In the early 60s I met a young Choctaw man who had a long Indian name that ended in “tubby.” Most everyone who knew him just called him Tub. Though we hadn’t met at the beginning of this narrative, the two of us were initiated into a hidden ring that studied the arts of conjuring and powwowing. These were spiritual and healing practices that dated far back in time but had been dismissed as a product of ignorance and even outlawed in places. Our teacher was an older Choctaw woman named Mary Gardner. This is what happened one time when I drove down to the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma and arrived at Mary’s cabin.

            A rust-colored pickup I hadn’t seen before was parked off to the side in the grass. As I pulled up next to it, I noticed a large and very muscular man sitting on the porch. He had long ropes of braided black hair falling down the front of his black cowboy shirt. The tips of the braids were tied with black ribbon, and he wore an old-style bone choker around his neck. All this was unusual in that day and time.

            He was staring at me with an unmistakably hostile look. The instant I cut my engine and got out, he rose and marched resolutely toward me. He stood directly in front of me, blocking my way to the cabin.

            ”What do you want around here, city boy?” he asked. “Whatever it is, we ain’t buying any of it.”

            “I . . . I came to see Mary,” I stammered uncertainly.

            “Mary who? She doesn’t want to see you, and you better get your ass out of here fast.”

            His arrogant tone spiked my adrenaline, and I started to see red. I stared angrily back at him, with the nervous feeling that I was in a major eye-lock with a mountain.

            “Why don’t we just ask Mary if she wants to see me or not?” I replied with as much belligerence as I could muster.

            “You know what?” the mountain replied. “You look just like that great big plastic man with red-checkered pants and a bib who stands out in front of all those Big Boy restaurants.”

            He seemed nearly twice my size, and the muscles in his neck were beginning to bulge impressively but I was mad enough now to throw caution to the wind.

            “Well, you know what yourself?” I countered. “You look like one of those silly wooden Indians they put out in front of cigar stores.”

            He didn’t seem to have expected a comeback, and he looked off to one side for a moment, considering. Then he ran is finger around inside his bone chocker, in the same movement a harried businessman might make fidgeting with his too-tight tie. Apparently I had thrown him off stride a hair or two, because finally he just barked, “Oh yeah?”

            I didn’t do much better myself, “Yeah,” I replied.

            His shiny black eyes ripped into mine, the time for talking clearly over. I was sure an avalanche of angry Indian was just about ready to crash down on me. It heightened my attention, and I became keenly aware of the moment. I clenched my hands into fists and was about to throw my most devastating haymaker, wondering if it would do any damage at all to this red granite wall, when Mary’s voice yelled, “It’s okay, Tub. Let him by.”

            Saved by the teacher. Tub looked at me slowly up and down. Then he snorted nonchalantly, as if to say I was of no importance to him whatsoever. He turned on his heel and walked back toward Mary, who was standing in front of the cabin. I breathed a sigh of relief and then cursed him under my breath as I followed.

            Mary was a dark-complexioned, beautiful elder. Tall and slender, she wore cowboy boots, jeans and a western top. “I imagine you probably had some trouble getting here,” she said to me. “That’s because it wasn’t time for you to come. If you would have remembered your dreams and paid proper attention, you would know I wasn’t going to be here. Tub and I are going to a powwowing near Lawton. You have to learn to be awake at night so you’ll know what’s going on.”

            “I knew you didn’t belong here,” Tub said. “Dreams are Mary’s telegrams, but you didn’t get her wire.”

            Mary’s comment about my dreams provoked a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach, because I knew instantly what she meant. I had felt they were attempting to communicate a message, but all I was able to remember when I woke up was that Mary was in them, explaining something. I realized now she had been warning me not to come. Somehow her messages had exactly the opposite effect and had made me crave the beautiful mountains all the more.

            “Well, you’re here now,” she said. “Keep an eye on the cabin. Chop some wood and clear the brush around back. We’ll return in a day or two. We were headed out the door, but I had a feeling you were going to show up.”

            “We’re going to powwow ten people—help them with their sickness,” Tub said. “I’m her apprentice. I help Mary out,” he added possessively.

            “Well, I’m her apprentice too,” I replied stiffly.

            Mary smiled. I walked with them to Tub’s pickup truck and watched them drive away. It all seemed rather abrupt.

            Well, I comforted myself that it really wasn’t so bad being alone. I had some good books in the car and had brought plenty of good things to eat. I figured I might just as well enjoy myself, so I went fishing for awhile and then read several chapters of Of Human Bondage, a book about a crippled-up man in love.

            Before dawn the next morning I cooked breakfast, crouched over the dew-wet ground by a small fire near my tent. I boiled some condensed milk and made a large tin cup of cocoa. Then I coated a small, pan-sized catfish with cornmeal and fried it up. After that, using the same iron skillet, I cooked some potatoes and an onion.

            The first light began to streak across the horizon as I ate. The twinkling stars died out one by one as the dark overhead slid gradually into day. A band of deep purple mist lay low over the brow of the mountain, flowing into strangely shaped strands, changing shade subtly with the passing moments.

            Fall in the Kiamichis can be breathtaking. The hills become awash in golden, fiery-colored leaves before they are stripped away by the wind. For me, it was particularly easy at this time of year to feel an intimate connection with each dogwood tree, each salt-gray boulder, each burbling stream, each animal. There was more than enough reason to get up early and spend the day knocking about in the mountains.

            Before full sunrise, the mist began to weep a fine spray of rain. I fastened the buttons of my army surplus jacket all the way up my neck to keep dry as I set out. Before long the drizzle let up, but the low mist still didn’t lift. Thin purple smoke hung over the ground, veiling it. Only the taller patches of brush and the upper parts of bushes protruded above it. The soil was soft and muddy, deadening the sound of my footsteps. I climbed to a high ridge, heading vaguely for an area known to the locals as the “Catclaws.” Its name came from deeply incised rock formations that appeared to have been made by a monster cat scraping its claws into the hillside. I found a place where the bulldozers had cut a rough dirt road and I followed it.

            Until then, I had been wandering absentmindedly, absorbed by the quite scenery. Rounding a bend in the road, my attention became sharply focused. With a slight shock, I saw the unmistakable human form obscured in the mist. I stopped dead in my tracks and drew a sharp breath. A woman it was—a gaunt old woman was standing in the smoky vapors ahead of me. She was stooped and motionless. Her clothes were weirdly old-fashioned. Her dress was black, as were her long leather gloves, and her boots buttoned up her ankles. Most disturbingly, her face was covered with a veil. My first thought was that she was dressed for a funeral.

            The woman held something red in each of her hands. I recognized the objects as vermilion-colored rattles. She lifted her left hand upward and dropped her right hand downward. She began to shake the rattles toward me, pointing one and then the other at me. I bristled. The sound had the unpleasant buzz of an X-ray when the medical technician hit the button and you sense the radiation passing through you.

            The old woman moved her arms and brought the two rattles together in front of her stomach. When they touched, the two rattles made a figure eight, or the shape of a red hourglass.

            She shook them again in an ominous whir. She then appeared to levitate several inches above the earth. Her black-buttoned shoes were pointed toe-down. As far as I could tell, they weren’t touching anything. Suddenly, she made a gravity-defying leap that propelled her the entire distance between us. I jumped instinctively backward as she landed exactly where I had been standing. I was absolutely terrified. My legs started pumping uncontrollably in reverse. Then they went out from under me, and I fell down flat on my back.

            I rebounded immediately into a sitting position only to find that my numb legs wouldn’t support me. I began scrabbling backward as fast as I could with the palms of my hands and my heels. I was too stricken with unearthly terror to make a sound.

            The woman looked at me. I could vaguely make out her face behind her veil. It was chalky white, and the red slash of her lips seemed to be grinning at me like the mouth of a corpse. “You’re Mary’s,” she said flatly.

            “I belong to no one,” I stammered back. “I’m not in any kind of human bondage.”

            “You think not. Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

            I wasn’t going to argue the point. I managed to scramble shakily to my feet. Without a word, I turned and ran as fast as my two legs would carry me. I heard the woman’s demented laughter behind me as I fled. I ran and ran. I hit a tree limb and fell, but bounced back up and was running again without even noticing if I’d done any damage. Then I turned my foot on a round rock, did a crazy rigadoon, skipped once, spun around, and went straight down on my butt. Once more I shot up and was off again like a jackrabbit. When I finally reached Mary’s place, I fell to the ground in front of my tent, heaving and gasping for air.

            After my breathing returned to normal, I ate something and went to work splitting wood and chopping it into stove-lengths to calm myself down. The day was warming up. I began to sweat. My strange encounter continually replayed in my mind like a needle stuck in the groove of an old record, repeating the same sequence over and over. I worked furiously, but despite my efforts, the power of the old woman’s image remained unabated. I set my ax aside.

            A couple of hunting hawks flapped by overhead, but the old woman had completely stripped away the peace I’d expected to find in the mountains. The rain had stopped, though. The sun was becoming brighter and stronger, burning off some of the day’s mystery. The warmth brought out the perfume of damp earth as the pools of water scattered over the ground to dry up. Thirsty from exertion, I went to the well for a drink. As I lowered the bucket into the hole I saw myself reflected in the water below. Then the bucket splashed into the image of my face, sending out rings of ripples. I swung the rope back and forth to get the lopsided bucket to sink. I hauled it back up, the surface of the water smoothed again and the image formed. Big as life, I saw the old woman’s face staring up at me from the bottom of the well.

            I dropped the bucket and staggered backward. I heard it splash when it hit. “Damn!” I yelled. “Leave me alone, you damned witch.”

            I went back to the woodpile and chopped feverishly until nightfall. I gulped down a hasty dinner. Great streamers of deep burgundy were stretched across the western horizon. The eight bright stars that formed the Drinking Gourd hovered over the mountains in the northwest. The sapphire-studded Dragon soon twinkled its tail in the deepening darkness. Mary called the constellations “our treaty belt with the universe.” I had the feeling from her that the alignment of the constellations made some nights nourishing and others not. I hoped tonight’s configuration was one of the more benevolent ones.

            My sleep that night was no more than a blink and a wink. I tossed and turned, and was glad to crawl sleepily out of my tent as soon as the rays of new sunlight fell across the mountains. Not bothering to cook breakfast, I just poured some evaporated milk over a bowl of dry cereal. As I ate, I wondered if I shouldn’t just go back home and forget about ambling around and hiking through the Kiamichis.

            But I decided to keep going and I worked for much of the day clearing the brush behind Mary’s cabin. Whatever I cut that was big enough to use, I dragged to the woodpile and snapped into kindling. Many of the pieces were rotten, so I just burned them. I didn’t know how large an area Mary wanted cleared. I worked back and forth in a semicircle, going farther and farther from the cabin each time.

            When it was past noon, I began to realize I must have gotten pretty heavily into some poison ivy. The vine was rampant there. I was covered with itchy welts and commenced to relieve my misery by clawing at them. I walked off toward the creek, thinking a bath might help. Mary’s beat-up old claw-footed iron bathtub sat on pebbly ground a few steps away. It could be filled with buckets from the creek, then heated by burning wood in a fire pit underneath. The tub was also Mary’s cauldron, in which she brewed medicine, and her washing machine, since she often put in a scrub board to wash her clothes. It was a kind of Kiamichi hot tub.

            For awhile, it was beautiful there with the sound of the creek gurgling by, but I was soon uncomfortable again. The steaming water made my poison ivy itch even more. The rest of the day was a big dose of hell. Somehow I got through it until Mary and Tub returned that evening. Before I could even begin to tell her about my frightening experience with the old woman, Mary took one look at me and had me strip down to my underwear. She told me not to wear my clothes again until they’d had a good washing. Tub found this enormously amusing and roared with laughter as I removed my clothes.

            When I was done, Mary handed me a big jar of water with tiny pieces of something floating around in it. She told me to drink it all.

            “I know where there’s some medicine for this,” she said.

            Then she went outside and was soon back with some plants that she bruised in her hands and had me rub over my itchy skin. They smelled awful but gave immediate relief. She told me to put myself into some new clothes. I did and when I came back from dressing, she put a jar of oily green gunk on the table and told me to smear it on my itchy places, as needed. Tub laughed and slid the jar of medicine toward me with a smirk. I snatched at it angrily.

            “What’s eating on you?” Tub asked.

            I told Mary and Tub about the encounter I’d had with the old witch while they were gone, omitting of course my cowardly reaction.

            “You met a grandmother,” Mary said. “You survived. You must be too old for her, I think. We’re friends, she and I, but you’d better keep away from her. She would as soon kill you as not.”

            Mary’s words confirmed the sense of peril I’d felt. “Who was she?” I blurted out.

            “She’s an old grandmother of these mountains. I often call her twice great grandmother. Some call her the woman in black. She’s been around a long time. Forever, it seems. She had trained many apprentices from infancy and then sent them out to other hills and mountains. She weaves a balance between life and death. It is said that if you meet her, you will either have a quick date with the cemetery or enjoy life as never before. What’s it going to be with you?”

            “How should I know? I hope I don’t die.”

            “Well, you made it this far,” Tub said. “These mountains are full of people who have disappeared without going off in a flying saucer—if you catch my drift.”

            “I think I’ve got the picture,” I answered, not sure that I did. I wondered if he intended it as some sort of threat.

            I turned to Mary and asked if she knew how the old woman had made her gravity-defying, fifteen-foot leap.

            “Yes, I know exactly how it was done. You didn’t really see an old woman dressed in black. You only thought you did. What you actually came upon was a small black widow spider. The red hourglass shape is her sign. She moved only a few inches toward you, but you saw it as giant leap.”

            I laughed. “I know what I saw, Mary, and it wasn’t a spider. I saw an old woman and she was as real as you or me.”

            “You don’t know a damned thing. You actually saw a spider, a spider with great power.”

            “Are you saying that my mind was just playing tricks on me?”

            “No, you saw what grandmother wanted you to se. Don’t think you are the only one to have seen this woman in black and been threatened by her. Thousands have had this same experience. I have seen her myself. The difference is that I have a true perception of her and know she is a tiny spider with enormous presence. Since your mind couldn’t accept this as a possibility, it protected you. You experienced her in a form you were comfortable with—that of an old woman. You were wise to turn tail and run away.”

            “I didn’t turn tail and run away,” I lied in embarrassment. “Oh okay, I’ll admit it. I was a tiny bit scared. I thought she was an old witch laying for me.”

            Mary said softly, “No, David, only a seductive spider. For now, you must live with your delusions.”

            “My delusions. Well, you’ve often told me about witches and wizards. Do they really exist, or are they delusions too?”

            “Plenty of them around here,” Tub said a little too loudly, giving me another of his stabbing looks. “I can tell you that much.”

            “Witches and wizards exist” said Mary. “They cause me no end of problems. There’s nothing worse than a bad one. The old ones are the worst—the ones who have acquired power and know how to use it. They have nothing else to do but sit around and indulge in their evil arts, sending out bad spirits to do injury. They ought to have their heads knocked off.”

            Her statement startled me. “Mary,” I said in shock. “I can’t believe you said that. You told me always to respect elders.”

            “I mean both things. It is a sign of our times that old people are no longer revered, and so they are justifiably wrathful. Today, the world wants youth and believes old people have outlived their usefulness. The elderly should be the most beloved of all, yet they are often despised. When they find themselves in this situation, many turn off onto the dark roads in anger. They have had long lives and know where power is located, and they grab some. They use it against people who have insulted them. They know how to keep close to the ground and strike like a rattlesnake. Don’t think it isn’t so. An old wizard is more capable than a young one. They have learned more about completion, so they can easily finish the story for others with their time polished arrows, believe me. Always respect elders, whatever else you do.

            “I’m getting old myself,” she continued, “so I guess I ought to know. At night I go up in the air with my dream medicines. You can tell I’ve been up there by these streaks.” Mary held out a braid of her salt-and-pepper hair. “See, I brought some of the white clouds back with me.” She laughed.

            “Well, I better be more careful how I treat you,” I said. “I’m going to be much more respectful from now on.”

            Mary laughed heartily. “You ought to be careful always with me,” she warned.

            Tub matched Mary’s prolonged laugh, but where hers was full of good humor, I felt his was still poking fun—targeting me. “Strange things do happen around here,’ he said. “Folks from the city have no idea. Maybe that’s why they avoid us, Mary?”

            “Maybe people avoid this area because of the likes of you, Tub,” I said.

            Tub turned and looked at me for a minute with impassive eyes. Then he replied evenly, “Why don’t you stay away too?”

            “Boys, boys, I don’t need it,” Mary interjected. “Since you are learning from me, you must get along together. Quit riding each other, or the both of you get out of here for good.”

            Tub and I were both embarrassed. We sat silently at first, and then made small talk until Tub yawned and stretched. “I’m hitting the sack,” he said. “I’m sleeping out in my truck tonight.”

            Minutes later, Mary told me to get some sleep too. Outside, Tub’s cowboy boots were sticking out his truck window as I passed, and I heard his snoring from inside. He had fallen asleep immediately. I wasn’t as lucky. When I finally slept, it felt as if a silvery gray curtain had fallen over me.

            The next morning we ate breakfast early. As soon as the table was cleared, Mary told Tub and me she had several errands for us to attend to in Talihina, a town not too awfully far away as the crow flies. Tub drove us there in his pickup, making snide comments along the way. When we were finished with our tasks we went to a joint called Skinny’s for burgers. Then we went to Tub’s place on the outskirts of town. It had bare cement floors inside and was in a complete shambles.

            “Sit over here, why don’t you?” he invited.

            I parked on what served as Tub’s couch, while he puttered around. It was no more than a stack of boxes covered with a small mattress.

            “Tub, this couch leaves something to be desired.”

            I began to get impatient, so I told him Mary would be expecting us and we’d best be getting back.

            “Rein up. Hold on to your horses, buddy,” Tub replied. “You can sure tell you’re a city boy—always in a rush. Let’s have a little drink first.”

            “Well, wait. What about Mary?”

            “Stand up for yourself, man. Act like you got some minerals down between your legs. A little drinky-pinky never hurt no one.”

            “Well, what did you have in mind?” I asked. “Do you want to go out to a club?”

            Tub grinned at me mysteriously. “Naw. Those honky-tonks are too rowdy even for me. We don’t need ‘em. I’ve got something better.”

            “Yeah, what’s that?”

            “A gallon of smokestack lightening. You know, shine. Shinola. It’s smooth as a baby’s butt. It’ll polish you right up. Want some?”

            “Yeah, well, I guess a little taste couldn’t hurt a body,” I said. “Break it out. Guess we earned it today. We worked really hard. I could use a drink.”

            Tub got out the jug and set it on the table. He took a couple of old jelly jars that served as glasses, poured them full to the brim, and pushed one over to me.

            “Swill on this, city boy,” he said.

            Agreeably, I grabbed the glass and tossed it back, letting about half of it slide down my throat. He was right—-no store-shelf whiskey could have touched it, not even the high-dollar brands. It tasted as pure as wild mountain honey and turned me right into a honey bee.

            “You weren’t kidding, Tub. I swear, this Oklahoma corn has done been conjured,” I said, smiling. “There ain’t nothing else like it.”

            We spent the evening and about half the night drinking, swapping jokes, telling lies, having some good horse laughs, and singing Forty-Niner songs. We were drunk as a couple of old bullfrogs croaking at Granny Moon. I woke up on the concrete floor the next morning, feeling shaky. But then Tub offered me a little of the proverbial dog that bit me, and it seemed to put things right. Tub and I had become fast friends, and we remained that way then and forever.

Adapted from Crossing Into Medicine Country, A Journey in Native American Healing, Copyright ©2005 by David Carson. Used by arrangement with Arcade Publishing, New York, New York. David Carson is the co-author of Medicine Cards, The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals and has lectured and given animal consultations and medicine card readings to people worldwide. He can be reached through his webpage, www.crossingintomedicinecountry.com

ABOUT DAVID CARSON
by Carl Hammerschlag, M.D.

I met David Carson, ten years ago in the remote wilds of northern New Mexico at a retreat center run by our friend and brother, Rabbi Gershon Winkler. We camped for a week together with our families and watched each other work. David is a Choctaw medicine-man but if you’re looking for a dark complexioned, feathered head-dress type, he won’t fit that mold. I do have my own preconceptions, and I have also met and worked with lots of medicine-men and women in my career so I looked at David with intense scrutiny.

David is “a fair skinned Oklahoman of Choctaw descent”, raised in a small Indian town, in his tribal tradition. As a young man, he apprenticed himself to the respected medicine woman, Mary Gardener; a powerful medicine-woman, a conjurer whose secret powers had been handed down to her for generations. Mary told him the stories of their ancestral healer, Yellow Tobacco Boy, and for the next 20 years he learned about the healing power in all things and beings. He learned how to see beyond the ordinary, how to locate the pathogen and then to create protection against it, how to interpret dreams, and about soul retrieval. Mary Gardner also taught David how to use medicine in a good way, not to disrespect it, because it would turn against him.

Crossing into Medicine Country is an authentic story about a man’s struggle to own his own healing power. It makes clear the trials and self-doubts about whether this was the right path for him. I like David, maybe it’s because we’re both seniors, but I think it’s more, his unassuming sense of self. He has learned to tame his ego with a sense of humor, irreverence, and humility.

I trust him, because he knows how to take care of himself when he’s sick and depleted. When David feels drained, he goes home to look inside for spiritual nutrition. And because he is willing to become “the point of the arrow”; a healer who is completely in the experience, not an observer, willing to use themselves as the instruments through which the illness flows out and their healing energy flows in. Sometimes a remnant of the disease may stay behind in the healer, the shamanic journey is not an easy path.

David Carson reminds me of all the attributes I admire in good doctors, he:

Makes good connections with patients; can speak to them in a language and symbols they can understand; and can inspire them.

Doesn’t only diagnose disease, but gets the patient to see their strengths as well as giving them tools to mobilize it.

Trusts his intuition, as much as his certainties.

Is able to connect with “helpers” (they can be instruments, places, family, spirits, communities, faith, sacred objects, rituals) but it’s something outside himself, that is part of his healing power. This awareness is also the mechanism by which doctors learn how to tame their egos.

Is totally present with the patient journey during the healing process, and is a full participant in the event, not a dispassionate observer.

David Carson has learned a unique perspective and I have seen him use it to see things they are the ordinary. He can analyze situations and get people to understand things that they needed to know in order to move beyond their limitations.

About Carl Hammerschlag, M.D.

Carl is a Yale-trained psychiatrist, who has spent most of his professional life working with Native American people. He has described his journey from doctor to healer, in his best-selling books, The Dancing Healers; The Theft of the Spirit; and Healing Ceremonies. He is a member of the faculty at the University of Arizona, School of Medicine, and a pioneer in the practical applications of the science of psychoneuroimmunology, the new, integrative, mind-body spirit medicine.