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History really does repeat itself

Even the indestructible have their hour



 

 

There is a certain type of person who cannot receive the same pleasurable stimuli we do by thinking about it. They must interact with the world; they can’t daydream about being with the prettiest girl in school, they must act on their desire. In life, they are fearless risk takers, like race car drivers and sky divers, because they have forgone discretion, recklessly jonesing for stimulation.

Mark Head, a breed Delaware, more Wasicu than breed, made his way west with the final wave of mountain men in the 1820’s. Head was extremely tough and durable, but not especially bright, with a talent for getting into hairy situations, and coming through alive and kicking, while many others, far more intelligent and resourceful, met with a tragic end.

Some have called the exploits of Head “hysterical fiction,” but they have failed to recognize the connective thread, so busy judging people by events, they forget to factor in who they were as people.

Once, high on a peaked roof in North Rapid, my buddies and I were toking weed, and Elvis said he’d give any guy five bucks if he’d jump off that roof. We all laughed, the way you laugh when you are baked, we all understood Elvis wasn’t serious, until we heard the sickening thump.

Allen Kuil (pronounced Kyle) had jumped off the roof. He had to force himself to his feet, could barely stand, wouldn’t walk right for a week, but there he stood, demanding Elvis pay him his five bucks.

Like Mark Head, redheaded Allen was tough and durable, eventually he’d be welterweight boxing champion of South Dakota, and because he stabled out of the same gym with so many Lakota fighters, people called him Allen “Manderson” Kuil. You have to know something about Pine Ridge geography to get that joke.

Allen was short, well-muscled, with oversized hands and feet that were always recklessly crashing into everything. He took everything literally, had no filter or discretion as we understand such, pretty much the opposite person I am.

But for all his life, where others were constantly at war with him, Allen was always my friend.

When I read about mountain man Head, the time he overheard an angry trader exclaim he’d pay good money for the scalps of the Indians that had just out haggled him, I was suddenly riveted on the words. The trader was just venting frustration, and every person knew he wasn’t serious. Except Mark Head. He returned with fresh, bloody scalps and demanded payment. Even those hard mountain men were horrified.

After Allen married my sister, he was family, and they had two kids together, Jason and Jennifer, but the Allen I knew as a teenager never really grew up. He was a hard worker, able to take discarded and broken things and make them useful again, able to take useful things and render them discarded and broken.

He remained loud and reckless, lacking discretion, even when paying genuine compliments, like at a Chinese restaurant: “You sure have good Chink food here.” When my sister divorced him, he drove his flatbed right into the side of her compact. He was considerate enough to wait until she wasn’t in it.

Allen would fight anybody, especially big men, a head taller than him, and after he beat up one of them, the guy ran him over with his pickup, and then just to make sure he was dead, backed over Allen a second time. Allen survived, his body had just crunched down deeper in the heavy snow. The judge told Allen, “It appears you’re indestructible and can’t be killed.”

In July of 1997, when he was 39 years old, Allen pedaled his ten-speed along a quiet backroad deep in Nebraska farm country. He had trained as a boxer on a ten-speed, it seemed a lot safer than crashing his pickup into everything. The kid who hit Allen from behind never saw him, and this time, Allen died instantly.

After the scalp incident, Mark Head continued to pin ball wizard around his reality, as the pin ball, not the wizard. Eventually he wound up in Taos, N.M., in 1828, during the bloody uprising, probably fearlessly unrattled even after they bound his arms, even after he saw similarly bound people dying all around him. A cat has nine lives, Head had a thousand, and on that day he spent the last one.

Allen’s son, Jason Kuil, had the smarts his father never had. He was built like his father, but facially resembled my father, spent time in the MMA cage. Jason almost didn’t make it as a teenager. He got to playing with a lighter and almost burned to death, spent time at the burn unit down in Denver where they skin grafted his torso back to life. Eventually, he wound up in Hawarden, Iowa, still just a kid, running from trouble, but he built himself a life there. He owned his own business, owned several rental properties, invested his money, told me despite all the money he was making, he lived frugally on about “five hundred a month.”

One thing he did while I was visiting last was buy a motorcycle for five thousand, sell it three days later for eight. Unlike his dad, he understood money. Like Allen loved his ten-speed, Jason loved his bike, told me he was “never going to miss a Rally.” He had big plans, but in July of 2016, when he was 39 years old, the headlight on his motorcycle went out in the dark. Jason wasn’t wearing a helmet. It had to happen on a curve. The bike struck a culvert and Jason was killed instantly.

Lots of people disliked Allen, considered him loud and stupid, and some disliked Jason, considered him loud and arrogant, but I loved them both, and they made such a ruckus while they lived, the echo won’t fade away in the time that remains to us.

(James Giago Davies can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)


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