After he had bid farewell and offered his wishes that the spirits’ wisdom should gift them in their thinking for each other, Kom returned to his house. Pela had Gordon hold his palms together. Using them for a table she slowly unwrapped the bundle. There were hundreds of colored beads in it, some of glass, some of bone, some stone, some gold, some cut from something resembling porcupine quills. They were black, gold, turquoise, red, green, blue, purple, brown, yellow, and white.
“God’n,” she said as she rewrapped the beads and grinned widely. “I make you such a shirt.” She laughed, looked at him with tears in her eyes, and laughed again. “You show me Coyote?”
He pulled the belt from around his neck and showed her the face of Coyote that Hosteen Ahiga had hammered into the leather. She placed her right palm against Gordon’s heart and said, “Coyote kind to you?”
“Kind?” Gordon raised his eyebrows. “Coyote is the Trickster. He teaches through mistakes and pain.” He had never thought of Coyote as kind. He smiled. “Coyote kind enough to let us meet, Pela.” He placed a hand upon her shoulder and squeezed. “Coyote kind enough.”
“No man have such a shirt,” Pela said. She squeezed Gordon’s arm, laughed, they hefted their bundles, and continued toward the village.
Thinking for someone required preparation. As it began, Pela and her relatives and women friends could not be bothered with an idle male underfoot. Gordon was not supposed to be there in any event, so Pela asked the sister of her dead husband, Bonsha, to bring Gordon to attend Ta Avi’s man-raising ceremony. Bonsha was portly, unusually tall, her suit of Pela’s furs worn with the fur in and beautifully intricate red, black, and yellow beadwork out. Her face had heavy dark features taken to easy frowns and easier smiles. At that moment, her face frowned.
“God’n, how many summers you have?” bluntly asked Bonsha.
“Thirty and eight,” he answered.
Her frown deepened as she brushed her right cheek with the back of her right hand. “You have a boy’s face.”
“From where I come, some men do not have hair on faces.”
Her eyebrows went up. “It is a choice?”
“For some. For some not.”
Bonsha’s frown grew deeper still, and then she shrugged and smiled. “Pela say you gift from Tana. Pray Tana make you useful, kind, and respectful as well as gifted, God’n.”
“I will, Bonsha.”
“I make oil lamps,” she informed him. “And God’n?”
Gordon thought on it. “I am looking.”
The clanhouse was a very large kiva-looking structure with a single east-facing door curtained with symbol-covered skins. The walls were made from vertically arranged tree trunks patiently trimmed, scraped, carved, fitted together, and wrapped with vines. Joints were tied with dried rawhide, gaps filled with dried mud and grass. The building towered above nearby buildings, but was only a single great room, the center of the floor sunken in three circular levels, the concentric tiers paved with flat stone making the room resemble a theater in the round. The center of the roof was supported by four wooden columns, each column made from a single tree-trunk, the wooden surfaces displaying the marks of endless chipping and scraping with flint edges. Light was provided by ceramic oil lamps in niches around the wall and hanging from the roof supports by thongs. Gordon glanced at Bonsha and pointed at one of the lamps. Bonsha smiled widely and nodded. “My work,” she said proudly, sweeping a powerful arm indicating the interior of the clanhouse. “All of them.”
She seemed to waiting for a response from Gordon. He studied Bonsha’s face for a moment, then held his hand out toward the lamps. “Your gift to clanhouse?”
Many smiles from Bonsha as she secured credit for her gift and at the same time gestured the gift’s unimportance. Gordon looked toward the center of the space. Heat was provided by a fire pit in the center of the floor, the smoke exiting from a hole in the center of the roof. Men, women, and children occupied about half the tier seats, the children occupying the top ring, the farthest from the fire. There was a buzz of conversation among those there—friends and relatives getting reacquainted. Bonsha guided Gordon down to the lowest tier. In several groups there stood eleven men and five women. Before she introduced Gordon to them, Bonsha explained to him those on the bottom tier were all gifted in that they had either reached or surpassed their thirty-second year. The men would sit separately from the women in this particular ceremony because upon the conclusion of the rite, the gifted men would take Kom Beadsigns’ son up the cliff to the men’s ledge to spend the night beneath the sky getting Ta Avi acquainted with the society of men and to introduce him to Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and the hunt. After introducing Gordon to the gifted, Bonsha returned to attend to Pela’s preparations.
Gordon turned to the nearest man with a question. “We are to spend the night on the ledge? In the cold?”
“Ta Avi, born in winter,” said the man, a pea farmer named Riff. He shook his head and lifted a hand and dropped it in resignation. “Bring plenty furs.”
Abo, a mucker, tugged at his own gray-streaked beard. “Your face, God’n. Where is your man hair?”
Once again he explained, half-wondering if his eventual tribal name would be Baby Face Redcliff.
As Gordon sat in the center of the arc of gifted men, a slender young man in raggedy furs brought him some hot tea in a cup made from hollowed wood. The boy had curly black hair, intense grey eyes, and a face whose expression marked him as outcast. Gordon thanked the boy, who held his gaze for a moment, then turned and climbed the tiers to the uppermost ring. Gordon sipped at the tea, which tasted pleasantly like licorice. One of the gifted men named Nubav offered Gordon a tiny white root from a pouch he carried. Gordon expressed his thanks, but declined not knowing what it was. When he glanced around at the growing crowd, Gordon noticed the boy who had given him the tea was studying him. The attention in the hall turned to another side of the ring.
Ta Avi, son of Kom Beadsigns, sat on the top ring on the east side along with other children. Ta Avi’s furs were decorated with colorful dried flowers and magnificent abstract beadwork. His father came down the tiers and sat in the gifted ring, his face covered in smiles. He greeted Gordon and thanked him for honoring his son. Soon a large man sat to Gordon’s left. He almost resembled artists’ conceptions of Neanderthal Man—heavy brow, low forehead, shaggy beard and hair—except for the well-done suit of furs he wore. They were heavier than usual, white with what appeared to be random streaks of gray and blue color, which would function outside on the snow as camouflage. He wore similarly colored fur-lined laced moccasin boots. Gordon nodded at the man’s furs. “Pela’s work,” he said.
The man nodded. “Pela my wife’s sister.” He placed his hand against his chest. “Pela only take three winter bear skins for making wraps. They keep me warm when the winds howl across the ice and game make me travel far, yet leave me free to throw spear or swing club. Ghaf, hunter.” He extended his hand, grabbed Gordon’s wrist, Gordon took Ghaf’s wrist, and they shared a single bone-crushing shake. “Good woman, Pela,” Ghaf said. He placed his open palm over his own heart. “I wed Pela’s sister, Lolna. Two sons, Taghaf and Ru.”
He nodded toward the south and made a rising gesture with his right hand. Two boys stood, the younger one on the top ring, the older on the ring just below. Both of them were clad in bear-hunting camo. Ghaf’s genes mixed with Lolna’s appeared to have advanced his children from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon.
“They are fine-looking sons,” said Gordon.
Ghaf nodded and his sons resumed their seats. Ghaf pointed at the fire pit. “The one placing the flour cakes: their mother and Pela’s sister.”