He went over and sat on a bale of rags outside the shop with the sign HOT ROAST DOG FOR SALE OR GIVE. The bale of rags seemed somehow lively; it was as if there was no division between the animate and the inanimate this day. He tried to make something out of the strange newspaper or the strange day, or the newly strange man who was apparently himself.
Oh, the newspaper was interesting. It could be read one way or another: by picture, by stylized pictograph, by various writings and printings. Here were anecdotes; wooly, horny, bottomlessly funny anecdotes: and they were about people that Christopher knew, or almost knew. And all the people passing by (Christopher realized it with a chuckling gasp) were also people that he knew or almost knew. Well, what made them so different then? They looked like familiar people, they smelled like familiar people (which the familiar people erstwhile had not done), they had the familiar name that came almost to the edge of the tongue.
“But what town is this? What day is this? What is the context?” Christopher wailed out loud. “Why is everything so strange?”
“Kit-Fox, you call me?” Strange Buffalo boomed at him. Strange Buffalo was a big and boisterous man and he had always been a good friend of Christopher. He had? Then why did he look so different? And why was his real name, or his other name, now unremembered?
“Will the buffalo go to war, do you think, Kit-Fox?” Strange Buffalo asked him. “Do you believe that the two great herds of them will go to war? They come near to each other now and they swear that neither will give way.”
“No, there will be only the pushing and goring of a few thousand bulls, not much else,” Christopher said. “The buffalo simply haven’t the basis for a real war.” He was surprised at his own knowledge of the subject.
“But the buffalo have human advisers now,” Strange Buffalo said. “It began with the betting, of course, but now we can see that there is real cause of conflict on both sides. I dabble in this myself and have some good ideas. We are tying spear-shafts to the horns of some of the big bulls and teaching them to use them. And we’re setting up big bows and teaching them to bend them with their great strength, but they haven’t any accuracy at all.”
“No, I don’t believe they were meant to have a real war. It’s a wonderful dust they raise, though, when they all come together. It makes you glad to be alive. And the thunder of their millions of hoofs!” (There was the distant sound of morning thunder.) “Or is that a thundering in the mountains?” Kit-Fox—ah, Christopher was asking.
“Well, there is quite a clatter in the mountains this morning, Kit,” Strange Buffalo was saying in happy admiration. “The deep days, the grass days like this one aren’t come by easily. It’s a wonder the mountains aren’t knocked to pieces when the big prophets pray so noisily and wrestle so strong. But, as the good skin says, we must work out our salvation in fear and thundering.”
“Is it not ‘In fear and trembling’?” Christopher asked as he lounged on the lively bale of rags.
“No, Kit-Fox, no!” Strange Buffalo pealed at him. “That’s the kind of thing they say during the straw days; not here, not now. In the Cahooche shadow-writing it says ‘In fear and chuckling,’ but the Cahooche words for thunder and chuckling are almost the same. On some of the Kiowa antelope-skin drawings, ‘In scare-shaking and in laughter-shaking.’ I like that. I wish I could pray and wrestle as wooly and horny as the big ones do. Then I’d get to be a prophet on the mountain also, and I’d bring in more days of grass. Yes, and days of mesquite also.”
“The mountain is a funny one this morning, Strange Buffalo. It doesn’t reach clear down to the ground,” Christopher said. “There’s a great space between, and there are eagles flying underneath it.”
“Ah, it’ll fall back after a while, Kit-Fox, when they have won or lost the wrestling for the day; after they have generated sufficient juice for this day, for I see that they have already won it and it will be a day of grass. Let’s go have a rack of roast dog and a gourd of choc beer,” Strange Buffalo proposed.
“In a minute, Strange Buffalo. I am in the middle of a puzzle and I have this fog in my head. What day is this?”
“It’s one of the days of grass, Kit-Fox. I just told you that.”
“But which one, Strange Buffalo? And what, really, are ‘days of grass’?”
“I believe that it is the second Monday of Indian Summer, Kit-Fox,” Strange Buffalo was saying as he gave the matter his thought and attention. “Or it may be the first Monday of Blue-Goose Autumn. We’re not sure, though, that it is a Monday. It sounds and tastes more like a Thursday or an aleikaday.”
“It sure does,” Christopher—ah, Kit-Fox agreed.
A laughing, dying man was carried past by four hale men. This fortunate one had been smashed by bear or rolled on by horse or gored by buffalo, and the big red blood in him was all running out. “It works,” the happy dying man cried out. “It works. I got a little too close to him and he ripped me to pieces, but it works. We are really teaching those big bulls to use the spears lashed to their horns. Others will carry on the work and the fun. I bet that I’ve had it.”
“A little blood to bless me!” Strange Buffalo cried out, and the dying man splashed him with the rich and rigorous blood.
“For me also,” Kit-Fox begged, and the dying man smeared him with blood on the brow and breast and shoulders and loins. Two other friends, Conquering Sharp-Leaf and Adoration on the Mountain, came and were blessed with the blood. Then the man died and was dead.
“There is nothing like the fine rich blood to make a grass day sing in your head and in your body,” Strange Buffalo exulted. “On the straw days they try to hide the blood or they bleed in a dark corner.”
(What was all this about the grass days and the straw days? There was now a sordid dull-dream quality, a day-of-straw quality that kept trying to push itself in. “For a little while,” it begged, “to reestablish rigor and rule and reason for just a little while.” “Go away,” said the day-of-grass quality. “The wrestle was won this morning, and this is a day out of the count.”)
Kit-Fox and Strange Buffalo went in, past the booths and work areas of the coin-makers, past the stands of the eaglewing-bone-whistle makers, and into the shop which had roast dog for sale or give. Strange Buffalo had a shoulder of dog and Kit-Fox had a rack of ribs. There was fried bread also, and hominy and pumpkin. There was choc beer dipped with gourd dippers out of a huge crock. Thousands of people were there. It was crowded and it was supposed to be. The man named Mountain twinkled in the air. Why had they not noticed that about him before?
Folks rolled up the walls and tied them. Now the strong smoke and savor could visit all the places, and the folks in every shop could see into every other shop. It was full morning and beginning to get warm.
“But I still want to know the date,” Kit-Fox insisted, not quite converted to the day of grass, not quite clear of the head-fog that accompanies the sullen burning of the straw days. “What newspaper is this that doesn’t have a date? I want a date!”
“Look at it. It tells,” said Strange Buffalo.
“You want a date, honey?” the top of the newspaper writhed in sudden flickering of day-fire print. “Phone 582-8316 and I give you a real date.” Then the day-fire print was gone.
“I hope I can remember that number,” Kit-Fox said anxiously. “Strange Buffalo, where is there a telephone exchange?”
“They are the same and single and right outside past the booths,” Strange Buffalo said. “You were sitting upon it when I came upon you. And you, you old straw-head, you thought it was a bale of rags.”