He drove down in the four by four following along the roughly strewn path and stopped at the curve of the bottom of a hill. "Here?" he asked. He thought he recognized the small pond she'd described. It certainly had cat tails, and sure enough there was a large dead tree stump jutting out of the water that looked like a dead man.
She turned to him in the seat and nodded. "We locals call the pond 'Dead Man's Float'." She pointed to the small wooden bridge that hovered over the footpath and small stream that meandered into the pond's outer edge. "That's 'Fuck You Bridge'..."
He looked at her with an arched brow as if to ask if she were serious.
She laughed and it was brilliant. All straight white teeth and a beautiful dipping Cupid's bow above full curved lips. She didn't have to wear lipstick... her mouth was a natural sort of blush that contrasted against her Cherokee skin. "Yes, I'm serious. Come on."
She pulled the handle of the door and pushed it open. The old red Ford protested loudly and she stepped out. She'd worn hiking boots and jeans and a loose red flannel shirt... but somehow it did not take away from her natural exotic look and her ebony hair fell down her back in straight strands. He followed quickly and they made their way across the field to the bridge.
She knelt down and began tracing her fingers against the carvings in the wood of the bridge. He leaned over and canted his head to the side, then finally got down on his haunches to read. "So many names..." he remarked. "What are they all for?"
"It's a tradition." She remarked, grinning.
She stood, brushed off her jeans with the palms of her hands and moved forward against him suddenly and with a catlike grace. He swallowed thickly and his Adam's apple bobbed against the taut skin of his throat. He thought suddenly to try to change her mind about whatever she was doing and licked his dry lips. "What's the tradition?"
She shrugged, her breasts bobbing in with her shoulders underneath the fabric of her shirt and she backed him up against the side of the bridge. He felt the rough hewn boards bite into his back and arched a brow at her. He was city born and bred and had come down for a tour and to hunt for arrowheads. The locals had said that Twinny TwoFeathers was the best for touring the countryside with and so he'd paid her small fee and rented an old beat up truck at the reservation. He was beginning to wonder what all the tour involved, though.
She gave him a shove and chuckled. "Don't look so worried, City Boy. Come on, let's go down by the stream."
She reached for his hand and it took him by surprise. She had long fingers and they led into beautiful nails. They were un-manicured, but she was healthy and so the nails were hard and long and curved and the skin was slightly blue underneath. It was a lovely effect and he caught himself staring at her fingers a moment, transfixed, before he allowed her to tug him off the length of the bridge and toward the sloping bank of the creek.
Twinny picked her way in front of him, releasing his hand as quickly as she had taken it. "This is the right time of year for finding." She said. "The floods have washed the silt up on the sides and over the land... leaving behind many artifacts... look carefully. But remember you can't just take things with you. It goes to the reservation."
He nodded, watching her hips sway with the cadence of her steps and when she stopped, he stopped too and they both knelt down next to the reeds by the bank where stones had appeared after the water had returned to its banks. She began pushing her fingers into the mud and there was a faint sucking sound as she tugged out a small piece of flint with a flicker of a grin. She passed the small arrow head to him. "Your first," she said.
He caught it, mud and all and wiped the small arrowhead clean on his jeans before looking at it. "It's small."
She nodded. "That's why you have to look close. Most of them are."
"Can I keep it?"
She laughed, full and rich and throaty and he glanced in her direction in time to see her use one of those long-fingered hands to flip her hair over her shoulder. "If you keep it, Uncle John will sell you up river to the white circus and you'll end up scooping elephant dung the rest of your life."
It was another local joke. He knew this. He'd heard it at the gas station. Those who took things off the reservation illegally got sold to the circus up river to work as shit scoopers because they were lower than dung in the eyes of the Osage Cherokee Natives, but he had hoped that she would not say anything if he pocketed the small arrowhead. He looked at it plaintively and she quirked a brow. "You didn't even find that one yourself, urban cowboy," she said. "I found it for you."
And suddenly, again, she was standing in front of him, only a whisper of wind between her hips and his stomach and he was disconcerted, looking down at her upturned face. What game was she playing at? Or did she do this with all the tourists? He swallowed thickly and took a step back and she matched him, the thick mud underneath them sucking at their shoes as they pulled their feet up and suddenly the stream was behind him and he had no where else to go. She grinned, reached up and placed her hands, palms flat, against his chest. "I could just... shove," She said.
He nodded but then thought to answer. "But why would you?"
There was the faintest ghost of a grin on her face and he wondered if it were men that she hated or just the men she had designated as Urban Cowboys.
She laughed... lyrical and loud and remarked, "To watch you sputter like a fish on the bank when you came up and to see the other men's faces when we got to the bridge house and told them that little Twinny TwoFeathers pushed you in the stream." But she did step back, giving him enough of a hairsbreadths room so that he could sidestep her, relieved, and head for the bank.
He headed straight for the bridge and crouched down next to the names. He noticed now that they were carved deeply, as if someone had used a knife. Twinny was still at the stream and he looked toward her. She cast a long lean shadow in the evening sun and her native ebony hair fell over her shoulder and glinted darkly in the dying light. He traced his finger into one of the names. It was both a first and a last and there was nothing else anywhere on the bridge.... no other symbols or words. Just names... row after row of them.
He flipped out his pen knife and pushed it against a clear space in the wood and began carving the straight back line of a solid letter "D" when suddenly the light he'd been working in was blocked out as she stood behind him and her shadow stretched over him like a shroud. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He dropped the pen knife in his startlement and stuttered. "I thought... you said... tradition... you said it was tradition... was going to carve my name here too..." He leaned over to retrieve his pen knife where it had fallen to his right side and suddenly her boot came down on it as well as on three of his fingers and he heard the knuckle crack. It wasn't bone breaking... but it was that un-nerving crack of tissue readjusting when you pop your knuckles.
"Like hell you are," she said.
He tried to pull his fingers out from under her boot and the petite native woman stepped down harder, crushing them into the boards of the bridge.
"Now see here," he started. "Get your boot off my fingers. I was just doing what you said." He looked up and saw that her face was dark and angry.
She shook her head. "Those names... those are our dead. They are the young. The government gave us this reservation but they still regulate everything. They won't let us bury our dead the way we want so we started carving the names on this bridge... it got its name from that." She sighed. "It's a sort of way of saying 'Fuck You' to the government. Understand?"
"Oh." He felt suddenly foolish and small and very sorry. He relaxed his hand and when he did so, she lifted her boot up, leaned over and handed him the pen knife. "I'm sorry," he said. It was not enough... he knew this. But it was all he had to offer.
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