Philipp Meyer - The Son

THE 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 uukaru’s eyes on me.

“Go on,” said Toshaway’s daughter. She gave N uukaru 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 umiar 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 uukaru 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.”

THE NEXT MORNING I slept the latest I had in months, waking up to the sound of N uukaru and Escuté chattering.

“The white one becomes a man,” said N uukaru 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.

BY 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.

They were also encouraged to steal, though only if the owner of the item were present, and only if the item were returned. Toshaway’s butcher knife was taken from his sheath as he ate lunch, his pistol was stolen from under his robe. The whites knew that an Indian could steal your horse while you were sleeping, even if you’d tied the reins around your wrist, and for a Comanche to say “that man is the best horse thief in our tribe” was nearly the highest compliment that could be paid, a way of saying that a person could walk into the heart of an enemy camp without being seen and, horses being common currency among both whites and Indians, was likely to become rich. The Comanches were just as happy to steal all the horses of a group of Rangers or settlers as they were to actually kill them, knowing that the buffalo wolves, mountain lions, or sparse water would eventually do them in.

AFTER A FEW weeks of instruction I was considered ready to go hunting with the bow, and so three other boys and I went down to the canebrakes near the river and sat waiting a long time. There was nothing moving and one of the boys took a section of reed and put it in his mouth, which, when he blew through it, made a sound like a fawn in distress. Within a few moments we heard stamping, then nothing, and then more stamping. Then I saw a doe walking slowly through the tall grass and blowdown. She pricked her ears and looked straight at me and I knew I couldn’t draw the bow without her seeing me. Not to mention arrows wouldn’t cut through the frontal bones, only the ribs.

The ten-year-old made a noise with his mouth that seemed to come from the other side of the thicket. The doe turned her head, but her body was still facing us.

“Now would be a good time to shoot,” he whispered.

“But the chest…”

“Shoot her in the neck.”

“Remember to aim low so she ducks into it.”

I drew the bow and began to feel better about everything — the deer still hadn’t moved — but at the sound of the string she crouched and took a leap. By a miracle the arrow went into her, but it only cut muscle. Then she was running at full speed with her flag up.