Opening Lines
More than just the opening lines, really. The first few pages of the novel are almost nothing but a persistence of imagery. Over the course of those pages, almost the entire history of the region in which the story is set is covered, from the first settling by indigenous tribes to the year in which the events take place, 1926:
“It was long after the buffalo thundered toward a great salt lick in lines, bellowing, snorting, and flicking flies. Long after their path, beaten like a drum, had grown four feet wide and two feet deep and had been there for eons. It was after a civilization of tens of thousands of people settled in a large, fertile basin, built a city near the old buffalo trace, and thrived there for over three hundred years.”
Before the Dive
On a literal level, the title of the novel refers to the act of a young Cherokee woman from Oklahoma who thrills the yokels of Nashville by riding the back of a horse forty feet through the air into a pool of water waiting below. Horse diving was a very popular carnival-type attraction at the time the story was set: the 1920s. And Two Feathers is part show-woman and part professional equestrienne:
“Two Feathers looked forty feet down into the pool. The water was peaceful and slightly brown, the color of the canvas containing it. Beneath the canvas was wood. Two looked at each hook securing the lining and at the boards they were nailed into. A few people were already on benches beyond the pool’s edges, but Two didn’t glance toward them. She was meticulously professional in checking her equipment, and, also, being mysterious.”
Little Elk
Two Feathers is not the only Native American character of great import in the story. It takes a lot to outshine a girl who rides on horseback through nothing but air into the water below to stand out as even more fascinating, but somehow Little Elk pulls it off. Perhaps because only one other character can actually see him and he’s a spirit who can often be found sitting in his favorite tree. Also, he is not what you would call happy about disturbing the burial places of his ancestors:
“Little Elk ran to get away from the evil. And away from the skull’s first soul, which lodged in the head, could be brought back to avenge such an act. Away, also, from the skull’s clan that could—should— rise up and wreak revenge. He didn’t want to get mixed up in that. He ran all the way to his tree, scaled it, and sat on the limb that had become his favorite.”
When is a Natural Disaster Unnatural?
Tragedy strikes Two Feathers on one her jumps. A girl and a horse go into the water, but only one comes out alive. What happened? Call it a natural disaster. Or, maybe nature was not entirely to blame.
“One of the bleachers was sagging. Maybe collapsing. The pool had disappeared. Its planks were exposed. Its canvas ripped open. Below was a hole, a melting away from the day, brown fading to black as night. Crawford remembered caves under the park. A dark, dangerous tangle that the Squire had once whipped him for traveling. He knew what had happened. The water had weighed on a roof, the earth had shifted, the ground had collapsed.”
