Two Roads

by Joseph Bruchac

  “Mason said he screamed then. He couldn’t help himself. And as soon as he let out that scream, that witch turned into an owl, shot up right through the ceiling and was gone.

  “His scream woke everybody up. They lit the lanterns, but there was nothing to see. Except that Charley Cornsilk was real pale and sick and so they took him to the infirmary where he died two days later.”

  Pop goes silent as soon as he finishes that tale. He’s told me other stories in the past, but never one like this. Most often they have been tales about animals acting like people and doing foolish things. Not Indian boarding schools or witches. It was like hearing someone else other than my father talking. Even his voice as he told that story was different.

  It scared me because I found myself in that dormitory as my father was talking. I was taken over as he told it, seeing things he was not mentioning. Like the way one boy’s boots at the bottom of his bed had fallen over. Or that the boy three beds away from Charley Cornsilk was crying in the darkness. Or that the lantern they lit had a cracked glass. Or that the letters C.C. had been carved into the side of the low rafter over Charley Cornsilk’s bed.

  Pop shakes his head. “I don’t know why I told you that story, Cal. I didn’t even know I remembered it. Funny how things come back to you when you start talking about the past. I ran my train way off on a sidetrack, didn’t I?”

  Pop laughs, a little one that sounds almost like he’s clearing his throat.

  “Why talk about being Indian now when I hid it ever since I married your mother and we decided it was the way to make a better life for our family?” Pop’s voice is dead serious. “Son, it is because of where we are now. Just look at us. Now I do not mean there is any shame about this hobo life. Especially when a man follows the ethical code. But I am the one who chose this way. Not you. Cal, this was not your choice.”

  I’m still upset about what I saw as Pop told that story. Why is it that I keep finding myself in other people’s memories? And why is it that they always seem to be dead people? I can’t talk to Pop about that. It would worry him. But that’s not the most important thing right now. What’s important are Pop’s plans for me. Maybe I can still change his mind.

  “Pop,” I say, “I’m happy being a ’bo. I think my life is fine now.”

  My father shakes his head, turning it just enough so that the moonlight shines on his face. I make out that there are tears in his eyes.

  “Son, a man needs the chance to make choices. I thought my making the choice for you of being white would be the best. But that was before this whole country went to hell in a handbasket. There are no opportunities now unless you were born a rich man. Doesn’t matter now whether you are white or red. When you are without a job and you have no food and no idea about where to go, you are not better or worse than an Indian. And that is how they treat you when you are down and out. Including those of us who fought in Flanders Fields to make this world a better place. But now I do have an idea about someplace to go. Two ideas, that is. One idea for each of us.”

  Pop slaps his chest and I hear not just the thump of his hand against his rib cage, but a flatter sound. Paper, maybe? Sure enough, when Pop reaches into his coat he pulls out that newspaper he was reading.

  “This is my idea,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s an idea for both of us. Let me tell you about it and then you can tell me if you’ll agree. That’s important, because if you do not agree then there is no way I am going to force you.”

  I nod to that. “Okay,” I say. “That’s the code.”

  Pop nods back. Rule number one.

  Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.

  “Remember Joe Angelo?” Pop asks. “What he did?”

  That confuses me some.

  “No,” I admit.

  Pop smiles. “Sorry, Cal. I’m jumping the gun a bit. Too many things going through my head right now. You know who I am talking about, though?”

  “Yes.”

  He’s the vet who walked to Washington. That I do understand.

  “Okay. What Joe did was to put himself on the line. He spoke up for all of us who served. Spoke up about our bonuses. But he wasn’t the first to do that. Last year, back in December, a bunch of men went to Washington and staged a hunger strike. Then this priest from Pittsburgh led a whole army of jobless men to agitate for help for the unemployed. And now,” Pop raises his hand and makes a circle, “there’s talk of more of us going there from a man named Walt Walters, a veteran himself. His idea is that we can be an army of peaceful warriors asking that the Congress and old President Hoover treat us fair and square and give us our bonus money.”

  Pop’s eyes glisten in the moonlight, as if lit by a fire from within.

  “Think of that, Cal, thousands of men camping out in the very heart of the nation. Asking the nation to open its heart to those of us who fought for freedom. And if we do get our bonuses,” Pop puts his hand on his pack, where his own Compensation Certificate is carefully stowed away, “then I’ll have enough money for us to get a little place of our own and a good life. A federal mortgage, vocational training. All that could happen. I could get us a house, really settle us in again.”

  Part of me likes the thought of that. The bonus money coming through. A whole thousand dollars. Us back on a farm of our own.

  But part of me is wondering if that is really possible. Young as I am, I know that President Hoover has a heart of stone as far as poor folks and veterans go. All he cares about is the rich. No matter how many men go to Washington, he is not going to change his stripes any more than a hyena is going to change into a horse.

  I can’t say that to Pop, though. I have to repeat what I said before.

  “I like being on the road, Pop. It’s aces being a ’bo. I like being with you. We already have a good life.”

  Pop looks at me with a bit of surprise. That was a long statement for me to make.

  He reaches out and pats my foot. “Cal,” he says. “Cal, Cal.” Then he sighs. “You are going to be a good man, son. But our life is not good right now. We are getting by, but that is about all. This is not the way I’d choose for you if it was up to me. Now I did decide to lead this sort of life after I ran away from Indian school the last time. Riding the rails was freedom to me. About the only freedom I could imagine for an Indian kid with no family. And then it was the army. But when your mother and I met, when we were able to have a place of our own, when we had you. Son, that was a good life and I want us to have it again.”

  Pop picks up a stick and starts scratching it on the earth that would look as red as blood in the daytime but is dark in the moon’s half-light. But there’s light enough for me to see what he is drawing. It is half of a circle.

  “This is what I think,” he says, tracing partway around the circle. “This is the way I have to go now. To Washington.”

  Then he moves the stick back to the starting point and tracing partway around in the opposite direction.

  “And this is the way you have to go while I’m gone.”

  He lifts the stick and looks up at me. “Just while I’m gone,” he says. “Because you can’t go to Washington with me. I’m not saying it’ll be dangerous, but it’ll be an army and you are not ready yet to be part of any army. And you cannot be riding the rails on your own. A boy your age alone? No, sir. I want to know you’ll be safe with three hots and a cot.”

  He looks at the stick in his hand. “I never wanted being seen as Indian for you, Cal. I thought you knowing about your heritage would do you no good. And I sure as blazes never thought back when we had our farm that an Indian school would be in your future. It’s taken me a lot of time and a lot thinking to come to this, son. But the way things are—in this country and in our lives—I just can’t see another way. If there was any other road, I’d take it. But I cannot think of any place other than old Plains View th
at would give you not just an education but also food every day and a roof over your head.”

  Pop pauses. “Then again,” he says, “you will be also joining a sort of army there. You’ll get you a uniform and learn military discipline.” He chuckles. “One thing they teach you for sure at Indian school is how to answer the bugle and march in formation, just like soldiers.”

  Having a uniform and being like Pop was in the army sort of interests me. But it is still far from anything I’d choose if it was up to me.

  Pop turns back to the shape he’s scratched in the dirt.

  “Anyhow, Cal, it won’t be for that long,” he says. “Just till I am done in D.C. and I can come back and get you.”

  Coming back to get me.

  That’s the first totally good thing I’ve heard in everything Pop has been telling me. But, for the first time in my life, a part of me is wondering if I can trust him. I’ve never ever mistrusted my father before. Now, though, I just don’t know.

  Pop looks at me. I have no doubt he is seeing the uncertainty on my face as obvious as a question mark painted in the middle of my forehead.

  “Now, look,” he begins moving the stick on one side and then the other of his rough drawing, completing the circle. “See how the two halves come back together again? That’s us, son. We’ll just be apart for a while.”

  I open my mouth to say something. I’m not sure what.

  But whatever I was going to say is forgotten as soon as we hear the gunshots.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  GUNSHOTS

  Most folks, Pop says, when they hear the sound of a gun, turn and run.

  Soldiers run, too. But they go toward the sound of the guns.

  “Stay back of me,” Pop says.

  Leaving the pot and cups behind us, we start running.

  There’s a way to run a trail through the woods at night, Pop taught me. Don’t run headlong. Jog along, feeling the path under your feet. Don’t just look down toward your feet. Look up. There’s a faint line of light above the length of a trail, especially when the moon is bright.

  No more shots. That might be good. But when we begin to see the light from a fire ahead of us it’s burning much bigger than a cooking fire. That’s not good.

  We pause at the edge of the clearing, staying low to the ground. We’re behind the trees, faces not lit by the fire. A man’s face is the first thing an enemy sees. Just putting your head down and not looking up makes it hard for anyone to notice you. It would have been better if we’d darkened our faces with mud. No time for that. But leaning forward, long hair falling over our faces, is almost as good a way to hide eyes and cheeks that might reflect back the light.

  Pop and I are unseen, but what we are seeing isn’t good.

  The clearing is so well lit because of the fire consuming one of the wooden shelters. Not Cap’s. At least not yet.

  Armed men with torches have invaded the hobo jungle. One’s holding a hound by a leash. That explains how they found their way here.

  They’ve lined up all the ’boes, forced them to kneel with their hands behind their heads. That first shot was likely fired into the air as a warning. I am just about certain who pulled the trigger.

  It’s the mean-faced man in the black suit. He’s sporting a big badge on his chest, holding what looks like a .45. He raises it high above his head, points it at the half moon.

  “Where is he?” the man with the gun says. “Where you hiding that . . .”

  BLAM! He fires another round up into the sky.

  Some of the kneeling men cower lower. But not Cap. He’s looking straight at the man with the gun.

  “That is a right nice weapon you have got there, Sheriff,” Cap says.

  “Y’all want a closer look?” the sheriff says, in an even voice that’s a-heavy with menace. He lowers the gun, presses it against Cap’s forehead, and pulls back the hammer with his thumb.

  This time Cap says nothing.

  The sheriff uncocks the weapon and pulls it back from the old man’s forehead. “Now, listen,” he says, “I am a reasonable man. I been tolerating you white bums jungling up here just as long as you don’t do no stealing. But I will not tolerate the likes of that man I saw get off the train. Not in my town. No vagrant Negroes are going to be allowed to come in and stir things up with their ideas. We get along fine with our own coloreds who know their place. They all know Sheriff Dan Boyle is a fair man.”

  Sheriff Boyle makes a circling motion with the gun. “Now I am not saying I’m going to shoot all of you. No, sir. But if y’all don’t tell me what I want to know, we are going to burn down every single one of your rotten little shacks, strip the clothes off your backs, beat the bejesus out of every one of you, and then send y’all down the road barefoot and naked as jaybirds.”

  Some of the frightened ’boes are looking in our direction.

  There’s a slight motion off to my left. Someone under a long pile of leaves is starting to move. I have no doubt who it is. Corporal Esom Dart. About to give himself up.

  “No!” Pop hisses. “Stay there.” As he rises to his knees, his hand reaches out and presses down on my back. “You too, Cal.”

  I don’t want to, but I do as he says.

  Pop reaches up to pull back his long black hair and tuck it under his cap.

  “Don’t shoot,” he shouts. “I’m coming out.”

  Hands raised above his head, he steps out into the light.

  All seven men, including Sheriff Boyle, have turned at Pop’s first words. Their guns are pointed in his direction as he stands there, totally still.

  “Yew?” the sheriff barks. He grabs the torch from the hand of the man closest to him, steps forward and holds it close to Pop’s face, who stays as motionless as the Statue of Liberty. He looks Pop up and down, from his boots to his cloth cap. “Yer the one I saw hop off’n that train?” he snarls.

  “Yes, sir, Sheriff,” Pop says. “But I am no Negro, sir. Though I am a Black.”

  Pop smiles as the sheriff lifts his torch again to study my father. From the look on the lawman’s kisser, he’s confused. Did he make a mistake because he was so far away? Pop’s height and build and even the clothes and cap he’s wearing match those of the corporal. With his long hair tucked up, the brown of Pop’s face, close to that of a light-skinned Negro, is visible.

  “What are you then, boy?” the sheriff says, his voice still hostile. “Mulatto?”

  “No, sir, Sheriff,” Pop replies. His voice is soft, conciliatory. “Easy mistake to make, sir, but I am Indian. Full-blood Creek out of Muskogee, Oklahoma.”

  Pop lowers one hand to take off his cap. Long black hair falls down to his shoulders.

  As Pop drops that hand holding the cap to his side, the hound that was sitting back on its hindquarters, stands up. It walks forward as far as its leash will allow. It touches its nose against the cap, then licks the back of Pop’s hand, whimpers, and starts wagging its tail. That’s no surprise to me. Pop has this thing about him when it comes to dogs. Even the meanest mutt responds to my father as if he was a long lost friend. A bit of that seems to have rubbed off on me, as well.

  The sheriff is looking a bit more at ease. “Yew got a name?” he says, his voice no longer a harsh growl.

  “William Black, sir. Veteran, sir. Army papers in my pocket got my name on them.”

  “Take ’em out.”

  Pop slips his hand into his jacket to pull out his discharge papers and his Compensation Certificate.

  Sheriff Boyle takes them, reads them, nods.

  “So why you here, boy?” he asks. This time his words sound more like an actual question than an accusation.

  “Just stopping over for the night, sir,” Pop says. “On my way to Oklahoma, up near the Kansas border. Taking my son to Indian school there.”

  I may be wrong, but it
seems as if I can see the hint of a smile on the sheriff’s face.

  “Challagi?” he says. “Old Plains View?”

  Pop nods.

  Sheriff Boyle laughs out loud. “That’s it, for sure,” he says. “Every year I catch me a nice little batch of runaways from up there. One year it was a whole group trying to get back East to their own little reservation in the South.”

  Sheriff Boyle grins, showing white teeth that look as big as tombstones.

  “Nice manners on ’em, I have to say. None of them Challagi boys ever puts up a struggle nor gives any lip when I catch ’em.” He grins at the thought.

  He squints toward the woods where Pop came out. “So where’s that boy of yours at? Hunkered down in the brush? Bring him on out.”

  “Cal,” Pop calls.

  I stand up and walk into the clearing, stop by my father’s side. I reach up for my own cap, take it off, and hold it in both hands in front of my chest.

  “My son, Cal,” Pop says.

  “Sir,” I say to the sheriff, bowing my head as I do so and keeping my eyes on the ground.

  “Off to school, huh?” Sheriff Boyle says.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You look just like your pa here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, then.”

  He hands Pop back his papers, turns to look around the clearing at the kneeling men, all of whom look considerably less terrified.

  “Now, you bums,” Sheriff Boyle says in a loud voice, “you all just take a lesson from this man and his boy. They might be Indians, but they know their place, nice and polite. Just remember, you do see any strange Negroes, you come and tell me right quick, you hear? And be glad you have such a fair-minded man as me keeping the law hereabouts.”