Of Emerald Eyes and Happenstance Part 8
Welcome to part 8. Once again, if this is your first time here, you may click on the following link(s) to catch up on Part 1 thru Part 7.
**** THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK OF FICTION. Any semblance to a person, place, or experience is 98.8% fabricated.
**** Also, I’d like to call attention to the featured image, by the very talented, Chelsea McKenzie.
Cullen’s Story
In a trance-like state, I sat there, staring into my drink. As if the brown liquid had been waiting patiently for a chance to speak, to impart wisdom, or to incite folly. I looked up, in a haze, confused even. I looked to my right and saw Charla, to my left, Cullen, and around the room, the customers there. It was as if an expanse of time had elapsed, exposing layer after layer of rock and sediment but I held no proof of that reality. For all I knew, I could have been staring into that glass for half an hour, though I suppose I knew better because if more than a few minutes had passed, “type A” Charla would have elbowed me to wake me. She is a great friend, but a bit impatient and unforgiving of anyone who might be conceived to be a waste of her precious time.
I shook my head, a little embarrassed. Similar to the feeling one has upon the realization that the “air concert” you’ve been performing for the last five traffic lights has had an audience for the last four. Momentarily, my mind raced, grasping for a topic change, an interesting observation to point out, or a joke I may have heard recently. Anything to get the spotlight off of me. I turned to face Cullen, then Charla, and said, “It seems that you two are enjoying the fact that I’m sitting here, bared soul open for display and all, but we have to change the subject or something. I’m feeling a little bit ‘emotionally naked.’ At least for a few minutes. Cullen, you may be okay, but this one here,” I said, pointing at Charla, “is taking notes; collecting material with which to blackmail me at a later date.”
“Oh not no, but HELLLLL no.” Charla burst out, allowing the word “hell” to drag out in her Kentucky drawl for effect. “You can’t leave us hanging, not knowing the story of your bastard kid. I mean, how old is your little “woods colt” now, 29? …30?” Had I not known her so well, I might have been sitting there with dropped jaw, but knowing Charla the way I do, I just smiled and continued. “In as much as I enjoy your ‘Blue Heron, Kentucky, phraseology,’ let me just sip on this Knobb Creek here for a bit and be a passive participant. Let’s make this seem more like three friends having a conversation, instead of it only being my turn to share in this 3-person ‘couch session.’”
At this, Cullen began to speak. “When I returned home from Viet Nam, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the world wasn’t as we’d all been taught to believe. The United States of America in many ways had become a foreign country to us. Not as much in the South, mind you, but it seemed that I’d been gone for decades instead of a couple of years. Like the world had entered some time warp, moving through evolution while on the other side of the world, time stood still. As I said, we didn’t return to a hero’s welcome, we just returned. I mean, we returned to nothing. Nothing familiar. Nothing like the Deep South before we left. I can’t say that I was never spat on, but I had to ask the question, where is the appreciation. I mean I sacrificed time out of my life to defend the country and the constitution, and for what? The United States Army did nothing to prepare us for the new reality and for many of my friends, well, they found themselves useless.
I’d been home a couple of months and had no plans, no goals, and no desire to really get up and start my future. I spent my days more or less sitting out under the live oak in the front yard. When the sun went down, I’d walk into town to a hole-in-the-wall bar and hustle pool. Or I might go to Dixie Gas station where there was always a “backroom” domino game. Then on the weekends, down in the bayous, there was always a game of Booray being played. Over time, I saved enough money to buy a Harley, and then I ventured out more and found more, less than wholesome ways to make money and to spend my time. Gradually, no one liked me. Not my friends, not my family, and certainly, not myself. My mother stayed on my back about getting a job. My father, who wasn’t at home much but when he was, he barely spoke to me. Finally, one day as I lay sleeping off a night of overindulgence, my mother threw a bucket of cold water on me, screaming in half Choctaw, half English, with some Cajun threw in for effect. The water felt as though icicles in the water were penetrating my skin around my chest and abdomen. I sat up straight, the wind exiting my body, and I sat there gasping to regain the oxygen supply to my lungs. Finally, I summoned the ability to speak and I screamed, ‘What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’ My mother finished her tirade, and left my room, slamming the door behind her, her voice still irate and I followed it throughout the house. I looked at my watch and upon seeing that it was after 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon, I guess I understood her anger.
I made my way to the front door, doing my best to avoid her, and found the old chair that I’d sat in underneath the oak, broken and in a pile there. Then I heard her voice screaming, ‘and you aren’t going to sit under that tree all day anymore either! Go see your grandfather, he is waiting for you.’ I turned and started for the house, but she threw the keys to my bike at me, telling me that I was going in the wrong direction. I was, or at least, I thought I was grown. After all, I’d been halfway around the planet. I had done things and had been witness to things that to this day, if I allow the mental image to escape, I have to quickly shake my head, wipe my hand across my face and press it all down, hopefully, to stay. But here I was, free and over 21, and yet, had my mother and my grandfather to deal with.
I drove into my grandfather’s drive and found him standing there, waiting and watching. He stood there, the long gray hair, the dark complexion, and a stern look on his face. I dismounted my bike, tried to smile as I walked toward him, and tried to find words to speak, but didn’t because I feared I’d sound weak and cowardly. I’d fought men on two continents, bigger, stronger, quicker, and probably meaner, but for whatever reason, I believed to my core that I would not be able to call this man out; that if challenged, he’d beat me senseless. I walked to him, offering my hand as a greeting, as if I was equal, but found no return gesture there. He studied me up and down and by the look on his face, I knew that I’d been measured and that I came up short. We stood there, facing each other, not a word to be uttered or heard. I searched my brain for something, anything to say that might soften the blow, and like Christ on the cross, I longed for this cup to be removed. But like Christ, I knew that what came next was already set into motion and nothing could be done to change the course. That I was left alone to catch the wrath of what was coming and that it wasn’t far from the Choctaw as well as the Christian teachings that I’d learned to that point in my life.
My Grandfather sat me down on a couch and he sat on a coffee table, his face inches from mine. “Your schedule, for what it’s worth, has been cleared for the foreseeable future. It seemed that my Grandfather had formulated a plan for my future and I was pretty sure that I was not going to like it. It was akin to what we know today as an intervention, only the Choctaw version of it. My Grandfather felt that it was important to hold on to the “old ways.” Naturally, I began to protest, citing that I was a grown man and had been around the world fighting for my country and so forth, but the old man would hear none of that. He looked at me sternly and even to this day, I can’t explain the quiet control he had over me. Respect, mostly I guess, but there was an element of fear sprinkled in there as well. I can only remember one spanking from him after he found out that my friend and I had thrown pieces of watermelon at a funeral procession. Before he whipped me, he said, ‘Son. I’m not whipping you for what you did. I’m whipping you for being stupid enough to allow yourself to be talked into something that you knew not to.’ Believe me, after that whipping, I never misbehaved around him.
He wasn’t abusive. He was just stern. My Grandfather felt that it was his personal responsibility and mission in life to keep as many of the Choctaw traditions as possible. Like a tribal leader, we were taught to respect all elders, but especially, him. And he carried himself in a manner that commanded a certain veneration. As he stood before me that day, inches from my face, I stared into his eyes, his dark and distant eyes, I remember thinking that he stood there an old man and briefly considering what might happen if I stood, pushed him aside, and walked off. But in those same eyes, I saw my reflection and it was like looking at a ghost. In my mind, I was still the eager young 18-year old that said goodbye to him in that very room three and a half years earlier, just before I shipped out to Nam. The man I saw mirrored in his eyes was unrecognizable like a child had been asked to draw a man’s face with finger paints, with no distinct lines, no real shape or form. In an instant, I studied the ghost-like spirit and what I saw was a glimpse into a future, bleak, dark, and foreboding. I stood before the old man and told him that I’d accept whatever it was that he had in mind for me that day. With that, he stepped to a mantle on the wall, clutched a leather pouch, and started for the door. Outside in his washed gravel driveway, he turned me around to face him, and the house behind him. He opened the pouch and extracted what appeared to be five ordinary rocks, but I barely got a chance to look at them before he reared back and threw them over my shoulder and into the driveway behind. He said, ‘Five days from now, you will return here and you will find one of those rocks, the one that will represent your spirit animal.’
What he said made no sense, but I trusted him and knew that, in keeping with his inscrutable ways, all would be made clear at some later point. We ate supper that evening and he instructed me to go to bed early, that we would be leaving at daylight the following morning.
He opened the bedroom door the next morning and handed me my clothes, washed and folded along with a new pair of socks and underwear. ‘Breakfast is waiting,’ he said. My breakfast consisted of one fried egg, one piece of dry toast, and a banana.
Outside, he had his john boat hooked to his pickup truck and he motioned for me to get in. The old Chevy fired off and within minutes we had made our way to the highway and after driving for over an hour, we left the highway onto a dirt road that led deep into a swamp. Along the drive, Grandfather told me that I was about to begin my prep for the most important journey a Choctaw man would ever take. As we drove, he told me that the next five days would be spent fasting, meditating, and communing with nature. ‘The next five days,’ he said, ‘will be among the most difficult of your life, but it is necessary to clean your body, to clear your mind, to clean your spirit, and to clean your soul, and prepare you for your vision quest.’ The gravel road ended at a primitive boat landing where we launched the boat and he took me far into the swamp until we came to an expanse of high ground with a rusty, tin covered, 3-sided cabin, open across the front with the exception of a large log that served as the only barrier from the outside. We unloaded a couple of backpacks and a duffle bag of gear, shook hands and he turned to go. ‘See you in five days,’ was all he said.
The Army trained me in most of the skills needed for a five-day stint of roughing it in the swamps, and I suppose that was a good thing, but I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I thought. I’d even experienced situations similar in Viet Nam. But the difference was, in Nam, I wasn’t alone, and there was always a mission, a set of orders somewhere, dictating where to go and what to do. And though vague at times, there was an enemy, definitive and tangible. In the Louisiana swamp for five days, I had no directive, no plan, and no orders. The enemy had no definition and was seemingly infinite in number. All of that was supposed to “come” to me as if by osmosis, like the constant seeping of the swamp into the surrounding firmament. As the sound of his outboard Johnson diminished, I sifted through my Grandfather’s words and came to the conclusion that the first bullet point of his presentation was that it was not his preparation but mine. I sat down on the huge log that served as the threshold for my home for the next few days and considered my situation. The conclusion I came to was that not unlike rehab, I was without contact with the outside world, I was there for the purpose of bettering my situation, and that ultimately, “I” was solely the reason I was there.”
Cullen was interrupted when a couple of the bar “regulars” stopped by to say hello. I was polite, but a little irritated by the interruption, as I had become riveted to his story and was anxious to learn the details of his quest. I had noticed that Charla had not moved and had hung on every word that Cullen spoke. After a few minutes, my customers said their goodbyes and started for the door. As soon as they were out of “earshot,” I apologized to Cullen for the interruption and urged him to continue. Cullen continued.
“I guess at this point in my story, I need to explain something about the Choctaw people. Often, when people think of “native Americans,” their mind immediately formulates images of teepees, peace pipes, feathers, dream catchers, and signs in the sky, among other things. People don’t realize that we are just men and women with a different heritage. From the beginning of the Choctaw nation, spirituality has been the heart of our civilization. Our beliefs and practices are only generally spoken about because the spiritual experience varies from community to community, from family to family, and certainly from individual to individual. Our spirituality is a deeply personal one and therefore, not to be shared in detail with anyone except certain Choctaw elders who served as interpreters. In other words, if we told of our experiences, it would in almost every instance, be written off as some sort of hocus pocus dreamed up after sitting around a teepee smoking a peace pipe. Not unlike the stories of the Christian Bible, like flaming, talking bushes, three men walking around in a fiery pit, and don’t forget the crazy accounts of the dreams of John the Elder while on the island of Patmos. I mean, at its surface you must agree that to a non-believer, I’m sure his first question would be, ‘What was that guy smoking? And how do I get some of it?’ But to believers, like I assume the three of us are, well, it is just something that we accept.
Suffice it to say though that Grandfather was right in saying what that five-day prep time would be like. Especially at first. By the time I heard that John boat coming to pick me up, I could barely move, but after I got home, showered, and had a very light meal, I felt ready to meet my guardian spirit and to receive guidance and direction intended for me.
The next morning, I started out on my Harley, a heavy duffel strapped to the sissy bar, no destination, no time limit, just moving where I was led and open to receive advice and direction from my spirit guide. I embarked on a journey that led to the deserts out west, the mountains of Colorado, the plains of Kansas, and to biker bars in Sturgis and in almost every town, for that matter. I have no idea how many miles I traveled, how many states I visited, I just rode when I felt it was time to move and stopped when led to stop. Each night, no matter where I lay my head, I dreamt the craziest dreams, and each morning, I wrote them down, able to remember them as vividly as if I was awake the entire time. Later I felt led to start home, I drove into my Grandfathers driveway to find him standing there in the exact place he stood almost Five months earlier as if he knew that I would return that very day at that very time.”
The three of us sat there briefly silent, Charla and I absorbing Cullen’s story while Cullen excused himself for a restroom break. Charla and I looked at each other, lock-jawed, not really knowing what we had experienced in hearing his story. I can only say that I have sat in Southern Baptist churches where I received lesser spiritual gifts. I don’t know, there was just something ‘contagious’ about his story. Just the ramblings of an old man in a bar on a Sunday afternoon? Well, I’d have to say yes and no. Yes that he was an old man in a bar on a Sunday afternoon, but to quote Charla, ‘not no but HELLLLL no.’ I believe that God is everywhere, including my bar on a Sunday, and I believe that God’s message is always available to us.
Cullen returned just as Charla sat an open beer before him. Again, in that almost shy and demure way, he nodded and lightly thumped the brim of his cap. He took a long pull from his beer and stared back at the two of us. It was Charla who broke the silence.
‘I have a question,’ she said, the Kentucky coal mine accent heavy in her voice. Cullen acknowledged her and invited her to continue. ‘What is the deal with the rocks you grandfather threw and did you pick one of them up when you got back from the swamp?’ Personally, I think Cullen saw through Charla’s abrasive tone and personality and found himself a little bit under the spell that she cast. Maybe the most human characteristic he’d shown all afternoon, because something about the man, I don’t know, defies classification. At any rate, he straightened himself after being directly addressed by Charla and replied. ‘I did pick up a rock and there is no way of knowing if the rock I picked was one of the rocks that Grandfather threw. I only know that I wanted to pick up a rock next to it but at the last second, I picked up a different one. I clasped the rock in my hand, almost afraid to know what I held. I opened my hand and there staring at me, plain as day, was a rock in the shape of an owl. Believe it or not, once I left the desert, I heard the hooting of an owl every single night I was gone.’”
Awesome writing, as always. I’m intrigued by all of the characters, especially Cullen. I can hardly wait for Part 9. As always, keep up the good work. I really think you should write this as a book. I love it !!!
Classmate, man , These characters are so profound. This has the making of a first rate novel.. Definitely a page turner, my friend