The Bull's Gift
It hadn’t rained yet, so Ket looked out at the grey morning and limped out to join the rest. He had to lean on the old stub of a spear he’d carried since the hunt that had made his reputation. The rest of that spear remained stuck in the flank of the mastodon that had fallen on him. The hairy brute just stood, wriggled away the dirt and ran off bellowing. The spear in its side might have actually killed it days or weeks later, but Ket was glad it had been mud they’d fallen in.
He’d climbed out, wiped his eyes and head, and was surrounded by the hunt party, grinning and slapping him on his back for being so tough. Now, despite looking down at his overgrown, gnarly old knuckles and hard, callused feet, he wasn’t so sure he was tough at all.
Well past his prime, Ket still managed to stand with the hunters before they took their leave with a shout and a slap on their chests. The act connected him with his own youth. It reminded him of how he’d been before he’d had too many falls, too many close calls, to remain a hunter.
So watching them depart down the game trail in pursuit of tonight’s meal, he began wondering what he had become. He was no longer a hunter, and his sons were gone. One off to join with another clan, one buried in the gorge above the cave. He was no longer a father. His life seemed now a count of how many things he wasn’t rather than the things he was.
He looked down through the tall pines that spread out below and saw a tiny glimmer of silver light where the river flowed through the valley. It reminded him of another thing he wasn’t. His mate, Biri, had fallen off a boulder while washing herself during the spring flood season and the current had taken her away. He was no longer anyone’s mate, either.
Deep within the cave, where the only light was from smoking grease lamps, Ket had found something he could do that helped the clan. Here he labored, day after day, as the hunt season approached; the old seer, Galt, at his elbow, chanting.
He felt the first drops of rain hit his nose and back. It was time to return inside. Galt would be calling for him. It made him feel almost happy, that a lifetime of watching the prey animals had brought him a skill that others found useful, besides hunting.
In that dank darkness, the feeble light dancing upon the cave walls and the crystalline formations from the dripping of ancient springs, Ket could gather up what strength he still possessed and from the tips of his fingers would flow the magic.
“Ket! Gather your pots. We have business in the sacred places!”
Galt’s voice disturbed his reverie, but he turned towards the even more ancient man and replied, “Yes, we do. The rain has come to bless the hunters, too.”
“Well, let’s get your pots and sticks and go.” Galt was always abrasive at first. Ket imagined from Galt’s movements, that he too, was in almost constant pain. As they passed his bedding and few possessions, he scooped up a deerskin bundle which carried the tools of his trade and followed the older man with his smoking lamp into the darkness.
As they stumbled over the rugged pathway, Ket recalled the big bull ox the hunters had killed last week. It had been a surprise to them all, as the bulls usually stayed with their herd and ran as soon as they smelled the hunters’ approach. This time, Ket had learned, one bull had remained behind, stamping the ground and pawing the dirt as if he was challenging them all. Two of the hunters were hurt when he charged them, but three had spears ready and soon, the bull’s huge head lay on the ground. Its giant tongue lolled out of its mouth, and in a single, clean cut of a flint knife blade, it was severed and presented to the hunter whose spear had struck first. He recalled only once in all his years following the prey animals, he had been the hunter who received the tongue.
In that moment, with the only sounds the slow drip of water and the scuffling of their feet, Ket suddenly knew he was being called by the bull’s spirit. He would paint the bull’s death, and show not just the strength and skill of the hunters, but also the power and beauty of the bull. Ket knew that the bull had given himself to the clan, and now that he was no longer a hunter, he could still make sure that it would never be forgotten.
© 2020 Richard Sutton
It hadn’t rained yet, so Ket looked out at the grey morning and limped out to join the rest. He had to lean on the old stub of a spear he’d carried since the hunt that had made his reputation. The rest of that spear remained stuck in the flank of the mastodon that had fallen on him. The hairy brute just stood, wriggled away the dirt and ran off bellowing. The spear in its side might have actually killed it days or weeks later, but Ket was glad it had been mud they’d fallen in.
He’d climbed out, wiped his eyes and head, and was surrounded by the hunt party, grinning and slapping him on his back for being so tough. Now, despite looking down at his overgrown, gnarly old knuckles and hard, callused feet, he wasn’t so sure he was tough at all.
Well past his prime, Ket still managed to stand with the hunters before they took their leave with a shout and a slap on their chests. The act connected him with his own youth. It reminded him of how he’d been before he’d had too many falls, too many close calls, to remain a hunter.
So watching them depart down the game trail in pursuit of tonight’s meal, he began wondering what he had become. He was no longer a hunter, and his sons were gone. One off to join with another clan, one buried in the gorge above the cave. He was no longer a father. His life seemed now a count of how many things he wasn’t rather than the things he was.
He looked down through the tall pines that spread out below and saw a tiny glimmer of silver light where the river flowed through the valley. It reminded him of another thing he wasn’t. His mate, Biri, had fallen off a boulder while washing herself during the spring flood season and the current had taken her away. He was no longer anyone’s mate, either.
Deep within the cave, where the only light was from smoking grease lamps, Ket had found something he could do that helped the clan. Here he labored, day after day, as the hunt season approached; the old seer, Galt, at his elbow, chanting.
He felt the first drops of rain hit his nose and back. It was time to return inside. Galt would be calling for him. It made him feel almost happy, that a lifetime of watching the prey animals had brought him a skill that others found useful, besides hunting.
In that dank darkness, the feeble light dancing upon the cave walls and the crystalline formations from the dripping of ancient springs, Ket could gather up what strength he still possessed and from the tips of his fingers would flow the magic.
“Ket! Gather your pots. We have business in the sacred places!”
Galt’s voice disturbed his reverie, but he turned towards the even more ancient man and replied, “Yes, we do. The rain has come to bless the hunters, too.”
“Well, let’s get your pots and sticks and go.” Galt was always abrasive at first. Ket imagined from Galt’s movements, that he too, was in almost constant pain. As they passed his bedding and few possessions, he scooped up a deerskin bundle which carried the tools of his trade and followed the older man with his smoking lamp into the darkness.
As they stumbled over the rugged pathway, Ket recalled the big bull ox the hunters had killed last week. It had been a surprise to them all, as the bulls usually stayed with their herd and ran as soon as they smelled the hunters’ approach. This time, Ket had learned, one bull had remained behind, stamping the ground and pawing the dirt as if he was challenging them all. Two of the hunters were hurt when he charged them, but three had spears ready and soon, the bull’s huge head lay on the ground. Its giant tongue lolled out of its mouth, and in a single, clean cut of a flint knife blade, it was severed and presented to the hunter whose spear had struck first. He recalled only once in all his years following the prey animals, he had been the hunter who received the tongue.
In that moment, with the only sounds the slow drip of water and the scuffling of their feet, Ket suddenly knew he was being called by the bull’s spirit. He would paint the bull’s death, and show not just the strength and skill of the hunters, but also the power and beauty of the bull. Ket knew that the bull had given himself to the clan, and now that he was no longer a hunter, he could still make sure that it would never be forgotten.
© 2020 Richard Sutton
Narrated by Richard Sutton
Narrated by Richard Sutton
POST RECITAL
TALK
BR: We wanted to set our author interview in a scene that would fit the story, but we couldn’t afford a trip to Africa or Finland or wherever this story takes place. So we decided to meet Richard Sutton in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in the Hall of Human Origins.
TN: But then everything went on lockdown due to the pandemic. The museum closed. But we didn’t let that stop us! We did a little breaking and entering at midnight, and now we’re waiting for Richard to join us. Hey Brent, watch out for that laser. See that dot there? We don’t want to trip the alarm.
BR: Okay… Hope he didn’t get caught climbing through the window.
TN: I think I just saw somebody over there. It’s too dark in here.
BR: Is that him? Richard?
RS: Brent? Tom?
BR: Good to meet you, in person this time.
TN: Yes. Unfortunately we can’t shake hands, and we have to keep these lovely masks on. Welcome to the podcast.
RS: Well, bandana here. Still virtual in-person is better than no person, right?
TN: Yeah, I suppose so.
BR: So here we are amidst our distant ancestors, people like Ket in your story. What inspired you to write this piece?
RS: The Bull’s Gift was always connected back in those dusty corners of my childhood interests in our ancient origins. Before I read Tolkien I had a Social Studies teacher in Junior High that liked to pose some interesting ideas to the class. One of these was how many, including Tolkien, believed that folk tales and myths began as real experiences? He brought art into it too, all different kinds of self-expression and sharing.
TN: It’s interesting that to write character-based fiction about prehistoric humans, we have to move into an entirely speculative mode. We imagine they had thoughts and feelings similar to our own, but actually we’re just making assumptions about their psychology.
BR: In the dark, just like we are right now.
RS: Well I tend to differ with most academics on that point. We still don’t really know each other but I don’t think the psychology of the deep past, once you remove the societal structures, was really much different than the processes and emotions we use and feel right now. So when I begin thinking, trying to recreate stories of those far off times I try and connect all the understandable reactions and problem-solving that I know.
BR: At some point in the eons of evolution, one of these people felt the urge to make art. You named him Ket. A pretty important role. He’s the progenitor of it all—the Sistine Chapel, Abstract Impressionism, maybe even what we’re doing right now, making digital audio for the internet.
RS: Ha, yeah. Well the clan-society we all come from, made contributing something to the survival of the clan paramount, just like we’re doing today… well trying to do. Ket had run out of much that he could do besides work in the dark with the clan’s seer/healer to express the immediate connection to the natural world they relied upon for their living.
TN: It was a good touch that it was the bull that inspired him—an animal, their source of food that only comes with a fight, the central challenge of their hunter-gatherer lives. Art tied to need.
RS: Exactly. An inspiration, expression of their need and how they were provided for.
BR: I’m fascinated by the origins of art in the human mind. I think Terence McKenna’s idea is entirely plausible—that the “evolutionary catalyst” that caused language, imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, all of human culture to develop, was psilocybin mushrooms. The “stoned ape” theory.
TN: Some people today are stoned apes.
RS: Haha. I remember being one of those more than once upon a time but I also remember that the experience rarely provided any useful communication with another living soul. It certainly told me all kinds of things about the stuff in the corners of my head.
TN: I understand you’ve written a number of novels, several of them about prehistoric or very ancient times. Are you attracted to that act of wild imagination that it takes to create those characters and details?
RS: Well not to shamelessly plug it but one of my favorites is my novel Troll, which takes place in northern Europe about forty thousand years ago, as the confrontations between the incoming, so-called modern humans and the already well established Neanderthal people got real. The academically accepted period of overlap is expanding rapidly now to the newest discoveries and they’re saying it’s somewhere around ten thousand years at least. It must have been a very evocative time though—the germination point of our fear of the others, which is the root of racism as well as many strange tales created to teach children around a camp fire not to wander too far away from the clan. I wanted to deal with that as fully as I could in a reasonable length novel. I was very pleased to have an anthropologist, well respected at the London Museum, write a really good review. It felt like I hadn’t been spinning my wheels, you know?
TN: Yeah, that’s always good.
BR: Do you have any current writing projects you’d like to tell us about?
RS: Well maybe. I’ve got two in the semi-works right now. A World War Two tale of a tugboat seaman caught between his life in Redhook, Brooklyn and his unfolding life in New Orleans as the war takes him further and further from his family. The other one is a sequel to my book The Gift: Voyages, which deals with secured materials and knowledge stolen from the library of Alexandria just as Caesar’s cohorts set it afire for the first time. The conspirators are sailing the stuff up to Massalia, which is a Greco-Phoenician trading port on the northern coast of the Med, now called Marseille, and then on to the interior of Gaul in the company of a Celtic healer and a druid, with several Romans on their tails. Well sadly my muse hasn’t been too active the past three years. I keep looking for it and it keeps not being there, to paraphrase Chris Smither. Hopefully I’ll find some new inspiration soon.
TN: Hey, look at that guy in the diorama. The one with the spear. I think I just saw his eyes move.
BR: What? No way.
RS: Yeah, he’s moving!
TN: Wait, don’t do that!
BR: His spear! Watch out!
SFX: large plate glass shattering
RS: Run!
SFX: three sets of footsteps running, receding into distance
Caveman: Ha! Fools.
BR: We wanted to set our author interview in a scene that would fit the story, but we couldn’t afford a trip to Africa or Finland or wherever this story takes place. So we decided to meet Richard Sutton in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, in the Hall of Human Origins.
TN: But then everything went on lockdown due to the pandemic. The museum closed. But we didn’t let that stop us! We did a little breaking and entering at midnight, and now we’re waiting for Richard to join us. Hey Brent, watch out for that laser. See that dot there? We don’t want to trip the alarm.
BR: Okay… Hope he didn’t get caught climbing through the window.
TN: I think I just saw somebody over there. It’s too dark in here.
BR: Is that him? Richard?
RS: Brent? Tom?
BR: Good to meet you, in person this time.
TN: Yes. Unfortunately we can’t shake hands, and we have to keep these lovely masks on. Welcome to the podcast.
RS: Well, bandana here. Still virtual in-person is better than no person, right?
TN: Yeah, I suppose so.
BR: So here we are amidst our distant ancestors, people like Ket in your story. What inspired you to write this piece?
RS: The Bull’s Gift was always connected back in those dusty corners of my childhood interests in our ancient origins. Before I read Tolkien I had a Social Studies teacher in Junior High that liked to pose some interesting ideas to the class. One of these was how many, including Tolkien, believed that folk tales and myths began as real experiences? He brought art into it too, all different kinds of self-expression and sharing.
TN: It’s interesting that to write character-based fiction about prehistoric humans, we have to move into an entirely speculative mode. We imagine they had thoughts and feelings similar to our own, but actually we’re just making assumptions about their psychology.
BR: In the dark, just like we are right now.
RS: Well I tend to differ with most academics on that point. We still don’t really know each other but I don’t think the psychology of the deep past, once you remove the societal structures, was really much different than the processes and emotions we use and feel right now. So when I begin thinking, trying to recreate stories of those far off times I try and connect all the understandable reactions and problem-solving that I know.
BR: At some point in the eons of evolution, one of these people felt the urge to make art. You named him Ket. A pretty important role. He’s the progenitor of it all—the Sistine Chapel, Abstract Impressionism, maybe even what we’re doing right now, making digital audio for the internet.
RS: Ha, yeah. Well the clan-society we all come from, made contributing something to the survival of the clan paramount, just like we’re doing today… well trying to do. Ket had run out of much that he could do besides work in the dark with the clan’s seer/healer to express the immediate connection to the natural world they relied upon for their living.
TN: It was a good touch that it was the bull that inspired him—an animal, their source of food that only comes with a fight, the central challenge of their hunter-gatherer lives. Art tied to need.
RS: Exactly. An inspiration, expression of their need and how they were provided for.
BR: I’m fascinated by the origins of art in the human mind. I think Terence McKenna’s idea is entirely plausible—that the “evolutionary catalyst” that caused language, imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, all of human culture to develop, was psilocybin mushrooms. The “stoned ape” theory.
TN: Some people today are stoned apes.
RS: Haha. I remember being one of those more than once upon a time but I also remember that the experience rarely provided any useful communication with another living soul. It certainly told me all kinds of things about the stuff in the corners of my head.
TN: I understand you’ve written a number of novels, several of them about prehistoric or very ancient times. Are you attracted to that act of wild imagination that it takes to create those characters and details?
RS: Well not to shamelessly plug it but one of my favorites is my novel Troll, which takes place in northern Europe about forty thousand years ago, as the confrontations between the incoming, so-called modern humans and the already well established Neanderthal people got real. The academically accepted period of overlap is expanding rapidly now to the newest discoveries and they’re saying it’s somewhere around ten thousand years at least. It must have been a very evocative time though—the germination point of our fear of the others, which is the root of racism as well as many strange tales created to teach children around a camp fire not to wander too far away from the clan. I wanted to deal with that as fully as I could in a reasonable length novel. I was very pleased to have an anthropologist, well respected at the London Museum, write a really good review. It felt like I hadn’t been spinning my wheels, you know?
TN: Yeah, that’s always good.
BR: Do you have any current writing projects you’d like to tell us about?
RS: Well maybe. I’ve got two in the semi-works right now. A World War Two tale of a tugboat seaman caught between his life in Redhook, Brooklyn and his unfolding life in New Orleans as the war takes him further and further from his family. The other one is a sequel to my book The Gift: Voyages, which deals with secured materials and knowledge stolen from the library of Alexandria just as Caesar’s cohorts set it afire for the first time. The conspirators are sailing the stuff up to Massalia, which is a Greco-Phoenician trading port on the northern coast of the Med, now called Marseille, and then on to the interior of Gaul in the company of a Celtic healer and a druid, with several Romans on their tails. Well sadly my muse hasn’t been too active the past three years. I keep looking for it and it keeps not being there, to paraphrase Chris Smither. Hopefully I’ll find some new inspiration soon.
TN: Hey, look at that guy in the diorama. The one with the spear. I think I just saw his eyes move.
BR: What? No way.
RS: Yeah, he’s moving!
TN: Wait, don’t do that!
BR: His spear! Watch out!
SFX: large plate glass shattering
RS: Run!
SFX: three sets of footsteps running, receding into distance
Caveman: Ha! Fools.
Music on this episode:
Kababayan by Hum Drums
Kababayan means "my fellow countryman"
Used by permission of the artist
