Hotline healers: an Almost Browne novel

338 Pages·1997·0.81 MB·English

by  Gerald Robert Vizenor

title: Hotline Healers : An Almost Browne Novel
author: Vizenor, Gerald Robert.
publisher: Wesleyan University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0819553042
print isbn13: 9780819553041
ebook isbn13: 9780585370569
language: English
Tricksters--Fiction, Indians of North
subject America--Fiction, Serialized fiction,
Picaresque literature.
publication date: 1997
lcc: PS3572.I9H6 1997eb
ddc: 813/.54
Tricksters--Fiction, Indians of North
America--Fiction, Serialized fiction,
subject:
Picaresque literature.
Page iii
Hotline Healers
An Almost Browne Novel
Gerald Vizenor
Page iv
Wesleyan University Press
University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
© 1997 by Gerald Vizenor
All fights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Acknowledgments
A shorter version of "Headwaters Curiosa" was first published as
"Monte Cassino Curiosa: Heart Dancers at the Headwaters" in
Caliban, number 14, 1995, edited by LAWRENCE SMITH. A shorter
version of "Hotline Healers'' was first published as "Hotline Healers:
Virtual Animals on Panda Radio" in Caliban, number 15, 1996.
"Naanabozho Express" was first published in a different form as
"Oshkiwiinag: Heartlines on the Trickster Express" in the journal
Religion and Literature, spring 1994, and in Blue Dawn, Red Earth,
edited by CLIFFORD TRAFZER, Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1996.
Page v
In Memory of
John Clement Beaulieu
Page vii
Contents
The Browne Barony 1
1 3
Teaser of Chance
2 9
Heirs of Patronia
3 30
Healer Dealer
4 49
Fifth Deal
5 78
Transethnic Commencements
6 100
Glossolalia Hermits
7 107
Hotline Healers
8 124
Body Counts
9 141
Naanabozho Express
10 151
Crystal Trickster
11 159
Headwaters Curiosa

Page 1
The Browne Barony
Almost Browne is a rather ordinary person in many ways. Ordinary in
the native sense of natural reason. His stories are an eternal rush of
creation, the trusty tease of chance, and a tricky solace.
Almost wears four ordinary wrist watches, and the hands are set at
arcane hours. His clothes are borrowed, bright, loose, and wrinkled,
from neck to ankle. He never wears hats, socks, or undershorts, and
his outsized shoes are tied with copper wire.
"We live forever in stories, not manners," he teased a newspaper
reporter last year. "So, tease the chance of conception, tease your
mother, tease the privy councils of the great spirit, and always tease
your own history." Yes, my cousin is outrageous, notorious, wanton, a
natural bother, and he is a mighty hotline healer in his stories.
Almost has a sure hand, heart, and eye of survivance. He has never
been a separatist or a coach of victimry. The traces of his native
ancestors are always tricky, but never tragic. Almost is my closest
cousin, and he was almost born on the White Earth Reservation in
Minnesota.
That chance of birth is the source of his ordinary nickname. He was
raised by our grandmother on the barony, a natural meadow of native
ceremonies and tricky stories. Some readers may find our barony hard
to believe at first, but once there, one shout over a panic hole, and the
outside world is never the same story.
Almost reasons that we are almost never the same even in our own

Page 2
stories. What we hear, what my cousin almost always talks about, is
chance, the unnameable creation of natives. "We are healers on a
native hotline, almost unnameable," he told students at a
commencement ceremony. We have always been unnameable. Our
native presence is unnameable in the histories of the nation. Almost is
unnameable, and some of his best stories were told on the first
reservation railroad, the Naanabozho Express.
The Baron of Patronia, Luster Browne, and Novena Mae
Ironmoccasin, raised ten children at the barony on the White Earth
Reservation in Minnesota. The nicknames of their children are
Shadow Box, Mikwan, Blue Heron, Rain, Bones, Aristotle, Galileo,
and Swarm. Mae and Rose, twin daughters, died in an influenza
epidemic.
Shadow Box Browne married Wink Martin, his second cousin. The
nicknames of their nine children are China, Tune, Tulip, Garlic,
Ginseng, Mime, Slyboots, Eternal Flame, and Father Mother. Ginseng
married Li Yan, from the People's Republic of China, and the
nickname of their daughter is Liberty. Eternal Flame renounced the
convent, and the nickname of her son is Almost. Father Mother was
an ordained priest. He renounced the order and married the novelist
Sharon Mary Greene. Their son is the unnamed narrator of the stories
in this novel.
Ashigan Browne and Luster are brothers. Luster remained on the
reservation and became the Baron of Patronia. Ashigan was removed
from the reservation by federal agents and lives on an island near the
international border. Gesture, the nickname of his son, is an
acudenturist and the owner of the Naanabozho Express.
Griever de Hocus is a distant relative. China Browne is the public
information director at his Wanisin Elephant Casino in Macao.
Gracioso Browne is another distant relative. Cozie Browne was an
abandoned child, raised as a cousin at the barony.
Pure Gumption, Admire, Chicken Lips, Casino Rose, Agate Eyes,
Ritzy, Cranberry, Hawk, Curly, High Rise, and Poster Girl, are the
nicknames of the active mongrels in the stories. Ritzy, for instance,
was the first mongrel to drive an automobile. Later he was an
instructor at the Animosh Driving School.