Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (5 page)

 
          
He
dumped the dishwater into his sink.

 
          
“Hello,
the house!” came a holler from outside.

 
          
Mr.
Ben tramped to the door and opened it. “Who’s out yonder?” he yelled back. “Oh.
It’s you, Mr. Altic.” Nor did he say to come in. I walked over to look. Brooke
Altic stood on the flagstones. He wore another suit of fancy clothes, a sharp
plaid jacket and plaid pants, with a white turtle neck to his shirt. On his
hands were pearly-gray gloves, not big ones like what we’d worn to go bee
hunting, but drawn snug as his skin. His eyes were hidden behind his dark
glasses. His long black hair was as slick as if it had been painted down with a
brush. I thought his nose looked sharper than a knife, and his teeth showed
white when he smiled them at us.

 
          
“Whatever
do you want of me?” Mr. Ben inquired him, and he didn’t sound as if he’d much
give what was wanted.
“Little enough of you this morning,
sir.”
Altic’s voice was as soft and friendly as a summer wind amongst
the flowers. “I want only to speak a profitable word or two with the guest you
have here. The master guitar player you call John.”

 
          
“I’ll
talk to him,” I told Mr. Ben Gray, and stepped out on the porch. "Yes,
sir, what can I do for you?”

 
          
"Suppose
you and I sit on the step here.” He smiled and smiled. "And let me tell
you how I want to make your fortune.”

 
          
I
sat down and so did he. He crossed one leg on the other. The boots he wore were
a sort of shiny blood-red, like a berry. I bet myself they'd been specially
made and cost a plenty.

 
          
"Since
last night I’ve been hearing about you, John, and everything I’ve heard is
greatly to your credit,” he said, with a show of his teeth. "I want you to
join the winning side in what's due to happen.”

 
          
"I’ve
always more or less wanted to join the right side,” I said back, while I
figured on him with those fine clothes.

 
          
"In
this case, the winning side happens to be the right side,” he said. "The
side that's due to be proved right by respectable federal law. It concerns the
Shonokins. Have you ever heard of the Shonokins, John?”

 
          
"Lately
I’ve heard tell two-three things,” I replied him.

 
          
"I
got up early this morning to tell you more things. Morning isn't really the
best Shonokin time.
After dark, the Shonokins.”
He
studied me. "Perhaps you've been told something about the Shonokin right
of ownership of the whole of America; a lawful title that goes back for tens of
thousands of years, to times long before the people you call Indians invaded
from Asia and seized the land from them?”

 
          
"Yes,
sir,” I said. "I’ve been a-hearing something along that line. What you
want to say is
,
the Indians haven’t got the first true
rights to
America
.”

 
          
“Quite
ably put,” he said, a-studying the shiny toe of his boot. “Of course, the
Indians think they have those rights. Just now, they’re at law in half a dozen
places to prove those so-called rights. It’s something rather gigantic,
particularly up in the northeastern states, where the old tribal lands are
being demanded again.”

 
          
He
started a-telling it off on his fingers. He touched the first one.

 
          
“About ten million acres in
Maine
for the Passmaquoddies
and Penobscots.”
He
touched another finger. “More big returns of territory demanded in
Massachusetts
, for the Mashpees on
Cape Cod
and the Wampanoags on
Martha’s Vineyard
and other places.”
Another
finger.
“Again, for the Pequods and Mohegans and
others in
Connecticut
.”
Yet another finger.
“For the
Oneidas
and Cayugas and Mohawks
in
New York
State
.”
He’d used up the four fingers on that hand,
and touched the thumb. “Here in the South, a big slice of
South Carolina
for the Catawbas and another slice in
Louisiana
for the Chitamaches.
To
say nothing of claims in the Southwest.”

 
          
He
doubled the fist in its gray glove. It looked slim to me. I recollected it
could have quite a grip.

 
          
“Oh,”
he said, a-smiling, “I could go on all day about this big list of legal
actions. And you and I don’t have all day.”

 
          
“I
said I’d heard tell just a little bitty bit about all this,” I said. “You seem
to be right much informed, Mr. Altic. Right much educated.”

 
          
“My
education isn’t formal, but I have something like four thousand books where I
live,” he said. “I chose each one for its useful information. Very well, John,
and what have the Indians to support all these demands, these lawsuits? Why
should anyone pay attention to the Indians, anyway?”

 
          
“Well,”
I said, “I haven't air seen children a-playing cowboys and Shonokins.”

 
          
He
laughed at that. It was a sort of crooning laugh.

 
          
“You
have a perceptible gift of homespun humor, I see. But back to the Indians: All
their lawsuits are predicated on the Nonintercourse Act of 1790—one of the
early acts of the United States Congress—that recognized certain aboriginal
rights of the various tribes.”

 
          
“I've
had that explained to me one time,” I said, “by an old Cherokee medicine man
named Reuben Manco. President George Washington his own self read the thing out
to a bunch of Indian chiefs. And air since that day, the white Americans have
been a-breaking that old law, time and time again, and maybe these Indians
today have got a something to say for what it is they want. They were here
first, on the ground they've just purely been run off of.”

 
          
“The
point is,” said Altic, “they weren't here first. They aren't the true, lawful
aborigines. The Indians dispossessed the Shonokins.”

 
          
“And
I said I'd been told something about that argument.”

 
          
“We
Shonokins have been pushed into hiding.” He wasn't a-smiling then. His
maple-colored skin looked tight on his face. “But we've never gone completely
away from the land that is rightfully ours.
Never.”

 
          
“You've
hidden,” I said. “Now you all want to come out of hiding.”

 
          
“We
want to, and we shall.” He sort of snapped that out. “The United States
Government, I say, is now in a mood to listen to fair arguments at last. To
grant fair titles, which is no more than we deserve. The federal law will be on
the side of my people.”

           
“Your people?”
I repeated him. “You talk like the chief of your people. Are you?”

 
          
“I'm
the chief of those that are here.
The chief of us all —but
never mind just now who the chief is, or where.
Back
to the legal aspect as recognized by human justice.
Here within recent
times, in the case of Montoya versus the
United States
, the Supreme Court clarified tribal rights
and also established a specific definition for the word tribe. It goes
something like this: A group of the same or similar
race,
united as a community under one leadership or government, and inhabiting a particular,
though sometimes ill-defined territory. All right, those terms exactly describe
the Shonokins.”

 
          
He
talked sharp and stern, but I kept my own voice quiet. I said, “Seems to me I
recollect Reuben Manco a-telling those things over to me, too. And he allowed,
a tribe meant a people or nation of Indians.”

 
          
“The
Supreme Court offered its definition to consider the specific problems of the
Indians,” Altic said, back in his smooth-talk way again. “In any case, that
word—tribe—is a word of the white man, not the Indian. It comes, as I
understand, from the Latin
tribus
—the
old Romans recognized people as tribes.”

 
          
“There
may be a lot in what you say,” was all I could give him.

 
          
“I
would also suggest that the word came into your use out of the Bible, where,
you'll remember, there were the twelve tribes of the Children of Israel.”

 
          
I
thought to myself, it would be a pure pleasure to hear Brooke Altic talk if I
wasn't a-pestering myself to know just what he was a-getting at.

 
          
“And,”
he went on then, “the Supreme Court needs only to be properly informed of the
nature of the Shonokins to come to recognize them as a tribal group of their
own. Not Indians, not whites. Not, strictly speaking, human as you define
human.”

 
          
“Not
human,” I said after him, a-trying to understand.

 
          
“But, nevertheless, the original and rightful owners of this whole
continent that calls itself
America
after the Italian
adventurer who never discovered it.”

 
          
He
gazed through his dark glasses at the flowers in the yard. He didn't seem to
think to himself how pretty they were. He just calculated.

 
          
“How
do you all aim to make folks believe these things?” I inquired him.

 
          
“By our antiquities.
We'll interest the experts at the
Bureau of Ethnology. They can be shown where to dig up Shonokin remains of many
millennia of the past.”

 
          
I
looked at him hard. “You'll open up your graves for them?”

 
          
“No,
John.” He sort of squinched his face at the thought. “We'll not open any graves
ourselves. They can do the grave-opening and examine the remains and be
convinced.”

 
          
“Convinced?”
I repeated after him.
“How?”

 
          
“By recognizing the special characteristics of Shonokin skeletons.
There are interesting racial peculiarities. For one, our third fingers are
longer than our middle fingers.”

 
          
He
peeled off his left glove and held out his hand. It was a slim, smooth hand,
and again I recollected how strong it could take hold of you. Sure enough, the
third finger was the longest. I saw that his nails were narrow and as dark as
iron, and came to lean, sharp points. More like claws than nails.

 
          
“We'll
prove our rights,” he said, a-drawing the glove back on and smoothing it to his
fingers. “And we'll win our rights.”

 
          
I
was a-thinking all the time. “The way you put things, the Shonokins would wind
up a-running this country and the whole bunch of other folks would be lucky to
wind up on a reservation somewhere.”

 
          
“Would
that be so bad, John?” he asked, sort of a- pushing his face at me. “If you
were a Shonokin, would that be so bad?”

 
          
I
got up on my feet. “Only I'm not a Shonokin, Mr. Altic.”

 
          
He
got up, too. He hiked on his toes, a-trying to be somewhere near as tall as I
am.