Spirit Pouch by Stanford Vaterlaus Read Free Book Online Page A

it has dragged on for at least a thousand years.  Finally the after-school bus stops at the corner and I step off.  My mind is already far from school and my eyes focus on the ground as I trudge the two blocks toward home.
    “Ah!,”  I kneel down and pick up a small white stone.  According to Ty, a white stone symbolizes purity, or repentance in this case.  Repentance is a necessary requirement for baptism. [10]   The stone has to be pure white for the spirit pouch.
    Ty laughed at me when I suggested that it might represent bread.  He said bread is not even white unless the flour is washed and bleached.
    I brush the dirt off of the stone and flip it over.  A streak of black zigzags across the back side and penetrates the surface.
    “Rats!” I say throwing the defective stone down the alley.  “I guess a pure white stone is not as easy to find as I thought!” Twenty six stones later I find the perfect one … white on both sides and as far as I can tell, white all the way through.  I tuck it securely into my pocket.
    Now all I need is a feather.  I told Ty that I would never find an Eagle’s feather and he got another good chuckle.  He said the feather represents the Holy Ghost.  He reminded me that when Jesus Christ was baptized, the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the form of a Dove, [11] not an Eagle.
    I set my eyes looking for a Dove’s feather.  After a minute or so I find one … small, slender and gray, lying in a slight depression at the base of a tree.  I can not help thinking how appropriate it is that I find it in quiet, lowly and humble surroundings.  I hold it gently as I walk home.
    In my room I open the leather pouch and pour the contents onto the bed.  I pick up the plastic feather and drop it over the waste basket.  I watch it flutter downward.  It lands on the rim of the basket, then tips inward and slips to the bottom.  I replace the fake, plastic feather with the slender, gray Dove feather.
    Digging the new pure-white rock out of my pocket I compare it to the one on my bed.
    “Ah, yes,” I say.  “Much better.”  I back up a few steps, jump into the air and sink the brown-streaked stone into the waste basket producing a loud hollow rattle as it spins to a lifeless stop next to the feather at the bottom.
    I sit down on the edge of the bed and survey the new collection of spirit pouch contents.  Ty said the medicine man would have added one personal item.  My eyes rest upon the old beaded necklace.  It looks a little small for a necklace, and the beads are dull and cracked from age.  It had probably been worn by the tribal medicine man.  Immediately images of headdresses made from Eagle feathers, and dark painted faces, and jiggling, bouncing, colored beads worn by chanting men comes to life and dance around a roaring bon-fire in my mind.  The necklace appears authentic enough, but I lift it off the sheet and set it gently onto my dresser.
    I open my top drawer, and with my finger I push aside an old ring I had found in Salt Lake City, a wallet sized picture of Chris from seventh grade, and a twenty two caliber bullet left over from our February teacher’s quorum activity.
    An old silver quarter and a wooden neckerchief slide partially hide last year’s Luke-Greenway cross country medal.  I raise it from the nest of treasures and read the inscription engraved into the copper.  It says, “Second Place.”  I can still remember the race, the pain, the struggle to move leaden legs and desperate need to fill my lungs with oxygen.  I remember the finish line in the distance and that my will to win had to be greater than my desire for oxygen and rest.  It almost was.  I took second place, only by two steps behind first place.  This year will be different, I think as I drop the copper cross country medal into the spirit pouch.  One by one I place each item back into the leather pouch until I hold the empty vial with the cork still in place.
    The tiny glass vial