The machine hung up on him, then, inflexibly stipulating the limitations of its indulgence, its mechanical timing marvelously, serendipitously, precise — but not necessarily auguring well. It was possible, if not likely, that a Boyd Harris wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the machine’s rudeness and my own.
I stood in the new silence, concentrating deeply. I suppose it makes sense that you can locate insanity adjacent to any large-scale, organized effort to give money away. Philanthropy thumps offbeat to the known pulse of the world, but seems too metered, too contained and inhibited, to be the pursuit of holy fools, baptized in a dream of total divestiture and munificence. Invariably there’s a preoccupation on the most benign level with accountability, and on the most sinister with control. Maybe because of that I’d always been a little leery of accepting the Boyd money (though not leery enough to decline it), or maybe it was because it had funded every extravagance my imagination had seized on without subsidizing a single page of decent fiction. Was it possible that they knew? I waited expectantly in the demolished room, expecting the phone to ring again, but it remained silent. Harris was probably on to the next Fellow, likely reaching another answering system at this hour, phoning through the lonesome night from under the shining stars of Texas.
SALTEAU
ONE day Nanabozho was walking by the lakeshore thinking about nothing in particular when he heard voices a short distance away. Very quietly he crept toward the sound and soon spied three young men talking where they had stopped to rest. He concealed himself in the bush so that he could eavesdrop on their conversation. The young men were talking about what they wanted from life. “I want to be a great hunter, I want to be able to track game all day and all night without ever getting tired,” said the first. The second said, “I want to be a man of great wealth.” And the third said, “I want to be able to live forever, for as long as the earth does.”
After a little while, the three men got up to go their separate ways, and after they’d parted, Nanabozho sidled up to the youngest of them, who wanted to be a great hunter, and struck up a conversation with him as they walked along the trail together. The young man, still full of enthusiasm for his own dream for himself, repeated his ambition and that of his friends. Nanabozho wondered why he’d bothered to stop, because men everywhere always want the same things, and he decided that he’d play a trick on them for wasting his time. When the time came for the two to part, Nanabozho said to the young man, “I live down here. Why don’t you and your friends come to visit me sometime? I’ll give each of you a gift.” The young man knew that he was speaking with Nanabozho, and that Nanabozho liked to play tricks, but he also knew that Nanabozho could be very generous, and he assumed, as men will, that no one could be more deserving of generosity than himself. So, as Nanabozho anticipated, he agreed.
Nanabozho built a fire and then sat outside his wigwam waiting for the three men and thinking about the things they’d wished for. Eventually, the men arrived. They were tired, and they were hungry, but they asked Nanabozho for their gifts before anything else. “Eat first,” said Nanabozho. He was a very good host. When they had finished, they began again to ask for their gifts. “Sit and rest,” said Nanabozho. So they relaxed, but after a short while the youngest said, “Nanabozho, you said you’d give us gifts.” And Nanabozho responded, “So I did.” He looked at the youngest, and said, “I’m going to make you a great hunter. You’ll track and kill game day and night.” And the youngest answered, “That’s just what I wanted.” And Nanabozho said, “Good.” And then he said to the next man, “I’m going to give you great wealth. More than enough for yourself, enough to share with everyone along the lakeshore.” And the second man answered, “Thank you, Nanabozho, that’s exactly what I wanted.” And Nanabozho said, “Good.” And then to the third man, the proudest and most arrogant of them all, Nanabozho said, “I’m going to make you immortal. You’ll live forever, for as long as the earth is here.” And the third man said, “That’s exactly what I wanted. Thank you, Nanabozho.” And Nanabozho said, “Good.”
Nanabozho wasn’t surprised that, having been promised their gifts, the three men were suddenly in a hurry to leave. “When will we receive our presents?” they asked. “Don’t worry,” Nanabozho reassured them. “They’ll come to you.” So the three men left, and after a while they came again to the place where they had to go their separate ways. The youngest man went into his wigwam. Inside, it was full of horseflies. And the youngest man began to swat at them, tracking them from one corner of the wigwam to another. He swatted at them day and night, but he never seemed to be able to get rid of all of them. And so that was Nanabozho’s gift to him. The second man came upon a canoe filled to the top with furs and tobacco and weapons and other goods, more than he could ever use. And he pushed the canoe into the lake, wading in after it and then climbing aboard. But once he was far from shore, the canoe began taking on water, because of his added weight, and pretty soon it sank to the bottom of the lake, carrying the second man with it. And that was Nanabozho’s gift to him. Now, the third man, the one who wanted to live forever, found that as he was walking along his legs began to feel heavier and heavier, and he felt more and more tired and sleepy, and finally he had to sit down just where he was. And once he’d sat down he turned completely into a giant rock, part of the landscape, something that would be there as long as the earth itself. And that was Nanabozho’s gift to the proudest and most arrogant of the three men.