Knock Wood by Bergen Candice

Author:Bergen, Candice [Bergen, Candice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

While I never came to feel comfortable in Terry’s world, his political convictions—aided by the temper of the times, by all I saw around me—helped to forge a political conscience in me.

If you grew up a Republican in Beverly Hills, the transition to liberal was inevitably loaded with irony. I remember the day Martin Luther King was killed; our housekeeper, Ruth, tears streaming down her face, hung a transistor radio on the Electrolux and sang slow gospel songs as she moved from room to room vacuuming. The best gesture of sympathy and solidarity the rest of us could muster was to drive around Beverly Hills that day in our Mercedes with our headlights on.

Terry was incensed by the plight of the American Indian; he had spent time on reservations and would tell me of the despair and hopelessness of their lives. Soon it weighed on my conscience too, and I visited reservations, met tribal leaders and became involved in the Indian movement on my own.

Tribal traditions were sadly tattered. I had become friends with a Navajo called Chief Rolling Thunder, a great old man who was the leader of his tribe on a reservation in the Southwest.

One night I invited him for dinner. As we finished eating, he asked me if I had any fresh meat that he could have. Well, no, I said, but there were some chicken legs and ground sirloin in the freezer. No, no, it was a whole animal he needed. Fresh, if possible. Didn’t we at least have a whole frozen chicken? I was sorry but we didn’t and the market was closed. What did he need it for? Wouldn’t ground sirloin do?

He sat silently awhile, pulling at his waist-long braid, then nodded, yes, that would have to do. He got up and pulled on his jacket; I gave him the sirloin and the chicken legs. He took them quietly, stepped out into the night and slowly climbed to the top of the mountain above the house. There he built a fire, knelt in prayer and chanted, offering up the ground sirloin and frozen chicken legs as a sacrifice. Soon rain began to pour, dousing his fire, and he returned looking defeated. It’s not easy being an Indian anymore.

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