Three Days Before the Shooting ... (162 page)

“Yes,” Hickman said, “I get the irony, and it sounds like a blues howled by an idiot. And what makes it so terrible is that it all ties together, the past and the present, the hope and the terror….”

“Aye! And don’t forget this, my brother in medicine: You’re sitting in that chair because of that camera. You want to continue?”

“Of course. But since most of what you’re telling me is new, please do me the favor of not being annoyed if what
you
find amusing leaves
me
torn between laughing and crying.”

“Hell, Hickman, I’m trying to give you an idea of the mess the State people have made—and keep making—of life in this country. So the only thing
new
about it was what those goggle eyes did with their devilish gadget. Anyway, if I go on we’ll be needing more Choc—you with me?”

“Yes, thank you, and as long as you talk I’ll give both you and your beer my sharpest attention.”

“Now
that’s
the way of a hunter! When tracking game in deep cover he must see with his ears, hear with his eyes, and feel with his mind and his smeller!”

Yes
, Hickman thought,
and it’s also sound advice for my dealing with you…
.

Love New—what outrageous names for such a sly little rascal! Because old or new, he’s anything but loveable. And if as he claims he grew up among Indians, all those volumes in his bookcase suggest that he’s as much of a reader as my old friend Millsap. Which makes for a mystery because most folks don’t expect a Native to be familiar with books. That’s why in making himself even more mysterious he shuffles his idioms and makes allusions to any book he can think of in ways that mock those who assume to be of superior intelligence. Which was exactly the way of that down-home character who was known as Sam, the Truth-defying Signifier!

Yes, Hickman
, an inner voice chuckled,
and at some time in his life this little Choc-drinking rascal jumped the reservation and went rambling in pool halls, beer flats, gambling joints, and other not-so-green pastures. And along the way he matched wits with fast-talking barbershop lawyers, past-grand-masters of the dirty dozens, and maybe a few worldly-wise preachers like you. But now, being old and ornery, he gets a kick out of blurring his image and background with talk about being of a son of “the People.”

All right, so he’s an Oklahoma Native, but of which of the tribes—Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, or Tuskegee-Creek? That’s the the high card hidden in the deck he keeps flashing and shuffling…. He’s like that New Orleans piano man who tolerated white folks calling him a “Negro” as long as they enjoyed and praised his music. Yeah, but let one of us homeboys question his background and he’d French-fry his accent and swear to being unadulterated Creole by blood and by breeding!

Which was like saying he was a mulatto who had not a drop of African blood. But so what? When we were paid for a gig and divided the kitty it didn’t earn him an extra plugged nickel. Any more than it did when it came to voting, or taking part in anything else ruled off-limits to us nappy-headed descendants of Hagar. So Creole or no, in the eyes of white folks he was just another “boy” with a talent for a new type of music
.

Yes
, Hickman thought,
and I’ve known quite a few like him, and sympathized
—
sometimes
—
with their attempts to make the most of their hair and their features and color. Even so, out of all of those I’ve known who tried to have it both ways, this Native, this Love, tops them all!

What a character! Knowing full well that the truth is seldom as simple as we’d like it to be he laces what he says with lies and dares you to find the truth in his lying. And along with his ducking and dodging, play-acting and jiving, the little poker-faced rascal has the nerve to play the dozens with my religion as a way of getting my goat the way he gets Janey’s. And in turning his tongue against what he calls “State folks” he’s acting an Ishmael straight out of Genesis—yes!—and with me listening and staring him dead in the eye!

Well, he has his ways and I have mine, and just as a musician’s background comes out in his music, whatever this little joker’s true identity happens to be sounds in the styles he combines in his lying. Like those echoes of Hiawatha which keep accenting the beat of his riffing And while he tries to make what happened out here a case of “either/or,” what I’m hearing in what he’s relating is the age-old, ever-present “this-plus-that.” Wonder what he’d say if I mentioned Will Rogers, who was both of the People and a star on Broadway? Or that other sons of the People, such as Jack Teagarden and Big Chief Moore, are famous for their skills in playing State Negro music?

What a mockery we make of democracy! Here’s a black, mixed-breed Oklahoma Native having fun watching what he calls “State Negroes” fighting with white folks over which of them is truly American. And while he looks on from behind his cigar-store Indian façade he’s probably cracking up over the idea of white folks going crazy thinking up ways for keeping us from mixing our blood with theirs. When the outrageous joke of it lies in the inescapable fact that it’s our rhythm and style which keeps taking them over! Yes, and what my bookish boy Millsap calls our grace under pressure. And as Millsap argues, many whites do draw hope and courage from our insisting that this country live up to the ideal of freedom which they deny us…
.

Hearing a hearty “Here we go,” Hickman turned to see Love standing with two bottles of beer. One of which the little man placed on the table before him and returned to the swing; where, taking a long sip of beer, he stared at his glass.

“Hickman,” Love said, “when it comes to beer, not even the
President
can drink anything better than this.”

“Yes, Mr. New, I believe you, but if you tell the white folks they’ll grab it.”

“Yao! Then they’ll slap on a tax and label the bottles with the picture of a white man propped on a horse. And next thing you know everywhere you turn there’ll be billboards telling the world that the best beer in the world is George Washington Beer. Done blanked out the fact that it was the Choctaws’ gift from the spirits. So I say let the State folks stay ignorant! And don’t even mention it to Janey, because she’ll phone her pastor and next thing we know he’ll be up in the pulpit ranting and raving about Choc being brewed by the Devil. That woman wants to ruin my life just because my ways are different from hers. Where’d I leave off?”

“You were saying that the boy came back the next day, but before you get into it, I’d like to ask you a question….”

Suddenly motionless, Love looked out into the sky above the backyard then back with a stony expression.

“Okay, Hickman, shoot,” Love said, “but be warned that I’m a fast-moving target—which a man like me has to be in this country. What’s your question?”

“I’m curious as to why you call folks like me ‘State Negroes’?”

“Hell, Hickman, it’s because you people let our being about the same color blind you to all the differences between us.”

“What differences?”

“Hell, man, the difference between our backgrounds and experience.”

“But that is true of everybody—at least in detail—so what do you mean?”

“That you State folks tend to see color before you see individuals. That you reduce a man to his color and overlook his uniqueness, his culture. That you State folks tend to see in the way of the shotgun, which scatters its shot in loose patterns. Which is fine for bringing down birds, but not worth a damn for stopping a man or a grizzly.

“For such the way of the rifle is needed, and even better, a telescoped rifle. One which can isolate details of camouflaged shapes, detect the slightest degree of uncontrolled tension, and allow a hunter to see through the shadows surrounding his target. Because when he’s dealing with those who enter the field of his vision such attention to detail is imperative. Aye! And when they speak with forked tongues it helps to have ears tuned to detect what’s being said and what’s
not
being said. Which is my way with men of all shapes, forms, and colors. A way which makes a hell of a difference between me and you State folks—you with me?”

“Oh, yes, and I’m learning.”

“You keep at it, because between us there are also the many differences in experience which go back to the time when the Yankees and the Rebs got tired of their killing and your folks came under the command of the United States government….”

“All right, but what about
your
folks, your father and mother?”

“In the beginning they were like the parents of your parents, human beings who’d been sold into slavery—Yao! But sometime before that Reb-Yank ruckus erupted my parents escaped and came West. Came to what was then known as the Old Territory, and here the tribes of the People made them welcome. So with that they were no longer slaves. And that began the branching of what in the beginning had been the common stream of life which was shared by your people and mine.

“Then time passed and the Rebs and the Yanks went to war, and when slavery was supposed to have ended my folks had a choice which yours didn’t. Because yours were still rooted in the ways of the slave states, and though no longer slaves they were left without options. But mine remembered what their lives had been under the feuding government in Washington and chose to remain with the People. Which means that they were never of the State people and had no need for the mockery of freedom which the North threw at the State Negroes, who by then were called freedmen….”

“Why not?”

“Because by then they were
already free!
And Hickman, they were
self-freed—
which is as different from being freed by the whites who enslaved them as darkness from daylight. Living among the People my folks had tribal rights and a voice in the councils. They had the same freedoms and responsibilities that were
shared by all of the People—Yao! They were governed and ruled by the same laws and customs, and having put aside the white man’s religion they were also free in spirit, free to worship the gods of the People. Which they did.”

“But even so, and forgive me for smiling, they were still colored…. Still mixed bloods living in the U.S. of A….”

“Yao! And had to keep well out of the way of the white man. But living on the reservation they were able to avoid most of the crazy color confusion in which the State folks—black, white, and mixed—are tangled. And remember this, Hickman: They were here in this country long before the State folks rushed in and ruined it….”

“Are you saying that before those you call the State folks arrived this part of the country was another Garden of Eden?”

“Oh, no! That’s just some more State folks’ foolishness. This was no Eden, and neither was it a ‘New Jerusalem’—which was another childish misnaming. It was simply a country where mankind, the earth, and the animals could live together in some kind of peace. But then the State folks came crapping and destroying and ruined it…. They
ruined
it!”

Hearing a note of anger, Hickman looked up to see the old man shaking his head. And now as the ancient eyes focused on his face, Love’s voice returned higher in pitch and more nasal, sounding with a mixture of Negro-Indian idiom that was edged with a bitterness long held in memory….

So now
, he thought,
he’ll get back to the moviemaking and to Janey’s little man whose questions got him started. Yes, and come to think of it, where’s the boy now, and what is he up to?

“Like I told the boy,” Love said, “the State folks had invaded this country all of a sudden, gusting through the land like flames through the prairies. Came fast and from many far places, and most of them wild as sage hens drunk to the gills on fermenting berries. On they came making waves. Came in the nighttime, and came in the daytime, with few knowing what to expect but all leaping along with heads filled with some raggle-tag notion of unlimited freedom.

“They came riding and came walking, on horseback, on foot, and in wagons. Yao! And some of them hoofing it all the way from Tennessee and Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, the Carolinas, and Georgia. These were the ex-slaves, the so-called freedmen, the State Negroes.

“So to bring things closer to the times the boy knew when he was living with Janey I asked him, ‘Do you remember the Watsons, the Hunicutts, and the Rogans?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I played with some of their kids. They were relatives, weren’t they?’

“I said, ‘Not unless it was through hoofing it all the way from Tennessee. Anyway, folks like them were different from the others because in remembering what they’d left behind them they came in hope but were prepared for the worst. But I was speaking of those who rushed here seeking “free land”—how the hell
could this land be
free
when it belonged to the People? But that’s what most of those who came walking or riding behind mule teams and oxen were seeking. So like a party of braves who had run many days and nights with a war party of hostiles dogging their trail, most arrived rest-broken and weary. I watched them come, and I tell you, the sight they made was alarming.

“‘Even sitting still on their exhausted behinds they seemed nervous and restless, still on the move. And as they increased in number most seemed on the lookout for something which kept to the shadows behind them. Something hostile and biding its time before springing to attack them. Something which moved only at night, or during that time of day when the sun pounds a man’s eyes like a club on a war drum. But the State folks kept coming and coming.

“‘They streamed here from the old country seeking what they told themselves was a new land, but which was by no means a reality. No, it was only un-fouled. It was just not in disorder. And that’s because the People respected the earth and replaced what they used of it. Sure, being men they did what men do, both to the earth, the game, and each other. But when this land was the People’s it was untouched by the treacherous sickness which the newcomers brought to it. It was unspoiled by the hate and the greed and color confusion that those of the desperate blue eyes brought here from the old land. Those who were sick with a self-disgust which made them think in ways other than those of the People. And besides, for the proud invaders our ways didn’t count, because in considering us heathens they denied our humanity!