Philipp Meyer - The Son

“I know what you are thinking, Tiehteti. Everyone will know and the penalties will be severe. More than you think, probably.”

“I’m not thinking anything,” I said. “He’s killing our buffalo.”

“All right,” he said. “All right, Tiehteti.”

PRAIRIE FLOWER WAS on fire that night. I did my best but after the second time I was less interested. She was rubbing herself against me and finally I stopped her.

“Usually I can’t get rid of N uukaru and Escuté,” she said. They were out on a raid, so we had the tipi to ourselves. “But now the one time I could use them. . ”

“I’m sure others are still awake, if that’s what you really want.”

“You know I don’t.” She cuddled against me. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“It’s the white man, isn’t it?”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” she said. “I apologize for my horniness.”

“Just give me a minute.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I’ll try,” I said. But I couldn’t.

IN THE MORNING, just after breakfast, they cut off his hands and feet because the nerves were all dead, and when the screaming began to abate, they moved the fire under the stumps where the nerves were still fresh. Fewer people were watching now, and though the sound of the man’s screaming filled the camp, it had already started to seem normal.

Toshaway told me this had once been a regular event, but over the years, as they began to raid farther and farther away from camp, the risks of bringing back a full-grown male prisoner just to torture had not been worth it.

“I am going out to hunt,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

WHEN YOU DON’T want to see snakes you find them everywhere and when you want one you can’t find it. Certain men milked rattlesnakes for war arrows, but I fumbled my equipment so much I had not wanted to risk it. Still, I had milked snakes, and after spending most of the day looking, I finally found a big w uts utsuki late in the afternoon, on a high rock in the sun. When he had stopped thrashing I cut off his head and wrapped it in a piece of buckskin.

The second night, the buffalo hunter was given broth and more water. By then he had only fifty or so fans, sitting around eating and watching him. I went to bed like normal and then waited until I couldn’t hear any more talking. The night was overcast and nearly black, which I took as a sign. I made my way quietly to where he was staked out.

He made a sound when I approached; he might have been saying please; he might have been saying anything at all.

It was a stupid plan; it was dark, there were small sharp teeth, and it was messy, but I used the back of my knife to milk the snake’s head over his mouth. It was only a drop or two but he began to kick. “Let it pass through you,” I said. “You don’t have to hold on to it.” I made a cut on his throat and milked the rest of the venom into that. I could tell I’d nicked my hand.

His breathing was already starting to change.

I walked away and washed myself in the stream.

When I got back to my tipi, Prairie Flower was in my bed, as excited as the night before.

When we were done, she said: “Where were you?”

“Just walking.”

“You were wet,” she said.

My arm was tingling. Finally I asked her: “That didn’t bother you, what they did to that man?”

It came out louder than I wanted.

“It’s just because he is white.”

“I don’t know.”

“It is not good to discuss this with anyone.”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t.”

“Even me,” she said.

It was quiet.

“I know you’re not weak. Everyone knows you’re not weak.” She was measuring her words. “Toshaway says you’ll be chief one day. They’re making you a buffalo robe, but it was supposed to be a surprise.”

“I was just asking how you felt.”

“They’re making a robe that shows how you killed the Delaware, how your magic protected you from his arrows, and then how you saved Toshaway from the soldiers. It’s supposed to be a surprise, though.” Then she said, “That man was white. You need to think about that.”

“We didn’t do those things where I grew up.”

She rolled away. “You know I was not always Kotsoteka,” she said.

“No.”

“When I was t uep ur u, maybe six years old, the Texans attacked my band. My brother made my sister and me go into the river and swim away. They shot my brother’s head off in the water, and they shot at me but missed. The next day my sister and I went back to our camp and found my mother, along with one hundred other dead women and dead old men and dead children. The Texans had cut off my mother’s head and put it on a stick in the ground and they had taken a t utsuwai and put it all the way up between her legs, and there was so much blood we knew they had done it while she was still alive. But there was no blood around her neck so we knew that was not done until after. That is why I grew up Pena t uhka but now I am Kotsoteka.”

“The same thing happened to my mother and sister,” I told her. “And my brother.”

“Tiehteti,” she said, “this cannot happen.” She reached for her things and began to dress and I decided I didn’t care. And of course she was right: she was allowed to talk about her family, I was not allowed to talk about mine, because unless your family was Comanche, it was as if they had never existed.

“You can stop me if you want,” she said.

I didn’t say anything and I heard her make a little sob and then I grabbed her and pulled her back down.

“I won’t talk about it anymore,” I said.

She shrugged. She slipped out of her clothes but we just lay against each other and eventually she fell asleep.

I stayed up thinking, trying to figure if the tingling in my arm was spreading to my side or if I was imagining it. Then I was thinking about my father. In the early forties, there had been so few victories over the Comanches that when they occurred, the news spread to the entire state. In all those years there had only been one fight in which so many Comanches had died, which was Moore’s expedition on the Colorado. Moore had claimed that over one hundred fifty braves had been killed, but there had always been talk that it was mostly women and children, that the braves had been out hunting when the raiders hit the camp. My father had ridden with Moore, and sometimes talked about the raid, but no differently than he’d talked about anything else. It was just something that had happened. Little Indians became big Indians. Everyone knew it.

Prairie Flower kissed me in her sleep. “You are good,” she murmured. “You are honest and good and you are not afraid of anything.”

THE NEXT MORNING the buffalo hunter was dead. His face and neck were bloated, but no one seemed to notice. Mostly they were disappointed. It was another sign the old ways were being lost: in the past, a captive might have been kept alive two or three days longer.

But if anyone suspected me, nothing was said. Prairie Flower and I spent every night together and Toshaway said if I wanted to borrow some horses to offer as a bride-price, they were free for the taking. He cleared his throat then, and mentioned, in a quieter tone, that fifty horses would be far too high. Times had changed.

I was given the buffalo robe they’d made for me, and my own tipi as well. It was turning out to be a good year. Fall had come and the rains were heavy and the heat had left the plains. The nights were crisp and the days sunny, the hunting good, and I began to make my plans with Prairie Flower.

A FEW WEEKS after the buffalo hunter died, people began to get sick.