Little Coon has sidled up to Tommy. “So,” he says, “you know any other songs, Muskogee Boy?”
“One or two.”
Little Coon looks over at Deacon, our dance leader. Deacon nods and so does Bear Meat. “Okay,” Little Coon says. He hands the rattle to Tommy. “Let’s hear one.”
Tommy shakes the rattle, a little hesitantly at first as he looks at Little Coon who has stepped back and is rubbing his palms together. Then Tommy takes a breath and calls out the start of the song. His voice is sure and his feet start to move. Deacon gives Tommy’s shoulder a gentle shove and Tommy shuffles forward, still singing as Deacon falls in behind him. Soon all of us are dancing, including me—an Indian boy who thought he was white, following a white boy who knows he’s Indian.
All of us are joined together and free in a song older than our breath and stronger than all the Challagi rules.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
FIRST LETTER
This week I’m going to be working in the stables.
So far, during the nine weeks I have been at Challagi, I have done just about every possible job a boy can do. I’ve spent two weeks in the shoe and harness shop, two weeks in power plant maintenance and plumbing, a week in printing, a week in painting, two weeks in masonry, and a week in electric wiring.
That is what they do for new students—move them around so they can get a taste of the different trades they offer here. Some of what they teach really is useful—if you want to spend your life as a laborer. They do not train anyone to be doctors or lawyers, politicians, businessmen, or bankers here at Challagi.
The only trade shop I haven’t been assigned is to baking. That’s a job most boys want since you get to eat fresh-made things every day, right from the oven (when no one is looking). According to Bear Meat, who’s one of the twelve student bakers who work there regular, they put out an incredible amount of food every week. Two thousand loaves of bread alone. Not to mention all the buns, corn bread, pies, and cookies.
The job I am going to have now, though, is what I think is the best one of all. Taking care of animals—especially horses.
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been over two months since I got here.
It feels like two years—or forever—whenever I think about Pop, how much I miss him and the life we were leading.
But it feels like only two days have passed as I walk into the stable. There in the first stalls to the right are the pinto and the bay. They’re the two cavalry horses Pop and I loaded onto the railcar and rode with all the way to the station. As I approach, the pinto leans his head out, shakes it up and down, and whinnies at me.
“My, my. Looks like old Satan there knows you,” a voice says.
I turn toward the one who just spoke. It’s a white-haired man who looks full-blood Creek. In the time I’ve been here it has gotten so that I can generally tell what tribe someone’s from, if he’s full-blood and not mixed. There’s this sort of lankiness that most Creeks have, a look to their faces. Creeks do look different from Choctaws or Cherokees. And a lot different from western tribes, like Cheyennes.
The old man shuffles up to me, a gentle smile on his face. As he gets closer I can see he’s not as old as I thought. His face is much younger than you’d expect with hair that white. And the way he is shuffling is not from age. I’ve seen it before in some of the vets Pop and I have met over the last year. It’s from war wounds.
“John Adams.”
“Sir?” I say.
“No, I am not the second president of the United States. That’s my name—or at least the one I was given, young’un. You the new boy, right? Blackbird?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. John Adams chuckles. “Figured you would end up here sooner or later. Been hearing about you. Knew your pa. Best boy with horses we had back then. He still know that horse song I taught him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You ever say anything else but yes, sir?”
“Yes, sir.” Then I add, “Sometimes.”
Mr. Adams slaps his leg and laughs out loud, a laugh that is cut off by a grimace on his face. “All these years and I have still not learned not to slap this bad leg of mine when something tickles me,” he says as he rubs his thigh. “Shrapnel. Some of it too deep to cut out without cutting a nerve, they told me. So even though I used to be full-blood Creek now I have to add that I have got a bit of German in me—German steel.”
“My pop, too,” I say, touching my left knee. “In here.”
Mr. Adams nods. “So now he’s gone off to Washington and bless his soul. Old Hoover has got a heart of stone, but maybe he and our other boys will make him change his mind. You hear Lowell Thomas on the radio that night?”
I nod. They allow us to listen to the radio in the common room of the dorm sometimes during our study hour between eight and nine. Lowell Thomas is the one whose deep voice is almost like the voice of God coming out of the speaker. Everyone listens as he tells America what it needs to know. On his network radio broadcast he’d spoken about the growing number of vets in Washington. “The March of the Bonus Army on Washington becomes more promising of excitement every day.”
I’ve been following the news of the Bonus Army in the papers and whenever I can catch a little on the radio turned on all the time in the hall outside Superintendent Morrell’s office. So I know that thousands and thousands of men have made it there. Black veterans and white ones alike, all with one purpose. The whole country is paying attention.
The vets have created a tent city in Washington. Some are camped out on the Capitol grounds. More are pouring in every day. Lots of folks have been helping them along the way. Railroad conductors have put on extra cars so that marchers could ride in them. But not everyone has been friendly to those veterans. Some are calling them Reds, saying they should be shot. Some marchers have been beaten and jailed.
“If I was a man with no job, I would be right there with ’em, young’un. Now let’s go say hello to your friend here.”
“Satan?” I ask.
“Well, that is what I calls him. Seeing as how he has a devil of a temper on him. Him and the bay. The other six are easy as pie to handle, but not those two. Don’t help none that the men brought him and the bay here did not favor us with their names.”
“Dakota.”
“Say again?”
“Dakota is his name. The bay is Blackjack.”
I walk over to the big horse’s stall.
“Careful now,” Mr. Adams cautions. “He bites.”
But he makes no move to interfere, which doesn’t surprise me. In the time I’ve been here at Challagi I’ve learned that the old Indian way is to let a young person try things rather than attempting to keep them away from danger. You learn by doing—and sometimes by getting hurt doing things the wrong way. That’s why the industrial classes taught by the Indian instructors are always more popular than those taught by white men. And also why those who are in those classes taught by men like Mr. Adams make more visits to the infirmary. Like I did after putting a metal punch halfway through my palm my third day in the harness shop.
“Yup,” Mr. Handler said, when I showed him my bloody palm. “Guess you can see why you have to keep your hand back whilst punching them holes. Now go get patched up.”
I’m not really worried about Dakota biting me. But I’m also not one to tempt fate. That’s why I’m reaching into my pocket as I get close to pull out what I’ve brought with me.
“Here, boy,” I say, holding the apple out on my open palm.
Dakota reaches down, lips curled back. He takes the red fruit delicately and crunches it between his teeth as I stroke his neck.
“Son,” Mr. Adams says, “you surely are just like your father.”
“Jay Bird!”
I turn to look toward the stable door at the person who’s just
come looking for me.
“Mail,” Possum says. “You got a letter!”
All of my friends know that I’ve been waiting to hear from Pop. That’s why Possum has hightailed it here to let me know that his cousin—who works in the school mail room and was told to keep an eye out for me—has alerted him that a letter’s finally here.
I look back at Mr. Adams.
“Go ahead,” he says. He points with his lips at the flat wooden tablet hanging on a hook by the door. “Just take that pass so as you don’t get in trouble.”
I’m holding the letter in my hand so tightly that the envelope is creased by the pressure of my fingers. There’s no return address on the outside, but Pop’s handwriting is easy to recognize. Plus, the cancellation mark over the stamp says District of Columbia.
Washington.
I haven’t opened it yet. Eager as I am to do so, I don’t want to do it where someone else might see me. I want to keep it between Pop and me. I’m not sure what the letter will say, but just getting it is good news. It means Pop is alive. Not having heard from him for so long has been hard on me. Not knowing if he made it to Washington. Or even if he was still breathing.
I keep the pass visible as I walk back to the stable. No one stops or questions me. When I re-enter the stable, Mr. Adams is grooming one of the big plow horses. He looks at me, sees the envelope in my hand, nods and points with his lips toward the little office room to his left.
“Go on,” he says.
I go inside, shut the door behind me, and sit down on a stool. My heart is pounding. I slip my little finger under the flap to open the envelope. I take out the letter and hold it up to my face. Pop’s familiar scent is on the folded paper. As is the paper itself. Unless I miss my guess, this letter was written on pages Pop tore out of his notebook. I bite my lip and then unfold it. For a moment I can’t read the words. It all looks blurry to me. I wipe my eyes with the tail of my shirt. This time as I hold the letter up it comes into focus.
1ST JUNE
My Dear Son,
This is your father writing to you, Cal.
I hope you are doing well at Challagi. I am sure you are doing your best and have found friends. I am proud of you, son. I know it is not easy for you.
I am sorry it has taken so long for me to write to you. First I had to find paper and pen and then there was the business of getting an envelope and a stamp.
I am sorry if you have been worried. I have made it to Washington. I wish I could tell you my address so that you could write back to me, but I do not have an address. Even if I did, it is hard to say how long I will be here. We all hope to wait it out here, but there are rumors that the president might give orders for them to come to clear us out. I am staying in a camp city we have set up near the Potomac. There are hundreds of others like me here, thousands in the city. All of us are here for the same reason, to convince Congress and old Hoover to give us our due, as you know. It is exciting to be among so many others like myself, all of us back in the army again in a way.
We are a real army now. We have chosen a commander in chief, Walter W. Waters. He was one of the ones who first proposed us all coming to Washington back in March. He has been helping keep us organized, getting food, setting up places to stay and all that. He’s also been negotiating for us with the police chief here, a Mr.Pelham Glassford who is a vet himself, a good egg, and sympathetic to our cause.
Because I know so much about the trains, I decided to help other men get here to Washington. So I have gone back and forth from Washington four times now, collecting other vets and showing them what lines to ride to get here. In one city we took over the railroad roundhouse until they agreed to put together a special train to carry four hundred of us part of the way here. Some other men here walked all the way from their homes. One came from Florida on foot all the way.
There is so much to tell, too much for me to put in a letter. Just know that I am okay and thinking of you. And I am hopeful that our business here will be successful soon. Meanwhile, son, hang in there. With luck I may be able to come and get you at the end of the school term.
I will try to write again soon.
I remain,
Your Pop
I read the letter a second time. Then I read it again. I know it’s short, but it says so much in those few words. As much as I miss him, I am proud of him. And I will try to do my best to make him proud of me.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
A BAD DREAM
July.
And I’m still here at Challagi. When the school term ended, many of the students went home for the summer. Half of our gang, in fact. Bear Meat, Skinny, Dirt Seller, and Grasshopper all went to help out their families on the little plots of land they have left—allotments meted out when the Oklahoma reservations were broken up by the Curtis Act of 1898.
I’d never heard about the Curtis Act before. And I sure as blazes did not hear a word about it in any of the classes taught at Challagi. I learned the story from other Creek students—mostly Deacon, who knows the most about tribal history and genealogy and the acts of Congress that affected Okie Indians.
The Curtis Act abolished the tribal governments and tribal courts in what was formerly supposed to be Indian Territory forever. It divided, like cutting up a cow, what used to be communal lands between individual tribal members. No Indian was allowed more than 160 acres, which left 90 million acres—the greater part of Indian land—to be given to white settlers.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough,” Deacon said while sitting round the fire after a stomp dance, “every Indian had to pay taxes on their land for the first time. So a lot had their land taken for non-payment of taxes. We also now had the right to sell our land if we wanted. And white men were ready to buy it.”
“Specially after the oil,” Little Coon added.
Deacon nodded. “Black gold, white men call it. We call it the black curse. A lot of that oil was on Indian lands. A few of us did get rich. But not so many as you’d think. Much of the Indian oil land was stolen by white men who got Indians drunk and had them sign their names on bills of sale and then did not pay them a cent. Some white men married Indian girls just to get their land.”
“But . . .” I said. Then I paused.
Deacon looked at me and nodded again. “I know what you’re thinking to ask, Jay Bird. Didn’t people object once they sobered up? First of all, most courts will not take the word of an Indian over a white man. Second, if an Indian woman marries a white man, then ends up dead right after that leaving everything to her husband, there’s not a soul left to object or ask if that death was suspicious.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. It all sounded like a bad dream. It made me understand even more why Pop wanted to escape from being an Indian. Why he didn’t want to raise me knowing about all this. I cannot say he was right, but I see now he was trying to spare me the pain.
Bear Meat growled. “Some of us still got land. No one going to take it from us.”
The firelight flickering over his determined face also made it possible for me to see the smile that came to Possum’s lips.
“Bear Meat,” Possum grinned, “is the littlest one in his family. They’re all bad men—even the women. Don’t no one mess with the Chitto family.”
Since two-thirds of the whole student body left it’s been quieter here at Challagi, though Possum, Little Coon, and Deacon are still here. While some of the school staff remained quite a few others are gone, taking their once-a-year vacations. Now no one’s perched atop the water tower with field glasses to observe our every movement.
Rather than the usual schedule of drilling and classes, those of us left here now have different roles to play—mostly as laborers and farmhands. Whether school is in session or not, animals have to be fed, grass has to be cut, and crops need to be tended. Plus there’s all the upkeep on the many school
buildings.
Why am I still here? Well, for one there is no home for me to return to. Not even twenty or thirty acres like the family farms that Grasshopper and Skinny and Bear Meat went back to for the summer.
For another, a second letter came in June from Pop. It was not delivered to me in the mail room, but by Superintendent Morrell himself who called me to come to his office at noon.
“Mr. Blackbird,” the superintendent told me, gesturing to me with a wave of his massive left hand, “I have heard from your father.”
He held out the brown piece of paper on which I saw my father’s familiar writing. It was not letter paper, but something heavier. A piece cut from a brown paper bag. The date on the top was a week after the letter I’d received.
To Superintendent Morrell
From William Blackbird
Sir,
I apologize for sending this on such rough paper. Here in our camp writing materials are hard to come by, as is the time to send such missives as this.
I am writing to request that you allow my son, Cal, to remain there at Challagi Indian School during the summer months. He is a good worker, as I hope he has proven. I am sure he can be of use among the summer student helpers and might even warrant a garden plot of his own.
I am unable to return and collect him as soon as I had hoped. My own role as an officer and quartermaster in our Bonus Expeditionary Force requires my continued presence. Our army of veterans of the Great War continues to grow and we believe that our pleas for the payment of our bonus money will eventually be answered, though it may take till the ends of the summer. The papers have written well of us. We believe, with an election coming, that the president will see the wisdom of giving us our due.
Please inform Cal on my behalf and tell him that I am proud of him.
I held the paper in both hands and read it a second time, hearing my father’s voice. Then I handed it back to the superintendent.
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