People of the Morning Star

People of the Morning Star Read Free

Book: People of the Morning Star Read Free
Author: W. Michael Gear
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Native American & Aboriginal
Ads: Link
sacred buildings, the modern mound encased St. Louis’s discarded garbage. The irony wasn’t lost on John Wet Bear.
    “Leave it to a bunch of white guys,” he muttered.
    The Great Plaza with its extraordinary visitors’ center lay just across the road, the Twin Mounds on the south. He could imagine his ancestors, bedecked in bright feathers, playing stickball and chunkey there. He could feel their passion burning as hotly as it had in his youth as he grasped the racquets and sprinted for all he was worth in pursuit of the ball.
    Turning east he could see the irregular bluff behind Collinsville and the closer mounds that marked the Eastern Plaza. Someone sat at the eastern mound edge, a Pendleton blanket over his shoulders, a canvas hat pulled low over gray locks as he stared into the distance.
    I’m sorry to disturb your meditation, mister. But you’ll be witness to a day that changes lives forever.
    As always, it took a moment to recover from the sense of awe, and only then did John locate the film crew on the northern end of the mound top. His heart slowed into an angry beat.
    A camera rested on a tripod in what would have been the middle of the Cahokian’s five-story mound-top structure. A skinny cameraman was fiddling with the focus; a burly man was folding out a chair and positioning it.
    Aware of the pistol pressing against his sacrum, John stuck his hands in his pockets, strolling to where the overweight bearded man was cleaning his glasses. Wearing a white shirt and a big, blue tie under his tweed jacket, the big guy seated himself on a portable stool against the backdrop of the interstate and the old meander lakes. The cameraman, dressed in the requisite vest, stared into the viewfinder on the Sony digital. It looked like an expensive piece of equipment.
    The cameraman called, “Sound check.”
    The big guy pushed his glasses on and positioned himself. “Testing, one, two, three, four—”
    “We’re good.” The cameraman studied the LCD display and said, “Starting from the top, five, four, three, two, one.”
    “Hello,” the big guy said heartily. “I’m Dr. Wig MacGuire. Alien Quest has traveled here, to Cahokia, Illinois, to the top of Monks Mound where we will attempt to unlock the secret behind the Alien construction of the most complex mound site in North America.”
    He stared intently into the camera, his brown eyes thoughtful. “What brought visitors from another planet here, to the Mississippi floodplain? Was it some deep deposit of rare minerals? Or perhaps the planetary coordinates that caused them to build such an intricate spaceport in the American Midwest?”
    He smiled intimately into the camera. “Whatever the reason, they chose this place. We can wonder about the meaning of the mounds, and why the Aliens chose to build them, but—”
    “I say you’re a lying bastard!” John’s hard voice carried.
    “Cut!” The skinny cameraman spun around. “Who the hell are you?”
    “I’m John Wet Bear, son of Billy Wet Bear and Mary Wet Bear. I’d tell you my clans, but being white guys it wouldn’t mean anything. What I want to know is why?”
    “Why what? We’re filming here. I need you to leave.”
    John kicked at the gravel path with one of his worn Dan Post boots. He’d propped his thumbs in the back pockets of his Levis … inches from the revolver’s grip. “You really believe that crap about Aliens? I mean, really”—he raised his hands, trembling them—“ ooooh ! Why’d they come here ?”
    The cameraman pulled out his cell phone. “You’re leaving, or I’m calling the police, right now.”
    “They can’t get here quick enough to save you.” John squinted behind his sunglasses, looking across the distant oxbow lake toward where the North Group mounds had stood. “White people have already destroyed most of Cahokia. You two assholes aren’t going to destroy the rest.”
    The cameraman hesitated, finally reading the threat in John’s posture and

Similar Books

Dead Secret

Janice Frost

Darkest Love

Melody Tweedy

Full Bloom

Jayne Ann Krentz

Closer Home

Kerry Anne King

Sweet Salvation

Maddie Taylor