The Truth About Stories (2 page)

She was not a rich woman, but she spotted an advertisement in a local
newspaper that offered the services of a detective who would find lost or missing
relatives for $75. Flat rate. Satisfaction guaranteed.

My brother took a long time in telling this story, drawing out the
details, repeating the good parts, making me wait.

The detective, it turned out, was a retired railroad employee who knew how
to use a computer and a phone book. If Robert King was alive and if he hadn't
changed his name, he'd have a phone and an address. If he was dead, there should
be a death certificate floating around somewhere. The detective's name was Fred or
George, I don't remember, and he was a bulldog.

It took him two days. Robert King was alive and well, in Illinois.

Christopher stopped at this point in the story to let me catch my breath.
I was already making reservations to fly to Chicago, to rent a car, to find that
bar.

That's the good news, my brother told me.

One of the tricks to storytelling is, never to tell everything at once, to
make your audience wait, to keep everyone in suspense.

My father had married two more times. Christopher
had
all the details. Seven other children. Seven brothers and sisters we had never known
about. Barbara, Robert, Kelly.

What's the bad news? I wanted to know.

Oh, that, said my brother. The bad news is he's dead.

Evidently, just after the railroad detective found him, my father slipped
in a river, hit his head on a rock, and died in a hospital. My aunt, the one who had
hired the detective, went to Illinois for the funeral and to meet her brother's
other families for the first time.

You're going to like the next part, my brother told me.

I should warn you that my brother has a particular fondness for irony.

When my aunt got to the funeral, the oldest boy, Robert King Jr.,
evidently began a sentence with “I guess as the oldest boy …”
Whereupon my aunt told the family about Christopher and me.

They knew about each other. The two families. Were actually close, but
they had never heard about us. My father had never mentioned us. It was as though he had
disposed of us somewhere along the way, dropped us in a trash can by the side of the
road.

That's my family. These are their stories.

So what? I've heard worse stories. So have you. Open today's
paper and you'll find two or three that make mine sound like a Disney trailer.
Starvation. Land mines. Suicide bombings. Sectarian violence. Sexual abuse. Children
stacked up like cordwood in refugee camps around the globe. So what makes my
mother's sacrifice special? What makes my father's desertion unusual?

Absolutely nothing.

Matter of fact, the only people who have any interest in either of these
stories are my brother and me. I tell the stories not to play on your sympathies but to
suggest how stories can control our lives, for there is a part of me that has never been
able to move past these stories, a part of me that will be chained to these stories as
long as I live.

Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous. The Native novelist
Leslie Silko, in her book
Ceremony
, tells how evil came into the world. It was
witch people. Not Whites or Indians or Blacks or Asians or Hispanics. Witch people.
Witch people from all over the world, way back when, and they all came together for a
witches' conference. In a cave. Having a good time. A contest, actually. To see
who could come up with the scariest thing. Some of them brewed up potions in pots. Some
of them jumped in and out of animal skins. Some of them thought up charms and
spells.

It must have been fun to watch.

Until finally there was only one witch left who hadn't done
anything. No one knew where this witch came from or if the witch was male or female. And
all this witch had was a story.

Unfortunately the story this witch told was an awful thing full of fear
and slaughter, disease and blood. A story of murderous mischief. And when the telling
was done, the other witches quickly agreed that this witch had won the prize.

“Okay you win,” they said. “[B]ut
what you said just now — it isn't so funny. It doesn't sound so good.
We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back.
Call that story back.”
²

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be
called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

So you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to
watch out for the stories that you are told. But if I ever get to Pluto, that's
how I would like to begin. With a story. Maybe I'd tell the inhabitants of Pluto
one of the stories I know. Maybe they'd tell me one of theirs. It wouldn't
matter who went first. But which story? That's the real question. Personally,
I'd want to hear a creation story, a story that recounts how the world was formed,
how things came to be, for contained within creation stories are relationships that help
to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they
exist.

And, as luck would have it, I happen to know a few. But I have a
favourite. It's about a woman who fell from the sky. And it goes like this.

Back at the beginning of imagination, the world we know as earth was
nothing but water, while above the earth, somewhere in space, was a larger, more ancient
world. And on that world was a woman.

A crazy woman.

Well, she wasn't exactly crazy. She was more nosy. Curious. The kind
of curious that doesn't give up. The
kind that follows you
around. Now, we all know that being curious is healthy, but being
curious
can
get you into trouble.

Don't be too curious, the Birds told her.

Okay, she said, I won't.

But you know what? That's right. She kept on being curious.

One day while she was bathing in the river, she happened to look at her
feet and discovered that she had five toes on each foot. One big one and four smaller
ones. They had been there all along, of course, but now that the woman noticed them for
the first time, she wondered why she had five toes instead of three. Or eight. And she
wondered if more toes were better than fewer toes.

So she asked her Toes. Hey, she said, how come there are only five of
you?

You're being curious again, said her Toes.

Another day, the woman was walking through the forest and found a moose
relaxing in the shade by a lake.

Hello, said the Moose. Aren't you that nosy woman?

Yes, I am, said the woman, and what I want to know is why you are so much
larger than me.

That's easy, said the Moose, and he walked into the lake and
disappeared.

Don't you love cryptic stories? I certainly do.

Now before we go any further, we should give this woman a name so we
don't have to keep calling her “the woman.” How about Blanche?
Catherine? Thelma? Okay, I know expressing an opinion can be embarrassing. So
let's do it the way we always do it and let someone else
make
the decision for us. Someone we trust. Someone who will promise to lower taxes. Someone
like me.

I say we call her Charm. Don't worry. We can change it later on if
we want to.

So one day the woman we've decided to call Charm went looking for
something good to eat. She looked at the fish, but she was not in the mood for fish. She
looked at the rabbit, but she didn't feel like eating rabbit either.

I've got this craving, said Charm.

What kind of craving? said Fish.

I want to eat something, but I don't know what it is.

Maybe you're pregnant, said Rabbit. Whenever I get pregnant, I get
cravings.

Hmmmm, said Charm, maybe I am.

And you know what? She was.

What you need, Fish and Rabbit told Charm, is some Red Fern Foot.

Yes, said Charm, that sounds delicious. What is it?

It's a root, said Fish, and it only grows under the oldest trees.
And it's the perfect thing for pregnant humans.

Now, you're probably thinking that this is getting pretty silly,
what with chatty fish and friendly rabbits, with moose disappearing into lakes and
talking toes. And you're probably wondering how in the world I expect you to
believe any of this, given the fact that we live in a predominantly scientific,
capitalistic, Judeo-Christian world governed by physical laws, economic imperatives, and
spiritual precepts.

Is that what you're thinking?

It's okay. You won't hurt my feelings.

So Charm went looking for some Red Fern Foot. She
dug around this tree and she dug around that tree, but she couldn't find any.
Finally she came to the oldest tree in the forest and she began digging around its base.
By now she was very hungry, and she was very keen on some Red Fern Foot, so she really
got into the digging. And before long she had dug a rather deep hole.

Don't dig too deep, Badger told her.

Mind your own business, Charm told him.

Okay, said Badger, but don't blame me if you make a mistake.

You can probably guess what happened. That's right, Charm dug right
through to the other side of the world.

That's curious, said Charm, and she stuck her head into that hole so
she could get a better view.

That's very curious, she said again, and she stuck her head even
farther into the hole.

Sometimes when I tell this story to children, I slow it down and have
Charm stick her head into that hole by degrees. But most of you are adults and have
already figured out that Charm is going to stick her head into that hole so far that
she's either going to get stuck or she's going to fall through.

And sure enough, she fell through. Right through that hole and into the
sky.

Uh-oh, Charm thought to herself. That wasn't too smart.

But she couldn't do much about it now. And she began to tumble
through the sky, began to fall and fall and fall and fall. Spinning and turning,
floating through the vast expanse of space.

And off in the distance, just on the edge of sight,
was a small blue dot floating in the heavens. And as Charm tumbled down through the
black sky, the dot got bigger and bigger.

You've probably figured this part out, too, but just so
there's no question, this blue dot is the earth. Well, sort of. It's the
earth when it was young. When there was nothing but water. When it was simply a water
world.

And Charm was heading right for it.

In the meantime, on this water world, on earth, a bunch of water animals
were swimming and floating around and diving and talking about how much fun water
is.

Water, water, water, said the Ducks. There's nothing like water.

Yes, said the Muskrats, we certainly like being wet.

It's even better when you're under water, said the
Sunfish.

Try jumping into it, said the Dolphins. And just as the Dolphins said
this, they looked up into the sky.

Uh-oh, said the Dolphins, and everyone looked up in time to see Charm
falling toward them. And as she came around the moon, the water animals were suddenly
faced with four variables — mass, velocity, compression, and displacement —
and with two problems.

The Ducks, who have great eyesight, could see that Charm weighed in at
about 150 pounds. And the Beavers, who have a head for physics and math, knew that she
was coming in fast. Accelerating at thirty-two feet per second per second to be precise
(give or take a little for drag
and atmospheric friction). And the
Whales knew from many years of study that water does not compress, while the Dolphins
could tell anyone who asked that while it won't compress, water will displace.

Which brought the animals to the first of the two problems. If Charm hit
the water at full speed, it was going to create one very large tidal wave and ruin
everyone's day.

So quick as they could, all the water birds flew up and formed a net with
their bodies, and, as Charm came streaking down, the birds caught her, broke her fall,
and brought her gently to the surface of the water.

Just in time.

To deal with the second of the two problems. Where to put her.

They could just dump her in the water, but it didn't take a pelican
to see that Charm was not a water creature.

Can you swim? asked the Sharks.

Not very well, said Charm.

How about holding your breath for a long time? asked the Sea Horses.

Maybe for a minute or two, said Charm.

Floating? said the Seals. Can you float?

I don't know, said Charm. I never really tried floating.

So what are we going to do with you? said the Lobsters.

Hurry up, said the Birds, flapping their wings as hard as they could.

Perhaps you could put me on something large and flat, Charm told the water
animals.

Well, as it turns out, the only place in this water
world that was large and flat was the back of the Turtle.

Oh, okay, said Turtle. But if anyone else falls out of the sky,
she's on her own.

So the water animals put Charm on the back of the Turtle, and everyone was
happy. Well, at least for the next month or so. Until the animals noticed that Charm was
going to have a baby.

It's going to get a little crowded, said the Muskrats.

What are we going to do? said the Geese.

It wouldn't be so crowded, Charm told the water animals, if we had
some dry land.

Sure, agreed the water animals, even though they had no idea what dry land
was.

Charm looked over the side of the Turtle, down into the water, and then
she turned to the water animals.

Who's the best diver? she asked.

A contest! screamed the Ducks.

All right! shouted the Muskrats.