Philipp Meyer - The Son

“That is not what happened to her,” I said. “A lot of the braves wanted to marry her but she wouldn’t allow them. She was kept separate from the men.”

The judge was giving me a strange look.

“I guess there was one young chief who wanted to marry her but he was killed in a battle with the army and maybe that broke her heart.”

“Was she ever attached to this chief, matrimonially or otherwise?”

“No,” I said. “The Comanches are real strict about that stuff.”

“Poor girl,” said the reporter. “She might have ended up a queen.”

“Probably would have.”

The judge was staring at me, as if trying to deduce why I would tell such an outrageous lie.

“I guess that proves the red man can be noble if he wishes it,” said the reporter from the Daily Times . He looked at the judge. “Contrary to what I am told.”

The judge didn’t say anything.

“It is as plain as day,” said the reporter. “If the Indians were left in peace…” He shrugged. “There would not be any trouble with them.”

“May I ask where are you from?”

“New York City.”

“I know that, but what tribe are you from? The Senecas? The Cayugas?”

The reporter shook his head.

“Or perhaps you are Erie, or Mohawk, or Mohican, or Montauk or Shinnecock, or Delaware or Oneida or Onondaga. Or, my favorite, Poospatuck? I suppose they are your neighbors. Do you attend their scalp dances?”

“Come off it,” said the reporter.

“There are no Indians left in your part of the country because you killed them all. So we find it interesting you have such a fascination with making sure we treat ours humanely. As if, unlike the savages your grandfather wiped out, ours are thoughtful and kind.”

“And yet look at this woman. She was taken as a prisoner, but not mistreated.”

The judge began to speak, then thought better of it. After a time, he said: “So it seems.”

Two weeks later, Ingrid Goetz was traveling east with that same reporter. I never saw or heard from her again.

AROUND THAT SAME time Judge Black came to me and told me my father was dead. He had been killed somewhere near the border, riding with a Ranger company. A woman claiming to be his widow, who had seen the announcement of my return in the newspaper, had written the judge and offered to let me stay with her.

From what anyone knew, my father had signed back with the Rangers after coming home to find his house burned and his family dead or missing, and while he had survived his first two years, he had been killed the third. The Texas Rangers in those days had a 50 percent fatality rate per tour; they lay buried all over the state, three or four to a grave. My father had been killed by Mexicans. That was all anyone knew.

I took my bow and a pair of trousers the judge had bought for me, so I would not be mistaken for an Indian, and went walking by the river. I expected to blubber, but nothing came out, and then I wasn’t sure if I was betraying Toshaway or not and I decided to stop thinking about it. That night I had a dream in which my father and I were standing together by the old house.

“You couldn’t have caught us,” I was telling him. “No one could have.”

But then he was gone and I was not sure if I was saying that to him or to myself.

THE JUDGE CLAIMED it was no problem but I could tell I was disturbing his household, as his three daughters had taken to painting their faces and making war whoops and practicing their ululations. His wife suspected this had something to do with me. She was the type who liked saving people but she had so many rules I couldn’t keep them straight.

I took to excusing myself after breakfast and spending the day along the river, looking for things to shoot. The judge made me promise to wear the white man’s clothing. He was worried I’d be killed by a citizen.

I was careful to hunt the birds I knew his wife liked and one afternoon I returned and laid out four ducks and a pheasant for the servants to pluck.

“Good day at work, I see.” The judge was sitting on the gallery, reading a book.

“Yessir.”

“It will be difficult to get you into a proper school, won’t it?”

I nodded.

“I have always found it interesting that white children take so quickly to Indian ways, while Indian children, when brought to be raised in white families, never take to it at all. Not that you are a child.”

“No sir.”

“Of course there is no doubt that the Indian lives closer to the earth and the natural gods. There is simply no question.” He closed his book. “Unfortunately there is no more room for that kind of living, Eli. Your and my ancestors departed from it the moment they buried a seed in the ground and ceased to wander like the other creatures. There can be no turning back from that.”

“I don’t think I’m going to school,” I said.

“Well, if you stay around here, at some point you will have to. Especially in m’lady’s house. It’s not quite proper to have wild Indians sleeping under one’s roof.”

I considered pointing out that I had two scalps under my belt, that I was a better hunter, tracker, and horseman than any white man in town. The idea of putting me in a school, with children, was ridiculous. But instead I said: “Well, maybe I should go check in with my father’s new wife.” She lived in Bastrop, which had never really settled up.

“No hurry,” he said. “I enjoy your company. But even there, if you want to have a future, you’ll have to acquire some education, however painful that might be.”

“I could sign with the Rangers right now,” I said.

“Of course. But I think it might be in you to do something more important than living among outlaws and mercenaries.”

I got sore at this but kept quiet. I tried to consider by what measure I might be thought to need further education. It was just that the whites were crazy for rules. And yet they were in charge. And I was white myself.

One of the Negroes brought us cold tea.

“Something’s been bothering me,” he said. “Ingrid Goetz wasn’t really treated any differently than any other captive, was she?”

“She was treated just as you thought she was.”

“So you made that story up to protect her?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Glad to see your time with the savages has left your humanity intact, Master McCullough.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“One other thing.”

I nodded.

“M’lady’s favorite Persian cat is missing and she is worried you might have had something to do with it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“How are the Indians on cats?”

“I never saw one. Plenty of dogs, though.”

“They eat the dogs, don’t they?”

“That’s the Shoshones,” I said. “A dog or coyote is sacred to a Comanche. You would be cursed.”

“But they do eat human beings occasionally?”

“That’s the Tonkawas,” I said.

“Never the Comanches.”

“A Comanche who ate a man would be killed by the tribe immediately, because supposedly it becomes an addiction.”

“Interesting,” he said. He was scratching his chin. “And this Sun Dance they all talk about?

“That’s the Kiowas,” I said. “We never did that.”

SHORTLY AFTER INGRID left, two more captives, sisters from Fredericksburg, were brought in by traders. There was a big fuss until people got a look at them. One had her nose cut off. The other seemed normal but her mind was gone. There was a big announcement in the paper but no one knew what to do with them; they were not talkative and very upsetting to be around so they ended up living in the spare house of the minister, behind the church. I went and visited them at the judge’s request, to try to communicate with them, but as soon as I spoke to them in Comanche, they didn’t want anything to do with me. They both drowned themselves a few weeks later.