This Life Told by an Old Indian

By Daniel Hansen

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A beautifully written frame story in the vein of One Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, and Canterbury Tales, Hansen (Raven's Spear, 2017, etc.) proves short fiction is a genre in which he shines.

Uncle is a chain-smoking, coffee swilling, cussing old coot who can weave stories out of smoke rising from an unconscious man. This venerable Native American fashions a series of such tales for a group of children, stitching together the life of Tomtom, the man who lies before him. The Uncle sections are simultaneously humorous, instructive, and world-weary, while the Tomtom stories dance in time, referencing, foreshadowing, and illuminating one another as they construct a biographical and psychological portrait of a mixed-race (Native American and white) young man. The stories range from the Twilight Zone-like "Goat Man," which mixes teenage ennui with a supernatural hitchhiker, to the laugh-out-loud "The Day I Heard the Bell Ring," which involves a wild ride on a cooler of beer while slyly alluding to Hansen's own Tricksters' War Trilogy. Both the frame ("His words were flecks of gold and smoke that leapt out at the fire before weaving back towards the children's ears") and the tales ("they cut away those parts of themselves they do not want. But those parts never go away, hanging from them like dead limbs never to be fully amputated") are elegantly written and image-filled. Whether Tomtom is wrecking his father's car and running off to live in a tent or forever swallowing unsaid words of love, each tale abounds with running themes, symbols, and allusions. The ability to see outward from darkness versus the inability to see into darkness, along with the idea of being loved but not wanted, permeate, while the appearance of wasps and butterflies continually portend and color events. The stories Uncle draws out of Tomtom highlight the life of a man in turmoil and just might bring him peace.

Smart, funny, heady, thoughtful, literary; this collection can be enjoyed on many levels by many different kinds of people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Hansen
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463178461

Daniel Hansen

Daniel (known as Dandan) is a philosopher and an artist. He works to become not only an artist but the art that he creates. He is a social philosopher and has supported his life by helping the casino industry. He is an Indigenous Futurism/SpecuNative author while working as a business consultant and a sensitivity reader. He has spent his life helping casinos and other businesses achieve higher revenue by providing experience-based insight and informed direction through improved analytics and more efficient operations. Dandan started working in gaming in September of 1997 at a tribal casino. In that work, he found that true success does not come just with a bigger bottom line but through Servant Leadership. Only by empowering others will one find success in this life. He is nobody and nothing.Dandan is an enrolled member of the Village of Kotzebue and a voting shareholder of the NANA Corporation. He grew up in rural North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. He has lived in many places, though Honolulu Hawai’i was a favorite. He loves to travel the world and find new places and foods. He loves food and considers himself a foodie if a drunken version of one. He is highly eclectic and loves to try new experiences. He lives very much by the doctrine of experience. With recent changes in his life, he has decided to create a blog, “Our Orchard.”Our Orchard will be filled with short stories, book ideas, book promotions, food thoughts, travel enjoyments, and just basic things that come about that Dandan wants to talk about (maybe go over the many ways to make the best cup of coffee, and yes there are many). His goal is not in creating a marketing commercial for his books, but instead, create a journal of his adventures.Dandan has begun a life of traveling and writing. He has become a leaf upon the wind. He spent time at Standing Rock in protest, visited places in the world that sounded illuminating (only continents left to visit (Australia and Antarctica)), and spent a lot of time deciding on what to do next. He has recently decided to live in the enviable (or unenviable as the case may be) position of being his own master, beholden to none.In his books and blogs, Dandan writes in eclectic and vastly different genres that spiral around each other in disjointed happiness. He has failed in life, and through those failures is finding his way to success. He works as a consultant and may work at another Casino someday. But, he lives his life as a libertine and an artist of experience.He is the wind and the wind passes through him. As a hobby and a food source, Dandan loves to garden. He even attempted to create a gardening app a while back on Kickstarter. He loves the warm sun on his face and the dirt in his hands. Spring in Idaho is the perfect time to live in the now. Dandan has learned through his years of gardening that to expect flowers one must plant seeds.Personal NoteIt is my goal to learn how to best sow the future I wish to have. I seek to learn the best way to live in this world, and I plan on sharing that journey. I invite you to join me on my adventure. The time has come to embrace the next step in life. To find a better way to enjoy my world. Follow me as together we plant seeds and grow our orchard.

Book preview

This Life as Told by an Old Ndn

Dandan Hansen

Copyright © 2018 Daniel Hansen

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To all of those that survived my own stories with me and their own stories without me. We did not all make it, and the best of us failed to, but we are here, and we deserve the next story.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgement

Forward/Author’s Note

Uncle Tells the First Story

The First Time I Met the Goat Man

Uncle Tells the Second Story

The Moment I Realized I Don’t Matter

Uncle Tells the Third Story

The Day Heard the Bell Rings

Uncle Tells the Fourth Story

The Moment I First Saw Myself

Uncle Tells the Fifth Story

The Worst Day of My Life

Uncle Tells the Sixth Story

The Day I Fell in Love

Uncle Tells the Seventh Story

The Night I Stayed in the Car and Then Got Out

Uncle Tells the Eighth Story

The Night I Truly Fell in Love

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All the people that share their stories that became these stories and the stories that will come after it in the series. I am in debt to you and yours for real life tales that I can interweave with my own to create this work. I love you all, and I know you love me, even if you did not always want me

#toldbyanoldndn

Trigger Warning: These stories include some unpleasant language and in a few, implied child neglect.

Non-Trigger Warning: I created my own covers for this book unlike my others, so they are not wonderful. I wanted to learn how to create covers, and what I was capable of. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Uncle Tells the First Story

The darkness burned through the room as the old man took a drag from his smoke. It puffed and billowed from his mouth and nose before taking his words up into the heavens. The fire burned before his old wooden chair, and he leaned forward to match the flame’s intense stare. The old man and the fire continued this competition until he began to cough. A dry retching sound that pulled at his core and cackled into the darkness. He attempted to sip coffee from his old plastic mug, pocketed from a diner he had visited once in his youth, but with the coughing, the sip was hard to accomplish.

The boy’s body that lay on the ground before the old man wheezed and wheezed, then grew still. It was common for people to bring their pain to the old man, so that he could share it. People came from far and wide and called the old man Uncle and handed him tobacco with heads lowered. Uncle cared for them all when he could, and told their stories when he could not. Even if the world had moved on and changed, Uncle was here for these people.

The voice of the young woman who had called to him to come for the boy still echoed, but what mattered was that he would make do with the body. He would share its story as if it were his own. He would wander and see what came out the other side; it was Uncle’s gift, and he would share it as he always had.

Uncle laughed at the humor of it all, and the children, his nieces and nephews, gathered around the fire, giggled with him. Uncle told stories every night that someone came to be helped, and those stories would wind around each of the children and paint pictures in the shadows and flames of Uncle’s old house. The children would sit wide-eyed as if the stories were their own.

The entire home was a single room with an old bed shoved into the corner and a fireplace near the door. Uncle never complained about the cold that weaseled in with the night air, but he often shivered and put blankets on the children under his care. He loved children, though he grumbled about them to no end. He complained about parents leaving them with him forever, even as he carved them toys from the branches they gathered. Uncle tried to recall those parents, but it made no never mind.

His coughing slowed and stopped, as did his laughter. He grew serious, as he often did before a story. He looked away from the fire and around at his gathered audience. They sat in a semi-circle around the flickering light, each with their own beat-up chair scrounged from some yard sale or junkyard on one of his morning jaunts into the world.

Uncle had likely never been in a furniture store—saw little need for one when the world had yard sales and people threw out stuff that worked. He had discovered thrift stores several years before, and those nieces and nephews still able to drive were often wrangled into taking him into town on Sundays, to watch him wander around used goods he wished to haggle for. Thrift stores were not as good as yard sales, though; they did not haggle enough, and one thing Uncle loved was to haggle. But with the world’s changes, there was furniture to be found on every street corner, if one bothered to look.

But the chairs made no never mind, nor did the water he placed on top of the stove. He always kept a pot of water on the stove. He claimed it cooled his throat and kept the spirits from getting unruly in and around the fire. The kids often gossiped that it was really so he could make his coffee whenever he wanted. Uncle had discovered a special vase-like item at a yard sale that allowed him to make something called pour over coffee. He loved it; he loved coffee almost as much as he loved smoking. He would take the grounds and dance around them like a kid celebrating, while he alternated between slowly pouring hot water and leaning down to watch it drip.

With Uncle’s cough now fully subsided, he was able to sip from his mug and begin. His words were flecks of gold and smoke that leapt out at the fire before weaving back towards the children’s ears. The smoke that hung in the air before them was the stories of those who had come to him. Uncle always had something to say, and he never said the same thing twice, mostly because his stories often changed with each telling. Not that Uncle ever lied or embellished; there were always just new facts to replace the old ones. The heart of each story was a solid truth found in history, and that was all he would ever say about that.

Quiet sounds filled the single room. Fire crackling, children and Uncle sipping. The long drag of a rolled cigarette. An old man’s wheezing. A chair’s creak as Uncle leaned in to toss his cigarette end into the fire. Uncle kneeled before the fire and pulled out a small ember-covered red rock. He held it in his gnarled fingers and blew gently upon the stone. It flared bright red, and Uncle set the stone upon the now-still body before him. The body began to scream, and Uncle shushed it with a gentle pat of the hand. He rose, true and beautiful, as he began the process of rolling another cigarette. Uncle always needed another cigarette.

Now, what was I saying… what was I saying. You know, you need to be careful, always be careful—not like outsiders are careful, ‘cause they have to avoid sin and taxes—but us, we don’t have no sin to avoid, and Uncle don’t pay no mind to taxes. What we need to be careful of, though, is making sure we learn from those that came before us. Our elders were not born smart. No, they did a lot of stupid shit to get smart, and they tell you about that stupid shit to help you not repeat it. Now, if you don’t do my stupid shit, and you tell your kids how to avoid the stupid shit you kids will do, well, eventually we will be pretty ok as a people. And that is the goal, the betterment of our people. I try my best to get you kids well-situated, and my grandfather did the same, and his before him, all the way back to forever ago. ‘Cause that’s what we do. We keep you kids from getting too unruly.

But Uncle… The little girl leaned forward with a frown upon her face. The frown was faked, though. Uncle would be irritated if they did not ask the right questions at the right time. The initial question-and-answer periods were built into every one of his tales. What about grandmas?

Well, don’t be daft. Grandmas do the same shit. Now quiet, and let me find you the story.

The kids giggled and then hushed. Uncle leaned farther over the body, looking this way and that along it. He pressed slightly against the body’s throat. A light smoke slipped up from the body’s lips and curled in the air as the red stone burned brightly. Uncle reached out and snagged the cloud of smoke from the air. He twirled it around his fingers and stared into it with an intensity Uncle had when he brought out stories for the children. It was the intensity of a young child attempting to read words he was still learning.

There was a boy, once, called Tomtom. He once only had one name, but everyone had to yell at him twice to get his attention, and it eventually just took as his name. I close my eyes now and think of Tomtom. I think of his life; I think of his childhood. Like your childhood, his was among his people. He had happy days and sad days. He had struggles and he had lessons. We all have lessons in this life; it is up to us to learn them.

The room grew silent, as even the fire ceased its crackle and the chairs ceased their creaking. The world held its breath and grew still, frozen. Uncle pulled the smoke up to his face and sipped on it. He breathed in and swirled the smoke up and into his lungs. The smoke that had escaped from the body sank deep into his lungs in a long slow drag. Uncle’s eyes grew distant; Uncle held his breath as he struggled to hold in the smoke, and the children’s breathing grew slow and quiet.

Uncle’s face changed; it relaxed into that of a callow youth. He whispered his next word in a different voice, a true voice, a dead voice brought back now to life.

The first time I met the goat man, I was sixteen years old.

The First Time I Met the Goat Man

The first time I met the goat man, I was sixteen years old. Three friends and I had been down visiting a local college town south of my home town of Plummer. We had been up for a few days in the grey, cloudy musk that is Moscow, Idaho, finding trouble as only teens can find it. We had met college students who seemed so old and foolish, but then, everyone to me then had the air of old and foolish about them. I knew it all; I knew the world, and I saw it for what it really was. One did not live in a tent if one did not have some answers, or so my youthful pride told me.

My hand was lifted before me, but the fingers were the thing—the fingers, or what was between them. I could see through them, and into them. There had been a lightness in my vision that dimmed as I moved my fingers before my face. I pushed my hands down, forcing myself to stop. I moved my fingers in a complex weave, enjoying the feel of them stretching and dancing.

I watched as a butterfly settled gently upon my finger, before striking fiercely at the wasp that never seemed far from me. The two circled and struck, neither able to kill the other. They danced around my fingers in a dance with each other that was a blur of color and pain. I wiped them from my eyes with my hands and looked at the sky.

I lived in a place of purity in my life. I had seen who I was, and the quiet sounds of accented words filled my ears. My purity was greater than that of those foolish enough to be older than I. I knew this; they kept their many objects and trappings of ownership around them while I had my car and lived in a tent. Not everyone can live in a tent in Idaho year-round, and those people who cannot are not as pure as I was at the age of sixteen. Pure and filled with understanding—at least that is what I told myself. I washed away all other reasons for my situation and attributed that situation to purity.

James had come out of the dark yellow house with a laugh to find Aaron and me sitting on the porch. James entered every scene with a laugh. His smile was his trademark look, and his laugh was a short, loud bark followed by the low laugh that seemed so out of place on his large face. He was always larger than life. It was not his height—which was greater than mine, but not by much. Not many Coeur d’Alenes were tall, but he pushed that envelope, at least when standing next to our group. Well, next to all but Aaron. It was not James’ girth that made him larger than life, though he outweighed me by a good margin. It was the smile that came suddenly and yet sat forever upon his dark features. His face was classically native and should have had the stoic look of an Italian Iron Cloud, but instead, he laughed and smiled. His eyes sparkled as he spoke, and there was always humor looking out at me from those wise eyes. And this moment was no different. He laughed, and I soon realized he was likely laughing at Aaron and me.

I pulled my eyes away from the sky to look at Aaron. Staring at the sky was a lifelong obsession of mine. I knew the clouds and what each one meant. I had spent hours of my life reading and studying what the sky meant and the many labels that scientists had attached to the different phenomena. I could tell you what kind of clouds were in the sky by the smell of the air. The sky held a fascination, through beauty and violence, that had immediate effects on the lives of those under it without ever really touching them. The sky was a vibrant tangle of emotions, and for a kid who had few emotions, it was fascinating for me. The cumulous clouds that sat sorrowfully to the south of us were traveling slowly, preparing to weep into the air. They were a point of depression in an otherwise happy sky. I realized I was trying to describe the emotion of the sky in my head, and I made a purposeful point to stop. Talking about things in my head created a layer of perception that just got in the way of my deeper understanding of the world I was staring up at. I wanted to enjoy what was there and not what I thought about it.

Aaron was an Apache kid who had joined us in our lifelong adventure during middle school and had become a fast friend to us all. He was goofy, in a tall gangly way, and his clothing choices came across as a conglomeration of different messes dumped together onto one body. Though the day was warm and I was wearing basketball shorts and a sleeveless T, he was in long johns, under cut-off shorts, with a large jacket over his ripped band t-shirt. He had a sketch pad and was drawing furiously some weirdly technical dreamscape that captured the sights and sounds of our most recent experience. I could see faces made of flame across the top of the page—like a ceiling of fire with small dark forms huddled beneath it. He looked up at James as well, and we both just sat there, momentarily torn from our individual dreams as we acknowledged our friend. James laughed again and shook his head while Aaron and I met eyes and smiled. It was hard not to smile when James was around. He filled the world with laughter.

Aaron went back to his sketch, pushing his long bangs out of his eyes as he focused again on his work. His scribbling was all he needed at that moment. I was lucky that he was not talking while he sketched. Sometimes he did. Long rambling loops of thought about odd facts he likely dreamed up the night before. Sometimes the conversations were hilarious, sometimes thoughtful, and other times just an obstacle. I looked back at the sky, smelling it as I languished in its beauty. It smelled like dandelions and dried grass, with a hint of leaves and wild abandon. It was peaceful. The smell of grass and wild abandon usually made me feel centered and at peace. I breathed deeply and enjoyed the quiet of my friends and the day.

The wind picked up and brushed my long blonde hair over my face and tickled my mind as it closed my eyes. I thought of stars and drowning in darkness, as I realized my worth. I heard the loud braying of the younger man behind me, still in the house. He was yelling about something, and we all took a breath before looking out at the world.

Fucking Pedro, Aaron intoned with a smirk and a shake of the head that he always did when speaking of his brother. A brother with the same father, but not the same mother.

Fucking Pedro, ain’t it?