Two Roads

by Joseph Bruchac

“Well, I guess you could say that,” I reply.

  Possum’s grin actually gets wider.

  “You know what that was?” he asks. “That handshake I just gave you?”

  “Nope.”

  “The Challagi Creek handshake,” Possum says. “Made up right here at this very school. Only done one Creek to another. When somebody like Skinny does that with you, Jay Bird, it means you’re accepted in as one of us.”

  That’s good, I suppose, being accepted and all. But how long will it last when folks find out who I really am? Which is what? An Indian passing for white? A white boy who now has to be an Indian? It makes my head hurt.

  Possum pokes me in the ribs.

  “Turn round,” he says.

  I plant my left foot, put weight on my trailing leg, and pivot into a fast About Face. I’ve already sensed the presence of people coming up behind us.

  Six boys. Arranged in a V formation like a flock of geese in flight. They’re all wearing sweaters. All but one of those sweaters are gray. Only one is red. It’s on the biggest boy at the head of their formation. The head goose. His face looks like it was carved of stone. He’s set his course straight toward me.

  Possum starts to say something. The red-sweatered head goose raises his right hand to shoulder height, palm forward, then quickly curls it into a fist. Possum shuts his yap. Then the red-sweater boy stops dead in front of me.

  I wait for him to speak a word of greeting. Maybe in Indian, there being no school employees around. But he just stands there as the other boys arrange themselves in a circle around me.

  I can guess what’s coming next. Every school has its own groups that stick together. These boys make up what Possum’s called his gang. Head Goose here is the leader. And now I’m about to be tested, like newcomers are at any school.

  I should be nervous. But I have just plumb used up all my nervousness.

  So I just wait.

  As does he, looming half a head above me.

  I keep looking off a little to his right and not saying a thing.

  No ganging up or kicking while you’re down, Pop said. They won’t fight like white men.

  More silence.

  Then someone farts.

  Not me. Nor Possum or the big boy in the red sweater. It’s a long-limbed, wide-lipped boy with big ears that stick out from his head.

  “Little Coon!” the head goose snaps, putting a load of seriousness into his voice.

  “Sorry, Bear Meat,” Little Coon drawls. Then he giggles.

  He’s not the only one amused by his unintentional breaking of the serious silence. That long drawn-out fart of his broke whatever tension the head goose was trying to build. All of the boys gathered around me are trying not to laugh. But not with much success.

  “Hush up,” Bear Meat growls. He turns his attention back to me.

  “You!” he says, his voice purposefully deep.

  “Me,” I reply, my voice so matter of fact it surprises me.

  I wouldn’t normally make a joke out of being confronted like this. But I’m not in the mood right now to be buffaloed.

  I smile at Bear Meat. He shakes his head.

  “You don’t look like much,” he snarls.

  “Ehi,” I agree.

  Possum laughs out loud. The others are holding back smiling. But no one’s coming up yet to slap me on the back and welcome me into their gang.

  “What you got in your pockets?” Bear Meat rumbles.

  I push one hand into the pockets of my pants so new they crackle like heavy paper. I grasp my few coins, open my palm so he can see them.

  I halfway expect Bear Meat to command me to give the coins to him. Instead he shakes his head.

  “Put that away,” he says. “Other pocket.”

  I bring out my jackknife.

  “Nice knife,” he says. “You want to give that to me?”

  “Nope,” I reply.

  I stand there, my closed knife on my open palm. I brace myself to be pushed or punched. But that does not happen. Bear Meat furrows his brows and looks into my face.

  “No?” he says. “How come?”

  “Give a man a knife,” I say, “you cut off any chance of him being a friend.”

  Bear Meat looks over at Possum, who shrugs and spreads his hands open.

  Bear Meat grasps his chin with one hand, resting his elbow in the other hand.

  “Tell you what,” he says, “I’ll rassle you for it.”

  He’s bigger than me and likely just as much stronger. I don’t want to lose my jackknife. But what else can I do?

  I nod.

  Possum holds out his right hand. I put my knife into it.

  The other boys have moved back from us. The one called Little Coon is scraping a twenty-foot circle around us in the dry red soil with a stick.

  “Loser’s first one to say give or get throwed out the ring,” Little Coon says in a slow drawl.

  Bear Meat drops into a low stance, hands held out in front of his body. Each of his broad mitts is a size bigger than mine.

  “Dirt Seller,” Bear Meat says to the bowlegged boy to Possum’s right. “You give the go.”

  “Okeydoke,” Dirt Seller replies. He raises his right hand high in the air.

  Out of the corners of my eyes I can see that our group got considerably larger while Bear Meat and I were confabulating. All kids—whatever their skin color—seem to sense when a brawl’s about to happen. They’re drawn to it like flies to molasses. Where there were nine of us minutes ago now there’s dozens.

  Unlike a fight in a white school yard, though, this crowd is pretty quiet. No one is screaming or yelling for Bear Meat to kill me. Everyone’s mostly just watching. Not that they’re totally quiet.

  “Who’s he?” I hear someone say.

  “New kid,” another person answers.

  “Jay Bird,” Possum corrects him.

  “Pancake right quick,” a fourth boy opines.

  “GO!” Dirt Seller yells, chopping his hand down like an ax splitting wood.

  I thought I was ready, but Bear Meat moves fast for so big a guy. Before I know it he’s grabbed my arm with one hand and swung his foot to hit my leg and knock me off balance.

  That kick to my left shin hurts, but I manage to pull free and avoid being thrown out of the circle. My well-worn shoes, not yet traded in for a new pair of bullhides, now has one sole that is loose. As I hop to one side, it catches on the ground and almost trips me.

  “Nice try,” a thin-faced boy who was one of the original five says. “You get him next time, Bear.”

  Bear Meat has stepped back, measuring me now that his first attempt to throw me failed. We circle. He’s so much bigger than me that my strength’s outmatched.

  Watch what a man does and keep doing.

  That’s what Pop told me.

  Bear Meat tries to grab hold of me. I duck back. When I do that, he crosses his legs as he circles. That’s the third time he’s done that.

  Okay.

  As his legs cross a fourth time I dive in. My shoulder hits his knees hard and I wrap my arms around his legs.

  But he doesn’t go down. Hitting him is like tackling a tree stump. I just about dislocate my shoulder. Then he drops all his weight right on top of me.

  WHOOMPH. The air goes out of my lungs. I’m stuck on my belly with him on top, though I am still holding tight to his knees.

  “Aitch-dee!” someone calls out in a loud whisper.

  Though I can’t breathe and feel three-quarters dead I recognize it as Possum’s voice.

  “Head disciplinarian,” someone else says.

  Bear Meat’s weight suddenly lifts off me.

  “What is going on here?” a harsh voice demands.

  Boys are being pushed back in every direction. A white man so big he m
akes Bear Meat look like a pip-squeak is thrusting his way toward us. The head disciplinarian.

  Bear Meat reaches a hand down and pulls me up to my feet. Though I feel like I have just been run over by a steamroller, I straighten my back and square my shoulders as the head disciplinarian reaches us.

  He stares at me. “What happened, boy? Somebody knock you down. Point him out!”

  There’s no sympathy in his voice. He is just itching to have the excuse to punish someone.

  “No, sir,” I whisper, using what little air is left in me.

  “WHAT?” the man bellows, leaning so close that the hot air from his lungs washes over my face and about chokes me.

  I turn my face to the side, inhale a deep breath, then tilt my head back to look up at him.

  “No, sir,” I say. “Nobody pushed me. I fell.” Which is pretty much true, though I do omit the part about someone falling on top of me.

  The HD looks skeptical, so I point to my right foot. “My shoe’s broken.”

  I reach out and put my hand on Bear Meat’s arm. “He helped me up.”

  The big man stares around the circle.

  “That is the Gospel truth, for sure,” Little Coon says, “Mr. HD, sir.”

  The HD glares at him. “Shut your trap, Oliver.” He stabs me in the chest with his thumb. “You’re a disgrace like your father.”

  As he walks away I feel as if I should have said something.

  My pop is not a disgrace. He served in France while you were here bullying little boys.

  But I didn’t. And I am feeling lower than a snake’s belly.

  Someone grabs my shoulder. It’s Bear Meat. We are still standing in that circle Little Coon scratched into the red soil. Is he about to try again to throw me? Let him. I don’t care. There’s no way this day could get worse.

  But instead of throwing me, he slides that arm around my shoulders.

  “You’re all right, Jay Bird,” he says.

  The other boys in the gang are coming up, shaking my hand in the Creek way. Possum places my jackknife in my palm after he shakes it. I start to hand the knife to Bear Meat.

  He shakes his head. “Naw,” he says. “Keep your knife.” He slaps me on the shoulder. “You sit at our table for mess.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  MESS

  Mess. Mess is the military word for a meal, in case you don’t know. Like a lot of things here at Challagi—the marching, the uniforms, the strict discipline—the army is supposed to be the model for much of what goes on here.

  Here, though, in the mess hall, it seems as if a good part of that discipline has just flown out the window. Though I am not saying there are no rules.

  Possum is spelling them out to me as we march into the room and scramble to get to our tables. As he talks, Possum steers me toward the one by the west wall that belongs to our gang.

  “Talking’s okay in here. Jes’ no hooting and hollering. Stay at your table until the old bugle blows. Then, exit the mess,” he says. “Most important, eat as much as you can before we got to get up and go.”

  The smell of meat and potatoes is greeting my nose even before we’ve reached our gang’s table. But there’s no eats there. As I slide onto the bench, all I see are metal plates, dull-looking pewter forks and spoons, and empty mugs. No food at all. I turn my head to make out where that aroma of food is coming from.

  Deacon, who’s sitting on my right, chuckles. “Settle down, Jay Bird. Food’s still in the kitchen,” he drawls.

  Little Coon’s across the table from me. “You a-feeling hungered?” he asks.

  I surely am. My belly is growling and my mouth is watering. Aside from Possum’s jerky, I haven’t eaten anything all day. My stomach is about to move in with my backbone. Last time I tasted victuals was after Pop and I loaded in those horses. Since then I’ve walked and gotten a ride, been poked with needles, scalped, stripped, and practically turned into a pancake in my wrestling match with Bear Meat—who’s sitting at the head of our table, knife and spoon held ready in his hands.

  “Get set for grub, son,” he says to me.

  “Ah-yup,” Little Coon says. “Food’s terrible here and there’s not enough of it. So y’all be ready.”

  I look around the huge room. The biggest I have ever been in. Big enough to fit every one of the eight hundred or so students with room to spare. Big enough to leave a sizable aisle between the tables where us boys are sitting and those far to the left occupied by the girls. Matrons are standing to keep watch on that space between the sexes.

  Possum points with his lips at the line of demarcation.

  “That there is no-man’s-land,” he chuckles. “Everything but land mines and barbed wire.”

  There are better tables around the outside of the room. They have cloths on them unlike our bare wood ones. Teachers and school staff are at those fine tables. Far away as they are, my eyesight’s keen enough to see that they have glassware, not mugs. Their silver knives, forks, and spoons glitter.

  They’re already being served by student waiters coming out of the doors to the kitchens in back.

  Little Coon leans toward me. “Now that there’s a job I would not mind having,” he says. “Waiters and kitchen workers are about the only ones can get fat here. Specially working the tables where staff sits. Always lots of leftovers on their plates.”

  “BOW YOUR HEADS!”

  That command has just come from the tall man standing up at the head of the biggest table. Superintendent Morrell.

  Everyone’s head goes down, but it’s not dead silent. The rattling of dishes from the kitchen, the shuffling of hundreds of pairs of student feet on the floor drown out the grace spoken in a normal tone by Superintendent Morrell who’s standing, hands raised, palms out, like a surrendering soldier. All the assembled multitude hears is his final word.

  “Amen!”

  It’s echoed like a rumble of thunder from everyone’s lips, mine included.

  “AMEN!”

  “Here she comes,” Little Coon says.

  I look where’s he’s gesturing with his chin. A stream of waiters is exiting the kitchen. Some hold big pitchers. Others have serving plates on their shoulders.

  Our table’s among the first. The pitchers are brimming with fresh buttermilk, white and foamy. As soon as the pitcher is plopped down on the plank table Bear Meat grabs it and begins filling the mugs passed to him one by one. Out of the corner of my eye I can see things are not as well organized at other tables. There, many hands are grabbing for those pitchers.

  But then the plates of potatoes and meat are slammed down by the waiters. The potatoes look overcooked and lumpy. The beef’s nearly gray in color and ribbed with gristle. But it makes no matter how this food looks. It’s like tossing a rabbit into a pack of wolves. Even Bear Meat, head of the gang though he may be, can’t control the chaos of spoons and forks stabbed at the food from every direction. My own included. Pop’s warning about what happens at Challagi mealtimes is fresh in my mind.

  It’s amazing no one gets a hand impaled. And mighty sensible, I now realize, that we’ve not been issued knives for our meals. If we were, we’d likely end up with mangled mitts after chow. As it is, I check my plate to make sure no one’s finger has ended up in the mess of tough meat and half-cooked spuds that’s about to be my midday meal.

  Possum eyes the sizable helping I got. He pokes me in the ribs with his elbow. “Jay Bird,” he asks, raising an eyebrow, “you sure you never ate here before?”

  It’s a question I don’t answer, being too busy forking food into my mouth. Chewing beef that would make shoe leather seem tender is not conducive to talking.

  Possum chuckles and turns his attention to his own plate.

  As I eat I look around the table at the faces of the Creek gang. Though I’ve only known them for a day they already look
familiar. I never wanted to be here, but being accepted like this—a strange thing for me—makes me feel less abandoned than I did when I watched Pop walk away. Plus it feels good to stuff my gut. It’s the fullest meal I’ve had since the dinner we ate on the train.

  Little Coon looks up from his plate at me, grins, and then belches. To his left, Bear Meat follows suit, belching even louder, followed one by one by the others at our table. I can’t help but smile as I take a breath and then let out a burp as loud as any of theirs.

  My mind and my spirit may not be pleased about being stuck here at Challagi but my stomach sure doesn’t mind.

  “Biscuits!” Little Coon yells, and everyone’s attention turns toward grabbing at least one or two from serving plates that are empty before they even touch the table.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  IN STEP

  I sit up in bed, confused about everything. Where am I? What was that earsplitting sound that just woke me up? And why am I hearing other people moving and talking all around me?

  I rub my eyes. There’s hardly any light to see by.

  “Pop?” I whisper.

  Someone grabs my shoulder and shakes it.

  “Wake up, boy! Didn’t you hear the bugle?”

  The face thrust in front of mine is not my father’s. It’s a younger man. His dark eyes are deep-set and close together. His broad brow is knitted above his thin eyebrows. His earth-colored cheeks are scarred with the pocks from a bad case of chicken pox as a child. His lips are thick, his chin broad, and there’s a gap between his front teeth. When he speaks it’s with a lisp. But despite that seemingly unattractive catalog of features, the face staring at mine is a pleasant one.

  C.B.

  His name comes to me at the same time I realize where I am. Where I’ve been for over a week now.

  Challagi Indian School.

  C.B. is the boys’ adviser for House Four. He’s Cherokee, graduated from this school seven years ago. His room is one floor down.

  “Blackbird,” C.B. says. His voice is firm but not unkind, “Am I gonna have to dowse you again to get you up?”

  Like he did the first morning I was here and refused to stir. I just kept trying to dig further into my dream of riding a fast freight to California by Pop’s side.