My father was standing there in the rain, holding the gun on Harold P. Endicott. He had Harold P. Endicott in his sights; he was looking down the barrel at him, at Endicott’s round, bald head. A bull’s-eye. My father was talking but I couldn’t hear the words, so I ducked down and ran through the brush, up to a big weeping willow. I hid behind it.
“The next shot is between your eyes, Mr. Big Shot, unless you get those dogs inside,” I heard my father say in his drunken voice.
Harold P. Endicott looked at his hellhounds, that whistle dangling from his neck. Their ears were perked up and they stared at their master without moving a muscle, not one.
“And don’t try anything funny. I know all about how you like to kill people with those dogs of yours. Just killed you a Bannock squaw, didn’t you?” my father said.
Old Endicott got real stiff, as stiff as his dogs; then he stood up fast and my father cocked the .25-20 and shot it, hitting the stone wall behind Endicott. Pieces of stone sprayed out and Endicott sat back down. Those hellhounds didn’t flinch, but you could tell they were slobbering to kill.
“Don’t press me, you crooked son of a bitch!” my father said. “I’ve killed me a bunch of people in my time and I sure as hell can kill one more if it’s you!”
Harold P. Endicott snapped his fingers and stood up, slow this time, walked to the back door and opened it, never turning his back on my father’s gun. He closed the door behind the dogs after they filed inside, one by one.
I heard my father say, “Pull the door tight and lock it!”
I ran around to the front of the house because I knew the front door was going to be open, and sure enough it was. I ran to the door, Old Glory there snapping loud above me, and I pulled the front door closed just as the first of the dogs got to it, murder only inches away.
I leaned up against the house for a while, so much sky in my lungs I thought I was going to float away, but then I ran to the back again, hoping there weren’t any other doors or windows open too. When I got back to the back of the house, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
My father had taken his suit jacket off and was rolling up his shirt sleeves. He had his chest puffed out and was muttering something, rolling up his sleeves.
“A fair fight,” my father said. “Like a man,” my father said.
“Where’s the gun?” I said, but my father didn’t hear me. Harold P. Endicott didn’t hear me either; the rain had started down hard.
Harold P. Endicott took his hat off and took a few steps, his whistle bouncing against his chest. He and my father squared off, fists out in front of them. Endicott hit my father in the mouth and my father went flying like my mother had when my father hit her earlier that night. Endicott laughed and took a step back. My father sat in the wet grass, shaking his head and holding his jaw. Then my father stood up and Endicott hit him again, but my father didn’t go down this time. My father came back with a punch in Endicott’s mouth, then one in Endicott’s big stomach. Then my father kicked him between the legs and Endicott doubled up, his nose bleeding, and held himself down there. I let out a cheer but I don’t think either of them heard; the rain was coming down loud as the river.
My father dropped his arms and looked up into the sky like it was the first time that he realized that it was raining. He put his face into the rain the way my mother had stood herself into that wind the night of the chinook. As my father was looking up, Endicott hit him in the stomach, hard, swinging his arm into my father like a baseball bat. My father went sprawling out onto the grass, spread-eagled. He was out like a light, KO’d. Endicott kicked my father in the stomach the way I’d seen him kick that woman Sugar Babe. My father let out an awful sound—a sound like water going down the drain. After that, he didn’t move.
It was then I saw it, the .25-20. It was propped against a pile of bricks at the edge of the lawn. Endicott started to turn back to the house, holding up the whistle with his hand. I ran to the rifle, picked it up, and aimed at Endicott’s head. Endicott had the whistle in his mouth. He was almost to the door. The cross inside the sights of the .25-20 was between his right eye and his ear. I pulled the trigger but nothing happened.
Endicott’s hand was on the knob, turning.
I cocked the rifle and the cross was right on the back of his head, just above the larded wrinkle. Then he turned around. Endicott had heard me cock the rifle. He turned around and looked straight at me—the cross was on his forehead. He looked me in the eye, that whistle of his in his mouth.
“Forevermore,” I said.
His eyes locked on mine, squinting down the sights. I set the cross on his left eye. Soon as I did, his eye changed. An arrow pierced it. Then his right eye wasn’t there either; it looked off into the distance. Endicott stepped back, the whistle fell from his mouth, then his knees gave way. He knelt for a moment, then fell forward. His ear was to the ground again, the way I’d seen him the other day, and his lard ass in the air.
Geronimo was standing on the lawn, just at the edge of the river, bow drawn, eyes fierce like a hawk’s, like a snake’s. He was naked except for a string around his waist with a patch of leather that hung down in front of him. There were beads on it—the beads that bought Manhattan—and a hunting knife in a sheath hanging from the string. Around his neck was a necklace with beads the color of the sky at night. Geronimo’s face and the right side of his body were covered with designs in muddy red paint-designs like you might see on rattlesnakes, or maybe butterflies. He did not move for some time. He just stood there pointing at Endicott lying there with his ear to the ground, pointing out Endicott’s death to the world.
I did not know how to uncock the rifle—my father had never shown me, not that I’d wanted to learn—so I pointed the .25-20 at the grass and pulled the trigger. The sound of the blast echoed through the trees and went up the river and down the river and up into the sky. After that it was quiet except for the rain. Then I heard another sound like children crying or lots of people way far away cheering—I couldn’t tell which—but then I knew that the sound was coming from Geronimo. He had started to sing the kinds of songs Indians sing—songs that are like animal sounds.
Geronimo started to move toward his prey then, laying his bow down gently. His step was more like dancing than a walk, and he was still singing as he went. Geronimo bent over and smelled Endicott like a dog would smell him. Then he circled around him again and again, dancing and singing the whole while.
Geronimo placed his foot on Endicott’s mouth and pulled the arrow from his eye. Heya, heya, heya, Geronimo sang. Then he made a crying sound, then a howling dog sound. He pulled the whistle from Endicott’s neck and held it up to the sky along with the arrow, like he was showing the sky, showing God, that Geronimo had gotten the whistle, finally. Heya, heya, heya, I got the whistle. And then Geronimo put the whistle around his own neck.
Geronimo took the knife out of its sheath and showed the blade to the sky, like he was telling the story as he was living it.
As I watched, I realized he wasn’t really a nigger. He was an Indian, like Sugar Babe. But then, watching him there in the rain like that, watching him like he was, I decided he was just himself, pure and simple: a person, like me. He was Geronimo being himself in our free country.
Geronimo brought the knife down and sliced part of Endicott’s head off, sliced along that lard wrinkle in the back. He took Endicott’s scalp and raised it up; showed it to the sky and told the story. Then he put the knife back into his sheath and picked up the arrow that had pierced Endicott’s eye. Geronimo picked up another arrow that was lashed to the bow and took those two arrows and made a cross with them. He raised that cross up in his left hand; in his right hand was Endicott’s scalp. Geronimo walked to the river slowly, dancing to his own wild animal sounds. He waded in up to his knees, letting the blood drip into the river. Geronimo told his story to the river too. Then he turned and told it to the east, then to the south, to the west, and finally to the north. Heya, heya, heya, he sang, heya, hey
a, Sugar Babe, he sang, heya, heya, Sugar Babe.
I WENT BACK around to the front door like Geronimo told me and got the hellhounds’ attention by opening the door an inch, then closing it again. I did it over and over, while Geronimo took Endicott’s clothes off his body like he told me he was going to do. Geronimo dragged Endicott into the house through the back door and laid him down there on the front-room floor in front of the fireplace. He put Endicott’s clothes in a pile next to him, shorts stuffed in the Levi’s, socks stuffed in the boots, just the way Endicott had done it. Geronimo smiled to me and said, you know, just like usual. When I got the signal that said the coast was clear, I closed the door for good, wiping the fingerprints off the knob just in case.
Then I took Old Glory down like Geronimo told me to do and folded it up like I had for flag duty at the St. Joseph’s School. I brought that flag to him like he said.
Geronimo looked at Old Glory all folded up proper like that and laughed. He took it from me and shook it out the way my mother shakes out the tablecloth. He laid that American flag down next to my father. Together we rolled my father into it. My father wasn’t dead, just dead drunk. Geronimo could tell the difference.
I cleaned the stone chips off the ground from when my father’d shot the wall. Geronimo picked up his bow and arrows. I got the .25-20, and my father’s suit jacket. Geronimo found the three empty bullet shells. He got the blood up from the grass where Endicott had been. I don’t know how Geronimo took away that stain, but he did. I looked around a final time; there was no trace of what had happened.
Geronimo said it was important to get out of there before the rain stopped. It was about ready to let up, he said. We were about to pick my father up on the red-white-and-blue stretcher—get out of there for good—when Geronimo walked back up to the house. I wish I hadn’t followed him back there, but I did.
We looked in the window.
Those five hellhounds were sitting around Endicott in their assigned positions, licking away like I saw them do before. The dog at Endicott’s head was licking at his scalped place. He was biting at it too.
I helped Geronimo carry my father down the road a piece, but then I felt like I was going to puke and then I did start puking. I began to see only the outlines of things again; everything was traced like the things back in my father’s saddle room. I started shaking all over, the fear that was always in me finally coming out. I tried to stop shaking, but couldn’t. I looked around. Everything seemed like the sound of the screen door when you were far away from it. I went down fast, flat as a pancake on the flat cookie sheet of earth. It was all I could do to keep from falling off the planet. I looked above me; all I could see was sky.
I remember thinking that the rain hadn’t stopped, and I was glad it hadn’t. The last thing I remember before I finally did fall into infinity, before I woke up in that room in the St. Anthony’s Hospital, was Geronimo carrying me and singing. But this time his song wasn’t a howl or a cry. His song was the kind that made you want to sleep, maybe forever. Maybe forevermore.
THE NURSE SAID over a week now, and then she said fever and then she said vivid imagination. My mother came in and crossed herself. Her one eye was still looking far off and it was black and blue.
When the nurse was gone my mother said American flag and sober and I love you. She left when my father came in. My father stayed but didn’t say anything, not until the sheriff came. The sheriff said pile of bones and nigger and scalp and whistle.
I STAYED AT the bottom of the river with the photograph of that woman Sugar Babe, with the dollar bills and the beads there in that room in the St. Anthony’s Hospital. When I knew the time was right, I pulled those underwater tubes out of my nose. I got up and checked the door a couple of times, opening it up an inch and then closing it over and over again, like I’d done that night, the way Geronimo had told me. Those hellhounds were trying to get in. I shut the door tight and crawled out the window; slid down the eave to the trellis with the Seven Sister rose hanging from it. I hopped a freight and joined the circus a thousand times. Mainly, I got myself out of that room in the St. Anthony’s Hospital. Haji Baba and Geronimo joined the circus together, hopped a freight. Everything was an illusion, from Nantucket to Oshkosh to Timbuktu to Broadway. Haji Baba and Geronimo swinging high, the swing going over onto itself, back to where things were normal again. Sprung back into home. Snug with American history, roast beef and spuds, farts, one thing leading to another, no problem forevermore.
THE INDIANS PARKED in the back alley behind the Working Man’s Club gave me a ride most of the way to the farm. They gave me a beer, a Rainier, and I sat in the front seat, riding shotgun by the window. Next to me was a woman named Mona Lisa who sat between me and the driver eating boiled eggs.
Wolf, the man who was driving, asked me if I had any money for gas. I said no, I didn’t, and then somebody else in there, some woman, said what can you do for us then? And all of them laughed. He’s got a big trinket for you, one of them said, and then they all laughed again. Somebody said sing for his supper and there was more laughter, and when they quit laughing, Wolf said you got any trinkets? and I said the trinkets that bought Manhattan, and for some reason they all laughed again. I didn’t think what I said was funny. I wondered how they could think it was. Finally I told them I could sing and dance.
They really laughed at that, the Studebaker bouncing up and down. Elvis Presley, someone said. No, Pat Boone, said someone else. Marge and Gower Champion, said someone. Tennessee Ernie Ford, Sixteen tons and what do you get, someone said, and everybody sang, another day older and deeper in debt, together, like they had been practicing that song for years. Then they all laughed again, but it got quiet when I started.
I started dancing the way animals move, the way birds fly up, the way the chinook blew. I danced the way Geronimo danced, the way rattlesnakes move, the way dogs sniff the air. I told my story the way Geronimo told his story that night. I sang the heya, heya, heya, Sugar Babe song, the heya, heya, Geronimo and Haji Baba jumped a freight, joined the circus, shooting the moon song; the Holy Ghost got you song, the wrestling with an angel song, the long-lost friend song, the flat-as-a-cookie-sheet and the sky-infinity song. Old Glory. Oh beautiful for spacious skies.
When I got done, there was no laughter coming out of the Studebaker. There were no sounds to fill up the space where the sound of my song had been.
Wolf turned around to Mona Lisa and she cracked an egg on the dashboard and peeled it, shells falling into her lap. They all talked to each other in their language, a language Geronimo would know. It sounded like arguing, but Mona Lisa scooted over closer to Wolf and said something real loud. Everybody listened to Mona Lisa and it got quiet again.
Wolf turned back around to me and said, you can ride with us if you don’t mind getting a DWI. I told Wolf that I didn’t know what that was, a DWI.
Drunk with Indians, he said, and then the Studebaker started bouncing up and down again, and it wasn’t quiet there anymore, all of them laughing again. Then Mona Lisa said, give him a beer.
Wolf stopped the car at the place where the main highway to town meets with the Portneuf River to let me out. They were going on to Fort Hall.
I stood there on the flat dusty road, the moon waning and the dome above me poked with star-holes. I watched until the Studebaker’s taillights dipped into the dark sky. Then I followed the river downstream. I ran into some bats, so I started walking alongside the river, out away from the trees. When I got to where the river dog-legs, by my secret place in the stand of the twenty-two cottonwood trees, I saw that somebody had cut down my swing.
I decided to go home.
The Oldsmobile wasn’t there and the house was dark. I walked inside. No one was there and some things were missing: my mother’s rosary, her prayer book, her lipstick, and her high heels with the holes in the toes, my father’s Old Spice, the toothbrushes, the percolator, and the radio. There was some peach pie in the refrigerator and milk gone sour, but no Black V
elvet whiskey bottles. Everything else—the davenport and the coffee table, my father’s chair, the beds, and the kitchen table and chairs—was all there. The geranium in the window was dead and things weren’t cleaned up so much like usual.
I thought for a minute that I might still be dreaming. Everything seemed underwater, like when I was down in the bottom of that pool with the picture of that woman Sugar Babe. I went through the hallway and touched all the butterflies and all the dice. Then I went into the bathroom and looked into the medicine-cabinet mirror and watched myself touch my face, then touch my reflection in the mirror. Everything felt real, or seemed real enough, and I thought back to that magician guy, Mr. Energy, and all he’d said.
In the yard, there wasn’t any tractor or hay baler or drain grill, or disc and harrows parked around. I stopped at the saddle room door and tried the knob. It was still locked. I couldn’t see in, but I could tell that things were the same in there. By the smell and by the way the floor was swept clean, I knew.
I walked out the back door of the barn to see if the holsteins were in the back corral and if the pigs were in their pen. That’s when I bumped into something hanging there in the dark, something hanging from the winch. I walked out the back door of the barn and bumped into the nigger hanging there from the winch, his legs gone to the knee. Crows flew up, then settled back down on him. Their wings flapping sounded like fire, like the tongues of fire over the Apostles’ heads. I stood there in the dark and thought: Holy Ghost.
Those birds had eaten out the nigger’s eyes—his bodily eyes—and they’d eaten his lips.
I looked at the nigger hanging there. I couldn’t move. I watched the birds cover him. Those crows. They were perched on his shoulders, perched on his head. Others were hovering. I could hear them in the dark. The dream I can’t stop having is full of them: crows all over the nigger—Geronimo—more crows than I’ve ever seen fill the sky. My dream is filled with those birds, and the rustle of fire.
Faraway Places Page 8