The Medicine Man, His Lovely Daughter and Nutmeg
Once, when I was just twenty and fresh out of the military, the opportunity of being Tribal Historian for a confederacy of Indian tribes fell in my lap. I was to travel the U.S. with an itinerant medicine man and his gorgeous teenage daughter. The first time I saw her, I gazed upon a bronze tan covering her sleek body. She wore a short buckskin skirt and had jet black hair, sporting two braids with an actual feather, for God's sake, tethered to each.
She smelled faintly of nutmeg and romance.
I was to accompany them to the various reservations across the U.S., compiling mountains of notes while learning—as the medicine man promised I would learn—the true story of the American Indian. Later I would document it all for posterity.
All I had to do was go home and pack, dole out my goodbyes and return in one week.
But, I was a lad of twenty and my mother had something to tell me:
"They will kill you and steal your money," she argued. Fact was I had no money. They'd have found that out soon enough. What I did have was the promise of sixty or seventy more years in my bag of life ... unless said bag was wantonly emptied and its contents strewn along some lonely road by these two peripatetic miscreants.
At this point, how many readers are asking, "Why would you listen to her?" And, really, had I heeded, instead, my youthful exuberance, and embraced the future, I actually just might have compiled that gargantuan history. Who knows? And, in the process I might have risen to undreamt-of heights of spiritual awareness. Then too, how about all those romantic detours from which I would emerge smelling faintly of nutmeg?
As I think about it, the real question I should ask is: "Why did I allow my mother's fears to lodge themselves so snugly in my soul that they would reverberate there at least once more while I was still relatively young?
Fast forward five years:
* * *
I was living the bohemian lifestyle in Los Angeles, in a communal house I shared with three others. Every day was an adventure in which we guzzled cheap wine from gallon jugs, argued heatedly over the placement of a comma and dreamt out loud. It was a damned good life!
I don't know who came up with the notion—I think it was Joe—that we should buy bikes and ride from California to New York. I'm sure each immediately rejected the idea in his own private mind, but it nestled like a grain of sand in the oyster of my brain. Over the next few days while they were working, going on their dates and engaging in drinking and partying, my tiny grain of sand quietly grew to a precious pearl. Call it the pearl of thrilling possibilities.
When I announced to the group that I would be buying my bike the next morning and would begin my adventure in two days, they met it with stunned silence. But, soon after, they cheered and assured me that if they didn't have their damned jobs, they would certainly join me. Secretly I felt a touch of superiority.
However, that night I felt something more. Something powerful, compelling, sinister. The pearl had settled in the pit of my stomach where it transformed and grew to the size and heft of a cannonball while I lay there staring at the ceiling. Call it the dread of the unknown. Call it the powerful undertow from the past. Call it …
"A truck will run you over."…
"Nah, ma, I'm gonna be careful."
"You'll get a flat in the middle of nowhere."
"I'll fix it!"
"You won't."
"Ma!"
"You won't. You don't know how. It'll be cold and rainy, your socks will be soggy … and you won't … know … how!"
Next morning, while the others were at work, I was on a bus back to Santa Maria.
* * *
End of story, you ask?
No … it's actually the beginning—or rather the beginning of many stories.
Okay, let me explain:
The first few paragraphs of this blog—the part about the medicine man and his gorgeous daughter—I lifted from the preface to my first Noah Winter novel, RSVP: Invitation To an Alchuklesh Massacre. Only after I reread the preface today did it dawn on me that Noah Winter is, in spirit, pretty much everything I am not.
That set me to wondering … how many other writers, when they examine their own creative progeny, discover themselves peering out their own protagonists' eyes at paths they wished they'd pursued—at least with their protagonists' depth, intensity, integrity, honor or courage?
While I won't presume to answer for any other writer, I'll try to noodle out a one paragraph answer about myself:
Contrary to his wussy creator's life, Noah Winter tends to launch himself a little too vigorously into the thrill of the unknown. It's like he has the ghost of the medicine man tugging at his right shoulder. And, if you broach the intimate space of Noah's love interest, Colleen, you may just carry back from the pages you were reading, the lingering scent of nutmeg.
I may be wrong, but I don't think Noah Winter fans would have it any other way.
She smelled faintly of nutmeg and romance.
I was to accompany them to the various reservations across the U.S., compiling mountains of notes while learning—as the medicine man promised I would learn—the true story of the American Indian. Later I would document it all for posterity.
All I had to do was go home and pack, dole out my goodbyes and return in one week.
But, I was a lad of twenty and my mother had something to tell me:
"They will kill you and steal your money," she argued. Fact was I had no money. They'd have found that out soon enough. What I did have was the promise of sixty or seventy more years in my bag of life ... unless said bag was wantonly emptied and its contents strewn along some lonely road by these two peripatetic miscreants.
At this point, how many readers are asking, "Why would you listen to her?" And, really, had I heeded, instead, my youthful exuberance, and embraced the future, I actually just might have compiled that gargantuan history. Who knows? And, in the process I might have risen to undreamt-of heights of spiritual awareness. Then too, how about all those romantic detours from which I would emerge smelling faintly of nutmeg?
As I think about it, the real question I should ask is: "Why did I allow my mother's fears to lodge themselves so snugly in my soul that they would reverberate there at least once more while I was still relatively young?
Fast forward five years:
* * *
I was living the bohemian lifestyle in Los Angeles, in a communal house I shared with three others. Every day was an adventure in which we guzzled cheap wine from gallon jugs, argued heatedly over the placement of a comma and dreamt out loud. It was a damned good life!
I don't know who came up with the notion—I think it was Joe—that we should buy bikes and ride from California to New York. I'm sure each immediately rejected the idea in his own private mind, but it nestled like a grain of sand in the oyster of my brain. Over the next few days while they were working, going on their dates and engaging in drinking and partying, my tiny grain of sand quietly grew to a precious pearl. Call it the pearl of thrilling possibilities.
When I announced to the group that I would be buying my bike the next morning and would begin my adventure in two days, they met it with stunned silence. But, soon after, they cheered and assured me that if they didn't have their damned jobs, they would certainly join me. Secretly I felt a touch of superiority.
However, that night I felt something more. Something powerful, compelling, sinister. The pearl had settled in the pit of my stomach where it transformed and grew to the size and heft of a cannonball while I lay there staring at the ceiling. Call it the dread of the unknown. Call it the powerful undertow from the past. Call it …
"A truck will run you over."…
"Nah, ma, I'm gonna be careful."
"You'll get a flat in the middle of nowhere."
"I'll fix it!"
"You won't."
"Ma!"
"You won't. You don't know how. It'll be cold and rainy, your socks will be soggy … and you won't … know … how!"
Next morning, while the others were at work, I was on a bus back to Santa Maria.
* * *
End of story, you ask?
No … it's actually the beginning—or rather the beginning of many stories.
Okay, let me explain:
The first few paragraphs of this blog—the part about the medicine man and his gorgeous daughter—I lifted from the preface to my first Noah Winter novel, RSVP: Invitation To an Alchuklesh Massacre. Only after I reread the preface today did it dawn on me that Noah Winter is, in spirit, pretty much everything I am not.
That set me to wondering … how many other writers, when they examine their own creative progeny, discover themselves peering out their own protagonists' eyes at paths they wished they'd pursued—at least with their protagonists' depth, intensity, integrity, honor or courage?
While I won't presume to answer for any other writer, I'll try to noodle out a one paragraph answer about myself:
Contrary to his wussy creator's life, Noah Winter tends to launch himself a little too vigorously into the thrill of the unknown. It's like he has the ghost of the medicine man tugging at his right shoulder. And, if you broach the intimate space of Noah's love interest, Colleen, you may just carry back from the pages you were reading, the lingering scent of nutmeg.
I may be wrong, but I don't think Noah Winter fans would have it any other way.