Indian Dick Rescues Honey Darling on The Fourth of July
From Chapter Forty-Three - A Builder's Tale.
From Chapter forty three of A Builder's Tale. Where Indian Dick Becomes the Hero.
"Hurrah America, the
land of the free, home of the brave, where we all wear white hats, and we are all exceptional. How could we not be? We are the myth. Americans are American Exceptionalism in all its good and bad, real and fraud reality.
This… That… is the fourth of July in Beauville. And you will see little of any racial melting pot here, where almost everyone’s DNA is Northern European. Except for the native folks. The Indian Dicks, and they don’t count. They are almost invisible, unnoticed, just part of it all...scenery...like the lake, the water, the forest… Invisible as nature… Until you notice. Until you smell the air and feel the breeze, until the rain falls on your face, until you see the buzzards soaring… And soon you will notice Indian Dick as he finds his place in American Exceptionalism....
Suddenly, as if on schedule, there is a slow gurgled cry and then a scream of “help” and then another, followed by young voices, shouting.
A little girl has followed the older children, climbing up to the silo’s top. An adventure, and a place to watch the fireworks. But it is too early and the children have become bored by Brown, every one of them climbing back down the ladder, leaving this small child behind because she was unwilling to go first.
As anyone who has climbed anything knows; it is much easier to climb up than down… The All-American ladder of success… or the ladder to the top of the silo. And now, the little girl is four steps down and frozen to the side… her small legs that were barely able to climb up, unable and unwilling to climb down. It was easier for her short arms to pull herself upwards than to support her on the way down. One of the older boys is climbing back toward her, but his coaxing is useless. The little girl might as well be welded to the ladder. She dares not turn, hugging the ladder tight, as those in attendance become overwhelmed by her whimpers and her louder cries of help.
Brown looks on, then shouts, and points to the crane. “Who will ride the bucket? Who Will ride the bucket?” Then he starts yelling at Ralph to drive up the hill, retrieve it and hurry, attach it to the crane, and drop the rainbow banner. “We need someone strong enough to pluck her from the side.”
Brown surveys the crowd. No one volunteers. His eyes travel left then right until he sees Dick standing in the shadows, chatting with a woman. “Dick, Dick.” Dick ignores him. Brown beckons with his hand his wide arm swinging, summoning Dick toward the podium. “Dick, Indian Dick,” shouts Brown… And then the eyes of the crowd turn ‘Who is Dick? An Indian?’ Liz gazes at Dick, turns and clutches his arm. And Dick is trapped.
The little girl is crying. Brown is shouting his name while gesturing, pointing towards the crane and bucket. “Dick, Dick.” But Dick is not going to ride the bucket. He turns to Liz, the hottie, who says, “Do it, you can do it,” as she squeezes his bicep.
“It will take too long to dump the banner.”
She squeezes his arm more. There is a moment, but sex is powerful, plus Dick cares. A momentary pause and then he shouts to Brown. “Ok… I’ll get her!”
He begins to walk and then he is running to the ladder, taking off his shirt as he runs, his broad back exposed to the twilight. And then Indian Dick, on the fourth of the fucking July, begins to climb to save the white man, and he is not going to wait on Brown and the crane either.
Dick is climbing. The crowd is watching. The anthropologist Bloom is watching, the Michagumee campers watch, and also Bloom's children who are yelling to their friends, “That’s the Indian…” But Dick hears none of this as he departs the shadows, muscles flexing, legs stretched, a coiled machine hurrying upwards toward the little girl who now lets go with one hand as she reaches for Dick
“No, No,” says Dick, “No honey,” soft and calm to counter the crowd’s excitement. “No honey. Hold on. Both hands. I’m coming.”
And Dick might be running up the silo now, left foot, then right, his calves bulging, thighs taut, his biceps flexing. His broad back is shiny mahogany, his muscles ripple, defined by the shadowed twilight, Sweat shimmers on his shoulders. He gleams against the darkening sky.
And no one has thought to halt the fireworks, and these commence on schedule as day turns to night, everything computerized, set to fire in crescendoed bright arrays. White and red, blue and magenta, blossoms fill the sky, smoke hovers on the water and the heavens turn hot with color. Fireworks boom, their explosions rising into the sky, as they flare and flash with powdered thunder, as smoke begins to rise and travel inland, upwards, towards the little girl who is petrified and frightened by the noise and flash, in shock, out of her mind with fear, waiting for Dick’s traveling time… seconds that seem like hours.
Some of the crowd looks toward the lake, toward the purples and bright whites, the emerald green embers that fall like small dying stars, but most are intent on Dick and the little girl, small against the sky’s reflected light.
“Almost there, almost there... hold tight.”
And then it happens, the little girl lets go with one hand and reaches for Dick. Dick shouts “No, No.” The sky turns bright white then deep blue and then deep rose red as the little girl slips and falls.
A collective gasp rises from the crowd, and in this instant the Indian Dick that was All State, the Indian Dick who has jumped through hoops with the Indian Charlies, the Indian Dick who could have been an acrobat stretches out and catches the child as the tiny girl falls by. Dick holding on with his right hand and arm, dangling from the ladder, now seventy feet up the silo, in shadow and in light. Everyone is entranced and fearful watching Indian Dick as King Kong, catching the child and throwing her Fay Wray style across his shoulder and then climbing down the silo’s side beneath the fireworks, welcomed back to earth by cannon booms and clapping… Applause for Indian Dick, who is not in the shadows now.
Photo is of a Chippewa Chief Late 19th century