Michael Blake: The Holy Road

Directly below him, on the third and highest work level, two big white men waited on an expansive metal floor at the foot of another slide. No white at all could be seen on these men's clothes. Though they wore extra covering, every inch of their attire was covered with blood, as was the floor they stood on.

The man holding a thin-bladed, slightly curved knife stared up at two workers looming near the top of the slide. He nodded and, following a clank of metal and a thump, a living pig, its piercing screams echoing off the walls, slid across the floor to where the two big white men were waiting. Grabbing the crazed animal by its ears, one of the white men jerked the animal's head back while the other's knife sliced through its throat. Jets of blood struck the men's chests, and a moment later, they were guiding the still-bucking body to the slide that would carry it to the disembowelers.

Ten Bears saw the process repeated again and was astonished at how quickly and smoothly the white men worked. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings and its nature, to the stench of so much blood and flesh, the earsplitting cries of their victims, the eerie light and barely breathable air.

A third pig tumbled down the chute, but as the man who held its ears tried to stretch its throat for the knife the animal unexpectedly threw its head back with such power that its human captor was knocked to the floor, losing his grip.

Ten Bears heard sudden laughter and turned to see that the man who had brought him up the stairs was laughing. He shouted something our and the man who had fallen looked up from the floor and made what Ten Bears took to be a sign of anger with one of his fingers.

The man's partner had caught the pig and was still trying to restrain it when the one who had put up his finger wrathfully pulled another knife from its place on the wall.

The laughter next to Ten Bears grew louder as the angry white man rushed across the floor. Bellowing words of rage at the struggling pig, he drove his knife into the animal's face. Then he stabbed and slashed until blood seemed to be squirting everywhere.

For some reason the man was treating the animal like an enemy and it was then that Ten Bears' head began to reel. Sound and smell and sight seemed to merge as he pushed away from the catwalk rail and followed the tops of his moccasins down the stairs.

He hardly glanced at Colonel Bascom or Interpreter McIntosh when he got outside. He tried to keep his eyes on his feet as they walked past the pens, for every time he looked up the same thing would happen. The faces of the animals, the tint of their coats, the heaving of their nostrils — all that he saw would swirl together like multicolored ripples of grease on the surface of a boiling cook pot.

As they drove away, Ten Bears asked if they could make the horse go faster and when the breeze began to pass over his face he could see clearly again.

He spoke only once more on the trip back to town, and that was in answer to a question from Colonel Bascom. The colonel recognized that the old man was shaken, and, certain that any Indian was inured to the sight of blood and death, assumed that he was overwhelmed by yet another achievement of modern civilization.

"You have seen how the white man makes meat,” the colonel stated rather smugly. "What do you think?”

Ten Bears never looked at Colonel Bascom, directing his reply instead to the space in front of his face.

"I do not believe it," he said.

As he sat talking with Kicking Bird that evening, Ten Bears tried to describe the way the white men made meat, but what he had seen so violated the basic tenets of his life that no portrayal seemed adequate.

Kicking Bird listened to Ten Bears' description in horror. To see blood, to smell death, to kill an enemy without mercy were aspects of life with which he was intimate, but hearing what had gore on in the white man slaughterhouse frightened him, and when Ten Bears told him about the choppers he had to stop the old man.

"They don't use all of the animal?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"Maybe half. They throw the rest away."

"You saw this? "

"Yes, I saw it. They didn't say any prayers, either."

"No. And one of the animals was attacked by one of the white men. . like it was an enemy."

Kicking Bird could not make sense of such a thing and the thought crossed his mind that Ten Bears might be afflicted with some sort of dementia. People of great age were often invaded by transforming spirits.

"The white man must have been insane," Kicking Bird theorized.

"I'm certain of that," the old man retorted. “There's no understanding this white man's holy road. I wouldn't be surprised to see Comanches in those pens next."

"The white people do not eat the flesh of other people, Grandfather."

"How can that be known? The river of excrement was not known. The place they make meat was not known. I don't care to find out any more about the whites. I want to go home."

"We are meeting the Great White Father tomorrow."

"Of course we are meeting him. I will sit with him and hear his words. But I will have nothing to say. I want to go home."

The delegation arrived at the Great White Father's residence in the early afternoon of the next day. The temperature had plunged overnight and the bundled warriors peered out from the hoods of blankets as they drove up, uniformly impressed with the size of the place called the White House. Various dignitaries fell into step with the party as it made its way through the vast rooms and corridors, all of them appointed with splendorous articles of white culture.

The men from the plains were at last shown into the enormous room where they were to council with the Great White Father. Its center was dominated by a table the length of several horses and surrounded by the things called chairs. Above the table were the sparkling glass trees whites liked to attach to their ceilings, and at either end of the room huge fires were blazing.

The warriors were seated at the far end of the table. Ten Bears was given the honor of the biggest chair, which faced the one standing empty at the opposite end, the one reserved for the Great White Father.

Many civilians and a few high-ranking soldiers took the remaining places. A dozen of the white man's black-skinned slaves were posted at various points on the perimeter of the room, and shortly after all was in readiness, the Great White Father himself, a covey of assistants traveling in his wake, entered the room. The whites rose from their seats, but the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, thinking that the rising was some kind of occult facet of encounters between the whites and their chief, stayed seated.

The Great White Father was not quite what they expected, for despite the hair on his face being extraordinarily thick and his eyes being unusually small, he looked about the same as most other white men. But it was clear that he possessed incredible power. With a simple lifting of his hand he induced the other white men to resume their seats, and when he began to speak, his followers leaned forward as if their lives depended on his words.

At the direction of the Great White Father the members of the delegation were made to stand up and arrange themselves in a line against a bank of windows. The Great White Father then started down the line, taking each man's hand and saying a few words of welcome. Over the men's necks he draped one of the heavy peace medals, each bearing a likeness of himself. When he reached Kicking Bird and saw that the Comanche was already wearing a medal stamped with the face of one of his predecessors, the Great White Father seemed especially pleased.

"Here is a man who knows peace," he said.

"I have always loved peace," Kicking Bird confirmed.