habit of suing his bosses or had an inordinate number of workman's comp claims. The news was good, the client was happy, and Jennie was in a good mood when she hung up and turned to him.
'Think you can spare me a couple hours?' he asked, before she could say anything.
She looked surprised, but nodded. Not warily this time, which was a nice change. 'Sure-you've been putting in an awful lot of time on our mutual case for me. So, what do you need?'
He sat back in his chair. 'I need-hell, this is really hard for me-' He felt himself actually blushing. 'I sound like some retro hippie or something. But-I've been watching you and Grandfather, and I need-I'd like-I-'
He had planned the whole speech out, and now it deserted him along with his confidence. 'Jennie-I mean, maybe I ought to call you by your Osage name for this, but you never told it to me-I want-can you-help me?' He looked up at her hopefully. 'I'm Cherokee and you're not, and I know what some of my people did to yours, but you and Grandfather are the only Medicine People I know well enough to ask.'
She blinked at him, and for a long moment, said nothing. Then she took a deep breath, and said, very carefully, 'Are you asking me to help you find your spiritual identity?'
He nodded, grateful beyond words that she had articulated what he had not been able to.
'Oh my.' She blinked again, then suddenly grinned. 'You know, your ancestors must be rotating in their graves like high-speed lathes. Have I ever told you what my people called yours?'
He shook his head.
Her mouth twitched. 'It translates as Thing-On-Its-Head-People,' because you weren't particularly valiant by the arrogant standards of my people, nor were you particularly outstanding in any other way, and the only way they could think to distinguish you from other nations was by the bandana the Cherokees wrapped around their heads.'
She started giggling then, and after a moment, he saw the joke.
'Well, if my ancestors are twirling, yours are probably trying to beat a path back from the Summerlands to whup some sense into your head,' he replied, with a weak laugh. 'That is, if you're even considering it.'
'Considering it?' She giggled again. 'Good god, David, Grandfather actually predicted this two days ago, and I didn't believe him! How can I not do my best to help you when he said that he was going to oversee the whole shebang?'
'The whole shebang' began with a three-day fast, punctuated with sweatlodge ceremonies, which honestly was something he had expected. He wasn't completely ignorant of Medicine Ways after all.
Grandfather Talldeer-who he was now supposed to refer to as either 'Mooncrow' or 'Little Old Man'- insisted that he move into Jennie's spare room for the duration of the ceremony. But he was to bring nothing, not even clothing, other than what he had on his back.
The first day of his fast he didn't see Jennie at all; Mooncrow led him through a special bath, followed by a long stint in the sauna-cum-sweatlodge. The old man was a lot more pragmatic than David had expected, handling things very calmly, as if he did this sort of thing every day.
'In the old days,' Mooncrow said, as he took a seat on the floor of the sauna, and poured a dipperful of water over the heated rocks, 'we'd have a drummer and a singer in here, chanting to put your mind on the right path. But these days-well, my drummer's in Talequah running his gas station, and my singer's splitting his time between classes and asking 'do you want fries with that?' So we'll have to make do.'
'Make do?' David asked, wondering what the old man had in mind.
Mooncrow grinned, and took a towel off a bright yellow sports-model cassette player. 'Got to deal with modern ways, sometimes. This thing doesn't mind the heat, and doesn't have a job and a mortgage and kids to feed. Doesn't get tired, either.'
David raised a skeptical eyebrow. If it had been his call, he would have thought this was way too much like buying a videotape of enlightenment . . . but if Mooncrow approved it. ...
But the tape Mooncrow started was not some synthesizer and Pan-flute, white-bread version of a drum chant. This was the real thing, recorded in a drum-circle, not a studio; it went straight into his chest and vibrated his entire body. His heart throbbed in time with it; his whole body swayed in time to it, and as Mooncrow lit a bundle of sweetgrass for smoke, David did not find it at all difficult to fall into the meditative state the old man demanded of him.
Three days of sweats and ritual baths, of tales and instruction, and in the end, it came down to this; standing barefoot in the middle of a clearing on some friend of Mooncrow's private land, wearing nothing but a loincloth of the old style and a medicine-bag Jennie had made for him. Mooncrow had awakened him this morning long before dawn, put him in his old pickup truck, and had left him here before the sun rose. David was light-headed from fasting, but his mind was clear, as clear as the sky overhead, and the breeze that brushed his body.
He felt like an entirely new and different person-one with more patience, fewer prejudices, and the wisdom to know he wasn't perfect. If this was a religious revelation- well-he figured he could get to like his 'new self' in a hurry.
This part of the vision-quest was another change from the old days, Mooncrow told him, with some regret. In the old days he would have gone straight out into the wilderness from his own village and would have stayed out where he would never see another human, traveling in whatever direction the omens sent him, until he met his spirit-animal.
'Of course,' Mooncrow had added with a chuckle, both strong hands holding the steering wheel, 'in the old days you would have done this long ago, when you were a boy, and you would not have been permitted in the company of men until you had.'
But there was no wilderness near enough to Tulsa to permit such a vision-quest; no place at all in the continental United States where he would not, sooner or later, encounter some other human if he began wandering,
So he would remain where he had been left, and his spirit-totem must come to him.
Along with the light-headedness of fasting, there was the light-headedness of excitement. He had been three days in preparation for this, and he had imagined many times what his spirit-animal might be. The Horse of his family name- the Puma-the Bear-the Wolf-best of all, the Eagle-
Don't focus on what you want, that's what Mooncrow said, he reminded himself. Don't focus on anything. Just wait, without expectations. Open yourself to the Earth. . . .
He did not even notice that he had settled, cross-legged, as easy as a leaf drifting down from the trees. He simply found himself sitting instead of standing, dismissed that, and as Mooncrow and Jennie had taught him, became a part of this little corner of the Earth, as still and as accepting as the grass.
He was not even aware of the passing of time, except as a change in the shadows and the patterns of shade and sunlight.
So when the white-tail buck stepped into the clearing and walked straight to him, he was not even excited. It was a beautiful animal, and he was lost in admiration of it. Sun gleamed on the buck's rust-brown sides, making him shine like a living statue of molten copper. He was a ten-pointer, and his rack shone black and bronze, gleaming as if it had been polished. His huge, liquid brown eyes stared directly at David; his black patent-leather nose twitched as he took in David's scent. He picked his way slowly and deliberately across the clearing, his ears pointed toward David, each hoof placed with such care that the dry leaves barely whispered as he passed.
At least, David was not excited, until the Deer dipped his nose to look into David's eyes, and said, 'Well. And it certainly took you long enough to see me!'
Mooncrow sat on a rock beside him, sunlight shining on his crown of gray hair, and chuckled. 'The Deer, hmm?'
David was a little chagrined at the identity of his spirit-animal; not disappointed, but chagrined. After all of Mooncrow's admonitions not to expect any particular animal, he still had fallen into the trap of hoping for something, well, a little more macho. If his spirit animal had to be one of the deer family-it would have been nice to have something like the wapiti, the great Elk, and not the white-tail buck. A little more like a power symbol and less like Bambi. . . .
'You don't sound surprised,' David remarked, after a moment. He had to be gratified by one thing, at least. It couldn't be more than noon, by the sun. His spirit-totem had revealed itself to him in a very short time. He had heard stories of it taking anywhere from one day to a whole week, sometimes more.
The old man smiled, giving him a sideways look out of the corner of his eye. 'I'm not surprised,' he replied. 'I already knew. Kestrel saw him.'
