A Lost Red Jacket…Part 3

The words were a bit heavy for Blanco. In fact, Blanco didn’t really like to speak, he considered himself a better listener, one that would go with the flow of others’ conversation. The idea of holding a lofty talk, especially with a dignified dignitary, confused and abashed him.

“Okay,” Blanco said in response as he lifted his wet shoes through the snow and worked his way around the left side of the slope, which was indeed easier to climb.

“And how, my Onö’ë:’ deyökiyë’nyadö’, my head protector, did you get here?” Red Jacket asked, his unblinking eyes staring directly into Blanco’s pale, pimply face.

“I drove here.”

“Yes, you said that, friend, tših, but why?”

“I told you, I have a business meeting in Buffalo.”

“Ah, a business meeting. You will need a great speaker, yes? Someone to wow the people of this venture? I am a renowned orator, Blanco, famous through Seneca, British, and Americans. You must bring me, and I can return this favor of you saving me. And thank the Great Spirit, you go to Buffalo. My home. This is not a coincidence, Mr. Blanco, that you and I have the same destination.” Red Jacket’s black eyes continued the weight of the world, and though Blanco tried to avoid those dark irises, he still felt their gravity.

“Uh huh,” Blanco said uncertainly. He readjusted his hand on the head, bobbing Red Jacket into the air a bit. “You’re heavier than you look.”

“It is because I am capable of great many things, Blanco.”

Blanco and Red jacket came to the crest of the hill, and there sat the company Nissan, both driver and passenger doors still open, the key still in the ignition.

“Well, Mr. Jacket, I guess I will put you down here like you said. Like I said, I have to get going.”

“What?” Red Jacket asked, appalled. Blanco began to carefully place the head into the snow as cars raced and rushed by. “You cannot, brother, friend. You are the Onö’ë:’ deyökiyë’nyadö’.”

“Okay,” Blanco said, gritting his teeth in a nervous smile as he wiped his hands on his wet pants. “See ya!”

“What?” Red Jacket said with quivering worry.

Blanco turned and walked towards the car.

“You can’t be serious. This is hadí:nyö’ö:ka:’, the white man’s way!” Read Jacket’s face was red and appalled, tightened with anger.

Blanco threw the passenger door shut and then climbed into the driver’s side. He shifted the gear into drive and then held his foot on the brake. He looked down at the passenger seat next to him and saw the coffee-stain outline of the Indian Head.

He heard Red Jacket’s calls through the car and a crippling feeling of guilt overwhelmed him. The whole situation brought him back to a recent conflict he had had with Mr. Tufton Lucko, his new manager.

It was during a junior sales training, which, aside from being implicitly boring and dull and a time-waster and self explanatory, it was quite high over Blanco Washerman’s head. In fact, Blanco had been falling asleep, his confusion with wowing his client, understanding documenting sales, and categorizing customers had corrupted the rest of his mind into a maleficent conundrum of dire apoplexy. Mr. Lucko had walked into the training room to see Blanco drooling all over the computer keyboard, the young Washerman’s noise-canceling headphones, taught over his skull, muting the beginning of the tirade. The haughty manager slapped the headphones off of Blanco’s head, waking our main character quite suddenly.

“You listen here, Washerman, you might be the grandson of the greatest Reaganite this world has ever seen, but you will always be drowning in his shadow. You are a lazy, good for nothing, dull, uncreative, incredulous, inconvenient, inconsistent bastard who wouldn’t know talent or creativity if it cut its head off and threw it in your lap! You make idiocracy seem like a prolific compliment.” Mr. Lucko had spoken with tempered rage, his voice hardly louder than a stabbing whisper. 

Blanco’s initial reaction was to say, thank you, but the red in Mr. Tufton Lucko’s face made him change his tongue to a, “Yes, sir.” Mr. Lucko exhaled and walked away, his head shaking with incomprehension.

But there, on the shoulder of Highway 87, a decapitated head had rolled into Blanco’s life and all but plopped into his lap, and his first intention was to abandon it. He continued to stare at the Indian stain on the seat beside him.

“This is my moment,” he said to himself. “This might be my chance to wow my client. Get out of the shadow.” Blanco jumped out of the car, his soaking wet body shivering from the snow. The April sunshine had never seemed brighter.

“Hey, Red Head,”

Red Jacket’s face was frustrated, splintered and blistered in unarticulated anger. Or in Blanco’s vision, normal. Of course, Blanco’s perception had been dependent on the faces he had seen at Beads & Trinkets, and all of those people at least had bodies to go along with their heads.

“Head protector, Onö’ë:’ deyökiyë’nyadö’, do you come to abandon me yet again?” Red Jacket’s lips were tight, his black eyes endless pits. His neck bulged with veins as he sat like a pumpkin, plump in the snow.

“Look,” Blanco responded, “I am sorry I did not think to help you right away. I… I am just a fucking moron, okay? I might as well tell you because who the hell else would listen? Hell, you probably don’t even want to listen. You just want to go back to wherever you said, I forgot.” Blanco began to scratch the back of his neck, his eyes sunk from Red Jacket’s sharp face towards the steep hill.

Red Jacket said nothing. The head was so motionless for what seemed so long that Blanco had started to think that maybe he was hallucinating, maybe he was seeing a halloween decoration abandoned on the side of the highway.

“Listen, ha:nyö’öh, white man. I ask much of you. I know this, but what can a man with no body, a bodiless head, do in a situation like this? I am a great speaker, this I know, some say greater than Logan the Orator, do you know him? My guess is not. But I can help you at your great meeting in the lands of the Seneca, Onödowa’ga:’. For this Buffallo village, it is near my lands.”

“Yeah, and that would be brave and new. It might be a big wow! It would be something Beads & Trinkets has never seen. Mr. Lucko will be shaking my hand, ‘using nuanced techniques to ensure new clients.’ It’ll be perfect.” 

“Plus,” Blanco thought to himself, “need be, I can just throw his head out the window if the sale goes wrong. Who would know or care?”

“Look down here, ha:nyö’öh, white man,” Red Jacket said, and Blanco moved his head slowly down towards the sachem.

“Lift me up. Good. That’s better.” Red Jacket said this lightly as he became eye level with Blanco.

“I am not some talisman for you, Blanco. You white people had found the Onödowa’ga:’ country; tidings were carried back. More of you came amongst us; yet we did not fear you, we took you to be friends. You called us brothers; we believed you, and we gave you a larger seat. But I have watched too many of my people, Seneca and Haudenosaunee, plundered and ripped apart by the tenacity of the white man, ha:nyö’öh. You have torn us down. Eager to tear down the great pine to grow your own roots. I am nothing but a head. I have only my word. Yet, Blanco, so do you, do you understand me?”

Blanco heard the words come from the Seneca chief’s mouth. He saw the black eyes move with magnetic soul. Something in him, be it his heart, his soul, or his brain, shuttered in somber forlornness.

“I understand.” Blanco said calmly, meeting Red Jacket’s eyes. He moved towards the car, delicately holding the chief’s head at his waist. “But I think I also have my limbs.” He said it with a flat face, a confused thought that somehow slipped down from his wrinkly brain and off of his pink tongue.