The Son (14 page)

Depending on what was in season, I was also put to gathering. Fruit from the
wokwéesi
(prickly pear),
t
u
ahpi
(wild plum), and
tunaséka
(persimmon), beans from the
wohi?huu
(mesquite),
k
uu
ka
(wild onion),
paapasi
(wild potato), or
mutsi natsamukwe
(mustang grapes). I was not allowed to carry a knife or gun or bow, just a digging stick, and there were wolf and bear and panther tracks everywhere.

No white person, even an Irishman, would have spent an hour digging a handful of runty potatoes, but I knew I had gotten off easy. I had not taken the big jump. I still got the feeling of a full stomach, a hot fire against a cold night, the sound of other people sleeping close. I knew what it would look like with the grass waving over me; the road to heaven would be slick with my own blood.

I
T WOULD BE
nice to expound upon the kinship I discovered between myself and the black Africans my countrymen kept in bondage, but, unfortunately, I made no such discovery. I thought only of my own troubles. I was an empty bucket that needing filling with whatever food or favors the Indians would allow, crippling my way through each day, hoping for extra food or praise or a few easy minutes to myself.

As for escaping, there were eight hundred miles of dry wilderness between the ranchería and civilization. The first time I was caught by the other children. The second time I was caught by Toshaway, who turned me over to his wives. They and their mothers beat me hollow, cut up the soles of my feet, and had a long discussion about blinding me in one eye, and I knew the next time I bucked would be the end of me.

T
O PREPARE A
hide, you stretched out the skin in the grass, hair side down, staking the corners. Then you knelt on the bloody surface, pushing and scraping off the fat and sinew with a piece of blunt bone or metal. If the tool was too sharp or you weren’t careful you would push through to the other side, ruining the hide, for which you would be beaten.

Between scrapings I spread a layer of wood ash so the lye would soften the fat; while that was happening I was sent for more water or wood, or I would skin, bone, and flay out a deer one of the men or boys had dragged in. The only thing I didn’t do was repair or make clothing, though the women would have taught me if they could have—they were always months behind what the men needed: a new pair of moccasins or leggings (one hide), a bearskin robe (two hides), a wolf robe (four hides). The hides had to be cut so the shape of the animal matched the shape of the wearer, and, as it took all day to finish even a single deer or wolf hide, mistakes could not be made.

In addition to making all the tools the band needed—axes, awls, needles, digging sticks, scrapers, knives and utensils—the women also made all the thread, rope, and twine. The band went through miles of it—for tipis and clothing, for saddles and bridles and hobbles, for every tool or weapon they made—everything in their lives was held together by string, which had to be twisted inch by inch. The leaves of a yucca or agave would be soaked or pounded, or the fibers separated from grasses or cedar bark. Once the fibers were loose they were braided. Animal sinews were also saved—tendons from a deer’s ankles were chewed until they split. The sinews along the spine were longer and very easy to work with, but these were in short supply and saved to make weapons, and the women were not allowed to use them.

If you were in a tight spot, cordage could be made from rawhide, but there were better uses for it and it stretched when wet. A hide would be laid flat and a spiral cut into it an inch or two wide, starting from the outside and cutting inward until the entire hide was one long strand. A single lariat required six different strands, though mostly the men made their own lariats, unless a woman was seen sitting with nothing to do.

The Comanches had no patience for the ignorance of their white captives when they themselves had been raised knowing that whether it took a minute or an hour to build a fire or make a weapon or track a man or animal might, at some point, be the difference between living and dying. When there was nothing to do, no one could match them in laziness; otherwise they were careful as goldsmiths. When they looked at a forest they saw each individual plant and knew its name and the seasons they could eat or use it as medicine; they saw the tracks of every living thing that had passed through. Any of them might have been dropped naked upon the earth and within a few days would be living comfortably.

By comparison we were dumb as steers. They could not understand why they had not defeated us. Toshaway always said that white women laid crops of eggs like ducks, which hatched every night, so it didn’t matter how many you killed.

A
S FOR ME,
I dreamed about scraping hides and woke up with the feel of the scraper in my hands. Once a hide was scraped and dried, we took a rawhide bowl and mashed in whatever brains were around, tallow, soap water from yucca (which I had dug up, cut up, carried back to the camp, then pounded and boiled), and maybe some old liver. Bear tallow was used most of the time, and this was the main reason bears were killed. My father and the other frontiersmen considered bear meat and honey the king’s supper, but the Indians would only eat bear if there was no hoofed creature to be found.

As for the hides, if the hair was left on, you tanned one side; if the hair was off, you tanned both sides. Then it was the worst part of the process—two days of kneading and twisting to get the hide broken. The final step with buckskin was to smoke it to make it waterproof, though not if it was for trade.

O
NE DAY IN
August, N
uu
karu caught up to me as I was fetching water. I was happy to see him as he’d been gone most of the summer, and even though we shared a tipi, we hardly got the chance to augur, because the women kept me working from can’t see to can’t see.

He’d come back from his last raid with a scalp, so even though he still looked like a boy, with bony arms and legs, the women now wanted his approval and the men invited him to their gambling. The Comanches had no ceremony for ending boyhood—no vision quests or hooks through the nipples—when you felt like it you started going on raids, watching the horses until gradually you were allowed into the fight.

“It’s women’s work,” he said, by way of greeting me.

I was carrying water up the hill. After I delivered it, I would go dig for potatoes in the mud. “They make me do it,” I said.

“So tell them you won’t.”

“Toshaway will beat me.”

“Definitely not.”

“Then his wives and mother and the neighbor woman will.”

“So what?”

We kept walking.

“What do I say to them?”

“Just stop doing it,” he said. “The rest is just details.”

We continued to climb the hill. The afternoon was cool and the women had not been asking so much of me. I saw no reason to stir the kettle. N
uu
karu must have sensed this, because he turned and punched me suddenly in the groin. I went to my knees.

“For your own good you will give me your full attention now.”

I nodded. It occurred to me that in the old days I would have wanted to kill him; now I just hoped he wouldn’t hit me again.

“Everyone in the world wants to be
N
u
m
u
n
uu
and here it is being given to you, but you are not taking it. When the Indians starve on their reservations, for instance the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Wichita, Shawnee, Seminole, Quapaw, Delaware”—he paused—“even the Apaches and Osages and plenty of Mexicans, they all want to join our band. They leave their reservations, they risk
ooibehkar
u
,
half of them die just trying to find us. And why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because we are free. They speak Comanche before they get here, Tiehteti. They speak their own language and they also speak Comanche. Do you know why?”

I looked after my water jug.

“Because Comanches don’t act like women.”

“I have to get the water,” I said.

“Whatever you want. But soon it’ll be too late and no one will think of you as anything but a
na?raiboo
.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Toshaway’s wives and mother and the neighbor woman were straightening up camp. The men were sitting around the fire, smoking or eating breakfast.

“Get me some water, Tiehteti-taibo.” That was my full name. It meant Pathetic Little White Man. It was not bad as Comanche names went, and I went for the water carrier without thinking about it. Then I felt N
uu
karu’s eyes on me.

“Go on,” said Toshaway’s daughter. She gave N
uu
karu a look; she must have known what was happening. The work that wore me out had equally worn out her mother and grandmother, and if I quit, it would fall to them again.

“I’m not getting any more water,” I said. “
Okwéetuku n
u
miar
u
.”

The neighbor woman, who had a voice like a burro and outweighed me by six or eight stone, picked up a hatchet in one hand and grabbed for my wrist with the other. I lit a shuck between the tipis, dodging around pots and equipment. The men were hooting and finally she threw the hatchet at my head, which, in my best stroke of luck in months, hit handle first. My bell was ringing but she stopped chasing me. She was trying to catch her breath. I slowed to a walk.

“I will kill you, Tiehteti.”

“
Nasiin
u
,” I told her. Piss on yourself.

The men looked in the other direction and began to talk in loud voices about a hunting trip they were planning.

“I’m going to the river,” I repeated. “But I am not getting any more water.”

“In that case fetch some wood,” called Toshaway’s mother. “You don’t have to get water anymore.”

“No,” I said. “I’m done with those things.”

I followed the stream down to the Canadian and sat in the sun. There were elk on the opposite side and Indians a couple of furlongs downstream. I fell asleep awhile and woke up feeling narrow at the equator—I’d left camp before eating breakfast—but I had no knife and all I was wearing was a breechcloth. There were plenty of old mesquite beans, but I wanted meat, so I went into the cane and spent half an hour catching a turtle. Fish were taboo but turtles weren’t. I had nothing to kill him with so I carried him around until I found a good piece of rainbow flint, then stepped on his shell till his head stuck out and cut through his neck with my flint. I sucked down a bit of the blood and it was fishy but not too bad so I drank some more of it and then turned the turtle upside down and sucked him dry.

Then I thought my mother wouldn’t be happy if she saw me drinking turtle blood like a wild Indian. I figured I’d been with the Comanches six months, but I’d had no time to think, just work and sleep, and I wondered if my mind had been rubbed clean. When I thought of my mother I saw a pretty woman’s face, but part of me was not sure it was really her. I forgot about the turtle and sat down. I watched the other Indians downriver. They had a new captive with them, a red Mexican. I waved and they waved back. That made me feel better.

Meanwhile the turtle was still leaking blood. I wondered if N
uu
karu was right or if he had played me for a gump. If the women were allowed to cut me up again—the only fun they ever got to have—it would be better to carry water.

I saw another turtle sunning himself and decided to catch him, then saw two more. After I cut their heads off I had nothing to make a fire. That was fine; I found some dead cedar and shaved off the bark. I found another flint to dig the notch for a fireboard and a short straight stick for the drill. My hands were hard and I got a coal in a few minutes and the tinder caught easily.

When Toshaway’s father rode up I was dozing in the grass with my belly full of turtle. He looked at the empty shells.

“You leave any for me, fat boy?”

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

He sat there on his horse, looking out over the river and thinking about things. “Get on behind me,” he finally said. “You don’t have to worry about the women anymore.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I slept the latest I had in months, waking up to the sound of N
uu
karu and Escuté chattering.

“The white one becomes a man,” said N
uu
karu as I emerged from the tipi. I could not believe how long I’d slept.

“Actually,” said Escuté, “he has become a boy.” They offered me some meat they’d been roasting, and some sumac lemonade, a couple of small potatoes. We sat and smoked.

“What are we doing today?”

“
We
are doing nothing,” said Escuté. “
You
are going out with the other children.”

I looked at them but they were not joking. Being retarded in all things they found important, the men had decided that I was best matched with the eight- and nine-year-olds.

B
Y THE AGE
of ten, shooting a rough bow he made himself, a Comanche child could kill anything smaller than a buffalo. At the Council House Fight in San Antonio, when the great chiefs came in for peace talks and the whites massacred them, an eight-year-old Comanche boy, hearing the news that his people were betrayed, picked up his toy bow and shot the nearest white man through the heart. He was trying to retrieve his arrow when the mob of whites killed him.

The children I was sent to play with were smaller than they would have been if they had grown up among the Anglos, but they’d spent every minute of their short lives riding, shooting, and hunting. They could sit a horse that would have thrown any white man, they could hit each other with blunt arrows at a dead run. There had never been any church or lessons; in fact, nothing had ever been asked of them, except to do what came naturally, which was to be out hunting and tracking, playing at making war. By the time their short hairs came in they would be going on raids to watch the horses, until the practice for making war and the making of war itself had become the same thing.