The Son Page 4

  “I can already shimmy my hands,” I told my brother.

  “For what?” he said.

  “We should stay ready.”

  He was quiet. We watched the fire.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “Of course I’m thirsty,” he said.

  The fire was getting bigger and the moss in the branches above us was flaring and smoke was coming off the bark. The embers of our own burned things were singeing our faces and hair; I watched the sparks climb up. When I looked over at my brother he was covered in ash like a person who had been dead a long time and I thought of how my mother and sister had looked when they sat together on the bed.

  The Indians brought all my father’s tools to be examined by firelight and I decided to remember everything they were taking: horseshoes, hammers, nails, barrel hoops, the bucksaw, the broadax and felling ax, the barking iron, an adze and froe; all the bits, bridles, saddles and stirrups, other tack; my brother’s Kentucky rifle. My Jaegerbuchse they decided was too heavy and smashed against the side of the house. They took our knives, files, picks and awls, bits for drilling, lead bullets, bullet molds, powder kegs, percussion caps, a horsehair rope hanging in the dogtrot. Our three milch cows heard the commotion and wandered up to the house for a feed. The Indians shot them with arrows. They were in high spirits. Burning logs were pulled from the fire and carried inside the house; people were tying their bundles, checking their cinches, making ready to leave. Smoke was coming from the doors and windows and then someone untied my hands and stood me up.

  Our clothes were thrown into the fire along with everything else and we were walked naked out of our gate, across the road, and into our field. A big remuda had been driven up, Cayuse ponies mixed with larger American horses. The Indians were ignoring us and talking among themselves, ums and ughs, grunts, no language at all, though they had words that sounded Spanish, and one word, taibo, they said to us often, taibo this and taibo that. We were barefoot and it was dark and I tried not to kick a prickly pear or be tromped on by the horses stamping and pacing. I felt better that at least something was happening, then I reminded myself that made no sense.

  We were lifted up and our legs tied to the animals’ bare backs with our hands tied in front of us. It could have been worse as sometimes they just tied you over the horse like a sack of flour. My pony was skittering; he didn’t like the way I smelled.

  The other horses were stamping and snorting and the Indians were calling back and forth across our field and my brother began to cry and I was mad at him for crying in front of the Indians. Then I began to blubber as well. We trotted out through our lower pasture, three months of grubbing stumps; we passed a stand of walnut I had picked for board trees. I thought about the men who had pushed us out of Bastrop, calling my mother a nigger and suing for our title. Once I had killed all the Indians I would go back and kill all the new settlers; I would burn the town to the bedrock. I wondered where my father was and I hoped he would come and then I felt guilty for hoping that.

  Then we were going at a lope with the bluestem whipping our legs. We stretched into a column and I watched as the Indians disappeared into the woods ahead and then my horse passed into the darkness as well.

  WE CROSSED GRAPE Creek at the only spot you didn’t have to jump, took a path through the bogs I had not known was there, came out at a gallop at the base of Cedar Mountain. Our cattle were white spots on the hillside. We were making ground in a long flat bottom with the hills all around, into the trees and out again, darkness to moonlight and back to darkness, the Indians trusting the horses to see, driving every animal in the forest in front of us. I looked for my brother. Behind me the riders were suddening out of the trees as if they’d been called out of the blackness itself.

  Despite the dark and the uneven ground my horse hadn’t slipped and had plenty of wind. We were coming to the base of Packsaddle Mountain. It was the last piece of land I knew well. I could turn the horse into the woods, but I doubted I would make it and my brother had no chance alone. Farther up the white hillside, I caught sight of the mustang pack I had intended to rope and break. They stood watching as we passed.

  TWO HOURS LATER we changed horses. My legs and backside were already raw and I’d been whipped by branches across the face and chest and arms. My brother was cut even worse; his entire body was caked with blood and dirt. We remounted and took up the same hard tempo. Later we came on a river that had to be the Llano. It didn’t seem possible we’d made it that far.

  “Is this what I think?” said my brother.

  I nodded.

  We waited for the horses to cross in the dark.

  “We are fucked,” he said. “This is a whole day’s ride.”

  Sometime later we hit another river, probably the Colorado, after which we stopped to change horses again. I could smell that my brother had shat himself. When they stood me on the ground I squatted with my hands tied in front of me and the water dripping off and the horses pacing all around. My legs were cramped and I could barely hold a squat. Someone kicked me but I did not want to be riding in my own mess so I finished shitting and they stood me up by the hair. I doubted there was any skin left anywhere below my waist. I was put on another pony. The Comanches didn’t trust the horses raised by whites.

  SOMETIME AFTER FIRST light we stopped to change horses a third time, but instead of remounting we stood around at the edge of a river. We were in a deep canyon, I guessed it was still the Colorado but not even the army ever went this far up. The sun hadn’t risen but it was bright enough to see color, and the Indians were standing around waiting for something. They were drinking from the river or leaning and stretching their backs, packing and repacking their saddlebags. It was the first time I’d seen them in the light.

  They carried bows and quivers and lances, short-barreled muskets and war axes and butcher knives, their faces were painted with arrows and blooming suns and their skin was completely smooth, their eyebrows and beards all plucked. They all wore their hair as a Dutch girl might, two long braids on either side, but these Indians had woven in bits of copper and silver and colored beads.

  “I can tell what you’re thinking,” said my brother.

  “They look like a pack of mollies,” I said, though I didn’t really believe it.

  “They look more like actors on a stage.” Then he added: “Don’t get us in any more trouble.”

  Then a stocky brave walked over and pushed us apart with his lance. There was a dried bloody handprint on his back and a long dark smear down the front of his leggings. What I had thought were pieces of calfskin on his waist turned out to be scalps. I looked up the river.

  Ahead of us was a high overlook and behind us the Indians were rotating the horses in and out of the grass along the banks. There was a discussion and then most of the Comanches made their way on foot toward the overlook. One of them was leading a horse and tied to the horse was the body of the man I’d shot. I hadn’t known he’d died and I got a cold feeling. My brother waded out into the river. The two Indians guarding us drew their bows but when I opened my eyes my brother was still in one piece, standing splashing himself—he was covered in his own waste. The Indians watched him, shriveled and pale and shivering, his chest caved from reading too many books.

  When he was clean he came back and sat next to me.

  “I hope it was worth getting shot just to wipe your ass,” I said.

  He patted my leg. “I want you to know what happened last night.”

  I didn’t want to know any more than I already did but I couldn’t tell him that so I stayed quiet.

  “Momma wasn’t going to make it but I don’t think they meant to kill Lizzie. When they saw she was wounded they took off her shirt and looked over her gunshot pretty carefully; they even rigged up a sort of torch so this old Indian could give his opinion. They must have decided it was bad because they all went and talked for a while and then they came back and pulled off the rest of her clothes and raped her.” He looked upriver wher
e the Indians were climbing up the canyon. “Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie.”

  “She’s in a better place.”

  He shrugged. “She’s in no place.”

  “There is still Daddy,” I said.

  He snorted. “When Daddy finds out he will likely ride straight for that woman he keeps in Austin.”

  “That is low. Even for you.”

  “People don’t go around saying a thing unless it’s true, Eli. That’s another thing you ought to know.”

  The guards looked back. I wanted them to stop our talking but now they didn’t care.

  “Momma knew she could save you,” he said. He shrugged. “Lizzie and I . . . I dunno. But you’re a different story.”

  I pretended not to understand him and looked around. The canyon walls went up a few hundred feet and there was bear grass and agarito spilling out of the cracks. A gnarled old cedar stuck out of the face; it looked like a stovepipe and there was an eagle’s nest in it. Upriver were big cypresses with knock-kneed roots. Five hundred years was nothing for them.

  When the sun hit the upper walls of the canyon a wailing and chanting went up. There was a shot and the burial party began to file back down to the river and when they reached us they knocked us down and kicked us until my brother shat himself again.

  “I can’t help it,” he said.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m worried,” he said.

  Several of the Indians thought we ought to be marched to the burial site and killed along with the dead man’s horse but the one who was in charge of the war party, the one who’d dragged me out of the house, was against it. Nabituku tekwaniwapi Toshaway, they would say. My brother was already starting to pick up bits of Comanche; Toshaway was the chief’s name. There were charges and offers and counteroffers, but Toshaway would not give in. He caught me watching him but gave no more account than if I were a dog.

  My brother got a philosophical look and I got nervous.

  “You know,” he said, “the whole time, I was hoping that when the sun came up they would see us and realize they had made some terrible mistake, that we were people just like them, or at least just people, but now I am hoping the opposite.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What I am getting at is that the very kinship I had hoped might save us might be the reason they kill us. Because of course we are completely powerless over our fates, but in the end they are as well and maybe that is why they will kill us. To erase, at least temporarily, their own reflections.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Stop talking.”

  “They don’t care,” he said. “They don’t care about a word we say.”

  I knew he was right but just then the debate ended and the Indians who had been for killing us came over and began to stomp and kick us.

  When they finished my brother lay in a puddle of water among the stones, his head at an angle, looking up at the sky. There was blood running into my throat and I threw up into the river. The rocks were floating all around me. I decided as long as they killed us together it would be fine. I caught a wolf watching me from a high ledge but when I blinked he was gone. I thought about the white one I’d shot and how it was bad luck, then I thought about my mother and sister and wondered if the animals had found them. I got to blubbering and was cuffed in the head.

  Martin looked like he’d lost twenty pounds; his knees and elbows and chin were bleeding and there was dirt and sand stuck everywhere. The Indians were changing their saddles onto fresh horses. I was hungry and before they could put me on another horse I sucked water from the river until my stomach was full.

  “You should drink,” I told him.

  He shook his head. He lay there with his hands cupping his privates. The Indians jerked us up.

  “Next time,” I said.

  “I was thinking how nice it was that I didn’t have to get up again. Then I realized they hadn’t killed me. Now I’m annoyed.”

  “It wouldn’t be any better.”

  He shrugged.

  WE CONTINUED TO ride at a good pace and if the Indians were tired they didn’t show it and if they were hungry they didn’t show it, either. They were alert but not nervous. Every now and then I’d get a glimpse of the entire remuda trailing behind us in the canyon. My brother would not stop talking.

  “You know I was watching Mother and Lizzie,” he said. “I had always thought about where the soul might be, near to the heart or maybe along the bones, I’d always figured you’d have to cut for it. But there was a lot of cutting and I didn’t see anything come out. I’m certain I would have seen it.”

  I ignored him.

  A while later he said: “Can you imagine any white man, even a thousand white men, riding this easy in Indian country?”

  “No.”

  “It’s funny because everyone calls them heathens and red devils, but now that we’ve seen them, I think it’s the opposite. They act like the gods were supposed to act. Though I guess I mean heroes or demigods because as you have certainly helped demonstrate, though not without a certain cost, these Indians are indeed mortal.”

  “Please stop.”

  “It does make you wonder about the Negro problem, doesn’t it?”

  AT MIDDAY WE climbed out of the canyon. We were on a rolling grassland thick with asters and primrose, ironweed and red poppy. Some bobwhites scuttled into the brush. The prairie went on forever; there were herds of antelope and deer and a few stray buffalo in the distance. The Indians checked their pace to look around and then we were off.

  There was nothing to protect us from the sun and by afternoon I could smell my own burning skin and was going in and out of sleep. We continued through the high grass, over limestone breaks, briefly into the shade along streams—though never stopping to drink—and then back into the sun.

  Then the Comanches all reined up and after some chatter my brother and I were led back to a stream we’d just crossed. We were pulled roughly off the horses and tied to each other back to back and put in the shade. A teenager was left to guard us.

  “Rangers?”

  “This one doesn’t look too nervous,” said my brother.

  We were facing opposite directions and it was strange not seeing his face.

  “Maybe it’s Daddy and the others.”

  “I think they would be behind us,” he said.

  After a while I decided he was right. I called the young Indian over. There were grapes hanging all along the stream.

  He shook his head. Itsa aitu. Then he added itsa keta kwasupu and when he still wasn’t satisfied I understood, he said in Spanish, no en sazón.

  “He’s saying they’re not ripe.”

  “I know that.”

  I wanted them anyway and I was so hungry I didn’t care. The Indian cut a section of vine and dropped it into my lap. Then he rinsed his hands in the stream. The grapes were so bitter I nearly aired my paunch. I thought they would help my fever. My lips were itching.

  “They’re good,” I said.

  “For tanning hides, maybe.”

  “You should eat.”

  “You are not making any sense,” he told me.

  I ate more of the grapes. It felt like I’d swallowed boiling water.

  I said, “Scoot over to that stream and lean over it,” and we did. My brother let his head rest in the water, as sunburned as I was, but I could tell he wasn’t drinking. Something about this made me want to puddle up but I kept drinking instead. The young Indian stood on a rock and watched. We sat up again. It seemed like my fever was going down and I could stretch my legs.

  “What’s your name,” I said to our guard. “Cómo te llamas?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said: “Nuukaru.” He looked around nervously and then walked off as if he’d given away some secret and when I saw him again he was upstream, lying on his belly, sucking up water. It was the first time I’d seen any of the Indians eat or drink much of anything, except for a few swallows. When he stood up he arranged hi
s braids and checked his paint.

  “I wonder if they’re cockchafers,” my brother said.

  “Somehow I doubt it.”

  “You know the Spartans were.”

  “Who are the Spartans?” I said.

  He was about to say something else when there was a rattling of shots far off. There was a scattered return volley and finally the slow knocking of a single repeating pistol. Then it got quiet and I knew it was just the Indians using their bows. I wondered whose bad luck it had been.

  Another young Indian came bounding down the rocks and then we were tied back on the horses and led out of the streambed. My fever had gone down and I didn’t mind the sun. After crossing a stony plateau we descended to a prairie that seemed to be mostly larkspur and wine-cup. A red dirt wagon road went up the middle and it was a pleasant sight with the blue sky and a few bright clouds and wildflowers everywhere.

  The Indians were milling around a pair of ox-drawn freight wagons. A third wagon was far ahead in the grass, turned on its side, a mule team standing dumbly in front of it. Someone was screaming.

  “I don’t want to see this,” said Martin.

  There was something white at the edge of the road; a small tow-headed boy in a boiled shirt. An arrow shaft had stuck through his eye and a big red-headed woodpecker was tapping a branch over his head.

  Farther up the road blood was dripping from the wagons as if someone had splashed a bucket. There were four or five Texans sprawled in the red dirt and another curled up like a baby in the back of the wagon. Off in the grass and larkspur the Indians were doing something to the last teamster and he was shrieking in a high voice and they were imitating him.

  With the exception of the two dealing with the remaining teamster, no one was wasting any time. The mule team was cut loose but they didn’t move; they stood with their heads down as if they had done something wrong. A spotted pony was dead in the ditch, his neck covered with blood, the owner trying to free his saddle. Another Indian pony, a handsome strawberry roan, was standing blowing pink froth out of a hole in its chest. His owner removed his saddle, blanket, and bridle and set them carefully in the road. Then, while hugging and kissing the roan’s neck, he shot it behind the ear.