The Education of Little Tree

by Forrest Carter

  It was dusk evening when we sighted the cabin clearing and Granma. She was out on the trail to meet us. She picked me up, though I could have made it, and put an arm around Granpa’s waist. I guess I was tuckered, for I fell asleep on her shoulder and didn’t know when we got to the cabin.

  “I Kin Ye, Bonnie Bee”

  Looking back, I guess me and Granpa was pretty dumb. Not Granpa, when it come to mountains or game or weather or any number of things. But when you got into words and books and such, well, me and Granpa took the decision to Granma. She straightened it out.

  Like the time the lady asked us for directions.

  We had been to the settlement and was on our way back home, and pretty heavy loaded. We had so many books that we split them up. Granpa was put out about the number of books. He said the librarian was pushing too many on us every month, and he was getting different people tangled up in the stories.

  For the past month he had been arguing that Alexander the Great sided with the big bankers at the Continental Congress and tried to undercut Mr. Jefferson. Granma had been telling him that Alexander the Great was not politicking at that time, and as a matter of fact, was not living at that time. But Granpa had it stuck in his mind, so we had to get the book back on Alexander the Great.

  Granpa was tolerable sure that the book would prove out as to what Granma said. I was tolerable sure myself as I had never known Granma to miss when it come to knowing what was in books.

  So, in the back of our minds, all the time, we knew Granma was right and Granpa had come down pretty heavy on the idea that it was getting too many books that was the cause of the confusion. Which sounded reasonable to me.

  Anyhow, I was carrying one of Mr. Shakespeare’s books and the dictionary, along with the can of coal oil. Granpa had the rest of the books and a can of coffee. Granma loved coffee and I figured, like Granpa, that the coffee would help out when we got to Alexander the Great, for the entire thing had been a worriment to Granma for the solid month.

  We was on the road from the settlement, me walking behind Granpa, when a big black car pulled up beside us and stopped. It was the biggest car I had ever seen. There were two ladies and two men in the car, and it had glass windows that slid right down into the door.

  I had never seen such before, nor had Granpa, for we both watched the window while it slid out of sight as the lady cranked on it. Later, Granpa told me that he inspected it right close and there was a narrow slit in the door that allowed the glass to go down. I didn’t see it, for I was not tall enough.

  The lady was fine dressed with rings on her fingers and big bobbles that hung down from her ears.

  “Which way do we go to get to Chattanooga?” she asked, and you couldn’t hardly hear the motor running on the car.

  Granpa set the coffee can down on the ground and balanced his books on top of it so they wouldn’t get dirty. I set down my coal oil can; for Granpa always said that if you was spoken to, treat such with proper respect and give full attention to what was being said. After we had done that, Granpa lifted his hat to the lady, which seemed like it made her feel bad for she hollered at Granpa, “I said, which way do we go to get to Chattanooga? Are you deef?”

  Granpa said, “No, ma’am, my hearin’ and health is fine today, thank ye. How’s your’n?” And Granpa meant it; for it was custom to inquire about such as how people was feeling. Me and Granpa was a little surprised when the woman acted like it made her mad, but that could have been because the other folks in the car was laughing at something she must have done.

  She hollered louder, “Are you going to tell us how to get to Chattanooga?”

  “Why yes, ma’am,” Granpa said.

  “Well,” the lady said, “tell us!’’

  “Well,” Granpa said, “first off, ye’re headed wrong, which is east. Ye want to go west. Now not dead west, but sly off jest a shade to the north, about where that big ridge is, over yonder … and that ought to take ye there.” Granpa lifted his hat again, and we bent to take up our loads.

  The lady stuck her head out of the window. “Are you for real?” she hollered. “What road do we take?”

  Granpa straightened up, surprised. “Why, I reckin whichever one goes west, ma’am—bearing in mind to sly off toward the north.”

  “What are you, a couple of foreigners?” the lady hollered.

  Now this set Granpa back; it did me too, for I had never heard that word, and I don’t think Granpa had either. He looked at the lady for a dead minute, and then he said, real firm, “I reckin.”

  The big car taken off, still headed the way it had been going, which was east, and the wrong way. Granpa shook his head and said in his seventy-odd years, he had struck up with some crazy people, but the lady proved up to any of them. I asked Granpa if she could have been a politician, but he said he had never heard of a lady being a politician—though she could have been the wife of one.

  We turned off onto the wagon ruts. Always, on the way back from the settlement, when we got on the wagon ruts, I commenced to think of something to ask Granpa. He always stopped when he was spoken to, as I say, to give full consideration to whatever was said. This gave me a chance to catch up. I reckin I was little for my age (five going on six) for the top of my head come just above Granpa’s knees, and I was always in a continual trot behind him.

  I had fallen back a good ways and was trotting hard, so I had to might near holler, “Granpa, have ye ever been to Chattanooga?”

  Granpa stopped. “Noooo,” he said, “but I nearly went there oncet.” I caught up and set down my coal oil can.

  “Must have been twenty … maybe thirty years ago, I reckin,” Granpa said. “I had an uncle, Enoch was his name, youngest of Pa’s brothers. He was gittin’ age on him, and when he liquored up would ofttimes git addled in the head and wander off. Well, Uncle Enoch disappeared which he oft did on high lonesomes, back in the mountains, but this time it stretched out to three er four weeks. Set us to sending inquiries with travelers. Word come back that he was in Chattanooga, in jail. I was set to go and fetch him out, when he showed up at the cabin.”

  Granpa paused to give thought to it, and begun to laugh. “Yessir, he showed up barefooted, with nothing but some old floppy britches on that he had to hold up with one hand. He looked like he had been set upon by boar ’coons … he was that skint up. Turned out, he had walked back ever step of the way through the mountains.” Granpa stopped to laugh, and I set down on the coal oil can, which rested my legs.

  “Uncle Enoch said he had got liquored up and didn’t recollect about how he got there; but he woke up in a room in a bed with two women. He said he had just commenced to climb out of bed and disassociate hisself from them when a banging set up on the door and a big feller busted in. The feller was mad and said one of the women was his wife and the other’n was his sister. Seems like Uncle Enoch had somehow or other got associated with practical the entire family.

  “Uncle Enoch said the women set up and commenced to holler fer him to pay the feller something, and said the feller was hollering, and Uncle Enoch was casting about trying to find his pants. Though he doubted there was any money in the pockets, he knowed he had a cuttin’ knife; fer the feller ’peared like he meant business. But he couldn’t find his pants, having no way in the world of knowing what he done with them, and there was nothing else fer him to do so he leapt out a window. Trouble was, the window was two stories up, and Uncle Enoch hit spraddled out in gravel and rock; that’s how he got skint up.

  “He hadn’t a stitch of clothes on, but he found a window shade, having brought it down with him. He said he wrapped the window shade ’round his private parts, and set about to hide until dark. Trouble was, he couldn’t find no place to hide; stepped out slap in the middle of a bunch of folks rushing around this-a-way and that. He said they had no manners at all and he liked to got run over twicet. The law got him and put him in jail.

  “The next morning, they give him some pants and a shirt and shoes too big fer him, a
nd put him out with some more fellers sweeping up the streets. Uncle Enoch said they was less than a round dozen of them, all told, doing the sweeping, and he didn’t see any way in the world they could ever git that place cleaned up. He said people was throwing things down on the streets faster than they could sweep it up. He said he saw no point at all to the thing, and determined he would leave. First chancet he got, he broke and run. Feller grabbed his shirt, but he run out of it; run out’n his shoes too, but he held up his pants. He said he run into some trees and hid out ’til dark, when he got his bearings by the stars and struck out fer home. Taken him three weeks to make it acrost the mountains, grazing on acorns and hickor’nuts like a hog. Cured Uncle Enoch’s liquoring … wouldn’t never go near a settlement again, far as I know. Nope,” Granpa said, “I never been to Chattanooga; ain’t goin’ neither.”

  I made up my mind right then that I wasn’t ever going to Chattanooga myself.

  We was at supper that night when it crossed my mind to ask Granma and so I said, “Granma, what is foreigners?”

  Granpa stopped eating, but he didn’t look up from his plate. Granma looked at me and then at Granpa. Her eyes twinkled. “Well,” she said, “foreigners is people that happen to be someplace where they wasn’t born.”

  “Granpa said,” I explained, “that he reckined we was foreigners.” And I told about the lady in the big car and how she had said we was foreigners, and Granpa said he reckined. Granpa pushed his plate back. “I reckined that we wasn’t borned down there on the side of the road, which made us foreigners to them parts. Anyhow it’s another one of them dadblamed words [he always used “dadblamed” instead of “damn” in front of Granma] that we can do without. There is, I have always said, too dadblamed many words.”

  Granma agreed that there was. Granma didn’t want to get into the word business. She had never, for example, got the words “knowed” and “throwed” disentangled with Granpa. He said that “knew” was something you got which nobody had ever used, and that the word, therefore, was “knowed.” And he said “threw” was how you got from one side of a door to the other side, and therefore it was “throwed.” He wouldn’t budge on it, as what he said made sense.

  Granpa said if there was less words, there wouldn’t be as much trouble in the world. He said privately to me that there was always some damn fool making up a word that served no purpose except to cause trouble. Which is reasonable. Granpa favored the sound, or how you said a word, as to its meaning. He said folks that spoke different words could feel the same thing by listening to the sound of music. Granma agreed with him, because that’s the way they talked to each other.

  Granma’s name was Bonnie Bee. I knew that when I heard him late at night say, “I kin ye, Bonnie Bee,” he was saying, “I love ye,” for the feeling was in the words.

  And when they would be talking and Granma would say, “Do ye kin me, Wales?” and he would answer, “I kin ye,” it meant, “I understand ye.” To them, love and understanding was the same thing. Granma said you couldn’t love something you didn’t understand; nor could you love people, nor God, if you didn’t understand the people and God.

  Granpa and Granma had an understanding, and so they had a love. Granma said the understanding run deeper as the years went by, and she reckined it would get beyond anything mortal folks could think upon or explain. And so they called it “kin.”

  Granpa said back before his time “kinfolks” meant any folks that you understood and had an understanding with, so it meant “loved folks.” But people got selfish, and brought it down to mean just blood relatives; but that actually it was never meant to mean that.

  Granpa said when he was a little boy his Pa had a friend who ofttimes hung around their cabin. He said he was an old Cherokee named ’Coon Jack, and he was continually distempered and cantankerous. He couldn’t figure out what his Pa saw in old ’Coon Jack.

  He said they went irregular to a little church house down in a hollow. One Sunday it was testifying time, when folks would stand up, as they felt the Lord called on them, and testify as to their sins and how much they loved the Lord.

  Granpa said at this testifying time, “’Coon Jack stood up and said, ‘I hear tell they’s some in here been talking about me behind my back. I want ye to know that I’m awares. I know what’s the matter with ye; ye’re jealous because the Deacon Board put me in charge of the key to the songbook box. Well, let me tell ye: any of ye don’t like it, I got the difference right here in my pocket.’”

  Granpa said, shore enough, ’Coon Jack lifted his deer shirt and showed a pistol handle. He was stomping mad.

  Granpa said that church house was full of some hard men, including his Pa, who would soon as not shoot you if the weather changed, but nobody raised an eyebrow. He said his Pa stood up and said, “’Coon Jack, every man here admires the way ye have handled the key to the songbook box. Best handling ever been done. If words has been mistook to cause ye discomfort, I here and now state the sorrow of every man present.”

  ’Coon Jack set down, total mollified and contented, as was everybody else.

  On the way home, Granpa asked his Pa why ’Coon Jack could get away with such talk, and Granpa said he got to laughing about ’Coon Jack acting so important over the key to the songbook box. He said his Pa told him, “Son, don’t laugh at ’Coon Jack. Ye see, when the Cherokee was forced to give up his home and go to the Nations, ’Coon Jack was young, and he hid out in these mountains, and he fought to hold on. When the War ’tween the States come, he saw maybe he could fight that same guvmint and get back the land and homes. He fought hard. Both times he lost. When the War ended, the politicians set in, trying to git what was left of what we had. ’Coon Jack fought, and run, and hid, and fought some more. Ye see, ’Coon Jack come up in the time of fighting. All he’s got now is the key to the songbook box. And if ’Coon Jack seems cantankerous … well, there ain’t nothing left for ’Coon Jack to fight. He never knowed nothing else.”

  Granpa said, he come might near crying fer ’Coon Jack. He said after that, it didn’t matter what ’Coon Jack said, or did … he loved him, because he understood him.

  Granpa said that such was “kin,” and most of people’s mortal trouble come about by not practicing it; from that and politicians.

  I could see that right off, and might near cried about ’Coon Jack myself.

  To Know the Past

  Granma and Granpa wanted me to know of the past, for “If ye don’t know the past, then ye will not have a future. If ye don’t know where your people have been, then ye won’t know where your people are going.” And so they told me most of it.

  How the government soldiers came. How the Cherokee had farmed the rich valleys and held their mating dances in the spring when life was planted in the ground; when the buck and doe, the cock and peahen exulted in the creation parts they played.

  How their harvest festivals were held in the villages as frost turned the pumpkins, reddened the persimmon and hardened the corn. How they prepared for the winter hunts and pledged themselves to The Way.

  How the government soldiers came, and told them to sign the paper. Told them the paper meant that the new white settlers would know where they could settle and where they would not take land of the Cherokee. And after they had signed it, more government soldiers came with guns and long knives fixed on their guns. The soldiers said the paper had changed its words. The words now said that the Cherokee must give up his valleys, his homes and his mountains. He must go far toward the setting sun, where the government had other land for the Cherokee, land that the white man did not want.

  How the government soldiers came, and ringed a big valley with their guns, and at night with their campfires. They put the Cherokees in the ring. They brought Cherokees in from other mountains and valleys, in bunches like cattle, and put them in the ring.

  After a long time of this, when they had most of the Cherokees, they brought wagons and mules and told the Cherokees they could ride to the land of the sett
ing sun. The Cherokees had nothing left. But they would not ride, and so they saved something. You could not see it or wear it or eat it, but they saved something; and they would not ride. They walked.

  Government soldiers rode before them, on each side of them, behind them. The Cherokee men walked and looked straight ahead and would not look down, nor at the soldiers. Their women and their children followed in their footsteps and would not look at the soldiers.

  Far behind them, the empty wagons rattled and rumbled and served no use. The wagons could not steal the soul of the Cherokee. The land was stolen from him, his home; but the Cherokee would not let the wagons steal his soul.

  As they passed the villages of the white man, people lined the trail to watch them pass. At first, they laughed at how foolish was the Cherokee to walk with the empty wagons rattling behind him. The Cherokee did not turn his head at their laughter, and soon there was no laughter.

  And as the Cherokee walked farther from his mountains, he began to die. His soul did not die, nor did it weaken. It was the very young and the very old and the sick.

  At first the soldiers let them stop to bury their dead; but then, more died—by the hundreds—by the thousands. More than a third of them were to die on the Trail. The soldiers said they could only bury their dead every three days; for the soldiers wished to hurry and be finished with the Cherokee. The soldiers said the wagons would carry the dead, but the Cherokee would not put his dead in the wagons. He carried them. Walking.

  The little boy carried his dead baby sister, and slept by her at night on the ground. He lifted her in his arms in the morning, and carried her.