by Jim Fergus
His mother’s face was bleeding from the blow of the rifle butt, and she was unconscious, and the Apaches stripped the dress from her body, careful not to tear it. The warrior Goso would give that dress to his young wife, Siki, who would wear it, with some modifications, for years to come. And for a long time, the boy Charley would think of his White Eyes mother every time he saw Siki wearing that dress, until eventually the memory of her faded, and the dress had no more significance than any other which his Apache mother wore.
Wielding their knives as precisely as surgeons, the Apaches cut the shoes from his mother’s feet, cut the stockings from her legs, cut the corset from her torso; these articles they did not care about preserving because no women among the People would wear such things. Because he was the leader of the raid, Goso took Charley’s mother by the hair and raised his breechcloth and, laughing, mounted her from behind the way that Charley had seen dogs do, although he did not yet understand why exactly they did this. His mother had begun to regain consciousness and she uttered a terrible moan that made the other Apaches laugh. Goso was finished with her in a very short time, and the next man mounted her, and the next. And when they had all finished with her, his mother weeping softly, begging for mercy, begging not for herself but for her son’s life, the man named Goso struck her two sharp blows to the back of her head with his rifle butt, crushing her skull, a heavy dull cracking sound like a gourd splitting open. All of this Charley watched as the Apache held him on the back of the wagon. He did not cry.
The warriors now turned their attention to the boy. The one holding Charley and the man named Goso began to quarrel. The one holding him pulled his knife and held it to Charley’s throat. Charley was not afraid. He himself had rushed out the hole that had opened in the universe and through which his old life was pouring and it seemed now as if he was floating in space, detached, light as a feather, weightless.
Later, when the story was told, it was always said that the boy Charley never cried; even when the warrior held the knife to his throat, he did not cry, he showed no fear. The Apache intended to cut the boy’s head off; by prior agreement, no captives were being taken on this raid of vengeance through White Eyes country. So far they had killed every man, woman, and child they had encountered at the isolated ranches and in the small settlements through which they had swept, stealing stock, stealing guns and ammunition, stealing whatever they could carry off and burning the buildings behind them. As the fires blazed, they had ridden off yipping like coyotes, carrying off the infant babies of the White Eyes they had killed, swinging them overhead by one leg, like twirling a lariat, flinging them away, to spin through the air and crash to their deaths on the hard, rocky ground. All this the Apache raiders had done to avenge the wrongs done the People by the White Eyes in a world gone mad with vengeance.
The boy Charley was not afraid. He looked in the eyes of the man who held the knife to his throat and he did not cry, he did not beg, he did not whimper. He looked straight in the warrior’s eyes and he did not make a sound. Charley had the Power. The warrior named Goso spoke sharply again to the man, who finally lowered his knife.
The Apaches plundered the McComases’ wagon, taking everything that was of value to them. They stripped the clothes from the judge’s body, and collected his Winchester rifle, the Colt revolver, and a good supply of cartridges for both weapons. Then they finished off the abandoned picnic. Charley remembered watching them dip into the cherry pie with their fingers, pushing bright red gobs of it into their mouths, laughing, cherry juice all over their faces. Charley remembered that he never got to taste that cherry pie; they never offered him a bite, even though it had been his pie and his parents’ pie, baked especially for them that same morning by nice Mrs. Dennis.
When they had completed their plunder, the Apaches remounted and the man named Goso walked his horse up to Charley on the back of the wagon. He leaned down and took hold of the boy by the scruff of his neck, as one picks up a puppy. Though Charley was only six years old, he was large for his age, weighed nearly seventy-five pounds already, but the man lifted him effortlessly and swung him up behind him on the horse.
“You belong to Goso now, White Eyes,” the Apache said in English. “Hang on to me.” And as they rode away from the wagon under the walnut tree in Thompson Canyon, away from the stripped, lifeless, violated bodies of little Charley McComas’s white parents, away from the first six years of Charley’s life, the last bit of his old world drained out through the hole in the universe, and just as suddenly as it had opened up, so did the tear close seamlessly behind him.
And that, Neddy, is how the white Apache they still call Charley came to be here. Now I watched warily as the man himself came awake in the wickiup; he groaned and squinted his eyes with the pain of a burning mescal hangover. He grunted something to the girl, and she answered him back. He sat up, seeming to suddenly fill the wickiup with his bulk, a giant wild-bearded redhead in this world of small brown people.
How odd to think that but for a single twist of fate, being in the wrong place at the wrong time on that March morning in 1883, Charley McComas would surely have grown up to be an upstanding, God-fearing citizen of the white world, a pillar of the community, perhaps, like his father, a judge himself.
Charley looked at Joseph and then he peered at me for a very long time. I wondered when the last time had been that he had seen a white woman, and if he still held some racial memory that identified in the slightest way with white people. Did he think of us as in any way similar? Did he see my blond hair and fair complexion as something we had in common? It occurred to me that our arrival yesterday might have been the first contact he had had with white people since he was six years old, and that his antipathy for the White Eyes might simply be a cultural response learned over the years from the tribal stories.
“¿Cual es su nombre?” I asked. “What is your name?” He did not answer, just looked at me. “I know you speak Spanish, Charley. Why won’t you answer me?”
“Because it is considered impolite for a woman to question a man in this manner,” said Joseph. “Especially a captive woman.”
“Ah, of course, the etiquette of captivity,” I said. “How careless of me.”
“You must show respect to him,” Joseph said.
“I’m not a captive,” I said. “I came here of my own free will. As a scientist.”
“He does not know what a scientist is,” Joseph said. “You are his captive. You must serve and obey him. You must obey his wife.”
The white Apache spoke at last, addressing Joseph.
“He wishes to know where the other captives are.”
“Mr. Browning is dead in the cave,” I said. “Murdered by Indio Juan and his men. I want him properly buried.”
“I am sorry,” Joseph said. “Mr. Browning was a good man.”
“Yes, he was.”
“And the others?” Joseph asked. “Tell me where my grandson is.”
“I don’t know.”
“What does that mean? You said that he was safe.”
“As far as I know, he is safe,” I said. “Safer than he was here at least.”
“They have escaped?”
“Does he understand English?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Joseph said. “Maybe.”
“What do you know?”
And so from Joseph’s account, I continue little Charley McComas’s story.
Forty-nine years ago, Goso led his raiding party from the murder scene in Thompson Canyon, south across the Burro Mountains, to the Pyramid Mountains, traveling at night across the broad open grasslands of the Animas Valley and finally crossing the border into Mexico. The Apaches knew that they were being pursued, both by army troops and civilian posses, and they kept up a punishing pace, traveling up to seventy-five miles a day, running their horses to exhaustion and replacing them with fresh mounts stolen from the ranches and settlements through which they swept. They slaughtered the spent animals and ate their organs raw so as n
ot to give away their location by making fires.
The warriors were impressed with Charley’s endurance, so unlike the other White Eyes captives they had known. The boy was hearty and strong, kept quiet, and did not complain. Where usually they found it necessary to force raw meat down captives’ throats in order to make them eat, the first time Goso handed Charley a piece of horse heart, he ate it without hesitation. After the second day, he stopped tethering the boy to his waist, and a day later he gave him his own horse to ride.
On the evening of the seventh day, deep in these mountains, the raiding party rode a perilous canyon trail so narrow in places that they had to ride single file, the horses picking their way carefully through the boulders. A river roiled at the base of the canyon far below, and high above hawks circled the thermals, shrieking. The trail climbed through a natural archway in the rocks and up onto a high grassy bench, where the stolen stock fanned out to graze on the bright green spring grass. From the bench the trail fell away into a small river valley where lay the ranchería of the People, Charley McComas’s new home.
Already alerted by sentries to the arrival of the raiding party, the women had come out of their wickiups to greet the returning warriors, making their high trilling sound, and the children ran to them, chattering and laughing. They surrounded little Charley, touching him, snatching at his pant legs, shrieking in delight. The boy kept his composure, swatting some of the more aggressive children away, which made everyone laugh.
Perhaps Charley had been destined for this strange new world of noise and color and smell, for he was not afraid. Already the memory of his old life had begun to recede in the same way that even the most vivid dream is eventually overwhelmed by the relentless actuality of the present. So Charley began to forget.
It had been a successful raid and the warriors had brought back many head of stock, and all manner of plunder. That first night a great feast and dance was held in their honor, as had always been the People’s way, and the men danced their triumphs before a huge bonfire, where they displayed their war trophies and chanted their tales of the raid. There were drum players and flute players and fiddle players, playing a strange, pulsating music such as little Charley had never heard before.
Goso himself recounted the story of Charley’s capture and the boy himself was pushed to his feet and made to dance, which he began to do shyly at first. But all encouraged him and they showed him the steps and soon Charley was dancing with greater and greater abandon, a child caught up in the music and the chanted tales, and though he could not understand the words, he felt the music and the stories deep in his bones, and he danced.
But suddenly the boy stopped dancing and he looked at these people, the women wearing their finest dresses, and the sparkling new jewelry presented them by the returning raiders, the men in their best breechcloths, leggings, and moccasins, others dressed in the boots, shirts, vests, jackets, and hats taken from their victims. From his young eyes, which had already witnessed such unspeakable atrocity, Charley looked out at this magic world, inhabited by these magic people, and he did not hold the horror against them. He was only a child, full of forgiveness and purity and the need to love and be loved. Charley looked out at them and then he did something that the People would always remember, that would enter their legends and be told time and time again when they recounted the old stories. He beat his little chest with his fist, and he cried out: “I am Charley!” They were the very first words he had uttered since his abduction, a simple declaration of identity. “I am Charley!” He was staking his territory in this new world, and his own name was all he had left to take with him from the old. The musicians stopped playing, the flute players and string players and drummers, the music dissipating into the thin mountain air. The People stopped dancing and all strained to hear what the boy was saying. “I am Charley!” he cried again, pounding his chest. “Charley! Charley!”
Some of the People, Goso among them, had already spent enough time among the White Eyes that they spoke a little English.
“The captive boy wishes the People to know that his name is Charley,” said Goso. The murmuring of the name ran through the crowd. “Charley.” The Apaches liked the sound of it. “Charley,” they repeated, and some of them laughed delightedly at the way the word rolled off their tongues. “Charley, Charley, Charley.”
The musicians started playing again, the dancers taking up their steps. And little Charley McComas, too, began to dance, a small, stocky, flush-faced, fair-haired boy, dancing before the blazing fire in the hidden Apache ranchería in the heart of the Sierra Madre, dancing amidst this dark, wild, ancient race of man, dancing under the stars.
The white Apache’s wife entered the wickiup and spoke sternly to me in a harsh, scolding voice. She was a strongly built, large-breasted woman with a broad face, high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, and a certain haughty demeanor.
“What does she want?” I asked Joseph.
“She wishes for the white slave woman to gather firewood for her,” Joseph said.
“Tell her I have a name,” I said. “It’s Margaret. And that I’m not her slave.”
“Your name is of no interest to her,” Joseph said. “And perhaps you would prefer to be the slave of Indio Juan.”
“Is that how it is, then?”
“That is how it is,” Joseph said. “The only reason Charley protects you is because his granddaughter requests it. But if you displease him, or his wife, they will cast you out. You will become the property of whoever else wishes to take you in. And if it is Indio Juan, Charley will not interfere again on your behalf.”
“I see,” I said. It wasn’t a terribly difficult choice to make. “I guess I’ll go gather firewood, then.”
I followed the woman out of the wickiup, the girl behind me. I stopped by the cradleboard to tickle the baby’s face; he was an astonishingly handsome, good-natured little creature. He smiled broadly and cooed at me, which seemed to soften somewhat his mother’s harsh manner.
“If your mother was Charley’s daughter,” I asked the girl, “who is this woman? She does not seem old enough to be your grandmother.”
“She is Charley’s third wife,” she answered. “There are so few men left that Charley and the others must take as many wives as they can in order to make more In’deh babies.” The girl seemed completely unaware of any irony in the fact that this white man was the primary brood stock for the production of Apache babies.
I think that la niña bronca was sent along with me to gather wood, not so much because they feared that I would try to escape, but simply to teach me the finer points of the chore. This involved bundling the sticks and branches together and tying them up with leather thongs. On the other end of the thongs was a kind of harness affair that slipped over the forehead, thus distributing the weight onto the neck and shoulders, allowing the bearer to carry heavier and larger loads … So much for my role as a professional ethnographer; I had become, in very short order, a slave and beast of burden. It was exhausting work and I was already thoroughly spent from the trials of the past twenty-four hours.
Charley’s wife, whose name I have since learned is Ishton, was roasting a piece of meat over the fire and stirring a pot when we returned with our loads of firewood. Joseph and Charley had been down to the creek and had washed off some of their hangover stink and were seated by the fire, as was the old woman Siki. We sat down ourselves. Ishton served everyone a portion of meat and some sort of root vegetable on a tin plate—everyone, that is, but me. The others began eating, ignoring me altogether.
“Wives do not serve slaves,” Joseph explained. “You must wait and serve yourself after everyone else has finished … if there is any left.”
The girl, however, took pity on me, filling a plate with food and handing it to me. As we were eating, another man came to the fire. He clearly had news but waited politely until he was invited to sit and had been served a portion himself. Then he began speaking.
“What’s going on, Joseph?” I aske
d.
“They have discovered that my grandson and the others have escaped,” he said.
“Tell Charley that a large expedition of Americans and Mexican soldiers is headed this way,” I said. “All they want is the Huerta boy. He could meet them halfway and turn the boy over to them. The expedition will never even have to come here.”
I saw that Charley was watching me intently as I spoke and I wondered again if perhaps he understood some of what I said. After Joseph had finished translating, Charley spoke to the girl, who rose and hurried away.
I addressed Charley in Spanish. “The boy’s father wants his son back,” I said. “That’s all. Young boys should be with their families. Do you remember what it was like? ¿Recuerda usted como era?” I turned to Joseph. “What happened to this boy, Joseph?”
“He became just like one of us. You can see for yourself.”
“But he’s not one of you.” I took Charley by the wrist and turned his arm over to expose the pale flesh underneath. He scowled at me. I put my other arm next to his. “Look, you’re one of us. Usted es como yo. Usted es un hombre blanco. You’re just like me. You’re a white man.”
“The color of his skin is not important,” Joseph said. “He is In’deh.”
And so, little brother, I give you the rest of Charley and Joseph’s story, which I have pieced together in these last strange days among the bronco Apaches. Thank God for these notebooks, and for my self-appointed role as substitute notebook keeper, which, more than anything, has kept me sane here.