos,” Zhingwaak said to Guy. “Your mother comes often to our school to help us. You live on the reservation and play always with Tom LittleWolf. Dance with us.”

      Guy swallowed. The passing dancers began to pluck at Tom and Guy as they passed.

      “I . . . don’t know how,” Guy said.

      “The dancing will come to you,” Zhingwaak answered. “Because you come to us, the dancing will come to you.”

      Tom and Guy stood by Zhingwaak and watched. The drumming was like the steady beat of a hay baler, only faster. Riding on the hay wagons sometimes Guy and Tom did little jigs to match the pump-pumping sound of the machinery. Tom looked at Guy, jutted his lip toward the dancers. They grinned at each other and joined the moving circle.

      Following the “Forty-Nine” dancers, Guy and Tom moved within a ring of Indians who only watched. The outside Indians were in shadow. Now and again the red eye of a cigarette glowed, then arched to the ground as one of them came forward. The new dancers smelled of whiskey and cigarette smoke and perfume. They were younger than Zhingwaak and the old woman; they were Guy’s parents’ age and some younger than that. As they entered the circle they laughed and shouted to each other. Sometimes they stumbled and fell. But the older dancers pulled them to their feet, kept them moving.

      Zhingwaak’s drumming quickened with an extra beat. Guy wove this new rhythm into his path of invisible, numbered footsteps on the hard-packed grass. As more dancers came forward, Guy and Tom were forced farther to the center. Guy could not see out, so he watched the new dancers. After they had danced for a while their faces began to shine.

      They stopped laughing and shouting to each other. They stumbled less. Their shirts soaked through with sweat. The new dancers’ smell of tobacco and whiskey and perfume changed into a sweet-sour odor like silage. A dancer alongside Guy shrugged off his shirt and flung it over the heads of the dancers into the darkness. With it went his silage smell.

      Suddenly Zhingwaak wailed. It was a thin cry that started high in the air