Bear Bob's Story as told to Edward Summer

Chapter Two
The Circle
 
 
 

We lived between the edge of the sea and the edge of the forest.  The earth was soft and brown beneath our feet when we stood up each morning. The sky was blue and deep above our heads when we gazed out into the sunrise. Then it was black when our families gathered around the hot fires before we slept again. The sparks from the flames rose into the heavens and stayed there, flickering, forever.

     The strange words and the strange voice continued to come from the little bear’s mouth. The little boy was motionless, listening.

 
     I ate each day with my family. My mother farmed. My father hunted with the other men. My brothers and sisters and mama and papa and I gathered several times each day to share our food.  It was like all the other families. We all lived in huts of mud and stalks. We all farmed and hunted and worked in the same way. We played games and danced and sang in the same way. My sisters played with dolls that my father made for them. My brothers and I played with wooden spears. All the days and all the nights were the same, except when the bad ones came from the other tribes. Then the women and children hid, and the men took their spears and went to fight.  But that was not often. So mostly, the peaceful days were the same, and we loved to eat together.

     As I chewed my food that day, I knew that something was different. Today would be special. Something would happen, I thought. I knew because I had seen it before. I had seen part of it, anyway, the part where they take the older boys away. They took my brother once, and he came back changed. That was a long time ago. Now I was his age, and today was my day. The food tasted the same. Mama and Papa and my brothers and sisters were the same. The village looked the same, and I felt like the same person inside.

     I was not sure when they would come. That was part of it. So I waited and chewed my food. Finished, I stood up with the rest, and we cleaned the bowls.

    “Remember,” my mama said to me, “Remember we love you. Debein. Love.  Jaa debein - debein ni hwe gbo. True love is without end, Masa,” she said.

    "Why do you say that, mama?” I asked. She said nothing, and we went back to work.

     Suddenly, there was a loud noise. We turned. There were huge men with strange masks. Huge men with colored mud on their bodies. Huge men waving painted sticks, waving spears. They were shouting. They were making strange noises. They swept through the village. Over there they grabbed a boy. Over here they grabbed my friend. Over there they grabbed another boy. And then one came straight at me. Inside I wanted to run, but I stood still and he picked me up and threw me on his back and gathered with the other huge men. Without stopping, they all ran out of the village carrying us on their backs.

     Where were we going? Where were we going? We went deep in the forest. Deeper. Deeper into the forest. And then they stopped.

     They put us down. They put us all together, and then they gathered around us in a circle. A circle. A circle all around us. And they stood there silent. Silent. Silent.  Not a single sound.

    We heard the birds. We heard the leaves rattle. We heard animals far away roaring, bellowing. We heardour own hearts beating. Beating. Beating in our chests, in our ears, all over our shaking bodies. Beating loudly.

      No one moved. There was no where to go now. Not yet. Not yet.

      And then he appeared. From nowhere, from somewhere behind the men in the circle. He was taller, gigantic. His mask was more strange, more terrible.. The eyes were shining metal pounded into black wood. The hair was straw screeching out in every direction. The mouth was blood red. The teeth were sharp and long and crazy. His body was all over mud, cracked and crazier than the teeth. The mud chipped and fell from his joints as he moved. It wrinkled and cracked as he moved closer and closer and closer through the circle of men.  Closer to us, closer to us, closer to us he came, and there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to go. Nowhere.

      We shook, we boys, here in a tight shivering circle.

      The tall one stood still. The other men came closer forcing us into a line. We stood one behind another. There were two rows of men, and one row of us in the middle. The tall one at the front. Another man with spears stood behind us.

      The tall man grunted. A strange sound. Then a drum began.

      Ta tum, ta tump. Ta tum, ta tump.

     The man with the spear pushed the last boy into the one ahead. Soon we all moved toward the tall man, the man with the fearsome teeth sharp enough to eat us. But he did not eat us. He turned. He turned. He turned away from us and began to walk. Began to walk. Began to walk. He walked toward the horizon, and we had nowhere else to go but to follow him. So we did in a line, these dozen boys and more. We followed him in a long line.

     Ta ta, tump tump. Ta ta, tump tump. The drums beat. Our feet moved. Ta ta, tump tump. One two, three four.

     And we walked and walked and walked and the sun walked with us. It followed us over the flat, dry ground.

     Ta Ta, tump tump. Ta tump, Ta tump.

     We walked and the sun was overhead. It heated our black bodies with its white hot light. And still we walked toward the edge of the world. The village was long gone behind us. We did not turn back because there was the man with the spears to stop us. We did not turn to the side. The men next to us carried knives. We followed the tall one, the one with the teeth.

     The sun walked always faster than us. Ta ta, tump tump. No matter how fast, how slow we walked, it was ahead of us, and always white hot. The tall man walked toward it and so do we.

     I looked down at the dust. The sun was too bright to look up. It made spots that danced in my eyes when I looked up. I was in the middle of the line. My friend ahead. I watched his back. I watched his legs. Step. Step. Step Step. Footprints in the yellow brown dust, puffed around his heels. Ta tump, ta tump.

     The sun was near the edge of the world. The sky had been blue, now it was a new color. A strange color not like the one I saw at home when we gathered by the fires, gathered by the huts to eat our dinner together with our families. I did not know where we were. Here there was no village, no trees. Only little scruff plants. They seemed dead, the little plants. Only them and more dust.

     We walked, ta ta. More dust, tump tump. Just drums, ta ta. Heart beats, ta tump.  Sharp knives, ta ta. Small boys, tump tump.

      The tall man stopped. The drums stopped. We all stopped.

     We heard our breath in our nose, in our ears. We heard our hearts in our chest, in our ears. And all the rest was silence.

     What was here? Why did we stop?

     We looked about. Nothing. Then we saw it. We saw it in the white hot sun. A black shape against the blinding white which fell lower and lower in the sky

     We saw it at the edge of the earth, holding up the sky, trying to catch the sun in its branches..

     A tree. A special tree. A one of a kind huge, fat tree.

     The moment I saw it, I knew what it was because my father had told me about the tree.

     "Someday you will see the tree," he said to me one day as we walked together. "And I will tell you about it so you will know it when you see it." And then he said:...
 

“As they walked through the skies, standing upon the clouds like men stand on the earth, the gods looked down. They saw this tree sticking up from where it grew, roots deep in the earth. It had no leaves. Was it dead?  One god pulled it up by its branches. He turned it around and looked upon it, holding it by the thick middle.

‘Which end is the top?’ the gods wondered. ‘’this end or that end?’ One god tossed it to another, and she puzzled over it, too, and tossed it back like a stick for a dog. "Which end is the top?" They could not agree.

‘It is full of life, this thing, this tree.’  On this they agreed amongst themselves. ‘We must put it back. Life must be preserved.’  On that they all agreed.

But like tonight, it grew dark. The sun slipped down past the edge of the earth. The fire, the embers of the day went out. And by mistake, the god who held the tree put it back upside-down: The branches into the ground, the roots up into the air.

And it grows like that still today. Thick in the middle, roots on top, branches in the ground."

     That was what my father told me, so I knew then what I saw.

     And I saw the tree was filled with life. But what kind of life was this that chattered and crawled as the day fled over the edge of the earth like water over a waterfall?

     The gods know. But we do not. Are the living things demons?  Are they evil? They sounded like demons. They flickered like demons. But they were far away at the edge of the world. Too far away and too dark to see clearly.

     The cloudless night came upon us. All of us boys were surrounded by the strange men. The darkness was coming.  The blackness was coming.

     The tree stood in the last fire of day. It was black against the last flames of the sun.

     It was there. The tree we call baobab.

     And then it was too dark to see anything.

This page 01/24/99