Chapter 1

By David Kearns

Red Dancing Bear saw the license plate and smiled.
He noticed the bumper stickers, some from national parks in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and California. Yes they would take him. These were the signs he had been waiting for. The plate, from Brevard County, Florida, was comforting. The van was like the one in his dream. The same color.
These people were from his ancestral homeland. They would understand the feeling of a warm summer shower off of the ocean and the smell of palmettos drying in the sunshine that always follows the rain.
Oh, the stickers all over the windows and doors of their 1998 Dodge Ram 250 van, more than the plate, these announced their arrival at the Bob’s Breakfast Barn off exit 13 in Tifton, Georgia like a blaring trumpet to Red Dancing Bear. Surely, this was the way the Aztecs felt when they first spotted the eagle on the cactus eating the snake in the valley of Mexico so many years ago, he thought.
One sticker, a mock election booster, read "Spock and Kirk in 2004” another, My Parents were abducted by Aliens and all I got was this lousy bumper sticker complete with the triangular head and big glassy eyes of a Gray as they have come to be known.
Red Dancing Bear crossed through the parking lot and wandered through the greasy front doors of the restaurant, this Saturday morning in August.
He was greeted with the sound of clanging spoons on filmy porcelain, and the low chatter of urban whites eating things that would surely kill them, if not today then eventually.
The clues would come to him soon enough. Soon Red Dancing Bear would find the family of suburban settlers he was seeking. Certainly before kitchen manager Stan Warner, who has a spot of cancer on his left lung, which was spreading, came out from behind the cook's line and ushered him into the parking lot again, all the while admonishing Red Dancing Bear for bothering his patrons the third time this week.
Red Dancing Bear stood before the hostess podium and scanned the eating urban white settlers.
"Sir, kin I help you?" asked a little girl, who was three months pregnant.
“No," said Red Dancing Bear.
"I am waiting for friends who will take me somewhere …" he smiled, reading her nametag and for an instant feeling betrayed. “…Jenny”
Such a sweet name beneath such a scowling little face, he thought.
He ignored her and went back to scanning the room of patrons again, awaiting the blessed word from the Creator. Some vital clue would be yielded, or perhaps the legendary feeling would wash over him and for no reason at all he would just know that this was the blessed, holy family he sought.
There had been a child-restraint seat in the Dodge van, he remembered, along with several stuffed animals and several copies of various Sci-Fi magazines.
The creator had not made things easy this day for Red Dancing Bear. There were several families in the restaurant to choose from.
Soon all would be apparent though and he could make his appointment with destiny.
"Sir, are you looking for someone. Can we help yew?" scowling little Jenny asked.
"Do not trouble yourself, Jenny. I'm just a harmless old man looking for some friends, is all. I smell good 'cause I washed up in the bathroom at the Waffle House off exit 12.
"All my clothes are clean because I also had them washed at the coin laundry last night. I only walked three miles before sunrise so I should not smell too bad at all.
“I have enough money to buy a cup of coffee so I qualify as a patron, but if you let me, I will leave soon and not bother you again for a very long time. I am looking for some people who will take me where I need to go," Red Dancing Bear explained.
"I'm going to get the manager," hissed Jenny, swishing the pleats of her green polyester skirt as she huffed off to find the father of her child, and her employer, who had the spot of cancer on his left lung, which was spreading.
She had good legs and wide hips, thought Red Dancing Bear as he watched her walk away. The child would be a healthy one, maybe even a boy. Hopefully it would not acquire the pinched face of its mother, nor the cancer of its father, he thought.
Red Dancing Bear continued to scan the room full of patrons looking for the owner of the van.
Before Stan Warner could come away from his line cooks, whom he was yelling at furiously for their poor performance this morning, Red Dancing Bear had seen the family.
The father was bent down over his greasy cancer-causing food, shoveling more of it into his acidic belly. The mother was fighting with a small blond girl who would become the mother of all humanity, over a toy they had been given to her by a young woman wearing a silly hat at a fast food restaurant. A restaurant that Red Dancing Bear hated to even mention by name; even in his thoughts.
The little girl was an angel, with bright sparkling blue eyes and an eternal smile.
"Heather, give it to me," said the mother, who had recently had her tubes tied.
The old Seminole wandered over to the table as the grandmother of all humanity was wresting a plastic toy away from the little girl. The mother was attempting to breast feed an infant at the same time.
Red Dancing Bear hadn't seen the baby before and he was somewhat surprised. It was a beautiful child.
He was even more surprised when he saw the young boy named Nathan. There he had been, in plain view, and Red Dancing Bear had missed his presence completely. The boy was lost in thought, fighting enemies on the screen of a notebook computer.
Nathan's breakfast, luckily, had not been touched but for a few sips of orange juice he had taken from a glass that 100 people had used within the last 24 hours.
"Hi, I am Red Dancing Bear and I have been waiting for you people for a long time," he said.
"Cool, an Indian," said Nathan, looking up from his computer screen for the first time in months.
"You are from my homeland, the Melbourne area, where the great river borders the eternal ocean?" asked the Seminole.
The mother covered her chest and held up the dribbling baby.
"Um, yes... honey I think he's referring to the Indian River," said the wife.
The husband, still too dumbfounded to protest the intrusion could only ask; "And you are?" of Red Dancing Bear.
Like the Little Big Horn, the element of surprise was with Red Dancing Bear.
"Just call me Red.I've been waiting for a ride out west. I’m not an axe murderer and I think I can help you find what you are looking for," smiled Red Dancing Bear.
"Cool Dad, a real Indian, can we keep him?" asked Nathan who was nine years old.