They met a mile from shore and agreed on a plan to find what was left of the fire. The father would paddle well to the left of their last sight of it; the guide was to head right. Then both would cruise along the shoreline back toward the middle. The youngest would head straight toward it. Coals could still be glowing, and whoever came near might rekindle a beacon. Still, they didn’t have much hope. Land, water, and sky were a marginless twilight.
The son saw nothing when he was a hundred yards from shore. He cruised backand forth along the waterline and was about to double back again when he saw the flare of a fire.
Shocked and gladdened, he drove his kayak toward it. He was not mistaken. The fire was roaring in surges and then falling dim as though an invisible bellows was at work. When he got closer, he spotted what could have been a human figure beside it, arms and body heaving, fanning it with a cloak or blanket so cumbersome that it could have been bear or buffalo hide. The figure’s size, build, and long hair made him think of a woman. He called out with a laugh.
As he neared shore, though, their savior drew back. As she left the glow, he thought he saw the forms of waiting animals, escorting her into the trees and darkness.
The youth whipped the blaze into an inferno, and his father and their guide soon found it. He told his story. The father was amazed; their guide was mighty quiet and didn’t say much about what he was thinking. He went to bed early.
Late that night, the young New Yorker saw the guide and his wolfy friend go out, as if for a rite or meditation destined to be private. It was hours before the pair returned, and nothing was said about it in the morning.
The Men by the Fire
Early one Sunday evening in August 2004, a young East Aurora man drove by the lakeshore not far from the Cattaraugus Reservation. A few hundred feet off the road, he saw the glow of a fire and human forms around it. He followed a couple of sets of tire tracks in sandy soil through the grass, hoping to see what was going on.
A dozen Seneca men between seventeen and forty sat around the fire, drinking a variety of their own spirits. They greeted Ken when he pulled up, and he decided to visit. He brought some of his own Scotch whiskey from the car, and the ice seemed fully broken when an observation of his sent a laugh around the circle. “Ken-man, you’re cool,” the oldest of them said. From then on he was Ken-man.
Ken thought he was fitting in, but soon noticed that most of the laughter and conversation came from the older fellows. He couldn’t help but study one young longhair who’d said nothing since he arrived. A lean fellow with the graceful build of a boy, he couldn’t have weighed a hundred forty pounds. He fell in upon himself, shaded his features in his mane, and muttered.
Soon he glared at Ken whenever he spoke as if he had no right to have an opinion, join a laugh that circled the fire, or share the lakeside air. Once he spat after Ken said something, and others spoke to him in Seneca. He said something short back and looked at Ken.
“We having some kind of problem?” Ken said. The young man rushed at him, and the two clashed chests in the glow. Ken’s weight threw the lad back. The oldest of the men, the one who had first used the name Ken-man, said something sharp to the young fellow.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Ken. Others tried to hold the whooping, snarling lad, gaining frenzy with each second like a Scandinavian berserker. The young Seneca fought through the arms, closed in again, and clutched with fingers like claws. There was something more than crazed about him. It was hard for three men to hold him. In the struggle, his torso showed. (“Talk about a six-pack, he had a twelve-pack,” Ken said later.)
A brawler himself, Ken had been the aggressor against bigger men. Something in that moment was terrifying. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “I’m not fighting you.”
“Run, Ken-man,” said the oldest, struggling. “Get out of here! He’s proving himself on you.”
“Run!” yelled others. Ken strode quickly to his car. A shadow fell near him as his hand was on the door. He spun, lashed out, and landed a perfect right to a jaw.
It was the young Seneca. Sense left the astonished eyes while still open.
Not every man gets all his weight into a punch. Ken is one of the ones who can do it. That tag should have dropped anyone for hours. Still, the blow felt odd. The young Seneca’s jaw had felt like something fixed to a leather saddle. The body had none of the give of other bodies he had struck and fell to the sandy soil tense like an animal’s.
Ken started the car and was turning onto the path when something pounced on the convertible roof, seeming to grab it at four points like a lioness tackling a buffalo. It had to be the young Seneca, trying to tear through the top.
Ken backed up, stopped, and turned, tossing the body over the side. He tore down the trail that he thought was the way he had come in. It was not. It actuallywent along the beach, curved a mile around marshy woods and thinned till it was invisible. The car hit something sandy and slowed. Ken got out and stood in the headlights, studying the situation. A shadow came out of the trees fifty yards off and flowed toward him.
It was the young Seneca. He’d run a mile or more in three minutes through black woods and come into the headlights, shirt in tatters. He bounded toward the car.
Ken started rocking
