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Show Blue Run/97 He got out and I heard the thing thud in the tmck bed, and then we went off down the dark road with a just dead owl quivering in the behind us. Some indians believe owls are messengers that forecast real bad luck about to happen. Others point out how they see through the darkest dark and hardly ever miss their prey-fearsome hunters, owls. Country folk claim that the owl sees the truth stillborn and pure, no living thing can lie to the owl. Either way, the owl's strong mojo, though all that was beyond me then, a girl in sunflower pajamas, riding with my daddy out in the Solgahatchia bottom Mens faces were lit up around a fire when we drove up. When the dream comes on nights when I'm alone, the sparks rise up in rivulets, loopy figure eights like crows fly in updraft thermals. One man's face shines jack-O-'lantern orange. He throws a log and the fire gets man-high, all those crazy sparks "Mornin or is it evenin," the fireman says "Come have one." Daddy gets out and stands by the fire. A bottle is passed. Dogs lope outside the ring of fire, the flames licking their eyes. Everybody seems happy, their mouths gape open Teeth show. They move around the circle to where Daddy stands, where he starts talking. The story is the old one, the tale that draws men out to hunt clubs and duck shacks and county-line honkeytonks from DesArc to Carthage, the old, old story of bloodletting and initiation, how it is to be a man. Wild as neolithics, men're born for hunt and slaughter in woods that wives and children must not enter This African man I met in the campaign, he told me how when he was sixteen he'd once stood in a ritual circle, allowed an elder to cut off the tip of his penis. Jesus, I believe in my heart that men are no less driven than any other animal to survive, to procreate themselves out of the grave. The price for such is heavy The real law of men is words once only uttered in gut, sinew and fist-the |