Philipp Meyer - The Son

It was Toshaway and Pizon. I hadn’t heard them come up.

“ Ku?e tsasimap u. ” Toshaway nodded at the Delaware.

“Do it quickly,” said Pizon. “Before he dies.”

The Delaware was lying on his side and I rolled him onto his belly. I put my foot on his back and grabbed his hair and he raised his arm to stop me, but I cut all the way around. He was slapping at my hand the whole time.

“Snap it off,” called Pizon. “One big motion.”

The scalp came off like a cracking branch and the Delaware lost his fight. I walked a few yards and looked at it: it could have been anything, a piece of buffalo or calf hide. The sun was coming up and my leg began to hurt: I’d cut myself on my own arrow spikes where they’d come through the Delaware’s back. He gave a last moaning rattle, and, looking at him there on the ground, stuck through from every direction with my spikes and the grass matted with his blood, it was like a haze clearing from my mind, like I’d been dunked again, like I’d been chosen by God Himself. I ran over to Toshaway and Pizon and grabbed them.

“Fucking white boy,” said Pizon. But he was smiling as well. He turned to Toshaway. “I guess I owe you a horse.”

THERE WAS A big dance when we got back, eight scalps had been collected, but before it began, Pizon told the story of how I’d gone after the Delaware alone, like a proper Comanche, with nothing but my bow, and he said we know what a great talent Tiehteti is with his bow. There was general laughter, which annoyed me. But this is serious, he continued, this was not some filthy N um uT uuka, but a warrior, and Tiehteti’s only weapon was one he cannot yet use from his horse. And to be shot in the heart, only to have the arrow refuse to go in? What does that say about Tiehteti?

For the rest of the night the medicine man who’d cleansed me of smallpox told everyone that he had given me his bear medicine, as only that could have stopped the arrow, but no one believed him. I knew the Delaware was almost dead when I reached him, that he had taken a ball in the lungs and been thrown from his horse onto the rocks, that if I had caught him five or ten minutes earlier he would have driven his arrow to my spine. That even in his final condition, if the buffalo-hide strap of my quiver hadn’t been hanging just so, the spike would have reached my heart. But by the end of the night those details meant nothing, and this was the point of the scalp dance, we were eternal, the Chosen People, and our names would ring on in the night, long after we’d vanished from the earth.

SOMETIME BEFORE MORNING I opened my eyes. I was lying in the yard of our old house and there was an Indian standing over me. I was watching the arrows go in but decided not to believe what I was seeing; I remembered I’d hit my head and was probably confused. The Comanche was young and there was something familiar about him and after a time I began to recognize his face.

WHEN MORNING CAME I could still feel the hollow where the arrows had gone. The sun had risen and was shining directly through the open door of the tipi and N uukaru and Escuté were outside smoking. I went and sat with them. The three boys who had taken me hunting, all of whom were still better hunters, riders, and bowmen than I was, came over and said hello, but didn’t sit — I was now their superior — and then N uukaru waved them away. “You’re done with those kids,” he said.

Escuté called his mother to bring us something to eat and then there were sugarberry cakes, which were hackberries and tallow mashed together and cooked over a fire. N uukaru and I thanked her. Escuté just took the food and ate. He must have seen the way I looked at him because he said: “We could get killed every time we leave camp. They all know this. Half of us will be dead by the time we reach forty winters.”

A short time later Fat Wolf, Toshaway’s eldest son, came by with his wife.

“So this is the famous white boy?”

Escuté said, “You’re a man now, Tiehteti, and I’m sure Fat Wolf appreciates the respect but you don’t have to stare at the dirt.”

Fat Wolf leaned over and gripped my chin, then his hand softened. “Don’t listen to my asshole brother. I always put him in a bad mood.” He pointed over his shoulder. “This is Hates Work. Obviously you’ve noticed her before, but as you are a man now, you may talk to her, and take note of her unfortunately soft hands.”

Hates Work, who was standing a ways back from her husband, smiled and waved, but didn’t say anything. She was by far the most beautiful Indian I’d ever seen, in her early twenties with clear skin and shining hair and a good figure; it was widely thought a tragedy that she would soon be ruined by children. Her father had asked fifty horses as a bride-price, which was outrageous according to N uukaru, but Toshaway, because he spoiled his sons terribly, as anyone spending time with Escuté might notice, had given the fifty horses and the marriage had been approved.

Fat Wolf himself was as tall as his father, but while his face was young, he already had the thin arms and heavy paunch of a much older man. He looked as Toshaway might if Toshaway had stopped hunting and raiding. I nodded at Hates Work and tried not to show too much interest.

Fat Wolf had lifted my poultice and was touching me gently, the open skin and bone, the cut still weeping. “Motherfucker,” he said. “I have never seen a wound like that on a living man.” He looked me up and down. “My father talked about you, but he likes everyone and we thought he was going soft. Now we see he was right. It’s no small thing.” He took me by the shoulders; he was a very touchy Indian. “You ever need anything, you come to me. And don’t hang around my brother too much, he’s a bitter little fuck.” Then he walked away with his pretty wife.

“What a fat fuck,” said his brother, when the pair were out of earshot.

“Escuté has been hoping that Fat Wolf will send her his way, but Fat Wolf is not interested in sharing yet.”

“I get plenty of tai?i on my own. I don’t need a handout from the fat one.” He looked at N uukaru: “You, on the other hand…”

“I get plenty.”

“From old women, maybe.”

“Like your mother.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” said Escuté.

It was quiet. I’d invented a number of stories about the various girls I’d been with, but N uukaru and Escuté knew better than to ask.

AFTER LUNCH I went to the stream to clean my trophy. I scraped the inner skin to remove all the meat and fat, rinsing it in the water, rubbing it with a coarse stone and rinsing it again, teasing off the silverskin with my fingers, repeating until the inner scalp was white and full and soft. Then I took a wooden basin, filled it with water and yucca soap, and carefully washed the hair, separating the strands, trying not to pull too hard, as if the Delaware might still feel what I was doing, teasing out each burr and grass seed, the dandruff and dried blood. I rewove his braids, replacing all the beads, which were turquoise and red glass, in the same places he had put them. I made a paste of brain and tallow and rubbed it into the inner skin, allowing it to dry and then rubbing in more of the paste. I stretched it on a willow hoop to dry, then carried it back to the tipi to hang in the shade.

THAT NIGHT WE stayed up late talking. I’d hung the scalp above my pallet and I watched it turn all night in the warm air from the fire. The embers went dark and we all drifted off and there was a rustling at the tipi flap and the sound of someone trying to come inside and I heard the other two wake up as well. By her hair I could tell the visitor was a woman, but otherwise it was too dark.

“If you are here for Escuté, I am over here.”