“Say, mush face, a few swab-jocks from Keyport been tellin’ me you’re a real wise guy. Read a lot of Commie shit. Think you’re some kind of revolutionary. Are you a troublemaker, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Everybody from Keyport been telling me a different story, boy. They tell me you’re a tough guy. You look more like a bag of bones to me. Ha! Yes, sir, more like a coon man slipping down a magnolia tree. Ha! Ha! Well, can you dig a hole like a pig, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Christ, boy, can’t you howl like a cat?”
“I guess so, sir.”
“I guess so, sir. You fucking idiot! Don’t ya’ know nothing?”
“I guess not, sir.”
“All right, stupid. What’s your serial number?”
“995 57 15, sir.”
“Where were you born, punk?”
“Seattle, Washington, sir.”
Slow and methodical, the Sergeant inches his way around the desk to stand in front of Thomas. He plans to bury the next questions in the younger man’s soul.
“Who ya’ trying to kid with a name like Thomas, boy? How’s a wetback like you got a name like Thomas? Ain’t it really Pancho Villa or Willy Garcia? Ha!”
“I’m not from Mexico, sir. I . . .”
“In my book you’re a fucking wetback. Shit you’re a wetback from head to toe. Who you kidding, boy?”
Thomas stares back into the two gray crystals. He watches the sweat roll down the Sergeant’s temples. He feels it roll down his own as well. His clothes are a sweat-sponge. Yet he says not a word. Silence encloses him in its shield. The Sergeant eases back into his chair, and turns a little. The leather snaps as if he had been glued to it. Thomas answers for someone else in the room. A man with blood darker than the forest of his people. A Klallam elder he has sworn to his ancestors to honor with his name and his life.
“My father’s a white sailor and my mother an American Indian, sir.”
Irritated and reflecting disappointment, the Sergeant shouts.
“It’s about time ya’ answered me, boy. But how many goddamn times I got to tell you to speak loud and clear. I’m deaf, ya’ got to holler it out.”
“Yes, sir! My mother’s Indian and my father white.”
“I didn’t hear a word you said. You must have a mouth full of shit.”
“Can’t you, Sir!”
“So, your father never swam the Rio Grande. Too fucking bad. He should’a. Down home where I come from we fry niggers like ya’ in chicken fat and feed the remains to the hogs. Ya’ know that?”
Thomas calls secretly to Cedar Crow; the chant his grandfather gave him as a child.
(When the world’s too broken in spirit and has lost its heart, live in the cave inside your skull: follow hummingbird’s flight through the yellow light to the center of our birth. Lie like an agate on the beach. Wait for wolf and eagle to lead you home.)
“No, sir.”
Thomas steps with his grandfather down the path into the notice; his mind wears the shadows of this mountain clearing like a headband. Although fear and anger make a war inside his gut, he does not take his eyes from the wall.
“You can’t tell me you were born in this country, boy. Americans know how to obey orders. After thumbing through your records, this leaves you out of the ball game. You’ve been a fuck-up left and right since boot camp from what I hear. All the time causing trouble, breaking every rule.”
Thomas returns from the clearing; the sweat forms like oil beads and rolls down his forehead to his nose and lips. His eyes blink rapidly a few times, but never leave the wall. He sighs. He watches from behind the bear grass and giant ferns, the circle of dancers at Old Tillicum’s last potlatch in 1891. Quickly, as if the sea had offered its cold but clear light, his mind takes the path back to it. On the coastal beach of his ancestors, he watches a family of Killer Whales surface and fall back into the water.
“Yes, sir, I mean, no sir.”
Once more the seated man fondles his pencil, pushes back his chair, and looks away from Thomas. Faint clicks echo off the walls. He heaves himself from behind the desk and abruptly exits the room. He returns almost immediately, wiping cold water from his lips; he steps close to Thomas, smiles.
“You don’t know what ya’ mean, do you, boy? You’re such a stupid retard, ya’ probably couldn’t find your way to the shitter, if your ass was chained to the stool. Shit, all ya’ can say is yes sir and no, sir. Isn’t that right, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What? Somebody cut out your tongue before I could? Those weren’t words, punk.”
“YES, SIR! YES, SIR!”
“All right, all right. Jesus Christ, give me a break. That’s enough. So the cat ain’t got your tongue. You’re just an idiot in gorilla-wear.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Sergeant leans forward, digging for the way to look through Thomas.
“Now let me hear you say real loud, ‘I’m the camp idiot, sir!’’
“You’re . . . I mean, I’m the camp idiot, Sir!”
“Shit, I’m sick of looking at your ugly face, boy. I’m going to kick your ass into the deepest and rottenest hole we have here. You bore the piss out of me. From here on out, you’re not Young Thomas anymore; you’re Thirty. And if you don’t want to end up at Sick Call, you fucking well better answer to Thirty. Turnkey! Turnkey! Get this piece of shit out of my sight before I puke!”
Yellow Eyes, a bald eagle, rises from the top of a red cedar, upward to the mountain peaks of Thomas’s ancestors, returning to the Elwha River and its source. The steady keen of Eagle sweeps through Thomas. Thanking his guardian spirit, his grandfather, the people, and the dawn striking its story into the undulating coastal waters, he stands easily within the steel bars that surround the room. Yellow Eyes drifts over the room and glides downwind into the alpine clouds, and vanishes.
BORDERS (1993)
Thomas King
Thomas Hunt King was born in Roseville, California, in 1943. His father was Cherokee. King earned his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Utah and in 2012 retired from his job as a professor at Guelph University in Ontario. “Borders” appears in his collection, One Good Story, That One, which was a bestseller in Canada. Similarly to some of King’s other stories, the plot focuses on the farcical nature of legal technicalities, narrated in this instance by a preadolescent boy: “It would have been easier if my mother had just said ‘Canadian’ and been done with it, but I could see she wasn’t going to do that.”
WHEN I WAS twelve, maybe thirteen, my mother announced that we were going to go to Salt Lake City to visit my sister who had left the reserve, moved across the state line, and found a job. Laetitia had not left home with my mother’s blessing, but over time my mother had come to be proud of the fact that Laetitia had done all of this on her own.
“She did real good,” my mother would say.
Then there were the fine points to Laetitia’s going. She had not, as my mother liked to tell Mrs. Manyfingers, gone floating after some man like a balloon on a string. She hadn’t snuck out of the house, either, and gone to Vancouver or Edmonton or Toronto to chase rainbows down alleys. And she hadn’t been pregnant.
“She did real good.”
I was seven or eight when Laetitia left home. She was seventeen.Our father was from Rocky Boy on the American side.
“Dad’s American,” Laetitia told my mother, “so I can go and come as I please.”
“Send us a postcard.”
Laetitia packed her things, and we headed for the border. Just outside of Milk River, Laetitia told us to watch for the water tower.
“Over the next rise. It’s the first thing you see.”
“We got a watch tower on the reserve,” my mother said. “There’s a big one in Lethbridge, too.”
“You’ll be able to see the tops of the flagpoles, too. That’s where the border is.”
When we got to Coutts, my mother stopped at the convenience store
and bought her and Laetitia a cup of coffee. I got an Orange Crush.
“This is real lousy coffee.”
“You’re just angry because I want to see the world.”
“It’s the water. From here on down, they got lousy water.”
“I can catch the bus from Sweetgrass. You don’t have to lift a finger.”
“You’re going to have to buy your water in bottles if you want good coffee.”
There was an old wooden building about a block away, with a tall sign in the yard that said “Museum.” Most of the roof had been blown away. Mom told me to go and see when the place was open. There were boards over the windows and doors. You could tell that the place was closed, and I told Mom so, but she said to go and check anyway. Mom and Laetitia stayed by the car. Neither one of them moved. I sat down on the steps of the museum and watched them, and I don’t know that they ever said anything to each other. Finally, Laetitia got her bag out of the trunk and gave Mom a hug.
I wandered back to the car. The wind had come up, and it blew Laetitia’s hair across her face. Mom reached out and pulled the strands out of Laetitia’s eyes, and Laetitia let her.
“You can see the mountain from here,” my mother told Laetitia in Blackfoot.
“Lots of mountains in Salt Lake,” Laetitia told her in English.
“The place is closed,” I said. “Just like I told you.”
Laetitia tucked her hair into her jacket and dragged her bag down the road to the brick building with the American flag flapping on a pole. When she got to where the guards were waiting, she turned, put the bag down, and waved to us. We waved back. Then my mother turned the car around, and we came home.
We got postcards from Laetitia regular, and, if she wasn’t spreading jelly on the truth, she was happy. She found a good job and rented an apartment with a pool.
“And she can’t even swim,” my mother told Mrs. Manyfingers.
Most of the postcards said we should come down and see the city, but whenever I mentioned this, my mother would stiffen up.
So I was surprised when she bought two new tires for the car and put on her blue dress with the green and yellow flowers. I had to dress up, too, for my mother did not want us crossing the border looking like Americans. We made sandwiches and put them in a big box with pop and potato chips and some apples and bananas and a big jar of water.
“But we can stop at one of those restaurants, too, right?”
“We maybe should take some blankets in case you get sleepy.”
“But we can stop at one of those restaurants, too, right?”
The border was actually two towns, though neither one was big enough to amount to anything. Coutts was on the Canadian side and consisted of the convenience store and gas station, the museum that was closed and boarded up, and a motel. Sweetgrass was on the American side, but all you could see was an overpass that arched across the highway and disappeared into the prairies. Just hearing the names of these towns, you would expect that Sweetgrass, which is a nice name and sounds like it is related to other places such as Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw and Kicking Horse Pass, would be on the Canadian side, and that Coutts, which sounds abrupt and rude, would be on the American side. But this was not the case.
Between the two borders was a duty-free shop where you could buy cigarettes and liquor and flags. Stuff like that.
We left the reserve in the morning and drove until we got to Coutts.
“Last time we stopped here,” my mother said, “you had an Orange Crush. You remember that?”
“Sure,” I said. “That was when Laetitia took off.”
“You want another Orange Crush?”
“That means we’re not going to stop at a restaurant, right?”
My mother got a coffee at the convenience store, and we stood around and watched the prairies move in the sunlight. Then we climbed back in the car. My mother straightened the dress across her thighs, leaned against the wheel, and drove all the way to the border in first gear, slowly, as if she were trying to see through a bad storm or riding high on black ice.
The border guard was an old guy. As he walked to the car, he swayed from side to side, his feet set wide apart, the holster on his hip pitching up and down. He leaned into the window, looked into the back seat, and looked at my mother and me.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning.”
“Where you heading?”
“Salt Lake City.”
“Purpose of your visit?”
“Visit my daughter.”
“Citizenship?”
“Blackfoot,” my mother told him.
“Ma’am?”
“Blackfoot,” my mother repeated.
“Canadian?”
“Blackfoot.”
It would have been easier if my mother had just said “Canadian” and been done with it, but I could see she wasn’t going to do that. The guard wasn’t angry or anything. He smiled and looked towards the building. Then he turned back and nodded.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning.”
“Any firearms or tobacco?”
“No.”
“Citizenship?”
“Blackfoot.”
He told us to sit in the car and wait, and we did. In about five minutes, another guard came out with the first man. They were talking as they came, both men swaying back and forth like two cowboys headed for a bar or a gunfight.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning.”
“Cecil tells me you and the boy are Blackfoot.”
“That’s right.”
“Now, I know that we got Blackfeet on the American side and the Canadians got Blackfeet on their side. Just so we can keep our records straight, what side do you come from?”
I knew exactly what my mother was going to say, and I could have told them if they had asked me.
“Canadian side or American side?” asked the guard.
“Blackfoot side,” she said.
It didn’t take them long to lose their sense of humor, I can tell you that. The one guard stopped smiling altogether and told us to park our car at the side of the building and come in.
We sat on a wood bench for about an hour before anyone came over to talk to us. This time it was a woman. She had a gun, too.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Inspector Pratt. I understand there is a little misunderstanding.”
“I’m going to visit my daughter in Salt Lake City,” my mother told her. “We don’t have any guns or beer.”
“It’s a legal technicality, that’s all.”
“My daughter’s Blackfoot, too.”
The woman opened a briefcase and took out a couple of forms and began to write on one of them. “Everyone who crosses our border has to declare their citizenship. Even Americans. It helps us keep track of the visitors we get from the various countries.”
She went on like that for maybe fifteen minutes, and a lot of the stuff she told us was interesting.
“I can understand how you feel about having to tell us your citizenship, and here’s what I’ll do. You tell me, and I won’t put it down on the form. No one will know but you and me.”
Her gun was silver. There were several chips in the wood handle and the name “Stella” was scratched into the metal butt.
We were in the border office for about four hours, and we talked to almost everyone there. One of the men bought me a Coke. My mother brought a couple of sandwiches in from the car. I offered part of mine to Stella, but she said she wasn’t hungry.
I told Stella that we were Blackfeet and Canadian, but she said that that didn’t count because I was a minor. In the end, she told us that if my mother didn’t declare her citizenship, we would have to go back to where we came from. My mother stood up and thanked Stella for her time. Then we got back in the car and drove to the Canadian border, which was only about a hundred yards away.
I was disappointed. I hadn’t seen Laetitia for a long time, and I had never
been to Salt Lake City. When she was still at home, Laetitia would go on and on about Salt Lake City. She had never been there, but her boyfriend Lester Tallbull had spent a year in Salt Lake at a technical school.
“It’s a great place,” Lester would say. “Nothing but blondes in the whole state.”
Whenever he said that, Laetitia would slug him on his shoulder hard enough to make him flinch. He had some brochures on Salt Lake and some maps, and every so often the two of them would spread them out on the table.
“That’s the temple. It’s right downtown. You got to have a pass to get in.”
“Charlotte says anyone can go in and look around.”
“When was Charlotte in Salt Lake? Just when the hell was Charlotte in Salt Lake?”
“Last year.”
“This is Liberty Park. It’s got a zoo. There’s good skiing in the mountains.”
“Got all the skiing we can use,” my mother would say. “People come from all over the world to ski at Banff. Cardston’s got a temple, if you like those kinds of things.”
“Oh, this one is real big,” Lester would say. “They got armed guards and everything.”
“Not what Charlotte says.”
“What does she know?”
Lester and Laetitia broke up, but I guess the idea of Salt Lake stuck in her mind.
The Canadian border guard was a young woman, and she seemed happy to see us. “Hi,” she said. “You folks sure have a great day for a trip. Where are you coming from?”
“Standoff.”
“Is that in Montana?”
“No.”
“Where are you going?”
“Standoff.”
The woman’s name was Carol and I don’t guess she was any older than Laetitia. “Wow, you both Canadians?”
“Blackfoot.”
“Really? I have a friend I went to school with who is Blackfoot. Do you know Mike Harley?”
“No.”
“He went to school in Lethbridge, but he’s really from Browning.”
It was a nice conversation and there were no cars behind us, so there was no rush.
“You’re not bringing any liquor back, are you?”
“No.”
“Any cigarettes or plants or stuff like that?”
“No.”
Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers Page 11