Read The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction Online

Authors: Bernard Malamud

Tags: #Fiction, #Jewish, #Short Stories (Single Author)

The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction (5 page)

He had meant to stop in Chicago to have a look at his citizenship papers at his cousin Plotnick’s, but he forgot.
Chief of the Tribe
THE KEROSENE LAMP on the locomotive cab flickered on the rails. The train, clackity-clacking, rattled into the space across the wide prairies. Yozip, unable to sleep with eyes shut, slept with his eyes open. He slept staring at the tribe’s documents he had left behind in the Commissioner’s office. They were scattered everywhere. He ran after them in dreams to retrieve the papers, but they were forever flying out of sight. Yozip had lost the documents Chief Joseph had entrusted to him and asked him to return. The ex-peddler woke to punish himself whenever he momentarily slept.
“The first time they send me on a job I come back without papers and without any luck. Everybody in the tribe will be ashamed and disgusted.”
At Helena, the train slowed and Yozip considered jumping off and disappearing into the night. But as the locomotive drew to a slow stop dawn was beginning and the new Indian, with a cry of surprise, recognized Bessie herself waiting for him untied at a hitching rail. He looked for Indian Head and some of the other braves and saw none. The horse alone had come for him. Bessie let out a motherly whinny. Either she had been sent to get him or had remembered where to find him, and had gone there by herself. Or perhaps she had waited for him, foraging what she could until his return. Dear Bessie.
Yozip kissed his horse on the head, mounted her with his meager bundle of clothes, and rode off in the direction of the valley. From time to time he pulled at the mare’s halter, trying to turn her and
go elsewhere, in another direction; but the animal insisted on carrying him toward the long valley. Yozip in anger slapped Bessie with his hand. The horse froze and refused to budge. Yozip gave up and let her bring him back to the tribal grounds. Neither apologized to the other.
He went, after a while, to the chief’s tall blue tepee, stopping outside a minute to revive his wits. He whistled to himself and waited. Yozip then poked his head into the tepee and saw that One Blossom wasn’t there. Entering, he found the old chief lying on his back on the frozen ground.
The new tribesman moaned. “So are you all right?” he asked the old chief.
The chief muttered that he was not far from death.
“So stay alive, Chief Joseph,” Yozip said. “What will we do without you? If you go away where will we go? What will the tribe do?”
“Ah, you have called me by my father’s name,” said the old chief. “He was a wise man who taught me in few words the depth of his experience.”
“In Washington,” Yozip said, “I told them what you said I should tell them, but I didn’t do a first-class job. Nobody wished to tulk to me there. Also I lost the papers of the tribe. I was stupid to let the assistant man take them away even for five minutes. I feel now to cry like a child because I did not protect the property of the People. I was not a first-class manager.”
“Crying is for children,” said Joseph hoarsely. “And it is not useful, because I had these papers copied by a scribe after I had signed the first treaty for this valley. I did not trust the whites.”
“That made me a heartache because I thought I had lost them.”
“We may know where evil begins, but not where it ends.”
Yozip asked the old chief what he could do for him now. “Should I call maybe the medicine man with the purple feathers that he sometimes makes you laugh?”
“Keep him away from me. He smells of goat turd.” The old man’s laugh racked him. He coughed brutally. Yozip wished he knew how to help him. It struck him again how ignorant he was.
He sat on the ground warming Joseph’s head with his hands.
The chief was dying, his voice was thickly hoarse.
“Where is One Blossom?” Yozip asked. “Where is also Indian Head?”
The chief smiled as though to himself. “They speak their words of love.”
“Now? When you are so sick?”
“What better time to love? For myself I have no fear. The Great Spirit touches me with his finger. I am warm.”
Yozip said he would look for them.
“There will be time for that. Now I want to talk to you. There is something to do for us. Yozip, the council of sub-chiefs agrees with me at least to ask you to become chief of our people. I know your qualities. You must help us to go on living our lives. You must protect us from the evil the white men lay on us. We cannot live without air. We love this valley. It is our place of freedom. You must help our people to live as the Great Spirit says we must.”
He coughed gratingly, holding his fingers against his head.
Yozip gazed at the withered, whispering man.
“Who wants me here? I come also from Quodish, but what can I do for the People. What do I know?”
“I trust you to learn what you must know. I want you to become Chief Joseph. I have chosen you in my place. I believe you will make a fine leader.”
“Why? How? What can I bring to the tribe?”
“You are a protector. Those who can must protect those who cannot protect themselves. These are the words of the Great Spirit in the open sky.”
“But why me? Indian Head would be better.”
“Indian Head speaks twelve words when there are six to say. You must teach him to protect himself. And you must help One Blossom, who does not always help herself. She is not as serene or wise as her gentle mother.”
“Indian Head will take care of her. He is her lover. What can I tell her if her lover says no?”
“You must look after my child as well as her lover.”
Yozip told the old man he would protect his children as best as
he could. “I will try, but I don’t think they will like it if a stranger says he will protect them.”
“Keep them together,” whispered the dying man. “Teach them to be disciplined. Tell them to respect our leader, and whom to respect. And they must honor their ancestors. My father lived his life in love of peace.”
“I will mention to them your father, also I will mention my father that he died in Zbrish.”
“Now I must begin my journey into the sky.”
Two red tears rolled down his cheeks of parchment.
Chief Joseph coughed harshly once and breathed quietly. He then stopped breathing.
Yozip wept for the old chief.
Indian Head and One Blossom entered the tepee and she began wailing over the dead chief as she tenderly arranged his feathers.
“Now I know what solitude means,” said Indian Head.
One Blossom, the youthful daughter of an aged father, kissed his eyes and wept in silence.
Now the warrior chiefs and the medicine man drifted into the tepee and stared at their dead chief.
The purple-flowered medicine man gave out a cry and, addressing the Great Spirit through the sunny opening at the top of the tepee, lamented the chief’s death.
The braves looked on silently.
Indian Head spoke to them, saying that their chief was dead, their new chief was Jozip, who had been initiated into the tribe according to their ancient customs.
Some of the Indians in the tepee uttered a noise of protest, and Yozip shrank to the wall of buffalo hide; but Indian Head addressed them eloquently, and soon each of the braves and warriors approached the new chief and touched his head with warm and cold fingers. Yozip memorized the faces of those whose fingers were cold.
“Your name also Joseph,” Broken Ear said, and again they welcomed him into the tribe.
“Jozip,” said the new chief.
The Burial
JOZIP MOVED among the mourners of the old chief at his burial as though he were a close relative. Lately he had become more facile in the language of the People, saying his words without excessive grunting. It was an easier language to acquire, he thought, than Russian, a difficult language, yet he had spoken Russian well.
“One day you will be a smart chief,” said Foolish Eyes.
“How can somebody who is not smart be smart?”
“You will find out.”
“I have too much to find out,” said Jozip.
For a time the body of old Chief Joseph, dressed in ancient garments and decorated with bone necklaces, lay under the open sky by the pine trees. The medicine man with the purple headdress had painted his face white with pink stripes, according to an ancient rule of the tribe. One Blossom, in torn garments, hacked off her braids with a knife and threw them into a fire that burned near where the old chief lay. When Indian Head saw her hair burning he bit his lips. Nor could Jozip bear to look at the burning braids of the beautiful young woman. She had changed; her figure was firmer, no longer plump. She lived in a world without a father. Indian Head told Jozip that she made his life joyous. Yet her eyes saddened as though she had looked at something she did not care to see.
After two days, Tuk-Eka-Kas, wrapped in deerskin by the women of the tribe, was lifted up by the braves and laid on six long poles.
His woven bier was raised on the shoulders of four warriors, Jozip permitted among them, and it was carried to the grave site that four braves and Indian Head had dug in the earth. A dozen women followed the bier, tearing their hair, mourning, sobbing. One Blossom was among them.
The warriors, with Jozip’s assistance, holding hemp ropes, lowered the corpse into the newly dug grave, the chief’s head turned to the east. Amen, thought Jozip; they walk to the west with their heads turned east.
The medicine man then spoke a mournful mouthful about the old chief who now lay in his new grave. The shaman called him a noble man. Once he had confronted a mother bear hunting for a lost cub. She approached Joseph, smoking his pipe in the woods, with a roar that fluttered his eardrums; but he had frightened the bear away by blowing a mouthful of the buffalo-dung smoke into her eyes. She had galloped away, stopping only to roar at the brave chief.
And once Chief Joseph, hunting bear in the forest, had come upon another hunter who had been struck by a fallen tree and was pinned under it. Straining to lift the huge tree and hold it off the warrior, the good chief gave the wounded man, whose head was bloody, a moment to crawl forth, and then carried him in his arms to be treated by the medicine man, who snapped his bones into place and massaged his wounded back. In a week the hunter had recovered. Thus had Joseph rescued his brother in the tribe.
When the shaman had completed his eulogy, One Blossom tossed six of her most treasured trinkets into her father’s grave. Indian Head had contributed a long bow and six sharp arrows. He bowed to the east.
Then several braves filled the grave, scooping up handfuls of earth, and the squaws and unmarried women wailed for the dead chief.
Afterward an old brown dog of the tribe—he belonged to no one and used to go along with the other dogs to hunt buffalo—lay on the chief’s grave as the dead man was growing used to death. The shaman screamed at the dog but Jozip asked him to stop lest he disturb the sleep of the old chief. “The Great Spirit has sent the
animal here out of love for the good Chief Joseph. He will not take away his dog.”
But to keep the ghost of the dead man from bringing madness to those who were still alive, the tepee of Joseph was moved fifty feet to the west. The medicine man then blew smoke from his pipe across every corner of it to remove the ghost-spirit before Jozip began to live alone in his new tepee.
A moon passed, then One Blossom and Indian Head held a feast in the old chief’s honor, at which a pair of his worn buckskin trousers and other personal belongings were given away to five of the assembled guests.
One Blossom gave the new chief a leather shirt that she had once made for her father, and Indian Head gave him a swift silver arrow to hunt buffalo when meat was scarce.
After the burial ceremonies, at Indian Head’s whispered suggestion, Yozip, who now openly called himself “Jozip,” although he thought of himself still as Yozip, gathered the braves together for a long ride over the Montana mountains to hunt the fat buffalo and store smoked and jerked meat for the long winter.
So now I am a real Indian, Jozip sadly, yet not unhappily, thought. So what can I do for my people?
The New Jozip
JOZIP OFTEN THOUGHT of himself as Yozip and experienced days of wonderment and doubt. He questioned his abilities, yet felt he had taken up a cause he increasingly cared about, that of the People. Many of his Indian brothers were still unknown to him, but he thought of them as his Indians and had begun to feel responsible for their welfare, as though there was a gap in their experience he might fill. “Don’t ask me why,” he said to himself. “Ask the Great Spirit who looks at us from the sky.” But the cause he had taken up helped him understand what he had lacked in his former, lonely life.
“If I am a man like me, what should I do next?” he asked Indian Head.
“First we must settle the land question with the whites, but before that we must prepare for the long winter. We will hunt buffalo in the mountains and in the snow. The animals will not know which way to run when we appear before them with drawn bows. They will stampede and thunder away as our braves shoot their bellies full of arrows.”
“This I don’t like to do,” said Jozip.
“You will get used to it.”
After ascending the western pass for two weeks of hunting on the cold plains in Montana, Jozip, when the meat was plentiful and the hides many, called a halt and the hunters descended toward their long valley accompanied by a dozen shaggy huge beasts, lassoed and led by squaws who had traveled with the hunters.
The buffalo, Jozip observed, was not a very intelligent animal, yet if treated humanely it would go where it was led. The hunt had gone well: they had not encountered any rival tribes and this was a year of plentiful beef. Jozip had been told that large numbers of buffalo were crossing the railroad tracks and interfering with the movement of trains. Conductors distributing rifles, and passengers potshooting from windows, were energetically slaughtering droves of animals before the trains could plow free of them and chug forward on the bloody tracks.
Jozip, from youth a vegetarian at heart, disliked this useless destruction of innocent animals, but now he was an Indian and lived as they lived. Yet he was also the grandson of a shochet, a religious slaughterer in the Old Country, who killed devoutly, gently, aware of the sin of taking a living life even though he blessed the beast as he slit its throat. Maybe it was in partial revulsion to his grandfather’s holy profession that the grandson avoided eating animal flesh and had ultimately become a vegetarian. Night after night, as the braves gorged themselves on meat, the new chief devoured buckwheat groats and fresh vegetables when available. Though some braves snickered at Jozip’s ways, still for a novice he was a decent chief—organized in his head, and sensibly aware of the needs of the braves and of the pride of warriors and sub-chiefs.
“Passable anyway,” grunted the warrior known as Hard Head.
The Indian hunters climbed down the Idaho foothills and moved toward their green land, where they at once encountered bad news that caused them quickly to forget the pleasures of the hunt. When they returned to the tribal grounds they were at once surrounded by women, children, and older men, who informed them that there had been a visitation of settlers, and one of the young women describing the incident angrily cried out, “Rape!”
“So who made a rape?” Jozip asked indignantly. “Who did such a terrible thing?”
One cheery woman with wild hair spoke up: “I was raped by a disgusting fiend.”
“Who is she?” Jozip cautiously asked Indian Head.
“She was raised in a missionary school and is interested in rape.
Her name is Penelope. Her father was one of our best hunters. Her mother is a loudmouth.”
“Do you think someone raped her?”
“I am not a medicine man and you are the chief of our tribe.”
Indian Head asked One Blossom, “Were you bothered by anyone? Touched?”
“One fool tried to touch me but I hit my knee between his legs. He slapped my mouth but the other whites called him off.”
“If I had seen that I would have killed him,” said Indian Head.
“Why did they come here, these men?” Jozip asked.
“Six of them appeared on their ponies,” One Blossom said, “and they told us we would have to leave our valley in thirty days. They said the valley belonged to them, and the tribe must leave. I told them they were liars, and they listened as if their tongues had turned to stone. Some of the women began to shout and cry. The Americans said they would come back after our hunters returned. What can we do?”
“We have our papers that your father signed them,” Jozip said. “If we stay here and don’t make trouble for them, they should not make trouble for us.”
“They are whites,” she said. “They don’t think as we do. And I don’t want to go to another valley. I have lived all my life here.”
“Maybe we should get a lawyer?” Jozip asked Indian Head.
“We have no rights in their thoughts,” he said. “When they get ready to drive us out they will try it. They have their Winchester rifles, and we only have bows and arrows and small voices.”
“I will tulk to them,” Jozip said. “And I will say we will not move from here because this is our land. Maybe if we tulk to them soft, they will answer soft.”
The Indians spoke among themselves and then disbanded.
Jozip sat with his head full of difficult thoughts.
The next day a crier called out the approach of twenty white men on horses.
Jozip appeared instantly from his tepee, where he had been drinking tea brewed from valley plants he had discovered. He put on his war bonnet and, going out to the white men, asked them to state their business.
“Who might you be?” asked a tall rider wearing a blue military cape. He had thin lips and a long jaw. His eyes were deep-socketed and he made no attempt to smile.
“I am Jozip, who is now the chief of this tribe. We are the People. I did not ask for this honor but they gave it to me anyway, so I tulk to you like the chief.”
“I am Colonel Gunther of Fort Boise,” said the visitor in a husky voice. He unbuttoned his cape and cleared his throat. “The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Horace Sedgewick in Washington, D.C., has ordered me to inform the people of your tribe that the Great White Father in Washington has lost patience with you for not obeying his orders. Now I will tell you this: The U.S. government has once more decided to extend your time of departure for thirty days beginning today, with no further extensions. I am here to say that if you haven’t left these surroundings within that stated thirty days, the cavalry at Fort Boise will round you up and deliver you to a reservation of our choice.”
“So where is this reservation, tell us?” Jozip said. “We hear about such a reservation but nobody says to us where it is. Is it in the sky maybe? Who will move us there? Maybe twelve eagles that they come from the sky?”
“I can’t provide you with any information any more specific than the message that I have just delivered,” replied Colonel Jacob Gunther. “But if I were you I would certainly make ready to leave this area pronto.”
“Please, Mr. Cohnel, I will speak to you with soft words. This is the valley of our tribe. The Great White Father gave to us this valley and also our Chief Joseph signed the papers. For fifteen years our people lived here and also they have fished here in our big river, and we love this earth and bury in it our dead.”
Jozip said that from the time of Quodish the valley had belonged to the red man. “If the Great White Father wants now to have the valley back, he must give us another place where we can live, and which is as good as this valley. We must have someplace to go and live there, otherwise we will be like animals.”
“We have our papers,” said the colonel. “You are Indians and not citizens of our country. You are dealing with the President of
the United States and you must yield to him. If you don’t want to make serious trouble for your tribe, you had better behave without further complaint or resistance, verbal or otherwise. No doubt we will lead you to another reservation. I have no further details of that matter in this moment. In the meantime, you are impeding the manifest destiny of a young and proud nation. We will give you just thirty days in which to prepare for a move in accordance with our plans for you.”
“Please, Mr. Cohnel, we ask for more time and also a little more consideration. We are men with the worries and troubles of men. We got to have justice. If somebody takes away from you your house and your garden but he doesn’t pay you for it, is this justice?”
“Yah,” said three of the Indians. The others stoically shook their heads.
The colonel yanked his horse’s bridle as he signaled his men.
“There are ways to listen,” he said to Jozip. “One is with deaf ears, which is what you do. The other is with intelligent awareness of the possibility of change for the better, which is what you are avoiding doing. We must therefore affirm our right to this land in the name of our nation, and our inalienable right to direct your next move within this country. If you disregard us we will exercise the right of eminent domain and do with our land what we have to do to fulfill our destiny.”
“So what is eminent domain?” Jozip whispered to Indian Head.
“The strong man does what he wants. The weak man listens.”
“Will they make a war against us?”
“We will fight back.”
“I am a man of peace.”
“You are chief of this tribe.”
“If you will speak to us the truth, we are not afraid of your words,” Jozip replied to the colonel.
“We don’t need any lessons in ethics, my good man,” said the colonel. “And preachment won’t put any pork in your pot.”
“From pork I am not interested,” said Jozip, speaking for himself.
The colonel said “Giddap” to his horse and the soldiers began to ride off the reservation.
One of them, puzzled by Jozip’s eloquence, said aloud, “Who
the hell is he? He don’t sound like no Indian to me. Who the hell are you?” he said to Jozip.
“Let’s get on along,” said the colonel to the soldier.
“I am Jozip,” said Jozip.
“That means Joseph,” said Indian Head. “He is a man of peace. We do not want war with the white people.”
Jozip nodded. He had not spoken as well as he would like, yet he heard dignity in the words he had said. “If you speak with your heart,” he told himself, “the words fix themselves together in the right way. They will say what you want them to say.”
“Sounds like Jew talk to me,” said the colonel in the capacious cape. “Nobody can trust these goddamn Indians in any way at all.”
“That’s as true as anything,” said the cavalry soldier.

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