was going to come up. He said it very directly and with emphasis in his quiet voice, and I felt that he knew his health was very, very bad, and that he was making preparations to go. He also told me that Carol was a fine artist and that he regretted she hadn’t had much time to do her own work, because being a mother and wife and working with the Treaty Council took up so much of her time. I hadn’t known about Carol’s art (beautiful sculpture and drawings); I was to see my first drawing by her on an invitation to a birthday party for Bill shortly before he died.
My mood was too peculiar the night of the party to risk inflicting it on others, and so I called and explained I couldn’t come. I consoled myself by thinking about how good Bill had looked the last time I’d seen him, when he brought a woman by my house to sell me some Big Mountain Support Group Navajo/Dineh rugs. He was slimmer than usual and wore a dark shirt and trousers and a blue Greek fisherman’s cap. I told him he was looking great, and he said he’d cut down on red meat. Since I think the consumption of red meat accounts for at least half of the world’s ills, I was extremely happy to hear this. He told a rather bawdy joke that I didn’t get, about an Indian and his saddle horn. I asked him to repeat it, and it never got any funnier; but it showed me another side of Bill that I’d never guessed.
When I heard he’d died, I didn’t feel sad right away. Belvie called to tell me and there were tears in her voice. I thought about his jokes and his voice and his tobacco seeds and his commitment to being an authentic person, always willing to give full accounts of his good years and his bad, and his patience with his children. Even at his farewell ceremony, at which I thought he looked quite justified and content with himself, I cried less for him—“free at last!”—than for the rest of us. What a mess the world is in! I thought. What peace to get away! But sometime later I felt very sad, because I missed him and because people like Bill are part of the foundation that holds the whole world up. Then I heard him say: Ah, hell, let somebody else hold the damn thing up for a while, and I felt more cheerful.
He lived a good life, with suffering, struggle, joy, children, whole peoples of all continents in it. He was forever receiving energy and support and love from those who recognized his magnificence as a human being, and he was forever giving back more than he got. I was glad that my years spent locating the Indian within myself prepared me for a friendship with Bill that proceeded in love, dignity, and remarkable harmony. He used to tell me that I helped him to affirm the connection between “Indians of the Americas” and “Indians [Africans] of Africa,” and we were both thrilled when the faces of Nelson Mandela and Leonard Peltier appeared together on Indian Treaty Council T-shirts and when, at rallies, their names became linked in the same breath. There were all his small but meaningful gifts of understanding; like his saying to me once, as my book The Color Purple was being criticized because of the character of Mister: “There’s a little bit of Mister in all of us.” Exactly my feeling. And, when he asked me to do a benefit for the Treaty Council and I declined, he understood when Belvie explained that it was because of the time of year. Alice is like a plant, she told him, she goes to sleep during the winter months, but she wakes up again in the spring.
Ohhhh, said Bill, imagining me, no doubt, as corn. At least I hope so.
Actually, Bill felt more like a big brother than anything else. There was a special affinity between us based on the common intuitive knowledge that, in a sense, all indigenous peoples are, by their attachment to Mother Earth and experience with Wasichus,*** Conquistadors, and Afrikaners, one. I loved standing on a stage next to Bill (one night in Berkeley especially comes to mind, when there were also Pete
My mood was too peculiar the night of the party to risk inflicting it on others, and so I called and explained I couldn’t come. I consoled myself by thinking about how good Bill had looked the last time I’d seen him, when he brought a woman by my house to sell me some Big Mountain Support Group Navajo/Dineh rugs. He was slimmer than usual and wore a dark shirt and trousers and a blue Greek fisherman’s cap. I told him he was looking great, and he said he’d cut down on red meat. Since I think the consumption of red meat accounts for at least half of the world’s ills, I was extremely happy to hear this. He told a rather bawdy joke that I didn’t get, about an Indian and his saddle horn. I asked him to repeat it, and it never got any funnier; but it showed me another side of Bill that I’d never guessed.
When I heard he’d died, I didn’t feel sad right away. Belvie called to tell me and there were tears in her voice. I thought about his jokes and his voice and his tobacco seeds and his commitment to being an authentic person, always willing to give full accounts of his good years and his bad, and his patience with his children. Even at his farewell ceremony, at which I thought he looked quite justified and content with himself, I cried less for him—“free at last!”—than for the rest of us. What a mess the world is in! I thought. What peace to get away! But sometime later I felt very sad, because I missed him and because people like Bill are part of the foundation that holds the whole world up. Then I heard him say: Ah, hell, let somebody else hold the damn thing up for a while, and I felt more cheerful.
He lived a good life, with suffering, struggle, joy, children, whole peoples of all continents in it. He was forever receiving energy and support and love from those who recognized his magnificence as a human being, and he was forever giving back more than he got. I was glad that my years spent locating the Indian within myself prepared me for a friendship with Bill that proceeded in love, dignity, and remarkable harmony. He used to tell me that I helped him to affirm the connection between “Indians of the Americas” and “Indians [Africans] of Africa,” and we were both thrilled when the faces of Nelson Mandela and Leonard Peltier appeared together on Indian Treaty Council T-shirts and when, at rallies, their names became linked in the same breath. There were all his small but meaningful gifts of understanding; like his saying to me once, as my book The Color Purple was being criticized because of the character of Mister: “There’s a little bit of Mister in all of us.” Exactly my feeling. And, when he asked me to do a benefit for the Treaty Council and I declined, he understood when Belvie explained that it was because of the time of year. Alice is like a plant, she told him, she goes to sleep during the winter months, but she wakes up again in the spring.
Ohhhh, said Bill, imagining me, no doubt, as corn. At least I hope so.
Actually, Bill felt more like a big brother than anything else. There was a special affinity between us based on the common intuitive knowledge that, in a sense, all indigenous peoples are, by their attachment to Mother Earth and experience with Wasichus,*** Conquistadors, and Afrikaners, one. I loved standing on a stage next to Bill (one night in Berkeley especially comes to mind, when there were also Pete
Similar Books
