Growing Up Native American

by Bill Adler

  That evening we told Momma about the scared man. She warned us about the dangers of hobos as our father threw us a stern look. Uncle Ralph was visiting but he didn’t say anything. He stayed the night and Sister asked him, “Hey, Uncle Ralph, why do you suppose they’s hobos?”

  Uncle Ralph was a large man. He took Sister and put her on one knee. “You see, Sister,” he said, “hobos are a different kind. They see things in a different way. Them hobos are kind of like us. We’re not like other people in some ways and yet we are. It has to do with what you see and feel when you look at this old world.”

  His answer satisfied Sister for a while and he taught us some more Pawnee words that night.

  Not long after Uncle Ralph’s explanation, Sister and I surprised a Black man with white whiskers and fuzzy hair. He was climbing through the barbed wire fence that marked our property line. He wore faded blue over-alls with pockets stuffed full of handkerchiefs. He wiped sweat from his face and when it dried he looked up and saw us. I remembered what Uncle Ralph had said and wondered what the Black man saw when he looked at us standing there.

  “We might scare him,” Sister said softly to me, remembering the whiteman who had scampered away.

  Sister whispered, “Hi,” to the Black man. Her voice was barely audible.

  “Boy, it’s shore hot,” he said. His voice was big and he smiled.

  “Where are you going?” Sister asked.

  “Me? Nowheres, I guess,” he muttered.

  “Then what you doing here?” Sister went on. She was bold for a seven-year-old kid. I was a year older but I was also more quiet. “This here place is ours,” she said.

  He looked around and saw our house with its flowering mimosa trees and rich green, mowed lawn stretching out before him. Other houses sat around ours.

  “I reckon I’m lost,” he said.

  Sister pointed to the weeds and brush further up the road. “That’s where you want to go. That’s where they all go, the hobos.”

  I tried to quiet Sister but she didn’t hush. “The hobos stay up there,” she said. “You a hobo?”

  He ignored her question and asked his own, “Say, what is you all? You not Black, you not White. What is you all?

  Sister looked at me. She put one hand on her chest and the other hand on me, “We Indians!” Sister said.

  He stared at us and smiled again. “Is that a fact?” he said.

  “Know what kind of Indians we are?” Sister asked him.

  He shook his fuzzy head. “Indians is Indians, I guess,” he said.

  Sister wrinkled her forehead and retorted, “Not us! We not like others. We see things different. We’re Pawnees. We’re warriors!”

  I pushed my elbow into Sister’s side. She quieted.

  The man was looking down the road and he shuffled his feet. “I’d best go,” he said.

  Sister pointed to the brush and weeds one more time. “That way,” she said.

  He climbed back through the fence and brush as Sister yelled, “Bye now!” She waved a damp handkerchief.

  Sister and I didn’t tell Momma and Dad about the Black man. But much later Sister told Uncle Ralph every word that had been exchanged with the Black man. Uncle Ralph listened and smiled.

  Months later when the warm weather had cooled and Uncle Ralph came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, Sister and I went to the hobo place. We had planned it for a long time. That afternoon when we pushed away the weeds, not a hobo was in sight.

  The ground was packed down tight in the clearing among the high weeds. We walked around the encircling brush and found folded cardboards stacked together. Burned cans in assorted sizes were stashed under the cardboards and there were remains of old fires. Rags were tied to the brush, snapping in the hard wind.

  Sister said, “Maybe they’re all in the box cars now. It’s starting to get cold.”

  She was right. The November wind had a bite to it and the cold stung our hands and froze our breaths as we spoke.

  “You want to go over to them box cars?” she asked. We looked at the Railroad Crossing sign where the box cars stood.

  I was prepared to answer when a voice roared from somewhere behind us.

  “Now, you young ones, you git on home! Go on! Git!”

  A man crawled out of the weeds and looked angrily at us. His eyes were red and his face was unshaven. He wore a red plaid shirt with striped gray and black pants too large for him. His face was swollen and bruised. An old woolen pink scarf hid some of the bruise marks around his neck and his top coat was splattered with mud.

  Sister looked at him. She stood close to me and told him defiantly, “You can’t tell us what to do! You don’t know us!”

  He didn’t answer Sister but tried to stand. He couldn’t. Sister ran to him and took his arm and pulled on it. “You need help?” she questioned.

  He frowned at her but let us help him. He was tall. He seemed to be embarrassed by our help.

  “You Indian, ain’t you?” I dared to ask him.

  He didn’t answer me but looked at his feet as if they could talk so he wouldn’t have to. His feet were in big brown overshoes.

  “Who’s your people?” Sister asked. He looked to be about Uncle Ralph’s age when he finally lifted his face and met mine. He didn’t respond for a minute. Then he sighed. “I ain’t got no people,” he told us as he tenderly stroked his swollen jaw.

  “Sure you got people. Our folks says a man’s always got people,” I said softly. The wind blew our clothes and covered the words.

  But he heard. He exploded like a firecracker. “Well, I don’t! I ain’t got no people! I ain’t got nobody!”

  “What you doing out here anyway?” Sister asked. “You hurt? You want to come over to our house?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Now you little ones, go on home. Don’t be walking round out here. Didn’t nobody tell you little girls ain’t supposed to be going round by themselves. You might git hurt.”

  “We just wanted to talk to hobos,” Sister said.

  “Naw, you don’t. Just go on home. Your folks is probably looking for you and worrying bout you.”

  I took Sister’s arm and told her we were going home. Then we said “Bye” to the man. But Sister couldn’t resist a few last words, “You Indian, ain’t you?”

  He nodded his head like it was a painful thing to do. “Yeah, I’m Indian.”

  “You ought to go on home yourself,” Sister said. “Your folks probably looking for you and worrying bout you.”

  His voice rose again as Sister and I walked away from him.

  “I told you kids, I don’t have any people!” There was exasperation in his voice.

  Sister would not be outdone. She turned and yelled, “Oh yeah? You Indian, ain’t you? Ain’t you?” she screamed, “We your people!”

  His top-coat and pink scarf flapped in the wind as we turned away from him.

  We went home to Momma and Dad and Uncle Ralph then. Uncle Ralph met us at the front door. “Where you all been?” he asked and looked toward the railroad tracks. Momma and Dad were talking in the kitchen.

  “Just playing, Uncle,” Sister and I said simultaneously.

  Uncle Ralph grabbed both Sister and I by our hands and yanked us out the door. “Awkuh!” he said, using the Pawnee expression to show his dissatisfaction.

  Outside, we sat on the cement porch. Uncle Ralph was quiet for a long time and neither Sister or I knew what to expect.

  “I want to tell you all a story,” he finally said. “Once, there were these two rats who ran around everywhere and got into everything all the time. Everything they were told not to do, well, they went right out and did. They’d get into one mess and then another. It seems that they never could learn.”

  At that point Uncle Ralph cleared his throat. He looked at me and said, “Sister, do you understand this story? Is it too hard for you? You’re older.”

  I nodded my head up and down and said, “I understand.”

  Then Uncle Ralph looked at Si
ster. He said to her, “Sister, do I need to go on with this story?”

  Sister shook her head from side to side. “Naw, Uncle Ralph,” she said.

  “So you both know how this story ends?” he said gruffly. Sister and I bobbed our heads up and down again.

  We followed at his heels the rest of the day. When he tightened the loose hide on top of his drum, we watched him and held it in place as he laced the wet hide down. He got his drumsticks down from the top shelf of the closet and began to pound the drum slowly.

  “Where you going, Uncle Ralph?” I asked. Sister and I knew that when he took his drum out, he was always gone shortly after.

  “I have to be a drummer at some doings tomorrow,” he said.

  “You a good singer, Uncle Ralph,” Sister said. “You know all them old songs.”

  “The young people nowadays, it seems they don’t care bout nothing that’s old. They just want to go to the Moon.” He was drumming low as he spoke.

  “We care, Uncle Ralph,” Sister said.

  “Why?” Uncle Ralph asked in a hard challenging tone that he seldom used on us.

  Sister thought for a minute and then said, “I guess because you care so much, Uncle Ralph.”

  His eyes softened and he said, “I’ll sing you an Eruska song, a song for the warriors.”

  The song he sang was a war dance song. At first Sister and I listened attentively but then Sister began to dance the man’s dance. She had never danced before and she tried to imitate what she had seen. Her chubby body whirled and jumped the way she’d seen the men dance. Her head tilted from side to side the way the men moved theirs. I laughed aloud at her clumsy effort and Uncle Ralph laughed heartily too.

  Uncle Ralph went in and out of our lives after that. We heard that he sang at one place and then another, and people came to Momma to find him. They said that he was only one of a few who knew the old ways and the songs.

  When he came to visit us, he always brought something to eat. The Pawnee custom was that the man, the warrior, should bring food, preferably meat. Then whatever food was brought to the host was prepared and served to the man, the warrior, along with the host’s family. Many times Momma and I, or Sister and I, came home to an empty house to find a sack of food on the table. I or Momma cooked it for the next meal and Uncle Ralph showed up to eat.

  As Sister and I grew older, our fascination with the hobos decreased. Other things took our time, and Uncle Ralph did not appear as frequently as he did before.

  Once while I was home alone, I picked up Momma’s old photo album. Inside was a gray photo of Uncle Ralph in an army uniform. Behind him were tents on a flat terrain. Other photos showed other poses but in only one picture did he smile. All the photos were written over in black ink in Momma’s handwriting. “Ralphie in Korea,” the writing said.

  Other photos in the album showed our Pawnee relatives. Dad was from another tribe. Momma’s momma was in the album, a tiny gray-haired woman who no longer lived. And Momma’s momma’s Dad was in the album; he wore old Pawnee leggings and the long feathers of a dark bird sat upon his head. I closed the album when Momma, Dad, and Sister came home.

  Momma went into the kitchen to cook. She called me and Sister to help. As she put on a bibbed apron, she said, “We just came from town, and we saw someone from home there.” She meant someone from her tribal community.

  “This man told me that Ralphie’s been drinking hard,” she said sadly. “He used to do that quite a bit a long time ago but we thought that it had stopped. He seemed to be alright for a few years.” We cooked and then ate in silence.

  Washing the dishes, I asked Momma, “How come Uncle Ralph never did marry?”

  Momma looked up at me but was not surprised by my question. She answered, “I don’t know, Sister. It would have been better if he had. There was one woman who I thought he really loved. I think he still does. I think it had something to do with Mom. She wanted him to wait.”

  “Wait for what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Momma said and sank into a chair.

  After that we heard unsettling rumors of Uncle Ralph drinking here and there.

  He finally came to the house once when only I happened to be home. He was haggard and tired. His appearance was much like that of the whiteman that Sister and I met on the railroad tracks years before.

  I opened the door when he tapped on it. Uncle Ralph looked years older than his age. He brought food in his arms. “Nowa, Sister,” he said in greeting. “Where’s the other one?” He meant Sister.

  “She’s gone now, Uncle Ralph. School in Kansas,” I answered. “Where you been, Uncle Ralph? We been worrying about you.”

  He ignored my question and said, “I bring food. The warrior brings home food. To his family, to his people.” His face was lined and had not been cleaned for days. He smelled of cheap wine.

  I asked again, “Where you been, Uncle Ralph?”

  He forced himself to smile. “Pumpkin Flower,” he said, using the Pawnee name, “I’ve been out with my warriors all this time.”

  He put one arm around me as we went to the kitchen table with the food. “That’s what your Pawnee name is. Now don’t forget it.”

  “Did somebody bring you here, Uncle Ralph, or are you on foot?” I asked him.

  “I’m on foot,” he answered. “Where’s your Momma?”

  I told him that she and Dad would be back soon, I started to prepare the food he brought.

  Then I heard Uncle Ralph say, “Life is sure hard sometimes. Sometimes it seems I just can’t go on.”

  “What’s wrong, Uncle Ralph?” I asked.

  Uncle Ralph let out a bitter little laugh. “What’s wrong?” he repeated. “What’s wrong? All my life, I’ve tried to live what I’ve been taught but, Pumpkin Flower, some things are all wrong!”

  He took a folded pack of Camel cigarettes from his coat pocket. His hand shook as he pulled one from the pack and lit the end. “Too much drink,” he said sadly. “That stuff is bad for us.”

  “What are you trying to do, Uncle Ralph?” I then asked.

  “Live,” he said.

  He puffed on the shaking cigarette awhile and said, “The old people said to live beautifully with prayers and song. Some died for beauty too.”

  “How do we do that, Uncle Ralph, live for beauty?” I asked.

  “It’s simple, Pumpkin Flower,” he said. “Believe!”

  “Believe what?” I asked.

  He looked at me hard. “Aw-kuh!” he said, “that’s one of the things that is wrong. Everyone questions. Everyone doubts. No one believes in the old ways anymore. They want to believe when it’s convenient, when it doesn’t cost them anything and when they get something in return. There are no more believers. There are no more warriors. They are all gone. Those who are left only want to go to the Moon.”

  A car drove up outside. It was Momma and Dad. Uncle Ralph heard it too. He slumped in the chair, resigned to whatever Momma would say to him.

  Momma came in first. Dad then greeted Uncle Ralph and disappeared into the back of the house. Custom and etiquette required that Dad, who was not a member of Momma’s tribe, allow Momma to handle her brother’s problems.

  She hugged Uncle Ralph. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw how thin he was and how his hands shook.

  “Ralphie,” she said, “you look awful but I am glad to see you.”

  She then spoke to him of everyday things, how the car failed to start and the latest gossip. He was silent, tolerant of the passing of time in this way. His eyes sent me a pleading look while his hands shook and he tried to hold them still.

  When supper was ready, Uncle Ralph went to wash himself for the meal. When he returned to the table, he was calm. His hands didn’t shake so much.

  At first he ate without many words, but in the course of the meal he left the table twice. Each time he came back, he was more talkative than before, answering Momma’s questions in Pawnee. He left the table a third time and Dad rose.


  Dad said to Momma, “He’s drinking again. Can’t you tell?” Dad left the table and went outside.

  Momma frowned. A determined look grew on her face.

  When Uncle Ralph sat down to the table once more, Momma told him, “Ralphie, you’re my brother but I want you to leave now. Come back when you are sober.”

  He held a tarnished spoon in mid-air and he put it down slowly. He hadn’t finished eating but he didn’t seem to mind leaving. He stood, looked at me with his red eyes and went to the door. Momma followed him. In a low voice, she said, “Ralphie, you’ve got to stop drinking and wandering—or don’t come to see us again.”

  He pulled himself to his full height then. His frame filled the doorway. He leaned over Momma and yelled, “Who are you? Are you God that you will say what will be or will not be?”

  Momma met his angry eyes. She stood firm and did not back down.

  His eyes finally dropped from her face to the linoleum floor. A cough came from deep in his throat.

  “I’ll leave here,” he said. “But I’ll get all my warriors and come back! I have thousands of warriors and they’ll ride with me. We’ll get our bows and arrows. Then we’ll come back!” He staggered out the door.

  In the years that followed, Uncle Ralph saw us only when he was sober. He visited less and less. When he did show up, he did a tapping ritual on our front door. We welcomed the rare visits. Occasionally he stayed at our house for a few days at a time when he was not drinking. He slept on the floor.

  He did odd jobs for minimum pay but never complained about the work or money. He’d acquired a vacant look in his eyes. It was the same look that Sister and I had seen in the hobos when we were children. He wore a similar careless array of clothing and carried no property with him at all.

  The last time he came to the house, he called me by my English name and asked if I remembered anything of all that he’d taught me. His hair had turned pure white. He looked older than anyone I knew. I marvelled at his appearance and said, “I remember everything.” That night I pointed out his stars for him and told him how Pahukatawa lived and died and lived again through another’s dreams. I’d grown and Uncle Ralph could not hold me on his knee anymore. His arm circled my waist while we sat on the grass.