Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

by Bob Blaisdell

  “Thank you, Joe; you are kind—and good.”

  He returned then to his apartment. His pipe was out, but he picked up a newspaper instead, threw himself into an armchair, and in a half-hour was in the land of dreams.

  When Charlie came home in the morning, after a six-mile walk into the country and back again, his foolish anger was dead and buried. Logan’s “Poor old Charlie” did not ring so distinctly in his ears. Mrs. Stuart’s horrified expression had faded considerably from his recollection. He thought only of that surprisingly tall, dark girl, whose eyes looked like coals, whose voice pierced him like a flint-tipped arrow. Ah, well, they would never quarrel again like that, he told himself. She loved him so, and would forgive him after he had talked quietly to her, and told her what an ass he was. She was simple-minded and awfully ignorant to pitch those old Indian laws at him in her fury, but he could not blame her; oh, no, he could not for one moment blame her. He had been terribly severe and unreasonable, and the horrid McDonald temper had got the better of him; and he loved her so. Oh! he loved her so! She would surely feel that, and forgive him, and—He went straight to his wife’s room. The blue velvet evening dress lay on the chair into which he had thrown himself when he doomed his life’s happiness by those two words, “God knows.” A bunch of dead daffodils and her slippers were on the floor, everything—but Christie.

  He went to his brother’s bedroom door.

  “Joe,” he called, rapping nervously thereon; “Joe, wake up; where’s Christie, d’you know?”

  “Good Lord, no,” gasped that youth, springing out of his armchair and opening the door.

  As he did so a note fell from off the handle. Charlie’s face blanched to his very hair while Joe read aloud, his voice weakening at every word:—

  DEAR OLD JOE,—I went into your room at daylight to get that picture of the Post on your bookshelves. I hope you do not mind, but I kissed your hair while you slept; it was so curly, and yellow, and soft, just like his. Good-bye, Joe.

  CHRISTIE

  And when Joe looked into his brother’s face and saw the anguish settle in those laughing blue eyes, the despair that drove the dimples away from that almost girlish mouth; when he realized that this boy was but four-and-twenty years old, and that all his future was perhaps darkened and shadowed for ever, a great, deep sorrow arose in his heart, and he forgot all things, all but the agony that rang up through the voice of the fair, handsome lad as he staggered forward, crying, “Oh! Joe—what shall I do—what shall I do!”

  It was months and months before he found her, but during all that time he had never known a hopeless moment; discouraged he often was, but despondent, never. The sunniness of his ever-boyish heart radiated with a warmth that would have flooded a much deeper gloom than that which settled within his eager young life. Suffer? ah! yes, he suffered, not with locked teeth and stony stoicism, but with the masterful self-command, the reserve, the conquered bitterness of the still-water sort of nature, that is supposed to run to such depths. He tried to be bright, and his sweet old boyish self. He would laugh sometimes in a pitiful, pathetic fashion. He took to petting dogs, looking into their large, solemn eyes with his wistful, questioning blue ones; he would kiss them, as women sometimes do, and call them “dear old fellow,” in tones that had tears; and once in the course of his travels, while at a little way-station, he discovered a huge St. Bernard imprisoned by some mischance in an empty freight car; the animal was nearly dead from starvation, and it seemed to salve his own sick heart to rescue back the dog’s life. Nobody claimed the big starving creature, the train hands knew nothing of its owner, and gladly handed it over to its deliverer. “Hudson,” he called it, and afterwards when Joe McDonald would relate the story of his brother’s life he invariably terminated it with, “And I really believe that big lumbering brute saved him.” From what, he was never known to say.

  But all things end, and he heard of her at last. She had never returned to the Post, as he at first thought she would, but had gone to the little town of B——, in Ontario, where she was making her living at embroidery and plain sewing.

  The September sun had set redly when at last he reached the outskirts of the town, opened up the wicket gate, and walked up the weedy, unkept path leading to the cottage where she lodged.

  Even through the twilight, he could see her there, leaning on the rail of the verandah—oddly enough she had about her shoulders the scarlet velvet cloak she wore when he had flung himself so madly from the room that night.

  The moment the lad saw her his heart swelled with a sudden heat, burning moisture leapt into his eyes, and clogged his long, boyish lashes. He bounded up the steps—“Christie,” he said, and the word scorched his lips like audible flame.

  She turned to him, and for a second stood magnetized by his passionately wistful face; her peculiar grayish eyes seemed to drink the very life of his unquenchable love, though the tears that suddenly sprang into his seemed to absorb every pulse of his body through those hungry, pleading eyes of his that had, oh! so often been blinded by her kisses when once her whole world lay in their blue depths.

  “You will come back to me, Christie, my wife? My wife, you will let me love you again?”

  She gave a singular little gasp, and shook her head. “Don’t, oh! don’t,” he cried piteously. “You will come to me, dear? it is all such a bitter mistake—I did not understand. Oh! Christie, I did not understand, and you’ll forgive me, and love me again, won’t you—won’t you?”

  “No,” said the girl with quick, indrawn breath.

  He dashed the back of his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled over the monosyllable “Why?”

  “I do not like you,” she answered quietly.

  “God! Oh! God, what is there left?”

  She did not appear to hear the heart-break in his voice; she stood like one wrapped in somber thought; no blaze, no tear, nothing in her eyes; no hardness, no tenderness about her mouth. The wind was blowing her cloak aside, and the only visible human life in her whole body was once when he spoke the muscles of her brown arm seemed to contract.

  “But, darling, you are mine—mine—we are husband and wife! Oh, heaven, you must love me, you must come to me again.”

  “You cannot make me come,” said the icy voice, “neither church, nor law, nor even”—and the voice softened—“nor even love can make a slave of a red girl.”

  “Heaven forbid it,” he faltered. “No, Christie, I will never claim you without your love. What reunion would that be? But oh, Christie, you are lying to me, you are lying to yourself, you are lying to heaven.”

  She did not move. If only he could touch her he felt as sure of her yielding as he felt sure there was a hereafter. The memory of times when he had but to lay his hand on her hair to call a most passionate response from her filled his heart with a torture that choked all words before they reached his lips; at the thought of those days he forgot she was unapproachable, forgot how forbidding were her eyes, how stony her lips. Flinging himself forward, his knee on the chair at her side, his face pressed hardly in the folds of the cloak on her shoulder, he clasped his arms about her with a boyish petulance, saying, “Christie, Christie, my little girl-wife, I love you, I love you, and you are killing me.”

  She quivered from head to foot as his fair, wavy hair brushed her neck, his despairing face sank lower until his cheek, hot as fire, rested on the cool, olive flesh of her arm. A warm moisture oozed up through her skin, and as he felt its glow he looked up. Her teeth, white and cold, were locked over her under lip, and her eyes were as gray stones.

  Not murderers alone know the agony of a death sentence.

  “Is it all useless? all useless, dear?” he said, with lips starving for hers.

  “All useless,” she repeated. “I have no love for you now. You forfeited me and my heart months ago, when you said those two words.”

  His arms fell away from her wearily, he arose mechanically, he placed his little gray checked ca
p on the back of his yellow curls, the old-time laughter was dead in the blue eyes that now looked scared and haunted, the boyishness and the dimples crept away for ever from the lips that quivered like a child’s; he turned from her, but she had looked once into his face as the Law Giver must have looked at the land of Canaan outspread at his feet. She watched him go down the long path and through the picket gate, she watched the big yellowish dog that had waited for him lumber up on to its feet—stretch—then follow him. She was conscious of but two things, the vengeful lie in her soul, and a little space on her arm that his wet lashes had brushed.

  It was hours afterwards when he reached his room. He had said nothing, done nothing—what use were words or deed? Old Jimmy Robinson was right; she had “balked” sure enough.

  What a bare, hotelish room it was! He tossed off his coat and sat for ten minutes looking blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then his whole life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him with appalling distinctness. Throwing himself on the floor beside the bed, with clasped hands and arms outstretched on the white counterpane, he sobbed. “Oh! God, dear God, I thought you loved me; I thought you’d let me have her again, but you must be tired of me, tired of loving me too. I’ve nothing left now, nothing! it doesn’t seem that I even have you tonight.”

  He lifted his face then, for his dog, big and clumsy and yellow, was licking at his sleeve.

  THE SOFT-HEARTED SIOUX (1901)

  Zitkala-Sa

  Also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876–1938), Zitkala-Sa was born in South Dakota at the Yankton Sioux Reservation. After attending a Quaker missionary school and Earlham College, she taught at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. She began writing, returned to the reservation, and married a Yankton Sioux, Raymond Bonnin. While involved in various national Indian organizations, she edited American Indian Magazine. “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” is narrated by a young Christianized man who returns to his Sioux reservation as a missionary: “My son [his father tells him], your soft heart has unfitted you for everything!”

  I.

  Beside the open fire I sat within our tepee. With my red blanket wrapped tightly about my crossed legs, I was thinking of the coming season, my sixteenth winter. On either side of the wigwam were my parents. My father was whistling a tune between his teeth while polishing with his bare hands a red stone pipe he had recently carved. Almost in front of me, beyond the center fire, my old grandmother sat near the entranceway.

  She turned her face toward her right and addressed most of her words to my mother. Now and then she spoke to me, but never did she allow her eyes to rest upon her daughter’s husband, my father. It was only upon rare occasions that my grandmother said anything to him. Thus his ears were open and ready to catch the smallest wish she might express. Sometimes when my grandmother had been saying things which pleased him, my father used to comment upon them. At other times, when he could not approve of what was spoken, he used to work or smoke silently.

  On this night my old grandmother began her talk about me. Filling the bowl of her red stone pipe with dry willow bark, she looked across at me.

  “My grandchild, you are tall and are no longer a little boy.” Narrowing her old eyes, she asked, “My grandchild, when are you going to bring here a handsome young woman?” I stared into the fire rather than meet her gaze. Waiting for my answer, she stooped forward and through the long stem drew a flame into the red stone pipe.

  I smiled while my eyes were still fixed upon the bright fire, but I said nothing in reply. Turning to my mother, she offered her the pipe. I glanced at my grandmother. The loose buckskin sleeve fell off at her elbow and showed a wrist covered with silver bracelets. Holding up the fingers of her left hand, she named off the desirable young women of our village.

  “Which one, my grandchild, which one?” she questioned.

  “Hoh!” I said, pulling at my blanket in confusion. “Not yet!” Here my mother passed the pipe over the fire to my father. Then she too began speaking of what I should do.

  “My son, be always active. Do not dislike a long hunt. Learn to provide much buffalo meat and many buckskins before you bring home a wife.” Presently my father gave the pipe to my grandmother, and he took his turn in the exhortations.

  “Ho, my son, I have been counting in my heart the bravest warriors of our people. There is not one of them who won his title in his sixteenth winter. My son, it is a great thing for some brave of sixteen winters to do.”

  Not a word had I to give in answer. I knew well the fame of my warrior father. He had earned the right of speaking such words, though even he himself was a brave only at my age. Refusing to smoke my grandmother’s pipe because my heart was too much stirred by their words, and sorely troubled with a fear lest I should disappoint them, I arose to go. Drawing my blanket over my shoulders, I said, as I stepped toward the entranceway: “I go to hobble my pony. It is now late in the night.”

  II.

  Nine winters’ snows had buried deep that night when my old grandmother, together with my father and mother, designed my future with the glow of a camp fire upon it.

  Yet I did not grow up the warrior, huntsman, and husband I was to have been. At the mission school I learned it was wrong to kill. Nine winters I hunted for the soft heart of Christ, and prayed for the huntsmen who chased the buffalo on the plains.

  In the autumn of the tenth year I was sent back to my tribe to preach Christianity to them. With the white man’s Bible in my hand, and the white man’s tender heart in my breast, I returned to my own people.

  Wearing a foreigner’s dress, I walked, a stranger, into my father’s village.

  Asking my way, for I had not forgotten my native tongue, an old man led me toward the tepee where my father lay. From my old companion I learned that my father had been sick many moons. As we drew near the tepee, I heard the chanting of a medicine-man within it. At once I wished to enter in and drive from my home the sorcerer of the plains, but the old warrior checked me. “Ho, wait outside until the medicine-man leaves your father,” he said. While talking he scanned me from head to feet. Then he retraced his steps toward the heart of the camping-ground.

  My father’s dwelling was on the outer limits of the round-faced village. With every heart-throb I grew more impatient to enter the wigwam.

  While I turned the leaves of my Bible with nervous fingers, the medicine-man came forth from the dwelling and walked hurriedly away. His head and face were closely covered with the loose robe which draped his entire figure.

  He was tall and large. His long strides I have never forgot. They seemed to me then the uncanny gait of eternal death. Quickly pocketing my Bible, I went into the tepee.

  Upon a mat lay my father, with furrowed face and gray hair. His eyes and cheeks were sunken far into his head. His sallow skin lay thin upon his pinched nose and high cheek-bones. Stooping over him, I took his fevered hand. “How, Ate?” I greeted him. A light flashed from his listless eyes and his dried lips parted. “My son!” he murmured, in a feeble voice. Then again the wave of joy and recognition receded. He closed his eyes, and his hand dropped from my open palm to the ground.

  Looking about, I saw an old woman sitting with bowed head. Shaking hands with her, I recognized my mother. I sat down between my father and mother as I used to do, but I did not feel at home. The place where my old grandmother used to sit was now unoccupied. With my mother I bowed my head. Alike our throats were choked and tears were streaming from our eyes; but far apart in spirit our ideas and faiths separated us. My grief was for the soul unsaved; and I thought my mother wept to see a brave man’s body broken by sickness.

  Useless was my attempt to change the faith in the medicine-man to that abstract power named God. Then one day I became righteously mad with anger that the medicine-man should thus ensnare my father’s soul. And when he came to chant his sacred songs I pointed toward the door and bade him go! The man’s eyes glared upon me for an instant. Slowly gathering his robe about him, he turned his back
upon the sick man and stepped out of our wigwam. “Ha, ha, ha! my son, I cannot live without the medicine-man!” I heard my father cry when the sacred man was gone.

  III.

  On a bright day, when the winged seeds of the prairie-grass were flying hither and thither, I walked solemnly toward the center of the camping-ground. My heart beat hard and irregularly at my side. Tighter I grasped the sacred book I carried under my arm. Now was the beginning of life’s work.

  Though I knew it would be hard, I did not once feel that failure was to be my reward. As I stepped unevenly on the rolling ground, I thought of the warriors soon to wash off their war-paints and follow me.

  At length I reached the place where the people had assembled to hear me preach. In a large circle men and women sat upon the dry red grass. Within the ring I stood, with the white man’s Bible in my hand. I tried to tell them of the soft heart of Christ.

  In silence the vast circle of bareheaded warriors sat under an afternoon sun. At last, wiping the wet from my brow, I took my place in the ring. The hush of the assembly filled me with great hope.

  I was turning my thoughts upward to the sky in gratitude, when a stir called me to earth again.

  A tall, strong man arose. His loose robe hung in folds over his right shoulder. A pair of snapping black eyes fastened themselves like the poisonous fangs of a serpent upon me. He was the medicine-man. A tremor played about my heart and a chill cooled the fire in my veins.

  Scornfully he pointed a long forefinger in my direction and asked,

  “What loyal son is he who, returning to his father’s people, wears a foreigner’s dress?” He paused a moment, and then continued: “The dress of that foreigner of whom a story says he bound a native of our land, and heaping dry sticks around him, kindled a fire at his feet!” Waving his hand toward me, he exclaimed, “Here is the traitor to his people!”