The Son

  “And so when my cousin was killed, I decided I would come back. I crossed the river and reached our pastures and felt more alive than I had been in months. I decided to walk all night. I had a story prepared if I met one of your fence riders, though I hoped I would not, as I knew that, depending on their mood, my story would not matter. But . . . there was no one. This I also took as a sign.

  “I knew what condition the house would be in. The stuffing would be pulled out of chairs, bird droppings, dirt everywhere, our papers shredded by mice, and of course the old pools of the blood of my family would not have been cleaned and the bullets would still be in every wall. It would look exactly as I had left it, except that it would have aged two years.

  “When I reached our lower pasture, by the old church, the sun was coming up and I could see the house had been burned. But still I thought no, empty homes are often vandalized, lovers go to them, the poor occupy them, the dry climate—even a cigarette might have started a fire. I went through one of the doors, made my way through the rubble to my father’s office, where I knew all our papers were kept, in metal cabinets that would have resisted any fire. The cabinets were buried under debris, like everything else, but after some time I uncovered them. My birth certificate, perhaps some money, stock certificates, things like that. But do you know what I found?”

  I looked away.

  “Nothing. They were empty. The papers were gone. Every single document and letter, every record had been removed. And then I knew it had been intentional. It was not enough to exterminate my family; it was also necessary to remove every record of our existence.”

  “No one wanted that,” I told her.

  “Another lie. You of all people, you have already forgotten that you are lying. Your lies have become the truth.”

  I decided to study a green lizard scuttling across the porch. Sometime later I heard a sound; her breath was rattling like a dying man’s. I had a terrible feeling but I watched her and she continued to breathe; she was asleep. I watched her for a long time after that and when I was sure she was not going to perish, I went inside and got a blanket and put it over her.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Eli/Tiehteti

  Late Fall/Early Winter 1851

  After we buried the last of the dead, the fifty of us still alive had gathered the few remaining horses and were making our way southwest, mostly on foot, hoping to find the buffalo, or to at least cut their trail. There was no fresh sign. It was clear the numu kutsu had not been in the area for over a year.

  No one knew where the good grass was or where the buffalo might be headed. Later we found out they had stayed north, with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Meanwhile, the snow was beginning to fall and there was not much to eat.

  With the exception of Yellow Hair, myself, and a few old Comanches who’d been exposed in previous epidemics, there was no logic to who had survived. The tasía had killed the weak and the strong, the smart and the stupid, the cowardly and the brave, and if the survivors had anything in common, it was that they had been too lazy or fatalistic to run away. The best of us had either fled or died in the plague.

  No one spoke. There was nothing but the wind, creaking of packs, the travois poles scraping over rocks. If we did not see enough deer or antelope, we would kill a horse, further slowing our progress. There was no plan except to find the buffalo; we did not know what we would do if we ran into the Tuhano or the army; there were less than ten of us who could still fight; many of the children had gone blind.

  One day, as we watched another norther blow in, the sky behind us the color of a bruise, a cold I knew would cut through my robe, it occurred to me that I had missed seeing many of the children at breakfast. I could not recall seeing them the previous night, either. I looked behind me and made a count of our long slow column and it was true. Half the children were missing. Their mothers had taken all the blind ones out onto the prairie and killed them, so that the rest of us would have enough to eat.

  That night we ran into a group of Comanchero traders who saw our fire in the storm. They were loaded down with cornmeal and squash, powder and lead, knives and steel arrowheads, woolen blankets. We had nothing to give them. Apparently all the other bands were decimated because they decided to keep us company a few days. They gave us a few sacks of cornmeal but we had no hides and our few remaining horses could not be traded.

  As they began to repack their mules, a sense of despair came over everyone; a few people sat down in the snow and refused to be consoled. The night had cleared and I walked away from the fire to look at the stars. There did not seem to be much point in continuing. The few people like me, who could still hunt, could simply ride away, but that was out of the question. I was standing there thinking when our surviving chief, Mountain of Rocks, came up next to me.

  “I would like to speak quickly, Tiehteti.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Obviously,” he said, “we may not make it through the winter.”

  “I can see that.”

  He looked out over the prairie, now covered with a light dusting of snow, which would soon turn into several feet.

  “There is a way for you to help.”

  I knew what he was getting at. The government was still paying high prices for returned captives.

  “You yourself may survive this winter here. Most of us will not. Maybe none of us will. But if you return to the taibo . . .” He shrugged. “You can simply come back once the traders are paid.”

  I didn’t look at him.

  “It is your decision, of course. But there is talk that you might volunteer to do this, especially given the sacrifices that many of the families have already made.” He meant the children. “Still, you are one of us and we would prefer if you stayed.”

  FOR THE GERMAN girl and me, the Comancheros left twenty bags of cornmeal, forty pounds of piloncillo, ten bushels of squash. Twenty pounds of lead, a barrel of powder, some gun lock screws, a thousand-pack of steel arrowheads, a few rough knife blades with rawhide handles. It was considered quite generous, though the traders had no doubt they would make a large profit, as I was still young, and the German girl still pretty, her face unmarked. Many captives, especially women, were returned with ears and noses cut off, faces branded, but Yellow Hair looked unscathed, and it was obvious that she would be beautiful once cleaned up. I was asked a few questions in English, to see if I still knew how to speak it, which I did. After nearly three years living among the wild Indians, that was not common, either, and by any measure our return would look like a great success and the Comancheros would be well paid.

  Mountain of Rocks asked me to leave him my Colt Navy, one of the two I’d gotten off the scalp hunter, but it was out of the question. I had buried the other with Toshaway. And I did not like the look of the traders, or Mountain of Rocks, for that matter.

  THE FIRST NIGHT Yellow Hair stayed close to me, away from the Comancheros.

  “Don’t let them touch me,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “Make them think I’m your wife.”

  “They’re trying to get money for us,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll do anything.”

  “Please,” she said.

  The next night I knew she was right: one of them kept sitting closer until finally he put his arm around her. He was a big man with a large gut; he looked like an unwashed version of St. Nicholas. I stood up and pulled my knife and he put up his hands, laughing at me.

  “You look a little young, but I won’t fight you.”

  “We don’t have to fight for her,” I said. “We can just fight.”

  He laughed some more and shook his head. “Boy, I can see you are holding on to her like death to a dead nigger. I already said I won’t fight you. I’m going to sleep.” He got up and went to his pallet under the wagon.

  That night she slept in my robe. I hadn’t touched a woman or even myself in nearly two months, because all I could think about was Prairie Flower, and her ruined face
when I put the dirt over her.

  But spooning with Yellow Hair, part of me seemed to forget all that. I could smell her sweet unwashed hair, and finally, when I couldn’t stand it, I began to kiss her neck. I wondered if she was asleep but then she said: “I won’t stop you, but I don’t want to do that right now.”

  I kissed her behind the ear and tried to make out that I had just been being brotherly. She moved my rutter so that it was not poking into her. We fell asleep.

  The next night she said: “We can make love if you want to but you know I was raped by maybe ten men in our band. I tried to talk to you about it many times.”

  I felt so ashamed that I pretended to be sleeping.

  “It’s okay,” she said, patting my hip. “I doubt they would have let you into the tribe if you’d been nice to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just don’t let these men rape me. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  On the third night I asked her: “Do you think I am not attracted to you because you slept with all those men in our band, or do you just not want to sleep with me?”

  “I don’t want to sleep with anyone,” she said. “But especially not these Comancheros. St. Nicholas showed his cock and balls to me and they are covered with a disease.”

  On the fourth night I persisted: “But what about me?”

  “Would you kill these Comancheros if I asked you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case I’ll sleep with you. But we have to be quiet so they don’t hear us or you might end up having to kill them.”

  “I’ll kill them,” I said, though in truth I thought it was unlikely, as we represented a year’s wage for them.

  She looked at me. She was a sensitive one. “Forget it. I’ll sleep by myself.” She got out of the robe. “I’d rather be raped than have sex with a liar.”

  “I’ll protect you,” I said. “Let’s not do anything. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

  The last time I asked her anything about sex was: “Did you ever get pregnant?”

  “Three times, but they all came out after a couple of months.”

  “How?” I said.

  “I beat myself in the stomach with rocks. Also, no matter how hungry I was, I would not let myself eat.”

  “If you’d had a baby, they might have made you a tribe member.”

  “That would have been great except every night I was there, all I dreamed about was going home.”

  “To where?”

  “Anywhere there were white people. Anywhere I wouldn’t have to live with men who’d raped me.”

  I should have felt sympathy for her, but it just made me angry. I missed Toshaway more than I missed my own parents and the thought of Prairie Flower made me so empty that I wanted to put my gun to my head. I rolled over and went to sleep.

  We rode together for three weeks, sharing the same robe so the Comancheros would think we were married, and every night I expected we would make love, as we slept spooning in the same robe, but it was true what she had told me, she had no interest at all. Even the one night we drank whiskey with the traders and she let my hands wander more than normal and I thought this is the night I might get inside her, but soon realized she was breathing very deeply and was no longer awake. I let my hands wander over her a little longer. The Comancheros knew their buyers, they were feeding us four or five times a day and Yellow Hair was looking healthier every minute, her ribs softening, her breasts and hips filling out, though still she cried every night in her sleep.

  “I guess if I had a fantasy,” she told me, “it would be to rape all the men who raped me. Bring them back from the dead and rape all of them, over and over. With a big jagged stick, I mean. I would push it in and out and I would not stop until I was good and ready.”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought about Toshaway and Nuukaru and Pizon, and Prairie Flower and Fat Wolf and Grandfather, and Hates Work, who was really Single Bird, Escuté and Bright Morning, Two Bears, Always Visiting Someone; I guessed I might kill Yellow Hair quite happily just to have a single one of them back.

  But she did not appear to notice. “I’ve actually thought about it quite a lot,” she said. “I mean raping them. It was what got me through the day sometimes.”

  She was smiling.

  “But now I don’t have to think about it anymore.”

  I didn’t talk to her that night, or the next day, either.

  THE LAST WEEK we spent on wagon roads, passing villages, settlements, the first white people I’d seen in three years who hadn’t shot at me. Yellow Hair waved at everyone. But the whites did not think it was a special occasion, seeing other white people. The land was settling up.

  When we reached the Colorado, close to Austin, I could not believe the roads; they had doubled in width and the ruts were all filled. Yellow Hair was happy, unusually talkative, and she had kissed the traders on their cheeks and thanked them and cuddled very close to me during supper. I could see their looks of jealousy, but St. Nick kept them in line. He knew what we were worth. He offered me a spare cylinder for my pistol if I would let him wash and cut my hair, which had grown halfway down my back. I thought about it, then agreed.

  When we went to bed that night, Yellow Hair allowed me to put myself partway into her but she was very dry, and after moving around for several minutes she got no better, and I was so ashamed I removed myself.

  “Go ahead and finish,” she said.

  “I can’t with you not wanting to.”

  She shrugged. “I really don’t mind. You kept your word.”

  I thought about it and then got out of the robe, stood up, looked at the sky, and finished myself off. The grass was not even covered with frost, it was so much warmer in the hill country than on the plains. I got back into the robe with her.

  “You’re a good man,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

  THE NEXT DAY we rode into Austin. We were taken to the house of a merchant the traders knew and then to the state capitol. A bunch of white men came and asked our names. It took most of the day but eventually three hundred dollars each was raised for us; the traders were paid and rode off without a word to me, though they tried to kiss Yellow Hair good-bye. She turned away from them. Now that we were in public, she would not even allow them to touch her.

  Her real name was Ingrid Goetz. The word spread and various wealthy women adopted her. When I saw her the next day she was wearing a blue silk dress, her hair washed and braided and pulled into a bun behind her head. Meanwhile I had refused to let them touch me—I was wearing buckskin leggings and a breechcloth, no shirt, and while they had insisted on holding on to my revolver, I would not let them take my knife, which I kept tucked into my belt.

  And so I slept on a spare cot at the jail while Yellow Hair stayed at a plantation east of town, the home of the U.S. representative and his wife. After a few days there was a reception for us at a judge’s house, a Georgian-style mansion near the capitol with a nice view over the river. The judge was a big redheaded man who could have hoisted a barrel in each arm, though his hands were soft as a child’s. He’d been educated at Harvard in his youth, then became a senator in Kentucky, then swore off politics entirely and moved to Texas to increase his fortune. He read a lot of books and his words ran eight to the pound, but he had a good spirit and I took to him right away.

  Yellow Hair and I made quite a pair. She looked like she’d lived in town all her life; I’d taken a bath and lost my long braids but otherwise I looked like a feral child. Several reporters gathered and they asked if we were husband and wife and looking at her, with her hair washed and her face clean, she struck me as even more beautiful than I had ever thought and I wanted her to say yes.

  Everyone else wanted her to say yes as well, as it made a good story, but Yellow Hair was a selfish creature. No, we were not connected in any way, I had simply protected her honor from the Comanches, she was returning with her honor intact thanks to me, honor honor honor, she still had it,
that was all.

  I was speechless. No one except the Yankees believed a word of it. The Indian’s appetite for his female captives was well known to all Texans.

  WE WERE FED big meals with fresh bread and beef and a roasted turkey, which I would not touch, as the Comanches thought that eating turkey made you a coward, and staring at the bird I was reminded of Escuté, who liked to tell the joke, if eating turkey makes you a coward, what does eating pussy make you? There was also roast pig, which I would not touch, as the Comanches knew it was a filthy animal. I ate about five pounds of beef and two rabbits and it was commented what a good appetite I had. Yellow Hair ate a small amount of bread and turkey and, looking at me directly, helped herself to several servings of pork.

  That night, despite the breezes flowing through the house, it felt so hot and still, and the beds so soft and smothering, that I went outside and slept in the judge’s yard. Yellow Hair, meanwhile, was already telling people that she had come from an aristocratic German family, though, as they had all been killed, there was no way to verify it. I was certain she was lying, as I knew where her family had been living, and the others doubted her as well, but no one was going to say anything. They had never seen a female captive returned in such good condition. You did not look a gift horse in the mouth.

  A few days later, the judge gathered several of the town’s influential people in his yard for a barbecue, along with a few reporters from the East. I was asked to dress in my garb and do some tricks. Of course most of what an Indian knows cannot be shown in a circus, like how to follow game, or read a man’s mood from his footprints, so I asked for a horse and galloped it up and down the yard bareback, while shooting arrows at a hay bale. The judge had first suggested I shoot a stump but that was out of the question, as it would ruin my arrows, and as both they and my bow had been made by Grandfather, I had no desire to damage them except on a living target. I sat there on the horse and people gave suggestions. The judge pointed out a squirrel that was high up in a live oak and I shot it off the branch and then shot a dove off a different branch. The onlookers applauded. Not far from them was a black eye in the grass that I knew belonged to a rabbit so I put an arrow through that as well. Several of the eastern reporters looked sick at the rabbit shrieking and flopping itself into the air but the judge laughed and said, He’s got quite an eye, doesn’t he? Then his wife gave him a look. He called an end to the demonstration. The Negroes stomped on the rabbit to quiet it and trampled the divots in the lawn as well.