Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2013 21:33:44 -0500
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Wayward Island 20

Wayward Island 20
How Summer Solstice was celebrated
By Jake Preston

      Reader restrictions: no minors, no readers who are offended by explicit
descriptions of gay sexuality. The story as a whole is a psychological study of gay
athletic hunks who love nerds, and the nerds who love them in return. The story
also deals with the problems faced by gay guys who live in rural areas. If these
themes don't interest you, there are many other great "nifty" stories to choose
from. Send comments and suggestions to jemtling@gmail.com. Jake will respond
to all sincere correspondents.

      Donations to Nifty keep juices flowing and fires burning. Click
"donations" at the Gay Male Stories headnote.

      *   *   *   *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

      Benzion and Sarah Haiam flew to Duluth from New York and stayed at
my cabin during the last two weeks of June. Red Feather and Chaim borrowed my
car to pick up Chaim's folks in Duluth. In deference to his father, Chaim wore his
yarmulke during their visit. The Haiams and Red Feather visited sights in Duluth,
and spent a night at Gary's home. When they got to Lake Ashawa, they asked me
where they could rent a car. I told them that they could use mine. I borrowed
Tom's truck for the week. Benzion was a butcher in Brooklyn. We were
determined that the Haiams wouldn't have to spend their hard-earned money in
the North Country. Their son was part of our clan.

      Chaim and Red Feather guided them to local sights: the underground iron
ore mine in Soudan, the open pit mine in Hibbing, the Bob Dylan center, and the
International Wolf Center in Ely, the Ashawa River waterfalls. Olaf gave them a
tour of the Bear Sanctuary in Orr. I spent time with them boating and canoeing on
the lake. Chaim showed off his water-skiing, a talent he acquired three weeks
earlier when we sponsored an ARCH Triangle beach party that included water-ski
lessons. One afternoon, we picked blueberries in a marsh, and harvested enough
for three blueberry pies. Red Feather and I planned North Country meals: venison
stew, venison steak, venison hamburgers, wild duck, fried walleyes and
Northerns, wild rice, "Swedish" spring potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce,
whatever we could think of. It was too early in the summer for wild raspberries
and strawberries, but we had homemade jams on the breakfast table.

      A mother knows intuitively if she has a gay son. Maybe that's not always
true, but it applied to Sarah Haiam. During her second night in the cabin (where
the Haiams slept in my bedroom), she made a trip to the bathroom and heard
Chaim and Red Feather making love in the loft. A groan could be heard from the
depth of a soul: it could have been either her son or Red Feather; afterward, the
playful chatter of two youthful voices in the intimacy of aprčs-sexe. Always alert
to the timbre of her son in the silence of the cabin, she realized that he and Red
Feather made love every night. One morning when she collected laundry from the
bedroom and the loft, she was neither surprised nor shocked to see that her son
shared a double bed with Red Feather. Acting on an impulse that she regretted at
once, she opened a dresser drawer and found a lube-tube, one of Jake's sex toys (a
vibrator), a package of condoms, and a cellophane-wrapped bottle of poppers
labeled Iron Horse, whose purpose was unknown to her. She realized that
curiosity had brought her an uncanny step too far into the private affairs of two
lovers, one of whom happened to be her son. She closed the drawer quietly, and
went back to tending the laundry. The evidence was conclusive, but it only
confirmed what she already knew by maternal instinct. She vowed to support her
son in the way of life that God had ordained for him. What mattered to Sarah was
that Chaim had friends who were kind, and a boyfriend who made him happy. She
worried about Benzion, but was glad for Chaim.

      Chaim grew up as a lonely boy in Brooklyn. The larger the school, the
lonelier he got. In grade school he was inexplicably different from other students.
In middle school he felt twinges of confused attraction to boys whose friendship
seemed unattainable. In high school he was a loner, confirmed in the belief that he
alone, of all the boys in his school, was sexually attracted to other boys. In the
locker room, especially, Chaim had to act straight while casting furtive glances at
the naked bodies of other boys. "What are YOU lookin' at?" once he heard a
varsity athlete call out. As it turned out, the remark was addressed to another boy,
but still, he thought he would die. His only friend was Leah Miller, a fellow violin
student. He and Leah often exchanged confidences, but the secret of his sexuality
was not among them. His classmates assumed that Leah was his girlfriend. No
one suspected that he was gay, except for his Mom. It was something of a
paradox: life in high school might have been less miserable, or at least less
exhausting, had his classmates known that he was gay. Even so, Chaim found
comfort in violin and piano lessons, and developed a natural talent that got him a
scholarship with the Music Conservatory at Oberlin College.

      As a freshman at Oberlin College, Chaim had male friends for the first
time. Some were openly gay; others, gay-friendly. For some, an imperceptible
boundary failed to distinguish between gay and gay-friendly. No matter: for his
friends, music came first, and whatever social life they had was built around
music lessons and concerts, and art exhibits and theater shows that called for
musical accompaniment. For Chaim, life after high school was happy for the first
time.

      Late in March, the dorm counselor asked Chaim if he would share his
room with a prospective new student who was visiting from Minnesota. When he
met Red Feather, he experienced the sensation of gaydar for first time. He fell in
love at first sight. The robust masculinity of Red Feather was a blip on the gaydar
screen that made him irresistible to Chaim. Red Feather's countenance, so
unmistakably Native American, was matched by Chaim's intense Israeli gaze,
irresistible to Red Feather. No one in Chaim's experience looked quite like Red
Feather, yet his profile and features formed a composite of all the unattainable
boys he had desired in school.

      Red Feather had many questions for Chaim about Oberlin College life, the
Music Conservatory, and life in New York City. "I feel like this is my first time
off the Res, even though I've spent most of the last six months at Lake Ashawa,"
Red Feather said. Chaim had questions about the Lake Country, and about Red
Feather's life as an Ojibwe. Each lad seemed exotic to the other. Mother Nature
took care of the rest. Differences attract. Extravagant differences attract
extravagantly. Lust, friendship, and lust caught them at once in a rush, as if
Nature had set out to prove, by scientific demonstration, that free will is just a
human illusion.

      Red Feather turned his gaze to Chaim's collection of books, especially his
Tanakh, a large, blue-covered volume with white letters. It had Hebrew on the left
page, and facing English translations on the right. He was a student of the Ojibwe
language, he said, but he had to make his own facing translations in notebooks,
which he hoped he could share with Chaim when he started college at Oberlin in
the Fall. Chaim expressed interest in this multicultural exchange. "If we decide to
become lovers," Red Feather said, "I'll teach you Ojibwe if you teach me how to
read the Tanakh in Hebrew." Red Feather drew some Ojibwe symbols, explained
their meaning, and showed how they could be joined together as syllables to make
words and phrases. "Ojibwe is an agglutinative language. Some phrases and
sentences look more like long words. But it's not as agglutinative as some other
Indian languages, like Aleut." Chaim wrote the first verse of Genesis, "In the
beginning..." in Hebrew from right to left. Whenever a Hebrew letter appeared
for the first time, he gave its phonetic and semantic meanings. "The letters have
numerical meanings, too, what they call gematics," he said. Sitting side by side at
Chaim's desk, theirs was a linguistic courtship, imbued with rising levels of
testosterone that could not long be suppressed. Each foray into linguistic exotica
was felt as a new temptation of the flesh.

      Red Feather went down the corridor to the showers. When he returned,
wrapped in a towel folded over to advantage his thighs, he showed no inclination
to get dressed. The dorm room had two single beds, but Red Feather said there
was room in one bed for both of them, "if that's all right with you, Chaim." He
lay on the bed closest to Chaim's desk-chair. Chaim moved to the bed, and sat
beside him. He couldn't take his eyes off Red Feather, who took Chaim's hand,
and guided it to his chest. Chaim's hand roamed Red Feather's torso. Terrycloth
materiality bore witness to Red Feather's throbbing erection. Red Feather held his
hand at the back of Chaim's neck, and pulled him close. For the first time in his
life, Chaim pressed his lips to another man's lips. Red Feather ran his fingers
through Chaim's hair. His delicate touch to the scalp was experienced by Chaim
as an electrically erotic jolt that transformed his tentative press of the lips to a
passionate kiss. His tongue thrust into Red Feather's mouth.

      Red Feather responded with just enough tongue-action to let Chaim know
that his kiss was welcome, but he remained passive enough to let Chaim control
the action. Their eyes met, ablaze with longing. Chaim watched while Red
Feather untied the knot that bound the towel around his midsection. Chaim slid a
hand beneath the towel. It roamed from thigh to pubes. Red Feather's cock
throbbed over Chaim's knuckles. Chaim kissed Red Feather again. His hand
cupped Red Feather's scrotum. His fingers found the contours of Red Feather's
testicles. Ref Feather returned Chaim's kisses with passion. His cock throbbed
rigid, while his body turned to putty in Chaim's hands. With one hand on each
end of the towel, Chaim drew it apart theatrically, like a curtain that disclosed the
glory of Red Feather, the chief object of Chaim's desire.

      A boy with a Hanukkah dreidel couldn't have been more excited. Red
Feather's shaft was bigger and thicker than expected, several shades darker than
his light brown body, veiny-purpled, nested in an unruly mass of pubic hair, and
dripping with pre-cum. Red Feather gasped joyfully and his cock throbbed when
Chaim fingered it and wrapped a hand around it. Chaim slid a finger over Red
Feather's pisshole and brought it to his lips for a taste of pre-cum. He wet his
finger again and slid it over the mass of sensitive skin below Red Feather's glans.
"Ooooo, don't do that, Chaim. You'll make me cum," Red Feather whispered.
Chaim felt a brand new thrill in the power to administer pleasure to Red Feather's
body.

      "Do you like this?" Chaim asked.

      "It's wonderful," Red Feather said. "My body is yours, Chaim." Red
Feather thought about Drew Fox, Henry Hasek's best friend and hockey-mate:
how Drew had surrendered his body so completely to Göran Svenson on
Valentine's Day. Only close friends knew about this, and not from Göran. Drew
talked about it one evening, in praise of Göran's talent as a lover.

      In his digital manipulation, Chaim found Red Feather's foreskin. In had
retracted to near-imperceptibility around his turgid shaft, but Chaim felt a subtle
slide of skin, and eased it forward. Red Feather showed him how to raise the
foreskin over his glans. "I've never seen foreskin before," Chaim whispered. He
bent down and sucked Red Feather's glans in his mouth, and sought out the
foreskin with his tongue. Red Feather pulled him off. "Don't do that just yet,
Chaim," he said. "I'm so horny, you'll make me cum if you do that."

      Chaim flipped Red Feather over. As Red Feather complied, he looked
over his shoulder at Chaim with a sly smile and eyes flashing lust, happy to see
that his inexperienced new friend was bold enough to take charge. Chaim ran his
hands over Red Feather's backside from shoulders to thighs, and worked his way
to curvaceous mounds and a cleft that formed an inviting trail to his portal. Red
Feather spread his legs to give access. He arched when Chaim stroked the hairs in
his cleft and ran a finger down to the portal. He arched a bit more when Chaim
kissed his ass-cheeks, and ran his tongue up and down the cleft, probing the
mystery of Red Feather, who sighed. Red Feather let Chaim linger over his
backside for as long as he needed. Finally he said: "It's time you got naked,
Chaim. I want to feel the weight of your body over mine."

      In less than a minute, Chaim lay over Red Feather, who helped him
arrange his midsection so his cock nestled in the cleft that had attracted his
attention earlier. "Ahhh, that's it," Red Feather whispered. "Your body feels so
good, Chaim. Your cock, too. I was hoping we could do this." Chaim kissed Red
Feather's shoulders, and tongued his ears and the back and sides of his neck. Red
Feather turned his face toward him for a kiss. Chaim frotted Red Feather's cleft
with his cock. "I think we should love orally for now," Red Feather said, "but
when we decide to fuck, I want you to be my top, just like this."

      For Red Feather this was a moment of jouissance. The impulse was
sudden, but not without forethought. Previously, he thought of himself as a
confirmed top. He certainly was with me. Now he wanted to be like Drew. He
wanted to experience the same satisfaction that Drew had with Göran-not just a
one-time fuck, but a giving relationship. As for Chaim, well, the cognitive
processing of Red Feather's message took time. To state it in the vernacular: he
couldn't believe his ears. From boyhood he had been conditioned to defer to the
wishes of others, not in matters of sex, in which he was virginal, but in all other
things. Now here he was, on his first night of love with an awesome boyfriend
who wanted him for who he was, and wanted to put him first. Lost in the ocean of
Red Feather, he couldn't find words. He kissed Red Feather's shoulder, and in his
own moment of jouissance, gave him a hickey that showed up later as an
unmistakable mark of love from a boyfriend who had mounted his backside.

      Not without an effort of the will, Red Feather resisted the temptation to
invite Chaim into his love-canal: better to establish a romantic relationship first,
Red Feather thought. He wanted Chaim to have something new to look forward
to. "Are you all right with this?" Red Feather asked. Chaim was silent. Red
Feather realized that he needed to be more explicit. "Is it OK with you if we wait
until later for anal sex, but when we do, you'll be my top?"

      "I think I'm gonna love you for a long, long time," Chaim said.

      "Love will abide. Take things in stride," Red Feather said. He flipped and
sidled into a 69 with Chaim. Their mutual fellatio alternated between loving
exploration, and a passionate desire to fire a volcanic eruption in the other. They
moaned in harmony when they filled one another's mouth with jizz. They shared
a musky blend in passionate kisses while Chaim lay sprawled over Red Feather's
body. Their cocks fought a sword-fight at first, but gradually melted into a
common pool of lubricious penile emission.

      Just after, in Red Feather's embrace, Chaim wept softly. He couldn't stop
weeping. "No one has ever loved me before," Chaim whispered to Red Feather.

      "Shhhh! Let's sleep now," Red Feather said. "It's time for sleep now."
They didn't sleep long, and when they awoke, they found that they had other
debts owed Nature, whose demands are not met without variety and physical
exertion; but we've seen enough. For the rest of the night, give the college boys
their privacy.

      Chaim and Red Feather adopted Linda Ronstadt's "Long, Long Time" as
their song, and played it often at the beginning of love-making. Their friendship
deepened when Red Feather chose Chaim to be his companion to the Cleveland
Orchestra (twice), and to the Playhouse to see Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. For
them it was like a double date with me and Mrs. Ravitch. Red Feather wished that
he could be virginal for Chaim, but how could he change a history that had
already passed? Even so, he thought philosophically, if it weren't for self-
confidence, Jake Preston best gift to him, perhaps he and Chaim would never
have found each other as lovers. Who could have foreseen the Ojibwe ritual of
virgin-restoration, or the festive way in which he, Chaim, and Olaf gave up their
cherries in a threesome?

      These memories and thoughts came to Chaim as the time approached-
and he knew it must-when he would reveal his gay identity to his parents. He
wasn't worried about Mom. Maybe she already knew. Would Dad be terribly
disappointed? He wondered. Benzion Haiam worked as a kosher butcher in a
male-dominated working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, where politics was
liberal but religion was orthodox, and Chaim bore the burden of being their only
child.

      In the North Country, friends came and went as they pleased, usually
unannounced, at my cabin, Ben Hasek's cabin, the farm, and the Wayward Island
lodge. Sarah noted with interest that half of them were Ojibwe, and all were men,
except for Mrs. Ravitch. "I guess you could say we're a clan," Sam Black Bear
said when the Haiams encountered him during a hike in the woods near the Hasek
cabin. He invited them in for coffee. They assumed that the cabin belonged to
Sam, and were surprised when he introduced them to Ben Hasek, "the other Ben,"
as the cabin's owner. Notwithstanding their Jewish appearance and Benzion's and
Chaim's yarmulkes, no one in the "clan" cracked jokes about Jews. Benzion
noticed that. No one cracked jokes about gays, as was customary in blue-collar
Brooklyn.

       Next morning, Sam and Black Bear invited themselves to my cabin for
breakfast with Red Feather and the Haiaim family. They had a reason. They
invited the Haiams to the powwow on June 21, "our first Summer Solstice
powwow," Sam Black Bear said.  "Be sure to get there by ten," Ben Hasek said:
"Otherwise you'll miss the wedding."

      "Our wedding," Sam Black Bear explained.

      "I didn't know gay marriage was legal in Minnesota," Benzion said. He
tried to conceal is surprise.

      "It's not," Sam Black Bear said. "But it's legal in the Ojibwe Nation. Dark
Eagle and Jake Two Spirits found three historical precedents, so he and Billy
White Cloud will perform an Ojibwe ceremony."

      "Is there anyone in the Lake Country who isn't gay?" Mr. Haiam asked.
He meant it as gentle humor. Chaim seized the moment.

      "Dad," he said, "and Mom, you should know that Red Feather and I are
just like Ben Hasek and Sam Black Bear. We've been lovers ever since we met at
Oberlin."

      Benzion looked shocked. He gave Chaim a stern look of paternal
disapproval. He looked darkly at Red Feather. He started to speak, but Sarah
Haiam interrupted: "Now, Ben, if it weren't for Red Feather Preston (she used his
full name), it would have been someone else. Just be glad our son has found
someone we can trust."

      The tension died down. Chaim and Red Feather told the story of the
Ojibwe Monument, which would make its first public appearance at the Summer
Solstice powwow. They talked about how they went to the Cleveland Orchestra
and Playhouse Square with Jake Preston and Mrs. Ravitch. They talked about how
they met at Oberlin, omitting the romantic details. Benzion wondered if there was
anything he could do about his son. "All you need to do is accept him, and
support him, and be there for him," Sarah Haiam said.

      The stock of wood for the fireplace was getting low. Even in June, a fire
was needed against the morning chill. Red Feather invited Benzion to help him
fetch wood. "Looks like I've been taken to the woodshed," Benzion joked. It was
his first time alone with Red Feather.

      "Mr. Haiaim," Red Feather said, "about me and your son.... Do you know
the game of ice hockey?"

      "Sure."

      Red Feather: "Well, in ice hockey there's always a goalie, and the forward
has to get through the goalie to shoot the puck into the goal. This is just between
us, Mr. Haiam. When Chaim and I play hockey, Chaim plays forward and I'm the
goalie. It's Chaim who gets all the scores. We've been that way from the
beginning. Well, almost from the beginning: we had a long courtship. Please keep
quiet about this. Chaim wouldn't like it that I told you."

      Benzion couldn't hide his surprise. That such a shy boy, well.... Red
Feather's outgoing masculine bearing led him to assume that Chaim played the
submissive role. That troubled him much more than the thought of his son's
gender-bending. He embraced Red Feather with an Iron-Man bear-hug. "Thanks
for telling me," he said. When they returned to the cabin, each with an armful of
firewood, Benzion seemed content with his gay son; proud of him, in fact. Every
time he looked at Red Feather's backside in jeans (even straight guys could see
that his figure was shapely), he gazed with the satisfaction that his son had
conquered that ass, not the other way around. Sarah noticed the sudden change in
his attitude, and wondered what Red Feather said to change his mind.

      *   *   *   *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

      At Wayward Island Resort, Tom received a call from Tom Flack, who
reserved all three cabins on the island for the third week of June. "Your resort was
recommended by Drew Fox," he said. "He said we could be assured of privacy
and discretion." Tom explained that the lodge and most of the cabins were on the
mainland. The island cabins face the open water, and cannot be seen from the
mainland. Flack is a fairly common name in the North Country, so it never
occurred to Tom that "Tom Flack" was the Viking quarterback.

      Terry Brown showed up at the lodge before Flack. With him in his car was
Göran Svenson. Tom figured Terry for a sportsman who would want to go
fishing, but Göran said they should take a canoe ride around Wayward Bay while
they waited for Tom Flack and Drew. "There are three eagles' nests in trees in the
island across from the open water," Göran said. "Let's check them out." Tom
noted with interest that Terry deferred to Göran, whatever he wanted.

      When Flack planned their one-week vacation, he intended to invite Henry
Hasek, but Henry declined out of loyalty to Red Hawk. Besides, he didn't relish
serving Flack as a constantly compliant bottom. Some guys might agree to that
just to be seen with a star Viking quarterback, but Henry wasn't one of them. He
suggested that Flack invite Drew-and arrangement that made it easier for Göran
to spend the week with Terrry.

      On the island, Flack shared a cabin with Drew. Their action together was
erotic but not unexpected, as Drew was enthusiastic as a bottom. In island cabin
number two, Terry expected the same compliance from Göran. He even bragged
to Flack that he would make Göran his bitch. Göran had other ideas. When Terry
groped Göran's ass, Göran groped back. He outmatched every attempt that Terry
made to assert dominance as a top. Theirs was a romantic comedy.

      "What are two tops supposed to do if they want to make love?" Terry
asked when they got naked in bed.

      "There's always oral sex," Göran replied, cagily.

      "You know as well as I do, that's not enough," Terry said.

      Göran: "Then one of us has to bottom."

      "Thanks for offering," Terry said.

      "Who said I'm playing bottom?" Göran protested. "I was volunteering
you."

      "I think the cutest ass should be bottom," Terry said. "That would be you.
Or how 'bout this? The biggest dick should be top."

      "I think the guy with the biggest foreskin should be top," Göran said.

      "I don't have a foreskin," Terry protested.

      "Maybe not, but I've got enough for two." Göran wrapped the end of his
foreskin about Terry's glans for a bit of docking.

      A dodgy look came over Terry. He decided to give it up. He didn't need to
say it. Göran knew from his eyes. He flipped Terry on his back and took the lead
in passionate fondling and cock-sucking. He mounted Terry's ass on a pillow and
frog-legged him to display his purply-black portal. He rimmed Terry's ass. Terry
fellated Göran's cock to throbbing hardness. When they were ready, Göran
embraced Terry tenderly for a "bridegroom's kiss," a ritual that Terry had used on
other guys in the past. It meant that penetration was about to take place, followed
by phallic acts of conquest, reciprocated by unconditional surrender. Some gay
men, when they're getting fucked, experience the sensation of a sudden fall into
surrender, like sliding into sleep and then waking up with a start. For those who
can feel it, the "slide into surrender" is habit-forming. This is not universally true,
but it applied to Terry. All this and more was experienced by Terry, who found
himself drawn into a world of sex upside down compared to his previous
experience and self-image.

      *   *   *   *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

	The Summer Solstice powwow began with Sam Black Bear's and Ben
Hasek's wedding at 10:00 AM. The wedding was held in the upper floor of the
barn which once had been used for storage of grain and hay. Behind the groom
and the groom, the Ojibwe Monument stood covered with a ceremonial blanket,
waiting to be unveiled. At the request of Mrs. Ravitch, the owner of the music
store in Hibbing had donated an old but well-tuned piano. Red Feather and Chaim
played piano and violin, a pleasant surprise for Benzion and Sarah Chaim, who
quickly made friends with the Chippewa elders. The whole Wayward Island clan
was there, and ARCH Triangle members, and Henry Hasek's hockey teammates,
and friends from the Mission Church in Crane Lake. Drew Fox and Göran
Svenson came with Tom Flack and Terry Brown in tow. Football fans recognized
them at once, and word of their presence was whispered from person to person
before they were formally welcomed.

      That was my task, to make a start. I introduced myself as Jake Preston,
"known to the Ojibwe as Two Spirits the junior Shaman." I acknowledged the
groups represented, and extended a welcome to guests who had traveled a long
way to be here: Benzion and Sarah Haiam from New York, Olaf Bjornsson all the
way from Norway, and Tom Flack and Terry Brown, the Viking quarterback and
forward. "Special thanks to our star musicians, too," I said, "Red Feather Preston
at the piano, and Chaim Haiam playing violin."

      Shaman Dark Eagle and Reverend Billy White Cloud took turns presiding
over a ceremony that combined Ojibwe and Christian elements. The four
Chippewa elders stood behind Dark Eagle. He began by declaring that this was
the first legal gay wedding in Minnesota, held under the auspices of the Ojibwe
Nation, whose civil laws took precedence as one of our country's First Nations.
He rehearsed three historical cases of gay marriage in Ojibwe tradition, and
displayed the birch-bark scrolls in which they were recorded. He related the
miracle of Manitou, which revealed the Ojibwe Monument and appointed
Summer Solstice as the date for the wedding and the powwow. "This wedding
affirms Manitou's blessing on the union of Sam Black Bear and Ben Hasek
Bluejay," he said. "It confirms the authority of Ojibwe law." Dark Eagle should
have been a politician, I thought. If any Ojibwe had doubts about gay marriage,
his declaration of Ojibwe independence gained their support.

	Billy White Cloud read the well-known chapter about love, 1 Corinthians
13: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I
make myself a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.... Love is longsuffering, and
is kind; love does not envy; love does not vaunt itself with boasting; it is not
puffed up.... Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never fails." In a prayer, Billy gave thanks for the Mission
Church, which (he announced by this means) endorsed the marriage of its
members, Sam Black Bear and Ben Hasek Bluejay.

	Sam Black Bear and Ben Hasek Bluejay exchanged vows of loyalty,
assisted by Dark Eagle and Billy White Cloud. Together they chanted an Ojibwe
prayer to Manitou, the Great Spirit, the God of the Mission Church, too. Those
who were able repeated each line of the chant. Steve Waabooz provided English
translations.

	After the ceremony, it was my task (as Dark Eagle's junior Shaman) to
announce that the unveiling ceremony for the Ojibwe Monument would take
place at 1:00 PM. I invited everyone to socialize, and greet the newlyweds, and
examine the Ojibwe artifacts that we had on display in our makeshift museum.
"Don't forget to visit the birch-bark wigwam in the barnyard," I said. I announced
that Red Feather, Chaim, Olaf, and Red Hawk were available to lead folks on
tours to the place on Rice River where the Ojibwe Monument had been found.
People bought lunch at a concession stand manned by Mission Church
congregants, and at a bakery concession, where Mrs. Helen White Dove sold
dozens of pastries and pies.

	By 1:00 PM, a large crowd had gathered in the barn-turned-museum. At
Dark Eagle's signal I announced: "Would Red Feather Preston, Chaim Haiam,
Olaf Bjornsson, and Red Hawk please come forward." They mounted the dais.
"Chaim's and Red Hawk's parents should be here, too," I said. "Benzion and
Sarah, and Peter Brave Heart, please come forward."  When all were assembled, I
said: "Our Shaman will tell us about the miracle of Manitou that revealed the
Ojibwe Monument. Manitou revealed Himself to us through the work of these
four young men. Before the Shaman speaks, let me tell you something about each
of them." I started with Red Feather Preston, my son, and his adventures with
Chaim, a fellow student at Oberlin College, and Olaf, the Norwegian student of
bears. I ended by introducing Red Hawk, whom the Ojibwe Council had named as
official photographer and historian of the Monument. Benzion Haiam's face
beamed with pride at his son. So did the face of Peter Brave Heart.

      Dark Eagle recounted the traditional tale of the Anishinaabe Trail. He told
how the Ojibwe Monument was found below an old Norway pine, two and a half
centuries old according to growth-lines in its trunk. "The Monument belongs to
our Ojibwe ancestors from the time when they first arrived in the land of the
Waabooz," he said. He recounted the peyote-ritual in which Manitou disclosed its
location on Rice River, and the thunderstorm that Manitou sent to reveal it. "It
was a miracle of Manitou, and a gift to the Ojibwe," he concluded.

      With Red Feather and Chaim on one side, and Olaf and Red Hawk on the
other, the youths removed the ceremonial blanket. People gasped and oooed and
ahhhed at the sight. They had expected a stone with primitive markings. Instead
they saw a granite stone, elaborately engraved with dozens of Ojibwe symbols.
Some were familiar, but most were unknown. The wedding of Sam Black Bear
and Ben Hasek Bluejay had been a historical moment at a personal level, but the
unveiling of the Ojibwe Monument had national significance.

      Red Hawk had prepared a sketch of the monument, trapped in its arboreal
grave; it depicted Red Feather and Chaim clearing the engravings of sand and
soil, while lightning flashed overhead and Olaf stood guard at the uprooted trunk
of the Norway pine. Mrs. Ravitch transformed the sketch into an official poster
for the Summer Solstice powwow. We sold dozens of copies on site, and several
hundred on our website, to raise funds for the museum.

      Some critics who were not in attendance at the powwow, and who never
saw the Monument, declared that it was a fake, and that the "Manitou miracle"
was a pagan publicity stunt to promote the interests of an impoverished (and
therefore contemptible) Indian tribe, or, worse still, it was a fraud concocted to
justify an illegal gay marriage. Red Hawk was not discouraged. Quite the
opposite. The negative criticism inspired him to the assiduous study of Dark
Eagle's birch-bark scrolls. Red Feather and Chaim joined him, guided by Mrs.
Ravitch, their anonymous mentor. The boys announced, almost weekly, the
discovery of a scroll-symbol that matched a symbol in the Monument. Gradually
they built a dossier, as yet incomplete, that unlocked some of the Monument's
secrets, while (incidentally) verifying its authenticity. They made plans to
continue this study during future summer vacations. These were summer jobs.
The Ojibwe Nation would pay them. In the following spring, National
Geographic published an article about the Monument and its remarkable
discovery, authored by Red Hawk, Red Feather Preston, and Chaim Haiam. The
photos and sketches bore the signature of Red Hawk.

      My story ends here. It goes without saying that in later months and years,
adventure and romance continued to enrich the lives of the folks we've met in the
North Country. Perhaps we'll meet them again at a later date, when they're all in
college!