The Witch Chapter - Welcome Steemit Friends I invite you into my world for some horror and the power to overcome horror. It is a world of the spirit and the hidden abilities some people have that they find out and secretly use to the benefit of all of us. Written for Steemit.

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The Witch 7

I watched as the Ute hoop dancer continued and then his dance with the hoops came to an end. The last moves he made were to extricate his body from the hoops and then he gathered two bundles, one in each hand. The drums stopped and he bowed. There was a great applause by the crowd.

There were now thirty kids down there and Rog returned from stopping Martha and Bjorn from anymore public displays of teenage affection.

The world was changing I thought and I wondered if Mommy and Rog remembered that my daughter married him at 17, him 19. I wondered if Ma remembered that we were both 16 when we were married and it was a shotgun wedding. There wasn’t a shotgun required because I wanted to but you get the idea.

I smiled about that just thinking of it, the memories. Ma always held it for me from the time I was twelve, the time I quit school and went to work. It was the Great Depression and not unusual for anyone to do anything they could. Parents did not to care if someone took their daughter out of the house to feed and clothe her. Her parents might not have been able to afford to keep her. Ma left school a few years after I did, just before we were married.

When I think about the time when we met and grew up it was a good thing we were young and stupid. We had no idea things were horrible everywhere. We were in love and truly did not care. The first two of our children passed away within the first year of their lives. It was not unusual for such things to occur back then. There was sincere mourning and life went on.

As the bird dancer moved to the center of the dirt area, I saw a grown woman with long brown hair step down with the kids. She was buxom and lovely, maybe forty or a little older and probably weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. She wore a brownish sweatshirt and jeans. Her skin was lighter than those of the performers but as soon as the music started, she began to dance just like the bird dancer but without a costume. She must have been a Hopi like the dancer. She was not one of the kids and a couple of inches taller than Martha, she stood out but not so much that she took my attention away from the performer.

Warned by the first dancer, the hoop dancer, everyone clapped in rhythm. He was a bird and he did bird things. He jumped up very high and soared. He swooped and dove and flapped his wings in intricate patterns like a hunting bird.

I saw the woman follow his movements exactly. She did seem to be able to jump higher than he did. It was obvious she knew the entire dance by heart and was much better than the kids. The drums became softer and the Navajo with his leather costume covered in intricate beads came forward and started to speak,

“This dance is a call for the Great Spirit, The ruler of heaven to come down and search the earth for evil to protect the tribe or nations from what is against them that they cannot fight alone. It is a form of prayer and now the singers will call while the dancing spirit attempts to get the attention of the Great Spirit who rules from the heavens to come down to save the people.” The speaker stopped and the drums began to beat loudly again. All the voices of those who sang became some sort of chant song. As near as I could tell, they chanted only a few words and often just one.

When they chanted, the dancer became far more animated. He used the whole considerable area, running and “flying around”. He looked up constantly in an imploring way. For as large as she was, the woman paralleled every single thing the dancer did while staying completely out of his way. I would never have thought she could be that nimble at that age.

This dance went on and on with the tempo of the drum beats and chants increasing in intensity every minute. The dancer kept up with the beat, moving faster and faster, still just as graceful, until every movement, some twenty minutes later was a full sprint. His gyrations and turns were faster than all the kids could mimic and they all stopped but the woman kept dancing. He truly was the bird dancer, unbelievable in his stamina. She kept up with him.

He jumped up in the air at a full sprint as high as he could jump while he spread his wings and came down in a bowed kneel with his wings folded covering his bowed head. At that moment, the drummers and chanting stopped. There were roars of applause and cheers as everyone in the stands rose.

He stayed bowed, kneeled, and I could see his chest heaving from the exertion. After a while, the bird dancer stood and bowed and received another round of applause.

I noticed that during the standing ovation, the woman dancer had disappeared. Maybe she was gone before that. A man came forward, the Navajo again and addressed the crowd. There would be a 15 minute intermission before the next two dancers came out and that records and books would be offered for sale. Hawking vendors appeared like at a ball game carting boxes held in place with shoulder straps at all the exits to the stands.

In their boxes were records and books. Martha talked to the vendor just below us. Then she raced up the stairs to her Mom and Dad. “Mom, can I have ten dollars for the record and the books?”

“Ask your father dear.”

“Dad, can I have ten dollars so I can do the dances at home?”

“Is there a fishing dance in there too?” I asked as Rog looked put out to consider the request. Ten dollars was a lot in those days.

“I don’t know I’ll go ask Gran’pa.” Martha zipped back down to the vendor nearest us asked the question and ran back up, the whole interaction took less than thirty seconds.

“The Navajo will do a fish dance, the Indians fish and dance before they do it. The Sioux will do the buffalo hunt dance.” Martha jumped with excitement as she reported.

“Fishing and hunting?” Rog opened his wallet gave his daughter the money as she nodded, turned to me and said as Martha ran away, “We’re going to have to buy a bigger boat aren’t we Dad.”

“Heavier poles and bigger nets for sure,” I nodded.

“As the Lord lives,” Ma exclaimed in disgust, then relented. “Okay, if it works I will believe it.”

When Martha came back with her prizes, Bjorn, Pete oohing and awing, to look at them I asked her, “What did you think about the heavyset woman that did the dance in front of you, Martha?”

She looked up and right into my eyes and paused as if she were considering. “Gran’pa that was one of them,” Martha replied sincerely.

“We helped get rid of it,” Bjorn said. Pete nodded,

“We’re real good at it now Gran’pa.”

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Written for Steemit: Copyright © 2017 Jeff Kubitz - The Dancer - et al. All Rights Reserved. Steemit.com/steemit/@jeff-kubitz