Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

by Bob Blaisdell

  “I go with the sun!” he cried, swaying toward the edge of the porch. Boastfully, exultantly, he demanded, “Give me my gun.” Jim handed him the pistol, stepped backwards noiselessly, his eyes holding Lovely. His hand on the latch, he stopped.

  Lovely Daniel’s uninjured hand, loosely gripping the pistol, hung at his side as he watched the full daylight spread down to the edge of the clearing. Out of some deep, long-hidden spring of memory rose a fragment of wild song, a chant of death. It mounted to a fervid burst, as the sharp red edge of the sun appeared; it ended in a triumphant whoop—and the roar of the pistol, pressed against his temple, sent a perching crow whirling upwards with a startled “caw!”

  Jim stepped inside.

  “What was that?” Spring Frog questioned perfunctorily.

  “Lovely Daniel was making answer,” Jim responded enigmatically.

  “Making answer? To what?”

  “Oh, a singing bird, I think—early morning singing bird, I think.” He looked into the faces of his friends until he knew that they understood, then turned to go out. He lingered to say:

  “If you fellows go look out for that which was Lovely Daniel, I get my wife to come and cook breakfast for us.”

  He found Jennie still crouched on the bed, hands still clapped tight against her ears. He gathered her into his arms, a vast tenderness and a fierce pride in her courage thrilling through him. With her face buried beneath his cheek and her arms tight about his neck, he sat on the bed and whispered:

  “All is well now, all is!” Her convulsive hold on him tightened.

  “Oh, my Jim!” she breathed fiercely and, after a minute, “I can go now and care for Betsy without fear.”

  “Yes.” Jim’s eyes sought the brilliant oblong of daylight that was the doorway, and his voice was tender and solemn as he added:

  “You can go to Betsy now, and tell her that Lovely went home without fear, on the back of the sun. I think she will understand what you say. —Pretty soon you come and cook breakfast?”

  “Pretty soon I come,” she echoed and, shivering, settled even closer to the great bulk of her husband.

  TRAIN TIME (1936)

  D’Arcy McNickle

  The ethnographic anthropologist D’Arcy McNickle, whose ancestry was Salish-Kootenai and Cree, was born on the Flathead Reservation in Montana in 1904. He worked as a staff member under John Collier, commissioner of the U.S. government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, and later directed the Newberry Library in Chicago’s Center for American Indian History. In the 1960s he was chairperson of the Anthropology Department at the University of Saskatchewan in Regina. His quiet and intense stories seem to have been informed by a deep experience of Chekhov’s and Hemingway’s short fiction. McNickle died in 1977.

  ON THE DEPOT platform everybody stood waiting, listening. The train had just whistled, somebody said. They stood listening and gazing eastward, where railroad tracks and creek emerged together from a tree-chocked canyon.

  Twenty-five boys, five girls, Major Miles—all stood waiting and gazing eastward. Was it true that the train had whistled?

  “That was no train!” a boy’s voice explained.

  “It was a steer bellowing.”

  “It was the train!”

  Girls crowded backward against the station building, heads hanging, tears starting; boys pushed forward to the edge of the platform. An older boy with a voice already turning heavy stepped off the weather-shredded boardwalk and stood wide-legged in the middle of the track. He was the doubter. He had heard no train.

  Major Miles boomed. “You! What’s your name? Get back here! Want to get killed? All of you, stand back!”

  The Major strode about, soldier-like, and waved commands. He was exasperated. He was tired. A man driving cattle through timber had it easy, he was thinking. An animal trainer had no idea of trouble. Let anyone try corralling twenty-thirty Indian kids, dragging them out of hiding places, getting them away from relatives and together in one place, then holding them, without tying them, until train time! Even now, at the last moment, when his worries were almost over, they were trying to get themselves killed!

  Major Miles was a man of conscience. Whatever he did, he did earnestly. On this hot end-of-summer day he perspired and frowned and wore his soldier bearing. He removed his hat from his wet brow and thoughtfully passed his hand from the hair line backward. Words tumbled about in his mind. Somehow, he realized, he had to vivify the moment. These children were about to go out from the Reservation and get a new start. Life would change. They ought to realize it, somehow—

  “Boys—and girls—” There were five girls, he remembered. He had got them all lined up against the building, safely away from the edge of the platform. The air was stifling with end-of-the-summer heat. It was time to say something, never mind the heat. Yes, he would have to make the moment real. He stood soldier-like and thought that.

  “Boys and girls—” The train whistled, dully, but unmistakably. Then it repeated more clearly. The rails came to life, something was running through them and making them sing.

  Just then the Major’s eye fell upon little Eneas and his sure voice faltered. He knew about little Eneas. Most of the boys and girls were mere names; he had seen them around the Agency with their parents or had caught sight of them scurrying around behind tepees and barns when he visited their homes. But little Eneas he knew. With him before his eyes, he paused.

  He remembered so clearly the winter day, six months ago, when he first saw Eneas. It was the boy’s grandfather, Michel Lamartine, he had gone to see. Michel had contracted to cut wood for the Agency but had not started work. The Major had gone to discover why not.

  It was the coldest day of the winter, late in February, and the cabin, sheltered as it was among the pine and cottonwood of a creek bottom, was shot through by frosty drafts. There was wood all about them. Lamartine was a woodcutter besides, yet there was no wood in the house. The fire in the flat-topped cast-iron stove burned weakly. The reason was apparent. The Major had but to look at the bed where Lamartine lay, twisted and shrunken by rheumatism. Only his black eyes burned with life. He tried to wave a hand as the Major entered.

  “You see how I am!” the gesture indicated. Then a nerve-strung voice faltered. “We have it bad here. My old woman, she’s not much good.”

  Clearly she wasn’t, not for wood-chopping. She sat close by the fire, trying with a good natured grin to lift her ponderous body from a low-seated rocking chair. The Major had to motion her back to her ease. She breathed with asthmatic roar. Wood-chopping was not within her range. With only a squaw’s hatchet to work with, she could scarcely have come within striking distance of a stick of wood. Two blows, if she had struck them, might have put a stop to her laboring heart.

  “You see how it is,” Lamartine’s eyes flashed.

  The Major saw clearly. Sitting there in the frosty cabin, he pondered their plight and wondered if he could get away without coming down with pneumonia. A stream of wind seemed to be hitting him in the back of the neck. Of course, there was nothing to do. One saw too many such situations. If one undertook to provide sustenance out of one’s own pocket there would be no end to the demands. Government salaries were small, resources were limited. He could do no more than shake his head sadly, offer some vague hope, some small sympathy. He would have to get away at once.

  Then a hand fumbled at the door; it opened. After a moment’s struggle, little Eneas appeared, staggering under a full armload of pine limbs hacked into short lengths. The boy was no taller than an ax handle, his nose was running, and he had a croupy cough. He dropped the wood into the empty box near the old woman’s chair, then straightened himself.

  A soft chuckling came from the bed. Lamartine was full of pride. “A good boy, that. He keeps the old folks warm.”

  Something about the boy made the Major forget his determination to depart. Perhaps it was his wordlessness, his uncomplaining wordlessness. Or possibly it was his loyalty to the old people. Something drew h
is eyes to the boy and set him to thinking. Eneas was handing sticks of wood to the old woman and she was feeding them into the stove. When the fire box was full a good part of the boy’s armload was gone. He would have to cut more, and more, to keep the old people warm.

  The Major heard himself saying suddenly, “Sonny, show me your woodpile. Let’s cut a lot of wood for the old folks.”

  It happened just like that, inexplicably. He went even farther. Not only did he cut enough wood to last through several days, but when he had finished he put the boy in the Agency car and drove him to town, five miles there and back. Against his own principles, he bought a week’s worth of groceries, and excused himself by telling the boy, as they drove homeward, “Your grandfather won’t be able to get to town for a few days yet. Tell him to come see me when he gets well.”

  That was the beginning of the Major’s interest in Eneas. He had decided that day that he would help the boy in any way possible, because he was a boy of quality. You would be shirking your duty if you failed to recognize and to help a boy of his sort. The only question was, how to help?

  When he saw the boy again, some weeks later, his mind saw the problem clearly. “Eneas,” he said, “I’m going to help you. I’ll see that the old folks are taken care of, so you won’t have to think about them. Maybe the old man won’t have rheumatism next year, anyhow. If he does, I’ll find a family where he and the old lady can move in and be looked after. Don’t worry about them. Just think about yourself and what I’m going to do for you. Eneas, when it comes school time, I’m going to send you away. How do you like that?” The Major smiled at his own happy idea.

  There was silence. No shy smiling, no look of gratitude, only silence. Probably he had not understood.

  “You understand, Eneas? Your grandparents will be taken care of. You’ll go away and learn things. You’ll go on a train.”

  The boy looked here and there and scratched at the ground with his foot. “Why do I have to go away?”

  “You don’t have to, Eneas. Nobody will make you. I thought you’d like to. I thought—” The Major paused, confused.

  “You won’t make me go away, will you?” There was fear in the voice, tears threatening.

  “Why, no, Eneas. If you don’t want to go. I thought—”

  The Major dropped the subject. He didn’t see the boy again through the spring and summer, but he thought of him. In fact, he couldn’t forget the picture he had of him that first day. He couldn’t forget either that he wanted to help him. Whether the boy understood what was good for him or not, he meant to see to it that the right thing was done. And that was why, when he made up a quota of children to be sent to the school in Oregon, the name of Eneas Lamartine was included. The Major did not discuss it with him again, but he set the wheels in motion. The boy would go with the others. In time to come, he would understand. Possibly he would be grateful.

  Thirty children were included in the quota, and of them all Eneas was the only one the Major had actual knowledge of, the only one in whom he was personally interested. With each of them, it was true, he had had difficulties. None had wanted to go. They said they “liked it at home,” or they were “afraid” to go away, or they would “get sick” in a strange country; and the parents were no help. They too were frightened and uneasy. It was a tiresome, hard kind of duty, but the Major knew what was required of him and never hesitated. The difference was, that in the cases of all these others, the problem was routine. He met it, and passed over it. But in the case of Eneas, he was bothered. He wanted to make clear what this moment of going away meant. It was a breaking away from fear and doubt and ignorance. Here began the new. Mark it, remember it.

  His eyes lingered on Eneas. There he stood, drooping, his nose running as on that first day, his stockings coming down, his jacket in need of buttons. But under that shabbiness, the Major knew, was a real quality. There was a boy who, with the right help, would blossom and grow strong. It was important that he should not go away hurt and resentful.

  The Major called back his straying thoughts and cleared his throat. The moment was important.

  “Boys and girls—”

  The train was pounding near. Already it had emerged from the canyon and momently the headlong flying locomotive loomed blacker and larger. A white plume flew upward—Whoo-oo, whoo-oo.

  The Major realized in sudden remorse that he had waited too long. A vital moment had come, and he had paused, looked for words, and lost it. The roar of rolling steel was upon them.

  Lifting his voice in desperate haste, his eyes fastened on Eneas, he bellowed, “Boys and girls—be good—”

  That was all anyone heard.

  THE MAN TO SEND RAIN CLOUDS

  (1969)

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Born in 1948 in New Mexico, of Laguna Pueblo ancestry, Silko published “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” while an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. The poet and novelist has taught at the University of Arizona, the University of New Mexico, and Emory University. “The reason I write,” she remarked in an interview, “is to find out what I mean. I know some of the things I mean. I couldn’t tell you the best things I know. And I can’t know the best things I know until I write.”1

  THEY FOUND HIM under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light-blue so that he had been easy to find. The big cottonwood tree stood apart from a small grove of winterbare cottonwoods which grew in the wide, sandy, arroyo. He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, gathered the sheep and left them in the pen at the sheep camp before they returned to the cottonwood tree. Leon waited under the tree while Ken drove the truck through the deep sand to the edge of the arroyo. He squinted up at the sun and unzipped his jacket. It sure was hot for this time of year. But high and northwest the blue mountains were still deep in snow. Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he was bringing the red blanket.

  Before they wrapped the old man, Leon took a piece of string out of his pocket and tied a small gray feather in the old man’s long white hair. Ken gave him the paint. Across the brown wrinkled forehead he drew a streak of white and along the high cheekbones he drew a strip of blue paint. He paused and watched Ken throw pinches of corn meal and pollen into the wind that fluttered the small gray feather. Then Leon painted with yellow under the old man’s broad nose, and finally, when he had painted green across the chin, he smiled.

  “Send us rain clouds, Grandfather.” They laid the bundle in the back of the pickup and covered it with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.

  They turned off the highway onto the sandy pueblo road. Not long after they passed the store and post office they saw Father Paul’s car coming toward them. When he recognized their faces he slowed his car and waved for them to stop. The young priest rolled down the car window.

  “Did you find old Teofilo?” he asked loudly.

  Leon stopped the truck. “Good morning, Father. We were just out to the sheep camp. Everything is O.K. now.”

  “Thank God for that. Teofilo is a very old man. You really shouldn’t allow him to stay at the sheep camp alone.”

  “No, he won’t do that any more now.”

  “Well, I’m glad you understand. I hope I’ll be seeing you at Mass this week. We missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you.” The priest smiled and waved at them as they drove away.

  Louise and Teresa were waiting. The table was set for lunch, and the coffee was boiling on the black iron stove. Leon looked at Louise and then at Teresa.

  “We found him under a cottonwood tree in the big arroyo near sheep camp. I guess he sat down to rest in the shade and never got up again.” Leon walked toward the old man’s bed. The red plaid shawl had been shaken and spread carefully over the bed, and a new brown flannel shirt and pair of stiff new Levis were arranged neatly beside the pillow. Louise held the screen door ope
n while Leon and Ken carried in the red blanket. He looked small and shriveled, and after they dressed him in the new shirt and pants he seemed more shrunken.

  It was noontime now because the church bells rang the Angelus. They ate the beans with hot bread, and nobody said anything until after Teresa poured the coffee.

  Ken stood up and put on his jacket. “I’ll see about the gravediggers. Only the top layer of soil is frozen. I think it can be ready before dark.”

  Leon nodded his head and finished his coffee. After Ken had been gone for a while, the neighbors and clanspeople came quietly to embrace Teofilo’s family and to leave food on the table because the gravediggers would come to eat when they were finished.

  The sky in the west was full of pale-yellow light. Louise stood outside with her hands in the pockets of Leon’s green army jacket that was too big for her. The funeral was over, and the old men had taken their candles and medicine bags and were gone. She waited until the body was laid into the pickup before she said anything to Leon. She touched his arm, and he noticed that her hands were still dusty from the corn meal that she had sprinkled around the old man. When she spoke, Leon could not hear her.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said that I had been thinking about something.”

  “About what?”

  “About the priest sprinkling holy water for Grandpa. So he won’t be thirsty.”

  Leon stared at the new moccasins that Teofilo had made for the ceremonial dances in the summer. They were nearly hidden by the red blanket. It was getting colder, and the wind pushed gray dust down the narrow pueblo road. The sun was approaching the long mesa where it disappeared during the winter. Louise stood there shivering and watching his face. Then he zipped up his jacket and opened the truck door. “I’ll see if he’s there.”

  Ken stopped the pickup at the church, and Leon got out; and then Ken drove down the hill to the graveyard where people were waiting. Leon knocked at the old carved door with its symbols of the Lamb. While he waited he looked up at the twin bells from the king of Spain with the last sunlight pouring around them in their tower.