The Light in the Forest (14 page)

But today his father betrayed no flicker of disappointment, and his son stayed impassive like him. In silence he followed where Thitpan and Disbeliever led, on a path neither he nor Half Arrow had ever trod before. By the tree moss and slant of the sun, True Son knew they traveled with the
east wind on one side and the south wind on the other. By a deep riffle they crossed the Ohio and climbed hills strange to him.

In a forest valley they divided. One party under Black Fish stayed on the path, and another with Thitpan, Cuyloga, and others turned to the south where Disbeliever said were white men’s cabins. They made out to meet at a spring across the mountain. The two boys went with the party under Black Fish.

Late that afternoon when all were met again, True Son noticed at once that Thitpan’s party carried booty and something else. A leaping ran through his blood like quicksilver as he saw their first scalps, one an ugly dark roan like rusted iron, one brown streaked with gray and a smaller one with long fine hair the color of willow shoots in the spring.

“
Jukella!
Oh, that I had been a lucky one!” Half Arrow wished.

By the fire that evening the two boys listened to a recital of the battle. Not a detail was left out from the time the Indians drew near the unlawful fields the white people had cut from the Indian forest and the cabins they had wrongfully built. The whole course of stratagem was recounted, every
sign and movement, the successful deception and ambush, all the fearful and cowardly efforts of the whites to escape and appease them, together with the foolish and fruitless words they cried in their religion which was no help to them now.

Eagerly the two boys watched the takers of the scalps skillfully dry them, stretching them on red hoops and trimming off the uneven pieces with their knives. Each time a piece was dropped, Half Arrow picked it up. With deerhide thread he sewed a small, pied, makeshift scalp for himself. The two boys put it on a pole and danced around it, singing fierce words of scorn and victory. But all the time the tender pieces of discarded scalp with long soft hairs the color of willow shoots in the spring kept entering True Son’s blood like long worms clotting the free wild flow. He tried to forget what he had said to his white mother, that never had he seen a child’s scalp taken by his Indian people.

Before he lay down for the night, he spoke to his father.

“Then the very young of the whites are our enemies, too?” he asked.

His father did not answer, only sat there strong with a look of aloofness, as if to say this was none
of his doing. But Thitpan, who claimed the young scalp, answered angrily.

“They are our enemies, yes. Was my brother young or old?
Bischi
, he was not much more than a youth and yet he was murdered by your white uncle.”

“It is clear to me now, cousin,” True Son said humbly. “I ask you to forget my ignorance. I did not know we fought children.”

To his surprise, his words produced a murmur of disapproval.

“Young cousin. I don’t fight children. On our way home I should have taken her prisoner. But a child holds us back on our way forward. Young cousin. It was lighter for us to carry her scalp than her body.”

True Son said nothing more, but he was conscious of dark eyes resentful at criticism from a boy.

Next day they came on a wide river. When Under-the-Hill joined them from downstream, he said that a boat of whites had just passed. Had they been an hour earlier they might have enticed it to shore and enriched themselves with rifles and powder. His report enlivened the eyes of the warriors. They held quick council. They would wait
for another boat. This was a favorite river to the whites. Many from the Quekel provinces used it as a watery road to the west. Sometimes traders and even settlers, seeking to steal Indian lands, could be found floating on it.

“Now your son will be good for something,” Thitpan said to Cuyloga. “Tomorrow he can call in his white cousins. When the boat comes close, we will fall on them with lead and hatchet.”

It was strange, True Son thought to himself, that here among his Indian brothers this night he should dream of his white father and mother. He saw them in his dream as clear and real as in life. It was wintertime in the dream and their sled hunted him in the forest. “Johnny! Johnny!” they called as the sled went over the snowy ground. Then suddenly the sled was a boat, the snow was water and other white people stood with his parents in the boat. For the first time he saw that a white child was with his mother. He tried to see the face of the child, but it kept looking the other way. It was afraid of something. At last True Son heard what it heard, the roar of Sokpehellak, the waterfall, just ahead of them on the river.

True Son woke in a sweat. He could still clearly see his white father’s bulging head, the high cloak
around the shoulders of his mother and the frightened crouch of the child.

In the morning, Thitpan and Disbeliever instructed the boy in the meritorious art of decoy. First they had him wade in the river and wash off his war paint with sand. Then they bade him pull on a pair of pantaloons they had taken from one of the white cabins. The legs were too long and the warriors gravely consulted what to do. In the end they cut them short with their knives. Also, the blouse they gave him to wear was wrong. Perhaps it had belonged to the slain girl. It was too small and constrained him. He showed them he could scarcely move his arms or shoulders in it, but they told him what mattered only was that he look like a white boy. The smaller he looked, the better to melt the whites’ cruel and stony hearts. Then Disbeliever took Cheek Bone along up the river to watch.

All day True Son waited for word that a boat was in sight. But the day passed and the next, and the only creatures that passed on the river were Those-Which-Go-Self-Suspended, the birds, and Those-Which-Go-Crooked, the butterflies. By the third day Thitpan said they had waited long enough. They took a vote to cross the river, but then Disbeliever, who had never deserted his post,
came running and hopping down the path. He said a large flatboat of whites had just hove around the upper bend. Hurriedly True Son was given back his pantaloons to cover his breechclout. He was helped on with his white blouse and sent into the river.

“Remember,” Thitpan instructed him, “you are not Lenape now. You are white. You must talk and act white. You must make their foolish white hearts bleed so they come close to help you.”

The water felt mild enough as he waded in, and yet the boy found himself shivering. He had to stand in the river a long time. Once or twice he thought Disbeliever might have mistaken a floating log for a distant boat of white people. When he looked back to shore he could see nothing. Thitpan had picked a place where the bank was thick with wipochk. Not a wisp of smoke arose, nor was there a sign of life among the bushes. Even the footprints on the bank had been smoothed out. The river shore looked peaceful and unpeopled as the deepest forest. Then he turned back to the water and saw an actual boat pushing around the bend above him.

It was larger than he expected, filled with white people and their possessions. For a moment the
thought of all the scalps and plunder gave his blood a fierce upward surge. Surely some should be allotted to him, for without him the others could do nothing. In his mind he recounted Yengwe words to call.

He felt sure that the boat had seen him. At first when it cleared the bend, it had kept to the middle of the river as if to be reasonably safe from either shore. But now he could see it pushing farther away from him. Although still a distance off, he lifted his empty hands and sent Yengwe words across the water.

“Brothers. Help! Brothers. I am English. I have white skin like you!”

The boat slowed visibly. There were both oars and poles among the men, but their use was suspended now. With its passengers staring, the craft drifted on the current. Presently it had lessened its distance enough for True Son to recognize the dress of several women.

“Mothers! Take me with you! Mothers! See, I am white boy! Mothers! Take me or I starve.”

He called so piteously that now he could hear the voice of one of the women remonstrating with the unwilling men. He couldn’t make out the words,
but her tone had the same imperial quality of his white mother when she forced her wishes on his white father.

“Brothers. Listen to her!” he cried. “Mothers. Don’t pass by!”

Slowly he saw the boat make its first movement toward him. A man’s harsh voice shouted to him.

“If you’re white, wade out to the middle and we’ll pick you up.”

True Son waded only a little farther. He crouched low in the water making it seem to cover his shoulders.

“Is deep! I can’t swim!” he whimpered.

He could hear the burden of argument rising from the boat and understand most of the words. Some believed in him and wanted to pick him up. Others shouted to the boatmen to go on. They mistrusted this strange youth in the river. Why did he say Brothers and Mothers, like the savages, and why was his hair cut around the edges in the Indian fashion? Why hadn’t he chosen a shallow place where he could wade out? The man with the harsh voice declared he would come no closer even though the boy had a Bible in his hands. But one of the women was True Son’s friend. She called
them cowards. She said with spirit that if they were afraid to pick him up, she would take an oar and do it herself.

Some of the men gave in to her. Little by little the heavily loaded flatboat slanted across the river. At his back True Son could feel the rising exultation of his hidden friends. Then someone in the boat moved and disclosed a child. It was a boy about Gordie’s age, dressed in a dark gray dress with a broad light band around it such as his small white brother used to wear. True Son stared and his begging abruptly ceased. Like a flash he remembered his dream. Could it be that his white father and mother were on this boat, coming west to find him, and that they had taken Gordie along? For the moment he forgot who and where he was. He was conscious only of this child so like Gordie coming closer and closer to the unseen rifles and tomahawks of his companions.

Once the child spoke to its mother and at the sound of the slender voice, True Son felt himself shaken.

“Take him back! It’s an ambush!” he suddenly screamed.

For a moment the men on the boat stood startled. True Son saw terror and incredulity on the
face of the white woman. Then in a panic the men bent their oars and poles to return the boat out of range. When it was seen that the prize was escaping, a volley of Indian shots rang out. True Son ducked as bullets went over him. He saw a stout man in the boat fall back as if too gross a mark to be missed. But distance kept most of the shots from taking effect. While the Indians came out on the bank yelling, reloading and firing again, the boat made off downstream, hugging the farther bank.

N
OT
until the boy turned back to shore did he realize the gravity of what he had done. He had betrayed his own brothers. None had welcome for him as he climbed the bank. Even Half Arrow turned away. Thitpan especially looked down on him angry and grim.

“Why don’t you go with your friends? Why come back to us?” he asked scornfully.

True Son didn’t answer. What could he say that
they would understand? He didn’t understand himself. He stood wet and miserable while the warriors withdrew to discuss him, his father and uncle among them. From time to time he caught the words:
tipatit
, chicken;
achgook
, snake;
putschiskey
, poison vine;
schwannack
, bad white people; and
schupijaw
, spy. When he started to take off his dripping blouse, Thitpan called to him angrily.

“It is fitting to a white person. Let it stay.”

“It is wet and cold,” True Son told him.

“Maybe soon it will be dry and hot enough,” Thitpan promised.

He spoke to Disbeliever and Under-the-Hill, who seized the boy. They bound his hands and feet with creepers. Then they let him stand. Disbeliever took charcoal from the fire and blacked half of True Son’s face. Under-the-Hill fetched white clay from the river bank. With this he chalked the remaining side.

The boy knew well what it meant. They were divided in council about him, were going to try him in the Lenape fashion. Here in their court under the roof of the Indian forest they would decide his fate, whether to do to him as the charcoal signified or let him remain alive. Thitpan and his cousins were for burning. True Son, they said, had been
sent by the white people. His tongue was like the crooked stripes of the whites’ talking papers. His heart would always be with the whites. There was no Indian blood in him.

True Son stood hearing, waiting. It was strange that, with all their talk of his white badness, never had he felt more Indian than at this moment. All the stories he knew of his Indian people who with calmness of mind accepted their death sentence came to his mind. He remembered Be-Smoke, whom the Lenni Lenape gave a reprieve of two years to live among his own clan, the Unamis. Easily he might have stayed away the rest of his life but came back on the prescribed day for his execution. Also there was Heavy Belt freed at night by his brothers-in-law but who stayed to die because it had been decreed against him by the village. True Son understood them perfectly. How could life mean anything to you if already your people had killed you in their minds?