A Quality of Light (18 page)

On their first play from scrimmage Allen and Chris’s team ran a Y-out for a twelve-yard gain. Then a shovel pass to a receiver coming from the backfield late got them ten more yards and they were threatening to score. We prepared ourselves grimly for the third play, determined to shut them down. At the snap of the ball Allen came right at me like I’d done to Chris. I back-pedaled, keeping my eyes on his chest so I could read the direction of the turn I was expecting any second. As Allen turned to button-hook in front of me, I planted my feet at the exact same second. I didn’t see Chris steamrolling across the field and he hit me with full force. I flew through the air and my right shoulder plowed into the ground. Groggily, I got up just in time to see Johnny punch Chris hard in the jaw. The taller boy crumpled. Mr. Hughes’s whistle was tooting madly from somewhere down field as Johnny clobbered Allen, who was trying to get past him towards me. The redhead fell to one knee, holding the side of his head in both hands and grimacing. Our teammates swarmed around Johnny to keep him from inflicting further damage on the two townies, and he struggled mightily against them before Mr. Hughes arrived to settle things down.

“All right, all right!” he said, wading into the middle of the melee. “Who started this?”

“The fuckin’ Injun!” Chris screamed, pointing wildly at me and trying to claw his way past his own team. “He’s dirty. He cheats.”

“Gebhardt. What about it?” Mr. Hughes asked, staring hard at Johnny.

“He doesn’t cheat,” Johnny said.

I wobbled over to the crowd.

“Kane? You got anything to say about this? Who hit you, son?”

I looked at Johnny. He just stared at me with that wide-open gaze and I knew exactly what it was I had to say. “It was an accident. I wasn’t watching where I was going. I didn’t see who ran into me.”

Mr. Hughes surveyed us all. He shook his head sadly. “Okay, that’s it, then. Everybody into the showers. And no funny business in there. I mean it!”

Silently we paraded into the gym and on into the change rooms. Johnny draped an arm over my shoulders and squeezed lightly. At the door Allen and Chris stepped past us, glaring over their shoulders. Not a word was said all the time we showered and changed. Finally, as he was reaching down to tie up his shoes, Chris looked over at us on the other side of the room.

“This isn’t over,
Injun!”
he spat.

“Long way from over,” Allen added.

“Why don’t you guys just leave it alone?” Johnny said. “He’s not bugging you.”

“What are you, his baby-sitter?” Allen said. “Gotta do his fightin’ for him? What is he, chicken? You chicken,
Injun?
Huh?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“No,”
Allen mimicked. “Fuckin’ redskin!”

Johnny stood up. “Hey. You guys wanna do it one more time? Right here?” He looked back and forth at both of them.

“We ain’t got no beef with you, Gebhardt,” Chris said. “I’m willing to forget the cheap shot you gave me out there ’cause I think you’re okay. It’s the Injun we wanna get.”

“Too bad,” Johnny said. “You wanna get him, you’re gonna have to get me too.”

“Why doesn’t he talk? Is he stupid?” Allen whined.

“No, I’m not stupid,” I said.

“If you think not rattin’ us out to Hughes is gonna make us grateful or make us forget,” Chris said, “you’re wrong, Kane. We don’t want you here. Nobody does. You’re a fuckin’ Injun. You belong on a reserve, not here.”

“Just watch your back, Injun,” Allen said.

“He doesn’t have to,” Johnny said, firmly. “I’ll be watching it for him.”

“Then that’s where
you’re
stupid,” Chris said before heading out the door.

I
climbed aboard the bus that afternoon and slumped into the seat beside Johnny.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Sore but okay.”

“Nice move on the touchdown.”

“Thanks. Nice pass.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“About what?”

“About
what?
Are you
nuts?
Hollingshead and Begg are gunning for you and you ask me about
what?”

“Oh, that. I’m going to do nothing.”

“You can’t do
nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have to fight.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a warrior.”

“You always say that. Warrior this and warrior that. Like because I’m Indian I’m automatically a warrior. Well, I won’t fight. I’m just going to do nothing and when they see it’s not bothering me, they’ll let it go.”

“So it’s not bothering you?”

“Well, yeah, it’s bothering me. But it’ll pass.”

“Bullshit. They’re gonna pound you out one of these days.”

“Why?”

“
Why?
Because they hate you.”

“I don’t hate them.”

“Well, you should. You like all those names? The lipstick on the locker? The notes? You like all that?”

“No. But it doesn’t mean I have to fight.”

“What does it mean, then?”

“It means I have to forgive them.”

“Forgive
them? Is that what your folks say?”

“They don’t know.”

“What?” Johnny gaped.

“They don’t know. I haven’t told them.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would just bother them for no reason. Look, in a week this will all be over. Everyone will get interested in something else and they’ll forget about me. I won’t upset my parents over something that doesn’t add up to much in the first place.”

“Being hated doesn’t add up to much?”

“Not to me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Johnny!”

“You’re full of shit, Josh. You’ve been learning from my old man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re behaving just like he does. You walk around letting on that whatever’s really eating away at you isn’t really eating away at you. That everything’s okay. That
you’re
okay. But you’re not.”

“I’m not like him.”

“Sure you are. Neither of you wants to fight. Him because he’s too drunk and you because you think God’s gonna swoop down and save you, change everything for you, make it okay. Well, it ain’t gonna happen.”

“How do you know?”

“Because God’s a warrior too. He wants to see you fight for your answers.”

“Yeah. I agree.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” I said.

“Why don’t you fight?”

“Because that’s not the kind of fighting God wants me to do. He wants me to fight with kindness and understanding. He wants me to fight with love.”

“Then I’d better keep watching your back.”

F
rom my earliest days when my parents and I would kneel by my bed together and I would clasp my little hands against my chest, bow my head and whisper the “Now I lay me down” prayer of childhood, prayer has always been a soft and gentle place. Throughout my life it has been my refuge and my strength. I never once doubted that the Lord harbored my soul those nights or that I would not die before I woke. I eased into dreams secure in the knowledge that angels hovered over me and that I would awake again to the resplendent light of love of God and parents.

As I got older and my parents schooled me on the nature of prayer, I began gaining comfort from sincere prayers for the well-being of others and for the world. I knew intuitively that prayers of thanks at the end of a day for all its blessings, both the seen and the unseen, guaranteed me peaceful slumber. A grateful man is a contented man, my father would say, a sentiment echoed in my mother’s assertion that salvation was born in an attitude of gratitude. I learned that I should never pray selfishly unless the things I asked for would ultimately benefit others. I also learned that courage came from offering prayers for those that hurt you — your enemies and revilers. Faith, my mother would say, grew from the
courage to pray for others before yourself and for the courage to pray for strength and direction instead of answers. Contrary to Johnny’s belief that I expected God to swoop down and change everything, I believed that he would strengthen me and that the answers would come when I was ready. So each of those nights, alone in my room, I prayed for strength and I prayed for the health and well-being of everyone at that school who mistreated me.

These days I know that faith is an acronym. It spells out Finding An Insight That Heals. I know that having the courage to pray for the strength to do God’s will in troubling situations — instead of for its immediate resolution or removal — results, eventually, in the dawning of an insight that heals the situation. An insight far removed from what the mind or desire might tell you is right and appropriate. But in the privacy of my room those nights, I knew only that the answer would come in God’s time and not mine and that prayer was the source of the comfort and strength that allowed me to walk back into those hallways each morning with a measure of dignity.

“I was speaking to Pastor Chuck about you the other day, Joshua,” my father said one morning in the middle of the second week of high school.

“About what?” I asked.

“Well, Mother and I think it’s time you started communicant classes.”

“That’s right, son,” my mother said, setting aside her Bible. “You’re old enough to become a confirmed member of the church and to take Communion with us.”

“Really? When?” I asked.

“Tomorrow night. We’ll drive you in to the church and hang around for late-night shopping until you’re through,” my father said.

“How long are the classes?”

“About an hour or so. For six weeks,” my mother said. “You could take Communion on Thanksgiving Sunday.”

Johnny called later that night and I told him my news. For all I knew the Gebhardts had never been churchgoing people and I took great pains to explain the concepts of Communion, confirmation
and church. I told him about the responsibilities involved in being a good church member and what I believed it could mean to my life. Things like being connected to a community of people who shared the same beliefs, traditions, ceremonies, rituals and outlook. (My father, of course, put it more eloquently. When two believers get together, he’d say, whether it’s under a tree or in the middle of a corn field, and they share their belief and faith, or they simply share themselves openly and honestly, open their hearts to each other, then the shade of that tree or the sweep of that field becomes their church.) I explained what I knew of the Presbyterian church, its organization, history and message. I also told him about my prayers at night and how this opportunity seemed like a partial answer.

“So, it might not exactly solve my problems at school, but it could lead to the answer,” I said.

“And you believe that?” he asked.

“I do,” I said firmly.

“Well, good for you. Me, I think you should just deck Chris Hollingshead.”

“But that won’t solve anything,” I said.

“It’ll shut him up! It’ll make him back off! It’ll at least make people know that you won’t be pushed around!”

“But will it, Johnny?”

“Yeah, it will. Trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

“Then fight, Josh. Fight!”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because. I just can’t.”

“Because that’s what your
church
says?”

“Yeah. Well, no. It’s what
I
say.”

“You wanna know something, Josh?”

“What?”

“You just told me that when you sign up as a member of the church, that you’re gonna have a whole community that shares your beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and stuff, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you already got that.”

“I do? Where?”

“Inside you!
The
Indian
inside you! All you gotta do is hook up to that and you have all the stuff the church says you need. You’re an Indian, Josh. You’re a warrior.”

“The way you talk, all Indians do is fight.”

“Yeah, well, at least it’s doing something about it.”

“You think I’m chicken, Johnny?”

“Chicken? No, Josh. I just think you gotta start being who you are.”

“I’m Joshua Kane.”

“You’re Joshua Kane, warrior. You’re Thunder Sky, remember?”

“I remember. But, Johnny, you gave me that name. And … and … you said that one day people would really listen to me. So maybe this is one of those times they’ll listen to me.”