Page 49 of Native Hawk
“Huntin’ ’em, for food?”
“No, for fun.”
“Fun?” he scoffed. “Strange kind o’ fun. For the Hupa, animals are sacred.”
“The only animals that were sacred in my family were pigs.”
“Pigs?”
“They were used to hunt thetartufo.”
“What’s atartufo?”
“You do not know?” Catalina was surprised.Maybe they called them something different in America. “Atartufois a…” She furrowed her brow. She didn’t know the English word. How could she explain? “It is a thing you eat.”
“Like a chicken?”
She chuckled. “No, it is not an animal.”
“It’s a plant?”
“Not…exactly.”
“So it’s a rock then,” he surmised. “In Italy they eat rocks.”
She laughed. “No.”
“No?”
“Atartufois a small, soft thing that you dig out of the ground.”
“Ah, a bulb,” he said. “My father’s people, the Konkow, they used to dig bulbs out o’ the ground to eat.”
“A bulb. What is this?”
“A bulb? It’s like a big round seed that grows into a plant.”
“No. Atartufodoes not grow into a plant.”
“But it’s under the ground?”
“Yes. It grows under the ground, close to the trees. The female pigs can smell them.”
“Now, Miss Cat, I think you’re makin’ stuff up.”
She gasped. Was he accusing her of lying? She elbowed him. “I am telling the truth.”
Only then did she see the sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “So let me get this straight. It’s somethin’ that ain’t animal, vegetable, or mineral, hunted by sacred pigs?”
She giggled. It sounded funny when he said it like that. “It is true. And some people believe they make you…” She didn’t know the English word.“Amoroso.”
“Amoroso?Amorous?” He raised both brows.
“I do not believe this.”
“Well, I suppose I might eat a rock if it made me amorous.”
She jostled his shoulder.
