Philipp Meyer: The Son

When he walked away, he did not look like any Indian I’d ever seen. The aborigines living among the whites were thin, light bodied, and hard wintered. This one was tall and stocky, with a square head and fat nose; he looked more like a Negro than a lathy starving Indian and he walked with his chest out, as if taking everything we owned was his natural right.

There were fifteen or twenty horses outside the gate and as many Indians against our fence, laughing and making jokes. There was no sign of my mother or brother or sister. The Indians were stripped to the waist and covered with paint and designs like they’d escaped from a traveling show; one had painted his face like a skull, another had the same design on his chest.

Some of the Indians were rummaging the house and others rummaging the stables or outbuildings but most were leaning on the fence watching their friends work. All the white men I’d ever seen after a fight were nervous for hours, pacing and talking so fast you couldn’t understand them, but the Indians were bored and yawning like they’d just come back from an evening constitutional, except for the man I’d shot, who was sitting against the house. There was blood on his chest and his mouth was frothing. Maybe he’d jumped sideways when the cap popped — they said the aboriginals had reflexes like deer. His friends saw me staring and one came over and said taibo n uw ukupat u?i, then knocked me in the head.

I had a long dream where I was brought before a man to judge me for my sins. It was Saint Peter, only in the form of the teacher of our school in Bastrop, who had disliked me over all the other students, and I knew I was going to hell.

Then most of the Indians were standing looking at something on the ground. There was a white leg crooked in the air and a man’s bare ass and buckskin leggings on top. I realized it was my mother and by the way the man was moving and the bells on his legs were jingling I knew what he was doing to her. After a while he stood up and retied his breechcloth. Another jumped right into place. I had just gotten to my feet when my ears started ringing and the ground came up and I thought I was dead for certain.

A while later I heard noises again. I could see the second group of Indians a little farther down the fence but now I could hear my sister’s voice whimpering. The Indians were doing the same to her as my mother.

FINALLY I REALIZED I was in bed. I was having a dream. It was nice until I woke up all the way and heard war whoops and saw I was still in the yard. My mother was naked and crawling away from the Indians; she had reached the porch and was trying to make it to the door. Inside the house, someone was pounding on the piano and there was something waving out from my mother’s back that I realized was an arrow.

The Indians must have decided they did not want her in the house because they began shooting more arrows into her. She kept crawling. Finally one of them walked up to her, put his foot between her shoulders and pressed her to the ground. He gathered up her long hair as if he was fixing to wash it, then pulled it tight with one hand and drew his butcher knife. My mother had not made a sound since I woke up, even with the arrows sticking out of her, but she began to scream then, and I saw another Indian walking up to her with my father’s broadax.

I had been puddling and moaning but that is when I dried up for good. I did not look at my mother and I might have heard a sound or I might not have. I tried to find Martin and Lizzie. Where Lizzie had been I made out a small white patch and then another and I realized it was her and that she was lying where they had left her. Later, when they led us out, I saw a body with its breasts cut off and its bowels draped around. I knew it was my sister but she no longer looked like herself.

I was dragged over to the fence next to my brother. He was crying and going quiet and crying again. Meanwhile nothing was coming out of me. I gathered myself up to look over at my mother; she was on her belly with the arrows sticking out of her. The Indians were going in and out of the house. My brother was sitting there looking at things. I began to choke and air my paunch and when I was done he said: “I thought you were dead. I was watching you for a long time.”

It felt like a wedge had been stuck between my eyes.

“I was thinking Daddy might come home, but now I think we’ll be miles away before anyone knows what happened.”

A young Indian saw us talking and threatened us with his knife to shut up, but after he walked off Martin said: “Lizzie was hit in the stomach.”

I knew what he was getting at and I thought about how he’d sat there while our mother unbarred the door, sat there when I tried to get the Indian out of the doorway, sat with a loaded rifle while Indians were shooting into the house. But my head hurt too much to say any of it. I saw spots again.

“Did you see what they did to her and Momma?”

“A little,” I said.

The Comanches went in and out of the house, taking what they wanted and throwing the rest into a pile in the yard. Someone was attacking our piano with an ax. I was hoping the Indians would kill us or that I would pass out again. My brother was staring at my sister. The Indians were carrying out stacks of books that I thought were meant for the fire but instead they put them into their bolsas. Later they would use the pages to stuff their shields, which were two layers of buffalo neckhide. When stuffed with paper the shields would stop almost any bullet.

The mattresses were dragged out and cut open and the wind caught the feathers and spread them over the yard like snow. My mother was in the way. The feathers were falling over her. The ants had found us but we barely noticed; my brother kept staring at my sister.

“You shouldn’t look at her anymore.”

“I want to,” he said.

WHEN I WOKE up it was hot. The pile of everything the Indians didn’t want, mostly smashed furniture, had been lit. An agarito was cutting into me. The fire got bigger and I could see into the shadows where our dogs were lying dead and I wondered if the Indians meant to throw us into the fire. They were known for strapping people to wagon wheels and lighting them. Then I was looking down on myself as you would a lead soldier. Interested in what I might do but not really caring.

“I can already shimmy my hands,” I told my brother.

“For what?” he said.

“We should stay ready.”

He was quiet. We watched the fire.

“Are you thirsty?”

“Of course I’m thirsty,” he said.

The fire was getting bigger and the moss in the branches above us was flaring and smoke was coming off the bark. The embers of our own burned things were singeing our faces and hair; I watched the sparks climb up. When I looked over at my brother he was covered in ash like a person who had been dead a long time and I thought of how my mother and sister had looked when they sat together on the bed.

The Indians brought all my father’s tools to be examined by firelight and I decided to remember everything they were taking: horseshoes, hammers, nails, barrel hoops, the bucksaw, the broadax and felling ax, the barking iron, an adze and froe; all the bits, bridles, saddles and stirrups, other tack; my brother’s Kentucky rifle. My Jaegerbuchse they decided was too heavy and smashed against the side of the house. They took our knives, files, picks and awls, bits for drilling, lead bullets, bullet molds, powder kegs, percussion caps, a horsehair rope hanging in the dogtrot. Our three milch cows heard the commotion and wandered up to the house for a feed. The Indians shot them with arrows. They were in high spirits. Burning logs were pulled from the fire and carried inside the house; people were tying their bundles, checking their cinches, making ready to leave. Smoke was coming from the doors and windows and then someone untied my hands and stood me up.