Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

by Bob Blaisdell

  “What the hell have you been up to, you old fart?” said the raspy voice of the daughter. He turned to stare into her loose-featured face. She was sitting in Amalia’s rocker.

  “I been fishin’.”

  The daughter stood up and walked toward him. She looked like her father. Jake Wind was written all over her face, carved into her bones.

  “You want to know where Moms is, huh? Wanta know where your old sweetheart’s gone to? Well, I’ll tell you. She’s been sent off to a home that’ll take care of her, even if she is cracked. Come in and find her sittin’ talking to dogs been dead for years. Dishes full of dog food for ghosts. Maybe you better eat some of it because your meal ticket’s been cancelled, you old bastard. This man is a doctor and he’s decided my dear mother was mentally incompetent. The ambulance took her outta here half an hour ago.”

  She kept talking, saying things she had longed to say for years. Homer LaWare wasn’t listening. His eyes took in the details of the room he had walked through every day for the last forty years, the furniture he had mended when it was broken, the picture window he had installed, the steps he had painted, the neatly stacked dishes he had eaten his food from three times each day for almost half a century. The daughter was still talking, talking as if this were a scene she had rehearsed for many years. But he wasn’t listening. Her voice was getting louder. She was screaming. Homer hardly heard her. He closed his eyes, remembering how the turtle held onto his sleeve even after its throat was cut and its life was leaking out into the pond.

  The screaming stopped. He opened his eyes and saw that the man with the grey crew-cut hair was holding the daughter’s arms. She was holding a plate in her hands. Maybe she had been about to hit him with it. It didn’t matter. He looked at her. He looked at the other people in the room. They seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

  “I got a turtle to clean out,” he said, knowing what it was in him that spoke. Then he turned and walked into the darkness.

  ONLY APPROVED INDIANS CAN PLAY MADE IN USA (1983)

  Jack D. Forbes

  Forbes (1934–2011) was of Powhatan and Delaware heritage. Born in Long Beach, California, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. For many years, he was a professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. “Only Approved Indians Can Play Made in USA” is almost too sad to be funny, but funny it is.

  THE ALL-INDIAN BASKETBALL Tournament was in its second day. Excitement was pretty high, because a lot of the teams were very good or at least eager and hungry to win. Quite a few people had come to watch, mostly Indians. Many were relatives or friends of the players. A lot of people were betting money and tension was pretty great.

  A team from the Tucson Inter-Tribal House was set to play against a group from the Great Lakes region. The Tucson players were mostly very dark young men with long black hair. A few had little goatee beards or mustaches though, and one of the Great Lakes fans had started a rumor that they were really Chicanos. This was a big issue since the Indian Sports League had a rule that all players had to be one-quarter or more Indian blood and that they had to have their BIA2 roll numbers available if challenged.

  And so a big argument started. One of the biggest, darkest Indians on the Tucson team had been singled out as a Chicano, and the crowd wanted him thrown out. The Great Lakes players, most of whom were pretty light, refused to start. They all had their BIA identification cards, encased in plastic. This proved that they were all real Indians, even a blonde-haired guy. He was really only about one-sixteenth but the BIA rolls had been changed for his tribe so legally he was one-fourth. There was no question about the Great Lakes team. They were all land-based, federally recognized Indians, although living in a big Midwestern city, and they had their cards to prove it.

  Anyway, the big, dark Tucson Indian turned out to be a Papago. He didn’t have a BIA card but he could talk Papago, so they let him alone for the time being. Then they turned towards a lean, very Indian-looking guy who had a pretty big goatee. He seemed to have a Spanish accent, so they demanded to see his card.

  Well, he didn’t have one either. He said he was a full-blood Tarahumara Indian and he could also speak his language. None of the Great Lakes Indians could talk their languages so they said that was no proof of anything, that you had to have a BIA roll number.

  The Tarahumara man was getting pretty angry by then. He said his father and uncle had been killed by whites in Mexico and that he did not expect to be treated with prejudice by other Indians.

  But all that did no good. Someone demanded to know if he had a reservation and if his tribe was recognized. He replied that his people lived high up in the mountains and that they were still resisting the Mexicanos, that the government was trying to steal their land.

  “What state do your people live in?” they wanted to know. When he said that his people lived free, outside of the control of any state, they only shook their fists at him. “You’re not an official Indian. All official Indians are under the white man’s rule now. We all have a number given to us, to show that we are recognized.”

  Well, it all came to an end when someone shouted that “Tarahumaras don’t exist. They’re not listed in the BIA dictionary.” Another fan yelled, “He’s a Mexican. He can’t play. The tournament is only for Indians.”

  The officials of the tournament had been huddling together. One blew his whistle and an announcement was made. “The Tucson team is disqualified. One of its members is a Yaqui. One is a Tarahumara. The rest are Papagos. None of them have BIA enrollment cards. They are not Indians within the meaning of the laws of the government of the United States. The Great Lakes team is declared the winner by default.”

  A tremendous roar of applause swept through the stands. A white BIA official wiped the tears from his eyes and said to a companion, “God bless America. I think we’ve won.”

  * * *

  2. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  HIGH COTTON (1984)

  Rayna Green

  Green (born in 1942) has taught at many universities and is the curator and director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. She earned her Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University and edited That’s What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women (1984). Green’s Native background, through her father, is Cherokee.

  IS EVERYTHING A story? Ramona asked her.

  It is if a story’s what you’re looking for—otherwise, it’s just people telling lies and there’s no end to it. Grandma waited to see how she took that and she started in again, smoothing out the red-checked oilcloth on the kitchen table as she talked. Ramona watched the purple cockscombs she could see through the kitchen door.

  You don’t have to hear anything, not about the white ones or the red—nothing about any of them, and you can call ’em all lies if you want. In a way, they are all lies just like them Thunder stories Gahno tells you or like the Bible—something that happened too far back for anyone to see and too close for anyone to deny. You listen to her stories much more and you won’t want to know the difference. Still, there’s always choices. It’s like the time Gahno was out in the cotton field—right here at the old home place, just beyond this door. We was just girls, all of us—her and me and Rose and Anna—and there was Poppa, the meanest old German bastard that ever lived. He had us out chopping cotton in the worst heat of the day. He treated Indian and white alike—you might say just like we was niggers—well, that’s what Anna used to say when she had sense, but some might dispute that she ever had any at all. Anyway, a big old black snake run acrost Gahno’s foot out there in the high cotton. And she commenced to screaming and run up to the house. Lord, she throwed down that hoe and hollered loud enough to make us all run up from the Field.

  Snake, she hollered, snake.

  But Poppa had seen the blacksnake come acrost the field and he didn’t put no store at all in running from snakes. He
liked to kill ’em, you know, and nail their skins up on the barn door yonder.

  Goddammit, he yelled, you scheisskopf Indi’n, ain’t one t’ing but one blacksnake an’ he don’t hurt you.

  That was his way of talking when he got mad and he never could talk good English anyway. Well, we all commenced to laughing and screaming at the sight of Poppa all puffed up and Gahno scared to fits—and her no better at English than him any day. She was so damn mad she about near spit at Poppa.

  Jesus no, Jesus no, he maybe not hurt me, but dat damn snake he make me hurt myself.

  And then we all went to laughing like as not to stop—and she started to giggle too that way she has even now. Poppa swole up even more like a toad and marched off into the house for Momma to soothe his hurt feelings, and Gahno threw down that hoe for good. She left Tahlequah and went to Dallas and she never came back—and I follered her the next year and Rose ten years later. Poppa never forgive any of us and Gahno wasn’t even his kin—but he acted like she was—so he had one heart spell too many when your Momma married her son. Betrayal was bad enough, but race mixing was worse. Marrying Indians was a damn sight worse to him. I guess he thought she’d stay and slave for him forever just like he thought we would. But he was wrong. Grandma paused for breath and then stopped, watching Ramona get up and head toward the old ice box near the sink.

  I know there’s another story here, Ramona said. Are you going to tell it now or should I get you more ice tea to get through it? You want me to doctor yours with some of Baby Dee’s finest so you don’t get hoarse?

  She saw assent in Grandma’s eyes so she opened the flour bin where Rose always kept the drinking whiskey—remembering Aunt Anna who always called it her heart medicine when she took it by the tablespoon ten times a day.

  It’s Rose I want to tell you about—and Will—and that snake wadn’t just a side story. Yes, get me some of Baby Dee’s good whiskey. It never hurt me nor anybody else who drank it with a clear heart. He got the trick of it from those Cherokee hill climbers you stem from, I’ll say that. But your Uncle Will, he was white and he drank white whiskey. It kilt his sense and will and left nothing but feeling. Baby Dee’s whiskey makes me want to go file my teeth and whip up on Andy Jackson. Just bring the jar and a bite of that ham on the sideboard, and I’ll tell you the real story.

  Ramona set the Mason jar of clear liquid in front of her grandmother, with the bowl of rock candy and mint leaves she favored for her particular brew. And she poured herself some into the blue enamel cup she always used when she came down home to Aunt Rose’s.

  To heart medicine, she said.

  God knows it ain’t head medicine you need, Grandma told her. You had too big a dose of that from your Daddy—thinking is the family disease.

  Honey, your Uncle Will, he was just like that snake, and the Baptist Church, it was like him—they was made for one another. But he was a drinking man, and he was when Rose married him. When he couldn’t get whiskey from the white bootleggers, he got it from the black ones. He never drank no Indian whiskey—not like everybody else—’cause he believed they boogered it just like Baby Dee does in truth. And that whiskey made him crazy anyway. He got worse. He didn’t have nothing but the whiskey and the whiskey had him. For ten years he poured the whiskey down.

  Rose got all the church women to pray and pray over him, week after week, and they kept poor Jesus awake yelling about Will’s sinful state. The more they prayed and hollered over him, the more he cussed and drank. And that made them pray more. You know how them prissy Baptist women is, honey—wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouthful—and they like to drove everyone to the ginmills and shake dance parlors before long. But everyone was more disgusted with Will. He’d run everybody’s patience out, and if he’d been on fire, not a soul would have pissed on him to save him. He raved and carried on when Rose and Bubba took the truck from him—they hid it out in Dadayi’s barn over yonder at Lost City—but he stole the tractor and drove it to the bootlegger’s anyway.

  Well, then one night, he put the harrow on and run that tractor over thirty acres of good lake bottom cotton, and Rose finally pitched a fit. She and Bubba tied that old drunk to the bedposts and left him there to piss and shit all over hisself and he done it—they left him for two days and more.

  Thirty acres might not sound like much to you now, but it was something then. They tied him to the bed right there in that room yonder and he thrashed and cussed and rolled for three days. He threatened and begged and done damn near everything he could to get them to turn him loose. But Rose’s heart had hardened—even to the point of letting her spotless house stink of drunkard’s shit. On the third night, he was worse than ever before, yelling and carrying on. And Rose finally come in from the front parlor where she’d tried to sleep these nights while he was cutting up. She come in and stood at the foot of his bed.

  Sister, give me just another bite of that ham and some of Gahno’s bean bread before I go on. I could piece all day on that ham and never set down to a meal. There’s nothing like funerals for good eating.

  You better hurry with the story or they’re all going to be back from the funeral parlor and hear the worst, Ramona told her. I’m going to have just a little bite myself to keep my strength up. I may need a whole ham the way you’re going.

  Baby Sister, I never knew you to let your strength get endangered. You’re both your Grandma’s child, that’s for certain.

  Well, Rose come into the bedroom trying to breathe in the stench and keep from laughing at the old bastard’s misery at the same time. She loved seeing him as wretched as she’d been all these years. So she stood at the foot of the bed, all dressed in an old white flannel gown—the same old one she’d worn for ten years and the one she would wear today if they hadn’t bought that silly blue town dress just to go to the boneyard. So there she stood in that ruffled white flannel gown, and Will, crazy with having the whiskey took from him, thought it was Jesus come to take him away. He seen the ghosts and boogers of his worst drunk dreams and commenced to bleat and call out to Jesus. Guilty through all the whiskey boldness, he called out to Jesus and begged Him not to take him now.

  Jesus, I been bad I know, but I’ll be good tomorrow. Jesus, I’m not ready now, but give me another chance to serve you. Jesus, I’ll praise your name tomorrow and never take another drop of drink.

  Well, sir, he went on like that ’til Rose got tickled and you know what a cut-up she is when she gets provoked. So, she started to laugh for all those ten years of suffering with that drunken worthless farmer, and she begin to shake that white gown and talk to him. So, she made out to him like she was Jesus. Well, if he could give up his sins, she reasoned, why couldn’t she take some up since there’d be room left in the emptiness.

  Oh, Will, she said, talking deep, I’ve got plans for you. I need a sober man, a righteous man, a just man. I’ve got plans for your life, but you’ll have to promise me to quit drinking and whoring and treating your good wife so bad.

  Oh, Jesus, I will, I will do it, he yelled. Jesus, I’m the one to do it.

  Will, she said, waving her arms and standing on tiptoe in the kerosene light—her gown all cloudy and white around her—I want you to come out of that piss and shit, out of the hog wallow you’ve fallen in, and I want you to preach my word.

  Oh, Jesus, he promised, I’m the one.

  Well, she damn near kilt herself laughing, but she went on until they was both worn out with it and he promised to preach Jesus’ word until he died. When she’d calmed herself, Will was still a-raving about Jesus. But she looked at that piece of stinking flesh on the bed and thought about murder. She picked up the jonny pot from under the bed and tried to break his head with it. She picked up the pissy sheets and tried to strangle him around his turkey neck, and she offered to smother him with the last of her good feather pillows.

  But Jesus had him no matter what she done, and he lived and praised her, thinking all the time it was Jesus putting him to the test. And well it might hav
e been. But wanting to kill him so bad and Jesus saving him made her hate the church on the spot. She thought if he did wake up and fulfill his promise to preach, it was a church she didn’t want nothing to do with it anyway. Well, the Devil didn’t offer her a solution and the little son-of-a-bitch didn’t die. So, she took off that white gown and threw it into the bed with him.

  It ain’t Jesus, you damned old fool, she up and screamed at him, it’s your crazy wife and be damned to the both of you.

  She boiled up water for the hottest bath she’d ever had and sat buck naked at the parlor pump organ all night, playing every shake dance tune she knew, and she was sitting there when Baby Dee come to start plowing in the morning. She was laughing and singing and happy like he’s never seen her, and he couldn’t believe his ears when she asked him if he’d ever thought of taking his whiskey-making skills to Dallas. They was gone before Will come to, and when he did, he took her leaving for the punishment he deserved. He cleaned himself up and went right uptown to the preacher to confess his sins and sign up for the Jesus Road.

  Rose and Baby Dee went right to Dallas with Gahno and the other Indians that had left before, and that’s where we all ended up—that is, until Will died fifteen years ago as sober as when he was born. But she’d had the good time and he’d paid for what he done to her by living a strict and righteous life. She’d takened away the only thing he loved, and ended up making her living selling it.

  And Jesus done it all, she would tell people.

  There’s a white flannel salvation that comes to drunks in the dark and makes ’em change. So she wondered when it would come to her. She got Baby Dee to booger his whiskey too, so wouldn’t nobody get saved on it and tot up more souls for Jesus. She used to tell him—we’re in the whiskey business, not the salvation business. Jesus looked like an Arab and dressed like a woman and that ain’t what we’re about. And they’d go on up to the stomp dances in the hills after they’d come back here to live, never drinking one drop of the whiskey they made, ’cause she’d turned Indian just as sure as she’d turned away from Christians, and that would have driven a nail into Poppa’s heart too. She always figured, just like Gahno, that snakes was meant to warn you, and she took the warning.