by Bill Adler
In this selection, young Chal invents his own private fantàsy world, a world in which even religious images can take on flesh. When Chal invites the figure of the Christ Child to join his group of imaginary playmates, the real world intervenes with swift and sudden cruelty to shatter his childhood innocence.
John Joseph Mathews (Osage) was born in 1894 in Indian Territory, which is now the state of Oklahoma. He held a degree in geology from the University of Oklahoma, and a degree in natural sciences from Merton College at Oxford. Among his scholarly and literary achievements are Wah’Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man’s Road and Talking to the Moon, a book of poetry. Sundown is his only work of fiction. Mathews died in 1979.
ONE MIGHT HAVE SAID THAT CHAL’S EARLY CHILDHOOD WAS CONTEMPLATIVE rather than one of action. Yet this would not be true; it was both a life of contemplation and action. Contemplation, mostly in the form of dreams wherein he played the role of hero, whether in the form of man or animal.
Sometimes he was a panther lying lazily in his den and blinking in physical contentment, or a redtail hawk circling high in the blue of the sky. Often at night, when he heard the raindrops on the tin roof of his bedroom, he would be an animal; an indefinite animal in a snug den under the dripping boughs of a tree. Sometimes real pain would be the result of these dreamworld metamorphoses; pain caused by the desire to fly over the green world high in the air, like the turkey vulture and the hawk. Unhappiness would descend on him as he lay on his back in the prairie grass, watching the graceful spirals of the redtail. He would get up with a feeling of helpless defiance and walk slowly to where his pinto cropped the grass with reins dragging. It was a hopeless feeling of inferiority in being earthbound, and at such times he would find assuagement in racing the pony over the prairie with the mane whipping his face; racing as fast and as carelessly as the discreet little pinto would run; racing until his attention was attracted to a coyote slinking off, or to some movement on the horizon.
Eventually his thoughts would flow into other channels, and later, as he rode into the barn lot erect and magnificent as a bemedalled general at the head of a dusty, victorious army, he would have forgotten his earlier unhappiness. The black surrey mares coming up to the gate to greet the lathered pinto were an escort, and the chickens the enthusiastic crowd. Of course there was a sort of “time out” as he opened the gate and spoke sharply to the black mares as they attempted to run past him; time out until the general could climb back into the saddle. The gate just wasn’t there, and the opening and closing of it had no part in the dream. The “general” would ride stiffly to the center of the lot, whirl about, much to the amazement and annoyance of the pinto, and stand like a statue for a few seconds. If he happened to remember, he looked around to see that there was no one within hearing of his voice, then he would make a high sounding speech to his trusting, brave, and victorious troops, then dismiss them with a flourish of his hand.
His final address to his soldiers was stilted and praiseful—the kind of thing which he believed would float down the corridors of time. No matter what high-sounding words came to his mind, he always ended with a note of defiance and profound warning: “Let England remember this day—let her remember that the men of America will defend their mother country to the last man, shouting, ‘Don’t give up the ship!’ You have covered yourselves with glory, and I am proud of you, and your memory will be green to the end of time.”
Oddly enough, he was forever leading charges against England. Sometimes he led gaily painted warriors; Osages and Sioux against the mythical tyranny of an England who was taking Indian land, but most of the time he led an army of picture book soldiers, who were of course inevitably victorious. This was the influence of the stories which his father read to him from American history books, which gave to the American every virtue and to the Englishman every vice.
He was a boy of great action though he even dreamed during the playing of games. Often he would start out on the long dusty road over Cedarvale Hill toward the Kansas line, foxtrotting. Going on under the hot sun of August until his heart pumped like drum beats in his thin chest, and his throat became dry and he was in pain. But on he would run until he halted, staggering, then fall into the hot shade of a blackjack, where he would lie on his back and gaze up at the restless leaves.
He was not a little Indian boy even then, but a coyote, that had just outrun his uncle’s greyhounds by tricking them. He had heard the pounding of their feet behind him, and could visualize the slavers flying back from their mouths, and the concentrated excitement in their eyes. When his breathing became regular, he would pull off his shirt which was already almost off, remove his denim pants, and with only his moccasins from which the beads had been worn, he would lie back and let the leaf shadows dance over his bronze body. If by this time he had not become something else or had not gone off on another line of dreaming, which would take him far away from the indolent summer voices, he would half rise and move the muscles of his nose in simulation of a coyote testing the air currents in quest of some trace of his enemies. In this simulation he often did no better than “make a face” with his nose wrinkled, but it answered the purpose; he was a coyote.
Often, his role was suddenly changed by a grasshopper climbing slowly up a grass stem, with the purposelessness of all grasshoppers. Or a cicada breaking into monotonous song just above him. Perhaps the hot breeze would stir the leaves more violently and there would be a subdued roar, like a moan; like a protest from Nature who had fallen into a soothing somnolence. A nuthatch moving like a shadow up a dark tree bole, fussing weakly, might send him into another dream world.
Sometimes he would not get home until after dark, walking or riding over the prairie and into the belt of blackjack where the density of the darkness, or half darkness of the twilight always produced other stimuli. If he were riding he would wheel his pony and dash off through the trees; the stiff, tough arms of the blackjacks catching at his clothing if he did not manage to dodge them by lying flat on the back of the pony or clinging to its side as he raced; enemies in pursuit of a fleeing brave. He would come to the edge of the sandstone hills and burst from the fringe of trees to look down upon the scattered red lights of the Agency; dim red lights like the eyes of prowling animals. At such times he would become a scout creeping into the camp of the enemy; leading the pony cautiously over the second growth oaks and slipping and sliding over the clay. But as he approached the barn and heard the restrained, inquisitive whinny of the mares, or the soft questioning of the Jersey cow, he would suddenly return to the world of reality with the thought of what his father might have to say about “mistreatin’ stock.”
Soon he would be back in the world of fantasy as he moved the heavy bales of hay from the loft to the mangers; as he thrust his head into the hot flank of the cow, as she lazily swished her tail against his back.
Whether he was alone on the prairie or swimming with little Running Elk, Little Wild Cat, Sun-on-His-Wings, and other boys of the camp, these days seemed always to be a part of the life he was destined to live; the quieter part of a stream near its source, lazy, murmuring and dappled.
But of this earlier life from babyhood, he remembered only a few outstanding things; like impressions made in fresh cement which would remain distinct throughout the years. Behind these impressions would be the silence, the tranquillity of his home. Always he remembered the silence, and though he grew more loquacious as he learned to say meaningless things, he had a reverence for it as long as he lived; even when he had assumed that veneer which he believed to be civilization.
His first lasting impression was when as a fat, bronzed baby sitting on the floor he was suddenly flooded with emotion; emotion that suffused him and left an impression which he never forgot, but he knew the source of that emotion only after years had passed and he had learned the details from his mother.
There were no servants in the Agency and those desiring them had to go into Kansas and induce the daughter of some starving settler to come t
o them, after getting permission from the agent and duly registering the girl, who was thereafter known as a “har’d gurl.”
It was thus that a flaming red skirt worn by one of these har’d gurls produced in the baby the first intense emotion of his life. He learned from his mother later that upon seeing the swishing skirt as the girl passed him, his baby hands clutched the air convulsively, his mouth flew open and he began to drool lavishly. Then his two chubby fists were placed in his mouth and his whole body quivered, and unconsciously, red became his favorite color; long before he learned of the religion of his people, red was sacred to him; long before He-Who-Walks-With-Stick told him that red was the color of the Sun, who was Grandfather, and of Fire, who was Father, and of the Dawn, sacred to Wah ’Kon-Tah.
Again, an isolated impression, the circumstances of which he half guessed and vaguely learned from his mother, disturbed his whole life. It must have been a Fourth of July celebration under the shade of the elms along the creek. The tinny music, the horns, the popping firecrackers and the sweating people he remembered. He remembered having held someone’s hand as he walked along, probably the hand of a har’d gurl; when suddenly his hand was dropped, and he seemed to be left alone. Then a towering, disheveled figure came toward him; a mad woman with her iron gray hair flying, cursing as she strode toward him. Her face was distorted and ugly and her eyes were gleaming. As she reached him she swung her great arm and knocked him sprawling. He did not remember being picked up, but the har’d gurl in charge of him must have come immediately to his rescue. But burnt forever in his memory was the intense emotion of that moment; so intense and so searing that it affected his whole nervous system, and the picture of that wild white woman with iron gray hair and eyes flaming with hate and madness, had ever the vividness of a white scar. Always thereafter, when the veneer dropped from a woman and she became excited and angered, he was suffused with that which seemed to be a strange chemical running through his veins, and he felt sick and his knees grew weak, and dejection sat on his spirit like black wings hovering.
He must have been older when the still, hot, summer evenings impressed themselves on his memory; evenings filled with the scent of honeysuckle and wistaria, when the insects chorused from the grass roots, led and almost drowned by the katydids. Evenings when there were no lights in the house and his parents sat for two or more hours in the silence. From his mother’s lap with his head on her gently heaving breast, he could hear the singing on Wednesday evenings come from the lone frame church in the valley. The little church to which the few white people of the Agency came from all directions along the dark, dusty road, swinging lanterns which they left by the front entrance.
For an hour or more he would lie thus, without day-dreaming, lulled by the bread and milk in his stomach and the sleepy, murmuring night. He would sometimes concentrate on the bass chirruping of the cricket, out of harmony with the rest of the chorus and much nearer, perhaps under the porch. If an Indian dog did not bark to bring him back to sharp consciousness, or the coyotes yap from Cedarvale Hill, a veil would come over his thoughts, smothering them in sensuous torpor, and he would be conscious only of a very slight squeak in his mother’s corsets as she breathed. Even this squeak was soporific, and soon, under the weight of the hot stars and the heated air that often in midsummer was like the breath of a panting dog; under the monotonous fiddling, buzzing and rasping from the grass and the singing that shrilled across the quiet valley, he would pass into sleep.
One day during the hot summer when he had been running through the house on his bare feet over the pine flooring that had begun to splinter, he ran a large splinter of wood into his foot. He remembered the smell of turpentine and the calm silence and the deftness of his mother. He remembered sitting on her lap in the kitchen. Pride in his independence must have been hurt, and to assuage it his mother was telling him that he should soon have a warm piece of the cake which the har’d gurl was baking as she hummed “Barbara Ellen.” To make her argument stronger his mother had told him that screwflies would get into his foot and it would be very bad if he got down on the floor again—and soon he would have a nice piece of cake and the screwflies would go away and he would be well again in a few days.
For a long time he thought that hot cake, just out of the oven, was an antidote for screwflies, and he had thought at the time that perhaps the screwflies were already at his foot and that his mother, with her usual calmness, was pretending that they were not; that his mother knew that the cake would drive them away, and that warm cake was the only thing with which to cure a wound which already had flies in it. What a screwfly was he didn’t know, but immediately pictured it with large red eyes and a proboscis shaped like a screw, with which it bored its way into fresh wounds.
It was at this time in his life that an intense dislike came to him. There was a cousin of his father, a thin woman with graying hair, who through his father had secured a position as teacher in the government school. For several weeks she stayed at the house and Chal was fascinated by her; one of the few white women he had ever seen. But he eyed her with suspicion when she attempted to get him to sit on her knees. He much preferred standing in a corner and listening with fascination to her almost continuous talk. Her room on the north side of the house was filled with a sickening, sweet odor, but it was also filled with the strangest things he had ever seen. There were pale little men and women made of china, like his mother’s cups, and bottles of delicate pink and green shades, and one in particular with a little red rubber ball attached to a red rubber tube, which in turn was attached to the top of the bottle. This he wanted very much, but certainly would never ask her for it; she would probably have talked too much in giving it to him, and that would have embarrassed him painfully.
The most fascinating thing in the room was a large hat which, as far as he knew, never left the hanger on the back of the door. It had a bright ribbon around the crown, and delight of delights, the ribbon was red. And above this ribbon, sitting eternally asleep on the crown, was a gorgeous golden bird with red hackles and long tail feathers, and he, after spending many minutes just standing and looking at this incredible bird, desired it with all his heart. That bird flitted into his day-dreams and was many times present in the fantastic experiences one has when he is asleep. And always when he came into the house from play, he would go and with a little thrill running through him, stand looking at the golden bird with a desire so intense that it made him unhappy.
But it was from his father’s cousin that he learned about Jesus and His birth; travail and death. He thought about the story so much that the carpenter’s little Son became his playmate in fantasy. He showed this fanciful Boy the place under the grape arbor where one could hide when he dreamed that he was a wolf or a wildcat. He told his fanciful playmate about a wild turkey that came into the barn lot with her brood and had taken corn from his hand but had run when his father came. But the fanciful playmate and the fanciful turkey never met, although he promised the former that he might see her some day if he could be very quiet and peek through the cracks in the loft.
One day cousin Ellen came into the house simulating breathlessness and sat down with her feet extended and her legs apart. She fanned herself with her large hat, saying that it was just as hot as it could be and that’s all there was to it.
“I bet I’ve walked miles,” she said. “But I tell yu though, it’s cooler in this room, all right.” For goodness sake, she just didn’t know how a person could stand it if it got any hotter than this—she thought she reely would die. Chal’s mother had stood with the wise, benign expression of fatalism and had said simply, “Well—it is hot,” as though she would pat cousin Ellen on the shoulder and say, “Never mind,” then left the room quietly.
Cousin Ellen stopped fanning herself and began to unwrap a small package, looking at Chal with a tight-lipped smile, “Guess what I got for a good little boy—something very nice—look.” She drew some picture cards from the paper and began looking at them. “Come
here,” she said. “Here are all the pictures about the Christ child and the crucifixion. Here’s the Christ child in the manger—isn’t He sweet, and here’s Joseph and Mary coming to Bethlehem—see Mary on the mule.” She believed it indelicate to say “ass.” “Now take them and take good care of them.” Chal took the pictures in his brown hands and backed off, then turned and started to go. “Wait a minute,” she said, and lifted a finger. “What do you say?” He muttered a “Thank you” over his shoulder as he went out into the yard. He went to the grape arbor and crawled under.
Certainly they were beautiful pictures: there were Mary and Joseph and the mule, the three wise men and a great, shining, abnormal star, about which he was rather doubtful. He had once asked his father if he had ever seen that star, and his father had said that he didn’t guess he ever had and he reckoned no one else had neither.
There was a picture of Jesus in white robes, floating among the clouds with a great red heart on his breast toward which he was pointing. This was his favorite; Jesus was certainly not bound to the earth like other things without wings. He looked long at the card which showed the crucifixion. There was the stripped, emaciated and pale body of Jesus with red wounds, against a background of clouds. At the foot of the cross were Magdalen and Mary the mother, the latter in a robe which he thought the most beautiful blue he had ever seen—a soft blue that made you happy. In skirts like women wear, only not so long, were the Roman soldiers with metal breastplates and long spears. One of them in particular he noticed; the one who stood with upraised spear and shiny helmet; the one with the mocking look on his face.