The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

  “Why do you need me?”

  “To be my lookout man. And I want to teach you how to make some easy cash.”

  He scanned the horizon. “How long since we’ve seen someone?”

  “Huh? I don’t know. I think a truck might have passed us before we turned down this road.”

  “What color was it? How many people were in it? Did they look like police, BIA workers, or Navajos that might live nearby?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember.”

  “When I ask you these things, boy, you better have answers—it might mean the difference between swiping enough to make a good profit and going to jail. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?”

  I knew not to challenge Dad. He’d just call me stupid and stay mad at me a long time. Being in the car with him when he was angry was like getting beat up in a phone booth—there was no escape.

  “You stand next to the car while I go inside,” he said, leaning over and sticking his face in mine. “And don’t get any bright ideas about following me. Watch the road, and if you see anyone, throw a large rock close to the door. If I don’t come, pelt the building as hard as you can. It will make a hell of a racket against the aluminum. We’re far enough away from the highway that this will work.”

  Dad checked the horizon again. “Okay, we’re good. Let’s go.” He hurried out of the car, removed the padlock with a key from his bulky key chain, and opened the door.

  I lined up a few rocks on the hood and then stuck my hands in my pockets and stared at the vast scenery. I would much rather have been fighting the Navajos at school. I shivered, sweat trickling down my back.

  Within minutes, Dad came back to the car with electric saws, screwdrivers, and crescent wrenches and tossed them in the trunk. “See anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head, and he hustled back to retrieve as many tools as the trunk would hold. It seemed like an eternity before he closed the door and locked the padlock. He slammed the trunk and we sped off.

  “Won’t the workers miss the tools?” I asked.

  “No, they won’t even notice they’re gone. I left lots of them behind. The BIA idiots buy these tools in mass quantities and don’t keep good records. And they move them from warehouse to warehouse. I’ll meet some of my Mexican partners in Gallup on Monday after work. They’ll sell them to gas stations and construction crews who don’t ask questions about where they come from. There’s a big market for that in Gallup. I’ll bring you on those trips in the future, but for now we need to hightail it home.”

  ON OUR WAY BACK, WE stopped at a gas station, and both of us went inside to use the bathroom. Two men were arguing, and their voices got loud.

  “You bumped me, you little Mexican bastard,” the big guy said.

  The short guy shook his head. “It was an accident.”

  “Let’s take it outside, and I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean to bump you. Forget it, will you?”

  The big guy got in the short guy’s face. “You have a big mouth. I need to teach you a lesson.” He raised his fists.

  The short guy stepped back, put his hands in the air, and hurried out the door.

  When we got in the sedan, Dad asked me, “Which guy do you think was right?”

  “The short guy. The big guy just wanted to start a fight.”

  “You’re right. The guy who left should have killed him.”

  “Killed him? But he was smaller and not as strong. Besides, it was a stupid argument.”

  “That’s why a man should always carry a gun. That bigger bastard would be no match for Smith and Wesson. When some asshole gets too loud, the smaller man needs to find a way to shut him up. I’ve never met a man I couldn’t beat, but sometimes there’s more than one.”

  “Who are Smith and Wesson?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Only the makers of the most powerful handguns in the world. They are the great equalizers.”

  “Would you have shot him?”

  “Hell yes. I love ridding the world of assholes. I’ve been doing it ever since I was in the navy.”

  “But don’t you worry about getting caught or even getting shot?”

  “No one will ever get the drop on me. I’ve beaten a few bastards to death. When I was in New Orleans at the end of basic training, I got into a fight with some loudmouthed son of a bitch who said he was a better boxer than I was. After the bar closed and everyone was gone, we settled it in the alley.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I beat the living shit out of him. They found his body the next day. None of the guys squealed. Nobody cares about these bastards, but after that, I made sure there were no witnesses—someone’s liable to pop off and finger you. Like when I was in the Q and put a shiv in the lifer cons who had it coming. No one ever saw me.”

  Dad’s head twitched, and he talked to himself nonstop until we got home.

  CHAPTER 23

  AS THE WEEKS PASSED, the poundings at school continued. They usually began with a kid knocking books out of my hand or kicking or tripping me. I had to fight back or the bullying would only get worse. And Dad expected me to retaliate, warning me that if I didn’t learn how to defend myself, he’d beat me harder than the Navajos did.

  The nice Anglo missionary kids got the crap stomped out of them too. I felt sorry for them. But I was different. I was a Cherokee. When the Navajos realized that, they would stop fighting me.

  I thought back to the Navajo families I used to watch at the Hubbell Trading Post. The shy kids would cringe and stare at their feet when anyone talked to them, like many of the hogan and trailer kids in Fort Defiance. It occurred to me that if I embarrassed the biggest, strongest Navajo hogan kid in my class, maybe everyone would leave me alone for fear they’d be next.

  I found the perfect target: Gilbert Blackgoat. Starting school late, he was three years older, four inches taller, and twenty pounds heavier than me. His English was poor. He shoved me whenever he had a chance. A girl in my class said he had a wife and would drop out of school after eighth grade to raise sheep with his dad.

  Gilbert had to be the shiest kid in Fort Defiance. His eyes never left his feet. I figured that if I took him on, everyone would respect me.

  Every day I tried to figure out how to embarrass him, but nothing came to me. Then a gift of gigantic proportions arrived at school—a brand-new bilagáana to replace my sick homeroom teacher.

  “Hi, I’m Miss Smith,” she said, a short, plump Anglo woman in a flowered dress who didn’t look much older than Lonnie. She was from Arkansas and wore too much makeup and perfume.

  “This is my first time on an Indian reservation, and I’m excited to be here. I’ll study this chart to help me learn your names.” She held up a sheet with squares representing our desks. “Please raise your hand and correct me if I pronounce your name wrong.”

  The class snickered as she butchered most of the names—Begay, Yazzie, Deschine, Todacheenie, and Wauneka, among others. When she finished roll call, she said, “Now we’re going to have a contest to select the class princess. Write down your favorite girl’s name on a piece of paper, and I’ll pass around a cigar box. I’ll announce the winner on Friday.”

  Our naive new teacher gazed at the silent faces, her eyes hopeful as she tried to connect with her students. “This will give me a chance to learn more of the girls’ names. I’ll work to get to know the boys too.”

  Her last comment got my attention. I knew what to do. When the bell rang and the class emptied for the next period, I raced out with the other kids and then sneaked back into the room before Miss Smith returned. I had about five minutes to remove a majority of the names from the cigar box and replace them with just one: Shirley Gilbert Blackgoat.

  By that time, I had gained a reputation for my pranks, having upped my game from Gallup. In between periods, when the classrooms emptied, I rummaged through the teachers’ desks and took test answers, markers, BIC pens, glue, tape, chalk, rubber bands. I
’d squirt glue in girls’ hair, run markers down their arms, and yank their ponytails. They would make faces at me and giggle. I even picked on boys who could beat the crap out of me.

  Sometimes I’d hide an eraser in my pocket to save for later. Throwing a chalk-filled eraser at someone’s head was always good for a laugh. It was also lots of fun snapping rubber bands through the air into a girl’s hair. I would launch paper airplanes too, often choosing the teacher’s head as my target. “You brat, keep it up and I’m sending you to the principal’s office,” they’d say, and the class would crack up.

  For variety, I used my peashooter and fired tiny pebbles at the kids’ ears. No one had better aim. If my shooter wore out or was confiscated, I replaced it with a straw. Other times, I pulled out a small water pistol and squirted my classmates in the neck.

  Of course, the principal and I got to know each other very well. But nothing he said or did ever deterred me. I was on a mission, constantly looking for ways to cause some mischief, get a few laughs—and ease the sadness I felt all the time.

  WHEN FRIDAY CAME, MISS SMITH counted the ballots at her desk. Smiling, she scanned the class. “Which one of you is Shirley Gilbert Blackgoat? I don’t see her on the seating chart.” She waited for a proud Navajo girl to raise her hand, but the class burst out laughing instead.

  Gilbert’s head dropped to his desk, and his shoulders hunched. Suddenly, he jumped up from his chair, his fists clenched. He knew who did it. No one else would have pulled something like that. I braced myself as Gilbert turned red and erupted like a volcano. He flew over to my desk and knocked me to the floor.

  “Kill you, Gáagii. I pound you.”

  He straddled my scrawny chest and punched me like a jackhammer, getting in some good hits before I managed to get my hands in front of my face. Henry laughed the hardest, as did my new friend Jim, a Menominee Indian whose father worked for the BIA in Window Rock.

  “Stop!” Miss Smith yelled.

  Gilbert froze midswing.

  Our teacher stood over us with her hands on her hips. “Apologize to David. There seems to be a misunderstanding.”

  Without saying a word, Gilbert got to his feet and walked back to his desk, his fists still clenched. His head looked like it had sunk into his chest. Miss Smith knew enough not to force him to say he was sorry. When class ended, he chased me down the hall, but I was fast, sliding into my next class before he could catch me. Students began calling him Princess Shirley.

  Classmates, even guys I thought hated me, came up to me and said, “Did good, Gáagii.”

  But not everyone found my humor amusing, and most of the hogan and trailer kids still jumped me on the walk home from school. I had a long way to go before the bullies left me alone.

  THAT AFTERNOON, WHEN DAD GOT home from work, he asked about the dried blood on my purple cheek. I told him how I had made Gilbert the class princess.

  Dad shook his head. “No son of mine is going to be the butt of Navajo beatings just to get along.”

  After dinner, he sat next to me on the old red couch and draped his arm around me. It was the first time he had touched me without hitting me since we moved to Fort Defiance. Sam plopped down on the floor to watch television, and Sally joined him.

  “Instead of making fun of Gilbert,” Dad said, “why don’t you fight him like a man? It’s the only thing that works with bullies. I’ll teach you to box so you can defend yourself. You know, we have papers that prove we’re Cherokees. If you stood up for your heritage, the kids would respect you. You act like you don’t believe you’re an Indian.”

  I knew we were Cherokees—Dad had told us from my first memory. But I was a defective one. Sam was already two inches taller than I was and a lot stronger. Boxing lessons might help, since embarrassing Gilbert wasn’t enough to stop me from getting clobbered. “I want to beat up the bullies, Dad. I want to be tough like you.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re finally figuring out how to survive here. When we’re finished, you’ll be able to outbox Gilbert—or anybody for that matter.” He puffed out his chest and raised his fists, the way I’d seen him mimic boxers many times. “Gilbert doesn’t know how to fight. All he’s doing is hitting you, and you’re a sitting target.”

  He stood and removed his shirt to get ready to spar with me. Flexing his chest muscles, he pulled his fists to his chest, and swung into the air. He shook his head, and I stared at the cold glow of his blue eyes underneath the crisscrossed lines on his forehead and couldn’t believe that he was my father. He was powerful and mean. I was weak and spineless.

  “You’re scared, and bullies sense fear,” he said. “Throw the first punch so hard, the bully will run away. No one will expect it—not from you.”

  We walked into the backyard and cleared some weeds and rocks inside the crater. Dad kicked a dog in the throat when he lunged at him. Sam followed behind, throwing rocks at the other dogs to keep them away, and Sally watched through the newly repaired screen door.

  “Jab with your left and punch with your right,” Dad said, demonstrating with his fists in the air. “Move your head back and forth so it isn’t an easy target. You want to keep your opponent off balance.”

  For two weeks, the lessons continued daily in the backyard while Sam looked on, laughing most of the time. I grew more confident, trotting to my right, swinging at Dad’s palms. My blows were getting more accurate, making him smile and nod.

  “Tell the bastard you’re the superior Indian,” he said. “I want to be proud of you, damn it, but I can’t. Your little brother is bigger, stronger, and faster than you. Sam would whip your ass if he wasn’t afraid of what you’d do to get even.”

  For sure, I could trick anyone and tell funny stories. But that wouldn’t help me with Gilbert, no matter how determined I was.

  After each lesson, I imagined myself in a canvas ring, wearing Everlast shorts and boxing shoes, fighting for a large purse in front of all the pretty girls in the arena. As I took off a silk robe, the fans cheered and chanted, “Crow, Crow, Crow.” In every dream, Violet sat ringside waiting to give me a kiss.

  Believing in Dad and in myself gave me new courage. Before long, my footwork got faster and more varied. “Move to your left, now to your right, drop your head, step into the punch,” he shouted. I started surprising Dad with my punches, nailing his chest or gut before he could block me. When he’d try to punch me back, I’d block his arm. I worried he’d get mad, but he praised me instead. Our boxing lessons were the closest I ever felt to my dad.

  When Lonnie watched the boxing lessons, she said, “You can’t beat up everyone who bullies you. You need to make friends with them.”

  “It won’t work,” I said. “The kids in my class don’t believe we’re Cherokee, and they crush Anglos. Dad’s right—I have to prove myself.”

  CHAPTER 24

  ABOUT A MONTH BEFORE SCHOOL ended for the summer, Dad pulled Lonnie and me into his bedroom and closed the door. He was as angry as ever.

  “Your crazy mother got help from my asshole boss at Woodmen Accident and Life in Albuquerque. He gave her money and got her a room and a job as a waitress at a truck stop. And then the do-gooder son of a bitch helped her get a lawyer to fight me.”

  Thankfully Mom was okay. I was careful not to let Dad see how relieved I was. In fact, it sounded like she was a lot better off than if she’d stayed with us. Maybe her broken nerves were better or even fixed. At least she’d fought back against Dad and wanted to make a life for herself.

  “I’ll bet she whines constantly about having to work. I need you both to testify that she’s an unfit mother.” His deep-set eyes narrowed at me. “David, you need to tell the court she threw a knife at you and it barely missed. That’ll finish off the crazy bitch. You won’t ever have to see her again, and I won’t ever have to give her a goddamn nickel.”

  Hurting Mom again wasn’t what I had in mind. I wanted to make things right. The knife-throwing incident had been my fault for purposely breaking her down. I w
anted to tell the court that Mom could be fit if she got a lot of help to fix her nerves. My testimony wouldn’t bring her back to live with us no matter how many good things I could think of, but I wanted to show her I loved her.

  On the morning of the trial, Dad, Lonnie, and I got into the Rambler and took off for the courthouse in Gallup. Under any other circumstances, I would have been grateful to miss school. Not that day.

  Dad and his lawyer escorted Lonnie and me into a large room, where Mom waited with her attorney and the judge. She wore a new dress, and her hair was combed and sprayed into place. It stunned me to see her so ready to defend herself against Dad, even though she didn’t stand a chance.

  Mom held her composure under questioning—at first. She sat up straight in her chair next to the judge and held her head high, promising to tell the whole truth and looking more confident than I ever remembered. I wanted to go hug her and tell her she looked nice, but I didn’t dare while Dad was watching.

  Mom’s attorney asked Lonnie if Dad tried to make Mom leave by being mean to her. She didn’t answer. “If your mom had the proper financial help,” he continued, “do you think she could handle the four Crow children?”

  Lonnie sobbed and shook her head.

  The judge asked Mom to leave the room, and her attorney started questioning me. The judge must have realized I wouldn’t say anything in front of her. But I never did answer the questions. I stammered a few unintelligible noises and nothing more. If I said Mom was good and could take care of us, the judge might make Sam, Sally, and me live with her. Mom couldn’t handle that. And Dad wouldn’t allow it. My brother and sister didn’t want to go back with Mom either. And they would never leave Lonnie—neither would I.