Chapter Seven
My head started banging against the window. The road had gotten worse and in the distance I watched huge black clouds coming our way. They were fast and looked if they were about to swallow us all and the whole damn reservation with it. It would only be a matter of seconds before they’d envelop us.
“Close the windows folks. We have some thunderstorm coming up,” Louis said.
The first raindrops started pattering on the dusty glass like spikes. They got more and more, cloning endlessly.
“I’m scared,” Lucy yelled, hiding away in Mark’s arms.
By then it had become almost impossible to understand each other because of the machine gun volleys the storm was firing down on us. As if it wanted to punish us for something.
It had become impossible for Louis to drive on. Trying to keep the damage as small as possible, he parked the bus under a huge overhanging rock. Although it barely covered half of the bus, we felt a bit protected.
The storm grew heavier and heavier until was hitting us from all sides. Like some kind of living creature wanting to beat the shit out of us. Louis got up from behind the wheel and pointed at us to hide under the seats. No use for words. With the ear shattering noise nobody would get it anyway. Lucy and Mark were two rows behind me while Louis took care of Tiko in front. We were petrified. It was so menacing I almost wet my pants. I pictured the little bus in the middle of this huge lost land, a toy in the hands of this ghastly thunderstorm.
What was going on here? Tiko had said something about his Dad’s ghost protecting him. I wondered why this guy hadn’t turned up yet. Or maybe he was powerful but there were others, stronger ones. Could it be that some of those were mad at us? Mr.Jones’ spirit farting himself back into our lives? Aah, bullshit. All this talk about ghosts and stuff. Old wives tales, pure coffee table blabber. I won’t let that scare me. After all I’m no sissy.
Suddenly an enormous CRACKBANG shook the bus and me into coma.
As I awoke, from the back of the seat in front of me, a scribbled-down naked girl stared down at the mess. ‘Tommy loves Jenny’ was written next to it. And then ‘Jenny is ready’. Compared to Lucy’s, Jenny’s boobs were more the size of peanuts. I didn’t care.
They did bring me back to reality, though. Slowly I started to remember and realized the situation I’d been rocked into. I tried to turn my head, but somehow it wasn’t listening. And it hurt. Things felt strange. I told my eyeballs to roll to the side so I’d be able to look to my right. To my surprise they did. Wow. Things weren’t that bad after all.
I was lying on my side on the floor, my head still pressed to the seat close to Ready Jenny. My back felt sort of twisted. I tried to move my arms. Though it didn’t entirely work out the way I had planned, slowly feelings began creeping back into my joints and muscles. Everything hurt but at least I was able to move again. Even my head started responding.
I tried pulling myself up from the floor. After I’d finally succeeded and was sort of sitting on what had once been my seat, I was able to oversee the damage. Most of the roof was gone. The sun was back, spreading heat through the huge hole. Half of the seats were junk. Everything was covered with rocks and mud and torn parts of the roof. The only color present was sand.
As a huge mass up front began slightly shaking in itself, I recognized Louis covered with debris.
“Hey boy, you alive?” he said while rubbing the sand from his eyes. “How about the others?”
“It looks like everybody was knocked unconscious by a huge explosion or something. Rocks everywhere, something big must have hit and destroyed the roof.”
I pulled myself out of my seat and went over to Lucy and Mark. They were still cuddled together with Mark holding the China bone over their heads as a desperate protection.
“Hey, lover birds, wake up, this is the beginning of ‘Lost in the Desert, Part 2’.”
Nothing. It wasn’t until I patted Mark’s shoulder that they came back to life. His hair looked like some kind of hat. They shook off the dust and disentangled.
Lucy took the leg, half embracing his waist.
“What happened? Damon, is everyone alive and …. does the bus, I mean is it still working?”
Suddenly we overheard some scratching on the undamaged rear part of the roof. I mimed the others that I’d go over to take a look.
“Be careful Damon,” Lucy whispered.
Trying my best to stay out of view from who- or whatever was on the roof, I walked over and stepped onto one of the broken seats to peek out.
“It’s only Tiko playing scout,” I called down while climbing up.
He looked o.k. Relief. Nobody was hurt. Lucy and Mark walked over to the gap and looked at us. Up front Louis kicked open the door - the lock probably got damaged during the big bang - and got out.
“What do you see, Tiko? Any aliens or natives in sight?” Louis called, holding a broken chrome grip in his hand.
He was amazing. Although the bus looked really bad, his mood was unbreakable.
“No natives, but I can see some of the cultists over there, near the bunkers!”
Tiko pointed at some tiny figures waving from atop some small humps in the desert. They made me think of half sunken in igloos. Tiko was so excited he almost fell back in.
“What are you talking about, Tiko? What cultists, I thought we’re on Indian territory here,“ Mark said.
Tiko explained the situation. Even if his people would have been farmers – which they weren’t – they’d never have been able to make a decent living from their land, simply because nothing would grow on this soil. Approximately three years ago a certain Mr. Jessons had bought two hundred acres from the Indian community. His money was a true blessing.
“But I thought that this land is yours by law and that it cannot be traded. Also to protect future generations from stupid selfish ancestors. Wasn’t there some other way out?”
Mark couldn’t see how selling off parts of their land could’ve been tolerated by the majority of the tribe, or even the government for that matter.
“Hey, what would you do if you are forced to live on land you cannot use because nothing ever grows there? Everyday you see people biting the dust. The only thing they do is drink and fight. Strong men turning into mindless vegetables. Wouldn’t it be a chance for those few decent people left to sell some of the land to start irrigation or use the money to build a school?”
“You call that a school, sitting in the back of the saloon with a drunken priest?”
“Yeah well, it’s better than staying home watching your mother cry or being whacked by a drunken father who is just through with spanking his wife! The priest taught us lots of things, apart from singing. He told us why white folks treat us the way they do and how they want us to be drunk and stupid, to keep things from changing. Well, I’ll tell you this: we will turn our world upside down. We can and will be doing as we please with and on our land and it’s nobody’s business but ours!”
We were all flabbergasted. I mean, Tiko just being ten and all. This little guy’s speech had us nailed. The way he was standing there, in the middle of the bus, his head dark red from excitement. Somehow we were so ashamed we couldn’t find the right words to react. Of course we knew it wasn’t our fault their lives were so miserable. But we felt guilty anyhow, because we’d never given it any thought. I mean, we were practically neighbors and didn’t give a shit about each other. It was about time we changed that.
“You’re right, Tiko,” I said. “It may sound stupid, but we didn’t know. It’s good you explained things. I hope that over time I’d be able to show you and your people the respect you deserve. You got through all this shit and came out strong. I’m happy to have you walking next to me as a friend.”
I watched him standing there, the black hair loose on his shoulders, the huge eyes and his potbelly.
“I like you too Damon, and the others. You are the first ones listening and I get the feeling you truly sympathize with our cause. Here, let me tell you the story of the cultists.”
We knew we’d be in for a treat. We sat down in shade of the bus. The sand was warm and a small breeze almost made us forget about the crash.
As you would have guessed, Tiko’s story was bursting with all kinds of colorful metaphors – to use Mr. Spock’s words. I won’t include all the swearing, it’d be too much to bear. You’ll have the short version. To get the feeling just add some to your own taste.
One day this Mr. Jessons came popping out of nowhere, offering Wild Cloud – Tiko’s Dad – a good price for a useless piece of land. He told the Indians that he was a priest and that he needed the land for his congregation because the other white men didn’t want him to practice his beliefs on theirs. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse. Not only did they desperately need the money to survive (the part he wanted was even less useful than the rest), they simply couldn’t deny him, someone as left out as themselves, what he asked for.
So he got it. The first thing he did after having acquired the land was to put up a huge cross. Tiko did a good improvisation of the guy ramming the cross into the soft sand. Add a stick and a hat and you’d have had the red Charlie Chaplin trying his best to hold up the thing.
But with his comic act Tiko had also made one thing very clear: to Mr. Jessons it was all about Faith with a capital F, the serious part of it. And of course he knew what he was talking about; after all he’d been saved himself. Because of that he felt that now it was his turn to do some saving on his own.
The first weeks nothing happened. Jessons stayed alone, no visitors. Just him and the cross. But just as Wild Cloud and the gathering of elders began worrying if they would have to return part of the money when Mr. Jessons would give up, the first group of settlers arrived. They started building the bunkers soon after. About a year later they were done. They’d built some twenty-five igloos in total, housing around a hundred people.
Mr. Jessons once invited the entire tribe to take a look, but apart from Wild Cloud nobody had wanted to visit the Fat Man, as they called him.
“He always kept talking about the eternal search for the light of inner truth. As my Dad asked him why he was looking for light underground, Mr. Jessons got very angry. He said he’d found it, though he kept silent about its whereabouts.”
“Well, then I cannot really see the need in any further digging,” Wild Cloud had said.
From that moment on, Mr. Jessons had never again invited any of the Indians. From time to time a tribesman met a settler, the Indian talking about the hunt and the settler about his search for light. If ever a tribesman felt tempted by Fat Man’s Paradise, as Wild Cloud called it, it usually didn’t take longer than a day or so to wear off.
True, the settlers had everything for free and you also got the impression that the electrical installations they kept bragging about were something close to magic. But the idea of having to dig for light was so far from the Indians’ reality that no matter what other temptations the cult had to offer, with time all lost their charm.