Spoken Word/Storytelling

The Medicine Bundle

by Anita Endrezze

It was five minutes after closing time when the museum curator, Margaret Winther, walked past the glass cabinet and saw that it was empty. At first, she couldn't believe her eyes. She closed them, then looked again.

“I haven't authorized any...” Her voice trailed off. The cabinet was definitely empty. She could even see a layer of dust defining the missing article. Briefly, she thought of berating the staff for failing to clean properly, and then would've laughed at her own absurdity in the situation, but she suddenly felt sick to the stomach. Nine years ago, when she was just starting her position as curator, she had argued for the acquisition of the missing object. Her museum (for that's how she thought of it) had bought the artifact when another museum had financial troubles and was looking for money more than history. The purchase had been the major expenditure for the last decade and much worried over by the board of trustees.

It wasn't that the item cost so much, but rather that the museum had so little money. Located in a mid-sized city, Ms. Winther had hopes of it becoming a regional museum of enviable quality.

Now, hands shaking, she pressed her face against the glass. The exhibit backdrop was a lurid painting showing a Plains warrior, in full battle regalia, astride a galloping, wild-eyed horse. It was especially inappropriate for what should have been there: a sacred Kiowa medicine bag. A bundle made of bison skin enveloping one hundred and twenty-five-year old objects used for healing and spiritual matters. Now it was missing from a locked case.

She ran to the front desk. Unless an employee had some good reason...cleaning? No, of course not. She forced herself to say it mentally: it had been stolen by someone she had worked with and trusted.

She spoke breathlessly, urgently, to her staff. They all seemed shocked. She looked at each one of them carefully, wondering who the thief was, who had betrayed her dream, a dream she thought she had shared with them all.

The police came. They questioned the staff and dusted for fingerprints. What would that prove, Ms. Winther wondered bitterly. They all wore gloves when they handled exhibit items; she had insisted on it. They lacked any sophisticated security arrangements, a situation she had railed against at every board meeting, but the budget precluded anything more fancy than a burglar alarm at every door and window.

She began calling other museums, art galleries, pawn shops, tribal centers, alerting them to the theft. She had no doubt it had been sold to a private collector, but it was possible that the thief had a more altruistic motive. Many Indians didn't believe their heritage belonged in public museums. Ms. Winther conceded that they might have a point, although she could have argued America's history belonged to everyone, and particularly, to her museum.

The police gave up looking for it.

The empty spot in the glass case irritated her, like a missing tooth or one broken fingernail on an otherwise perfectly manicured hand. She checked on the exhibit every hour, an obsession formed from anguish and loss and having no personal life to speak of.

Eventually, she replaced the stolen medicine bag with a display of a Cheyenne war shield. At least, it went with the backdrop painting and, therefore, required no further expense.

In Germany, Helmut Trautmann gazed excitedly at the new acquisition to his private collection. The medicine bundle looked wonderfully authentic, like something from a John Wayne movie, he thought. The leather was gray with age. Thongs made from the immense sides of bison wrapped the bag tightly. Ragged feathers were tucked into the knots at four corners. He imagined they were the feathers of eagles, noble birds with wings as wide as the American prairies. Strips of faded red trade cloth further bound the bundle. When he twisted one end of the cloth, he could see the dark crimson fabric underneath, like blood opened in a vein, undimmed and vibrant.

He was eager to open the bundle. He wanted to touch the objects within, not because they were holy (he wasn't sure he believed in a god beyond Good Fortune), but because they were old and from an extraordinary savage people (that somehow struck a chord in his own Teutonic soul ) and because it reminded him of his childhood. He had played “Wild Indians” with the other schoolboys, crafting arrows from the willows that grew by the river. Sneaking Indian-style, which involved placing one foot silently in front of the other, he had crept through the long fronds of willow, his face smeared with river mud. He had perfected a blood-curdling war cry, much to his mother's distress. He helped himself to one of her cream-colored handkerchiefs and dyed it red from berries plucked by the roadside. His medicine bag was filled with the magic of his lost childhood: a duck feather, a round white pebble, a pig bone that he variously pretended was human or bison or bear, and an arrowhead he'd found in a field his father rented out to a farmer. Although the arrowhead was marvelous in its own right, being from his ice-age ancestors, he had instilled it with the mystery and mastery of new makers, ones who wore bison robes and painted red circles around the eyes of their war ponies.

Long ago, Herr Trautmann had discarded his own medicine bundle. Now he had it back.

But he didn't open it. The knots were tight and the seller had supplied him with an X-ray of the interior. The seller had advised him to keep it unopened, thereby increasing its resale value. Untouched, the seller insisted, it retained its provenance, its power, its mystery. Herr Trautmann didn't care about its resale value since he intended on keeping it forever, but he was thoughtful. He could see the objects within by viewing the X-ray, a negative of what was holy, the light transformed to dark, the long shapes that could be bones or flutes or the nerve endings of trees shattered by lightning. The round shapes could be small skulls, creatures of the grasslands, or balls of bison hair, or even the essence of earth's curvature seen from a shaman's entranced eye.

Who knows what magic was potent enough to turn away bullets or heal the wounds caused by life turning as dark as soldiers' coats? The irregular shapes in the bundle made him feel as if he had entered a cave and found his whole body covered with black hand prints; or that he had fallen off the edge of a cliff and found himself broken at the bottom, dark-skinned people pulling the meat off his bones, singing in a language that sounded like chips of flint.

No, he decided, he wouldn't open it, considering himself already open to it. Herr Trautmann had a mystical bent, a side of himself he didn't like to think about too often. As chairman and owner of Germany's largest textile company, he was used to numbers and considered himself cut out of cloth of the highest and rarest quality. That he was successful only proved his point, and like the bundle, he kept himself tightly contained, lest his emotions and dreams escape, unraveling the man he patterned himself to be.

Weeks later, Herr Trautmann was mulling over the name for a new line of athletic shoes for one of his subsidiary companies. He doodled lines and circles on his notepad as he listened to his marketing team toss around ideas. He realized suddenly that he was drawing arrows. That brought to mind the medicine bundle.

Why not the Kiowa shoe, he asked himself. No, that might bring attention to himself and, besides, it wasn't a well-known tribe. But what about the Apache? Most Europeans had heard of that tribe from watching Hollywood movies. Everyone knew about the most famous Apache of them all: Geronimo. Now there was a name for a shoe! It would suggest to the customer an image of a warrior. The wearer of this shoe would imagine himself to be strong and fearless, with great endurance, an invincible urban renegade!

“Gentlemen! Our new line of shoes will be the Apache. Top of the line will be the Geronimo,” he announced, straightening the knot of his tie. “I'm sure you can think of a number of marketing strategies.”

Everyone agreed it was an excellent image. They discussed it feverishly while Herr Trautmann listened indulgently. These advertising types were of an excitable nature. They all agreed they needed a logo, one that would identify the shoe immediately to the consumer.

Herr Trautmann stood up. He had just the thing, something he'd seen in the X-ray of the bundle, or maybe in his dreams. He brushed aside his uncertainty and quickly drew the symbol on a sheet of paper with a black felt pen. Nodding, the group agreed it had power, although everyone seemed to have a different opinion on what it was: lightning or an arrow or a cosmic music note or a tree branch divided by sky.

The shoes were manufactured in Mexico, in a polluted border town where labor was cheap, and the workers, descendants of Apaches and other tribes, would never be able to afford the shoes they made. Then the shoes were shipped to stores in Europe and the States.

1.

Jimmy, “the Snowman,” bought a pair of Geronimos for $l95 in Buffalo, New York. He liked the logo, which was emblazoned on the heel in designer graphics. He liked the price; it showed the world that he was someone. There's not much to know about the Snowman. He had two emotions by which he experienced life—rage and lust—and it was often difficult to tell the difference between the two by his actions.

He seldom thought about himself, partly because he was young and partly because he didn't understand the concept of introspection. His life was based on action, his world the one of physical push-and-shove. He had a couple of girls he called “his bitches” and he had fathered several children by them, without any sense of responsibility for their lives.

He considered himself an entrepreneur. His merchandise was drugs, especially heroin. High quality stuff. But it was the dealing that gave him a rush: the dimly lit alleys where he was only one more shadow, the competitors who wanted a piece of the business, the cops who were waiting for an excuse to bust him. It was a tough world and the Snowman was tougher.

That night, he wore a silk shirt, jeans, and his new shoes. As he drove he noticed a car following him. It pissed him off. He stepped on the gas and skidded around a corner. It followed. He hit the brakes and whipped his car around in the middle of an intersection. He headed straight for the other car and pulled out his gun. As the car sped past him, he shot. Laughing, he turned the corner and cruised a few blocks. Show that sucker! He zoomed through a red light, cars honking at him, and swung quickly down a side street. In his rearview mirror, he saw the car was back. Shit! He drove faster. As he skidded around another corner, passing a tavern called Ten White Horses, his rear tire blew. His car side-swiped a blue van then skipped the curb and smashed into the building. The windshield exploded, tiny pieces of glass embedding in the Snowman's eyelids. His head snapped forward and the car burst into flames, the imported silk shirt flashing into instant threads of fire.

The car was a bundle of flames and metal. His shoes began smoking; that logo with its ancient symbol burned steadily into the bone of night.

In Germany, the stolen bundle was locked in an airless glass box, inside the safe which was in a hidden room in Herr Trautmann's house. If he had attached some kind of security weighing device, it would've revealed that suddenly the bag weighed less. But there is no machine that can weigh spirit, nor explain the quick bright light that flamed for a second over the bundle.

This was fire. This was East.

2.

Pamela Ford paused to glance at her watch. Forty-five minutes before her plane left to continue her journey to Seattle, Washington. She stood in front of a Kansas airport gift shop and figured she'd have enough time to browse a bit.

She wandered up and down the aisles. There were rattlesnake eggs, Dorothy and Toto T-shirts, giant pencils, “incredible drinking stone” coasters, rubber Indian drums with neon pink feathers, smokeless ash trays, rolls of breath mints, and stands of magazines, books, and newspapers. She paged through a fashion magazine then put it back, adverse to paying good money for the privilege of reading ads.

She turned to a display with Indian jewelry. There was a beautiful silver bracelet with a large chunk of turquoise balanced on a filigree center. It was very unusual, both masculine and feminine, strong and delicate. And the stone had a curious natural marking that looked like starry waves or lightning.

She asked the clerk if she could try it on. As the clerk handed it to her, she noticed an attached tag, which read, “This is genuine pawned Indian jewelry,” and noted that the buyer should, “keep this pawn ticket to increase the value of the piece.” Well, really, she thought, half-amused and half-irritated. What was she supposed to do, wear the damn tag? And what was so special about jewelry pawned by some down-on-his-luck Indian? She put the bracelet back, then paused and picked it up again. She put it around her wrist. She supposed it was all a scam; there was no poor Indian selling his last asset to feed his family. Instead, some enterprising white guy was probably printing fake pawn tickets to cover stolen goods. She shook herself; she had a tendency towards the dramatic. It was most likely just what it seemed and she liked the bracelet well enough to buy it.

Later on the plane, she fell asleep. She had a strange dream, disjointed but filled with sparkling images.

...long degrees of falling earth...into the geography of garnets, tiny red suns burning, water and sky solidified into turquoise deep in the mountains...twin heroes with the glass eyes of stars and with the mouths of fiery opals...it was midnight black, a carbon moon over her face of mica and snow...she was struggling to climb up from the center of the world...there were monsters with long tails and people made of mud...arrows made out of falling stars and a woman making pots from many colors of clay.

When Pamela Ford woke up, she rubbed her neck. What a dream, she mused. So vivid and yet meaningless. Her sister, Chris, would've written it all down. She was really into that kind of thing. Well, maybe she'd tell her all about when she got home. But now she thought she better review her notes for tomorrow's business meeting. She reached down and pulled her bag out from under the seat in front of her. As she did, she noticed how icy one hand felt. Perhaps the bracelet was on too tight. She regretted her extravagance in buying it now. Maybe she'd give it to Chris for her birthday next month. Then, at least the money would've been spent on someone else. That seemed more worthy to Pamela somehow. She felt guilty about spending so much on herself. She shook her hand and removed the bracelet, wrapping it in a scarf she had in her purse, and tucked it into one of the purse's inner pockets.

In Seattle, she took a taxi to her hotel. It was later than she expected. She was tired. All she wanted to do was climb into a clean, soft bed. As she stepped out of her taxi and turned toward the hotel entrance, she was pushed roughly to the pavement. All she saw was the designer logo heels of the retreating thief's shoes. The doorman rushed to help her. She was shaking; her stockings torn. She'd never been mugged before.

The thief ran down towards Pike Market. At night, there were many dark places under the Viaduct stairs that led down to the Sound. He rooted in the leather purse and grabbed the wallet, then threw away the purse. He didn't notice the scarf wrapped around the bracelet.

The purse landed in the trash can. The thief disappeared into the darkness, pulling out a wad of cash and credit cards.

The following day, the garbage trucks collected the can, taking the purse and bracelet to a landfill, where it was buried. The bracelet was in a bundle of leather and red cloth. The stone slipped into the darkness of earth, the natural marking bright as a blue star.

The Kiowa bundle, still secure in the German safe, remembered how once the pounding hooves of millions of buffaloes had pulverized the earth into dust, obscuring the turquoise sky. A small sigh escaped the bundle, a wisp of powdered red clay.

This was earth. This was West.

3.

It had all started at church. Sally Antonio had been herding her three giggling children down the steps after the service, holding the youngest's hand and carrying the baby in her arms, when a well-dressed young woman had smiled at her, remarking that it was so wonderful to have so many children.

Sally, five months pregnant, laughed and replied that it must be due to her good luck charm. Then she managed to get everyone in the car without too many arguments over who should get a window seat. As she drove away, she wondered where she'd put the coming child. They'd have to get a bus!

Later that night, she got a phone call from the lady she'd spoken to at church, who apologized for bothering Sally, but, well, what did she mean by a good-luck charm? At first, Sally drew a blank, but then remembered. Actually, it was more special than a good-luck charm. Sally regretted being so casual about it. Her Aunt Sophie had given to it to her on her wedding night: a kind of doll, only not to be played with, made out of turtle bone and wrapped in red trade cloth. It had no face, just the jut of turtle bone. The doll was Sia; her Aunt Sophie had married a Sia man. They both had chuckled when they gave it to her, saying, “Not that you'll need any help, Sally, we've seen the way you and Charlie look at each other!” Sally had blushed and later put the doll away in her underwear drawer, a most unwise place she now realized as she patted her swollen stomach.

The woman on the phone continued. “My name is Janet Anderson. I've been trying for years to have a baby. This might sound crazy, but, oh, could I borrow your good-luck charm?”

Sally hesitated.

“I'm desperate!” the woman begged. “You don't know how much I want to hold my own baby in my arms.” The woman began to sob.

“But it's just a piece of bone!” She explained. “Some old Indian stuff.” She was slightly embarrassed about the pagan doll.

“I don't care if it's a rabbit's foot! Please!” the woman pleaded.

Between sobs, the woman promised to take good care of it and return it promptly. Sally didn't know what to do, but she was moved. She remembered the first time she had found out she was pregnant, the excitement, the awe, and the anxiety.

She said slowly. “It's a tiny doll, very old, made from a sea turtle.”

“But it works,” exclaimed the woman. “Do you put it under your pillow when you, uh, you know...”

“No,” grinned Sally to herself. Her pillow seldom stayed in one place when she and Charlie made love. “You don't do anything with the doll. That's why I don't know if it really works.”

“I don't care. If I can just try it?”

“Okay,” Sally finally agreed. “I'll bring it to church next week.”

That had been three years ago. Sally had not seen the turtle doll again, although she'd seen the woman, obviously pregnant, and leading a toddler by the hand. Sally spoke to the woman several times at church, asking for the doll back. At first the woman promised to return it next week, then she offered to buy it. Price was no object, she had made that clear. Her husband owned Anderson's Apparels, which was a clothing factory and used poor Asian women and children to sew their clothes. It was doing very well, in spite of the shipping costs.

Sally wanted her Sia doll back. Not that she wanted another baby, but it seemed to call to her, the way one of her children would murmur in her sleep. Sally was angry at the woman. How could she keep something that was not hers?

Sally was part Pima, part white, and part black. She was by genetic disposition disinclined to possessiveness of an individual nature. She tried to understand her feelings about the turtle doll. It was not that it belonged to her, she decided, but that it belonged with her. It had been a gift given in love by her relatives to provide her with the greatest gift of all: her children.

Janet Anderson hadn't been an honorable person. Sally was happy that she had been able to have children and would've let her keep the doll for another few kids, but Janet had been so evasive (even changing churches) that Sally wished she'd never been so generous as to loan out the doll. She imagined it sitting in a display case in Janet Anderson's living room, along with a Japanese fan, a velvet bull from Tijuana, a dusty porcelain shepherdess, and a pair of red candlesticks from Taiwan. Sally knew she was being unfair. But it just wasn't right.

That's where the matter remained until one rainy afternoon when the river flooded. Mrs. Anderson's brick tri-level was in danger of being washed away in spite of the sandbags piled around it. She stood on her back deck and watched the dark clouds churning into the river, the rain blasting the desert so hard that the red soil bounced back up into the sky, forming a low horizon banded by scarlet, dirty air.

She decided it was time to leave when her son's swing set floated away. She grabbed Andy Jr., who was wearing his Toddler tom-tom shoes, from the famous Geronimo shoe line. Every time he walked, small drums concealed in the heels tha-rumped. He loved them, stomping his feet energetically. Mrs. Anderson stuffed La Chanson Narcissus Napoleon's Victory III (their pedigree French poodle) into the back seat and drove frantically away.

The turtle doll, which had indeed been part of a collection of items termed “collectibles,” with a value only apparent to their owners, smelled the water rising. There were no eyes on the doll, but it could see the red mud flowing into the heart of the river. The waters pumped into the house, reclaiming the ancient channel that had existed many times in the river's long memory. The turtle doll felt the red trade cloth lift slightly in the current. Under the cloth dress was an ancient symbol, like water poured from stars. The turtle bone doll swam into the river, feeling the hard shell of life curve around its bone until there were legs again and strong teeth, and it was whole again, tasting the primitive sea that was there before the desert was born.

In Germany, from inside the medicine bundle, came the soft sound of rain.

This was water. This was South.

4.

Buddy Red Buffalo was driving home after the powwow. The drum was in the back seat of his Pinto. Following him, in two other cars, were the other drummers and singers. Buddy was driving carefully due to the drum. He had even rigged up a seat belt for it.

He was fairly new at drumming. He was exhausted. Drumming took a lot of energy and concentration. He wanted to do a good job. He wanted the dancers to feel that the drum had become part of their souls.

Buddy wasn't familiar with the road. There were miles of frozen wheat fields and sage on either side of the road, which wound around the Palouse hills. It was almost dark, the light a soft gray barely distinguishable from the earth. His back ached and his right arm was stiffening. It took a lot of stamina to be a drummer and this had only been Buddy's fourth powwow. He shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the muscles.

All at once the road seemed to swerve towards the sky and the car started bucking and twisting, skidding on a patch of ice. He remembered later that he could see stars, real stars, not the kind you get with a bump on the head. And, he told his friends, the stars were in a wavy, watery symbol, kind of like the one painted on the drum. Ed Yellow Grass's grandmother had dreamed the symbol for the group.

“Then I saw,” he hesitated, glancing shyly at his friends, “a door opening in the sky and thousands of animals ran out. Buffalo, deer, antelope, bear, rabbits, birds.”

Ed looked at him. “How many fingers do I have, Buddy?”

Buddy squinted. “Four?”

“Better lie down again,” said Ed. He'd been holding up two fingers.

Jim, a Yakama singer, stood at the edge of the road. Goddam trash everywhere. People were junkin' up the planet. Beer bottles, pizza box, newspaper showing some ad about a trendy shoe, yellowed pages torn from a paperback. His eyes followed the skid marks from Buddy's car. Something strange had happened. He could smell red clay in the air. He thought he heard the drum of hooves, but as he glanced around, he saw the fields were empty. It was weird. He didn't want to be the one to say it, though. He just kept looking at the trash.

But he couldn't help thinking about how the car snorted its way across the field, then rolled the way a horse does when it itches. Finally landing upright, the car shook once and then was still, headlights knocked into a cock-eyed angle. The sound of glass breaking, falling like chunks of stars on to the earth, disturbed their thoughts.

Buddy had been wearing a seat belt, so how in the heck, they all wondered, did he end up in the back seat curled around the drum? All of his life, Buddy'd had bad luck. He was good-hearted, but had no ambition. He took what came his way. Sullen women. Dead-end jobs. Balding—who ever heard of a bald Indian? At last, they thought, the universe did something right for him. It was about time.

They looked at the car. The driver's seat was smashed in, the steering wheel stuck like a burr in the headrest. The front window was cracked in a horseshoe shape. The drum and Buddy were unharmed.

The frozen grass was trampled and broken in a circle around the car. Buddy felt something wet on his cheeks. He touched the skin carefully, thinking it was blood, but it was water—not tears, not salty. Something from a river, where the stones are shaped like sleeping turtles. He knew he couldn't understand what was given to him that night. But he felt stronger, special, standing there alive and aware in the northern night.

All the singers lifted their voices in a song of prayer, the cold air filling their lungs, the night rushing in and out, their warm human breaths flowing over the hills and the dreams of animals.

This was air. This was North.

In Germany, a small crack in the glass box widened. Air spilled in, lifting the bundle gently. The objects within began their transforming journey back to their origins.

Red shadows of buffaloes drifted slowly across the landscape of Herr Trautmann's dreams. He broke out in a rash. The German economy underwent a recession and he lost millions of marks.

Buddy's drum sang about White Painted Woman and her baby, Child Born of Water. He cut a CD that made him famous—in Indian Country—with those who liked a drum solo that lasted fifty-four minutes. Sally traveled to Sonora, Mexico, home of the Sia, and offered cornmeal to the islands of turtles in the Gulf of California. When she got home, she discovered she was pregnant again. Mrs. Anderson choked on a bone and died when her children were too young to remember her later in their lives. Pamela bought a container of Mace and became a very nervous person who avoided traveling. Ms. Winther quit her job at the museum and underwent treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The Apache line of shoes were copied in Asia and sold in K-Mart stores for $9.99. Teenagers refused to wear them. Millions were found hanging by their shoelaces from electrical wires spanning the nation's streets. Geronimo sank back into the obscurity of American history, in spite of the popularity of classic western films. Very few knew that Geronimo's real name was Goyathlay, or “One who Yawns.”

The medicine bundle in Herr Trautmann's collection vanished, leaving four thin traces of dust.

Into each direction, white horses blinked snow from their eyes, hidden rivers stampeded into mountains, butterfly-shaped bells flooded the air with golden sounds, and crystal skulls burst into laughter.

When the holy symbol had completed its circle, its own song of the four directions, all the Indian people everywhere had the same dream. It lasted just a few seconds, but takes a lifetime of remembering. What you must do is to live your life as if your soul knows the way and is only leading you forward, the way a parent holds a child's hand.

You must remember you are like a medicine bundle, with a drumming heart and a soul that burns both within and without. There is water and blood. There is air and breath.

There is a dream.

There is a memory. There is a song.

There is life.

Anita Endrezze is an award-winning author, storyteller and artist. Her books/chapbooks include: at the helm of twilight (Broken Moon Press, 1992); Throwing fire at the Sun, water at the Moon (University of Arizona Press, 2001); The Humming of Stars and Bees and Waves (Making Waves Press, England, 1998); The North People chapbook (Blue Cloud Quarterly, 1983); and Burning the Fields chapbook (Confluence Press, l983). Her work has been published many magazines, and such anthologies as, Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, and Talking Leaves. Her work has been translated into 71 languages, published in 10 countries and appears in college texts, as well as National Geographic magazine. www.hanksville.org/storytellers/anita/images