Two Roads
Page 10
“Fifth thing is that back when I was in Challagi about a quarter of the kids looked no more Indian than Bette Davis or Laurel and Hardy. You’d see blue-eyed blondes and boys and girls with pale skin. Only thing they all had in common was Indian blood in their family and being poor.”
Pop pauses, dropping his hand. “It ought to be easier for you, Cal, than for those kids. There was always a lot more bullying of kids who looked white. And you don’t. You look as Indian as I do.”
I think about all the times Pop and I have almost been taken for Negroes because of our brown skin. Times I wished I were blond and fairer. But now it’s going to be an advantage? The whole world seems upside down.
“I was lucky,” Pop continues. “I got taken in right away by the Creeks and the older boys looked out for me. It will likely be the same for you. When you arrive they’ll probably take one look at you—the other kids, I mean—and lump you in with the full-bloods, seeing as how your hair’s black and your skin’s brown. They’ll see you as Indian.”
Indian. Just like that?
My world is upside down now for sure. I guess I’m going to have to get used to walking on the ceiling.
CHAPTER
TEN
HORSES
The train is slowing down. I peer out the partially opened door. We’re coming to a rail yard dominated by what looks like barracks and stockyards. There are corrals with fine-looking horses in them. Their hooves are kicking up dust as they run back and forth behind the fences.
There are men, too. All are either wearing the blue army uniforms of cavalrymen or dressed like cowpunchers. I look back at Pop.
“Stay put,” he says.
The train stops. Voices come from outside. I step back from the boxcar door. With a whirr of metal wheels it’s pulled open. A man with thick black hair and a handlebar mustache is standing there next to the burly crewman who just opened the door. The black-haired man strokes his mustache, nods his head, then shows his teeth in a wide friendly grin.
“Indians?” he asks.
I don’t know how to reply. No? Yes? Maybe?
“You could say that,” Pop says.
“All right! Know much about horses?”
Pop raises an eyebrow. “Only everything.”
“All right,” the man says again. “They’s bound for Challagi. Retired cavalry mounts. Some is a bit skittish, though. Help us load ’em and then ride on with ’em? We’ll give you and your boy a square meal. Deal?”
“Deal,” Pop says.
A ramp is brought up. The crewman moves aside so that it can be fitted onto our boxcar. Pop helps settle it into place and then the two of us walk down to join the others. We follow them to a corral holding eight big horses. The two largest ones, a bay and a pinto, are galloping back and forth, tossing their heads.
Retired they might be, but far from worn out.
Pop leans over to me. “Been a practice of the army to retire its horses at Challagi. There’s plenty of room for them on the eighty-six hundred acres around the school and more than enough hands to care for them.”
There’s a smile on my face for the first time since Pop started talking about the Indian boarding school. Horses! Any place with horses can’t be half bad. Galloping along on a horse’s back is even better than riding the roof of a passenger car. Our three horses are one of the things I miss most about our farm. Aside from Mom’s death, the saddest thing I remember is watching them being led away.
The first six are easy enough to catch with the help of the two wranglers assigned to the task. Four mares and two geldings.
As Pop puts the bridles on he checks each animal’s teeth, he pulls back their lips, feeling their back molars for the signs of wear that show their age.
“Not a one over fourteen,” he says. “Lots of miles left on these babies.”
Leading them up the ramp one by one to their stalls is no problem. I take two all by myself.
“Boy’s good with horses, ain’t he?” one of the cowboys says. His dark skin may mean he’s either part Mexican or Indian himself.
“You could say that,” Pop replies. I can hear the pride in his voice, and it makes me feel fine.
“But now we got them to deal with,” the second cowboy says, gesturing with his thumb back at the remaining horses, the bay and the pinto—in the corral. “Names are Dakota and Blackjack, we was told. Ought to be Trouble and Damnation far as I am concerned.”
Both of them are wild-eyed, whinnying, rearing up, baring their teeth, kicking up a fuss, and looking to fight.
“What do you think, Arjay?” Cowboy One asks.
“Seems to me, Eljay, like we have got us a couple of hellions there,” Cowboy Two answers.
“Nothing that a bullet in the brain won’t cure,” Eljay adds.
I suppose they’re only joshing about killing those skittish horses. But the thought of putting an animal down like that bothers me.
“Pop and me can get them,” I blurt out.
“Well, I’ll be,” the wrangler named Arjay says. “You hear that, Eljay? It turns out the boy can speak after all.” He steps back, one hand on his heart, the other held out palm up like I saw a doorman in a movie do while opening a door for a man in a tuxedo. “Go right ahead.”
“Be our guest,” Eljay adds, copying his friend’s gesture.
Pop and I go into the corral. They close the gate behind us.
“Want us to get a broom and dustpan to sweep up your remains?” Eljay asks.
Arjay chuckles. Then, in a serious voice, he says, “You two take care. That bay there, Blackjack, he broke a man’s arm yesterday.”
A small crowd has gathered outside the fence to watch, including the black mustached man who first saw us and a bunch of cavalrymen.
Pop and I pay no attention to the onlookers. Our minds are on the pinto and the bay. We don’t move at first, though. We just stand there for a while, letting them get used to us. It doesn’t take that long. These aren’t wild horses, but cavalry mounts. They’re just upset because they’re being separated from the people who rode and took care of them. They don’t know what’s going to happen next.
What happens next is that Pop starts singing. Soft at first, barely loud enough for a person to hear. What he calls his horse song. Every morning when we’d go into the barn to hitch up Austin, our plow horse, or Humken and Hokkolen, our matched pair of bays who pulled our wagon, he’d be singing it. There’s no real words, just sounds that are soothing.
“Ho-ho-yeh, hey-ey-yo.”
The two horses prick up their ears. They stop rearing and turn toward us. We walk their way, our hands down at our sides. Pop is singing a little louder now.
“Ho-ho-yeh, hey-ey-yo.”
The horses stand still, watching as we approach. The big muscles in their thighs are still twitching, but they’re getting calmer. We stop about twenty feet away. Pop is still singing. Me, I’m just keeping my mind calm and friendly-like. Horses sense when a person is nervous or angry around them.
Finally, the horses look over at each other and nod their heads like folks reaching an agreement. They walk up to us, lower their heads, and nuzzle our chests as we stroke their necks.
“Well, I’ll be,” I hear Eljay say.
“You can open the gate,” Pop says as he slips the bridles over each of the horse’s heads.
We lead the two horses out past the awed cowboys. I go up the ramp with the pinto named Dakota, Pop with the bay named Blackjack. We secure them in the two last stalls, then come back to the door. The crowd that watched from outside the corral is now at the bottom of the ramp.
As soon as we appear they start clapping.
Pop waits until the applause stops. Then he touches two fingers to his cap in a little salute.
“Mealtime now?” he asks.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
We’re on our way again. I’m leaning against the rough pinewood wall of the stall where Dakota is standing. Every now and then he whinnies soft-like and I give him a handful of hay. A mound of that sweet-smelling grass was forked in with us before the call of All Aboard.
After our dinner, which was real fine—pot roast with onions and carrots, potatoes, and enough thick brown gravy to float a battleship—we’d been offered a better ride.
“You can join us in the caboose,” Wilkie, the mustached man told us. “You earned that.”
Pop shook his head. “Horses’ll be happier having us with them.”
Plus Pop needed more time alone with me before we got to Challagi.
“Classes won’t be hard for you, Cal,” he says.
The train is rolling across an endless expanse of brown and yellow plains. Not a patch of green to be seen. Off in the distance are big black clouds—no doubt chock-full of dust. Not headed our way, though. Fixing to dump a few thousand acres of Oklahoma soil into the Gulf of Mexico.
We study those clouds a bit before Pop turns back to me.
“No,” Pop says, “academic classes ought to be easy. You learned a lot from your old school. More than most high school students at Challagi did in my time. Matter of fact, unless they got a better batch than when I was there, you may find you know more than your academic teachers do as far as your three Rs go. At Challagi the big emphasis is on industries. The agricultural side of things there is top-notch, modern farming in fact. There’s where you can get an education. Pay attention, Cal, and you’ll learn a thing or two we can use when we have a farm again.”
Pop pauses. He looks off to his right as he does when he’s visiting someplace in his memory.
“The first thing they are going to do is boil you up. Strip you, scrub you clean, run a metal comb soaked with kerosene through your hair to get rids of nits and lice. Even though you don’t have any.” Pop looks at me. “They’ll cut your hair, too. Real short. Can you handle that?”
I nod, but I feel like I’ve been gut shot. Cut off my hair? I resist the impulse to pull out Mom’s comb or run it back across my head. I know that might make Pop feel bad.
A man can stand almost anything as long as it’s not forever.
That’s what I tell myself. I have to come to terms with this. It’ll be over before all that long. Just a few months. Pop will get his bonus money, come back and get me. I’ll grow my hair back then. We’ll start a whole new life on a new piece of land. A hundred acres with a barn, a team of horses, a cow or two to milk, and chickens to give us eggs. Out in the country, but not so far from a town that we can’t go in on a Saturday night to a movie house and see the latest Tom Mix serial, maybe go to an ice-cream parlor and . . .
“You hear what I just said, son?”
I focus my eyes away from that dream and look at Pop. He knows I have been off somewhere in my mind. I would never lie to him.
So I shake my head no.
Pop smiles. “I was just saying you better be prepared for three things, Cal. First is to start marching come tomorrow. They’ll have you in a uniform and bugle you up before dawn.
“Second thing is when they feed you, don’t hold back. No such thing as table manners at Challagi. Grab what you can as soon as it hits the table. Otherwise you are sure as shooting going to get thin.”
Pop pauses again and looks at his hands. “Last thing is that you’ve got to be prepared to fight. The big boys won’t pick on you. It’ll be the ones your age.”
Pop holds up his hands, makes them into fists. “Unless things have changed one hell of a lot, they won’t be pulling knives or using any weapons. No biting or eye-gouging or hooking. No ganging up or kicking while you’re down.” Pop smiles. “They won’t fight like white men. They’ll fight fair. But they will be trying to get their licks in. So you fight hard, too. Think you can do that?”
“Yes,” I reply, which is not exactly the truth.
Pop has tried to teach me boxing. But it’s not something I learned all that well. I don’t like the idea of hitting anyone.
At my old school I only ever got into one fight. It was during recess with a bigger boy a year older than me. He was bullying the three second graders, keeping them off our one swing. When I told him to stop he cocked his fist and threw a punch at me. I knew in my head what I should do. Step aside and let the punch go by me like Pop taught. Then maybe throw a left hook.
Except I just froze. All I did was stand there. Luckily for me, what he punched was my stomach and not my head. Unluckily for him, what he hit was my belt buckle. So it hurt him a lot more than it did me, especially since it was a pretty big buckle and I’ve always had strong stomach muscles. That blow just pushed me back a step and I stood there looking at him.
“Oh man,” he groaned, shaking his fist. “I’m done. I give.”
It all only took a second and was over before any of the teachers saw anything. So I didn’t get in trouble. That was only a month before our school got closed down forever.
Pop settles back. Both of us are sitting in the open boxcar door, knees drawn up to our chests. You don’t want to let your legs dangle outside a fast-moving freight. It’s a good way to get yanked out if there’s a post or a signal near the track. More than one beginner’s seen their hoboing career come to an end that way.
Behind us, the horses are making soft sounds. Every now and then one knocks a hoof against a stall as they move about. They’re just shifting their positions. Contented and quiet. I take a deep breath, The scent of horses is something I’ve always loved. Being here with them should make me feel at ease as the miles go rolling by.
But it doesn’t. I don’t feel right. It’s almost like just before I came down with the chicken pox. My head is throbbing and there’s a sensation like a knotted rope in my belly.
Pop says I’m Indian. But I’ve never felt like an Indian, never thought of myself that way. I just want to be myself. Just Cal. Not something strange as the other side of the moon. What I am is a gentleman of the road. A man with an ethical code. My pop’s son. I don’t want to be a stranger surrounded by folks who are likely going to despise me.
I close my eyes, trying to shut off my thoughts. I count backward from a hundred. I do it twice, but I’m still awake. I try listening to the rhythm of the train’s wheels. It’s a metal melody that’s soothed me to sleep hundreds of times over the months we have been on the road.
Clickety-Clack, Clickety-Clack, Clickety-Clack, Clickety-Clack, Clickety-Clack, Clickety-Clack . . .
But this time the lullaby of the rails is different. What I’m hearing is not the whir and rattle of steel on steel. Instead it seems to be saying:
You’re White, You’re Indian, You’re White, You’re Indian, You’re White, You’re Indian . . .
And then somehow, though I’d thought it impossible, I must have slept. When I open my eyes we’ve almost stopped. The half-light of that time just before dawn is sifting in through the boxcar door. Pop’s not by my side. His warmth is missing as well as the sound of his breathing, his familiar scent.
A noise comes from behind me. It’s just the horses, stirring in their stalls.
For a minute I panic. Where’s Pop? Did he leave me already?
“Cal.”
The boxcar door slides farther open. It’s being pushed by Pop, who wasn’t visible in the shadows.
“We’re here,” Pop says.
We’re pulling into a small railway station. ARKANSAS CITY, the sign reads. The depot clock says it’s five a.m.
“Where’s the school?” I ask.
Pop chuckles. “This is as close as the train brings you to Challagi. We’re not even in Oklahoma yet. This is Arkansas.” He looks to the south. “State line’s that way. It’s a four-mile walk from here to the school.”
A square-built, spade-bearded
man is waiting on the platform. He’s walking toward us.
“I am E. Wimslow,” he says in a booming voice, not even waiting for the train to stop. “My company has been delegated the responsibility of receiving those mounts I was told you two would be accompanying.”
It seems they’ve telegraphed ahead. So Pop and I are not treated like bums. Instead, we help unload the horses, bringing them down the ramp with no trouble at all. They’ve gotten to know us real well in the time we’ve spent with them. Sleeping with a horse in its stall tends to relax it, make it feel like you are sort of family.
As we lead them down the street, Mr. E. Wimslow never stops talking. Most of what he says is just idle chatter until he puts up a hand as we reach a stable.
“My two hands and myself,” he says, “will be handling it from here. We have the government contract with the school. We will check the horses over, make sure they are sound, then stable them here for the night. This being Sunday, the Lord’s Day of Rest, we shall not be bringing them to the school till the morrow. So, I thank you for your help.”
I guess this is where it ends for us as far as those horses.
It’s a disappointment for me. I feel so at ease with them. They’re like old friends after our train ride together. I had this image in mind of Pop and me riding in to the school. Everybody watching with their mouths open as we gallop up, whooping like wild cowboys. That kind of entrance might make it easier for those people I’ve never met to see me as somebody special. Like Hoot Gibson or Ken Maynard. Not some random nobody who doesn’t know who he is anymore.
But no. We’ll not be arriving at the Indian school on shank’s mare.
Mr. E. Wimslow is shaking both our hands. He’s grasping mine so firm I feel like my fingers are being crushed. However, I do not wince or show any sign of pain.
“Here, my lads,” he says releasing me from his iron grasp. He reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out two coins, slaps the shiny silver dollar into Pop’s hand and the fifty-cent piece onto my own aching palm.