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  • Camp Clovis
  • Terese Svoboda (bio)

Summer camp, boys’ foot races, showing off underwater, crafts with leather, spear-point chiseling, campfires—the usual. Even Clovis boys camp. They get so troublesome in the village they are told to spend time elsewhere. Go rough house, they are told, Go work on your spear points and don’t bother us. These boys would like to think this is just the usual, that they have moved their fires downriver because they always do, it’s summer and that’s when they’re supposed to camp out. But this year there’s so few kills at home their mothers pack no jerky, there’s no mush and honey meal goodbye. Little food in the village means fights from who knows where, other hungry people, relatives or strangers—they will come at you. This makes everyone nervous. Stay out of the way, they are told.

Besides, they are supposed to watch the plants.

You don’t send grown men to watch plants, not even a field full of strange plants. Plants just don’t warrant the manpower. Women have to stay home to cook what there is, girls are all trouble. You send boys to camp beside the plants. The boys aren’t going anywhere, they are going to camp anyway. It’s summer.

These plants produce dreams. You eat one or two and wow. Then you retch, you have such a headache, your hands shake, but it’s worth it. Nobody had ever even seen these plants until a season ago. Some who tried their seeds never came back from their dreams, they were so good. Imagine, a whole year of dreams. But somebody has to take care of you when you dream, somebody points out. It’s no picnic. And while you are dreaming, you can’t fight, says another. All the others shrug and look forward to harvest when the boys’ guarding is over and the dreaming can start.

These boys will dream too by the end of the summer. If they’re old enough to camp, they can dream. That’s what their parents tell them. They don’t have any ritual for these plants going yet. Maybe the plants [End Page 20] come from the moon—look at the lines across the leaves, all craggy, says an old man. Everybody checks out the moon but few see a resemblance. They rip up a plant or two and inspect its root for moonishness and then burn it—ah, the scent, the promise of dream.

If only the plants could tell them where the game has gone.

One old man thinks there is no game because they ate the last bison. They haven’t seen bison in three seasons, not since they ran that big herd over a cliff. The hunters deny that they took any more bison than usual. They say there are just fewer bison all around. Their wives spurn them. They love bison, cooked with sumpweed. The hunters retort that even the big deer is not rutting when it should. Maybe the deer have other wives, scoff their wives. The old man tries to suggest something spiritual is happening. The dancing leaves of the plant are like the fetlock of the bison and will lure them back, he says.

The wives say they see no game.

Spiritual or not, somebody has to watch these plants so they are not stolen or eaten by rats or coyotes or birds or die from drought. They are not game, but maybe the boys will see game in their dreams and when they wake, they can go after them. Who better to guard them than these dreamy boys?

The boys are supposed to camp near the taller plants. Tassels have appeared along their stalks. Maybe hanging around the tassels will give them whiskers. Some of the younger boys have been pulling at the tassels with hope. The older boys say those at home will let them be eaten by this plant if they don’t watch out, then they say eating or smoking too much of this plant will kill you. These boys don’t like to sleep too near the plants and walk...

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