Underbelly by Gary Phillips Page A

preserving hides and so forth to their sons and so on. But they kept their methods close to the vest as it were.”
    â€œMeaning they didn’t share their knowledge with the rest of the tribe?”
    â€œCorrect. Obviously a way to control the flow of information and to exalt their positions. Therefore their skills would always be in demand because not everyone had purchase of same. Which as we know is unusual for American Indians. More like Old World guild members,” he noted. “Also the Chumash had female chiefs.”
    â€œHow advanced for them,” the woman said, and you could tell she was smiling.
    Magrady clicked the tape off. “Great, a history lesson.”
    â€œQuiet. Let’s keep listening.” Bonilla put the machine back on.
    More was said about the lifestyles of the Chumash, the Indian tribe that once inhabited the California coast, inland to a degree, and out into the Channel Islands. The Q&A wound back to Talmock.
    â€œHe was quite something,” Professor Langston was saying, “both shaman and chief. He was said to have led a village of some five thousand people, a town really. Very unusual, for at the most their villages were no more than one thousand people and even that is something when you think about it. He seems to have openly had a wife and several concubines as well.”
    â€œThe Mayor Villaraigosa of his day,” Magrady cracked.
    Bonilla shushed him.
    There was more conversation. The woman said at one point, “So finding Talmock’s mummified head is remarkable as you pointed out.”
    â€œIndeed, as the Chumash did not practice mummification of their dead, though we know the Aztecs did.”
    â€œBolstering the speculation that Talmock possessed knowledge from other regions,” the woman added. “Lending support to the thesis he was both chief and shaman.”
    Langston made a contemplative sound. “And of course there’s the symbolism of Talmock’s head. That is to say, there are those who would ascribe such properties.”
    â€œHow do you mean?” the woman asked.
    â€œWell, say like the Centurion Longinus’ spear, said to have pierced Jesus’ side at his crucifixion.”
    â€œThe Spear of Destiny,” the woman said.
    â€œYes. Or Poseidon’s trident. Objects that imbue certain power and beliefs. In some cases faith, and in some cases magic I guess we’d have to say. And when it’s a hand or head of a magical being, you can imagine how some can get quite excited.” He chuckled dryly.
    Magrady and Bonilla exchanged quizzical looks.
    â€œSo Floyd wants the head back because it will cure him,” Bonilla opined, stopping the tape.
    Magrady remained stonefaced.
    â€œThat was a joke, son.”
    â€œMaybe it ain’t to Floyd.” He flashbacked to moaning and bleeding soldiers, their wounds superglued together, taking dragson heroin-laced cigarettes and mumbling prayers for evac in the aftermath of VC Bouncing Betties exploding, severing limbs and ligaments. These were mines that when triggered shot up about three or four feet in the air then went off, their payload of screaming shrapnel ripping through bodies like buckshot through tissue paper. Too many times this was not due to a patrol not finding the mine, but to improperly crimping the thing. That meant squeezing the blasting cap and the fuse together just so as you disarmed the device. But invariably some junior officer fresh from asshole school was barking from a safe distance away about hurrying up, like defusing a bomb was as easy as ordering a pizza.
    â€œHe might truly see this as a way to walk again, Janis,” he said seriously. Chambers had been crippled in an industrial accident, not the war, but the desire to walk again, to be whole physically was as much as the drive to be whole psychologically, Magrady concluded.
    Momentarily she looked chagrined for belittling what might be their friend’s