Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  The captive boy watched the captive eagle straining against its tether. The great golden bird, actually just an adolescent, had grown up a prisoner. The Comanches had stolen the eagle from its mother’s nest when it was just a fuzzy eaglet. Now a rawhide rope— one end tied to a stake, the other knotted around the eagle’s foot—kept it bound to the earth. The tribe held the bird in captivity because they needed eagle feathers for many of their rituals. Regretting the handsome bird’s plucked tail, Jimmy would have attempted to comfort it for its loss, but he suspected that this captive would fight back.

  The eagle’s feathers had been pulled from its tail in preparation for the Eagle Dance that would take place later that morning. Even now, its lost plumage was being tied into the hair of the dancers who had been bathed in the creek, then streaked with war paint and rubbed with sage. During the dance, the eagle’s power would be absorbed by the dancers. The great bird itself had to suffer so the Comanches could take on some of its greatness.

  Jimmy knew the eagle would not be the only captive who would have to suffer on that fine festive morning. He wasn’t quite sure what he was expected to do—or what they would do to him—but he doubted that he would like it very much. The Sun Chief had dressed him in new buckskin leggings that were decorated with elk’s teeth. He, too, had been bathed in the creek. He, too, had been rubbed with sage. But he suspected he hadn’t been so well groomed and perfumed for his own pleasure.

  A half-dozen braves appeared and led Jimmy away down a ravine where they waited for the ritual to begin. Soon the white boy heard the raiders coming for him the way they had come that morning in what already seemed the distant past.

  Looking up at the sky, Jimmy thought of the eagle. He almost expected to see it flying overhead, although he knew very well that it was tied to the ground. He imagined it up there and wondered if it ever imagined the same thing. He even seemed to see himself as the soaring eagle, up there in the cloudless sky, looking down on all that was happening and about to happen on earth. He saw a frightened white boy way down below.

  It was as if he saw the whole ritual while floating in the sky. He saw the warriors pouring down a ravine toward the white boy, like an angry flash flood. They wore eagle feathers in their hair, and they screamed like eagles, but he knew that he was the real eagle way up in the wind.

  From above, he saw them all play their parts in the ritual drama. The Comanches, who had waited with the white boy in the ravine, pretended to defend him. The raiders pretended to struggle to capture him. They fought a make-believe hand-to-hand battle there on the red-earth stage. They crashed sacred war shield against sacred war shield. They shook war axes and brandished shivering lances. Jimmy saw the white boy instinctively try to run, but a raider caught him by his blond hair—bleached almost white by the sun—from behind. It was an exciting scene. He was glad that he had such a good vantage point from which to watch.

  Now the angry flood receded back down the ravine, returning the way it had come, carrying with it the white boy in the ceremonial buckskin leggings. This tide carried him to the broad bottom of the canyon floor, where the tepees rose one after the other like whitecaps. The whole tribe rushed out to welcome home the returning make-believe raiders and to celebrate the mock taking of a real captive. Watching from on high, Jimmy wondered why they went to so much trouble to catch what they had already caught.

  In the forefront of the welcoming throng was the Comanche boy who was the white boy’s young overseer. At the sight of him, the captive flinched. The white child seemed really to be afraid of this red boy. He wasn’t pretending.

  Still in the sky, looking down on the assault, Jimmy saw the Comanche boy slap the white boy across the chest with a rawhide whip. The white boy accepted the blow passively. He seemed beyond pretending, beyond struggling, beyond caring what happened to him. The red boy pushed the white boy down. Still there was no resistance. The whip rose again but stopped overhead as if it had forgotten what it was intending to do.

  The Comanche boy had paused in mid-blow because he was so surprised to see a small horny toad escape from the clothing of the fallen white boy. The captive tried to scramble after his pet, but he lay in an awkward position and moved clumsily. The Comanche boy picked up a rock. The white boy reached for the red boy’s arm but missed. The rock came down on the back of the small armored animal that seemed to have survived millions of years in order to die that day at the hands of a young boy.

  Jimmy had seen his father killed by the Comanches. He had seen his grandfather killed by the Comanches. He had seen a Comanche spear go right through the small body of his sister. And now a Comanche had killed his last friend. He hadn’t been able to fight back against the mounted warriors who murdered his father and grandfather. He had been fleeing for his own life when they were butchered. He had ducked and doomed his sister, and he hadn’t done anything to avenge her death. But now he was finished with standing by helplessly and watching all that he loved being murdered. The killing of Fred was one killing too many. Now he would fight back. Now he would strike a long delayed blow for his slain father, for his mutilated grandfather, for his raped aunts, for his sister writhing on the ground.

  The unarmed slave charged his tormentor, charged the whip, charged the flint-bladed knife that suddenly appeared. Jimmy kept coming, his anger blinding him to the danger. What did he care? What did he have to lose? Why cling to this slave’s life? He knew he should have been the one to die at the fort instead of his sister, so now he would pay that debt and join her. But when he saw his enemy smile, he got mad enough to want to live. Why should he give this savage beast satisfaction?

  Moving quickly, by reflex, Jimmy deflected the knife. The sharp stone blade sliced his palm, ricocheted off his wrist bone, and plunged into his left eye. He screamed the way his grandfather had screamed, the way his grandmother had screamed, the way his aunts had screamed. His sister hadn’t screamed. She had been made of sterner stuff than he was. The Comanche boy kept pushing the knife, trying to plunge its sharp point into the brain behind the ruined eye, but the white boy’s eye socket was too small to admit the wide stone blade. If he had been full-grown, he would be dead now.

  With one eye destroyed and the other blinded by blood, Jimmy groped in the dark for a weapon. It was as though the God of his fathers guided his hand to the appropriate weapon, for he clutched a jawbone. Samson slew the enemies of his people with the jawbone of an ass, but Jimmy clutched the broken jaw of a buffalo. The white boy blindly struck the red boy across the left ear with his sturdy weapon made of bone and teeth. The mock ritual battle of the Eagle Dance had given way to real war.

  Wiping the blood out of his right eye, Jimmy saw through a blood haze that his enemy was bleeding from the ear. The sight of all this blood—the blood in his eye, the blood of his foe, white blood, red blood—crazed the white boy. It was the blood of his father, the blood of his grandfather, the blood of his aunts, the blood of his sister, and the blood of his ancient horned pet, Fred’s blood. And his own blood. He felt a blood lust for blood vengeance. He struck out again and again at the blood as if blood itself were the enemy. He wanted to hurt blood. He wanted to conquer blood. He wanted to kill blood. He wanted to destroy blood. He wanted to bury blood forever.

  The eagle soaring high overhead, the one-eyed eagle who was Jimmy, looked down on a small, blood-spattered Samson who kept striking blow after blow with the jawbone. The white boy way down there had the mad strength of the insane. He had the uncaring audacity of pure lunacy. He kept waiting for the roof of the temple to come tumbling down on him, but it didn’t matter because he was safe up here. Let them kill that white boy. Let them drive a lance into his back. Let an arrow pierce his side. Let him die like his sister and like Fred. Let . . .

  Then his enemy fell at his feet and he was suddenly afraid. He had killed the Comanche boy and now the Comanches would kill him. He could feel the throng moving closer, constricting around him. He had a terrible picture in his mind: his hair being cu
t from his head, coming loose with a pop.

  Jimmy saw the Comanche boy at his feet seem to come back to life, rising slowly onto his hands and knees. His enemy appeared to be starting life over again as a baby crawling. Or some lower four-footed animal. Jimmy felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed to see that he hadn’t killed the other boy.

  The savage white boy raised the jawbone once more. The dead buffalo seemed eager to avenge itself on the race that had killed it and so many of its relatives. Its bone struck the Comanche on the back and the shoulders again and again. As he beat the red boy, the white boy kept anticipating the feel of the lance point between his shoulder blades. He shivered.

  The Comanche boy-warrior collapsed once again. And this time, he didn’t try to get up. The savage white boy looked down at his beaten enemy and then around at the crowd.

  Now they would kill him.

  The Sun Chief stepped forward. He would perform the execution. The slave was the master’s property and would die at his hands. The white boy sank to his knees. Reaching down, Jimmy’s master laid hands on him, held him for a moment, and then raised him up. He lifted him all the way over his head. The master was going to kill the slave by dashing him to the earth.

  The master set his bloodied slave on his shoulders. The Sun Chief paraded the small white boy through the village with a huge crowd following behind. It was a victory celebration. Looking back with one eye, the little white warrior saw a throng of Comanches all dancing and waving eagle feathers. Soaring high on his master’s shoulders, Jimmy felt like an eagle leading a flock of brother eagles through savage heavens.

  80

  Proud of the new eagle feather tied in his hair, Jimmy reached up and touched it gently to make sure it was still there. He felt it flutter in the warm, restless summer air. Then his hand moved instinctively from the feather in his hair to the bandage over his ruined eye. Now the small purple splotches on his face, which resembled the Big Dipper, pointed not at the North Star but at his empty eye socket, as if it had always known what would happen. Squinting with his one good eye, he watched the smoke from the council fire move slowly back and forth, a grey feather as tall as the afternoon sky.

  Jimmy could see the men of the village seated in a great circle, which reminded him of a huge eye. The fire at the center of the circle was the pupil. This giant eye was staring up at the heavens.

  While he waited nervously for his part in the ceremony to begin, Jimmy kept turning his head this way and that as if wary of some approaching enemy. Since he had lost an eye, his field of vision was sharply reduced, and he always felt as if somebody were creeping up behind him, or on his blind side. He tried to compensate for his loss by continually pivoting his head, which was tiring and made him a little dizzy. He felt as if he lived in a wooden box and was looking out at a world through a single knothole. And the world he saw was flatter and less forgiving than it had been before. That was the bad part.

  The good part was that the loss of an eye had made him appreciate what his remaining eye saw all the more. As he pivoted his head to the right and then back to the left, he beheld a paradise to which he had been blind before when he had both eyes. Of course, he had recognized from the beginning that the canyon was an extraordinary place, but he had somehow missed seeing how truly beautiful it was. Now he felt as if he were living in a fairy-tale palace with turrets and towers sculpted out of red sandstone. The beauties of his new home were made all the more touching because they seemed so fragile; not that the red canyon was likely to disappear from the world any time soon, but it might very well vanish fromhis world if his one remaining eye ever failed him. He was so moved by what he beheld that tears rolled down one side of his face.

  Jimmy noticed that the women and children were gathering to watch the ritual. They formed an informal ring around the formal council circle. When he saw a certain face, he scowled, for it was bruised and battered, with missing teeth and a broken nose. But it had somehow survived the wrath of a small white warrior. Jimmy looked away from his victim, back toward the fire.

  A tiny feather of smoke rose from the pipe that the men passed from hand to hand around the circle. The bowl of the pipe—which burned a mixture of tobacco and crushed sumac leaves—was shaped from red sandstone taken from the wall of the majestic canyon. The stem of the pipe was a hollow reed that was inserted into the bowl. Since the two parts of the pipe weren’t welded together, the smokers had to hold them and pass them with both hands. The red pipe seemed to be a smoldering emblem of the red canyon itself.

  As he watched the pipe make its way around the circle, Jimmy breathed in the slightly sweet aroma of the burning sumac and tobacco. He kept on reaching up every now and then to check on his proud feather. Touching it somehow seemed to make him less nervous. And every time he touched his feather, he then proceeded to touch his bandage, over and over, time and again, his own private ritual. When he saw a brave lay the pipe aside, the one-eyed boy reached up and held onto the feather tight.

  Jimmy stared hard with his one eye as the men all rose in unison and placed their right hands over their hearts. Then they stretched out their hands to the sun. Then they covered their hearts again. Then they started walking in a slow circle, repeating their sun salute over and over again, now raising their hands, now covering their hearts. And they chanted some sort of greeting—or perhaps a prayer—to the sun. Their words and their feet made a solemn, serious sound.

  When this living wheel finally stopped turning, the Sun Chief broke from the circle and walked in Jimmy’s direction. The closer he came, the more the boy tugged at his feather. Reaching the blond child, the yellow-painted brave took the boy’s hand, gently pulled him to his feet, and led him toward the great circle with the fire at its hub.

  The Sun Chief led him inside the ring, deep into the circle, up so close to the fire that it made his face hot. The white boy stared into the flames to keep from having to look at all the faces staring at him. The aroma of the pipe was thick around him. The smoke and the heat and his nerves made him light-headed. He swayed forward as if he might fall into the fire, the blazing pupil of the monster eye, but the Sun Chief took hold of his shoulders and steadied him.

  Still holding him by the shoulders, the red man turned the white boy around so that his back was to the fire. As Jimmy was trying to get used to all the staring eyes, he saw a stately old man leave the ring and approach him. He had many eagle feathers tied in his hair because he was an old respected man of magic. When the ancient shaman came to a stop directly in front of the boy, Jimmy desperately wanted to reach up and stroke his own feather, but he didn’t dare move at this solemn moment.

  In a deep, grave voice, the old medicine man began what seemed to be a speech directed at the white boy. Jimmy listened almost reverently although he couldn’t understand a word. He heard from their tone that the words were meant kindly, and they relaxed him a little.

  When he had finished his lecture, the wrinkled shaman came and stood next to Jimmy. His master the Sun Chief took up a position on his other side. The three of them now stood in a row facing the hot afternoon sun. The old shaman placed his hand over his heart, the Sun Chief did the same, and so Jimmy copied them—he placed his small white hand over his excited heart. When the medicine man raised his hand to the sun, the Sun Chief lifted his also. Jimmy did the same. Then all three hands returned to their hearts. They repeated this salute three times.

  Then the Sun Chief bent down and grasped Jimmy in a suffocating bear hug as blood-curdling cries echoed through the camp. The boy gasped for breath and would have liked to cover his ears, but he was still smiling broadly. Without understanding the words, he still understood what had happened to him.

  He had been adopted into the tribe. He was a Comanche.

  81

  In the dark, cramped tepee, the yellow-painted Comanche warrior was trying to teach his new white-haired son how to talk. He pointed to the white boy, then pointed at himself.

  “Nu-mu-nu,”he said s
lowly and distinctly.

  Jimmy’s face drew itself into a small scowl because he had no idea what the sound meant.

  “Numunu,”the new father said more rapidly,“numunu, numunu.”

  The boy’s uncomprehending shoulders went up in a shrug.

  “Numunu.”The man pointed at the boy.“Numunu.” He pointed at himself.“Numunu.” He pointed back at the boy.

  Jimmy was afraid his new father would be displeased with him, even angry with him, so his scowl deepened. He even cringed slightly. But his new father only grinned broadly, reached out for his hand, and led his son out of the tent. The warrior was in a hurry. He was almost running, dragging his son along behind him, in his haste to teach him. When they came upon a squaw scraping a buffalo hide, the father stopped and pointed.“Numunu,” he said.

  They passed a warrior asleep in the shade of his tepee. The father pointed again.“Numunu.”

  They hurried on past a small band of naked boys playing a ball game.“Numunu.”

  Continuing their tour, they rushed by a group of girls in buckskin who were learning to sew with sinews and a bone awl.“Numunu.”

  Jimmy stopped. He stood in the middle of the village, thinking. Then he slowly pointed to himself.“Numunu,” he whispered.

  As he said the word, Jimmy saw his new father nod and smile broadly. Then the boy pointed at the Sun Chief.“Numunu,” he repeated a little louder.

  The father nodded again, still smiling.

  Acting on impulse, Jimmy reversed the roles. Now the son grabbed the father’s hand. Now the boy dragged the man through the village. Now Jimmy pointed at a brave mending his bow.“Numunu!” he shouted.

  Running on, he pointed to a gaggle of old men who were telling tales, counting coups.“Numunu!”

  When he had dragged his father to the edge of the village, he pointed to a brave on horseback.“Numunu! Numunu!”

  The Sun Chief, his father, picked up his son and hugged him, and they called each other by that strange name over and over as if it were a love name:“Numunu, Human Being,Numunu, Human Being,Numunu . . .”