The Strong Current by Robert Day

Author:Robert Day [Day, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Native American literature, historical fiction, literary fiction, Alabama, Native Americans, The Strong Current
ISBN: 9781603060875
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Published: 2011-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

A mental picture of the eleven others appeared to him, and how each might seek the Creator in his own cabin. Here, he reckoned, in the place where his own family resides, God would descend to gather him in the still cabin air. The Master of Breath lives in the leaping fire. The bowl of broken and dried roots sounded lifeless as he gently shook it. He might easily surrender himself up to this overwhelming thing.

He would eat one of the pieces of root now. No, everything must be right. No rushing into it. His senses must be open to receive the voice and vision. The early sunlight shone through the hole in the roof of the cabin and illuminated the blue smoke that rose in the light.

He said a prayer. He picked up a piece of the root and bit into it. The souwatchcau was hard and desiccated. It would not yield as he tried to break it with his teeth. The bitterness was so strong that he winced when his saliva finally moistened the root. Soon his mouth was filled with an acidic sharpness, nearly making him retch. He bit into the piece of root as it began to soften a bit, and sucked hard at the loose pieces, pulling the medicine from it.

Sunlight began to fill the cabin as he sat down. The emptiness of his stomach gnawed at him as he rememberd he’d missed the sofki that morning. He did not consider it because his attention was on the great fast. But the medicine did not rise in him. As the sun climbed toward noon he had gone through half the bowl of the souwatchcau, chewing it and spitting out the flayed shreds of stem and fiber. He placed the bowl with water in it on the fire and dropped a piece of root and smaller stems into it, hurrying the process whereby he might gather some feeling of being removed to a brighter, clearer world. He felt only a meager lightness in his head and a tingle in his fingertips. It was only he and his fire, alone, nothing more.

Something greater is waiting on me, I am certain.

When the tea cooled so that he could drink it, he sipped the weak brown liquid, and as it lost some of its steam, he began to take bigger swallows. Then Otci drank it all, tilting his head back to receive every drop. He put the bowl on the floor and placed another piece of root in his mouth, biting hard.

The nausea came. It began to build quickly in his stomach. In a cold passage up his back and neck he felt a fever gripping him. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he sat waiting for the lightness to pass away and the stronger throb to hit him. A drip ran down his temple to hang on the side of his face. He lifted his hand to wipe it, but felt his stomach drawing tightly around a bloated sensation coming up from his bowels.

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