Two Roads

by Joseph Bruchac

  Possum is still studying my busted bullhides.

  “Least we can do today is try to get a couple of nails pounded into them clodhoppers of yours.”

  I nod.

  “Why not get some sneaks like mine?” he asks as we near the harness shop.

  I reach into my pants and pull out my empty pockets.

  Possum shakes his head. “Didn’t your Pop leave you no money on your account with the school bursar?”

  It’s a question that surprises me.

  “Accounts? People do that?”

  “That’s how I got mine,” Possum says. “Bought them in town with money my gramma put on my account.”

  “You think I have an account?” I ask.

  Possum grins as we enter the harness shop at the exact moment that the bugle sounds.

  “Do I look like the bursar?” He puffs out his cheeks, pulls in his shoulders, and messes up his hair so that he almost does look like Mr. Cash, the chubby white man who handles the school’s funds.

  I have to laugh.

  “Look,” Possum says, “didn’t no one ever explain to you about accounts?”

  I shake my head.

  “One thing about Superintendent Morrell,” Possum says, “that man is as honest as a June day is long. Believes a man should get paid for his labor. That’ll teach us Indians how to be more like white men.”

  Like some white men, I think, remembering Just Jack.

  “So,” Possum continues, “every day we might earn a few cents from the industrial work we do. That gets put in our accounts. Summertime you get paid even more. Thirty-five cents a day for cutting grass. If you get assigned a garden plot, you keep some of the money for what vegetables you grow. Older boys might even be allotted a field to grow hay and grain. That earns you three dollars a day.”

  I think about the thirty days I’ve been here, looking at the callouses and cuts on my hands from the jobs I’ve been learning in the various shops and barns. It’s a good thing I heal fast. And even better that my reflexes have been quick enough for me to keep from getting more than small injuries.

  “Tell you what,” Possum says, “soon as we have the time, I’ll walk you to his office. Help you find out.”

  “BIRD, over here!” The heavy, nasal voice of Mr. Handler, the head harness and shoe repair instructor breaks up our conversation. He’s a graduate of Challagi. Like most of those who teach trades, he’s been employed here since his graduation twenty years ago. He’s holding up a heavy handful of harness leather in one thick-fingered hand, cutting tools in the other.

  “Sir!”

  I hustle over to him before he decides I’ve earned a demerit for typical Indian laziness—as he puts it, despite the fact he is an Indian himself. A dark-skinned North Carolina Cherokee.

  Instead of handing me the stuff he’s holding right away, though, he looks down at my feet—at the flapping sole of my right shoe to be exact. And a look that almost seems concerned actually comes over his face, which usually shows no emotion at all.

  “Son,” he says, “them the only work boots you got?”

  “Yes, sir,” I reply.

  He throws the harness material and tools down on a bench.

  “Come with me.”

  I follow him to the shoe-making part of the large, low building, back past the local farmer and his team of matched black horses that are being fitted with just-made harnesses.

  “Sit,” Mr. Handler commands. “Pull ’em both off.”

  I do as he says. I stand and watch as he takes first one and then the other in his broad hands, holds them up, and studies them. He shakes his head.

  “I sure as blazes did not make this pair,” he says. “One of my lazy Indian boys done this slipshod job. Not worth the powder to blow ’em to hell.”

  I’m not sure whether he means the shoes or the student who put them together. Probably both.

  “Uppers are not half bad, but these soles . . .”

  He rips the bottoms off both shoes and sends the soles flying like bats across the room, not looking where they land. What he does next happens with such a blur of movement that it is hard for me to follow. Measuring, cutting, fitting, nailing into place. He’s done in almost no time at all.

  “Here,” he says, tossing me my repaired bullhides. They hit me in the belly so hard that they almost knock me down, but I manage to grab them.

  “Put ’em on.”

  I sit to slide on one boot after the other, pull the laces tight, and tie them. I stand up, stomp first one foot and then the other. My bullhides are still stiff and heavy, but as I walk back and forth in them, they feel sturdy for the first time.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “You can thank me by getting your butt back to making them harnesses.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  Time to build more callouses.

  * * *

  • • •

  Just as Possum described, Mr. Cash is a little white man with a round face. And a no-nonsense attitude.

  “We’re here to see about Cal Blackbird’s account,” Possum says.

  “Your name,” Mr. Cash said, as if Possum hadn’t just identified me. “Name,” he said again, pointing his pencil at me like it was a gun.

  “Blackbird, Cal,” I replied.

  “Spell it,” Mr. Cash says, licking his index finger and then using it to open a thick green ledger book.

  I spell it as he runs the eraser end of his pencil down the page.

  “Calvin?” he asks in a voice about as neutral as a blank sheet of paper.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thirteen and twenty-eight,” he says, tapping a line of writing so small I cannot read it.

  “Sir?”

  “Dollar and cents. Ten left on account. Three and twenty-eight earned.”

  He opens a drawer.

  “Five,” he says.

  “Sir?”

  “All I can disburse per month. Five.” He holds out five one-dollar bills.

  I look over at Possum. He holds up three fingers. His Converse All-Stars cost three bucks. Then he shrugs and holds up another finger, just in case.

  “Four’s enough,” I say.

  As we walk back toward our dorm I’m feeling happy. It’s not just because I’ll finally be able to have a pair of comfortable shoes—new ones, at that. It’s because Pop left money for me. For a moment it felt as if he were here with me. Just a brief moment, but that and the prospect of my own Keds has put some sunshine into my heart.

  “Best thing about this,” Possum says, “is that today’s Friday and tomorrow we have got us a town day. I know just the place for you to pick up a fine pair of sneakers just like mine. O’Boyle’s Dry Goods.” He grins over at me. “They sell penny candy, too.”

  “Good thing I got this extra dollar.” I grin back at him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Saturday morning.

  Possum and me and a dozen other boys are riding the back of the school wagon sent in to town to pick up harness shop supplies. It’s being driven by Mr. Handler, who saw us walking and ordered us to hop on board in that gruff voice of his, which I now realize covers up a soft heart. Hard as the work in his shop is—and as useless as it may be in this new world where cars are surely going to take the place of horses—he really wants to teach us the right way to do things. Unlike most of the academic teachers who are lifetime employees just looking to serve out their term before retiring.

  I am quieter than usual. Not that anyone notices since quieter than usual just means only saying a word or two every hour as opposed to every half hour. I ought to be happy—getting away from the school routine and heading out to do something special. But being away from Challagi, seeing the open road ahead of the wagon, reminds me of all the roads Pop and I walked together over the last
year. I’m doing what he wanted me to do. But I am still worried about him out there without me to look out for him. I hope I hear from him soon.

  Possum nudges me in the ribs.

  “Thinking about them new shoes?” he asks.

  I guess I should be. So I nod and then go back to watching the road ahead as the horses clop along.

  O’Boyle’s is not our first stop in town. That first stop, which was along our way, is the train depot where we help unload some boxes being shipped East.

  “Thinkin’ of hitchin’ a freight, Jay Bird?” Possum asks.

  I just smile as I studied the train schedule, reading it from top to bottom, bottom to top, then back down again until I figure I have it fixed in my mind.

  “Done?” Possum says.

  “Done,” I reply.

  “Shoes now?”

  “Shoes.”

  Five minutes later we’re in O’Boyle’s. No other customers are there as I walk up to the counter where a huge red-haired man is smiling down at us both.

  “Shoes, I’d wager,” he says, looking at my feet.

  I nod and I’m handed a pair of black Keds.

  I sit down, slip them on, lace them up. They fit my feet like a second skin.

  “So whaddaya think?” Possum says.

  I stand and walk back and forth down the crowded aisle of O’Boyle’s, being careful not to knock over any of the various sized boxes piled precariously on all sides and filled with all sorts of stuff.

  WHATEVER YOU NEED, WE HAVE GOT IT.

  That’s what the sign outside read. From the way every inch of the store is cluttered with goods, it just might be true were it not for the fact that the one thing Mr. O’Boyle does not sell is books—aside from copies of the King James Bible of which he has half a dozen offered at a quarter each.

  I take another step, then hop up in the air and land without making a sound. It’s as if my feet have springs under them with those thick rubber soles.

  “Yes, indeedy do,” the ruddy cheeked proprietor says. He rubs his huge palms together so hard you’d think he was trying to start a fire. “Plimsolls was what they called them when they first attached rubber to the sole of a shoe. Then in ’92 along came the U.S. Rubber Company with their canvas tops. It was they who named them Keds.”

  I nod. Possum had warned me that anything bought at O’Boyle’s would come with an explanatory lecture from the store’s owner who was a history buff. And would have been a better teacher than most of those heading up our classes.

  “Sneakers, folks started calling them. That was on account of how easy it was to sneak up on a man, them shoes being so silent and all. But what you have on there, young man, for the price of but two dollars and ninety-eight cents, are Chuck Taylor All-Stars, named for the famed Indiana hoops star, hisself.”

  He cocks his head to look at me and rubs his hands together even harder.

  “You like-um them shoes, Chief? You want buy-um?”

  I sigh inwardly at his attempt to talk the way some Indians do whose English isn’t good. But there’s no use in trying to correct him.

  I just nod my head and hand him three dollars.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  TO HELP INDIANS

  I’ve been at Challagi Indian Industrial School two whole months now.

  The “noble mission of this fine institution” is to help the Indian.

  I’ve now heard the superintendent say that more times than I can count. It is meant to teach the Indian a new modern way. To finally make him into a useful citizen after, as Superintendent Morrell puts it, “untold generations of meaningless savage life.” To give him a true, higher purpose.

  After the time I’ve spent here, though, it seems to me like the true purpose of this place is to wear the Indian out. I have done enough marching to have walked to California and back. The daily routine here starts at five a.m. with the first bugle.

  TA-TA TA-TA-TA TA-TA TA-TA-TA

  TA-TA TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA

  Reveille, assembly, close-order drill, even before morning mess. That’s true for the girls as well as the boys. They also have to march—but in their own companies. Then the day’s work begins. Students handle all the maintenance work at the school. We grow all the food, work in the fields, clean the stables, feed the farm animals, fix everything that needs fixing.

  We boys are all kept busy growing and building things that the school can sell. If we are lucky and are chosen to do certain jobs, just as Possum told me—like cutting the grass on the lawns—we can actually earn as much as thirty-five cents a day. The girls do all the cooking and kitchen work, as well as the sewing, making and mending things. Some of the boys who have sisters or cousins in the girls’ houses have told me about what those girls have to do every day. They may not be plowing fields and picking rocks, but they do the cleaning and dusting and scrubbing of the floors as well. So they do not have it easy.

  My first two weeks here, even though I thought my hands were used to hard work, I ended up with big blisters on my palms. I had cloth bandages wrapped around both hands. But it didn’t prevent me from having to keep on working. Bleeding hands or not, if you don’t do exactly as you are told you get demerits. If you stray off a walkway and step on the green grass you get demerits. If you are late to class you get demerits. If you make too many missteps in close-order drill or your uniform is not neat, you get demerits. It’s not just the staff who can give you demerits. It is also the older students who’ve been chosen to be monitors. So someone is always watching you during the day, including that man on top of the water tower.

  Get enough marks on your red card and you get punished. Loss of privileges is one punishment, being told you can’t take part in social activities or go to town once a month. There’re worse punishments, too, even though they no longer use the whipping post which is still standing by the parade ground. It’s a log half buried in the ground with iron rings on it five feet up where a boy’s hands could be fastened.

  Being sent to break rocks down where the creek runs closest to the school grounds is still common practice. Making big rocks into little rocks, just like you were on a chain gang. Scrubbing floors on your hands and knees is another punishment you get for too many demerits.

  My behavior since I’ve been here has been so good that I hardly have any demerits at all—even though the one thing that was on my mind all the time for the first week here was the one that would have earned the harshest punishment. Running away.

  Not only do you lose all your privileges, as soon as they drag you back they shut you up in a dark room for a day or more with just bread and water and a bucket for a latrine. Among my friends, that has happened to most of them at one time or another. I sure as blazes do not want that happening to me.

  By the time the last bugle comes at nine p.m., after evening assembly, some boys are so tired they can barely drag themselves up the stairs to fall into bed without even bothering to wash up or take off their clothes. They’re too tired to do the one thing that so many of us dream about doing—running away and never coming back again.

  Thinking of running, I continue to be a disappointment to Sergeant Chapman, our drill captain. He has now asked me three times to come to track practice.

  “Make some use of that God-given speed of yours, Bird,” he keeps saying. “We could use you in the hundred and the last leg of the relay.”

  He’s explained to me—more than once—the benefits of being on a sports team. Not only would I get time off from the various duties around the school, I’d be able to get away on trips to compete against other schools.

  “Where’s your school spirit?” he’s asked me.

  I have just listened and said nothing each time he’s tried to convince me. I don’t want to get involved in this place any more than I am. It’s enough that I have a bunch of friends in our Creek gang—I d
on’t need more than that. I don’t intend to stay here a day longer than I absolutely have to. As soon as Pop gets back from Washington with his bonus money I am going to be out of here for good.

  School spirit is something I don’t care about or ever intend to have.

  Although I no longer think about it all the time, the only running that appeals to me would be running away from here to wherever I can find my pop. Which I will not do because of my promise to him to stick it out till he either sends for me or shows up to get me.

  I have to admit, though, that there would be benefits to being one of the athletic boys. They have a special training table in the mess hall with more food than the other students. The ones who get treated best are the boys on the boxing team. That is because Superintendent Morrell has a special love for that sport. That is why he has a special boxing class twice a week during our physical education time where we usually just do such things as sit-ups, jumping jacks, and exercises using Indian clubs and medicine balls.

  Once a month the school has boxing matches, where our boys either fight each other or boxing squads from other Indian schools. The school boxing coach is Mr. Handler, the brown-skinned Cherokee man who graduated from Challagi in 1912.

  According to C.B., our dorm adviser, when Old Man Handler was a student at the school, he was the light heavyweight boxing champion and never lost a match. He might even have become a pro fighter—except that being a poor Indian he would not have been given a chance to win any real fights.

  “He got an offer from a promoter in Oklahoma City,” C.B. told a group of us one night before bed. “Went down there to see what it was about. But the deal was that he would have to look good for a round or two and then take a dive to whatever white boy he got matched against. Story is that he said ‘Like this?’ stepped in and knocked the promoter out with an uppercut. Then he came back here and has been here ever since.”