Novel Yancy

Fire Walker

When they reached the camp, Yancy became more quiet. He looked straight in front of him. He imagined what the others were thinking. The children who he used to play with must have thought that he had been killed in the fire.





“Yancy!” a cry came from the crowd that was gathering as they got closer to their home. Yancy gave them no response. He knew that they were unable to see his face through the cloth that veiled it, but he did not want recognition.





“Yancy,” the child yelled again. He did not respond.





“Yancy,” Berry Blossom spoke calm and angelic as she placed his belongings on the dirt floor. “This is your family, and they have been worried about you. You do not have to do anything that is not in your own time. They will still be here when you need them.”





Yancy felt foolish, but he was not ready yet. He had to find his own way out of this war that he fought inside his own head. He knew that this was his family. “How will I answer questions from my friends and family? I do not know the answers himself.” he thought.





Long seconds turned into minutes. Minutes turned into hours. Hours into days. Then days to weeks. Then Yancy walked out through the yard. He decided to gather berries by the river's bank.





He looked down at his reflection in the water. There he only saw the cloth that protected his face from the sun. Yancy wanted to see his own face. The sun had gone down, and he decided to remove the cloth. There he gazed on a nearly healed face. There were no oozing, and all the raw scars were all that was left of the house fire.


Yancy looked at himself, “You are strong. You have the spirit of the turtle to guide you through life.” It must have been his imagination, but the reflection was not scared. The skin in the water's image had no blemish. Then it spoke to him. “Scars are only skin deep. Courage to be who the Great Spirit created you to be, is a path beyond any flaws in the skin. You have to use the internal gifts he gave to work.”





He turned and walked back toward his tent. He walked without the protective cloth. The other members of the tribe went on about their work as they normally do. Then he realized that their were children on down the stream. He decided to walk to them.





They took notice. Each child slowly begin to ask questions.





“Do the scars hurt.” One asks.





“It used to hurt so bad that I could not speak. The white doctors gave me liquid that made me sleep.”





“Why did one hand get burned and the other was not?” Another asks.





“I am not sure. I think that I may have been laying on one. My body probably protected it from the flames.” He looked down at his arm, and he realized that he had asked his own self the same question. How could he have one arm that appeared the same as it had before the fire.





Then one little girl walked up and touched his face. She was around the age of his sister when the fire took her life. Her brown eyes were without judgment. They seemed to radiate with concern that Yancy was alone. “Don't you miss your mom?” She was stared into his lash-less eyes as if his face was no different than her own reflection in the river.





Yancy smiled with tears still in his eyes. “I do miss my mom, but when I sleep, I feel her close to me. You look like my little sister.” He added. “She burned in the house with my mom and dad.”





She reached up and help his hand. “Your mom needed her with them, but can I be your little sister? I have no brothers. I had one, but he died of a bloody cough last winter.”





He knew that she gave him a reason to be the best big brother that he can be.





Majag saw that Yancy had problems understanding why the white-man rejected him, but he was sure that with patience Yancy would open up. He did not want to press the subject before the boy was ready. The hospital said that Yancy would be having his up and down emotional bouts.





One day Majag and Yancy sat together, and watched the tribe children play. The two sat in the same place that Yancy had listened to Majag tell his stories before the fire, Yancy remembers how close he had always been to his uncle. He sighed and began to talk.





“Majag,” Yancy began, “Why did the people of the town want to kill my family? My sister was only a baby, and she could do no harm to anyone.”





“I think that people fear what is different. Perhaps the white-man's pride fears that their blood line will be tarnished by marring an Indian. There is no changing things like that.” Uncle Majag looked down while he remembered his sister Cheona.





“I will find those who killed my mother and father.” Yancy's eyes filled with anger. “I think that they burned my home. So I will burn their town.” His face turned with the bitter emotion that he felt. Yancy's body tightened with noticeable tension.





Majag reached over and patted the child on his back. “Think about what you are saying child. Fire will burn the buildings and some of the people, but no matter where you go you will meet more people who believe as those that burned down your family.”





Yancy looked at his scars. He knew that his uncle was right. “Then I will become a law man. I will spend the rest of my days looking for the murders who did this to me. I will see them hanged.”





Majag smiles, “You are much like George. Your father would be proud that you chose to do the same job in life as he had chose to do.”





“Cheona is always guiding you if you make the right choices. She will protect you in your quest.” Majag continued.





“Thank you Uncle Majag. I know you miss them too.”





Majag pulled a chain out of his shirt. “I found this when they pulled you from the fire. I think that it may lead you to who started the fire. One of them dropped it.”





“The W may be part of a name.” Yancy replied. “ I feel that I am going to find the men who changed my life and took my family from me.” He looked at the letter for a long time. The letter was the only clue that he had to what had happened. It would someday give him the answers that he needed.





“Yancy, you were saved from the fire for a purpose. The Great Spirit has found favor in you. He has given you strength to continue in the foot steps of your fathers. The scars are to remind you that there is a reason that you lived.”





Yancy asks Majag to tell him a story about his father and mother. As Majag began to speak. The children ran and sat in a circle around Majag as they had months earlier before the he had lost his sister to the fire. Yancey felt like he did when his mother brought him to visit the tribe. For that moment Yancy was back in a familiar place listening to his uncle telling stories.





“Your mother was only a girl of about seventeen when Father sent her to live with George. George was hunting the hills for a couple of horse thieves when he saw Rising Sun beneath a great bear. George ran toward the animal, but the bare ignored his advance. Because he did not want to alert the outlaws, he did not want to shoot off his gun. Then he takes his hunting knife in his hand. He jumps onto of the bear as his giant paw was about to fall its fatal time. With the spirit of our ancestors, he wrapped his arm around the bear's head. When the animal looked upward, your dad plunged the blade into it's eye. The bear fell on to Rising Son who was already covered with blood. George pulls the bare off Rising Sun, pulls his favorite knife from its eye socket.”





“What happened?” Yancy asked.





“Rising Sun went to the river and washed both his own and the bear's blood off into the water. He received minor cuts. Your grandfather was so glad to be allowed live that he wanted to reward your father. The two men rode into this tribe. George noticed Chenoa. She was beautiful. She was tending the evening meal.





She was one of the most important women of the tribe. She had not been with man, and many brave had made an offer to make her their wife. There were only three women who had no husband. One was in her thirties. The braves felt that she was too old to have many children. The other was a widow with three children. No brave wants another's children. So Chenoa was priceless to Rising Sun. When he noticed that she was pleasant to George's eyes, he offered her to him as a wife.





Chenoa made him a good wife, and she gave him three beautiful children.”





Yancy and the children had enjoyed the story. Majag enjoyed telling it. He had not told a story since he had spent the time in the hospital. He was happy that his first in some time was about his sister whom he missed so much.”





As the children dispersed, they all came over to Yancy. They all wanted to see his burns, and to hear the story of how he got them.





Majag nodded that it was ok to tell the story. Majag looked at the boy. He was so happy to see the boy healing in his inner wounds as well as the burned flesh. The two of them sit together just listening to nature and watching the fireflies.





Yancy began to tell his story. “My mother used to bring me, my sister, and brother to this very place to listen to Majag tell his stories. I never thought that I would be telling you such a sad story as I am about to tell you.





Mother came in to our bed room. She was so kind. After she read the story of Jonah from the Bible and told us of the Great chief Bright Feather, she kissed us good night. She stopped at the door. She told us again that she loved us. This was not the normal thing. She always told us that she loved us, but she never took the time to look back at us and say it again.





Then I woke up to the house being filled with smoke. It felt like I could not breath. I was so afraid when I opened my bedroom door. This is how I got this scar.” He put out his hand so that the children could see the deep circular burn in the palm of his right hand. The burn was one that was hard to heal due to where it was.





“The door knob was so hot that it burned me. I tried to get to my parents and sister, but the smoke took me down. During my smoke sleep, I was visited by the spirit of Bright Feather. He took me to the land after death. There I saw bright light and many relatives that had crossed over. He told me that I could not live there, and that the screams of my family would soon be cries of joy. He said that they would live without scar or pain. Father and Mother would be waiting for me. He told me that I was not going to cross over from the fire.





Then the light disappeared. I woke two weeks later at the hospital. When the nurse told me that I had lost my family, I realized that I now have the rest of my life to find those who sent my family to the other side. I am visited by Bright Feather from time to time in my sleep.”





The children were all in awe of the story, and Yancy removed his shirt to all the others to see the extent of his burns. His back that should have been touched by the sun. It should have had a smooth dark color, but now his back was not one of a normal child. There were white skin that had different shapes. There were black patches that the fire attacked even deeper. Other areas had not healed yet. They looked bloody and oozing liquid.





The children did not react the way that Yancy had thought that they would. Each child was impressed that young Yancy survived the flames.





One child said, “ I wish that I was that brave. Can we call you Fire Walker?”





Yancy was known to his tribe as Fire Walker from then on.

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