Saucer in the Dunes

44 The Blue Fog

After supper, we sat around the fire, relaxed, and talked. It all started to make a little more sense. Ronnie added a few more pieces of wood to the fire at Tik's request, and Jimmy and I got our sleeping bags and laid them out on the ground to lie on. First, Kema retold Jimmy's joke to Tik, and then they both began telling us more about growing up in Oklahoma and why they had returned to Georgia.

"You see, Tamela Pashme was an old man. He was a crook, dishonest, but a likable guy, if that makes any sense. He never meant any harm."

"What does that mean?" I interrupted.

"I mean, he didn't try to steal from anyone he knew on our Rez, mostly tourists and people like that."

"No, I mean his name; what does that mean," I said, making myself a little clearer.

Kema stopped, looked off in thought, and smiled back at Tik first, then at me.

"It means dull knife. I'm sure it was given to him later; no way he was born with that. That's all we knew him as. He was just sort of a no-account type guy, maybe a little off his rocker."

Tik smiled and agreed.

"He got wind that we were leaving the Rez and started bugging us to dig up this treasure. I just laughed at him. That old man had been selling treasure maps for years to any white man fool enough to believe him. Even though I tried to laugh him off, he always bugged me about it. He just kept on and on. I used to mow his grass and trim the bushes in his yard. He didn't have any family anymore, so Pap made it my job to help him out. Anyway, I finished mowing one afternoon, and he came out and asked me to come inside to show me something."

"Damn, that still sounds bad when you put it like that, man," Tik jabbed at him.

"Yeah, but it wasn't like that. He brought this really old book, like not even a book, older, tied together with broken leather straps. The pages were legit old, like not real paper but animal skin. All old stuff. There was a map, and he pointed it out and wouldn't get off of it until I copied the whole damn thing down."

"Yeah, and the weird thing was Creek don't keep records like that, nothing that old. Our language is mostly spoken, written sometimes, but not like in books like you think."

"You know, back then, this was our land, the whole place, where the town was, well, most of it anyway, it was all Creek Nation. If you went digging any of those places, you might turn up something old Creek, maybe even older."

"I've got some arrowheads," Ronnie spoke up.

"Yeah, and there's some pottery and stuff in the library," I added.

"It's in a glass display case."

"So man, the old people are real particular about this stuff. I know you don't know this about us, but our people are very funny about their history."

Tik spoke up suddenly.

"Yeah, man, they drill it into you. You learn it whether you want to or not. They teach it in school, and they teach you at home. It's always there."

"Yeah, true, well, the old people take that stuff seriously. So I showed my grandad, and he didn't know what to make of it. But the first thing he said for sure was that it wasn't Creek. Like, the book belonged to someone else you know. That never dawned on me because I had never seen anything like that before. But you know, he was right. He just looked at what I had copied and said that no Creek would have been able to write in English like that, not back then; no way."

I looked around at everyone in the creeping darkness. We were all focused on Kema as he spoke. It was so interesting.

"But, like I said, you know how old people are. Grandad, well, he went and did some talking, and before I knew it, this thing was suddenly important. Grandad promised Tamela that we'd see about getting whatever it was back. You know, I don't think he ever knew much about it, just that it might be there and that it might be historically valuable to our people."