Philipp Meyer: The Son

I felt guilty but that did not stop me from eating my share. My mother did not feel guilty at all. She wished for more wine. Everyone was falling asleep.

I carried the ham bone out to the springhouse, then sat watching the stars. I had my own names for them — the buck, the rattler, the running man — but my brother convinced me to use Ptolemy’s, which did not make any sense. Draco looks like a snake, not a dragon. Ursa Major looks like a man running; there is not a bear anywhere in it. But my brother could not abide anything so tainted with common sense and thus my effort to name the heavens was aborted.

I put the horses in the stable, barred the door from the inside, and climbed out through the gap in the eaves. It would take any Indians a while to get at them. The horses seemed calm, which was a good sign, as they could smell Indians better than the dogs.

By the time I got back inside, my mother and sister had retired to my parents’ canopy bed and my brother was lying in my sister’s cot. Usually my brother and I slept in the room across the dogtrot, but I let him be. After gathering my rifle, war bag, and boots to the foot of the bed, I spit into the last candle and climbed under the covers with my brother.

AROUND MIDNIGHT I heard our dogs rucking up a chorus. I had not been sleeping well anyway so I got up to check the porthole, worried my mother or sister would see what was sticking up under my nightshirt.

Which I forgot about. There were a dozen men near our fence and more in the shadows near the road and still more in our side yard. I heard a dog yelp and then our smallest, a fyce named Perdida, went running off into the brush. She was hunched like a gut-shot deer.

“Everyone get the hell up,” I said. “Get up, Momma. Get everyone up.”

The moon was high and it might as well have been daylight. The Indians led our three horses out of the yard and down the hill. I wondered how they’d figured their way into the stable. Our bulldog was following a tall brave around like they were best friends.

“Move over,” said my brother.

He and my mother and sister had gotten out of bed and were both standing behind me.

“There’s a lot of Indians.”

“It’s probably Rooster Joe and the other Tonks,” said my brother.

I let him push me out of the way, then went to the fire and poked it so we would have light. Since statehood we’d had good Indian years; most of the U.S. Army had been stationed in Texas to watch the frontier. I wondered where they were. I knew I should load all the guns, then remembered I had already done it. A rhyme came into my head, buffalo grip, barlow blade, best damn knife that was ever made . I knew what would happen — the Indians would knock on the door, we would not let them in, and they would try to break in until they got bored. Then they would set fire to the house and shoot us as we came out.

“Martin?” said my mother.

“He’s right. There are at least two dozen.”

“Then it’s whites,” said my sister. “It’s some gang of horse thieves.”

“No, it’s definitely Indians.”

I got my rifle and sat down in a corner facing the door. It was shadows and dim red light. I wondered if I would go to hell. My brother was pacing and my mother and sister had sat down on their bed. My mother was brushing my sister’s hair saying, Shush now, Lizzie, everything will be fine. In the dimness their eyes were empty sockets like the buzzards had already found them. I looked the other way.

“Your rifle has a nipple on it,” I told my brother, “and so do the pistols.”

He shook his head.

“If we put up a fight, they might just be happy with the horses.”

I could tell he didn’t agree but he went to the corner and took up his squirrel gun, feeling the nipple for a percussion cap.

“I already capped it,” I repeated.

“Maybe they’ll think we’re not home,” said my sister. She looked to my brother but he said, “They can see we have a fire going, Lizzie.”

We could hear the Indians clanging things around in my father’s metal shop, talking in low voices. My mother got up and put a chair in front of the door and stood on it. There was another gun port up high and she removed the board and put her face to it: “I only see seven.”

“There are at least thirty,” I told her.

“Daddy will be following them,” said my sister. “He’ll know they’re here.”

“Maybe when he sees the flames,” said my brother.

“They’re coming.”

“Get down from there, Mammy.”

“Not so loud,” said my sister.

Someone kicked the door and my mother nearly fell off her perch. Salir, salir. There was pounding. Spanish was the language most of the wild tribes spoke, if they spoke anything but Indian. I thought the door might stop a few shots at best and I motioned again for my mother to get down.

Tenemos hambre. Nos dan los alimentos.

“That is ridiculous,” said my brother. “Who would believe that?”

There was a long quiet time and then Mother looked at us and said, in her schoolteacher voice: “Eli and Martin, please put your guns on the floor.” She began to remove the bar from the door and I realized that everything they ever said about women was true — they had no common sense and you could not trust them.

“Do not open that door, Momma.

“Grab her,” I told Martin. But he didn’t move. I saw the bar lift and propped the rifle on my knee. The moonlight was coming through the cracks like a white fire but my mother didn’t notice; she set the bar aside like she was welcoming an old friend, like she’d been expecting this from the day we were born.

IT WAS SAID in the newspapers that mothers on the frontier saved their last bullets for their own children, so they would not be taken by the heathens, but you did not hear of anyone doing it. In fact it was the opposite. We all knew I was of prime age — the Indians would want me alive. My brother and sister might have been slightly old, but my sister was pretty and my brother looked younger than he really was. Meanwhile my mother was almost forty. She knew exactly what they would do to her.

The door flung open and two men tackled her. A third man stood behind them in the doorway, squinting into the darkness of the house.

When my shot hit, he windmilled an arm and fell backward. The other Indians sprinted out and I yelled for my brother to shut the door but he didn’t move. I ran over to shut it myself but the dead Indian was lying across the sill. I was grabbing for his feet, intending to pull him in and clear the doorway, when he kicked me under the jaw.

When I came to there were trees waving in the moonlight and one loud noise after another. Indians were standing on either side of the doorway, leaning to shoot into the room, then ducking back around the corner. My sister said, Martin, I think they’ve shot me . My brother was just sitting there. I thought he’d taken a ball. The Indians took a break for the powder smoke to thin so I jerked the rifle from his hand, checked that the hammer was cocked, and was swinging it toward the Indians when my mother stopped me.

Then I was on my stomach; at first I thought the house had fallen, but it was a man. I grabbed at his neck but my head kept chunking against the floor. Then I was outside under the trees.

I tried to stand but was kicked and tried again and was kicked again. Now a man’s feet, now the ground next to them. Now a pair of legs, covered in buckskin. I bit his foot and was kicked a third time and then my hair was being pulled like it would come out at the roots. I waited for the cutting.

When I opened my eyes there was a big red face; he smelled like onions and a dirty outhouse and he showed me with the knife that I would behave or he would cut my head off. Then he lashed my hands with a piggin string.