Authors: Arthur Slade
Tribes
Tribes
By
Arthur Slade
Copyright 2002 by Arthur Slade
ISBN: 978-0-9868555-5-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Arthur Slade.
Cover art by Christopher Steininger
Novels By Arthur Slade
For fans of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury...
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Dedication
For Scott Treimel,
who believed from the beginning
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Brenda Baker, Vincent Sakowski and Edna Alford for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript; to the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Canada Council for financial support; to Wendy Lamb for her insight; and to Lucy, Darwin and Rush for their inspiration.
prologue
MY FATHER
My father, Percival Montmount, died in the Congo after lunch on a Sunday three years ago. I was fourteen. He was an anthropologist, then living with a tribe of blue-skinned pygmies who gathered fruits from the fronds of midget trees. We have a picture of Dad between a pygmy and a plastic-looking tree. Dad smiles, showing white, perfect teeth. The pygmy looks into the camera, hypnotized.
My dad died the next day. The photo was given to us by a
National Geographic
photographer, a blond hominid named Cindy Mozkowski. She called him a saint, a brilliant ethnographer, and said the pygmies had truly respected Percival of the Shining Forehead.
Ms. Mozkowski wept big tears that slid slowly down her cheeks and landed on our doorstep. Mom wouldn't let her in the house because she had brought bad news. Next it would be bad luck.
Here's how my dad ascended to the department of Heaven reserved for anthropologists. He was lying on his cot one muggy summer day, outlining an essay titled "Why a Pygmy Refers to Himself as We." A tsetse fly stole through the netting and into Dad's tent. It landed on his arm. He brushed it away. It buzzed over to his exposed toe. He wiggled, and the fly shot into the air. Undaunted, it circled around and around and compound-eyeballed Dad's neck. It touched down and bit.
That evening black Azazel sickness conquered my father. The pygmies buried him standing up. He was facing the sunrise so that he could be carried off to the next world. It was their custom.
It's what Dad wanted. It was in his will.
second prologue
MY FATHER'S EYES
My name is Percival Montmount, Jr., and I have my father's eyes. My eyes are aquamarine like his, set in a thin-boned, eagle-nosed face. But the similarity is more than a physical trait: I have my father's eyes. The night he died, Dad materialized at my bedside, extended a ghost arm, and opened his fingers to reveal a pair of glowing spirit eyes. He gently held the back of my head and inserted the magical orbs into my sockets.
I blinked once...darkness. Twice...light. Dad waved goodbye as he faded away.
I wept, not knowing whether the tears were mine or my father's.
field journal
Items to carry on the person:
Reliable pen
Backup pen
Field study notebook
Open mind
one
THE BEGINNING
Let's begin at the beginning. About 3.5 million years ago, a short, hairy hominid called
Australopithecus afarensis
walked on two legs, thus distinguishing himself from his peers. His hobbies were swinging a club and throwing stones, precursors to baseball. His offspring gave birth to taller, less hairy anthropoids, who in their turn birthed more. As the millennia passed, these hominids mutated, shed their body hair, perfected the use of their opposable thumbs and strained the boundaries of their intellects, until at last they built siege engines and sailing ships.
These creatures discovered North America. They engineered primitive cities and formed an unwieldy organization they named government. One particularly keen tribe attempted to walk across the barren Canadian prairies in search of the perfect site for a temperance colony. Confused by the wind's whistling, they wandered north. They camped near a river and named the place after the Cree word for a tasty purple berry:
Missask-quah-toomina.
Saskatoon. This camp grew especially fecund, attracting sufficient hominids to include one motivated biped who convinced the others to build a high school.
Truly, it was the first backward step in 3.5 million years. The second was the invention of football teams.
Justin, a robust member of the Jock Tribe, clutched my collar with meaty digits. His right hand was clenched in a fist.
"Don't!"
Whack.
"Ever!"
Whack.
"Call me!"
Whack. Whack.
"That!"
Whack.
"Again!"
Whack.
His football ring flashed in and out of my vision, stamping impressions in my cheek that would likely be documented in Grad pictures next Thursday. Justin's features were Cro-Magnon: high forehead, thick skull, broad face. The color of his large gray eyes resembled that of an atomic mushroom cloud. Football season was long over, leaving him with vast reserves of simmering testosterone. I was helping burn them off.
"Got that, you little turd?" He shook me. My limbs flopped, but his grip prevented my collapse. "Don't follow me. Don't even look at me." Justin rapped Stonehenge-sized knuckles on my skull. "Got it?"
I nodded. The signal. Submission. He was Lord of the Apes, the Almighty Banana King. I was a low monkey, not worth his energy. Not worth—
Whack!
An uppercut to the jaw lifted my consciousness from its mortal cage. I floated skyward, watching my body waver back and forth like a pugilist whose brain hasn't processed the message that the last punch knocked him out. I drifted higher. A light opened above me. Was this a harbinger of the fabled afterlife all tribes dream of?
A female voice sang out, "Let him go!" Was it a high priestess come to bring down the temples? The mother goddess herself?
"No problem," Justin grunted, "I'm bored anyway." He shoved my carcass. I suddenly snapped back inside myself, eyes wide with fear. I fell like a cut redwood tree, momentum adding to my body's weight. I neglected to use my hands, so I smacked into the ground and shock waves coursed through my nervous system.
The Busybody Tribe surrounded us, shielding the crude ceremony from Groverly High's windows. Its affiliates goggled. Their eyes were large, their batlike ears stretched high to gather up every vibration and echo. When it became clear that I would do no more than moan, they vacated.
I blinked. Stared at an azure morning sky. Wisps of clouds floated in the air. Birds chirped. It could have been a nature documentary. I was relieved it was Friday.
A face appeared in my line of vision. Female. Blurry. Familiar. I batted my eyelids to clear my watering eyes. It was Elissa, my friend.
"Jesus, Percy!
What happened?
"
Several facial areas felt hot as coals. I rubbed my cranium. "I left my body."
"What?"
"I was floating and this light appeared, coming toward me. Maybe it was the afterlife."
"I think you have a concussion."
I tried to sit up. Not prudent. Pain fused seven lower vertebrae. "I am experiencing severe discomfort."
Elissa leaned over, blocking the morning sun. She was as tall and thin as me, her brown hair bobbed, her elfin face elegantly bisected by a slim nose. Her eyes grew wide and owl-like. They stared now, signaling concern and curiosity. She had epicanthic eye folds, though no obvious Asian ancestors. A sign that all humans share common traits.
Elissa had engaged in ritual body piercing, not for fashion, but in honor of ancient beliefs. Some African cultures believe that demon spirits fly up a person's nostrils and cause illness. To prevent this, she wore a nose ring. She had also situated one ring at the end of her right eyebrow, an ever-present silver tear flicked to the side.
Her fingertips brushed my cheek. "Ow!" I exclaimed.
"Why'd Justin do it?"
"It was my fault. I strayed into his territory." She helped me sit up; my back cracked with each movement. "He then spoke inciteful words to evoke a response."