Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  I AIN’T GOING TO take you day by day through the time I was at that school and done interpreting of the kind of which I just give you an example which can stand for the rest. I’ll say right now them Cheyenne boys never did learn English or they learned more than they let on to, but the point remains if they was ever addressed in the simplest terms of it they did not respond, nor did any of them ever speak a word of English in my hearing. I used to wonder what might happen if they was tested by somebody saying, in English, that the people hoping to get the beef at dinner would have to ask for it by name, for all them boys cared for by way of food was meat, which was the scarcest item on the school menu, being furnished by the Government for reservations and schools like this, which meant a lot of the supply vanished mysteriously before it ever got there.

  Or for that matter, what would they do if you yelled “Fire”? But of course I never tried these tests, for I was mostly sympathetic with the boys, which even then I realized was the kind of sentimentality that actually works to the detriment of them in whose favor you think you are acting. Oh, I would give them hell on this matter, saying, “What good are you doing yourself, or your people, going to school, if you don’t learn anything?”

  The answer I’d get, from Wolf Coming Out or Walks Last or Goes in Sweat (whose names incidentally the Major changed respectively to Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Anthony Wayne, though nobody but him used them, and he couldn’t tell one boy from another), the answer I’d get would be, “But we are learning what the white man teaches, for you are explaining it to us.”

  And then I’d feel worse than ever, because I wasn’t really passing on what the teachers said in history and geography, and the least part of the arithmetic lessons was the words. As to English, the kind of young woman who gives the impression of being already old, kind of dried up before her time, was the teacher, Miss Dorothea Hupple by name. The way she taught seemed reasonable enough, and I guess she had some success with the other students, particularly the girls, who didn’t mind being taught by a woman.

  She begun by pointing to various parts of her own person and giving the English for each, hair, ear, eye, nose, and so on. After hearing the word, the class was supposed to repeat it. But what they done at first was to say every word in Cheyenne, and even I was taken in by that at first, assuming they would go on to the English, which I would chime in, seconding Dorothea, but they never did. When I finally told them to knock it off or they’d get no meat for a week, Walks Last reminded me that nobody including the staff had got any in five days (neither had Mrs. Stevenson, who was thinking of quitting), and Wolf wanted me to tell the Veho woman to point to an intimate part of her anatomy and give the English name for it. “Or don’t white women have any?” he asks.

  Now I had to conceal all this when I spoke to Dorothea because though them boys made me plenty mad at times, I felt more for them than I did for the whites, because of my upbringing but also because I could remember being in school when I was with the Pendrakes. I hated school. The difference was that not being an Indian I knowed I was wrong, which never made me like it better but was more forward-looking in the long run, a real difficult concept for the red man even though they might give lip service to it. They kept thinking they could stay completely Indian despite all the evidence to the contrary. That was what was both great and hopeless about them.

  Now if Amanda had been the English teacher this sort of thing wouldn’t of gone on for long—I mean, I don’t know if the boys would of learned any more, but I would of had to explain what was going on with them, what they was really saying in Cheyenne, and so on, but Dorothea Hupple, see, had taken a shine to me. She was one of them spinsters come West to find a husband, where, respectable females being scarce, the prospects seemed good. But stuck in this school she didn’t enjoy such advantages, for not only was the other woman teachers in the same boat, but of the men there the Major was a widower too distracted by all his ideas to see a woman if he looked at her; John Bullock, who taught all the boys, including mine, the basic techniques of farming, plowing, seeding, reaping, and so on, was himself a farmer and lived with wife and kids, several of which were old enough to help him, on the land adjoining the school fields; Klaus Kappelhaus, the instructor in arithmetic, happened to be a German recently come from the Old Country, and though I guess he spoke English grammatically his accent was so strong few could understand him and his harsh voice scared Dorothea; and finally I suspected Charlevoix of being a heemaneh, the way he gave some of the lads the once-over in the bathhouse, though when I asked my boys, not mentioning him by name, if anybody tried to interfere with them, they said no, for if so they would of give him a good beating unless he put on a dress, after which he would be treated well, which is the Cheyenne tradition.

  Anyway, Dorothea as I say took a fancy to me and therefore never made any fuss about the lack of progress of my boys at English and always accepted my lame excuses for them and my sanitized translations.

  I was myself interested in Amanda Teasdale though not in the mooning way I felt towards Dora Hand. Amanda was not a teacher proper, unless substituting for someone under the weather, but rather the second-in-command to the Major in overseeing the school, and insofar as he let her manage things they would be well done until he got his hands on them again, for though his head was in the clouds a lot, he couldn’t tolerate a female having too much authority, in which he was like most white men and every male Indian I ever knowed, for example my boys, who thought even poor Dorothea Hupple showed the white woman’s tendency to be too bossy. Not that I myself was a radical in this respect, I tell you frankly, though I have never liked being lorded over by anyone of any sex or race, but I have never much resented a person whoever they might be that does or knows something better than myself. An opportunist like me couldn’t afford to be otherwise.

  Amanda for example was an educated individual who had not only gotten all the way through regular school but then had went to a woman’s college in addition, so there wasn’t much in the way of learning that must of escaped her—in my opinion, but not in hers, for one of the notable things all that education done for her was make her dissatisfied. She claimed women wasn’t taught the important subjects like Greek and Latin and the kind of mathematics called calculus but rather how to draw and play the piano and read stories. As the last-named sounded preferable to me, I wondered why she would of wanted instead to learn dead lingos and how to calculate beyond the commonsense sums good enough for most folks, but I knew that if I made that point it would only be a further example of how ignorant I was, so I didn’t.

  I got to know Amanda some during the time I was at that school, for she too seemed to like to talk to a man, with the difference that she was not looking for one to marry. In fact, after I got to know her better, she allowed as how she was against wiring, for herself anyhow, on account of it was a worse form of white slavery than them women who worked at the Lone Star, for they at least got paid and also could quit any time.

  This was a new one on me, I had to admit, but I never argued the matter with her, for what did I know over someone who went to college? I did have experience of harlots, however, and could of told her the whole thing got complicated by the fact that, as I have said, them which I had knowed generally looked forward to getting married sometime and the ones that did seemed happier than respectable women in the same situation, make of that what you would. My own theory was that in their working life they got to know the worst weaknesses of men, which left only the good side to find in marriage. As for the husbands, well, they hadn’t no reason to sneak around the corner looking for a whore.

  It was generally of a Saturday afternoon that I saw Amanda, for that was the only off time you got at school, though I never had much to do at certain times during the week, when the boys got their instruction in farming from John Bullock, who was a man of few words and taught by demonstrating how to use a plow, how to bale hay, and the rest of it, and my boys, according to John, was all right at it whe
n they wanted to be, but sometimes they’d fall into some kind of Cheyenne mood which I had seen many a time when I lived with the tribe, though when they was amongst their own people this tended to happen on an individual basis and not in bunches at once. It was like they went someplace else in spirit while their body remained where it was. When they was in that state, nothing could be done with them.

  But back to Amanda. It didn’t look to me like there was much to do for pleasure out there on them flat treeless plains that was turning into rich farmland when cultivated by men like John Bullock, and the nearest white town was no more than a whistle-stop and was too long a hike unless there had been something to do beyond watching the infrequent trains come and go, which is what the people who lived there did, but Amanda had found by walking about five miles out into the country you could reach a little stream, which had a nice bend in it shaded by cottonwoods.

  She had been going there by herself, which was another of the things she done that was unusual for young ladies of the day but not as dangerous as it might of been at one time, now that wild Indians no longer roamed the region. I didn’t pretend I come along to protect her, which I might have done with another kind of girl even so, but Amanda disliked the idea she ever needed a man’s help for anything. I hadn’t run into that sort of female before, for she wasn’t no Calamity Jane type, dressing and acting manly, cussing, spitting, and chewing, and working as a mule skinner. For a hike in the country she even wore her everyday long dress and high-button shoes.

  When I invited myself along for the first time I was surprised she agreed, never having shown the slightest interest in me after hiring me for the job, but I guess she was struck by the novelty of it, and low as I was on the totem pole I wasn’t in no position to compromise her authority.

  On the first walk we had cleared Bullock’s acreage without her saying a word, and I therefore didn’t think I ought to, but it finally occurred to me that maybe she was being polite and just waiting for me to begin. Being with respectable women made me real nervous.

  I finally says, “Mr. Bullock’s crop looks good,” meaning the nice stand of wheat we had just got beyond. It was all buffalo grass from there to the horizon, level as a body of water. “Makes me feel my years. I come this way as a boy, on the wagons. You wouldn’t then have thought you’d ever see farms here.”

  Amanda nodded but said nothing. I should mention we was walking side by side at her pace, which was right brisk, and while in this part there wasn’t no actual road yet, there was a trail what had been made maybe for centuries by buffalo and other animals now gone, so the plains wasn’t ever exactly trackless even to white men.

  “In them days,” I went on, “you might encounter a herd of buffalo that filled the world, or you might not see any at all for weeks, and most of the time you’d never run into an Indian, but then all of a sudden there would come a little band, always seemingly from noplace, though you could see in all directions for miles.”

  She nods again, like she’s not really listening, and then says, “Tell me: are your boys making progress in English?”

  “They’re coming along,” I says. “Probably doing as well as can be expected.” If your expectations was nil, as I didn’t add.

  “Why are they so difficult? We are not their enemies.” She asked this earnestly, not with annoyance.

  “It’s got to do with their manhood. They can’t prove it in war any more, and they can’t even hunt while they’re here.”

  “I don’t like to find fault with Indians,” Amanda says, “but we must show them that shedding blood should have nothing to do with being a man.”

  This of course was said by someone who was not of the male sex. If she had created men they would have been nicer than the ones turned out by God.

  “That’ll take a bit of doing,” I says.

  “But it must and will be done.” Amanda spoke firmly, compressing her pale lips.

  Walking along at her pace under a bright sun built up quite a lot of heat in a person, and I was sweating, though you’d never know it was hot looking at Amanda, who wasn’t carrying a parasol like ladies did in town or even wearing a hat. Maybe that wealth of gold hair afforded protection, for the skin of her forehead stayed uncolored. She made quite a contrast when standing next to Mrs. Stevenson, and the latter once beamed at her in my presence and said, “Honey, I guess they couldn’t make ’em any whiter ’n’ you.” I don’t mean she looked unhealthy by any means. I found her real attractive, and the longer I knowed her, all the more so. Which don’t mean I had any ideas of doing anything with regard to her except taking these walks, for after several of them she didn’t pay no more personal attention to me than she ever had, and I never made a practice of making an advance upon a lady without getting some suggestion she would not find it repulsive.

  Amanda seemed to accept my company easily enough, but I had the feeling that if I hadn’t showed up some Saturday when she was setting out, she never would of looked around to see if I was on my way. As yet I had an unusual association with this girl, unlike any other I had experienced, but I believed this was due to her living a privileged life in a family that was rich and high class by my standards, whereas consider my own situation. There wasn’t no reason why she should be interested in me unless she wanted to hear some of my colorful history, but she never showed any curiosity as to how I become fluent in the Cheyenne language. As to my participation in battles and being an intimate of gun-fighters, well, I have spoke of her disapproval of bloodletting, so there wasn’t much of my experience I could have related for her pleasure. Or so I thought anyway, disregarding my association with harlots, which was not all that extensive given the place and time. But even had it been otherwise, Amanda Teasdale would not of been the person I would normally have discussed the subject with. In them days a man didn’t speak about sexual matters with a female person, certainly not a respectable one like a wife, if you had such, or a sweetheart, but not even much with the kind of woman you could buy though you might well use a reasonable amount of foul language in her company. What I mean is, at the risk of being indelicate here, a man would get to the business without talking about it unless there was some dickering as to the fee. Oh, maybe sometimes, with the better type of service, he might get asked if he had a preference. But I sure doubt if any customer of any calico queen of that day was ever questioned as to what he was doing there.

  So I’ll admit I was amazed and also shocked when, on one of them walks, Amanda says, in a matter-of-fact way, “Why would a man go to a prostitute?”

  Resorting to humor to conceal my embarrassment, I says, “Well, if you don’t want them to shed blood, then that’s all that’s left to do.”

  I should mention that Amanda had never shown no sense of humor whatsoever and did not develop one now. In fact she didn’t give any indication she heard my answer, but rather went ahead and give one herself. “Is the urge to dominate women so strong that he will even pay someone to feed it?”

  I wasn’t certain what that meant, but given my own joking response, I expect I owed her some tolerance. “Well,” I says, “if you really are puzzled about the matter, it ain’t, isn’t, hard to explain. When a cowboy comes in off the trail, he wants to have some pleasure on the money he earned by the weeks of hard work, so he gets drunk, gambles, and buys some time with a woman. He would no doubt prefer a free example of the last-named, but is not likely to know any decent females in the town to which he has drove the herd, and he’s not going to be there long enough to meet a nice girl in some respectable way, and if he did she’s not going to do what he wants until they get married.” All of this sounded so self-evident to any grown person I couldn’t believe I was explaining it.

  Amanda had been listening this time, and when I finished she says, “My father is not a cowboy.”

  Once again she had me at a disadvantage. I thought I must of misheard. Young women didn’t speak of their father and sex at the same time. As I say, they didn’t speak of the latter at al
l, especially to someone they hardly knowed. But now we was in sight of the cottonwood grove at the bend of that creek, and you might need some experience of the plains to know how welcome a sight a tree is after miles of horizontal country, across which the winds blow incessantly, taking me back to memories of my early boyhood with the covered wagon. I was also looking forward to a drink of water.

  “We’re here already,” I says.

  But Amanda stuck to her point. “He has bullied my mother all her adult life, he bullies my sisters and of course the women who work for him at the bank. Yet all of that is not enough.”

  I guess I had heard her rightly but that didn’t mean I wanted to know more of what I considered a distasteful topic. “Look here, Amanda,” I says. “I think I’m the wrong person to be talking to.”

  “But you worked at that place.”

  “The Lone Star?” I shook my head. “I doubt he goes there. He’d stick out amongst that bunch.” I said that to make her feel better. All kinds come in there to drink or watch the girls dancing, some dressed like merchants and bankers. Not everybody went upstairs with a working woman, but if he did, there was a discreet back stairs to get to by the same route you used to reach the outside urinal. Anyway, I didn’t know her Pa.

  “I have followed him,” she said decisively. “And he has stomach trouble and doesn’t drink.”

  I was really uncomfortable. “I oughtn’t be listening to this,” I says. “You’d do better to speak to that preacher in Dodge.”

  “Why?” Amanda asked. “Is he a customer there too?”

  “The preacher?”

  “He’s a man, isn’t he?”

  “Some of us is stuck with that designation,” says I, with a smile, though I begun to think her strange. “And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “I refuse to believe that.” She pushed her lower jaw forward. “No man has to act like an animal.”

  “Then, begging your pardon, you ain’t met some of them I have,” I told her. “Talk about meanness, no animal comes close.”