Simon "Bullnose" Walker: A Character Study (fictional)
Setting: Early to mid-1800s, somewhere in the Sierra Nevada
* * *
Simon Bullnose Walker was a hunter. He hunted to survive.
But sometimes, as now, it wasn't about survival at all. It was about something
else, something…bigger.
Some might call it vengeance; others, justice. Still others
might call it murder. Simon didn't much care if it had a name. Names were just
words. And words were the creation of men. The world was much bigger than
words, and words restricted men's thinking, locking them into seeing only what
they could define. Words made men blind to the bigger reality, the truer
reality around them.
It was a lesson Simon had learned early in life. Folks were
always looking for words to say what he was. Whatever word they chose would dictate
how they would talk to him, how they would respond to him…and how they would
treat him. Those who called him darkie expected him to do their fetching; when
he walked away as though to oblige them, he just kept walking, and never looked
back. Those who called him greaser expected him to be a thief; and so he took
what was theirs, and then disappeared into the night, leaving them to chase nothing
but shadows—because the word they'd used had no reality within it. Those who
called him injun expected him to be a savage; and so he was. No one ever used any
of those words on him more than once.
Simon didn't much care if there was a word that spoke truly
about him. The old trapper who'd found him had always said Simon shouldn't
abide by men's words, because Simon was more than just a man. In fact,
according to that trapper, Simon might not even have been born of woman. He'd
been found caterwauling in a cradle, in the middle of the forest, an infant
child left alone and hungry. When no human soul came forth to claim him, the
trapper took him in. He was called Simon for the trapper's baby brother, whom
the trapper had abandoned to venture west in search of something that had
always seemed elusive in the society of men, something grander than words could
ever describe—something Simon had found even when the trapper couldn't; he'd
found it whenever he gazed out over things no man could ever create—or
recreate—valleys and gorges and waterfalls that defied even the greatest
artists' pallets…or the greatest poets' words.
Simon's second name came about as he grew into the man he
would become. His wide face and nearly equally wide, flat nose earned him the
name Bullnose. Like Simon, it was a name he had never been inclined to argue
against. Like Simon, there was a purpose to it. It was a name that gave him
strength, and he wore it well.
His third name, Walker, came about much later, after the old
trapper had died and Simon was left to walk in the world alone. It was then
that he became a hunter. He lived in the forest with the other animals, and he
came to respect them as they came to respect him. He would not use an animal to
serve him. Just as he would not fetch for those who called him darkie, he would
not expect an animal to fetch for him. He rode no horse. He conscripted no mule
to haul for him. And though the trapper
had been good to him, Simon did not respect what the trapper had done. Trapping
was not hunting. Trapping took
animals. Hunting was different. Simon hunted only those animals who called to
him, those that were willing to give what they had so that he might survive.
They gave him food. They gave him clothing. And sometimes, as now, they gave
him shelter.
At the first signs of rain, Simon had tucked himself into
the niche between the rocks he'd taken as his home as soon as he'd caught up
with his recent prey. The niche was small enough for most men to overlook, yet
large enough to enable him to stretch out in comfort. And throughout the storm,
that's exactly what he'd done. He'd pulled a thick bear skin over the opening,
providing him with warmth as well as protection, and he'd settled into a sleep
deep enough to revive his body as well as his spirit.
When he woke, he could easily sense the change in the
weather. The smell was crisp, the sound…soft. The lonely howl of the wind might
seem hard to most men, but to someone like Simon, a man so unlike other men, it
was comforting. It was the kind of howl that reminded Simon he was where he
belonged, the kind that sang to him like a lullaby…the only lullaby he had ever
known. He breathed in that crisp scent, that soft lullaby, and then he pulled
aside his bear skin door to find the entrance of his niche nearly obscured by
new fallen snow.
It was a sight that gave him succor. Dawn was hours ahead
yet, but it would be a good dawn, a good day. Weather such as this made other
men weak, men such as the two-legged prey he'd been tracking by smell for the
past three weeks. Yes, they would be weak, but he was now rested, and strong as
the bull that had given him his second name.
The day to come would surely mark the last day of his latest
hunt.
