Poem: "Iron-Like Animals"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the November 7, 2023 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from fuzzyred and helgatwb. It also fills the "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs." square in my 11-1-23 card for the Drabble Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. It belongs to the Shiv and Iron Horses threads of the Polychrome Heroics series.


"Iron-Like Animals"

[Sunday, October 4, 2015]

Shiv went to the Omaha Reservation
to deliver some messages from Boss White.

After he dropped off the messenger pouch
at the Tribal Headquarters, he wandered
around Macy for a bit, because you
never knew what sort of activities
might crop up on a weekend.

The Omaha folks tended
to be pretty spontaneous.

Besides, it was turning into
a beautiful fall day after
a rather drizzly morning,
and Shiv was not eager
to go back to the drab city.

Sure enough, he spotted
people milling around --
someone was having
a garage sale today.

He checked to make sure
that his hands were clean,
because he'd been getting
lots of commissions for art
smacking Family Services,
then scanned the goods.

Old books, baby clothes,
girl clothes, some toys,
miscellaneous junk, meh.

Then he spotted the table with
kitchen goods and pounced on it.

There was some nice Pyrex,
but he couldn't find a price tag.

Shiv looked around, because
some garage sales just had
a sign with general prices.

Wilma Many Corn sat behind
another table, so Shiv said,
"I can't find prices on anything."

Wilma chuckled. "That's because
this is a giveaway, not a garage sale.
Take whatever you can use, Little Lynx."

"Really? Anything?" Shiv said, startled.

"Anything on the tables or blankets,"
Wilma said, waving a hand at them.
"Boxes and bags are over there."
She pointed to a hatrack that held
a bunch of canvas bags, under which
was a large pile of cardboard boxes.

Shiv started sorting through the Pyrex,
because he could always use more of that.

John They Don't Know What They're Missing
sidled up beside him. "You taking all of it?"

"Nah, there's plenty to share." Shiv
didn't want to hog it, and besides, he
liked John. "What're you looking for?"

"Cookware?" said John. "Mine keeps
wandering away, so I'm running low."

"Here, there's several casseroles,"
Shiv said, putting them on the table.
"I'm after some measuring cups
and storage containers, but I
could use more cookware too."

John took the two biggest dishes
and pushed the smaller ones
back to Shiv, who kept them.

They sorted out the rest
of the stuff between them,
including a few mixing bowls
that John took as well as
a half-and-half serving dish
that Shiv gladly claimed.

"Here, take a box," John said,
handing him a cardboard one.
"I got rags for packing too."

Shiv was starting to feel
a bit guilty as he loaded
his loot into the box.

Then he spotted a stack
of cookie tins and grabbed
those. He could return one
full of snacks and call it even.

Another box held a jumble of
spoons, forks, and table knives.

Shiv was delighted to find that
the awful-looking black ones
were actually genuine silver.

He wrapped them up and
added them to his box.

Another table offered
craft supplies, most of
which was kiddie junk, but
there were remnant skeins
of hand-dyed cotton yarn
that he eagerly grabbed and
stuffed into his canvas bag.

Then Shiv found the tool table.

It held many boxes and trays of
mismatched items and partial sets,
like someone had gotten new ones and
cleaned out the garage to make room.

He found wrenches and screwdrivers
of carbon steel, along with the head of
a hammer that had no handle in sight.

There were three half-pliers made of
stainless steel, none of which matched.

One small box held twenty sockets
from at least two different sets
done in a lovely alloy steel,
but no ratchet to drive them.

There was a stack of saw blades
and a long tray full of drill bits,
both made from high-speed steel.

By the time Shiv filled a box
with toolsteel, it was getting
kind of weighty and he was
at the end of the row now.

Several of the Iron Horses
were hanging around, and
Shiv wanted to talk with them,
but he didn't want to lug around
multiple boxes of heavy loot.

As he looked around for
inspiration, Wilma called,
"Would you like to leave
your goodies here? I can
write your name on them."

"Yeah, thanks," Shiv said,
stashing his haul with her.

Glancing around, he saw
Joseph and Kyle working
their way through the crowd
of people at the giveaway,
while Ben and Ron stood
together holding something.

"What's up?" Shiv asked Joseph.

"The Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation
wants to start raising a herd of buffalo,"
said Joseph. "We're helping them
with fundraising. Ben has the tablet
for donations, and Ron has the one
with information about the project.
Kyle and I are passing the word."

"Huh," said Shiv. "I'll check it out."
He headed toward Ben and Ron.

"Aho, Little Lynx!" called Ben.
"It is good to see you today."

"I came to deliver messages
and stayed for the giveaway,"
said Shiv. "Joseph just told me
about the buffalo project that
some other reservation is doing."

"The Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation
already hosts a herd of wild horses,
the Indian Cave ponies," said Ron.

He used the tablet to show Shiv
pictures of a herd running through
the shallows of a river -- blacks and
bays, chestnuts and pintos, even
a blue dun and a palomino.

The low, rolling hills of
mixed-grass prairie reached
toward the wide Missouri River,
where they rose into rocky bluffs
and the ancient Indian Cave itself.

There were restored meadows of
wildflowers alongside stretches
that had never been plowed.

The forests along the river were
dominated by cottonwoods,
sycamores, and willows.

Higher up, several species
of oak trees towered over
understories of hackberry,
green ash, black walnut,
mulberry, and maple.

A picture from spring
revealed flowering trees
such as basswood, redbud,
dogwood, cherry, and catalpa.

Campgrounds offered space
for tipis and other tents, along
with odd little half-cabin shelters.

Hiking trails and riding trails wove
through prairie and forest alike.

"It's beautiful," Shiv said. "That
looks like a good place for buffalo."

"That's the plan eventually, but
because of the horses, the tribe
wants to start the buffalo herd on
a family plot farther to the north
that doesn't any have grazers yet."

"Yeah, that makes sense," said Shiv.
"I've seen how big buffalo can get,
just watching the ones you have."

"I have seen a herd of buffalo,
hundreds of them, come out of
the morning mist under a copper sky,
one by one, as if the dark and massive,
iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally
swung horns were not approaching, but
were being created before my eyes and
sent out as they were finished," Ron said.

Shiv chuckled. "They are like iron,"
he agreed. "I never have to worry
about not spotting them. To me,
they almost glow in the dark,
their bones are so heavy."

"I've seen your work in
buffalo bone," Ben said.
"It's very impressive."

"Not as impressive as
the live ones," Shiv said.

"Ah well, nothing is as
impressive as a buffalo
rising up out of the grass,"
said Ron. "Would you
like to see the plot where
the buffalo will be released?"

"Yeah, the reservation pictures
are gorgeous, I'd love to see
more like that," Shiv agreed.

"The main plot has 475 acres,
but other relatives own several
of the bordering plots," said Ron.
"With those, it's close to 600."

He brought up the pictures
on his tablet computer.

"It's about half prairie or
savanna and half forest,"
Ron went on. "Buck Creek
runs through the west part
to Dancing Man Lake."

The ranch had tall hills
tufted with trees, from
walnuts and maples on
the slopes to cottonwoods
and willows near the water.

Much of the space was
oak savanna of high grass
dotted with scrubby trees,
bushes, and berry thickets.

The creek wound its way to
a narrow lake with offshoots
that did look a bit like legs.

"That's nice for deer and
maybe bobcats," said Shiv.
"Plenty of grazing for buffalo."

"Down on the reservation, they
have mountain lions, wolves, and
bears to help keep the horses
and deer from overrunning it,"
said Ben. "That's good hunting,
and fishing in the Missouri River."

"Buck Creek has bullheads,
carp, and catfish," Ron added.
"Dancing Man Lake also has
a good supply of crappie."

"Mmm, fish," Shiv mused.
"I love me some catfish."

Ben laughed. "We know."

"So how many buffalo would
fit in here?" Shiv wondered,
looking at the main plot.

"That depends on forage,"
said Ron. "With lush grass
like this, one acre might
support one buffalo. Often
it takes more, two to five acres
per buffalo, especially when
the cows have their calves."

"Gosh, that's over two hundred,"
Shiv said. "That's a lot of buffalo."

"The tribe hopes to start with
four seed herds, each consisting
of a bull and four cows," said Ron.
"They're saving money by buying
a yearling bull, and investing more
for cows in calf to different bulls,
to maximize genetic diversity."

Shiv had heard about that.
"Sound like a good plan."

"Once the herd doubles,
they'll send a yearling
back to each reservation
that donated," said Ben.

"After that, they'll make
new seed herds and move
them to the reservation proper
and some other family holdings,"
said Ron. "It's good to have
different herds nearby so they
can exchange calves regularly."

"Why not just donate buffalo
instead of cash?" Shiv asked.

"Some tribes might, but they're
trying to get unrelated animals,"
said Ron. "Anywhere that tribes
close to each other have buffalo,
we tend to trade already, so they
wind up being related to each other."

Ah, okay," Shiv said. "So four herds
of four makes sixteen buffalo. That's
gonna get expensive pretty quick."

"That's why they're passing around
tablets at other reservations," said Ben.
"Each package features four buffalo.
If we don't fund all four -- and we
probably won't -- then it gets passed
to the next reservation, and so on."

"We've got until the end of November
for fundraising," said Ron. "Buffalo have
a breeding season from June through
September. Two months after that, cows
can be confirmed pregnant. That gives
the yearling bulls until next season before
the cows will need service, and by then
some of the bulls should be ready."

"That sounds like a lot of work,"
Shiv said, shaking his head.

"Nothing is particularly hard
if you divide it into small jobs,"
said Ben. "That's why the tribe
is working in sets of four buffalo,
passing the packets around to
different places and people.
Would you like to join the fun?"

"Sure, show me what ya got,"
Shiv said, holding out a hand.

Ben passed him the tablet,
set to a page with the prices
of the buffalo and a scale
showing how much they'd
raised so far (not much).

A yearling bull cost $2,500
and a cow in calf was $3,500.

Shiv had gotten a bunch of
commissions lately, not just
from Torrin but also from
other folks who wanted
to spank Family Services
with snarky artwork.

He was happy to help,
but now he had a lot of
extra cash and Dymin
had been ragging on him
to do something with it.

"Yeah, I can swing that,"
he said with a smirk. He
put in the amount and
then swiped his card.

"Thank you," Ben said,
glancing at the tablet.
Then his jaw dropped.
"Wait, what? Is this --
did you type that right?"

Shiv checked the number.
"Yeah, that's right," he said.
"I've had a good week, so I
figgered I'd spread it around."

Ron looked at the tablet,
then cupped his hands
around his mouth and
hollered, "We have cow!"

"What?" Joseph said,
whirling to look at them.

"But we just started!"
Kyle said, staring.

"Our Little Lynx is
feeling rich today!"
Ben said, clapping Shiv
on the back hard enough
to make him stagger.

Sometimes Ben forgot
how much bigger he
was and that Shiv
was a lightweight.

Joseph and Kyle
both turned to yell,
"We have cow!"
passing the word.

People hooted and
clapped, and Shiv was
starting to feel conspicuous.

Then Ben said, "Here, hold this,"
and passed the tablet to Ron,
heartlessly abandoning them
to the thickening crowd.

Ron took off his necklace
of buffalo bone beads and
looped it over Shiv's head.

A guy he didn't even know
handed Shiv a sealed bottle
of birch beer, and someone else
flumped a blanket over his shoulders
woven of what felt like genuine wool.

Curious, Shiv looked closer and saw
that the blanket was mostly blue with
bits of red, white, and even a little yellow.
The tassel trim also had pink and green.

The wool felt as soft as a horse's nose,
and he fell in love with it immediately.

"Hey, I found this in the giveaway
and I grabbed it for you," John said,
holding out an old metal tractor seat.

"Awesome," Shiv said with a grin.
Those things made great chairs or
stools once you put legs on them.

More people kept handing him
stuff, though, and patting him on
the back, and he really wasn't
used to that kind of approval.

Finally Orla came to his rescue,
shooing people away and scolding
them for crowding him like that.

"Go on, now, leave him alone,
you know Little Lynx doesn't like
people hanging on him that way,"
she said as she flapped her hands
at them like chasing chickens.

Everyone scattered except
for Ron, so that was a relief.

Orla was really good when
it came to rescuing people.

Then Ben came back and
handed Shiv a sausage
of his salmon pemmican.

"Holy shit, a whole pound?"
Shiv squealed. "Gee, thanks!"

Ben usually handed it out in
little thumb-sized bits, rather
than the big ones he kept for
serving at demonstrations.

"Well, maybe I'm feeling rich
today too," Ben said, winking.

Shiv looked down at his loot,
especially the buffalo necklace
that, while bone instead of metal,
reminded him of the iron-like animals.

It was true that nothing was too hard
if you broke it down into small jobs,
like the Iron Horses had done.

People were just trying
to encourage him for
going along with all that.

Thinking about it gave Shiv
a strange feeling, though,
which took a minute before
he could to pin it down.

It was belonging.


* * *

Notes:

This poem is long, so its setting and content notes appear separately.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

Nice.
I went to google image because I wanted to know what a blue dun horse looks like.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you liked it!

Blue dun is the effect of the dun gene on a black coat, so you get a body of silver through slate-blue to charcoal with black points.

[wispfox]

Aww. He's starting to feel like he belongs somewhere. :)

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

He really is. It feels weird to him, though. Getting used to it will take a lot longer.

[readera]

💖💖💖

Shiv goes & backs a whole cow & then he's surprised the tribe wants to give him all the things! Lol.

He's more then paid for all of the things in the giveaway. Plus he'll maybe mention it to Boss White or the Finns and they will help out too.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Shiv goes & backs a whole cow & then he's surprised the tribe wants to give him all the things! Lol. <<

His past experience is mostly people taking without giving back.

>> He's more then paid for all of the things in the giveaway.<<

LOL yes.

>> Plus he'll maybe mention it to Boss White or the Finns and they will help out too.<<

Entirely possible.

The thing is, Shiv has a weird and largely dysfunctional relationship with money. He doesn't handle numbers well. He's easily overwhelmed by choices. He grew up poor, so he thinks of himself as poor. But now he's in a position where he sometimes makes ridiculous amounts of money.

Dymin helps him organize his finances. She's good at it. She can break it down for him into budgets that he can handle, although some take a bit of prodding. But if he makes extra beyond his needs, she expects him to do something with it -- spend it, put it into savings, invest it, give it to charity, etc. Not throw it in a box on his dresser or just leave it in an account doing nothing. This is more than Shiv really finds comfortable, so he wants to get it off his plate as fast as possible. He has built up a handful of quick ways to do this that Dymin finds acceptable. One of those is spending it on allies like the Omaha. Another is buying art supplies.

Re: Yes ...

[kellan_the_tabby]

Reminds me of a conversation I had with my aunt once, which came around to people winning the lottery & how many of them wind up so much less happy than they were, & then about how so many really rich people were also kind of horrible. I told her I knew a solution, & it was an easy one; she was skeptical, until I said 'Take care of your debts, get a good place to live, stick a bit in the bank, then give the rest of it away. Then you're not rich, so it's not a problem."

Which would never have occurred to her, but then she doesn't live in the same society as most people who hang out here.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That would certainly work.

Other options riff on doing good without hogging the wealth, such as ...

* Buy land and set it aside for nature. That's on my list as "buy enough habitat for a wolf pack."

* Use it for microloans, grants, or investment in small businesses in disadvantaged areas. Frex, put a local supermarket in a food desert.

* Pick any cultural gap and just start chucking stuff in it. Frex, commission sculptures by and about black people or paintings by and about women of color or set up a tribal craft store or fund a language nest.

Re: Yes ...

[kellan_the_tabby]

All excellent ways to get rid of extraneous money!

First thing I'm gonna do is walk into the local food bank/shelter/free firewood/basically all the everything place here in the valley & ask how much money they can deal with getting at a shot.

In a month or two when they actually believe the check isn't gonna bounce, I'm gonna ask how much they can deal with a month, & then do that.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It helps if you know somewhat about how nonprofits work. Things I might ask about ...

* What is their current wishlist? Most organizations keep a running list of stuff they need to find and/or can always use. It often ranges from cheap to expensive items. A good way to make new friends is to buy one of the big-ticket items there and/or a quantity of always-needed supplies.

* Do they have a tiered donation system? Most have a handout or website with suggested levels for individuals and institutions. If you have Too Much Money, you can use the institutional scale, it's what my supervillains typically do.

* How do they handle angels, or whatever they call their top donors? Orgs with an active donor program will have something for this, and if they're largish, one or more staffpersons who deal with angels. If so, just talk to them.

* What grants are they applying for? This will give you an idea not only how big an amount they can handle, but what they would like to do with it.

* What are their major projects? Often they will have an annual plan and a long-term (5-10 years) plan with rough cost estimates.

* What kind of fundraisers do they do and what are the goals? A very easy step is just give them that much, then they don't have to spend the time on fundraising.


For advance planning, it helps to have contacts at your local or wider organizations for your favorite worthy causes. I could get on the Grand Prairie Friends website, look up contact information, tell them I'm a member and have a ton of money to spend, and we'd go out to some local park for a chat about how to spend it. I know enough about their projects to discuss things like the bat support program, invasive species removal, prairie restoration, etc. I know we have bald eagles moving in and I strongly suspect they're attracted to the local lake and our 1000+ acres of nearby riparian forest and floodplains that also has bobcats, so I'd look into expanding that. And so on. I could pull that string, get a meeting within a week or so, and have projects rolling out very quickly.

*ponder* Come to think of it, I could also visit our local orchard and ask them if they know anyone in the business who'd like to help start an apple tree collection. Though I'd have to do some research. Since they can grow Arkansas Black effectively there, I might have to put the southern collection here and the northern somewhere far away, instead of vice versa when I originally had this idea decades ago.

Start with people you know, so make sure you know enough people to start with.

Re: Yes ...

[kellan_the_tabby]

Oooo, useful info, thank!

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service! The more people who know how nonprofits and donations work, the better chance that information will get into the hands of someone with megabucks to spend.

[siliconshaman]

Kinda nice seeing Shiv flustered in a good way!

and yeah, Holy cow!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

He is fumbling his way through social skills. :D

[helgatwb]

*\○/*

[fyreharper]

Aw, this actually made me tear up.

Poor overwhelmed Shiv at the end there though. Good on Orla for rescuing him from the chaos!

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Aw, this actually made me tear up.<<

*hankie*

>> Poor overwhelmed Shiv at the end there though. Good on Orla for rescuing him from the chaos! <<

Orla has damn well adopted that kid. She doesn't see a need to talk it to death, but she treats him like one of her own. Shiv has a lot of the same symptoms as her FASD kids, and many of the same accommodations help him. She watches for stuff like that. She doesn't care that there's no official record of parental drinking habits, because that's often the case. It's enough for her that he fits -- and she'll trample anyone who hassles him, and everyone knows it, so they get the hell out of her way.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I like this one. I forget where Shiv got that nickname!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I like this one. <<

Yay! I'm happy to hear that.

>> I forget where Shiv got that nickname! <<

It's his tribal name, from "That Big Booming Drum."