The Spirit

“No, no, no, it’s not that. I don’t mind if you tone yourself up with it or whatever it is you do. But I’d suggest you use your own while teaching these people.” Helder leaned in closer, a teenager sharing a secret. “These people, Moon. It’s a funny thing. They spend their lives in offices, dreaming about weekends when they can be pioneers and cowboys and getting back to nature and all that. It’s a technological age, you see? Now, that fiberglass bow was probably stamped out by some machine in a factory that makes a thousand of them every hour. These people want to get away from all that. They’ve got the feeling no machine can make a bow as well as an Indian using his own hands. By the way, that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Nope.”

“It’s not!” Helder was visibly disappointed.

The Indian could not imagine arguing about the mani­fold advantages of these machine-­made fiberglass bows over even the finest Indian ones. They were more accurate, more powerful, and better balanced. They did not go limp when wet or break in the cold. The steel shafts with their plastic stabilizers flew truer and punched deeper than ash arrows with feathers. “You can take them down, too, Mr. Helder,” he said, breaking the bow down into small pieces. “And these here balance things are just great. ’Course, it’s all expensive, but it’s great.”

“Moon. Just use your own goddamned bow. As a favor to me. Okay? Okay.” Helder stalked away, muttering something about craftsmanship.

The Indian released an arrow as his dog began a frenzied bark. The shot went wide. The Indian turned as the animal was about to attack a tall man with a bandaged arm. The Indian whistled, and the dog reluctantly backed away from the stranger, leaving its snarls coiling about in the air.

The man walked rapidly away from the group.

“Hey, that’s okay, mister. He won’t hurt you.”

The man turned around and slowly walked back, eyes fixed on the Indian. The dog roared again, and the Indian smacked it with his bow, sending it with a yelp behind the legs of an outraged girl.

The man was tall and built square, with a head of thick brown hair and a face like a fist. Although of massive stature, his face was pallid and his skin was smooth. His muscles must have come from deliberate indoor exercise rather than physical labor.

Something about the man’s face! He looked at you from under, as if you were taller. Yet the Indian could not imagine where he could have seen him before, unless it was in the Army.

“The dog’s crazy, mister. If he bothers you, kick him.”

“Your name is Moon? John Moon?”

“Sure.”

The man joined the line of guests, waiting his turn. The Indian went through four people with three arrows apiece before the man grasped the bow in his injured arm and fitted an arrow to it.

“Sir,” said the Indian. “That’s a fifty-­pound pull on that thing. Go easy on your arm.”

“Don’t worry about my arm,” the man said in a belligerent manner that started the dog barking again. Although his pain was evident, the man raised the bow, pulled it all the way back, and fired the arrow into the cottonwood.

“Not bad,” said the Indian admiringly. It was the best shot of the morning.

“Do you ever use a rifle, Moon?”

“Not any more. Now, this time get the arrow up a little higher. That’s it. That’s it.”

The man’s face sweated with pain. A faint double stain of blood soaked through his bandage. Nevertheless, his second arrow landed just over the first. It took him a while to fit the third arrow. “Ever been to Canada, Moon?”

“I might have. I been lots of places.”

“How about Caribou. Ever been to Caribou?”

“Is that in Canada?”

“Yeah. There was an accident up there a few months ago, a helicopter crash.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do say. Some men were killed. It seems somebody shot the helicopter down and this rather nasty animal tore off their heads.”

“That’s terrible.”

“They were friends of mine. I barely got away with my life. Remember that, Moon?”

“No, sir, can’t say as I do. I don’t read the papers very much.”

The man stared at him.

“Sir,” said the Indian with the respect he always accorded a good shot. “There’s other folks waiting.”

The man yanked back the arrow, tearing open his bandage. Blood flooded his arm. Despite his pain, he sent the arrow squarely between the other two. The Indian admired him even more. He was a proud man, one who showed how little pain affected him. He stalked away toward the lodge before the Indian could compliment him.

There was another ski show that night, so the guests cleared out of the dining room by eight o’clock and congregated on the sundeck. The Indian helped carry in cutlery, tablecloths, dirty plates and glasses. They scraped and stashed the dirty dishes in the washer and replaced the tablecloths for breakfast.

One of the men in the kitchen was a fat little fellow with pig eyes and a mouth dragged down in a perpetually resentful scowl. The others addressed him as Lester. Lester did not seem to like Indians.