Number Nine: Chapter 12

DEGANAWIDA’S DRAGONS


FADE IN:

EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – ARIEL VIEW – DAY

COWGIRL IN THE SAND by Neil Young plays in the foreground as Jake and Ruby drive.

Hello cowgirl in the sand
Is this place at your command?
Can I stay here for a while?
Can I see your sweet, sweet smile?

Jake and Ruby pull up at a Last Chance Gas Station. Ruby makes a call from a pay phone, while Jake fills her up.

NUMBER NINE plays in the background.

Jake and Ruby continue driving east in the desert sun.

Hello Ruby in the dust
Has your band begun to rust?
After all the sins we had
I was thinking that we’d turn back…

CLOSE UP of Jake and Ruby singing along.

Old enough now to change your name
When so many love you, is it the same?
It’s the woman in you that makes you want to play this game…

FADE to an elder Indian, cross-legged in the open desert, praying. This is WHITE WOLF, Jake’s mentor and spirit guide.

FADE OUT COWGIRL. FADE IN CORTEZ THE KILLER (Neil Young).

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
In that palace in the sun…



White Wolf smiled at his favorite student for a long while before they exchanged the embrace of a father and a son. He was not his father. His father was a drunken, gambling, mostly white man, who left him and his mother when he was almost too small to remember. His mother would say he was a good man whose demons were stronger than he was. His mother passed away before Jake left the reservation. It was one of the reasons he left. She died of a white man’s disease born of drinking water poisoned by the nuclear waste buried in Navaho soil. The doctors called it inoperable cancer but he called it the white man’s curse. He would have anything for her. He would have given his life. He cared for her in her dying days. He prayed at first for her recovery and then for the end of her suffering. Before she sang her death song she summoned White Wolf and asked to take care of her son even though she already knew he would. White Wolf filled the space that his father left.

“How long has it been? It seems like yesterday,” said the old man.

“It was yesterday,” replied Jake, always the coyote.

“I see you brought a gift,” said White Wolf, casting a lecherous eye on Ruby, sending a chill straight through her until he gave the joke away with a laugh.

“She has spirit,” he said, “for a white woman.”

He turned and walked to the shade of a canopy, a sheet of canvas tied to his trailer in a desolate corner of Third Mesa. It seemed to Jake a lonely place until the old man taught him to see without his senses. It was a place of infinite magic if one had the eyes to see.

White Wolf sat at an old wooden table, pouring sage tea as they joined him.

“The old woman is gone to town,” he said. “I told her we needed provisions.”

Ruby was perplexed. She understood that this was a very old, wise and powerful spirit. She understood the bond between him and Jake. She did not understand why Jake had not spoken of him. She did not understand that the silence between them spoke more of their bond than words.

The old man was sizing her up and Ruby felt it to her bones. When he spoke, she listened as if the balance of all creation hung on his word. Perhaps it did. She was out of her element – a lifetime removed from city lights, jazz clubs, rock and roll, convenience stores and fast food restaurants. Still, there was something comforting in the desert landscape, the solitary mountains and red rock formations, the endless waves of sand and sage rolling with the winds of change. It freed her mind to expand and wander.

She imagined survival in this desolate land, splitting cacti for water, hunting rabbits with stones, eating flowers and finding herbal remedies. She imagined herself the lizard, emerging from shadow to snare a beetle. She imagined herself the hawk, surveying her territory and sounding a warning for human invaders. She imagined herself the coyote, hunting rabbits and field mice, gliding without effort over a floor of sand and stone.

“The coyote is the most adaptable of animals,” said White Wolf.

She looked at the old man, rambling on about the weather, the oppressive heat, heat that drove scorpions and rattlesnakes to seek refuge indoors, plants that blocked their path, and she understood that the spoken word was not the message. She looked at Jake, nodding and sipping tea, and she understood the layers of communication that did not depend on spoken words.

She felt the desert pulling at her soul, sucking the essence of her being into its embrace and becoming a part of her as she became a part of the desert. She saw in their faces that the old man and the young mestizo (that was the word they used to describe his mixed bloodline), her dark skinned lover and guardian spirit, understood the transformation that was taking hold of her and approved.

Ruby was becoming someone else. No, she was discovering another self. She was learning to see the world with new eyes, silent eyes, eyes of the heart and soul. She was learning not to question what she did not understand. She was learning to trust the goodness of spirit, the warmth of kindness, and mindset of acceptance.

“There is only today,” she told herself. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now: Jake Jones, Ruby Daulton and their teacher, White Wolf of Third Mesa.

“There are no white wolves in the desert,” she thought.

The white wolf is a native of the northern woods, where the cold winds blow pure and clean. Like the white buffalo, it is a rare being, rare even in the north. In the desert, it does not exist.

“White Wolf does not belong,” she thought.

When he was a child, White Wolf combined a gentle touch with a firm hand. He was strong in mind and body, certain of his way, yet always sensitive to the needs of those weaker and less certain. He was always willing to help the outcast, the unfortunate, the sick and needy. He was not of the world to which he was born. For these reasons, he was given the name of White Wolf and it was prophesied he would become a great teacher to the children of the desert.

Tall Woman, his wife who was short in stature, returned to give Jake and Ruby a warm welcome before she withdrew to prepare a meal worthy of their guests.

When night fell and they were fed and seated comfortably by the fire, the old man told the story of Deganawida’s Three Dragons. Deganawida was the great Iroquois prophet and founder of the Six Nations of the northeast.

“He was a man of great wisdom,” White Wolf proclaimed. “He spoke of the three dragons only days before he left his people for the other world. He spoke at this time so the people would never forget, so they would pass his words to the next generation and so on, so they would feel his words in their souls.”

Jake poured fresh tea as White Wolf closed his eyes, inviting the spirits to refresh his vision, though he had told the story a thousand times before.

“One day there appeared a great white dragon. Deganawida did not say where this dragon came from. It did not come from the north for that is where the red dragon came to do battle with the white dragon. It did not come from the south for that is where the black dragon appeared and changed into a white woman, who empowered an Iroquois boy to defeat both the red and white dragons. It did not come from the east for that is where Deganawida himself appeared in the form of a blinding light that frightened all the dragons into submission. So we surmise that the white dragon came from the west, where the Cherokee say all souls go to die.”

The four of them sipped their tea and gazed into the fire where the flames danced to the tale of the dragons. The desert wind rose up and swept around them as the barren earth came alive in a spirit of awakening. To each of them it sang a different song, told a different story and delivered a different message.

“What does it mean?” said Ruby at length.

Tall Woman exploded in gales of laughter, nearly spilling her tea as the others joined in her good humor.

“The white dragon should have come from the north,” said the old woman.

“The white man should have come from the east but that is where Deganawida appears,” said the old man.

“The red dragon should have come from the south. It is the color of fire, the heart and the blood pumping through our veins,” said Jake. “It belongs to the south, the birthing place where all life emerges.”

“The black dragon,” said Tall Woman, “changes into a white woman. She should have been an Indian. The light of a new beginning should have come from the west, not the east.”

“Nothing in Deganawida’s story makes sense,” said White Wolf. “I believe he was teaching his people to see the world with new eyes.”

“How does the story end?” pressed Ruby.

“The native people survive by taking in the good parts of the dragons that threatened them with destruction,” said White Wolf.

Ruby wanted to ask what happened to the dragons but she found her mind drifting away. Jake guided her to a bed of buffalo hide and furs in the corner of the room where they laid in each other’s arms and set their minds free to wander.

It was time to let go the waking world. It was time to dream.


Many times I’ve been alone
And many times I’ve cried
Any way you’ll never know
The many ways I’ve tried

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don’t leave waiting here
Lead me to your door…