by Peter Bowen
“I am Commissioner Parker of the Indian Bureau,” he said. I looked at him close, and he looked more like my friends in the car than he did me.
His eyes was twinkling. “General Grant who is now President Grant is a simple soldier,” he said. “My Iroquois name is Donegahwa, the Keeper of the Western Door of the Long House of the Iroquois.”
This was, since the Iroquois were my neighbors when I was growing up, like saying you were President of the Five Nations of the Iroquois.
Grant must be so far gone in whiskey he thinks appointing an Indian to the Indian Bureau is going to make him friends? How many Injuns vote, fer Chrissakes.
My puzzlement showed in my face, I guess.
“Have you been here before?” Donegahwa asked me. “Mr. ... uh ...”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I says, “the name is Kelly. Luther Kelly.”
“Not Yellowstone Kelly!?” says Donegahwa.
“Goddamn it,” I roared, “I got to turn this train around and go skin that flannelmouthing goddamn shithead scribbler ...”
“It’s too late,” says Donegahwa. “Far, far too late.”
The six Sioux come down off the train, a little wobbly at walking on something that don’t move. I looked at Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Red Shirt, Sitting Bull—all steady on his pins—and Hump and Low Dog. I thought it was too late. This Donegahwa feller seemed about too smooth by half.
“He’s Indian,” says Red Cloud, eyeing the clawhammer coat and the stovepipe hat and the polished box-toed boots.
“Yes,” I says in Sioux.
“Well,” says Red Cloud, smiling, “tell this mangy white-man’s cur he is less than the fart of a toad and I would like to kill him and I will at the first opportunity!” All said cheerylike.
“This is Red Cloud and he’s pleased to meet you,” I says to Donegahwa.
“Excellent!” says Donegahwa.
“Lizard puke!” says Red Cloud.
“I hope I may be of help to you,” says Donegahwa.
A translator’s life can be a hard one, but I did my best. Donegahwa was genuinely trying to help, and Red Cloud heaped insult after insult upon him, faithfully mistranslated by Luther. I was a little annoyed with Red Cloud and furious with that damned Spotted Tail, grinning like a gargoyle throughout.
Donegahwa had horsecabs waiting for us, and we drove to a good hotel, where the bellboys smirked at the Indians and the doors had a number of round plugs in them, where someone had to get into the room to carry out the corpses of those who didn’t understand these newfangled gaslamps.
We was descended upon by drummers and pimps, and the Injuns didn’t understand a word, but as my anger rose they fell in behind me and the pimps left, shaking their fists. I had some high words with the walrus-moustached manager, and his house cop joined in, and we had a nice little Donnybrook going there until my Sioux friends showed up fingering their tomahawks and knives, and quite obviously ready for serious business. The walrus moustache and his cheap thug jumped into the elevator, which warn’t there. They went through the roof of it a couple floors below, and the collision greatly reduced their health.
“Ah, Kelly,” says Red Cloud, “how savage life is here! I almost wish that I could read and write.”
I was mopping the blood off a cut lip when a spit-shined young captain come stomping up the stairs and asked to have a private word with me.
“None of these barbaric, bloodthirsty, savage, renegade piles of coyote shit speaks English,” I says, watching Spotted Tail lick his chops, “so speak your piece.”
“General Grant wants to see you alone, and right now.”
I explained that I was off to see the Great White Father, and I’d appreciate it if they didn’t molest nor kill nobody until I got back. I told Spotted Tail in Sioux if there was a problem to demand that they be taken to the White House.
There was a snappy hansom awaiting with a grim-looking sergeant in it and we took off at a fast pace for the White House, an ugly building where ugly things was thought up, usually.
President Ulysses Simpson Grant, a short rumpled feller you’d have thought a feed and grain merchant from some Illinois backwater had you met him on the street, was awaiting “Major” Kelly in a fine billiard room all hung with portraits of former Secretaries of State, where the real mendacity and chicanery is practiced, with seasoned players like England. Grant was smoking a seegar and sipping whiskey and he motioned me to a sideboard where the fixings lay. We was alone.
We talked of nothing much for a bit, until I was some settled, and then he asked me courteously about the Booth affair, and I told him it didn’t amount to much.
“Don’t suppose it would pay to go after the folks who were in on the assassination of Lincoln,” I says, feeling some righteous and disgusted. Well, hell, I was young.
Grant just shook his head. “More government I see more damned unbelievable it gets,” he says. “I’m President. I wish I could shoot about half of Washington tomorrow. Lincoln’s dead, and all that would happen if we went after them as deserves it is that the South would be plundered for another twenty years. It will take the nation generations to heal anyway, I can see no point in adding to the trouble.”
We blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“I’ve failed a few times in life,” Grant said, meaning his failed business efforts. “And I don’t know if I can do this job but I have to try. I’m the only man enough voters think on to get elected. I have no more stomach for righteousness. So you did burn his diaries.”
“Yes,” I says. “I did everything I was ordered to do. Now, if you don’t mind, a question. Why the false-front major’s rank?”
“Oh, that,” says Grant. “We always have need of a few rascals and rascals only understand threats of a dire kind. Your pay is accumulating. If you would like a few medals that’s easy enough.”
“Why me?”
“Bridger and some others said you were likely. Some I oughtn’t to tell you about. And I won’t.”
Grant walked over by the window. “If the American people knew how badly they were served by their government they’d rise up and hang us all. And that would do no one any good. Hang a few guilty men and tens of thousands starve for years.”
“Am I likely to be called again?” I says, about half angry.
“Nothing immediate,” says Grant, twinkling. “But that could change in a matter of seconds.”
We’d run out of those topics. Grant asked if Red Cloud and Company needed anything.
“Abolishing the whites,” I says. “Short of that not much. It’s terrible for me to watch these good people go down like grass before a mower. They were living just as their fathers had.”
“Sherman will be after them and he’ll contrive to bring them all in or kill them all. Bill is a kind man, and he’d leave no eye open to weep. If he had his way, though of course we’ll torture the survivors with missionaries and poison them with government rations. Give them schools and such. It will never take the place of what they had.”
Grant went on to explain that the treaty Red Cloud and the others had signed in 1868 did give them some lands as long as grass should grow and rivers flow, but the treaty that got signed wasn’t the treaty that got read to them.
“Would it have mattered if it had been the one?” I asked.
“No, it wouldn’t matter,” said Grant. “They can come in now or we can chase them down. One way or another they will have to come in. One way or another.”
“The gold in the Black Hills will do it,” I says.
Grant looked off toward the horizon, pain in his face. A soldier, he’d dealt out more blood and death than any other man on the planet, and now he was left with tending the wounded and small matters like the Germans in Mexico, the Russians in the Northwest, and the damned British, who was waiting for any old tidbit that might drop into their well-shaven jaws.
“What about this bird shit? I can assume that I can now be told about the bird shit?”
“The bi
rd shit,” said Grant. “They don’t teach you about the effects of bird shit on the lives of nations. You have to come on it by accident and get elected President. I’d blow out my brains but I’m waiting for the bastards to top it.”
Grant explained why I had to go to Canada and smother a syphilitic fugitive in the name of Manifest Destiny.
There were these islands off the coast of Peru, all covered with bird shit, millions of tons of it, and very valuable stuff it was, too. Bird shit was a large component of modern smokeless gunpowder. Smokeless powder was a boon to slaughter on the battlefield, because everybody could still see after the first volleys.
We own the bird shit concession now, but the British wanted it, to deny it to the Germans.
“Well,” I says, “that makes about as much sense as fried ice.”
“Indeed it do,” says Grant.
I had another drink of whiskey and thought on what I’d just been told.
“You dragged me all the damn way here to tell me some fairy tale?” I says. I couldn’t quite get comfortable with the why behind my murderous little foray up Canada way.
“Not much of a joke at all,” said Grant. “But there you have it.”
The world was a madhouse, sure enough.
“Your commission is based solely upon your liking for fairy tales,” said Grant. “You’d make a terrible officer. I was a good one, but since I got to be a general I’m spoiled. After a while the rotting corpses stink in your dreams.”
My crazy uncle Angus, who used to read Thucydides to me, always said that nations conducted their affairs with the same sort of morality was exhibited at the Saratoga races by the whores. Actually, he said, musing, the whores win on points.
I liked Grant. He was a decent man in an impossible job, and probably thought that someone else could only do much worse.
“How come every time I turn round another of your fellers is up on charges?” I asked, bold in my disgust.
“Well,” said Grant, “I can’t actually tell the American people how rotten their government is, but I can drop a hint or two.”
I laughed so hard I spilled whiskey on the carpet. Grant grinned. Well, he’d do to ride with, sure enough. There was a knock at the door and an aide scurried in and whispered something in Grant’s ear, and then he scurried out again.
“The Frogs and the Krauts are fighting,” said the President, “and that’s too bad for the Frogs.”
“Who recommended me to you?” I asked, thinking it was Gus Doane.
Grant shook his head. “Nope, not that name. Believe me, it’s better that way.”
I nodded. Well, it would come out in time.
“When I’m through here,” said Grant, “I’m going to go back to Illinois and train horses and look after my grandchildren and I’ll never tell them a damned thing. I hope none of them become soldiers, and if they do, I hope none of them are good at it.”
I shook his hand and left. The cab ride to the hotel didn’t take long. I stopped for one more drink before joining my chums.
The mirror behind the bar was distempered. I looked at myself and I seemed to be floating, drowned, in a dark green sea.
31
IN ORDER TO IMPRESS and scare hell out of Red Cloud and his fellow Sioux, and show off what fine people us white folks was, there was a lot of excursions to see this and that. For openers, we went to some demented professor’s laboratory where the feller was working on a flying machine. Unlike the clumsy gas balloons, the professor’s thingismus would prove that heavier than air flight was possible. It so far had eluded folks, and the flights had been of short duration with few if any survivors.
The Injuns and I stood around while the professor, who hadn’t washed in so long you’d of had to sand him good to get a rope to stay on him, scribbled on a blackboard and hollered “EUREKA” a lot. He was a mighty determined man, and the day after we was there to his shop he wired down the safety valve on the steam engine that was supposed to power the chamois-skin-and-bamboo wings just right, and the engine split open and poached him on the spot. At least he was fairly sanitary when they hauled him to the undertaker.
“Big goddamn thing,” says Red Cloud. “Our young men are always jumping off buttes when they have chewed too much jimson weed. If the Great God wanted man to fly he would have given us wings and a place to go.”
We got dragged to a Pennsylvania coal mine. The Indians declined the offer of a ride down the shaft, so we just looked at the surface works. When we walked through the sorting mill and saw dozens of ragged boys picking the slate from the washed coal the Indians looked sad and shook their heads. The boys had those pinched faces and bluish skins folks get when they never have had enough to eat.
A crowd of newspaper reporters followed us everywhere, always yelling for quotes, which I gave them, even pumping up the obscene ones given to me by the warriors.
The journalists was hard to discourage. They plagued us awful but finally come to do a service for us. What a job they got! Pry, pry, pry, and when they’d find something out the paper wouldn’t print it.
The army put on a close-order cavalry drill demonstration somewhat marred by a dropped beat that caused two lines of troopers to crash into one another. In moments the field was littered with injured men and broken horses. The brigadier got so angry he had a fit of apoplexy and died on the reviewing stand.
“I’d hate to see the whites try to fuck,” said Spotted Tail.
Every evening we went to a different burlesque house to watch the girls take off most everything, which entertainment us boys likes the world over. My charges was decorous and only made rude comments in Sioux. No one could understand them but me and all I really had to contend with was folks after me to explain, usually ministers slumming for Jesus.
We went to a display of oil products from Pennsylvania, and Spotted Tail said that the same stuff poured up from the ground on their lands.
We was taken to a symphony concert and enjoyed it hugely, the eighty or so instruments was fascinating to the Sioux. They loved the music, even though it was of a different tonal scale than Injun music.
One especially pestiferous journalist who had a nasty habit of showing up in your bathwater or under the bed got his but good one night, I HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH IT. Ahem. He was asked through an interpreter if he would like to become a member of the Turtlegooser’s Society. Also the ceremony would make him blood brother to the Sioux Nation.
When he had stripped to the skin he was set upon by his fellow lodge members, who painted him red from head to toe and then tossed him into a huge hogshead out back of the hotel, which had a hundred-pound snapping turtle in it. The turtle’s jaws had been wired shut, but how was he to know? He run off up the street in his paint, purchased for its resistance to every solvent known to man.
His newspaper expressed indignation, and, speaking for us, I expressed astonishment that such a cruel joke could have been perpetrated upon the poor man.
That backed the shoals of journalists off some, and then we was assaulted with wave after wave of lovelies, the sort who was game for anything as long as it caused eyebrows to rise.
The management of the hotel observed that they were not running a cathouse, and I said airily that I’d no idea whatever of what they could be talking about. I said this through a crack in the door, because a beautiful young woman of Prominent Family was lolling on the bed popping chocolates in her lovely mouth. Her husband was off yachting, the fool.
Occasional hasty conferences with my Sioux chums revealed that they didn’t care if we never left the hotel again. I said this would pall, they said that they didn’t think so. It did eventually for everyone but Hump, who had been seen clear by his spirit guide when he lay out in the wet for five days, neither eating nor drinking. Which, come to think on it, beats hell out of Yale.
Hump’s prowess got grand reviews by word of mouth and he had ladies lined up taking numbers from Low Dog, who found the job of appointments secretary less taxing and he coul
d sort of high grade the ore, so to speak.
Management was having fits by this time over our sporting life—some folks can’t stand to watch others enjoying themselves. They sent lawyers with writs, and I kept my head down, since there was no one else but Spotted Tail who could read English and he wasn’t owning to it.
The day when all the Sioux and Kelly were to be formally received at the White House come and it was a most memorable day in all respects.
The day dawned with a screeching and caterwauling coming from Red Shirt’s room, where one young lovely had crawled up the laundry chute and found him disporting happily with another young lovely. This brave who had counted over three hundred coup and scalped forty enemies and who was one of the bravest men I ever knew prudently took refuge under my bed, bidding me ring for room service and have them bring up tea and scones. He had taken a particular liking to both. Dulcet sounds of busting crockery and ripping skin soothed the rest of the Sioux awake. They came into my room following the heady scent of scones to find War Chief Red Shirt, the chickenshit son of a bitch, lolling on my bed drinking tea.
Also this paragon of a paladin was smoking one of my seegars.
The local haberdashers had give us all clawhammer coats and pinstriped trousers and boots and stovepipe hats. The Sioux wore everything but the pants. The pants bound some, they explained.
I thought a clawhammer coat and a breechclout looked mighty elegant, but it never did catch on.
First the presidential steam yacht Columbia was to take us up the Potomac, a filthy river full of oil and dead animals. We chuffed upstream, eating lobster salad and listening to the Marine Band play patriotic tunes. I had a chat with the concertmaster, during which money changed hands, and the band played music hall tunes that reminded us all of slim legs kicking high and feathers and pretty frocks and grand frolics. Soon the hidden jugs come out—they’re always around somewhere, regulations or no, and we ended up smashing into the dock hard enough to cave in the bows. We stumbled furtively to the waiting hansoms.
We sort of poured ourselves through a side entrance and we was immediately met by stewards bearing strong coffee. We sobered up or something like it, and went on in to dinner. It was a men only affair, with Grant and his cabinet officers there and some male secretaries taking notes.