Two Roads: Chapters 5–11

But I am not about to say anything for fear it will start Pop off on another bout of laughing.

It’s not one of his happy smiles, but one that can best be described as rueful. “Of course you don’t understand, son. How could you after the way you’ve been raised thus far?”

“Cal,” he says, his voice so soft no one else in the boxcar but me can hear—especially those who turned their heads our way when Pop had that attack of guffawing.

They told how this country was won from the savage Indian tribes who were the enemies of civilization and progress until they were all subdued.

They told how this country was won from the savage Indian tribes who were the enemies of civilization and progress until they were all subdued. Manifest Destiny. How things were meant to be.

First was my paper getting a big red F scrawled on top of it along with the word “Ridiculous!”

“Now, where did your boy get those outlandish ideas?”

“There came a time,” Pop said, “when it was decided that fighting Indians and trying to just kill them off was not the best idea. Part of it was that some white people were sympathetic to what they called the plight of the Indian.”

“To be honest, though, it wasn’t conscience that led the government to change its mind about what to do with Indians. Mostly it was money. You know how much?”

Say a new word and my brain just grabs it like a frog snagging a fly with its tongue.

“Geronimo!” he says as he lets go, rolls, and comes up on his feet like a circus acrobat. Quite a nimble feat for an old man surely no less than fifty years of age.

I follow him fifty feet farther off the tracks uphill into a thick patch of dry brush and stunted trees.

A blue jay, unaware of our presence, lands on a branch two feet over my head, preens itself with its beak, flaps unhurriedly away.

He starts sloshing the water I just lugged in an old galvanized pail from the nearby creek he pointed out to me.

He is holding up a ham hock, displaying it as if it was some sort of prize, which of course it is.

Every one of the seven of us gathered round Cap’s fire express their assent.
“You bet!”
“Yessirree, Bob!”
“Ah-yup!”
“For sure.”
“Indeedy-do.”

“Thank you, Professor.”
Those last words being, of course, from Pop. To which I add a hearty nod.

He pulls out a series of mismatched cups, some chipped and cracked, but serviceable.

I do not venture an opinion.

Last year, back in December, a bunch of men went to Washington and staged a hunger strike. Then this priest from Pittsburgh led a whole army of jobless men to agitate for help for the unemployed.

“Think of that, Cal, thousands of men camping out in the very heart of the nation. Asking the nation to open its heart to those of us who fought for freedom. And if we do get our bonuses,” Pop puts his hand on his pack, where his own Compensation Certificate is carefully stowed away, “then I’ll have enough money for us to get a little place of our own and a good life. A federal mortgage, vocational training. All that could happen. I could get us a house, really settle us in again.”

There’s a way to run a trail through the woods at night, Pop taught me. Don’t run headlong. Jog along, feeling the path under your feet. Don’t just look down toward your feet. Look up.

I been tolerating you white bums jungling up here just as long as you don’t do no stealing. But I will not tolerate the likes of that man I saw get off the train. Not in my town. No vagrant Negroes are going to be allowed to come in and stir things up with their ideas.

“No, sir, Sheriff,” Pop replies. His voice is soft, conciliatory.

“So where’s that boy of yours at? Hunkered down in the brush? Bring him on out.”

Pop and I stand stock-still, not moving a muscle as the sheriff and his posse of torch-bearing men depart.

Idea was to teach us useful trades. Academic classes half the day, and the other half of the day industrial.

Domestic trades for the girls such as sewing, housekeeping, and cooking.

A government commission investigated the Indian schools. Indian schools were supposed to civilize us, make us like other Americans. At some schools they were killing us.

“Third thing is that at Challagi Indian School you’re not supposed to speak anything other than English. When I was there, say one word in Creek you get your mouth washed out with lye soap.”

There are corrals with fine-looking horses in them.

A man with thick black hair and a handlebar mustache is standing there next to the burly crewman who just opened the door.

Retired cavalry mounts. Some is a bit skittish, though.

We follow them to a corral holding eight big horses. The two largest ones, a bay and a pinto, are galloping back and forth, tossing their heads.

As Pop puts the bridles on he checks each animal’s teeth, he pulls back their lips, feeling their back molars for the signs of wear that show their age.

Both of them are wild-eyed, whinnying, rearing up, baring their teeth, kicking up a fuss, and looking to fight.

“You can join us in the caboose,” Wilkie, the mustached man told us.

“The first thing they are going to do is boil you up. Strip you, scrub you clean, run a metal comb soaked with kerosene through your hair to get rids of nits and lice. Even though you don’t have any.”

“My company has been delegated the responsibility of receiving those mounts I was told you two would be accompanying.”

“Notice how Mr. E. Wimslow grabbed your hand in that vise grip of his?”