House of Bones

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After the evening meal Paul starts tapping on his drum and chanting quietly to himself, and Marty picks up the rhythm, chanting too. And then the two of them launch into that night’s installment of the tribal epic, which is what happens, sooner or later, every evening.

It all sounds very intense but I don’t have a clue to the meaning. They sing the epic in the religious language, which I’ve never been allowed to learn. It has the same relation to the everyday language, I guess, as Latin does to French or Spanish. But it’s private, sacred, for insiders only. Not for the likes of me.

“Tell it, man!” B.J. yells. “Let it roll!” Danny shouts.

Paul and Marty are really getting into it. Then a gust of fierce stinging cold whistles through the house as the reindeerhide flap over the doorway is lifted, and Zeus comes stomping in.

Zeus is the chieftain. Big burly man, starting to run to fat a little. Mean-looking, just as you’d expect. Heavy black beard streaked with gray and hard, glittering eyes that glow like rubies in a face wrinkled and carved by windburn and time. Despite the Paleolithic cold, all he’s wearing is a cloak of black fur, loosely draped. The thick hair on his heavy chest is turning gray too. Festoons of jewelry announce his power and status: necklaces of seashells, bone beads, and amber, a pendant of yellow wolf teeth, an ivory headband, bracelets carved from bone, five or six rings.

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