I rattled on until Herman said, “Ja, I telled you Fingerspitzengefühl works like charm,” as if the bus ride all the way from Milwaukee had been merely a matter of giving it a little think.
Already feeling like we’d had one of the great days of our lives, after the parade the two of us followed the flow of the crowd to the ticket booth at the fairground entrance, where the rest of the day’s events were chalked on a slab of blackboard.
“Fancy dancing, Donny.”
“Rodeo, Herman.”
I was impatient to get in and start to see everything worth seeing, but he took his time peeling off money for our entrance fee, asking the ticket seller, an Indian of indeterminate age with a single feather sticking straight up out of his hair, if we could stow the duffel bag and suitcase in the booth since we hadn’t had time to find a place to stay. “Hokay, I’ll keep an eye on ’em.” He jerked a thumb to the corner of the booth and I dragged our luggage there and turned to go.
“Donny, wait.” Herman was grinning nearly back to his ears. “One thing more. Put moccasins on, hah?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? With my purple rodeo shirt with the sky-blue yoke trimming and now my pearl-gray cowboy hat, my outfit lacked only the moccasins. Swiftly I swapped out of my shoes, my feet grateful in the softness of the buckskin, and in an inspiration of my own, I tucked the autograph book under my belt like a hunter’s pouch. Then off Herman and I went as if the beadwork fancy-dancers on my feet were leading us to the real thing.
We still were on the same earth as Manitowoc, but the world changed as we headed for the fenced-in area of grandstand and corrals and chutes and arena where the rodeo would be held. Tepees by the hundreds populated the encampment bordering the fairground, white cones sharp against the blue sky like a snowy mountain range, all the same precise height. Drummers and chanters there kept up the “Hey-ya-ya-ya, hey-ya-ya-ya” beat as if it was the pulse of the seasons of the strawberry moon and the buck moon. Herman and I tried not to rubberneck amidst it all, but failed laughably. Fully half of the rodeo-going crowd around us was Indian families, the fathers wearing braids and the mothers sometimes not, excited children dribbling after in colorful shirts while trying to look as swayve and debonure as I felt. Herman was like a keyed-up kid, too, asking this person and that if they happened to be Apaches and not discouraged by the steady answer “They’re not from around here.”
Then we were funneled into the rodeo grounds—surrounded by a horse-high hog-tight woven-wire fence with the gate conspicuously manned by sharp-eyed tribal police; rodeo crowds are not exactly church congregations, and the Crows were taking no chances on drunks and other unwelcome sorts sneaking in—and the pair of us virtually walking on air filled with the aromas of fry bread and sizzling steak amid the lane of food booths and craft displays of jewelry and woven blankets and wearables set up next to the arena.
“Karl May would not believe his eyes, hah?” Herman chuckled to me when we passed by a homemade camper, SLEWFOOT ENTERPRIZES painted on the driver’s door, where a bearlike Indian man seated on the running board was driving belt holes into some piece of paraphernalia with a leather punch and chanting, “Made to order, folks, best dancing rigs this side of the happy hunting ground, same price as they was a minute ago, git ’em right here and now.” And as if he had conjured them, suddenly ahead of us at a refreshment stand were fancy-dancers everywhere, costumed as if they were under a spell that made them halfway to birds.
? ? ?
THE SIGHT CAST me into a spell of my own. The day’s fancy-dance exhibition, according to the printed program we had picked up at the gate, would take place between the bronc-riding events, and this batch of selected dancers—many of them not a day older than me, I noticed enviously—were waiting around, drinking pop and eating candy bars until called on to perform. I hung back and gaped at their costumes, which covered them almost entirely, from beaded moccasins to a feather or two sprouting out of equally beaded headbands. I mean, fancy only began to say it. Fuzzy Angora goat hide step-ins were wrapped around the bottoms of their legs, and fringed vests long as aprons draped down that far. Anklets of sleigh bells jingled with their every step. The upper part of the body was the real story, though. Strapped on each dancer’s back was a great big spray of feathers, like a turkey’s tail in full display. What lucky kids they were in all that getup, I thought with a pang, ready to dance their hearts out. It may have been my imagination, but my moccasins seemed to twitch as we passed the dancers by.
Coming out of my trance as everyone but us was flocking to the grandstand on the far side of the arena, I had the presence of mind to say the next magic word to Herman.
“Cowboys.”