T
HAT NIGHT WE
stayed up late talking. I’d hung the scalp above my pallet and I watched it turn all night in the warm air from the fire. The embers went dark and we all drifted off and there was a rustling at the tipi flap and the sound of someone trying to come inside and I heard the other two wake up as well. By her hair I could tell the visitor was a woman, but otherwise it was too dark.
“If you are here for Escuté, I am over here.”
“And N
uu
karu is straight ahead of you, on the other side of the fire.”
“You are both dreaming,” said the woman. “Forget I am here.”
“The wife of Fat Wolf. You are joking me.”
“Where is Tiehteti?”
“He is right here,” said Escuté. “You are talking to him right now.”
“Is he in here or not?”
“I don’t know. Tiehteti, are you here? Probably not. I saw him heading out to the pasture; Fucks a Mare was going to show him something.”
Hates Work said: “You are a serious asshole, Escuté.”
“But funny?”
“Sometimes.”
“N
uu
karu, I have bad news. For the one-thousandth time, a woman has come to the tipi and she has no interest in you.”
“Fuck off,” said N
uu
karu.
“As for Tiehteti,” he pronounced, “it is time for him to become a man. It is a process that requires physical contact, and so at some point, unless you would simply prefer to watch a master at work, you will have to tell this woman, who is among the most beautiful of all Comanches, though also the laziest, where you are located in the tipi.”
“I’m over here,” I said quietly.
“N
uu
karu, you skinny pervert, don’t think you can lie there and masturbate; get up and give Tiehteti his privacy.”
“Noyoma nak
u
hkupa.”
“I would prefer not to,” said Escuté. “For I am wise, and a great leader, and one day I’ll be your chief.”
He and N
uu
karu took their blankets and left.
“Tiehteti? Say something so I can find you.”
“Follow the wall to the right,” I said.
I felt her touch my pallet. It was too dark to see her, or to even know who she was except by her voice, but I could hear the rustling as she took off her dress. Then she slipped under the robe. Her skin was smooth against me. She began to kiss my neck and drift her fingers along my stomach, I tried to touch her, but she put my hand back and continued to rub my belly, then my thighs, it seemed I ought to be doing something, I tried to reach between her legs, touched hair, but she stopped that hand as well. I began to feel docious. Nothing was expected of me; she was a grown woman and she had the reins.
She was of this same opinion. She ran her fingernails up and down, across my chest and down my legs, while slowly kissing my neck. This went on much longer than I thought it properly ought to, but finally she climbed on top of me and then I was inside.
There was a noise. Escuté poked his head into the tipi.
“How long, wife of Fat Wolf? One minute? Or, let me guess, he is already
p
u
a
.”
“Out,” she said. “Go masturbate yourself with N
uu
karu.”
She kissed me on the nose. She was leaning over me, being very still. I wanted to start moving but she held me in place.
“How does that feel, brother-in-law?”
I made some noise.
She moved her hips. “Should I do this?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. Maybe not.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I think we will just stay like this,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
“It feels good to me also,” she said.
This seemed like an unbelievable coincidence. At some point she began to move slowly. She was leaning forward and our foreheads were touching and she was holding my hands. Her breath was sweet. “Hates Work is not my real name,” she said. “My name is Single Bird.”
B
Y THE TIME
N
uu
karu and Escuté came back, I had slept with Single Bird five times. I expected Escuté to have something to say but he didn’t; he and N
uu
karu whispered something to each other and then N
uu
karu went to his pallet but Escuté, instead of going to bed, slipped over to us very quietly. He felt Single Bird’s hair, and then he gently felt my face, and then he patted me on the chest and said something in Comanche I did not understand, and Single Bird murmured something in her sleep, and Escuté leaned forward and kissed her hair and patted me again and then kissed me on the forehead. Then he went back to his pallet.
I was awake. I woke up Single Bird and we did it again.
I
N THE MORNING,
when the faintest of gray light was coming through the smoke flap, I felt her get up. I pulled her back.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s already late.”
“Tell me why they call you Hates Work.”
“Because I only do the work of ten men. Instead of fifty.” She leaned over and kissed me. “Don’t look at me in public. This will probably never happen again. This is the first time my husband has sent me to anyone, and I don’t know what kind of mood he’s going to be in when I get back.”
A few hours later, N
uu
karu and Escuté and I were sitting around the fire, eating dried elk and watching the bustle of the camp. Something was wrong with Escuté; normally he did his hair carefully into an a fan on the top of his head but that morning he had not even painted himself.
“Is Fat Wolf going to be angry at me?” I said.
“He’s going to cut your dick off. I hope it was worth it.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said N
uu
karu. “Everyone wants to sleep with Hates Work and you’re the only one who has, except the guy who paid fifty horses for her.”
“My father paid fifty horses, not my fat brother. If it was my father getting her I wouldn’t care.”
“Escuté is especially pissed, as you can tell.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? Where are my fifty fucking horses if I wanted to marry? Meanwhile, Hates Work gets sent to Tiehteti.”
“Who do you want to marry?” I said.
“No one. That’s the point. Who the fuck can I marry now that the fat one has taken the best-looking girl anyone has ever heard of?”
“Her sister is not bad,” said N
uu
karu.
“I am fucked, is the point. He is a fat coward but I still end up looking like the bad one. Eight of the horses that went to her bride-price were horses I gave to my father. When was the last time my brother even went on a raid?”
“You should stop,” said N
uu
karu.
“I don’t care who hears me.”
“You will later.”
We sat for a while. I couldn’t see what Escuté had to worry about. He had six scalps and while he was shorter and slimmer than his father and brother, he was nicely built and had an easy way of moving and all the young Indians, men and women alike, looked up to him. Then I thought maybe he was right: Hates Work was his only real equal in the band.
“There is a very beautiful captive owned by Lazy Feet, the blond one? The German?”
“Yellow Hair,” I said.
“Yes, her. She is the equal of Hates Work.”
“I’m not marrying a fucking captive. No offense, Tiehteti.”
“We’re all from captives at some point,” said N
uu
karu.
“Yes, but still I am not doing it.”
“You weren’t angry last night,” I said.
“No, I wasn’t. I’m not angry at you, Tiehteti; I’m glad you got a taste, you deserved it. It’s just my father, because the fat one is the oldest, he can do no wrong, and fifty fucking horses, he didn’t even try to negotiate.”
“We all know you’ll be a chief,” said N
uu
karu. “Everyone knows that. Your brother won’t be. He’s just a man with a rich father.”
“Yes, and if I get killed on a raid before I get to be a chief? While my father supports the fat one and buys him a few more wives?”
“Then I’ll make sure you don’t get scalped.”
“Unbelievable,” said Escuté, and shook his head.
“You still have a father,” said N
uu
karu. “This is something to be grateful for.”
“Your father died well and he wasn’t scalped,” said Escuté. “He is already at the happy hunting grounds.”
“Thank you, Escuté, and where is that, exactly? I’ve heard it’s beyond the sun somewhere, in the west. You know it’s strange, because sometimes I get the urge to ask my father’s advice on various matters, or feel his hand on my shoulder, but everyone assures me he is in the west, just past the sun, though Tiehteti, who does not know our ways, tells me that if you follow the sun to the west you eventually reach a limitless expanse of salty water, rather than a land where horses run fast enough to fly, where it is neither hot nor cold, where game impales itself on your lance and is magically roasted and you eat everything with an accompaniment of the richest marrow.”
“I’m sorry,” said Escuté. “I have no right to complain.”
“Ah. For once your lips move and there is truth.”
“On a different matter,” I said, “do you think it’s likely I’ll see Hates Work again?”
“Knowing my brother, no.”
“Impossible to say,” said N
uu
karu. “But it would be an extremely bad idea to think about her at all, as Fat Wolf might be sensitive about it. That was incredibly generous, what he did, and he may have done it just to look good.”
“She enjoyed herself, I think.”
Escuté shook his head. “Be careful, boy.”
“She enjoyed herself because her husband gave her permission. If it ever happens without his permission, or he even suspects it has happened, he will cut off her nose and ears and slash her face. And you will develop similar problems yourself.”
“In your favor,” said Escuté, holding up a hand, “your accomplishments notwithstanding, he still considers you to be extremely young, and not so much of a threat. So it is possible.”
“You are better off thinking about her sister, Prairie Flower, who is unmarried.”
“Also not as lazy. Or as good-looking, for that matter.”
“But still very pretty. And intelligent.”
“And thus pursued by plenty of men with more to recommend them than you have, who have killed more than one enemy and stolen many horses.”
“Not to mention Escuté fucked her, so she almost certainly has a disease.”
“Perhaps,” said Escuté, “you should concentrate your efforts on your riding and shooting, which are known to need attention, and consider this as you might consider a visit from the Great Spirit.”
“Scalps and horses, my son.”
I didn’t say anything.
“But if some other girl decides to come to your tipi at night, of her own free will, and manages to make it past N
uu
karu and I, which is unlikely, then you can safely fuck her. While the opposite situation—let’s say you have been talking to a girl, and she has given you certain signals, such as letting you put a finger inside her while she is out gathering firewood, and, being certain she likes you, and being desirous of a respectable place to make love to her, you decide to visit her tipi one night—”
“You will be instantly killed by her father,” said N
uu
karu. “Or some other family member.”
“Who will then give Toshaway a horse in compensation for your death.”
“In short,” said N
uu
karu, “until they get married, the women get to be with whomever they want and are the only ones allowed to choose. Afterward, if they behave like that, they get their noses cut off.”
“So what do I do now?”
Escuté was shaking his head. “Listen to the white one. He lost his virginity only eight hours ago.”
“Horse and scalps,” said N
uu
karu. “Horses and scalps.”
Jeannie McCullough
I
n 1937, when she was twelve, a man named William Blount, along with his two sons, disappeared from his farm near the McCullough ranch. The farm itself was dried up, the family living on relief flour and rabbit meat, and Blount’s wife said her husband and two boys had gone onto the McCullough’s property—which still had plenty of water and grass—to get a deer to feed themselves. Neither Blount nor his sons ever came home and his wife claimed to have heard shots from the direction of the ranch.
Everyone knew what happened if you trespassed on McCullough land. Both roads to town wound through its quarter-million acres and if your car broke down, you were better walking ten miles along the road than cutting through the pastures, where fence riders might take you for a thief. After the Garcia troubles, the ranch had been declared a state game preserve, which meant that in addition to the vaqueros, the McCulloughs had game wardens—technically employees of the state—as additional security. Some said they buried a dozen people a year in the back pastures, poachers and vagrant Mexicans. Others said it was two dozen.
Those people are just talking,
is what her father said. But she could see that her brothers, who treated the vaqueros as family, were not comfortable around the fence riders.
The day after the Blounts disappeared, Jeannie answered the front door to find the sheriff standing there alone. He was originally from up north; suspected of being a half-breed Indian, he was a tall thin man with a sunburned face and hawk nose. He had been elected over Berger, her father’s man, by pandering to the Mexicans. Berger had hunted their land and borrowed their horses; Van Zandt only came when there was trouble. Or, said her father, when he needed money.
On the staircase landing, right under the big Tiffany window, was a daybed where you could lie and read. You could also hear downstairs without being seen. She lay there, with the sunlight coming through the window, the portraits of her family along the staircase: the Colonel leaning on his sword, in the uniform of the Lost Cause; the Colonel’s dead wife with their three boys. Both the wife and one of the sons (Everett, she knew) were illuminated by an otherwordly light; Peter (disgraced) and Phineas (whom Jeannie liked) looked normal. Also along the stairs were marble cherubs and busts. She listened to her father and the sheriff.