Some time I will recount my struggle with unauthentic-ness in an article on the subject.
4. Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, for example.
PART ONE
Chapter 1: Spirit Road
#1
If he looked up, he would be able to see; otherwise there would be only Night’s shadow around him. Now it was dark, and now all would follow. He wondered if he was the one who had killed the girl. He did not need to open his eyes to feel darkness, did not need to listen for snapped twig, scraped stone. He knew the men would come tonight, as if they were tearing at his heart already. He looked for fear there and, sure enough, found it, crouched in shadow, less than a small flame. Nothing would stop this old thing from happening. Yet even as fear’s flame grew and licked toward his throat, he held on to the rightness.
He was lying on the ground, just there where some rocks spilled down to enter the water, but in darkness he could not see that. He lay face down, waiting, breathing the smell of dirt. When his legs had folded on him and he had settled down to wait, he had stretched his body out for almost the only time in his life with his head toward the horizon where Sun had disappeared. He knew it would also be for him the last time. As sleep had overtaken him, it had whispered that finally he could follow. Not now, not yet, but soon.
Now, awakening, he rolled onto his back to look at the star-track, searched for the way his feet might take him as he climbed the back of Night. He would gain the sky-path there to the eastward, would follow across the arc of brightness where the stars grew thick, the small lights of The People who had departed before him and even now were crowding toward Skoksun Kálo -- the Land of the Dead.
The girl would not be far ahead of him.
Ignoring the licking fear, Compotwas Doctor studied the sky, looking into his own heart, searching out what had happened, tracing again in his mind the trail that had brought him here, to this place. Against the line of the horizon, he found the girl’s face. Like that of Keintpoos, her uncle.
#2
Keintpoos had sent for him, and he had come all the way down from the reservation. Why shouldn’t he? After all, while many would not call Keintpoos a lá-ge, a leader, everyone knew him to be open-handed. That was the word even among the Bostons, who called him ‘Captain Jack.’ There was something there to see in the way of him. He was not, people said, just your ordinary Indian.
And he, Compotwas Doctor, a kiuks, was known to be one of the best of the shamans. A sucking doctor. A healer. He had agreed when Keintpoos called for him to come and summon his spirits. They would listen to him when he called them. They were the powers he had long ago wrestled and pleaded with, who had long evaded and tested him -- until they had submitted and had taken him. He was proud of the songs they had given him.
When the kiuks entered the house down on Lost River, he noticed in the little remaining light the buckskin thong hung over the rafter. It had been placed above the girl lying on the mat; it betokened Keintpoos’ offer. The price was a good one. Compotwas Doctor had seen the horse tethered outside the earth house. It was long-legged and handsome, not just an Indian pony. Two full blankets were folded over its saddle, good ones. He would claim the present after he had finished. The blankets could go, one with his Spokesman, the other with The Invoker, but he himself would keep the horse and the saddle.
He thought to himself that the Modocs who had stayed back at Sprague River -- up on the Klamath reservation -- would talk among themselves, saying how Jack must have prospered from going back to his old camping ground. Otherwise, they would say, how could he offer such a prize as this? “We should have stayed out with him,” they would say, “not come crawling back here among the Klamaths for a piece of blanket and some army beef.” Compotwas Doctor did not care that he himself would cause the people to say Jack had done right to leave the reservation and take all those Modocs with him. The folks over by Yainax could gossip as much as they wanted. For it was true: the horse he had agreed upon was a good one.
Now, however, he must surrender those thoughts and listen to his Invoker who had brought him here. As his eyes grew used to the semi-dark of the unfamiliar house and he settled into himself for the task before him, he felt the breath of the gathered people. They crowded in together, some along the walls, others pressing forward, the better to hear him, to miss nothing. Here and there in the shadows he recognized the faces of ones he had known back at the Klamath reservation. People who had followed Jack here to Lost River. They were not harried now but determined, ready to answer in chorus as The Invoker called out the names of the shaman’s spirits.
From among them Compotwas Doctor selected the ones he might need this night.
Kéis! Blaiwas! Tcûskai! Kówe! Coltz! Kumal! Witkátkis!
Rattlesnake! Eagle! Weasel! Frog! Porcupine! Pelican! Fish Hawk!
As his Invoker chanted each name, the chorus echoed it. So many! But the kiuks had still others:
Lightning! Bear! Ghost Spirit ….
The chorus hesitated at this last one; its words grew ragged and dwindled away to a whisper. They were afraid to have the death-bringer in the darkened room with them. Compotwas Doctor snapped his fingers at the singers, chiding them to press forward. If he could risk daring to bring these forces, the people could at least show they would welcome -- and honor -- them.
The girl lay on her back, on a pallet against the east wall of packed earth, neither a child nor a woman by the look of her. She had the face of her uncle: wide-spaced eyes, clear features, full mouth, but now sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. Her hands tugged at the meager cloth covering her. When she turned toward him, the kiuks saw she had fear, but her eyes, like those of Keintpoos, though they were needful, were steady. The people watched as he drew the strip of red-painted buckskin from his bag and laid it next to her. His long fingers arranged the feathers -- yellowhammer, woodpecker -- and smoothed them.
Compotwas Doctor sat at the foot of her bed, facing the girl and his Spokesman, waiting for the room to hush. He rummaged in his bag and found his pipe and lit it, the acrid red-willow bark smoke filling his mouth and stinging his tongue. In the dark silence he rocked to and fro, trailing the smoke from his lips, blowing it over and over again in little gusts across the girl’s body. He traced with his fingers his own arm then reached out and touched the girl so. Where he laid his hand he felt the skin wince, then warm under his touch. He proceeded to her leg, her belly, her head. Still rocking, now blowing his own breath across her, he felt her soften, felt her breathing fall into rhythm with his own. He reached for the sprig of sage at his side, dipped it into the water-basket and, calling silently to the spirits now crowding the room, let the droplets fall onto the silent girl.
What had happened? Who had done this? He must know.
The women had been sure they could tell him: their gossip had come to Compotwas Doctor that afternoon as he entered the Lost River camp. She was headstrong, like her uncle. She would do what she pleased and not be led. She had just finished her preparation for womanhood,
