Geegeeton's Wall Art

 

 

The river Geegee used to flow across the country called Geegeeland. Actually Geegeeland was named after the river Geegee. There was a forest by the river and a mud road around the forest. Geegeeville was a village by the mud road. Little boy Geegeeton used to live in a hut at Geegeeville. His hut had thatched roof and mud walls. Geegeeton painted a bison on the mud wall. The bison had a pair of green horns.

One day, a real bison came out of the forest. It was walking along the mud road towards the river Geegee because it was thirsty. On its way it found Geegeeton’s hut. Geegeeton was then playing with his toys in front of the hut. The bison could not resist but laughed at the green horns of the bison that Geegeeton had painted on the wall. Geegeeton was hurt and he asked, “Why are you laughing your lungs out?” 

The bison tried to control itself. Then again it burst into laughter and replied, “urrgh….. ah hah hah… I have never seen a green horned bison… uuff, ooofff.. khah… in my whole life khaph haph..hah hah..” Geegeeton quipped, “This is not a real bison. I have dreamt of it. It came out of forests to quench its thirst. It went to the Geegee and started drinking. As its stomach started getting fuller and heavier it lost balance and it slipped into the river mud. Its horns caught algae from the river floor and remained green from then on.”

The real bison stopped laughing abruptly. It became very unhappy. It thought that Geegeeton had hurled a joke on it. It sighed and nodded in disapproval and headed on where it was going. Geegeeton shouted, “My dream did not end there. Haven’t you seen a rooster in green feathers?”

The bison was afraid to listen to anything about Geegeeton’s dream. It never liked dreams that were too similar to reality like a thirsty bison. When it reached the river, it was trembling in fear of fall. Its knees were making cracking sounds. Yet the need for drinking water was the strongest among all the feelings the bison had at that moment. It tiptoed along the slope of the river bank. As it reached the near flat part at the bottom of the bank, it became able to sip water from the brink. 

But it was taking small sips of water because it was aware of the gradually rising weight of its stomach with all the water it had been drinking. Actually, to avoid a fall, it tried to stand straight for longer and did not spend much time in bending forward posture while sipping water from the river. Thus it ended up in taking more number of sips, and obviously, more number of bending forward for taking each sip. This toil made the bison exhausted and it started panting soon. It became so tired that it was shutting its eyes while breathing in and out.

A fly wanted to play with the large hairs on the bison’s back. But a crow found prey on the fly. So while catching the fly from the hairs on the back of the bison, the crow flapped on the right side of the stomach of the bison. Already frozen in fear, the bison could not resist the flap of the crow's wings and it fell into the river. But the flow of the river was almost at a standstill there and there were shallow small pools lying side by side, one after another, joining the top veneer of water to form the base of the water column of the river. The bases of such pools were carpeted with green algae. The carpets were beneath the column of water and, so, were invisible from the top. The bison’s horns dipped into the algal base of such a pool when it fell. The cool water entered its nostrils and it felt a force to open its eyes. Only a haze of mud splotched its eyes. By this time it was completely out of breath. Gasping, it pulled out its horns and head above the water and took a long breath. Yet it kept its eyes shut.

After a while, it stopped trembling. Then the bison gathered all its courage to stand up on its feet again. Then it saw its reflection on the mirror of water. It became terribly sorry and started weeping bitterly. With the bison’s tears dropping in the pools, the water in them was first stirred, then whirled, and then, brimming. In a short while, the whole river gained a terribly swift current. With a pang in its heart thinking of being drowned or being swept away, the bison ran upward along the slopes of the bank and neither noticed when it climbed up to the mud road nor the direction of its run. It stopped only at Geegeeton’s. Actually Geegeeton stopped it.

Geegeeton fed the bison with fresh lemon grasses. Then he made its bed with warm strands of hay. He also put a wooden bucket full of water so that it can quench its thirst whenever needed during the night. At nightfall, Geegeeton went inside the hut. The bison was depressed. It fell asleep before all the stars shone in the sky. 

At daybreak, the bison opened an eye. It was thinking whether to come out of the cover of hay with green horns. It was ashamed of the color. Nobody but the crowing rooster was there. All its throat feathers were green. The bison shut its sole open eye in shock and shame. Then it opened the other and looked on the wall of Geegeeton’s hut. The rooster painted on the wall had green feathers along its throat. But the green color from the horns of the bison was gone.

The bison jumped off its hay bed and hopped to the wooden bucket of water. In the first ray of sun, it saw that it has got back its horn colors. Then the rooster came in tiptoe to the bucket and sipped some water and then gurgled out all the algae lumped in its throat. Then it dipped its head to its stomach into the bucket and came out all clean with white feathers.

By this time Geegeeton joined them. The rooster and Geegeeton walked with the bison to the limits of the forest. The bison went back to the forest. Geegeeton and the rooster came back to the hut. Geegeeton started drawing the bucket full of water with a layer of green algae at its base beside the bison and the all white rooster with a red crest.