When The Cloaked One Comes

When My Father Fell

I remember my father as I saw him on the last day of his life. The years of memories I had before that day have been tainted by his death, but the memories are still happy. The love I have for him and for those many memories are far more important than his death. The elders tell us that a man's death does not define him so long as the way he lived was more important. The way my father lived was the reason he died and the elders have a saying for that as well. They say that a noble man, a heroic man also, does for the tribe, not for himself. This saying did not always have an ominous meaning, but in my tribe, far north, it means that a man fights the beasts of ice knowing that he will die for such bravery.

That is how my father died. He fought the beasts since before my birth and as soon as I was old enough to understand the brutal truth of his coming sacrifice I clung to him. As a child I knew, as all my friends did, that a man whose skin is wet always is a hero. The beasts of ice bleed a clearness like that of water but which never dries. It pools on the bodies of the beast and in the snow or dirt and stays until a snow comes to cover it up. But blood on a man stays forever. It has a shine as if the skin is wet, and on a windy day it even feels wet.

My father fought the beasts and I can recall the order in which I remember more of his skin seemed wet always. Already at the beginnings of my memory his hands and arms were wet. Then soon a shoulder and his neck had been splashed. His legs too came to be covered after a large beast the size of a great bear fell upon him. A flying beast dove at his face and as he slashed it with his knife the blood ran down his collar and stained his right shoulder blade and lower back. It was his last battle though that had splashed him so badly that it had become a scar upon my memory. A man beast had attacked a child near our village and in frantic haste he dug a snow-knife into its clavicle. It turned, spraying his face, as he dug the clumsy too wide blade into the beast. It fell to the ground dead and he felt the stinging wetness in his right eye.

It is that sheen as of fresh tears I see always in my memories of him. I know that when he taught me to track caribou he was younger and less marked, but it is that old man with the marked cheek who teaches me again.

I know the man who laid his wet shirt and coat by the fire when we fished in the thin summer ice had only that new run of wetness down his young muscular back for a few days, but it was the older man with the claw marks of a lion beast and the great undrying tear who teaches me in my sleeping now. I can ignore all these but the tear. The tear brings me sadness and none of the other marks. It was the tear that made clear in my mind my father would die.

I would look at my brother too and wonder when he would die. He was a warrior also and one of great regard. He benefited greatly from my father's teachings and inherited his warrior's intuition. It was not discussed often in our home that my father and brother would one day fall to the cloaked one, but it was on my mind from the day of his tear on.

I was not to be a warrior. I was to be an elder. My parents took great pride in this. I could see in my mother a relief that one son had the freedom to live and die as a normal man should. She took great pleasure in hearing of my brother's successful hunts and battles with the beasts or the rare tribal conflicts that arose sometimes. But always on her face when she no longer had to project pride in her men was concern. She would share this concern with me but not my father because she wanted him focused on his duty and not on a fear of disappointing her.

As a boy destined to become an elder, from early I was talked to as a man would be. I was counseled in fairness and applying ambivalence to subjects that many would passionately take to one side of. I received blunt criticism and uncommonly harsh opinion on matters. The meaning of such things was to gauge my growth. As one meant to become an elder, it was important that I see the world as it is and see the opinions of others on subjects that could divide. It was the duty of all adults in the village to test my thinking and understanding with hard truths and the fact that my father and brother would die a warrior's death to the cloaked one was a familiar conversation.