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Native
Waters Home TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword From the Foreword: Let me tell you about the two great writing endeavors of my life. The first is memoirs: history, biography and outdoors musing from behind a fly rod. Most at home on the water, words spring eternal from the ancestral lakes, bayous and swamps I haunt any chance I get. There are more stories here than I could possibly ever tell. The second is fiction. Not just any fiction, but fiction with a decidedly ominous slant. They way I grew up, in an Indian household on a reservation, there was always talk of “ghosts.” The European term, and all the things it entails, was not conveyed to me with any sense of dread or danger except in those oral legacies where some force teaches valuable lessons. In our world, spirits were always with us, for the Indian lives in circular time and our ancestors are here now, spirits move in the natural world and there are forces at work that surpass us. Yet very often I see Native American writers shy away from spiritual fiction. Perhaps the legitimate reasoning that such things are private holds them in check. This is an argument I cannot refute. But those childhood tales of spirits and evil-natured Neka sama and the boy Ustupu who wanders the skies with his six great hunting dogs firmly implanted a love for fiction beyond the mainstream. I followed this trend throughout my life, devouring macabre literature constantly. No slashers, no axe-murderers, but tales from Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson and early Stephen King kept me on the edge of my seat and filled me with untold wonder. So most of the stories in this collection have a definite lean toward otherness, delving into matters of a spiritual nature both comforting and nefarious. We learn through indigenous culture that there is good and there is evil, and the Creator of All Things can be depended upon if we follow the path and do not wander from the signs. Rabbit did this, and in his haste to make lost time fell and split his lip on a rock. He wears the mark of his indiscretion from the Creator’s will even today. There is no difference between the concept of God and the indigenous Creator, except those men have placed there. The Creator of All Things defies detail, and his name is only complicated when we try to heap him full of footnotes, adjectives and metaphors. There are joys and there are sadnesses in life; betrayal and revelation; mystery and majesty. How the spiritual weaves in and out of the fabric of existence is merely a matter of perception. These stories touch on the dark side of existence, on things not quite visible, not quite there, but dangerous or cruel, loving or devoted. Most reflect my love of things on the edge of perception, netherworlds and shadows, creatures benign or vengeful. Here are the glimpses underneath bridges, behind dark forests, into hidden doorways with keys intentionally lost. So if you chose to enter, know this: Here there be dragons. Within these tales are chills and thrills, morality plays and things unsettling. They are not all Native based, nor are they all disturbing. Some have no spirits or slouching beasts at all. My ghosts do not knock on the undersides of tables, throw vases at walls or creep like phantoms, pale and misty, out of darkness. But they are here, and thunderbirds leap in and out of cloud billows as I chase them down lost highways that lead to undiscovered countries just off the edge of any map. |
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