Coast Range. Nick Neely

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СКАЧАТЬ these stairs led to a different kind of afterlife. The ascending fish would forge into the narrowing mountains, toward the Rogue-Umpqua Divide, to offer their offspring the best possible start: cold, clear water.

      “This place can fill with hundreds of people,” said Barry, as he surveyed the bright, roaring scene and looked at his watch. The salmon were waiting. Barry had started coming to the powwow in his midtwenties, and this year was his thirty-seventh. “All the people that had to work today,” he said, “they’re going to come in this weekend. They’re going to start coming in bumper-to-bumper.” They would be hungry.

      Jessica wasn’t happy about the state of the sacred fish. It wasn’t exactly cooked, and tension was simmering between her and Barry. Traditionally, the meat of the one ceremonial salmon is gleaned and eaten, while the skin and bones are left untouched. Jessica and a friend named Lottie were hunched over the table like surgeons over a patient, and this procedure wasn’t going well. Normally the skin peels back easily, as one, but this time it was resisting—and then tearing. Inside, the fillet was sloppy, a vibrant raw orange, as wet as a kiss. Slipping the flesh from the hair-thin bones was nearly impossible.

      Between subtle frowns, Jessica told me the origin of the tribe’s reverence for salmon, a story that, in its essence, holds true for much of the Native culture of Cascadia: “Long ago, animals walked upright like humans. Once we arrived, some of the animals realized we were starving. We weren’t able to feed ourselves. Salmon was one of those animals, and they said, ‘We will provide for you and be your food.’ So that’s when they went to the river and became fish. They go out to sea, they come back, and the females of course give birth, but their body nourishes their fry. That’s why we honor them. The salmon is one of those people that stepped forward. They chose to give their life up for us, so that we wouldn’t starve.” Implicit in this story, of course, is that we are the “fry” of salmon, that they are our parents even as we catch and devour them—as perhaps all children do—and sometimes make an awful mess of them, as we have with dams and stream degradation in more recent history.

      The ceremonial salmon was in tatters. When Jessica and Lottie were finished, they endeavored, carefully, to reconstruct the fish. But frankly, it looked monstrous as it lay on the tray, with its shredded gray skin draped unconvincingly across its midsection like a blanket full of holes. Its eyes had baked to an opaque white. The conspicuous teeth of its upper jaw suggested a mischievous smirk, as if the salmon knew of and enjoyed the trouble it had made. It was sprawled in a slurry of mayo, fat, and sloppy orange shards.

      “Turned out nice, didn’t it?” Barry said.

      “No,” said Jessica.

      “Yeah, it’s not done yet,” Barry replied. “The fire never was hot. I didn’t have my briquettes here this year. They just lowered the grate, instead.”

      Aunt Rena noticed when she was led forward for another blessing.

      “It’s not cooking fast enough, so this is what they did,” said Grandma Gin. “Will that be okay?”

      We held our breath.

      “That’ll be all right,” Aunt Rena said, to palpable exhales. “We will have it this way, this year. But next year, it better be done. They better put it on earlier than you did today.”

      “Give me briquettes next year, and it’ll be done,” Barry said softly.

      The boys lined up in front of the table, three still in their baby fat, two others older and slimming. Their T-shirts told of the region and its predilections: Go Ducks with the bright yellow O of the university in Eugene; skater designs with frenetic lettering and skulls wearing bejeweled crowns; the 18th Annual Strawberry Cup at the Willamette Speedway in Lebanon, Oregon (sponsored by Napa Auto Parts). One boy sported a fauxhawk, his hair shaved on each side, but robust, tussled, on top. Another had an epic scrape across his cheek, a raspberry from an encounter with pavement. A third was much taller than the rest. Somehow he’d evaded this rite of passage, until now.

      The kids didn’t look so much Native, as American, both healthy and unkempt. They looked as if they’d been camping in the woods of Oregon. The five of them stood before tribal elder Robert Van-Norman, a retired logger and Vietnam vet, who held the wing of an eagle and slowly fanned the smudge smoldering in its abalone. The white tendrils drifted over the boys, and over the fish presented on a tray lined, naturally, with foil. It remained a horrendous sight, which made it the more serious and captivating. Behind the kids stood friends and family, and the dedicated few—not the whole tribe—some leaning against a faded pickup with peeling blue paint. This included girls in the shortest of jean shorts, generous belt buckles, and blond pigtails, and I wondered what they made of this moment: whether they felt brave and left out.

      Aunt Rena again:

      “Grandfather, I would like for you to bless us . . . and the river, who has provided us with the salmon that we will partake of at the elder’s dinner. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

      “Aho,” the crowd echoed. “Aho.”

      “Now those boys are going to go down in a minute,” Rena continued, turning to address them. “When you get ready to push this fish in the river, you pick up that foil and slide it right to the bottom. Robert, you get busy when they start that into the water. You say a prayer. All right, that’s it, honey.

      “I don’t know whether I did it right,” Aunt Rena said to Grandma Gin.

      “You did it right,” she replied.

      “We can do it our way,” said Kelly.

      Robert then took over as master of ceremonies, stuttering a little. He was silvered and portly, down-to-earth, and he wore a beaded, bear-claw necklace. He read a simple poem by a cherished elder and then told it like it was:

      “These five young men that we have here today . . . we’re going to take this salmon down to the river and return it so that we may be able to enjoy this ceremony and the nourishment that it has brought to our people for, for, a lot of years.

      “These young men have stepped up and volunteered to do this, and what is great about it, is that they’re going to pass on to their . . . maybe one day their children will want to be a part of it. These young men are somebody, or some, that we can be proud of. To step up and do this. Younger people that, that . . . to see them and know what they are doing is a wonderful thing.”

      Rena jumped in, as a damselfly landed on her mottled hand and flickered away: “You young people—pardon me, Robert—listen to your elders, and you obey everything that your daddy teaches you. The tribal children, even the white ones . . . walk the straight and narrow, and when it comes your turn, and you’re grown up, you can carry on, and your children, and your children.”

      Robert: “Before we do go down, there are some people who I would like for us to honor. Their names are in the program, so I’ll just go ahead and read them. Let’s keep them in our hearts and think of their families.

      “Honoring friends in passing,” said Robert.

      Donald Allan, Jr.

      Barbara Davis

      Robert Davis

      Delbert Rainville

      Deagan Season

      James Sturgeon

      Thomas Sturgeon

      Florence СКАЧАТЬ