Cherokee (20 page)

I was just on the point of telling Hays we'd better go to hunting for a hotel for the night when I saw a buggy coming from the sawmill. In another half a minute I could see it was Charlie Stevens driving, using the reins one-handed. He managed to turn the corner of his house and give us a little salute at the same time. I figured his barn was around back and he was going to put his horse away.

Hays said, “Boy, he is mighty handy with just that one arm, ain't he? And ain't he spry in his manner. You say he's an old friend of your daddy? He must be a sight younger. They can't be the same age.”

I was still staring off, thinking about first one thing and then another. I just said, “I don't know.”

“Listen, Boss, if we gonna try and make it back to Chickasha by tonight we ought to get on the road here pretty quick.”

I looked over at him. “What do you want to be in Chickasha for tonight? They ain't got no whorehouses there.”

He grimaced. “That ain't what I mean. But that's whar the depot is. I thought we'd be gettin' on the train and headin' home. I'd like to see some country I recognize pretty soon. Hell, I can't tell north from south up here.”

“I don't figure to leave until tomorrow morning, maybe even later than that. This matter is a little more complicated than that.”

“Hell, Boss, we brung the gold. I thought that was our job.”

“Hays, you draw the same wages here as you do laying around the ranch in Matagorda County. Just lay around here and don't ask so damn many fool questions. We'll go when I say go and not before. Now hand me that bottle and hush up.”

The afternoon sun was beginning to wane, and with it the little warmth that it had brought. I'd left my jacket inside, and it was getting too cool to sit out in my shirtsleeves, even if it was a heavy cotton shirt. Just as I was getting up from my wicker chair Charlie Stevens came to the front door. He said, “You boys better come on in. It's going to get a little nippy out there for porch sittin'.”

We went on in, going down the hall to the big, cheerful parlor. Mister Stevens went up to the sideboard and got himself a glass of brandy, and invited us to help ourselves. Hays and I took whiskey, and Hays plopped himself down in a chair like he was going to homestead the place. I figured me and Mister Stevens could make some small talk before I felt obliged to run Hays off so that I could discuss the questions that were churning through my mind. I said, “That's some sawmill you got there, Mister Stevens. It appeared you had three steam engines turning a like number of blades.”

He nodded. “We put out a lot of board feet.”

“I noticed a lot of logs piled up at the back of your place. But I don't see many logging trees around here.”

He smiled. “No, this place is just about logged out. When I first set up here there was pine for miles and miles. But the cattlemen wanted the land for pasture, and I could take what they cut down and turn it into planks for houses and barns and fences and whatnot. Worked out pretty good. But that's all done now. We get our pine logs about twenty miles to the northeast. We got a little narrow-gauge railroad that runs up to the logging camp and fetches back the logs.”

“I don't quite get how business is done around here. Are we still on the Cherokee reservation?”

“Oh, yes. In fact all of my business is done with the Cherokee Nation. Right now I'm the only mill supplying sawn lumber to the tribe. At least the only white man. There are some mills run by Cherokees, mostly men I've taught, but they're not a concession like mine is. You have to have the approval of the Tribal Council to run a business on the reservation. That is, unless you're a sutler. Or an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

“Tell me, just what the hell is a reservation? Is it to keep the whites out or the Indians in? I don't get it.”

He shrugged. “Well, at first, especially with the hostiles, like the Apache and the Comanches, the idea was to pen them up so they couldn't raid and pillage over the countryside. So a reservation was to keep them in. Not that it did much good. They were usually placed on land where there was no game and the Indians had no way of feeding themselves except for what they could get from the sutler. These men were usually crooks and scoundrels who got the concessions to feed the Indians from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But what they did was mostly starve the hostiles into open rebellion. They'd buy poor cattle for three or four dollars a head, claim to have bought, say, a hundred head, but they'd only buy twenty, maybe thirty. Then they'd turn around and bill the government for a hundred head at twenty dollars a head. But the bad thing was the few poor cattle they'd buy couldn't feed the poor people they were intended to feed, so some of the hostiles broke off the reservation and give the reservation idea a bad name.”

“What about the Cherokees?”

Charlie Stevens smiled. “Well, they hardly fit the same mold as the Apaches or the Comanches. They've been farmers most of their existence, hunters and farmers. Oh, they can fight when they have to, but they'd rather talk the matter over.”

Hays said, “They always been up here in Oklahoma?”

Mister Stevens shook his head. “No. In about 1820 the United States government decided to move the Cherokees out of their native land, Georgia, where they'd lived for centuries. The War of 1812 was not too long over and people wanted to settle the southern Gulf Coast states. So the Indians had to go. Back then Oklahoma looked like the most worthless piece of real estate around, so they marched them up here on what has since come to be called the Trail of Tears and established a reservation. I'd have to say that the reservation here is intended to keep the white man out, though it hasn't done a very good job of it even though the Cherokee is the most civilized and advanced of any tribes I know of. But after the land rush there has been great infringement on their rights and on their property. Frankly, I fear for the future. They are a unique and valuable people. I would hate to see them trespassed on again.”

To my ears it sounded a little bit like a lecture, and I couldn't help wondering if he was saying it for my benefit. Now I was beginning to understand why people would occasionally ask me if I was Indian-blooded. The reason they were asking that was that a quarter of my blood was Cherokee. It made me feel funny to realize it. And I kind of figured that Charlie Stevens had said what he had to make me feel proud of that quarter of myself.

I looked over at Hays. I said, “Ray, I've got a little confidential business I need to discuss with Mister Stevens. Why don't you fill up your glass and wait on me out in the kitchen? I'd appreciate it. I ought not to be too long.”

He got up quickly. “I don't need no more whiskey, but I wouldn't mind seein' if that lady ain't got a bit more of that apple pie and cheese. I never hear'd of such.”

Charlie Stevens got up to show him the way back to the kitchen. While he was gone I got up and replenished my tumbler with some more of Charlie's good whiskey. I was back in my seat before he came in. He stopped at the sideboard and asked if I wanted a cigar. I told him I'd just stick to the cigarillos I was comfortable with. He made a business out of getting his cigar lit and then sat back down. We were about four or five feet apart.

Truth be known, I didn't know what I was feeling. A couple of hours past I'd been told that the woman I'd always thought was my mother wasn't my mother. But just the saying of the words couldn't all of a sudden make my feelings change. To me Alice was still my mother whether she was the one that birthed me or not. From the time I was aware, she'd been there as my mother, and I'd always called her that and thought of her as that, and this, this Lucy was just a faceless somebody I couldn't connect with myself. If my feelings were aroused about anything or toward anybody, it was Howard. It made me mad as hell him letting me live a lie, and him living a lie all these years. Here I'd thought my mother was some genteel Southern lady from Georgia when, all the time, she'd been a half-breed off the reservation in Oklahoma. No wonder me and Lew Vara were so close. Hell, we practically had the same bloodlines.

I said to Mister Stevens, “I'd like to get the straight of it if you know it. Do you know all the facts?”

He sort of shrugged. “Well, I'll tell you as much as I know. I don't know all of it, maybe, by the lights of what you want to know.”

“When did Howard marry my mother?”

“He never did.”

“I'm talking about my mother Alice.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked away for a second, thinking. “I'm trying to recollect. I know he wrote me about it. Said he wanted me to know he was still looking after Lucy if news of his marriage reached me and might cause me to have any worries on that score.”

“That was damn big of him.”

He smiled slightly. “Well, yes, but that was Howard. He was having his own way, but he wanted you to understand that he was looking out for the rest of the hired hands at the same time.”

“Well he had to have married Alice sometime between when I was born and when Norris came along, because I can guarantee you Norris ain't got no Indian blood in him. Talk about somebody favoring. He favors my mother . . . Alice.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, it was sometime in there. He'd made it big selling cattle to the Confederacy along toward the end of the war. They'd already eat every cow from Mississippi to Virginia, so those Longhorns your daddy drove up found a ready market. And he got gold for them too.” He thought again. “I would reckon you were running close to one year old. I remember in the letter he wrote that he was telling his high-born Southern society wife that your mother had died, but that I wasn't to believe it. She was going to raise you as her own, and Lucy was being taken care of and not to worry.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where the hell was . . .”

“Your mother?” he said. “Your birth mother?”

“Where the hell was Lucy while all this was going on? Howard comes waltzing in with a wife. What does he do, move her out and my mother in and take me away from Lucy and ... I mean, what the hell happened?”

I was getting hot about it. I wasn't getting hot at Charlie Stevens. I was just getting confused, and that made me angry. And the more I thought of the whole damn situation the madder I got.

Charlie said, “Well, I wasn't there. But I guess Howard didn't figure he was gonna rise too high in the world with a half-breed for a wife, especially when he could have one from a high-born family in Georgia. And yes, I reckon she come with a dowry. And right then I reckon Howard could use the money. You got to understand, Justa, that your daddy was a pistol. He was young and full of piss and vinegar and ambition. Mostly ambition.”

“Fine. Fine for Howard. But what did he do with the woman he stole from you? Your wife.”

A little look of sadness passed over his face. “Well, he built her a cabin a ways from his main house. Two or three miles. I'm sure he done for her as proper as possible. I doubt she wanted for anything that was in Howard's power to give her.”

“Well, what the hell was I doing all that time? And what did my mother, Alice, think about it? Hell, she had to have known.”

“Well, like I said, your mother Alice took you to her breast just as if you were one of her own. I don't mean to her breast like for milk. I imagine you was weaned by then. And besides, your mother Alice wouldn't of had no milk.”

“And this woman who borned me, Lucy, didn't she kick up a fuss about having her baby taken away from her?”

Charlie sighed and looked even sadder. “Son, I wasn't there so I don't know the particulars. But your daddy was a forceful man and Lucy was still awful young. I imagine he made her see that was the way it had to be. She'd lived with me, been taken off by Howard, lived with him, had a son by him.... Well, you got to remember she really wasn't brought up to expect much out of life. I imagine she was grateful for what come her way.”

I said, “Hell!” I got up and walked over to the sideboard and poured myself out another drink. “Well, I reckon I'm beginning to see why Howard, as you say, was either too afraid or too ashamed to tell me all about the matter. Still, I wish he hadn't loaded me up with all that gold.”

Charlie chuckled quietly. “Maybe he thought I'd take it.”

I looked around at him from the sideboard. “Why don't you?”

He sipped at his drink. “I don't need it. I got more money now than I know what to do with.”

“Take it anyway.”

He just shook his head.

“Why not?”

He sighed. “Because that would allow Howard Williams to take me off his conscience. It would mean that I had forgiven him.” He turned his head so he could look square in my face. “And I ain't ever going to do that.”

“Hell, he's an old man. He's just trying to clean up an old debt before it comes time to go out of business. I know what he done to you was wrong, but it was a long time ago.”

I felt a little strange taking Howard's side and trying to complete the errand he'd sent me on, especially as angry at him as I was. But I was thinking that it might do Charlie more good than Howard if he was to forget the old grudge. I'd seen men bowed by the weight of grudges, and this Charlie Stevens appeared to be a mighty fine man. I didn't like to see him carrying that load that was as much trouble to him as the gold had been to me.

I said, “Charlie, I was gonna say this is none of my business, but I guess it is. We both been harmed by this matter. I ain't going to pretend that my hurt is anything to compare with yours. But I reckon I'll have to end up forgiving Howard. I'm going to do it for my own sake more than his. What about you? What word can I take back to him?”