Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2. Annie Proulx

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was goin a tell you about Indian stuff?” he said. It was the ideal time with Georgina out and the long evening stretching ahead.

      “Don’t bother,” she said. “I went to the library and got a stack a books.” She gestured at the counter where several books lay. He could see the library call numbers. “I’m just goin downtown for a hour. I’ll start readin when I get back.”

      After she left he looked at the books. The top one was Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. “She won’t read that one easy,” he said to himself remembering his own heart-bruising time with the book years earlier.

      He was surprised to hear the old Land Rover roar in a little after ten, while he was still on the telephone with Georgina telling her about chasing down Chummy King’s cows.

      “I hear Linny’s truck,” he said. “Better hang up. See you tomorrow noon then? O.K., love you, honey. Drive careful.”

      “You want a talk?” he called to Linny, hearing the screen door squeak.

      “Yeah, but first I want a read the books and get the background. Then I will know what questions to ask. O.K.?”

      “Well,” he said. “That makes sense.” But he felt a twist of disappointment. His thoughts on the subject had surfaced, his mind like a tongue probing an infected tooth. He wanted to get into the nickel misery of those crushed ancestors, measure his schizoid self against the submerged past.

      “You let me know when.”

      “You bet,” she said and pounded up the stairs with the books.

      The next morning in the kitchen her face was swollen, both eyes red slits. “Up all night?”

      “Just about.” Her voice was rough and cold. She poured a cup of coffee. He asked no more questions.

      It was almost a week before they talked. The days had gone by, Linny down in the old building sorting papers and making lists, but at night, instead of heading for the bars she stayed in her room. Georgina said it was a sign the girl was settling down. Charlie thought she was reading the bitter books. On Thursday, Georgina said she had to go up to Sheridan again. There was an important match, some South American polo players of note, a gala dinner.

      “I’ll stay over with Nora Bible,” she said, naming a ranch wife who ran the refreshment tables at all the polo events. “Not so many people bring their picnic baskets like in the old days when it was tailgate city. Don’t one a you want a come up for the match? Charlie, you haven’t seen one for a year, anyway. Be nice. And, Linny, I bet you never even been to a polo match.”

      “Oh, I got too many things goin on right here,” said Charlie. “Take some snaps for me and tell me about it.”

      Linny shook her head at Georgina and went upstairs.

      The cans of film stood in a row on the dresser. She knew a great deal now about what they might show—an Indian dragging a soldier from a horse, some fake hand-to-hand fighting, Indians poking two white captive women with a stick, the Gatling and Hotchkiss guns spraying, and everywhere Buffalo Bill peering into the distance, riding at the front, his white showman’s goatee wriggling in the wind like an albino eel. She did not open any of the cans. She knew also that nothing in the film could possibly equal the tragic power of the single still photograph of Big Foot wrapped in rags lying dead on his back in the snow, his long frozen arms half-raised as if to ward off the bullets, his open ice-glazed eyes fixed forever on anyone who cared to look at him.

      Charlie and Linny rinsed the dishes and arranged them in the dishwasher. Charlie never went near the machine without thinking of his mother sloshing chipped plates in an old grey enamel dishpan.

      “Dad, can we talk about the Indian stuff now?” She rubbed furiously at the clean counter with a sponge. “The Indian stuff,” he said.

      “Yeah. We’re Sioux, you always told me, but I don’t know what kind a Sioux, and you always said you were born on a rez, but what rez?”

      “Oglala Sioux, and I was born at Wazi Ahanhan, Pine Ridge, next a Rosebud. That’s where they pushed old Red Cloud’s people after they got them out a the Powder River country. That Powder River country was the last a the old, old ways. Red Cloud ought a see it now, all full a methane gas pads and roads.”

      “So Red Cloud could be a relation? I mean, we could be connected to him, right?”

      “We might be.”

      “Then what are we doin here with this—with Georgina?” She waved at the dishwasher, the poppies in a blue vase on the kitchen table. “Why aren’t we with our own people? Don’t I got cousins and grandparents and all?”

      He’d known these questions would be coming, but the answers were still floating around in the blue sky.

      “Linny, I’m sorry, baby girl—I been de-Indianized. I been out workin in the wide world since I was fourteen. The rez didn’t have anything for me. And I never kept in touch with any a them.” But even as he spoke it was as though he were a tall kettle boiling away and his daughter had just raised the lid. The steam rushed forth. Linny stood there, rigid, brimming with anguish and the sense of isolation that she had breathed in from the books all the week long.

      “I bet you never been on a rez, have you?” he said. She shook her head.

      “There’s more to it than deciding whether you want a live on the rez or in the world. Remember that Indians did not invent therez. They were the white man’s prisons to get the Indians off the good land. Linny, there’s no virtue in choosin the rez. You can lock yourself into a corner with no way out.”

      The girl made an impatient face, little more than a twist of the lips but discounting all he was saying.

      He knew it was hopeless but went on. “I’m guessin you want a do the whole thing, don’t you—sweat lodge, beaded moccasins, get yourself a pretty Indian name, find a good-lookin Indian stud, and get into the rez life? I see that brain goin a million miles a hour. Just so you know, I had those same feelins long ago. I went back, met your mother, got you started, and so forth. Romance. To me, now, the romance is wherever you find it, but not very likely on a rez.”

      “Why didn’t you guys give me a Indian name?”

      “We did.” He smiled. “Little Bedbug.”

      “Dad! Goddammit, I’ll pick my own name. Something nice. Like Red Deer or Jade Blossom.”

      “You got your cultures mixed up.”

      “Well, what’s your name? They didn’t name you Charlie, did they?”

      “Yeah, they did. They saw how the world was, so they named me Charlie. I suppose you want me to go around bein called Stands Lookin Sideways or Big Dick?”

      The girl’s face was black-red, and he was afraid she was going to start crying or shouting. But she said, “You wait,” and ran up the stairs to her room. In a few seconds she was back again with paper in her hands.

      “You can make fun,” she said, “but I been readin all that Buffalo Bill Cody stuff in Mr. Brawls’ boxes, there, all that stuff about the movie he was goin a make, that he did make, called it The Indian Wars Refought, and СКАЧАТЬ