Cherokee

by Giles Tippette

  “I don’t quite get how business is done around here. Are we still on the Cherokee reservation?”

  “Oh, yes. In fact all of my business is done with the Cherokee Nation. Right now I’m the only mill supplying sawn lumber to the tribe. At least the only white man. There are some mills run by Cherokees, mostly men I’ve taught, but they’re not a concession like mine is. You have to have the approval of the Tribal Council to run a business on the reservation. That is, unless you’re a sutler. Or an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

  “Tell me, just what the hell is a reservation? Is it to keep the whites out or the Indians in? I don’t get it.”

  He shrugged. “Well, at first, especially with the hostiles, like the Apache and the Comanches, the idea was to pen them up so they couldn’t raid and pillage over the countryside. So a reservation was to keep them in. Not that it did much good. They were usually placed on land where there was no game and the Indians had no way of feeding themselves except for what they could get from the sutler. These men were usually crooks and scoundrels who got the concessions to feed the Indians from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But what they did was mostly starve the hostiles into open rebellion. They’d buy poor cattle for three or four dollars a head, claim to have bought, say, a hundred head, but they’d only buy twenty, maybe thirty. Then they’d turn around and bill the government for a hundred head at twenty dollars a head. But the bad thing was the few poor cattle they’d buy couldn’t feed the poor people they were intended to feed, so some of the hostiles broke off the reservation and give the reservation idea a bad name.”

  “What about the Cherokees?”

  Charlie Stevens smiled. “Well, they hardly fit the same mold as the Apaches or the Comanches. They’ve been farmers most of their existence, hunters and farmers. Oh, they can fight when they have to, but they’d rather talk the matter over.”

  Hays said, “They always been up here in Oklahoma?”

  Mister Stevens shook his head. “No. In about 1820 the United States government decided to move the Cherokees out of their native land, Georgia, where they’d lived for centuries. The War of 1812 was not too long over and people wanted to settle the southern Gulf Coast states. So the Indians had to go. Back then Oklahoma looked like the most worthless piece of real estate around, so they marched them up here on what has since come to be called the Trail of Tears and established a reservation. I’d have to say that the reservation here is intended to keep the white man out, though it hasn’t done a very good job of it even though the Cherokee is the most civilized and advanced of any tribes I know of. But after the land rush there has been great infringement on their rights and on their property. Frankly, I fear for the future. They are a unique and valuable people. I would hate to see them trespassed on again.”

  To my ears it sounded a little bit like a lecture, and I couldn’t help wondering if he was saying it for my benefit. Now I was beginning to understand why people would occasionally ask me if I was Indian-blooded. The reason they were asking that was that a quarter of my blood was Cherokee. It made me feel funny to realize it. And I kind of figured that Charlie Stevens had said what he had to make me feel proud of that quarter of myself.

  I looked over at Hays. I said, “Ray, I’ve got a little confidential business I need to discuss with Mister Stevens. Why don’t you fill up your glass and wait on me out in the kitchen? I’d appreciate it. I ought not to be too long.”

  He got up quickly. “I don’t need no more whiskey, but I wouldn’t mind seein’ if that lady ain’t got a bit more of that apple pie and cheese. I never hear’d of such.”

  Charlie Stevens got up to show him the way back to the kitchen. While he was gone I got up and replenished my tumbler with some more of Charlie’s good whiskey. I was back in my seat before he came in. He stopped at the sideboard and asked if I wanted a cigar. I told him I’d just stick to the cigarillos I was comfortable with. He made a business out of getting his cigar lit and then sat back down. We were about four or five feet apart.

  Truth be known, I didn’t know what I was feeling. A couple of hours past I’d been told that the woman I’d always thought was my mother wasn’t my mother. But just the saying of the words couldn’t all of a sudden make my feelings change. To me Alice was still my mother whether she was the one that birthed me or not. From the time I was aware, she’d been there as my mother, and I’d always called her that and thought of her as that, and this, this Lucy was just a faceless somebody I couldn’t connect with myself. If my feelings were aroused about anything or toward anybody, it was Howard. It made me mad as hell him letting me live a lie, and him living a lie all these years. Here I’d thought my mother was some genteel Southern lady from Georgia when, all the time, she’d been a half-breed off the reservation in Oklahoma. No wonder me and Lew Vara were so close. Hell, we practically had the same bloodlines.

  I said to Mister Stevens, “I’d like to get the straight of it if you know it. Do you know all the facts?”

  He sort of shrugged. “Well, I’ll tell you as much as I know. I don’t know all of it, maybe, by the lights of what you want to know.”

  “When did Howard marry my mother?”

  “He never did.”

  “I’m talking about my mother Alice.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked away for a second, thinking. “I’m trying to recollect. I know he wrote me about it. Said he wanted me to know he was still looking after Lucy if news of his marriage reached me and might cause me to have any worries on that score.”

  “That was damn big of him.”

  He smiled slightly. “Well, yes, but that was Howard. He was having his own way, but he wanted you to understand that he was looking out for the rest of the hired hands at the same time.”

  “Well he had to have married Alice sometime between when I was born and when Norris came along, because I can guarantee you Norris ain’t got no Indian blood in him. Talk about somebody favoring. He favors my mother . . . Alice.”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes, it was sometime in there. He’d made it big selling cattle to the Confederacy along toward the end of the war. They’d already eat every cow from Mississippi to Virginia, so those Longhorns your daddy drove up found a ready market. And he got gold for them too.” He thought again. “I would reckon you were running close to one year old. I remember in the letter he wrote that he was telling his high-born Southern society wife that your mother had died, but that I wasn’t to believe it. She was going to raise you as her own, and Lucy was being taken care of and not to worry.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Where the hell was . . .”

  “Your mother?” he said. “Your birth mother?”

  “Where the hell was Lucy while all this was going on? Howard comes waltzing in with a wife. What does he do, move her out and my mother in and take me away from Lucy and ... I mean, what the hell happened?”

  I was getting hot about it. I wasn’t getting hot at Charlie Stevens. I was just getting confused, and that made me angry. And the more I thought of the whole damn situation the madder I got.

  Charlie said, “Well, I wasn’t there. But I guess Howard didn’t figure he was gonna rise too high in the world with a half-breed for a wife, especially when he could have one from a high-born family in Georgia. And yes, I reckon she come with a dowry. And right then I reckon Howard could use the money. You got to understand, Justa, that your daddy was a pistol. He was young and full of piss and vinegar and ambition. Mostly ambition.”

  “Fine. Fine for Howard. But what did he do with the woman he stole from you? Your wife.”

  A little look of sadness passed over his face. “Well, he built her a cabin a ways from his main house. Two or three miles. I’m sure he done for her as proper as possible. I doubt she wanted for anything that was in Howard’s power to give her.”

  “Well, what the hell was I doing all that time? And what did my mother, Alice, think about it? Hell, she had to have known.”

  “Well, like I said, your mother Al
ice took you to her breast just as if you were one of her own. I don’t mean to her breast like for milk. I imagine you was weaned by then. And besides, your mother Alice wouldn’t of had no milk.”

  “And this woman who borned me, Lucy, didn’t she kick up a fuss about having her baby taken away from her?”

  Charlie sighed and looked even sadder. “Son, I wasn’t there so I don’t know the particulars. But your daddy was a forceful man and Lucy was still awful young. I imagine he made her see that was the way it had to be. She’d lived with me, been taken off by Howard, lived with him, had a son by him.... Well, you got to remember she really wasn’t brought up to expect much out of life. I imagine she was grateful for what come her way.”

  I said, “Hell!” I got up and walked over to the sideboard and poured myself out another drink. “Well, I reckon I’m beginning to see why Howard, as you say, was either too afraid or too ashamed to tell me all about the matter. Still, I wish he hadn’t loaded me up with all that gold.”

  Charlie chuckled quietly. “Maybe he thought I’d take it.”

  I looked around at him from the sideboard. “Why don’t you?”

  He sipped at his drink. “I don’t need it. I got more money now than I know what to do with.”

  “Take it anyway.”

  He just shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  He sighed. “Because that would allow Howard Williams to take me off his conscience. It would mean that I had forgiven him.” He turned his head so he could look square in my face. “And I ain’t ever going to do that.”

  “Hell, he’s an old man. He’s just trying to clean up an old debt before it comes time to go out of business. I know what he done to you was wrong, but it was a long time ago.”

  I felt a little strange taking Howard’s side and trying to complete the errand he’d sent me on, especially as angry at him as I was. But I was thinking that it might do Charlie more good than Howard if he was to forget the old grudge. I’d seen men bowed by the weight of grudges, and this Charlie Stevens appeared to be a mighty fine man. I didn’t like to see him carrying that load that was as much trouble to him as the gold had been to me.

  I said, “Charlie, I was gonna say this is none of my business, but I guess it is. We both been harmed by this matter. I ain’t going to pretend that my hurt is anything to compare with yours. But I reckon I’ll have to end up forgiving Howard. I’m going to do it for my own sake more than his. What about you? What word can I take back to him?”

  He said slowly, like a man who wants to get the words exactly right, “I can forgive Howard for my arm. And I can even forgive him for stealing Lucy from me. If he’d of gone on and treated her like a wife, married her as I was going to do, treated her like a lady, then I could have forgiven him. I loved Lucy and I wanted what was the best for her, even if it meant Howard got her instead of me.” He stopped and took a sip of his drink, and then stared off as if he was seeing ghosts from the past. “But the one thing I can never forgive Howard Williams for is the shabby way he treated Lucy. He didn’t marry her. Hell, he did worse than that. He treated her like someone he was ashamed of. He found him a fine lady and hid Lucy away in a cabin that he would sneak off to visit like a plantation owner going to visit one of his bitch slaves. He treated her like shabby goods, he treated her like a half-breed. He treated her like a worthless Indian.” He looked up at me. “And he expects me to forgive him for that?” His voice was trembling. “I will never, under any circumstances, forgive Howard Williams for the way he treated the woman I loved. And I hope his conscience burns him the rest of his life like a red-hot poker. I hope he burns in Hell on earth.”

  CHAPTER 10

  There wasn’t much I could say to him about that. There wasn’t much I could disagree with in what he said. Hell, I figured I would have felt the same way. I went back to my chair and sat down, and for a little while neither one of us said anything. The blood had rushed to Charlie Stevens’s face with the emotion of his last remarks. Now his color was slowly returning to its normal light tan. I let some time pass and then I said, “You told me you remarried, Charlie.”

  He nodded. He was his cheerful, benign self again. “Oh, yes, and I made a very fortunate find.” He smiled like someone remembering a fond memory. “I married a young lady the Tribal Council had brought out here to teach the Cherokee youngsters their ABC’s. She was from Virginia. She looked upon it as a great adventure, coming out here to the Wild West to teach Indian children. Her name was Jane, Mary Jane Sheridan before I married her.” He picked up the long-dead cigar he’d been smoking out of the ashtray on the table by his chair and went through the motions of getting it relit. When it was drawing he said, “We had fourteen happy years together.”

  “What happened?”

  He shook out the match he was still holding. “The cholera took her. Oddly enough, she died about the same time that I had a letter from Howard telling me that your mother Alice had passed over.”

  I noticed he was careful of my feelings, calling Alice my mother even though he knew damn good and well she wasn’t.

  “You have any children?”

  He looked sad. “Just the one. A daughter. She didn’t live very long.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Many a man has said this country is too rough for horses and women. And children.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering if he was talking about me and Ben and Norris. We’d been children once, back when all this was happening. It was a little too far back for me to have any recollection, but I had to reckon I’d been a child at some point, though I’d never much felt like it.

  We were both quiet for a few moments. Then I kind of heaved a breath and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me the rest of it.”

  He fiddled with his cigar. “There’s not much more to tell. Howard wrote me when Ben was born. Of course Lucy died in childbirth.” He looked away for just a second. Then he said, “To tell you the truth, when I read it in Howard’s letter, I was relieved. I envied Howard, him getting another son from her, but I was glad that she was out of it, through with playing second fiddle, through with being hidden away like damaged baggage.”

  I said, “I’d of been four.”

  Charlie glanced at me. “I expect so. Though I doubt if you’d of knowed much about how they got babies.”

  I nodded. “I’ve got some dim memory of it. One day there was a tiny baby in the house. How’d they take care of it? My mother Alice . . .”

  “I reckon they’d of got a wet nurse in. With as many Mexican women around, one wouldn’t have been hard to find.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Was a hell of a lot going on I didn’t know a damn thing about.” I took a quick pull on my drink. “And you figure Alice just took the baby in and acted like it was her own?”

  Charlie said gently, “What else could she do? Don’t you suppose she knew about Lucy? You can’t hide that sort of thing in a little closed place like your daddy’s ranch.”

  “And she just put up with it?”

  Charlie said, “She was already raising one son by Lucy. You. Where was she supposed to draw the line? From what little I’ve been able to gather about her, she was an extraordinary woman.”

  “Then why wasn’t Ben by her? She had Norris. What happened after that? Did Howard get tired of her?”

  Charlie said, “I don’t know.”

  I said viciously, “What’d he do, alternate ’em? Like breeding cows? ’All right, Lucy, it’s your turn now,’ or, ’Alice, get in the stall.’ Shit!”

  “Makes you angry. I don’t blame you.”

  “You don’t know anything about Norris?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, I really don’t. Your daddy has been sparing with the ink. I suppose he thought I only wanted to know about the sons he had by Lucy. What’s Norris like? What does he think about?”

  I gave a thin smile. “Norris. He thinks about Norris.”

  “You’re not close with him?” />
  “It’s funny coming here. It hasn’t been pleasant to find out, but it at least explains how I’ve felt about Norris. I never quite felt the same way toward him as I have Ben. Ain’t anything I can explain. It was just that he was so different. And not just in looks. Looks are the least of it. We just don’t seem to pull in tandem. He looks at matters completely different than me and Ben. More than once I’ve had to remind myself that he was my brother when I’ve been on the point of taking his head off or punching him in the mouth. Now I know the reason why.”

  “He’s still your brother.”

  “Half brother,” I said.

  “He’s Alice’s son. You still consider her your mother.”

  I looked off, seeing through the walls, seeing a long way off. “I think I would have liked the chance to get to know Lu . . . , my mother Lucy. And there was time. She was alive four years while I was on this earth. I might have knowed her just a little, but that’s a sight more than what I got now.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Was neither one of us there. We ain’t in a good position to judge.”

  “I wonder why Alice didn’t have any more children after Norris? Hell, there was a good ten or eleven years in there for her to try. Surely she could have done better than Norris on a second try.”

  Charlie half smiled. “That ain’t the kind of talk you’re going to want to remember tomorrow. Justa, you been stung. From what your daddy has wrote me about you you are a man who likes to hold the reins. Now you’re finding out somebody else was directing the wagon. You don’t like it. Right now you’re angry. You know better than to talk when you’re angry.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. I finished my drink and stood up. “I reckon I better go collect Ray Hays. We got to find us a hotel for the night. And I got to find out about southbound trains out of Chickasha. I didn’t expect to find you so easy.”

  Charlie got up. “Why, what do you want a hotel for? I got four big bedrooms upstairs ain’t doing nothing but gathering dust. And my man Washington has been smoking a ham for the last week. Washington come down from Virginia as a young man with Jane. If there’s anybody knows how to sweet-smoke a ham it is a Negra from Virginia.”