Grayfox (24 page)

It was a hot, muggy day toward the end of August 1861, when I rode back into Miracle Springs, California.

There wasn't a breath of wind.

My poor horse was tuckered out, both from the heat and the days of riding. And as anxious as I had been to get home, I was tuckered out too—plus a mite jittery inside. So I was content to sit on his back and ride along slowly.

I rode through town with my hat pulled down over my eyes. I didn't want to see anyone I knew. There were too many thoughts and emotions going through me in too many directions. I only glanced about now and then from under the brim of my hat just in case Pa might be in town. I looked in at the Mine and Freight, but didn't see Pa or Corrie or Almeda anywhere around.

Then I headed out of town and up toward the house and our claim.

I was nervous by then!

What would Pa say? He'd have every right to give me a real tongue-lashing for what I'd done. He'd even have the right to deck me with his fist for what I said to Almeda. If he did, I wouldn't argue.

No matter what Pa did, it was still going to be hard to face him again. I knew that's exactly what I had to do. I'd done wrong, and it was time to own up to it. But that didn't mean it was going to be easy.

The closer I got to home, without even thinking about it, I must've let the horse move slower and slower. By the time I rounded the last bend and saw the house again, his hooves were clomping down that dusty road in a slow cadence that seemed as sleepy as the hot afternoon.

The first thing I saw was Corrie, standing on the porch with her hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun. She was looking in my direction, but then I saw her turn and look up toward the mine.

There was Pa, walking slowly down toward the house!

I heard a voice call out something inside. But I wasn't paying attention to the house anymore. My eyes were fixed on Pa.

And now he'd seen me . . . he was running toward me!

More noises came from the house . . . shouts . . . people were running outside! People were calling out my name!

I reined my horse to a stop and slipped out of the saddle. I tried to walk forward, but I'd only taken a step or two when Pa reached me. He threw his big arms around me and squeezed me tight, holding me to his damp, sweaty chest.

I stretched my arms around his waist and closed my eyes.

I couldn't believe it—Pa was weeping.

So was I.

Pa and I stood there silently holding each other for a long minute.

When we finally let go and stepped back, Pa looked into my face, and then said, “Welcome home, son!”

It was like a spell was suddenly broke.

All at once everyone else rushed forward and swarmed around me with hugs and kisses and a thousand questions, laughing and talking and grabbing at me. I couldn't say a thing! At first I forgot that they must have all thought I was dead.

“Nice beard, Zack!” said Tad.

“You little runt,” I said back, giving him a friendly little shove with my hand, “you went and grew up while I was gone!”

I was turning all around, trying to take everybody in.

The next person my eyes lit on was Becky.

“And you, Becky!” I hollered. “When did you get to be such a beautiful, grown-up woman!”

Then I spotted Corrie.

At first I couldn't find any words to say to her. Corrie and me were the oldest of the five, and I think the older we got the more special she was to me. She was just about the best sister a fellow could ever have, and in those first seconds, seeing her again, I realized how much I loved her.

Finally all I could do was give her a long hug.

I could tell she was trying to say something, but it took a while for her to get the words out of her throat.

“Oh, Zack,” she finally said. “I . . . I was afraid . . . I'm just so glad to see you!”

Then I hugged my stepma. “Almeda,” I said.

“Oh, Zack . . . we love you so much!” she said, still crying. I didn't hardly have any breath left in me after she got done hugging me!

All this time Pa had been standing back, wiping his eyes. Now he stepped toward me again. I wondered what he was going to say, if he
was going to mention anything about the day I left so angrily. The nervousness I felt riding home came back. But Pa wasn't thinking anything about that awful day—at least not right then.

“How about a handshake of welcome, Zack?” was all he said. “A handshake between men . . .
man to man!
”

Pa stuck out his hand toward me.

I couldn't reply. I knew if I tried to say anything, I would lose my voice altogether.

I reached out and took his hand.

It was just like the final handshake with Hawk. We just stood there grasping each other firmly, gazing deep into each other's eyes. There wasn't nothing neither of us needed to say.

I think at that moment both Pa and me knew well enough what the other was saying
inside
. The look we gave each other meant that everything was forgiven—on both sides.

This time it was Becky who spoke up first.

“Why did you grow the beard, Zack?” she asked.

“It's a long story,” I answered as I released Pa's hand.

“Where you been?” asked Tad.

“Another long story!” I laughed.

“What's that hanging from your saddle, Zack?” asked Tad.

I turned around and looked.

“That's a quiver . . . for arrows.”

“Why's it empty?”

“That one's real long,” I said, only this time I didn't laugh when I said it.

“How did you get—” asked Corrie, then she interrupted herself. “Wait, I know—it's a long story, right?”

I nodded. “Right,” I said, “but the
why
of it isn't so long.”

I paused and thought for a minute. It was another one of those times when everything you've been through runs past your mind in a few seconds.

“Are you going to tell us the
why,
then?” Corrie prompted.

“I'll tell you everything,” I answered, “when the time is right.”

“Give the man a chance to get the dust off his feet, Corrie,” said Pa.

Probably none of the others noticed. But my heart practically leapt out of my chest. It suddenly dawned on me that Pa was calling me a man. I don't know that he ever had before, or if he had maybe and
I hadn't noticed. But it sure sounded good. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was ready to believe it!

“Come on, Zack, son,” Pa went on, “let's get that horse of yours put up. Then what do you say me and you go up and give a
howdy
to your uncle . . . and Alkali up at the mine!”

“Sure, Pa,” I said. “Yeah, I'd like to see them too!”

We turned and headed toward the barn. I reckon by now I was an inch or two taller than Pa. But that didn't matter. Pa threw his arm up around my shoulder as we walked. With the leather reins in my free hand I pulled the horse along behind us as we walked.

When we were about halfway to the barn, Pa stopped and turned back around.

“Almeda!” he called back. “You start figuring on how to fix up the best vittles we ever had! Corrie, you make up a heap of those biscuits of yours. We'll invite the Reverend and his wife, and Nick and Katie—I know they'll all be anxious to see Zack. We'll have us a great time!”

He turned back, and he and I continued on to the barn.

“It's mighty good to have you home, Zack,” said Pa softly.

“It's good to be home, Pa.”

We got the horse put up, then puttered around in the barn a while, making small talk.

Finally we both wound up standing side by side, leaning against the rails of one of the stalls, looking inside at the horse that brought me all this way back from the desert.

It was quiet for a long time.

“Pa,” I said finally. “I want you to know how sorry I am.”

“Don't think nothing of it, Zack.”

“I had no right to say the things I did. I'm sorry, and I apologize. I hope you'll forgive me, Pa.”

“I appreciate it, son. 'Course I forgive you. You got my apologies too. Some of what you said was right—I ain't been the best pa to you. So I need you to forgive me too.”

Everything Hawk said about broken mirrors flooded through me.

“You're my pa, anyhow,” I said. “So I don't reckon you gotta do it all perfect. Nobody can do that. I'm just grateful to God that I got to be your son.”

“Thank you, Zack,” said Pa. “Those words mean more to me than you can ever know.”

We stared straight ahead for several more minutes, not saying any more. I knew both of us had tears in our eyes. And then I told him just briefly about the accident and how I'd managed to stay alive.

“I hope you can meet Hawk someday, Pa,” I said.

“I'd be honored to,” said Pa. “Can't think of anything I'd rather do than shake the man's hand and tell him thank you for taking such good care of my son.”

“You and he'd like each other, Pa.”

“I like him already, son.”

Again it was quiet a minute.

“Well, let's go see Nick,” said Pa at length, slapping his arm around me again.

We left the barn and walked up the creek. On the way, he told me everything he'd been doing at the mine.

We spent the whole rest of the day together, him telling me about the mine and Sacramento, me telling him about Hawk and Nevada. We both got a lot of things said that we ought to have said years before. Most of all, when the day was over, we'd both apologized for a dozen more misunderstandings, and I don't think either of us had any more doubts that we loved each other. It was sure a day I'll never forget as long as I live.

By the time evening came, it felt almost like I'd never been gone.

Dinner that night was something special!

Pa treated me like a guest of honor. I had a hard time not thinking that I didn't deserve it. But everybody was so happy about me being home that I couldn't keep them from making over me. It was embarrassing, but it felt good too.

Everybody was there, like Pa had told Almeda and Corrie. There was food and laughing and singing and more of Alkali Jones's tall tales than any of us could have swallowed in two weeks.

I was having a great time. But I'd catch myself every once in a while remembering something Hawk had said or something that had happened, and it would make me thoughtful for a few seconds right in the midst of all the celebration.

Everybody kept coaxing me to tell everything that had happened since they'd last heard from me. I wasn't especially anxious to relive the bitterness of what I'd been feeling when I left home, as wrong as I now saw it had been. But then when Pa and Corrie told how they'd come looking for me and what a narrow escape they'd had with the Paiutes themselves,
1
well, that perked me up enough to start up my story right from there without having to dwell on the past.

So I told them about my first months riding for the Express and then what had happened the day when I suddenly found myself face-to-face with the band of unfriendly Paiutes. Everybody laughed so hard they cried when I told them about how I'd remembered Rev. Rutledge's sermon. Alkali Jones's
hee, hee, hee!
was nearly one continuous cackle!

“I even tried what you said you couldn't do, Reverend,” I said. “I stopped laughing long enough to close my eyes and count to ten. I thought that just maybe they
would
go away, that it was just a bad dream. But when I opened my eyes again, they were still there. And I still had to do what you said in your sermon—either go through
them or around them. But I gotta tell you, Rev. Rutledge, I found myself wishing I'd paid better attention that day at church, because I thought maybe you
had
said something else that I just couldn't remember!”

“No, that was it, Zack, my boy,” said Rev. Rutledge, wiping his eyes. “Through them or around them, that's all I said.” He was still chuckling as he spoke.

Then I continued on, telling them about the accident, then about waking up in one of Hawk's caves, then about Hawk himself.

I told them a lot of what had happened during the months—things I'd learned, how I'd grown up. Tad was most interested of all in the caves. He always had liked those places, even after our own mine had fallen in on him.

“How many caves does Hawk have?” he asked in astonishment.

“I don't know, Tad,” I said. “I don't suppose I ever stopped to count. Eight or ten maybe. We'd store different things in different places, use them at different times—that is, if a bear wasn't occupying one.”

“Zack!” exclaimed Almeda.

“It only happened once,” I said, laughing.

“What did you do, shoot it?” asked Rev. Rutledge's wife.

“No, Hawk doesn't like to kill unless he has to, unless it's life or death. No, that time we took sort of a backwards approach to your husband's advice. We stood out of the way and let the problem go down the hill past us!”

“Sounds like you owe the man your life, Zack,” said Pa.

“I owe Hawk more than my life.”

“How do you mean?” asked Rev. Rutledge.

“He taught me how to live, how to survive, how to see things most people never have a chance to see, and never would see if it was stuck right in front of their noses.”

I told them the way Hawk would teach me to see. But it was just stirring up too many other emotions to say anything about Demming and the Paiute trouble and Laughing Waters. So I didn't bring that up.

The house fell real quiet after I was all through.

“A remarkable-sounding man, your Hawk,” said Almeda.

“Best friend I ever had,” I admitted.

And again it was silent.

“Actually, I reckon that ain't quite true,” I said. “He's the one who helped me see I had an even better friend than him and had for a long time.”

“Who, Zack?” asked Becky.

I didn't answer her directly, but kept talking about Hawk.

“Once he began to find out about my background, and I began to tell him about all of you and about Miracle Springs—what my life had been before he picked me off the mountainside—he started trying to make me use my extra set of eyes to see inside myself. He helped me see a lot of things I never saw before, things about all of us, this family of ours, and . . .”

I hesitated.

I'd been speaking real soft, and suddenly I was afraid I was about to start crying. It wasn't easy saying these things with so many people listening. It would have been a lot easier
not
to say any of it. But I reckon this was the moment Hawk had told me about, when you found out whether or not you had the courage of true manhood.

I took in a deep breath and continued on.

“Mostly he helped me to see,” I said, “a lot of things I'd never seen or understood about me and Pa. Once Hawk realized how it had been when I left, he asked lots of questions. He probably knows you about as good as any man alive, Pa, even though the two of you have never met. He told me some things about myself that weren't too pleasant to hear, even though I knew they were true. He's a straightforward, honest man, and I knew I could trust him. So I had no choice but to believe him. I had to look at myself, at some of the foolish things I'd done, like running off half-cocked and blaming things on Pa that I had no right to blame on anyone.”

Again I stopped and took in a deep breath.

This wasn't easy! No wonder men didn't usually dig around down inside and let folks see what was inside them. Hawk was right. This
did
take more guts than facing someone trying to shoot you!

“He made me look down inside myself,” I went on, “just like he'd all along been making me look at things in nature. He made me look at my anger. He told me that I'd never be a man until I learned what anger was supposed to be for. He said I'd never be a man until I learned to swallow my pride and come back and say I was sorry. ‘Only takes half a man to be able to live out in nature all by yourself, Zack,' Hawk told me just before I left. ‘So now,' he said, ‘it's time
you learned to be a whole man. It's time to take the half you learned out here and put it to use being the other half.

“‘Don't make the mistake I did of never going back. I learned a lot of things. I know how to live in the wilds. But in a way I'm still only half a man. It's too late for me now. I drifted too long and too far. Now my own people are gone. But it's not too late for you, young Grayfox.'”

“
Grayfox
 . . . who did he mean? Was that you, Zack?” asked Tad.

I smiled.

“Yeah, Tad, it was me.”

“Why'd he call you that?”

“For a while, that was my name up there.”

“It sounds like an Indian name, Zack,” said Almeda.

I smiled again.

“Yep,” I said, slowly nodding my head. “That it was. Given to me by the Paiutes.”

“Why? What does the name mean?”

The long silence that followed was all full of memories for me. How could I possibly tell them all that had happened with Demming and the Paiutes and Laughing Waters and being given my new name? That would take another whole evening. It was all I could do to tell Hawk's part of it!

Besides, whenever I thought of Laughing Waters, which I did every day, I felt strangely quiet inside. I didn't know if that was part of the story I
wanted
to tell just yet . . . or keep to myself.

At last I sighed deeply.

“It's part of the long story about the quiver,” I said. “Maybe even longer than this one.”

“Please tell us, Zack,” implored both Tad and Becky at once.

“Someday I'll tell you all about it,” I answered with a smile.

“Why not tonight?”

“I can't tell you now.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure it's finished yet . . . and I gotta get to the end
myself
before I can tell you about it.”