When I'se just a kid, I used to walk on mud. Not so dramatic a story, you might say, as the story of Christ walkin' on water. Then again, I wasn't tryin' to be Christ. No, no, no. I'se tryin' to be a Indian. You see, I knew 'bout Christ and all, hell, went to visit him, listen to stories 'bout him and sing him folk songs every Saturday night. Watched him hangin' 'round on that big ole plaster-o-parish cross, just waitin' for big ole drops of ruby-red blood to come pourin' out them holes in his hands. He was Christ, see, and nothin' less than a jewel color'd work. So I thought then, anyhow.

As I was sayin', though, I wasn't tryin' to be Christ. No, I'se tryin' to be a Indian. See, Indians were so mystical and all. After all, I didn't know any. Didn't hear people really tell stories 'bout them much, neither. Just knew that they could move through Mama Nature quieter and quicker than a fox without leavin' no trail behind 'em. Well, that's what I thought, anyway. So, when I'se just a kid, I used to slip on my oldest, nastiest sneakers and go walkin' in the mud. See, I figgered if I could manage to walk through a muddy spot without leavin' no trail, why, I'd be walkin' like a Indian. And if I could walk like a Indian, why I could grow up to be a Indian.

Hell, stop laughin'. I said I'se just a kid then. Didn't know no better.

Anyhow, I practiced until my butt turned red from all the hidin's I got for gettin' in the mud. Why there's this one time when I'se walkin' on the rocks in the mud (Mama had forbidden me to get in the mud again after the day's third bath) and my li'l sister was tryin' to follow me, but she's 'bout as coordinated as a drunk cocker spaniel pup. I started to slip right off one a them rocks, so I pushed offa the fence with one had. Just a quick li'l push up 'til I caught my balance. Well, my sister thought that was a swell thing to do and she tried, too.

Fell right smack dab into the mud, she did. Dragging that one hand and then the other'n, too, right down that damned fence. Had one splinter that went through the whole length of her palm. Such a screechin', I tell you, you ain't ever heard such screaming outta li'l kid like that before. You'da thought someone was piercing her side with a red-hot sword.

Well, that stopped the mud-walkin' for that day. My butt was every bit as sore as my sister's poor pin-cushion hands after my Mama got hold of me.

But that story's neither here nor there.

No, I was tellin' you 'bout growin' up to be a Indian. I don't rightly recollect when I first thought about it. I could make up all sorts of stories 'bout how lonesome I was, playin' all by myself. How my parents just didn't know what to do with me and so they did nothin'. How I didn't fit in nowhere and all that jazz. But those stories done been told before. I'm sick of tellin' 'em and you're sick of hearin' 'em. So we'll just let those stories set where they are while I tell you a bit of another story. Now it happened this way, I'm sure of it. 'Course, I was only six or so at the time, a precocious tike, but a mite young for memory to be as solid an apparition as, say, that hidin' you got the first time you got caught smokin' behind the gym. But even the edges of a more recent memory like that become foggy about the edges, events jumblin' together. And how can you remember after twenty, thirty years just exactly what was said when?

Well this is a story. It happened this way, I'm sure of that. I might have shaded some details and thrust them into the background, pulled a minor player into the foreground and taken a few pounds off the gut just for effect. But the picture itself, now that is just as clear and as true as the Mona Lisa.

But did she really have that smile?

Well, that's neither here nor there. Now this particular part of my tale started in Albuquerque. And it happened quite a ways back, 'round seventy-one, seventy-two or so. You know, 'bout the time of the second generation of "Indian troubles" - the first bein' when we first hauled 'em all off to teensy tiny parcels of land we didn't think we particularly wanted anymore. 'Course by the seventies we knew damn well that we wanted some of that land back for mining this and that and the other. Atomic and nuclear testing. Oil. All sorts of things those particular areas seemed good for after all.

At any rate, we're talkin' 'bout the seventies, here. Just a touch before the F.B.I. arrested Leonard Peltier for supposedly bein' the "manager" of the American Indian Movement. A.I.M. didn't have no such position, but Peltier went to jail despite all of the F.B.I.'s bumblin' 'round and general lack of proof. The early seventies were full of Native unrest. 'Course, I didn't know 'bout any of this stuff then. I was white. And I was only six. Those two worlds hadn't yet collided for me and the news wasn't something every six-year-old likes to watch.

Now, my mother, she didn't listen to a whole lot of the news, neither. No, she's a shopper. Like the Suzy Homemaker stereotype, she watched soap operas, cleaned house and shopped until I finally threw a screamin' fit. She'd drag me 'long into some clothin' store or another and I'd hide inside those circular clothes racks, just waitin' for her to get to where I was facin', then I'd jump out hollerin' BOO! at the top of my scrawny, asthmatic lungs. Never failed to scare the livin' shit out of her. After that trick had been played out (usually to the threat of "Wait until we get home!"), I'd go sit in some quiet corner of the store and sulk, bored senseless. This one time I noticed that all the little tags on the clothes were duplicates and perforated down the middle. I figgered they didn't really need two of the same thing on all those clothes, so I started tearing them in half, collecting them all in one hot, grubby little hand. Mama came over after shoppin' for what must have been at least a year and saw the mess of tags stickin' outa my hand. Red-faced, she pulled me up to the register and emptied my hand on the lady's counter. I thought that lady was gonna burst right into tears. I tried to make her feel better by pointing out that they were the same on both sides, and they didn't need both sides of those tags.

When we left, that lady was down on her hands and knees, staplin' those little tags back together, matchin' up each and every tag to the right piece of clothing with only half a tag. Mother, of course, was mortified. That was a night spent in my room, dinner a glass of water and a stale peanut butter sandwich.

At any rate, Mama was a shopper, that's for sure. Lost her sense of time and everything else just as soon as she hit a store. Grandma was damn near the same way. A bit better about watchin' me, maybe, but not much. I gave both of them the slip so many times they tried a leash on me once. Velcro wrist band wrapped 'round my hand was pulled off at the first opportunity (about five minutes into Sears, I believe it was, and they'd just passed the toy area). Took them another twenty minutes to realize that Mama was pullin' 'round a empty rope by her wrist. No wonder she said people kept givin' her funny looks.

Well, that was another bad scene when we got home, but that story's neither here nor there. Naw, the day I want to tell you 'bout started awful early, the sun just barely beginnin' to shine through my dark blue curtains, washin' my bedroom in a blue glow that I used to pretend was the ocean. I usually spent mornings "swimmin'" through my room, playin' like I was at the bottom of the sea, but despite the fact that I was usually the first up and playing quietly in my room, spinnin' out all manner of stories for my toys to act out, I had barely crawled out of bed and headed for the window this particular mornin' when Mama opened the door and announced that we were goin' shoppin'.

I was dressed quickly, despite my best efforts to grab toys and begin the mornin' ritual of play first, talk later. Mama wasn't havin' none of it. I was dressed and sittin' at the breakfast table before I could do more than grab a toy car and shove it in the yellow hem of my Health Tex shorts. A bowl of oatmeal carefully dumped to the clear plastic mat under my chair later, we were on our way out the door.

Now, we'd lived in Albuquerque for all of about a month. Mama had done exhausted the local mall and wanted to head on up to Santa Fe to check out The Mall that she'd heard so much about. I was frustrated at havin' only escaped the house with only the one toy car. It was goin' to prove to be a long day, I was sure of that. The signs were all there. Mama never, but never, got up this early unless she was plannin' on a long day of shoppin'. And Grandma was wearin' her regular clothes instead of one of those little cotton housedresses she wore in town. And since it was Saturday, we was likely to add church to end the day of shoppin'. As we drove through the town, Mama started the day's litany.

"Now, I want you to stick close to your Grandma and me," she said, watchin' me in the rearview mirror. I nodded without much enthusiasm.

"I mean it. You don't talk to strangers, you hear me?"

I heard her. People in the next state heard her.

"I mean it. You don't talk to strangers and you stay right next to your Grandma and me. You understand me?"

I nodded again. I wasn't much for talkin'. Well, back then, anyhow.

"There are goin' to be a lot of dirty, nasty Indians lying around here, and you are not supposed to talk to them. You stay close, hold my hand, you hear me? They want nothing more than to steal a little white child. None of your wanderin' away, you hear me?"

I drove my car up the arm rest and onto the header, pressing the metal against the glass of the half-open window. Then drove it back down the curved armrest and into the parking garage of my shorts' hem. This story was old news. I'd heard the same procession of don'ts the whole month that we'd lived here. Frankly, I was hopin' to see a Indian and ask them if they'd please take me to their teepee and teach me to shoot a bow and arrow and keep me as one of their own. Not that I figgered they'd want a scrawny li'l thing like me, but I thought it might be worth a shot.

Mama was sayin' more things, more of the same, and I was drivin' my li'l car back and forth and back and forth until I reached so far toward the front seat that I ran out of window glass to lean the car against and my Matchbox car hit the real pavement to be smashed by the car behind us.

Even scrawny asthmatic kids can holler real loud.

I wasn't hollerin' so much because I'd lost the car, naw, it was a beat up racer that I'd found in the sandbox at my last day care and smuggled home in the hem of my shorts. No, I was hollerin' 'cause that car was the only entertainment I was likely to have all day and I'd just tossed the damn thing out the window of the car. This day was not startin' out well at all.

We reached The Mall a short while later (after a quick trip to the first gas station restroom for a slight attitude adjustment). Mama found a parkin' spot at the eastern end of town and consulted the map in the glove compartment. Grandma was sweatin' and complain' 'bout the heat already and it wasn't even near noontime yet. We walked up a few blocks, made a couple of twisty turns as Mama consulted the map. And then we were there. The Mall. It wasn't a mall indoors, no, it was several streets with shops lining the sides. But I wasn't really paying attention to those shops.

There were Indians absolutely everywhere. I was in heaven. I heard Mama gasp. It was like the world's biggest garage sale. Indians with their stuff all spread out on blankets in front of the little shops.

Indians I could talk to. This was gonna be great. I could feel it already. Somethin' was going to happen. Somethin' big. I could feel it. The squashed car was completely forgotten. (Well, I still wanted to find it on the way home just to see if it was flat and what it would look like if it really was flat. Would it be paper thin like Wile E. Coyote after he was run over by a steamroller? Or would it just be crushed like a M&M after I stepped on it? Or somethin' in between like the squirrels I used to find in the street when we lived in Houston?)

Mama and Grandma yanked me into a clothin' store before I could move on my own; the possibilities still dancin' before my eyes. The store was dark after the bright sunshine and it took me a few minutes until I could see well enough to start gettin' into trouble. Just as I was gettin' ready to pick up what was left of a shiny red nightie before someone's cat had shredded it away to next-to-nothin', Mama and Grandma whisked right back outa that store, faces red. Not to their likin', I suppose.

We waltzed in and out of a few small shops, never pausin' long. I was bored.

"Hi!" I waved to one of the Indians sittin' out on her blanket and smiled broadly.

Mama yanked my arm nearly out of the socket at that.

I was bored. I began singin' to myself, softly, about everythin' I saw around me. The jewelry counter out in the middle of the sidewalk that was too high for me to see anythin', the dirty blankets on the sidewalk, the clean Indians we kept passin'. I hadn't seen a dirty Indian yet and the streets were gettin' more and more crowded.

Lunch was not the McDonald's I pointed out, but a small Mom and Pop greasy spoon with orange vinyl booths and slanted wooden tabletops with strange words I couldn't read carved into the tops. It was dark in here, too, and I was fast comin' to the conclusion that Mama only thought that Indians were dirty because the lights were too bad to see any better.

"I want a chilicheeseburgerwithonionsonit." I poked at a small tear in the faded orange vinyl, pulling out a bit of greyish fluff.

"Just a minute." Mama consulted with Grandma for a minute.

"Hello, what can I get for you folks this afternoon?"

The waiter was a Indian. He had on the bluest pair of jeans I'd ever seen in my life and a shirt much whiter than the walls at home. He buttoned it all the way up to the very tiptop button, but he didn't have on a tie. His blue-black hair was pulled into a small, thick braid and tied with a bit of leather thong. Yep, a real Indian.

"I want a chilicheeseburgerwithonionsonit. And onion rings. And root beer."

He stared at me for a moment, then gave me a wink. I grinned at him.

Mama ordered the soup of the day and salad and Grandma ordered what Mama ordered. Mama canceled my root beer and made the man bring me a milk instead.

"How come I can talk to that Indian but not the ones outside?" I asked.

Mama slapped my hand away from the hole in the vinyl that I'd been pickin' at. Of course, my finger was deep inside that dumb hole and instead of slappin' my finger out, she tore the hole open wider.

"Shhhhhhh! Do you want everyone to hear you? And if you don't stop pickin' at that, I'll take care of you right here in front of all of these people."

"I was bein' quiet."

Mama rolled her eyes and gave Grandma that look that said just how long-sufferin' Mama was and wasn't she such a saint for puttin' up with me. I folded my arms across my chest and glared at the table until the waiter finally reappeared with our lunches. He looked at me with sad eyes.

"I'm sorry, but we were all out of onion rings today. I had to bring you some french fries." Again with the wink and a smile. "Do you think you'll live?"

I ducked my head and smiled. "Yes," I mumbled. "Thank you."

Mama near choked on her water when I said thank you. I don't know why. I remembered to say it most times. The waiter smiled at me and walked back up to the counter.

"I like him," I announced.

"Eat your lunch," Mama said.

I ate my burger and commenced with the usual french fry army war. This time it was crunchy fries against soggy fries. Sometimes it was short against tall. The crunchy fries were winnin' 'cause I don't like them. I ate all the soggy fries and left the crunchy fries to celebrate their total victory over the soggies. Mama forgot to notice I was playin' with my food. I think she was just glad I was bein' quieter than usual.

After lunch, we stopped for a moment to look at a strange assortment of stuff on a blanket just outside the diner. A old Indian man with a wrinkledy face rested with his back against the diner, shaded by the diner's awnin'.

"What's this?" I asked him, pointin' to a strange picture.

"A sandpainting."

I stared at it. "What's this guy?" I pointed to a strange figure whose body formed a square 'round the whole picture, framin' it.

"That's a guardian. Rainbow," he added as I kept lookin' at him, all expectant.

Before I could ask anythin' else, Mama had ahold of my arm and was draggin' me off again. For the rest of the day, I forgot to be bored. I kept thinkin' of the waiter in the diner and how nice he'd been to me, and the Indian outside the diner with the sandpaintin'. I'd never seen anythin' like it. How did you paint with sand? How would you get it to stick? How did you get just the one color to go in a certain place? I had a hard enough time getting the crayon to stay in the lines, how in the world could I manage to get the sand in the right places? But most of all, what did it mean?

I was so quiet, Mama seemed to even forget I was there. We spent more and more time lookin' at clothes and jewelry and most times Mama even forgot to grab my hand when we left a store. Not that I minded all that much, I just had to watch her every minute or she'd slip away and I'd be lost among the Indians.

It was gettin' to be hotter'n blazes and the back of my shirt was drenched by the time Mama finally consulted her map again to find the local church for an early evenin' mass, it bein' Saturday and all. I protested for a minute, this being one more hour of boredom I just didn't think I could take after the long day, but Mama insisted with Grandma backin' her up as usual.

The church was the darkest place we'd been in yet, but I'd pretty much expected that. I hadn't been in a church yet that I wasn't wishin' for a flashlight just to find the pew. Mama stuck her hand in the holy water and did the sign of the cross. I reached way up, stuck my hand in the cool water and just wiped it all over my face and neck, I was that hot. Mama didn't notice and Grandma turned away smilin' again. We wandered out of the vestibule and into the church. They couldn't afford no stained glass windows at this church, it seemed like, because they had painted the walls like they were stained glass. But, they did it with stuff that looked like the sandpaintin' I'd seen at the old Indian's blanket. The people on the walls didn't really look like people. They were angular, like all the drawin' had been done with a ruler. And the colors were all strange. They weren't the rich jewel colors of the stained glass windows I'd ever seen before; they were bright and gaudy with turquoise, yellows, reds and bright oranges. Mama clucked her tongue and shook her head a tiny bit before genuflectin' at a pew in the very back. I think she wanted to make a quick getaway.

The crucifix in the front of the church stole all my attention after sittin' in the pew. The cross itself was made out of split rails like in some of the fences I had seen. The fronts of the rails had been sanded as smooth as a baby's butt, and Christ was painted on the cross, not carved up there. I'd never seen anythin' like it. And the paintin' job was like the walls, all angular and bright. Kind of a happy crucifix, not all sad and depressin' and bloody. I liked it.

The music started, everyone stood and the priest came marchin' down the aisle. The service droned on like every other one I'd ever heard. I never listened to anythin' except the readin's and gospel. Those were usually good stories, except that Mama always poked me in the ribs every year when the readin' about children obeyin' their parents came 'round. The gospel that day was one of my favorites although I don't think that the priests ever tell it quite right. First off, it's talkin' about when Jesus was a kid and it always made me think maybe I'se the second comin' of Christ except that nobody knew it, not even me. I never said nothin' 'bout that to nobody, though. I wasn't that stupid. It was just a nice daydream like when I'se thinkin' 'bout how I'd like to be Kit Carson (well, I liked him fine 'til I found out he was responsible for the Cherokee's Trail of Tears, then I'se just mad), or how I'd like to be ole Walt Disney (well, okay, bad example, but I didn't know then that he was some kind of C.I.A. or F.B.I. spy and a McCarthy-ite to boot), or Kermit the Frog (there, see, I found one that is still good and if you know somethin' 'bout him I don't, I don't even wanna hear it). I didn't really think I'se the second coming of Christ anymore than I thought I was a Muppet. But it was fun to pretend.

But that's neither here nor there. I'se tellin' you 'bout that gospel story. Now this one happened when Jesus was about twelve and his parents took him on a trip up to Jerusalem for some big celebration or another. Anyhow, Jesus, he got bored hangin' out with his folks, so when they started headin' for home, Jesus stuck around Jerusalem and talked with the elders and dazzled them with how smart he was. After a while, Mary and Joseph finally noticed that Jesus wasn't with them anymore and they headed on back to Jerusalem in a panic to find him. Mary was all upset at him and everythin', tellin' him what a naughty kid he was for runnin' off and makin' 'em worry about him. Jesus looked at them and all matter-of-fact asked them where else they expected him to be?

The gospel bein' over, the priest came up to the pulpit to talk, but I wasn't listenin' no more, just starin' at that crucifix in the front. And at first I was thinkin' 'bout that story and how I'd tell it. How Jesus got bored and wandered off because Mary and Joseph weren't payin' any attention to him. How if I was tellin' the story there'd be way more about what Jesus was thinkin' and less of Mary and Joseph fussin' over him. And maybe more of the stories that he was tellin' the folks at the temple. And then I got to thinkin' 'bout that crucifix. I knew what the story was behind that. I knew about the pictures on the walls, even if they were drawn funny, but I didn't know about no Rainbow guardian. So, when Mama and Grandma got up to go to get their communion wafers, I slipped out the door of the church and into the fading sunlight. Now, in Albuquerque, at least where we lived, the sun didn't fade, it just up and left. But here, it was more like I was used to. A sunset and a fading of light. Some of the Indians were beginning to pack up the stuff on their blankets already. I took off runnin', tryin' like the devil to remember just exactly where that diner was.

I pretty near tripped right over the old Indian while I was lookin' up the other side of the street for the awnin' over the diner's entrance.

"Whoa, there, little one. Where are you going so fast?" He looked up the street. "Is someone chasing you?"

I shook my head and tried to catch my breath. I pointed to the sandpaintin' that was still sitting out on his blanket.

His eyes widened a tiny bit. "You came back because of that?"

I nodded, gulping in air. "What. Does. It mean?"

He stared at me for a moment and sat back down on his blanket. "You shouldn't be out here all by yourself, little one."

"Who is the Rainbow guardian?"

The Indian looked at me for a minute, his black eyes peerin' right into me until I finally looked behind me to see if Mama was behind me or somethin'. "Does your mother know where you are?" he asked.

I shook my head and tried a different tack. "Who is that?" I pointed to another sandpaintin' and another figure done mostly in triangles.

"That's Thunderbird."

"Like the planes?"

He smiled a little. "No, not like the Air Force planes."

I stared at the first sandpaintin' again. I wouldn't touch it. "Is it holy?" I asked him finally.

He nodded.

I nodded, too, bobbin' my head slowly up and down as he had. "It looks like the paintin's in the church," I told him.

He smiled. "I have to put these things away, now," he said gently. "It's time for me to go home."

"Can I help you?"

He nodded again, a faint breeze rippling through his black bangs. "Certainly." He handed me a box all divided into small squares by a grid of cardboard. "Here, you put all these little pitchers into this box, one pitcher per section like this." He picked up a small, red clay pitcher about two inches high and set it carefully in the box. "But you have to be careful. If you drop them, they'll break."

I put the box down on the sidewalk very carefully and began pickin' up the small pieces of pottery and placing them oh, so carefully into the box. They were pretty much all the same, just slightly different colors. A mesa done in all squares in the center, right underneath where the pouring spout was, with an arch that looked kinda like a headdress going over it like a rainbow frame. Only, they weren't really rainbows. Some were a bright pink, some turquoise, some blue, some green, some orange. The background between the mesa and the headdress was painted a dusk-purple while the very top and edges above the white and black eagle feathers of the headdress was painted sky-blue. They were kinda cute, but they weren't the sandpaintin's.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Frank Ooljee. What's yours?"

I paused. I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. I wasn't supposed to ever, ever, ever give them my name. And despite the fact that this Indian looked awful clean to me, I knew I wasn't supposed to be talkin' to him either. Of course, I wasn't supposed to run away in the middle of church neither. I frowned.

He seemed to understand, though, a small smile creeping across his face. "Funny time to go all shy on me," he said.

I ducked my head, concentrating on picking up the little pitchers, and shrugged my shoulders. I was on the last row of the little pitchers and the last of that row were a bit different than the others. For one, they were just a touch bigger and the paintin' on 'em was more detailed. Instead of a Indian headdress as a border, these had somethin' that looked more like the Rainbow guardian framing the painted area. The colors were more muted than some of the others that I had already put away. The centers of these held different drawings, none alike. One looked like the Thunderbird, one looked kinda like a bear, another like a dog. I put these away gingerly, terrified that I was goin' to drop one and make him mad at me.

"Who is Rainbow?" I asked, still lookin' at that last pitcher.

"A guardian." He paused and looked at me. "Kind of like a guardian angel, you know?"

I stared at him. "But that's a Christian thing."

"That doesn't mean only Christians have guardians, little one, just that guardian angels are like the guardians that we have." He finished putting away the sandpaintin's and started picking up some leather billfolds with intricate beadwork on the outsides. He pointed to the billfolds and handed me the box he'd been putting them in. "Here, you finish this. I've got to go in the diner, I'll be right back." He caught my eye and stared at me closely. "You don't let anyone run off with this stuff, you hear me?"

I nodded. "I won't."

His stern face melted into a smile. "Good." He disappeared into the diner.

I ran one hand over the beadwork on a billfold, the beads all cool and tickling my palm. I dropped it in the box, ran my finger over the next one, dropped it in the box. Over and over again until he came back outside.

"You're a busy little worker," he told me and I smiled at him.

"What was the name of that sandpaintin'?"

He shook his head and tried not to laugh. "It's . . . ." His voice trailed off and he looked at me closely again.

I liked him, but he was startin' to make me nervous, starin' at me so intense all the time. But I figgered if he tried to kidnap me and take me to his teepee, it would be better than the long ride home and the hidin' I was gonna get for runnin' outa the church like that.

"It's not a real sandpainting, little one. It's only a small part of a real sandpainting, and even then, I've made some changes in it." He folded the flaps of the sandpaintin' box closed.

"Why? What does a real one look like?" How could he change it? It was holy, he had told me it was a holy thing. The priest wouldn't change the stories in the gospel, how could he change the sandpaintin's?

He crouched down next to me. "The tourists love the sandpaintings. They're a good way for me to make some money. But they're holy and they're meant for specific purposes." He paused. "Would you use the holy water in the church for drinking?"

My eyes opened wide in surprise. "No," I said quietly, thinkin' of spreadin' that holy water on my face just 'cause I'se hot this afternoon.

"Nor would I want people hanging up a real sandpainting in their living room. The look of one, yes. They're pretty, aren't they?"

I grinned at him and nodded.

"Yes, I think so, too. But would you take a Jesus off of a crucifix so you could play with it along with your other toys?"

"No!"

"That's what it would be like if I let someone buy a 'real' sandpainting. They are taking the holy object away from . . . ." He paused again, eyebrows trying to meet above his nose. "They are taking the holy thing away from the ceremony that makes it holy to begin with. Can you understand that?"

"Yes."

And the strange thing was that I did understand what he was talkin' 'bout. I may have been only six, and no one else had ever bothered to explain holiness to me before, but what this man said made good sense to me. If it's a common everyday thing, like a picture in the livin' room, then it can't be all that holy. Holy is somethin' rare and wonderful. Somethin' that you can't fully explain because it just is. That Van Gogh in the museum is holy because you only come see it sometimes, when you need to see it. You hang a print of it in your livin' room and it becomes commonplace and boring, all the mystery and intrigue drippin' out of it, stainin' the wall until you can't see the holy anymore, just the empty place where it used to be. Like the white rectangle on a wall where a paintin' once hung for a long time is whiter than the area around it. Empty.

And it was kinda like the stories I was tellin' myself all the time. They were holy, too, because you could hear them just once so they were rare in a way. It wasn't just takin' somethin' holy away from its ceremony, it was how you thought of the thing, too. The stories I told changed because the next time I told them I was all changed up and different than the last time I'd told them. Like my stories 'bout how I was Kit Carson, only I didn't make the Cherokees go on the Trail of Tears. Or how I was really Jesus come back. Those stories were holy, too, because I was makin' myself up as I went along. And they were true for as long as I thought them up and believed in them. Kind of like how grownups tell kids that Santa Claus is true as long as you believe in him. And how those stories 'bout Jesus are rare 'cause they're only told on holy days. My stories were rare like that and never stayin' the same and never doin' quite what folks seemed to expect them, or me, to do.

"When I grow up," I told him, "I'm gonna be a Indian, too."

He laughed. And then I felt a hand wrap itself around my wrist.

"There you are!"

Mama had finally caught up with me.

"Do you know that we were in the car and heading home before we realized we had to come back looking for you? Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?"

I was afraid to even turn around for fear she'd not relax her grip and wear all the skin offa my wrist where her hand hung like the claw of a monster. Frank Ooljee frowned a bit.

"There's been no harm. I couldn't get a name out of --"

"That's none of your business." Mama turned me around. "Did you break anything?" she demanded.

I shook my head.

Mama started to drag me off. Grandma was waitin' in the car just down the street.

"Wait!"

I twisted around and Frank Ooljee held out one of the larger pitchers to me. "For helping me so much, little one. I insist." He said as Mama gave him a look.

"How much do I owe you for that?" she said makin' it sound like an insult to be asked any money for such a piece of shoddy work.

"It's a Thunderbird," he told me, ignorin' Mama altogether. "Like the planes." He winked and grinned.

I smiled despite myself.

"The Thunder Beings are friends, you should always remember that." He turned back to his blanket and began foldin' it up.

I clutched the little pitcher tightly to my chest, petrified that Mama would jerk my arm at the wrong time and send my bit of pottery to be crushed like my Matchbox car. But I made it to the car with no incident. I didn't even hear Mama lecturin' me on the way home. Just kept thinkin' 'bout what Frank Ooljee had told me. And thinkin' how wrong Mama had been not to let me talk to the Indians. Not just because I'se little and just wanted to talk to a Indian, but because Mama was afraid of them when she shouldn't be. It's the first time I can ever remember thinkin' that my mama was wrong about somethin' important.

I got over thinkin' I would grow up to be a Indian, eventually. Well, sort of, anyway.

And I never was the least little bit scared of thunderstorms after that neither. In fact, a few years later, after my li'l sister was born (remember, the one who tried to walk on mud just like me, but slid her whole hand down the fence instead?) and when she got old enough to talk, I always protected her from the thunderstorms. I don't think she ever quite believed my stories about the Thunder Bein's, but then, they were just things I made up to help her feel better. They weren't the real stories of the real Thunder Bein's. But they were every bit as holy to me and her. I told them rarely, only during bad storms, only when my li'l sister was very scared.

And you know, after a good rain, I still grab my oldest sneakers and go for a walk, tryin' out the muddy spots with a silly grin on my face, and checkin' to see just how much of a trail I've left behind me. And while I'm walkin' through that mud, well, this is a story I still believe:
"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a Indian, too."

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Robin MacRorie graduated from the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame in 1996 and currently teaches first year composition there. "Mud-Walker" was first written in 1996. While many writers don't particularly like to give readings of their work -- writing is, after all, a pretty solitary art -- I'm not one of them. This piece in particular, really comes alive at readings, and considering its "storyteller" nature, that's not too surprising. I will try to post a RealPlayer snippet from the story to give the flavor of a reading at some point in the future.