I decided to tell Jennifer I didn’t have time to be anyone’s boyfriend right now. I said I had too much on my plate. She took it hard for about five minutes. I guess she realized there was other boyfriend material out there. I kept on riding to and from school with her and her mother. But from then on I always sat in the back seat by myself.
On Saturdays I played stickball with Charley and the others. That put me at the community center six days a week. They got to know me pretty well around there.
But I think I got to be known a little too well.
A few days before Christmas, my family went to the yearly Christmas dinner held there. The gathering room was decked out with decorations made by Choctaw kids. The Christmas tree was covered with ornaments created from all natural things. There were pinecones hanging from red ribbons and leaves that had been spray-painted gold. Strings of colored popcorn circled the branches.
After we finished eating, Santa Claus came into the room. He was immediately surrounded by a swarm of children. They all needed to tell him what they wanted for Christmas.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he said in a booming voice. “You children line up over there in the corner by the Christmas tree. You can tell Santa what you want for Christmas. But only if you’ve been good all year.” He laughed another loud laugh. The children all ran for the tree. Santa gathered up his big red bag.
That Santa Claus looked a little familiar to me. So I got close enough to see who was underneath the beard and costume. It turned out to be Mr. Tubby. He had some additional padding around the middle to help him fill out the Santa suit.
We talked for a couple of minutes. Then Dad came over to tell me it was time to leave. It was then that Santa, Mr. Tubby, spoke to my dad. Too bad for me.
“Ned Cheska, it’s been awhile,” Mr. Tubby said. “Randy must be your son.” His voice sounded a bit odd. It seemed like he was being polite, but not really friendly.
Dad looked closer at the man behind the beard. He stiffened a little. It seemed as though these two men knew each other but maybe didn’t like each other too much.
“Carl Tubby,” Dad said. “I didn’t recognize you in the outfit. I thought you moved away from here.”
“I’m back. Been back awhile. Please excuse me. I’ve got to go play Santa. See you around.” He picked up his bag of toys. Before he left he shook my hand.
“See you Saturday as usual, Randy,” he said. “I’m really impressed with your improved toli skills.” He smiled and headed for the kids in the corner.
Uh-oh, I thought. The cat’s out of the bag. The beans have been spilled.
My father’s brown face turned bright red. His eyes burned angry.
“What did he mean by that, Randy?” he asked. “He’ll see you Saturday as usual. Your toli skills have improved. What’s he talking about?”
Dad asked these questions as though he already knew the answers. And he didn’t like those answers.
“He’s been playing stickball every Saturday,” Mom’s voice said from behind us. I looked over to see her just as she walked up to us.
“I told him he could,” she added. “It’s what he wants to do.”
Dad looked like he was about to explode. But he didn’t. Instead his eyes rolled back in his head. Then he fell to the floor.
Chapter 8
Old Ways/New Ways
Mom and I followed the ambulance that took Dad to the Neshoba County Hospital over thirty miles away. We sat together in the waiting room while the doctors examined him.
“What could’ve happened?” I wondered. “Did I make Dad so angry he had a heart attack?” I was worried and felt a bit guilty too, like this was somehow my fault. Mom was almost frantic.
In a little while a doctor came out and spoke to us. He said Dad had a tumor pressing on his brain. That sounded way beyond serious. The good news was that it wasn’t cancer. They could operate on him in the morning. He should be able to go home within a few days, the doctor said.
Mom called my Aunt Issi who lived north of us about twenty miles. She came to the hospital, picked me up, and took me home to my house. She stayed with me while Mom sort of camped out at the hospital to be near Dad.
Aunt Issi was my dad’s sister, but I didn’t see her much. It seemed that there was some old argument between her and Dad. They didn’t talk to each other. I never really knew what it was about. I thought now was as good a time as any to find out.
“Aunt Issi, how come you and Dad don’t get along?” I asked when we got home.
“He never told you?” she asked me back.
“No,” I said. “I’m just now starting to hear a few things about how he grew up. About how he didn’t want to follow the old Choctaw ways.”
“That’s the very thing that separated us,” she said. “The old ways against the new ways. Many Indians came to believe you couldn’t do both. Your father was one of them. But, like your grandfather, I believed you could.”
“Sounds possible to me,” I offered.
“You would’ve had to grow up when we did to understand. It was different back then. The churches and the schools were teaching us that we couldn’t follow the old Indian ways. They tried to make us believe that those ways were somehow bad. We were supposed to be like our white American neighbors. But things have changed since then, and I’m glad.”
“Dad hasn’t changed,” I said with a sigh and a yawn.
“Time for bed,” Issi said. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
I started to head for my room, then stopped. “I’ve always wanted to know. What does your name, Issi, mean?” I asked.
“It means ‘deer’ in Choctaw,” she answered. “My name is Deer. Did you know your father’s name is really Neshoba, not Ned?”
“No! What does Neshoba mean?”
“It means ‘wolf.’ Your grandfather named all four of his kids for animals. Your other aunt and uncle who live in Alabama are named Nita and Fala. That’s ‘bear’ and ‘crow’ in our language.”
“Deer, Bear, Crow and Wolf,” I said. “Cool names.”
“Yeah, way cool,” Issi agreed. “Now off to bed with you. Tomorrow we’ll drive back to the hospital.”
Off to bed I went. As I lay there I thought about what animal name I’d choose if I could. Maybe Bobcat or Badger. How about Cougar? I drifted off to sleep before deciding.
It was Christmas break so I didn’t have to worry about school for a while. A few days passed as we waited to hear about Dad’s condition. The doctor said the operation went well and everything would be fine.
Several days after the operation, I was allowed to go into Dad’s room where he was recovering. He was sitting up in bed. A bandage was wrapped around his head. Mom was standing beside the bed. I stood across the room.
“Hey, Randy,” Dad said as I got closer.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Very glad to be alive,” he said softly. “Because there’s something I need to tell you. Please come closer.”
I took a few steps toward the bed.
“I’m very sorry for the way I’ve been treating you,” he said. His eyes got watery. “They told me they’d have to operate to remove this brain tumor. And the only thing I could think of was this. What if I died without telling my son that I loved him and wanted him to be happy?”
I didn’t expect to hear that at all. I took the few remaining steps to the bed. I leaned over and hugged my father. Even though he had been hard on me, I still loved him.
“And then I had another thought,” he continued. “What if I survived the surgery and didn’t allow my son to be who he was or do what was important to him?”
I looked up into my dad’s eyes. “What are you saying, Dad?” I asked.
“Your mother told me how good you were at playing stickball,” he said. “How the team captain had asked you to play on his team. She said that playing toli would give you a chance to build your confidence. It would allow you to follow in Jack’s footsteps in your
own way.”
He looked over at Mom. She took his hand in hers.
“Your mother is a smart lady,” he said with a smile. “And I’m a stubborn mule.” All three of us hugged. Dad even hugged Aunt Issi and told her he was sorry. I figured we’d be seeing more of her from now on.
Dad was able to come home from the hospital just after Christmas. When school started again after the winter break, I was ready to start practicing serious stickball.
That’s when I got my next surprise. Charley set the practice schedule for Saturday afternoons at the usual place. I arrived at my first practice to find a field full of adults. I must’ve gotten the time wrong, I thought.
“Randy, I’m glad you could make it,” Charley called from across the field. He jogged over to me.
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “Did I miss my team’s practice?”
“What do you mean? This is your team,” he said. “I thought you understood that this was the men’s team you’d be playing on. Only men’s teams can play in the Choctaw stickball championship games.”
Some of the men moved closer to hear the conversation.
“Charley said you’re the best natural-born stickball player he’s seen,” one of the men said. “Welcome to the team.” He held out his hand for me to shake.
I was in shock. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t move. The man reached out and grabbed my arm. He took my hand in his and shook it. The other men lined up to shake my hand too. I counted each hand that I shook. There were twenty-nine. Men of all ages.
“I’m a lot smaller than you guys,” I said. “I’ll get creamed out there.”
“This team will protect you,” Charley said. “They’ve all sworn an oath to block, smash, or flatten any player on any other team who even thinks about roughing you up.”
And that was that.
The practices began, along with my unbelievable career on the men’s Oka Homma stickball team. The name Oka Homma means “Red Water” in Choctaw.
Of course, I had to still go to tutoring sessions after school to keep my grades up. Mom checked on my grades often. So I had to pay attention in class and pay attention in tutoring. That’s the price I had to pay for playing stickball.
A couple of evenings a week and every Saturday I was out on the field. When it was too cold or rainy, we’d use the nearby Red Water Elementary School gym to exercise and practice our plays.
I found that good stickball teams ran plays like football teams do. You have to have a plan for getting the towa down the field and to the goal. Otherwise the game was just chaos. That’s what it looked like to people on the sidelines. The game didn’t seem organized at all. But it really was.
Dad went back to his job at Fall-Mart, but he seemed like a new man. He was less angry and more friendly. Mom said the tumor had been part of his problem before. But most of Dad’s troubles in life came because he had been so stubborn.
“The doctor must’ve removed the stubbornness right along with the tumor,” she laughed. “I’d forgotten how much fun your dad used to be.”
He even showed up at my stickball practices from time to time, and a few of our Saturday practice games when he didn’t have to work.
Things were going so well I got up the courage one evening at dinner to tell Mom and Dad about the dream I’d had about Jack.
“I was afraid to tell you about it,” I said. “I was afraid you’d think I was crazy. Or that I was just trying to make you think— Actually, I don’t know what I thought would happen.”
When I finished talking, my dad was silent for a couple of minutes. He was hardly breathing, and a tear formed in the corner of one eye. He wiped it with his napkin.
“I totally forgot about it until now,” Dad said, “but I had a dream about Jack at around the same time. I didn’t want to tell anyone about it either.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“In my dream, Jack was in his football uniform,” Dad continued. “He said it was time for me to let go of him. Otherwise, he couldn’t move on. He also said if I kept trying to control things and people, like Randy, I might make myself sick.”
Mom and I sat in silence. “Wow,” I thought. “It was more than just a dream. It really was Jack somehow reaching out to us. He was trying to help us from the other side.”
The following Sunday our family attended the nearby Memorial Methodist Church for the first time in a long time. We wanted to let Jack know that his spirit had touched us. The preacher was glad to see us and invited us to come back real soon.
When Aunt Issi heard about our matching dreams, she called it “powerful medicine.” She invited us to her house out in the country for a Choctaw ceremony. Dad wasn’t so sure about it, but we went anyway.
An old Choctaw medicine man did a ceremony for us. He said it was to bless us because a departed family member had visited us from the spirit world. He said it would also keep us safe from having any unwanted spirit visitors coming to see us.
He sang a Choctaw song and had us drink a bitter-tasting tea he’d made. He prayed a long time in the Choctaw language. Then we all went inside and had a feast. That was the best part.
After that we went back to our regular lives. I really didn’t know what to make of it all. Or which one to believe in—church preachers or Indian doctors. But I thought it was better to cover all the bases.
Chapter 9
Fair Play
On the last day of school, Principal Gilroy called me into his office. Coach Boles was there too. They were looking at my report cards for the year.
“It looks like you managed to improve your grades this year,” Mr. Gilroy said. “Your parents must be pleased. And I guess that means you’ll be able to get involved in sports here at the high school next year. ”
“I guess you didn’t hear,” I said. “I’m on a men’s stickball team. I’m playing toli now. That’s my sport. We play with no pads, no helmets, and no cleats. Football is for wimps!”
The two men just looked at each other in disbelief.
“You should consider adding stickball to the school’s list of sports,” I continued. “I think toli is the national sport of the Mississippi Choctaw Nation. This is the Choctaw Central High School, after all.”
The principal and the coach were very disappointed. They almost reminded me of a couple of teenagers who didn’t get their way. Mr. Gilroy dismissed me from his office just as the final school bell rang. I was glad to be out of there. On to summer!
The month of June was filled with stickball practices. Of course, most of the men had day jobs so we practiced at night. That was better anyway.
People said summers in Mississippi were so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. I didn’t know if that was true, but it was hot. And humid. So humid you could cut the air with a knife. That’s the other thing people said about Mississippi.
At the beginning of July, Charley got the game schedule for the Choctaw Fair tournament known as the World Series of Stickball. He showed me this year’s list of teams. Twelve Choctaw communities would be competing for the championship.
The Choctaw Fair took place in the middle of July each year. The first set of tournament games would be held the weekend before. The finals would take place during the fair. All games were played on the Choctaw Central High School football field.
In our first match, we’d face a team called Tushka Homma, which means “Red Warrior.” So it would be Red Water against Red Warrior.
Game time arrived Saturday at eight p.m. The games were held at night for the same reason our practices were held at night. Heat and humidity.
Mom and Aunt Issi came to the stadium to watch and cheer on our team. Dad had to work the late shift at the store. That was disappointing, but no big deal. There would be other games.
I walked onto the field with my teammates. We were all wearing our brand-new uniforms. Red T-shirts and black gym shorts. Each player had a number printed on the front and back. Above the number was our team name: Oka Homma.
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The large electric scoreboard at the end of the field was lit up and ready to go. It was usually used for the high school’s football games. Now it would mark off four quarters for stickball and keep track of our scores.
Mom called to me from the stands and I waved. Only a few spectators were on hand to watch. This wasn’t as important a game as the ones during the Choctaw Fair.
Then all the Oka Homma players gathered in a tight bunch on our side of the field. We held our sticks above our heads.
“Who are we?” Charley called from the middle of the group.
“Oka Homma!” we all called back.
“Who’s gonna win this game?” Charley asked loudly.
“Oka Homma!” we screamed as loud as we could.
Then we rattled our sticks together. The clack, clack, clack of the sticks rang out across the field.
We were pumped up and ready to play! As the youngest and smallest player, I knew I wouldn’t be playing during much of our first game. Charley needed the strongest and fastest players out there. I was backup.
Only ten of our thirty players were out on the field at any one time. The rest watched from the sidelines and waited their turn. But no one waited long. Running up and down the field was tiring. So Charley substituted players often. That kept the players fresh.
A referee blew the whistle and the game began! Our opponents played hard and fast. The towa moved quickly back and forth across the field. Our team scored, and then the other team scored. By halftime we were tied four to four.
Charley let me play a few times during the second half. I was grateful. I held my own ground and didn’t embarrass the team once.
We squeaked by to win our first tournament game by one point, nine to eight! What a rush! I was exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.
After the game, Charley pulled us all together. “Great game, guys!” he said. “Now we move on to the next round. The schedule says we’ll be playing again this Thursday night at eight o’clock. We’ll do one more practice at the community center Tuesday night to get ready. See you then.”
Little Brother of War Page 4