Tiny Bone Flute
Pearl Three Ears
Carlos Wing, my grandson, knows these places up in Llegue Canyon where to find stuff. My mother Alice Little Mouse told me that the Old Ones had places up there for ceremonies. Maybe they was sacred I don’t know and there ain’t nobody left who remembers good enough about the Old Ones. My reckoning is that if the Old Ones had ceremonies up in there they was probably sacred and I told Carlos to quit them places and leave them alone. Young people they don’t listen no more. They got little radios to stick into their ears which ruins them for listening. You see, the time when the young begged us for stories of the old times, them times is long gone. Now the radio and them game machines have replaced history, sure as shit, just like English and Spanish has robbed us of our beautiful tongue.
Carlos and his friend Lujan they showed to me this little flute which they found way up in the canyon.
“Mira abuelita, it’s a tiny little flute.”
Indeed it was a flute, the same kind of flute Ben Toshaway uses when he does at a healing. The flute Carlos held in his hand looked just like Ben Toshaway’s, just more yellow. Older.
Oye, listen. Play Mano, play for abuelita.”
I knew that this boy was musical; him and his brothers Cisco and Louis they had a little band with electric guitars and a electric piano thing they played at weddings and sometimes at the high school dance. So Lujan picked up the little flute and blew into it. It was real high soft sounds came out from this little flute. I shut my eyes and thought about my diabetes like when Ben Toshaway was healing.
“You hear that, abuelita; it’s kinda like a Beatle’s song. Lujan he’s good, ain’t he?”
“Yes. But you boys must carry that little flute back up to the canyon. That little flute is sacred, Carlos. These things got magic inside them. It’s made from the bone of an eagle. Could be really old. Maybe this little flute it’s cured a lot of pain. You boys go put him back where you found him.
I called Ben Toshaway on the telephone to ask did he maybe want to see the little flute. “No, no, Pearl, tell them boys they got to return this to the exact place where they found it. It’s got dead on it, dead inside it, dead all over it. They got to, else bad things could happen. I would come over and talk to them but I know they won’t listen to me. Your Carlos is the one wrote ‘witch man’ and a ugly face with a magic marker on my tailgate at the rodeo. I seen him do it”.
At supper Carlos was stupid. “No, I can take it to Dowhanka’s, there’s a gringo will pay for Indian relics. “Maybe $20 for this pequeñita, no?”
Dowhanka’s is a bad place. The sign reads “Trading Post” but most of what is traded there is beer and dope. I shook my old head and told this foolish boy that if he did not return the little flute its magic would spill out backwards and instead of healing it could do bad. Carlos made a smirk with his face and said didn’t nobody believe such stuff nowadays. “Abuelita, you can believe in your witches and your ghosts, but I’m turnin’ the pequñita into somethin’ real. Cash money; that’s somethin’ I can believe in.”
Carlos came home proud for he sold the eagle bone flute to the stranger for $40. Nothing happened to either one of them boys. In September when school started I took bad sick and they cut toes off from my foot. By Christmas time I could not see out of one of my eyes and they cut off the rest of that bad foot. I know it was on account of them boys disturbing the little flute.
Gary Ives lives in the Ozarks where he grows apples and writes.
Photo Credit: Melina McDermott.