[This is a work of fiction, written for fun and not for profit. All DC Comics-related characters are copyrighted by DC Comics; all rights reserved and no permission was granted to use them. This work may not be reprinted without the written consent of the author and must include this disclaimer.]
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With wide-eyed wonder, I sat in Ollie's super-charged Maserati and marveled that the driver was none other than the man from the newspapers. I watched his large, blue veined hands on the steering wheel and compared them to mine, for in my way I was able to create a similar kind of magic to his own when handed a bow and arrow. His hands pulsed with the kind of pride a confident, well-to-do man must channel from some unearthly source, as they casually rested on the leather-draped steering wheel, only moving slightly now and then to right the path of the tires. They were big, strong, able hands, surely capable of caring for a kid like me...? And still, though I sat next to the hero of my dreams, I was bombarded with feelings which caused me some amount of shame. The car careened ever westward, and the dim yellow lights of the reservation faded into the dark blue of night as viewed through the passenger rear view mirror as I slumped into the plush brushed-leather seat and wondered why I'd been banished from my people into the arms of a man I didn't even really know, except for what I'd read of him in magazines.
Of course, they aren't really "my people," the Tachini band; they were just good enough to raise me. They never had to do it, but thankfully they ignored that fact and took me in anyway. Despite the obvious difference in my race versus theirs, I was raised as if I'd been a full-blooded member of the tribe, and it had never really occurred to me that I was different. Until it was driven home to me, I didn't "know" I was white. I'd giggle at that thought if it didn't hurt so much to think of it. As crazy as it sounds, I'd spent every day of my life trying to be the best young Diné boy I could be. But in the end, no matter how good a goat herd or runner or archer I had learned to be, I was told I had to leave, and burning holes into that rear-view mirror made me realize how much of myself I'd left behind there...and I was afraid.
"You can get into trouble doing that, you know," Ollie said lightheartedly, smirking at me. I remained with my eyes ever steady on the mirror. "Doing what...?" I asked. "Looking back, kid. Once upon a time that very act turned a fellow named Lot's wife into the Morton's Salt Girl...heheheheh." I stared blankly at him for a moment, then returned to the mirror. "You know the story, don'tcha, Speedy-boy?" he asked, nudging me with his elbow and trying to be jovial.
Ruefully, I gave up my vigil and dropped my eyes to the floor of the car; I figured that if my new guardian didn't like my reply, he'd still have time to drop me off by the roadside before it would be too long a walk for me to get back home. "I know the story; it's one the missionaries told us. They were always tellin' us stories that put people down for just being human. I felt sorry for that lady. She wasn't lookin' back because she'd miss the evil there or just 'cause she was nosey. That place was...her home---that's all, and she was leaving behind all she ever knew---all she had. And she got zapped for that? It's kinda creepy. I guess I'm not supposed to say stuff like that. The preacher made me stand in the corner for two hours for spouting off like that in Bible studies class; shootin' off my mouth's how I got kicked out of that class. Can't help it; that's how I feel." I couldn't help but take the story of Lot's wife even more personally at the time; I think I knew just how she must have felt.
My voice trailed off into nothingness; I'd guessed I had blown it with my new guardian and had better shut up before he really became enraged---not a healthy thing to happen while driving on the open road. Ollie shook himself and wore a quizzical expression. Raising an eyebrow, he said, "You are mighty philosophical for a kid your age..." Scratching his head, he thought better of asking me anything else for the moment. In the years which followed, I can't recall him ever bringing up the subject of religion again and he never made me attend a church or anything. I don't think it was so much a matter of giving me space; I think he just didn't want another theological debate for which he was so ill-prepared. Green Arrow never enters a battle unarmed, but theology was one arena in which he was not prepared to fight. His religious designation had always been "playboy," and Hugh Hefner would always be his guru.
Ollie reached over and flicked a switch on a very complicated-looking control panel to his right; 'course it would look complicated to me, since I'd never ridden shot-gun in a sports car before. Everything about that convertible was like Wonderland to my eyes, what with the digital this and onboard computer-powered that. A couple of people in our band had cars, but they were old ones---wrecks and relics some of the men spent entire Saturdays trying to repair. I remember Brave Bow's niece, Morning Star, saying that repairing those old hunks of junk was merely a cover for the men to spend the whole of their weekends drinking, playing cards and smoking. 'Figures, though. Not a whole lot more for a young and wild bunch of Diné brothers to do, being out in the middle of nowhere an' all.
The sound of another favorite BB of mine---B. B. King---rattled me back from my memories, as did Ollie's steady tapping in time on the steering wheel. He jerked his head back and looked over at me as I stared at the digital read-out on his dashboard. "Oh...let me guess..." he began, "I'll bet you're going to start complaining about my taste in music next, eh Speedy? Well just forget it---'cause nothing plays in this car if it isn't THE BLUES!" My eyes were opened as wide as the grin on my face. "You...you like the blues, Archer?" I stammered, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. "Yeah...what of it?" Ollie shot back in a belligerent tone, "And quit calling me 'Archer,' kid; you sound just like the old man. You walk like him, you talk like him, you THINK like him---you even hold a bow just like him. Just to let you know, kid---newsflash: you're not a 60 year old man! You've got to start acting like...being your own man. If you're going to live in Star City and go to school there, you're going to have to get hip to the jive, get your mittens laced and get with it---and in a Metropolis minute."
I pretty much ignored his lightning-speed blurb, not that I understood the last part anyway; I was too amazed to be hearing one of my other heroes on Ollie's amazingly good sound system. I let his words die away, and after a minute or so I said, "I love Brother B. B.---he is Blues Man Numero Uno!" Ollie laughed out loud. "And just what do you know about the blues, my little out-of-place blue-eyed soul brother?"
I'll admit I was a greenhorn and not wise to the ways of the suburban white man, but even then I knew he thought I was just an ignorant little hijo de puta. "What do I know? I know Robert Johnson, man....and I know Ma Rainey and Bobby 'Blue' Bland and Muddy Waters and John Hammond, and I know this music that is so strong in me that it makes my heart cry out, makes me want to roar like a sandstorm comin' in off the desert and leaves me washed with tears---hot tears like a sweet-water summer storm. The music makes me burn up and feel cool all at the same time, and I want to sing out like that so bad because I know the hurt in those words. It's like...it's like..." I stopped babbling; I felt foolish having bared my soul to a man I only fantasized that I knew. I didn't really know him---I'd only dreamt of him every night for almost a year. I wanted him to understand how I felt so desperately that I took one last try at it.
"It's like..." "Like someone knows how I feel," Ollie and I said in unison, and my mouth went agape again with the wonder that he did understand me after all. "I lost my folks when I was youngish too, kid," he said rather matter-of-factly, "...nowhere near as young as you were, ya know, but young just the same. Difference is that they were two of the wealthiest two people on Earth, with a combined annual net worth larger than the gross national income of the UK. The Queen family motto is 'Spit and you'll hit something we own.' So, unlike you, I was well cared-for when they died and I didn't get stuck doing the Dickens thing and working like you....errrr, what did you say you were doing back on the reservation?" "Goat herd...sir...I'm a goat herd," I repeated solemnly. "Yeah...yeah...not much call for that in Star City, kid; you'll need counseling. Ok ok ok, little soul man," Ollie said, bobbing back and forth with the sound of the music, "when we get into Star City I'm going to have to go to this little stand I know at the corner of 4th St. and D and pick up some shades for you. Can't look cool without 'em; they'll do wonders to frame your face. The Mighty Green Arrow's sidekick's gotta come into his new 'hood with an ATTITUDE!"
"You get a light in your face when you speak of Star City," I observed, watching his bright teeth gleam as he laughed. "It must be a wonderful place for you to protect it as you do; the spirits must have guided you there." He paused to look at me in that way that I would become more than familiar with in the following months, the look that reminded me of just how distinct the world I came from was from the one he was taking me to be a part of. "Spirits?" he asked, cocking his right eyebrow high and lowering his left, as a dog does when it's not sure its desires have been understood. "You make your own luck in this world, kiddo; that 'spirit guide' stuff was ok back on the reservation, but you'll need a hell of a lot more than that on your side out here in the real world. You've got to decide what and who you want to be and get there own your own terms. Take me, for example: I was born heir to tens of millions of dollars and still I was expected to do one better than my old man. But will the board of directors let me be my own man and make the decisions I want to make? Nah. I gotta listen to the god-damn shareholders, the namby-pamby lawyers, the accountants...and then there's Widdershins, my dad's sniveling little toady who still thinks I'm twelve and wet behind the ears! Hell, even the chick who comes in to give me my manicure once a week gets more of a say in how Queen Enterprises is run! So what did I do? What's the answer? What do you think I did, huh, Speedy-boy?!"
I stared at him blankly, not having the slightest idea what I was expected to say. He shot a disapproving, exasperated look my way and banged my left shoulder with the back of his hand. "DIVERSIFICATION, boy! I took the bull by the balls and diversified my private assets! Invested my private holdings and liquid assets MY way and made a fortune of my own---MY money, not Daddy's money! I did a Sammy Davis, Jr., kid, and that's how I do everything---it's gotta be MY WAY or it's nothin'! That's what the Green Arrow gig is about; it's about doing things my way and seeing that the little guy in the street gets a fair shake without being ripped off by thugs and crims too lazy to go out and get their money, cars or what-have-you the right way: by earning it. I don't want the city my parents built up to be torn down by low-lives and creeps, and the cops don't have time to babysit rooftops and watch the scumbags and cat burglars---so I do it for 'em. I give a lot to Star City; my whole family did: parks, schools, affordable housing developments, department stores, a baseball team, jobs. Oliver Queen, the business mogul---that's how I protect my city by day, but by night I do it dressed as Robin Hood. I won't rest until my city is on the map as the best protected, most desirable place to live. See if that goof-ball back in Gotham City can pull THAT off---hahahahaha! Fixed him, 'cause now I've got a sidekick, too, and you're going to be a lot better aide to me than some little bare-legged, back-flippin' pansy in tight shorts, aren'tcha Speedy?"
A moment of silence followed. In a movie, I'd figured, there would have been a round of applause for the hero as he took an over-acted bow and flashed a toothy grin. I wasn't sure how I was expected to react to his "mission statement;" I just recall slumping into my seat and staring at the highway signs, hoping he wouldn't ask me anything else. But I've never been the lucky sort...
"So, Speedy---hey, I'll have to have my maid, Matilde, take your measurements when we get in; can't have a sidekick who isn't outfitted correctly, you know. And we'll have to get the legal stuff done, get you enrolled in school and...you've got your vaccination records and your birth certificate and all, right?" "Ummmmm....no, sir," I stammered, "...the Tachini never found any of those things. See, the ranger station burned down in the fire...all I got is what I brought..." which amounted to what I wore on my back, a fringed buckskin jacket which had belonged to Brave Bow---he gave it to me as a parting gift---my bow and quiver, a Navajo blanket I'd helped to weave, a small ceremonial drum I learned to play for tribal rituals, and a partially-rusted old cow bell. This was the sum total of my worldly possessions, and I suddenly realized how little use they might be to me in a place like Star City. Then again, what else would I have to remind me of the place where I'd been raised?
"S'ok, kiddo; I'll get ol' Widsy on that when we get into town," Ollie assured me. "He can sort it all out. We'll get you set up as my ward; that just means I'll have legal custody of you. Don't want to find out I'm breaking any laws by transporting you across state lines or anything! I've got a few things to take care of when I get home, and I'm due for a business meeting in Japan in a couple of days. Hudson---that's my butler---will get you squared away. You'll see---it'll all work out. We'll have all the time in the world to get together and figure out how the Green Arrow and his trusty sidekick, Speedy, will fight crime and corruption while still finding the time to make the best damn red chili on the planet! Yee-haw!"
But, of course, he was wrong about one thing---we didn't have "all the time in the world." It was more like fifteen months, more or less. Childhood is a fleeting thing, and teenagers seem to race toward adulthood at break-neck speed. I was certainly no exception. Ollie's trips away from home became more and more frequent as the months went on. We were partners against crime in the late evenings, mainly, playing surrogate father to surrogate son in the wee hours between midnight and 3AM. Beyond that, we didn't see much of each other, except on occasions when Ollie wanted to play hooky from his plush office suite. On those wonderful days, he'd pull me out of school to take me camping in the Sierras, where we'd hike, make a vat of three-alarm-fire chili and drive any other wilderness-lovers away by blaring our blues CDs and laughing too loudly. 'Course there's nothing like a few well-placed boomerang arrows to put a fright in the campers nearby and send them scurrying back to civilization, as Ollie taught me.
With Ollie gone most of the time and my emotions torn between the spiritual status quo of my former lifestyle on the reservation and the hedonism I'd picked up from Ollie through his credit-card happy, money-can-buy-you-love city life, I felt a new and terrible level of instability. And then things got worse. Having lost his entire fortune due to his lack of attention to the fraudulent actions of business associates he'd trusted, Ollie's high-life on Cloud Nine came to an abrupt end and he woke up in a world which now looked down on him---a true reversal of fortunes. Meanwhile, I became an afterthought to him; he'd pretty much forgotten his promise to take care of me, electing instead for a "hand's off" approach to guardianship.
Ollie used some of his remaining private funds to move us out of his family's namesake mansion and into a tenement apartment building in Avalon Park, an area known for rotting slum dwellings and rampant gang and criminal activity. After settling in, Ollie simply took off for a few days to "...clear my head, kid," leaving me behind for weeks on end to manage on my own. Early on I discovered new and challenging ways to stay one step ahead of the utilities workers in my efforts to keep the lights and phone on and to keep something in my stomach. I was almost sixteen by then, hardly a legal age to be left "home alone" so often, but Ollie lighten the tone of his abandonment of me as amounting to "survivalist training," an effort to toughen me up for adulthood, in aid of teaching me to be independent. "Hang tough," he'd always say as he walked out the door, with me reduced to begging him to tell me where he was going or for how long. I never rated much of an answer; his standard reply amounted to needing space to be with his pals---either Hal Jordan, the test pilot who is Earth's Green Lantern, or Ollie's girlfriend, Dinah Lance, the hero called Black Canary. "I've gotta find myself," or "We're off in search of America," he'd giggle like some starry-eyed hippy. For me, it was just a matter of accepting that I was again alone in the world and would have to manage the best way I could. I'd never had a phone or electricity on the reservation and could live without them, and, thanks to the garbage I daily pumped into my arm, I never had much of an appetite. And, thanks to Ollie, I also had no direction or self-esteem.
I floated in and out of school, in and out of the Teen Titans---that group mainly made up of fellow orphaned super heroes I only paid a passing allegiance to---and in and out of consciousness on wafting clouds of pot, hash and the incense I used to cover up their tell-tale scents. So much for crime-busting with the ooey-gooey, gee-willikers Justice Little League; I began hanging out with the guys on the other side of that equation, the ones with the far more deadly hobby: heroin. I lived for it, stole for it, lied for it, pawned stuff for it, even used my body to get it; heroin clawed away at my mind, my body and my soul. I couldn't think of anything else but my next fix, when I was conscious enough to think, that is. I shook with fright every time someone knocked on our door, living in terror that it was either the police, finally on to me, or, even worse, our landlord. Our big, slovenly landlord happened to have a sideline as our friendly neighborhood pusher. Whenever he banged on the door I could never be sure if it was to collect the rent money Ollie hadn't left for me or to see if I wanted to sample some more of his deadly wares.
When my world finally unraveled, it was with that same suddenness that seemed to go along with all the other major changes in my life. Ollie'd come back from chasing off with Hal, all fired up about catching druggies in our building. Later that evening he bounded into my room, asking me something stupid about making chili...and he caught me trying to get a fix. Next thing I knew I was flying toward the wall, my face on fire from the backhanded slap Ollie dished out. My whole body ached from the sting of his hit against my face, the gnawing of my heroin withdrawal and the humiliation I felt seeing the seething rage and shear contempt for me in my mentor's eyes. I just wanted to die. My hero...my guardian...my father figure---he threw me out into the street with nothing more than the clothes on my back; all I could grab was my back pack and my buckskin jacket. I never looked back.
That was two weeks ago---"the two weeks from hell" is how I'll remember it for the rest of my life. My guardian spirit must have guided Hal to me as I lay writhing in pain in that filthy, trash-strewn alley, but it was his own innate kindness which made him take me to Dinah's place. There, in her smartly decorated little house, I bared my blistered soul to a woman I'd only ever met once before. She listened to my tale of woe, nursing my bruised body and crushed spirit at the same time, and she did so out of the goodness of her heart. She owed me nothing; I now owe her everything. Words can't express how much her kind acts have meant to me; as long as I live I will never forget that she saved my life.
My iron chariot lumbered and rocked its rickety way up the highway toward the small outpost of Dinnehotso, jarring me right out of my thoughts. Within minutes, it slammed to a stop and let me off on the dirt trail which led me back to the Tachini reservation. I have returned here to seek out the shaman. It's not like the old days, back when all spiritual needs were officiated by Brave Bow, for only his spirit now remains. He never told me how very ill he was as he sent me off with Ollie that day three years ago; those two ol' coots knew I'd never have left if I'd known that. Brave Bow died of complications due to liver cancer only weeks after I left for California; I thought my heartbreak over his death would never mend. Maybe I was exactly right about that, for it wasn't long after that when I began to "dabble" in smoking pot, somehow believing that it opened my mind up to the spiritual world in which my beloved mentor dwelled, much as I had seen the shaman use peyote to commune with the spirits during secret rituals in which he sought cures for those who were ill of body or mind.
"You need balance, Lost Arrow," I can hear Brave Bow's stern, soft voice in the back of my mind. And, of course, he is right, for my soul is tired and lost. The Coyote, the trickster god, has been playing with me, leading me down the path of disaster, but, as is his way, he also led me to a place in which dwelled the spirit of Estsa'Natlehi---the Mother goddess---personified by the nurturing Dinah. The tale was handed down from shaman to shaman's son throughout the ages that in ancient times the goddess bore two sons, both mystical archers who fought and defeated The Anaye---a group of hideous monster gods---using arrows tipped with lightning and fire. Is it any wonder I pray to her for guidance? Who better to understand the plight of a motherless archer who has lost his way?
As I walk down the dirt trail which leads to the shaman's hogan, I think ahead to what lies before me this day. When I dozed off on the bus earlier, I saw a vision of myself dropping to my knees before the shaman and begging for his assistance, explaining to him what I had endured after my exile. Assured of his benevolent intervention, I was placed in the center of a circle of dazzling, brightly colored, perfectly drawn images. Before me, burning brightly, the sisters of the flames which once changed my life so drastically flickered away, and above me the blithe spirits of the ancestors took pity on a poor forgotten child. Over my forehead, Soaring Eagle, the Tachini hataali, purified me with his bottle of rain as he sprinkled the sacred waters gathered at Window Rock, the shrine of the Diné Nation. He chanted the ancient words of his people which sought guidance and comfort to lead me toward enlightenment. Then, in my dream, I saw the sons of the goddess pierce the dual demons of addiction and despair with their cleansing arrows and the great pain they had caused was ripped away from me.
Through heroin withdrawal I had suffered the most horrible trial of my life and nearly lost what was left of my mind; it amounted to my "wounding" to call upon the spirits to heal me. All harmony between my being and the natural world which had been lost will now be restored. Through the healing ceremony I will reclaim the soul I have so carelessly discarded and become whole once more. As Roy Harper, the hero called "Speedy," I have traveled around the world and seen both the good and bad sides of life, only to succumb to the worst of all possible existences. I have survived degrees of both wealth and poverty, happiness, sorrow, anger, despair and acclaim; there was nothing left for me in Star City except misery and death. Here and now, back on the land on which I grew strong and tall, I will be reborn in the spirit of the goddess. In this place I called home, I will know peace once more...and Lost Arrow will live again.
---DB
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