MARCH (BUFFALO CALVES DROP MOON), 2007

The light from the bedside clock.s red numbers gave a serene look to Talking Coyote.s face as he slept. His breathing, slow and regular, was about to change. Under closed lids his eyes started to jump frantically showing he was in deep REM sleep, dreaming.

"Kales ta, N'gsisak, Kales ta. (Listen, my son, listen)."

Talking Coyote found himself in a forest watching a scene unfold before him, but it looked as if he were looking through a thousand tiny prisms. His brain refused to register the multitude of duplicate images that caused a sense of vertigo. His body had shifted shape into that of a spider, something he had never done before. The spider moved in its web to get a better look at the commotion.

Shifting shape again, he now became one with a large bear- like creature he had never seen before. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air and burned the creature Xinkwelenowak's nostrils almost as much as the fiery pain in his left thigh. "Alapsi (hurry up)," he said to the deer, otter, and muskrat in front of him. "Up the hill toward the cave. You will be safe there." He herded the animals up a well-used trail that had deepened the past few weeks from heavy use. Tracks from all types of animals were stamped into the packed earth, one on top of the other.

Father! It hurts, I can feel his pain, it hurts to walk. Father?

Behind the Xinkwelenowak was the sound of two men crashing through the forest. Looking back, he heard one cussing aloud, "Pigor, did you see the size of that bear?"

The nearest man stopped to reload his muzzleloader and put a fresh load of powder in the flash pan of his gun. The man's hands were shaky and more powder fell to the earth than went into the barrel of the gun. It took three tries to put the ramrod into the barrel to push his shot home.

Confused about what he was seeing, Talking Coyote sensed the image of an old man with red hair and a red head wrap swim into his consciousness. "Kales ta, N'gsisak (Listen my son). It is for you to see this and no other."

He speaks Lenape? He is not Indian, yet calls me his son in our language. Through the wisps of gunpowder smoke the scene focused back to the two men.

The other man shouted back, "I think you wounded him good, Curt. I see blood on the trail. They are heading up to that cave!" Pigor stopped and sucked in a lung full of air.

Talking Coyote could see the second man through a thousand little prisms; he had returned to the spider. The second man was ugly, missing a nose and wearing leather clothing caked with what looked like dried blood and animal remains. The man's breath wafted by the spider web; the stink of his breath and blood- stained buckskins made the spider's mandibles start to twitch, confusing the smell with a near-by meal. Blood, sweat and fear were what he smelled coming from this man. I can smell his fear, Father, he told the Great Spirit.

Still looking through the spider's eyes, Talking Coyote's vision moved back to the old man with red hair.

The red-haired man said, "The white man has been killing the animals for over the past hundred winters, and they do not know what it is to stop. We tried to stop them, only to be killed for our scalps. The balance of nature has turned, and the animals turned to the Xinkwelenowak to protect them. They have helped them in the past and they are now their only hope, N'gsisak."

Who are you? Why do you speak to me?

"Kales ta," you are to see this that has happened. Who I am does not matter. What you see is what matters."

Still inside the spider, Talking Coyote watched as the Xinkwelenowak herded the animals he was protecting into the shelter of the cave.

"Quickly, into the cave. Go through the hole in the floor and do not look back," he told the animals. But he turned aside at the cave entrance and jumped into the bush.

Talking Coyote, still in the spider.s body, crawled to the top of its web and saw the Xinkwelenowak working his way around the opening of the cave to about thirty feet above the entrance. There the creature disappeared.

Feeling the vibrations of the man.s voice coming through the spider web, Talking Coyote heard the man with no nose yelling to his mate, "I don.t like it. I didn't sign up to chase a crazed, wounded bear into a cave."

From this vantage point, Talking Coyote could see the man with no nose was also missing his right ear. He watched the man called Curt follow the blood trail from the wounded creature. Curt approached the cave with his musket ready. As the man drew close to the cave, he searched the path to the right for a sign of the blood trail.

The Xinkwelenowak threw a boulder down the hill. As he watched, it looked to Talking Coyote as if it was in slow motion, viewed through a kaleidoscope. Thousands of images of the rock appeared on its second bounce as the boulder arched down toward Curt.

The smoke shifted again, and Talking Coyote left the spider behind. He now saw the world from inside the man named Curt. He knew the Xinkwelenowak was above him, and he looked up to see death coming. When the bolder hit, Talking Coyote's breath shot out of his lungs with so much force, blood was mixed in it.

He was dying along with the man named Curt. The last thing he saw was the spray of blood mixed with air, floating in front of his eyes, settling on the boulder that had rolled down and now pinned him against a maple tree.

Surprised to be alive, Talking Coyote suddenly found he had shifted into the body of a toad. Breathing deeply, he felt the toad's neck expand and fill with air. He was inside the cave the animals had run into earlier. The cave was empty except for the Xinkwelenowak standing at the entrance. He was yelling to the man with no nose, "From this day forever, you will not kill another of my brothers or sisters. We will leave you to your death.

"You have no souls. You are not human beings!" Talking Coyote watched him limp into the cave toward the hole in the floor and sit down. Reaching up onto an outcropping, the Xinkwelenowak pulled down a pipe bag, almost knocking the toad to the floor. As he filled the pipe, he prayed to the Great Spirit, "Father, I have saved all the animals I could find. I must go through the hole. You will have to send another in my place."

The Xinkwelenowak lit the pipe, and, as he started to smoke, the hole in the floor of the cave started to grow smaller. Still smoking the pipe, the Xinkwelenowak crawled through the hole, turned, and lay on his back.

Talking Coyote felt his soul being tugged into the hole with each puff. As the hole grew smaller, the faster he felt he was flying backward through a tunnel. Suffocating! Help me! I cannot breathe!

Each puff of the pipe made the hole smaller, until only the pipe bowl stuck out of the ground. The retreat was sealed off. The only thing remaining on this side of the cave floor was the bowl of a pipe, carved from red pipestone. The pipe head had a bear standing on his hind legs holding the Great Turtle in his arms.

A great gulp of air exploded into Talking Coyote's lungs as he sat up in bed, sweating.

His wife awoke. "What is wrong, Tom? Is it the same dream?"

Tom Talking Coyote Jefferson turned on the small lamp at his bedside. "It is nothing. Just a dream. Go back to sleep. I will stay up a bit and come back to bed soon." After turning off the lamp, he crossed the bedroom to a time-worn lounger next to the window.

The moon reflected off the photos on the dresser. Pictures of his five children brought a smile. Only his daughter, Florence Fair Woman, remained home at the ranch with them. At twenty, he could not count on her being home much longer. Soon some man would come and whisk her away.

Away from the reservation? he wondered. Fair Woman will go away just like the animals in my dream, sucked into a hole, and White Tail and I will never see her again. He hung his head and ran his fingers through his graying hair. He looked next at the picture of his parents. Mom, we miss you. When did we grow to be so old? Dad, what do I do about these dreams? What do they mean? Today, I will go see my father, he decided. Looking out the window at the farm, he sat there until sunrise.

When he was getting close to the lodge, planting mounds started to become plentiful. Dirt was mounded up and a variety of different plants were put into the same mound. Corn was planted on the top with squash, pumpkin, and sometimes tobacco, all in one mound.

Next to the lodge was an herb garden where his father grew his medicinal plants. Flies buzzed heavily beyond the lodge. That was where the compost was located. Food, plant clippings and human waste were composted for his plantings.

The lodge was made in the old way. It was built from birch bark lashed to a frame of ash saplings tied together with twine made from the inner bark of the trees and sealed with pitch from the pine trees. No modern tools or materials were used to make the lodge.

Talking Coyote found his father, Wilber Standing Bear Jefferson, working in his garden.

"Hay (Hello), Father. I hope this day finds you well." When Standing Bear looked up, his smile changed to a look of concern. His father could tell he was troubled.

"What is wrong, my son?"

"I had a dream, Father," he said with an involuntary shudder. The smell, I will never forget the smell of death, he thought, shaking his head to clear his senses.

"Oh? A dream can be a powerful message from the spirits, or it can be a burrito that stayed too long in the icebox," his father said as he whacked at the weeds at the base of a plant mound. His father's stone hoe was a stick with the stone blade lashed in the crook of a hacked off branch. Stopping his scrapping at the weeds for a moment, he looked his son in his eyes. "Did this dream bother you?"

"Yes, Father, it did. I saw one of the ancient ones. He was wounded, and he tried to save the animals. I became part of him for a time, and I could feel his pain and his anguish. He had to save the animals. He was injured, and I could feel a burning in my leg as if I was the one shot. I shape-shifted into a number of different things, Father. It was very confusing trying to make sense of what I saw and heard. I have never shape-shifted before. Then the dream changed, and an old, white man with red hair spoke Lenape and called me his son."

His Father's eyelids dropped at that comment. "It was not a bad burrito, I know now."

"Do you know him, Father?" Relief flooded Talking Coyote.

His father replied, "E'e' (Yes), I know him. He is an old one from our people. Red Hair was a Shaman about a thousand winters ago. He talked to the Keepers-of-the-Animals and helped the tribe in a time of great need."

"I am confused, Father. Why do I not know this story? Am I not a storyteller for the tribe?"

"A storyteller, yes. A member of the Society of the Deer, you are not. Red Hair's stories are for those who are what you are not."

Talking Coyote watched his father sagging as if the wind was stripped from a kite. He swayed slightly as he settled to the ground in a sitting position. With what sounded like fear in his father's voice Standing Bear spoke to him. "Red Hair has shown himself to you, my son. Those who deal with Red Hair live or die. There is no middle ground to Red Hair."

"Can I get you water, Father?" Talking Coyote grabbed a water bag made from a bear's stomach off a branch nearby. Pouring some water into a gourd cup tied to the bag, he put it to his father.s lips. Please, do not die on me. Stay with me, Father.

His father's trembling hands cupped his own as he took the water offered. "You must tell me if you have more of these dreams. Everything you see, feel, or hear cannot be forgotten. I will pray for you, my son. If Red Hair is in your life, your life is now in danger."

"Danger, from an old white man in a dream? I will not believe it, Father. It was a dream, nothing more."

Watching his father, he saw him retreat into his thoughts.

"Did you feel your life was in danger in this dream, my son?"

"Well, yes, one moment I left the spider's body and went into the body of a white man that was killed by a thrown boulder. I felt I was dying along with him until my body went into a toad in the cave."

Upon hearing this, Father sprang to his feet. "You shared the spirit of the spider, were killed inside a white man, and lived again to become a toad?"

"Yes, I guess so."

Panicked now, his father gasped, "Son, you must listen to me. Spider is a trickster. He will take from you and you will not know something is gone until later. Then you saw Red Hair?"

"Yes, Father."

"Spider first, Red Hair second, and then you were killed, only to come back as a toad and watch the Keeper-of-all-Animals disappear in a hole in a cave. Son, this was a test. If you had not passed you would have died with the white man under the boulder. For some reason, Red Hair has picked you for something. What, I do not know. But your life is in danger. He will test you again. If you fail the test, you will die.

I will prepare a sweat for you to cleanse your spirit. It will take some time. You must tell me everything you dream when we next meet."

Father knows Red Hair, and my life is in danger.

For the second time in a day Tom Talking Coyote Jefferson was concerned for his family. I am to be tested, what if I fail and die? Who will help White Tail? Sure the kids will look after her, but who will the farm go to? Marla Snake Killer, Geraldine Badger Pocket and Florence Fair Woman do not want it. Ben Tinker and Franklin Stands Upright would work it, of course. Alone with his thoughts, Talking Coyote walked through the woods back to his truck on the dirt road a quarter mile away.

Chapter 2

APRIL (GROWING GRASS MOON), 2007

The winter had been cold. Naomi Deiter had overheard one of the local trappers, while she was buying gas, and he claimed the cold was so long and so deep that he was able to trap by chipping his animals out of the ice by their lodges. "Yep, that beaver pond froze right to der bottom. Got a whole family of beaver I did, two muskellunge and t'ree trout fore my arms got tiret a.chippen."

Naomi thought he was telling stories but couldn.t be sure. After all we did use up five cords of firewood this winter and I still froze. We only used four last year. Spring had a hard fight to reclaim the land in the hills and valleys from winter's grasp. The trees had started to bud in earnest, adding a hint of green to the land that had been gray far too long. Flowers were starting to sprout and people were getting their first look at which plants had survived the ravages of winter. Naomi's yard, particularly hard hit by the weather, looked worse this year than last. Snowplows had dug up a portion of her front yard. Coal ash used to improve traction on the roads had killed her grass where it collected in the slowly thawing ground. This was the view Naomi could see from her bathroom window, the promise of growing things and renewal coming from a barren, damaged earth.

Just like me, barren and damaged, Naomi thought as she tore her eyes away from the promise of new life in the abused ground.

Naomi's house, on a lot over two hundred feet long, looked like the typical miner's home. The front yard had only ten feet separating her house from the road. The old mining companies built the houses with space behind them for planting a garden. Her home, sided with octagon asphalt shingles instead of wood, looked just like all the other houses on her street. Once the coal business dried up around Allentown, people bought up the houses for a good price. Many people fixed the insides to suit their tastes but left the outsides pretty much as they bought them. Being in Pennsylvania Dutch country, most people shunned fancy exteriors of the homes. Like a box of Cracker Jacks, they all looked alike on the outside, but the inside held a wonderful surprise.

Naomi sat on the side of her tub. She had just started an early pregnancy test and looked at the kit as the seconds ticked by. She was thirty-four years old, and her sister already had three kids by her age.

The seconds took minutes to go by while she looked at the tester and waited for the plus sign to show up. Please show the plus sign, please.

Slowly a line started to show in the tester.s window. A single line, not pregnant.

Tears sprang from her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. After all the fertility treatments and home remedies, she would remain childless for another month. She knew her husband, Will, would be supportive. He always was. But she didn't want support. She wanted flesh and blood growing in her womb. She wanted a child. No, she wanted her child.

Naomi's bathroom, decorated in towels and accessories from K-Mart and Target, showed her bargain hunting skills. She was a frugal woman who cared about where she shopped, while avoiding the thrift stores. I would bargain with almost anyone, she thought as she sat on the edge of her tub looking at the kit in her hand.

Gazing out her window at the promise of growth in her yard, she let out a slight snort at the irony of it all. Maybe she would visit the woman at the local Indian reservation again for some herbs and potions to help her ovulate. It was too long since she had visited her.

Martha Running Woman Jefferson on the Lenape reservation had helped her in the past. She had given Naomi a potion to help with ovulation, which resulted in a pregnancy last year.

The memory of the pregnancy caused the tears to flow freely again. Naomi miscarried late in her third trimester. Running Woman gave her some herbs to help cleanse her system so she could try again, but Naomi had not returned to the reservation. She had phoned and talked to Running Woman for hours at a time but had not gone to see her.

Perhaps, today she would.

While she was sitting there thinking about seeing Running Woman, the phone rang. Naomi stood up and walked out of the bathroom toward the kitchen. The hallway, painted in a lilac color with a border along the upper section of the wall, had children flying kites. The old lath and plaster walls were uneven and made the kites look as though they were swaying in the wind. She put this border up outside the nursery when she thought there would be a baby to fill the room.

Naomi caught the phone on its third ring. "Hello?"

"Hi, Babe," Will said. "Did you do the test?"

She replied in almost a whisper. "Yes, it was negative." Her lower lip quivered and she tried not to let Will hear the tears and heartbreak in her voice. She didn't want pity, but there it was. She stood leaning over the tiled counter that Will had put in this winter. She picked at a piece of grout sticking slightly out at the corner of one of the cobalt blue tiles. It always caught her dishrag when she cleaned the counter. "Damn it, Will. When are you going to fix this piece of grout? It always catches on everything I put on the counter."

"Ah, honey, we can try again."

She heard his voice crack over the phone, and she could feel his disappointment in her. Will's voice did not match his body. Will, over six feet tall and well muscled with the exception of a bit of a pouch in the gut, showed an athlete who let his training lapse. One would expect his voice to be deep but he was a tenor.

"We'll talk when you get home. Okay? I have some running around to do." Digging at the grout with her thumbnail, she heard a snap. Reflexively, she pulled back her hand. "Shit, I broke my thumbnail. This is simply not my day."

After Naomi hung up she decided to go to the reservation to see Martha.

Will and Naomi lived in Allentown. The reservation was not far away. The hills of Pennsylvania were beginning to turn green and the forests lay upon the land like a deep carpet of moss. The air, however, smelled of sulfur which matched Naomi's mood at the moment.

The sulfur smell came from the destruction to the land from strip mining for coal and oil processing for too many years. The strip mines and shafts surrounding Allentown caused the sulfur from the mines to permeate everything. There were still a few oil wells producing crude and others capped off years ago that leached oil into the earth. The streams died, as did many of the natural spring wells. In many places the land degraded into man- made canyons in the earth. Fish couldn't live in the streams. Many animals used to live along the rivers and springs, but had moved to higher ground or greener pastures.

Running Woman had once told her the stench was the smell of death in a wound that would not heal. Without the balance in all things, life would slowly die off.

With that thought running through Naomi's mind, she picked up the phone to call her. She punched in the numbers from memory and listened to the phone ring. After four rings, she was just ready to hang up, when the answering machine picked up: "Hay, Martha Jefferson is not home. Please leave a message or if you want to order flowers or herbs please leave your order and phone number after the beep.

The phone was answered just as Naomi started to leave a message. "Hay," Martha said into the phone.

"Hi, Martha, it's Naomi," she said, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder. Rummaging through the junk drawer next to the sink, she found an emery board to fix her broken nail.

"Sorry it took me some time to get to the phone. I was watering my herbs and medicinal plants. What can I do for you?"

Naomi started to cry into the phone. "Oh Martha, it turned up negative again. Will is devastated, and I don.t know if I can face him when he gets home tonight. He so wants a baby, and I can.t even do that simple thing for him." She started a cycle of sobbing and catching her breath as Martha just listened to her cry for a few moments. "And I broke a nail on a tile Will has not fixed. It hurts like hell."

"Naomi, you remember I said you may not be able to have a child. I can see things sometimes. I see a child in your life; just not your own. Have you talked to Will about adopting? Why don.t you come over and I will make us up a pot of tea and we will talk.

Naomi said she would be by in about half an hour and thanked her.

Martha smiled as she hung up the phone. Naomi was coming. Martha Running Woman Jefferson was Wilber Standing Bear Jefferson's second oldest daughter. At forty-six and still not married, it was one reason for her name.Running Woman. Her mother, Bernice, had given her that name at her womanhood ceremony. At the time it was because Martha loved to run. No one could catch her, not man, woman, or child.

As her life went on, Martha knew her mother had felt despair as she ran from relationships with men with the same abandon she ran the meadows in her youth. It had caused her mother great pain to see her daughter not getting married or having children. In her mother.s Turtle Clan, land and rites went to the women's family, as did political influence in the tribe. Martha's sister, Kate Smile's-At-Nothing, had four children, but only one girl, Anna, who would inherit it all.

Martha had an athletic build, mostly due to working her gardens of herbs and plants. Plus, she still liked to run. She would run at least six miles per day and some days more. Also, she was an enigma to people outside her tribe. She helped to deliver babies and helped women with fertility, while she herself had neither children nor a man in her life.

She knew the people in her tribe suspected she was a lesbian. The Lenape did not look at homosexuality as an abomination. They knew people who were oriented that way were noted as healers. What they could not give of themselves in having and raising children they were able to give to others.

Martha could feel Naomi.s pain and it was partly because she, too, never had any children. It wasn.t that she hadn.t had men try to woo and win her to their blankets; she was just not interested.

Martha never gave it much thought that she loved women. That was one reason she started being a medicine woman, to help them. Nothing gave her greater joy than making a woman happy, either in the robes, or by helping them to have children.

Secretly, Martha loved Naomi. Her phone call hurt her so much Martha vowed she would help her to get a child. She had friends on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. If a baby was what Naomi wanted, she would help.

Chapter 3

APRIL (GROWING GRASS MOON), 2007

Sunny Little Coyote Cornplanter lay on a cot made of spars, small tree trunks stripped of their bark and shaved smooth. A natural equivalent of 2x4s lashed together and rope latticework. He snuggled his face in the ancient mattress that had absorbed years of his grandfather.s scent. Little Coyote closed his eyes. I bet this smells of the way things used to be in the old days.

The mattress was made of deer hides, hand stitched with sinew, and stuffed with sweet grass which Little Coyote helped his grandfather to change often. Little Coyote was comfortable in this bed.

Turning and looking up at the saplings lashed together to form the ceiling of the lodge, he asked, "Grandfather, why do you insist on living out here in the woods with no electricity? Come to the reservation with us. We have room for you."

Leaning back in his chair, Wilber Standing Bear Jefferson waved his hand at Little Coyote and grinned at him. "I like it here. What do I need electricity for? Electricity has done nothing good for our people. The children used to listen to the stories of the Elders. Now they sit in front of a box that tells them nothing. They learn nothing."

Standing Bear, now in his late seventies, had moved back to the woods after his wife, Water Girl, crossed over years before. He dressed in hides and made most of his own clothing. Once a tall man, years of hard work and age had arched his back like a sapling bent for a snare. He still had almost all his teeth and a smile that would make anyone's heart glad. Straw Cowboy hats were his weakness. He had a few lying around his lodge and there was never a time except for sleeping when one of them wasn.t perched on his head. His hands were hard and calloused. His skin was soft, but showed the abuse of many years in the sun.

Little Coyote knew Grandfather's lodge showed he lived as he spoke. Water was hand carried from a stream a few hundred yards away. Light came from stone lamps that he had made. Animal fat would be put in a depression in the center he had knocked out with a hammer stone. Moss acted as a wick when lit and that was the source of light in his lodge. He did allow himself a potbelly stove to heat his lodge and to cook on.

Along one wall was a ledge about three feet off the ground. It was set at that height to avoid the cold drafts on the floor in the winter. That was where the bed was, as well as a storage area at the bottom of the sleeping mat. The dirt floor, cold in the winter months, stayed cool in the summer. Above the sleeping platform was another shelf built into the wall. Here dried food was stored, along with most of Standing Bear.s belongings.

The opposite wall held a few frames with hides of muskrat and beaver stretched out in them, as well as a hunting bow and snowshoes. He lived a simple life, and Little Coyote loved to visit here.

Little Coyote, the son of Standing Bear's daughter, looked like his mother and had the same smile. The smile was always there, even when there was nothing to smile at. The old man sat on a chair in his one-room lodge and looked at the boy in front of him.

Little Coyote saw sadness in his grandfather's eyes.

"Stories are important. That is how we remember the old ways and the language. Language is important. Not electricity, not running water in your lodge, not food you buy from the market. Food grown with your own hands, water taken from the stream where the Great Spirit put it. That is what is important."

The boy rolled his eyes. Grandfather often told him he could be a storyteller if he had the desire. It was a lecture he was sure he could repeat from memory. "Yes, Grandfather, I know you do not trust people who make toilet in their lodges."

It was a running joke between Little Coyote and his grandfather. You cannot trust people who crap where they eat. Go outside to make your toilet. Let it go back to nature to help things grow, not be flushed away and be of no use to anyone.

"But, Grandfather, I know many of the stories you have told me!"

"Bah, you know nothing!" Grandfather barked. "You know all the things in your favorite cartoon. But you do not remember the name of the boy who tamed the wind, or the proper steps to set up a sweat lodge. How will our people survive if we lose the harmony with our ancestors? Some day your survival and the survival of our people may depend on what you can remember."

Little Coyote knew it was a question Standing Bear often asked about harmony. His grandfather believed that one day man and nature would come to a clash. Nature would win because it was patient, where man was not. Man would forget the old ways on how to work with nature accept it into their lives, and live with it in harmony.

Grandfather started into one of his stories again, "Nature is something to be experienced. It is to be lived with, not shut out. The white man says he loves living in the country. But what does he do?" Standing Bear waited for his grandson to answer. When he didn't, he continued, "The white man moves to the woods. Then cuts the trees down so he can 'see' see what? He just removed what he left the city to see. He wants to see nature, then kills it off or moves it from his lodge so he can see. He moves to the country to see nature, then he locks it out of his lodge. What foolishness." Standing Bear slowly worked his tired body up to get a cup and some coffee from the potbelly stove. After he settled down again he looked at Little Coyote.

"The white man does not see what is there because he does not think it is possible. He does not see the Spirit of the tree talking to the bird that lives in its branches. He does not see the animals that live on what the tree has given them. Its nuts drop for the animals to eat. They did not have to buy them in a store. Nature gave them freely for nothing more than the wish that what the tree no longer needed, it shared with another.

"He does not see that the squirrel, when he had his fill of nuts, would bury some to start a new tree. He does not see that the Spirit of the tree and the squirrel look after each other and live in harmony. To the white man the squirrel buried the nuts for winter. We know the squirrel buried the nuts to help the tree reproduce. To ensure both the tree and the animals that depend on it will have homes and food in the coming years. White man comes to see nature, and then kills it off as they have always done."

Little Coyote wanted to interrupt his grandfather and say he knew the stories, but he knew to interrupt an Elder was considered very rude. So he settled back into the deer hide mattress and listened.

"We see what is there and accept it for what it is." He looked at his grandson to see if he was listening. He was. "When I look out from my lodge, I see trees. Not just trees but their Spirit too. To us it is something we can see with our eyes and in our hearts. The white man cannot see that. All they see in a tree is something that blocks them from seeing nature. What fools they are!

"They do not see that when they cut down a single tree they affect the balance of nature. They open their view of the world as they see it. But they do not see that they have taken the homes away from our brothers, the birds. They do not see they have taken the food from the mouths of our brothers, the squirrels. They do not see that by removing the tree, they have opened up the world for chaos."

"Chaos, Grandfather? I do not know what that word means." Little Coyote looked at his grandfather, confused, as he tried to figure out what the word meant.

Little Coyote looked so much like his mother. He had her smile but was named after his uncle Talking Coyote. It was an honor to Talking Coyote that his nephew was named after him. But by the same token it helped to set his path in life. In many cultures the coyote was a trickster. A master of illusion and chaos, bearers of that name shared many of the same traits.

Standing Bear smiled at his grandson. "You are chaos," he said. "Chaos is when something is balanced and then something comes along to knock it down. Like when you played the trick on your sister, Anna, and scared her half to death."

Little Coyote smiled at the memory. His sister, Anna Maker- of-Things, was always making things about the house to organize her belongings. Anna would make bookshelves for the schoolbooks, or containers for the flowers and herbs she collected. Little Coyote had switched out sage in one of her containers with a lizard. Anna hated lizards. She put her hand in her container to get some sage to burn before dinner. The lizard was glad to see a way out of its prison and leapt on Anna.s arm and raced up her sleeve heading for the wall and freedom. Anna screamed, and the family came running to see what was wrong.

Her mother, Smiles-at-nothing, had propped open the door to the lodge to let a breeze in. When everyone came running into the room to see what Anna was screaming about, one of the reservation dogs saw an open door and a venison roast on the table. The dog made a dash for the roast while everyone was in the living room. In one easy jump it landed on the table. The tablecloth slid under the weight of the dog as it tried to stop on the tabletop. The tablecloth, the dishes, silverware, glasses, roast, and the dog all crashed to the floor on the other side of the table. The dog grabbed the roast and ran out the door before anyone could stop him.

That was the chaos his grandfather was referring to.

Little Coyote replied, "But, Grandfather, I do remember the stories. Most of them anyway."

"Okay," said Standing Bear. "Who controls the power of the rocks?"

Little Coyote's face went blank for a moment. "Rocks, rocks, rocks," he whispered to himself. If only I could remember which direction the Spirit was. North! It was the grandfather of the North. "Muxumsa Lowanewank," he shouted out.

Standing Bear smiled at his grandson. "Yes," he said. "It is Muxumsa Lowanewank. Now tell me what else he does."

"North Grandfather gives us the winter, ice, snow and cold. He gives us the trees, rocks and our bodies. He also gives us all we see around us."

"And, what else? Maybe the most important thing North Grandfather gives to us?" asked Standing Bear. Before Little Coyote could answer, Grandfather said, "He adds a physical form to the Great Creator's thoughts and visions."

Little Coyote snuggled down into Grandfather's bed. He pulled a bearskin robe over himself and asked Grandfather to tell him more stories. Time was running short to hear them. Spring was coming to eastern Pennsylvania. And with the warmer weather, the stories were not told. Summer was for planting and hunting, preparing for winter. Stories were only told in the winter months, and Little Coyote had much to learn.

Grandfather put another log into the potbelly stove and settled in to tell stories to his grandson all day. As he talked on, Little Coyote would start to doze off. When Grandfather saw him dozing, he would yell, "Kales ta!" and Little Coyote's eyes would snap open. When Little Coyote.s eyes would not open any more, Grandfather knew story time was over for now.

It was at times like this that Wilber remembered his wife. "Water Girl," he sighed. "Can you see this child? Help me to teach him our ways so he, too, can live in harmony." He picked up his pipe and filled it according to tradition and lit it with a fire stick lit from a coal in the stove. As he prayed to the Great Spirit his prayers were carried on the smoke curling from the pipe. The entire universe was in this small room at this moment. Wilber Jefferson crawled into the bed with his grandson and slept a sleep of a contented man.