The Light in the Forest (15 page)

Thitpan voted first, throwing a heavy stick on the fire to show his strong choice for burning. One after the other followed, tossing sticks. When he saw how it was going, Half Arrow turned and stumbled off in the forest. True Son in pity watched him disappear among the leaves. His own
father, he noticed, waited as if till last. When it came to the turn of his uncle, Black Fish, the latter motioned his brother-in-law to go ahead, signifying he would vote with him.

The boy’s father stood there a moment. Then deliberately he went to the fire. True Son’s heart sank. He felt sure that his father joined in the vote against him. Then he saw that his father carried no stick. Instead he picked up a charred one from the fire. Silently he began blacking his own face, not one side, but both and the backs of the hands also. When he was done, he faced them.

All had watched him puzzled and a little disquieted. Now they waited, fastening their eyes on him. Cuyloga looked powerful and forbidding, his eyes in the black face flashing with whiteness.

“Brothers,” he spoke. “I have listened to the council. I hear that my son is a spy from the whites, that his tongue is the fork of a tree and his heart black. Brothers. You know me. I am Cuyloga. Cuyloga knows his son. It was Cuyloga who raised and instructed him. He is like Cuyloga. If he is double-tongued and a spy, then Cuyloga is also. Why don’t you bind and burn Cuyloga, for he is the father and responsible for the bad instruction?”

There was only a kind of displeasure and uneasiness from his hearers. Cuyloga went on. Never had he appeared more formidable and magnificent to his son than at this moment.

“Brothers. What do you expect of me—to stand idly by while you burn my son? My son has brought death to none of us. The scratches he gave us are not on our bodies but our pride. Brothers. How if my son is burnt do I go back and face her who lives with me in my house? How do I look in the eyes of his sisters who think the rainbow arches over him? Brothers. It is easier for me to fight you all than go back and say that Cuyloga stood by and did nothing while his brothers in anger put his son to the fire.”

With the quickness of Long Tail, the panther, he took his knife and cut the boy’s thongs. Then he stood there waiting for the attack but none came. The warriors were too astonished. They watched, sullen and yet fascinated by the drama. This was the great Cuyloga at his bravest that they looked upon, and none knew what he would do next.

When he saw that they hesitated to fight him, he turned to the boy. His manner was not softened. He spoke, if anything, with sterner dignity.

“True Son. I have things also to say to you. It is not easy to say them. When you were very small, I took you in. I adopted you in my family. You were to me like my own son. I taught you to speak with a straight tongue. I showed you right and wrong. I bound you to my heart with strong new vines. The old rotten vines that held you to the white people I tore apart. True Son. Now I find these old rotten vines have new life. They have sprouted again to pull you back to the white people.

“True Son. From your early days you were not neglected. You were taught the kinds and signs of game. You were taught their habits and where to find them. You were taught to hunt and shoot. You gave me no shame as a hunter. I told myself that when I am old, you, my son, will support me. When my bones creak, you will keep me in bear’s oil and venison. When the ashes of life cool, you will be the fire to warm my old age. Never did I think that you would turn against me and that I would have to send you back to your white people. All this time I looked on you as Indian. I leaned on you as a staff. Now it is broken.”

True Son heard with emotion.

“My father. Never will I go back to the whites.
They are strange to me. They are my enemies. My father. If you send me away, I must go, but never to the white people.”

His father looked at him with sternness and pity for a long time.

“True Son. Maybe not now, you think. But after you are away from us for a while, you will go back. True Son. I look into your heart. I look into your head. I look into your blood. Your heart is Indian. Your head is Indian. But your blood is still thin like the whites. It can be joined only with the thin blood of the white people. It does not mix with the brave redness of Indian blood. True Son. I and you must leave here together. When we come to a white man’s road, that will be the place of our parting. You must go one way. I must go the other. Afterwards the path will be closed between us. True Son. On the way to that road, no harm will come to you. Cuyloga will watch over his son. After that road, we are son and father no longer. We are not even cousins but enemies. You must have no pity for me or I for you. When sometime you meet me in battle, you must kill me, for that is what I must do to you.”

The boy’s mouth was stopped. He could say nothing, only look at his parent whom he had never
loved or yearned for so much as at this moment. From behind a bush where he had returned, he saw Half Arrow’s look of bitter emotion. Even Little Crane’s brother and cousins had been powerfully moved by the scene and oration. What they might do to his father in ambush later, he could not guess, but there would be no attempt to molest either of them now.

At a sign from his father, True Son kept on the white blouse and pantaloons. Both gathered up their packs. There was no leavetaking. The two boys looked at each other a long farewell. Cuyloga had already left and True Son moved up the river-bank path after him.

In the afternoon, Cuyloga shot a turkey. They roasted and ate it before evening. The boy could hardly touch it and he thought that the meat stuck in his father’s mouth also. Near noon next day they came to a ford. A wide trail led down from the north and crossed the river. With a sickening feeling, the boy saw the track was rutted by white men’s carts.

His father spoke bleakly.

“This is the parting place. This is where the path must be closed between us. My place is on this side. Your place is on that. You must never
cross it. If you come back, I cannot receive you and they will kill you.”

The boy stood there a long time. He knew his father was waiting for him to go. At last he made the first movement, but at the edge of the water he turned. He hoped he would see in his father the faintest sign of relenting, but he found only fixed purpose in those dark eyes.

“My father. Do we say good-by to each other now?”

“Enemies do not do so,” Cuyloga told him harshly. “I am no longer your father, nor you my son.”

“Then who is my father?” the boy cried in despair and turned quickly to hide the blinding wetness in his eyes.

There was no reply from behind him. After a moment he forced himself into the water. It came to him then that this was the second time he was made to go through this living death. Not a year ago had he been forced to part from Half Arrow and Little Crane. Then, like his father today, they had stayed on the afternoon side of the river. Then he had felt the same bitter grief as now. Then as today he was made against his will to take up his life among the white people.

But gladly would he exchange today for yesterday, if he only could. Then, no matter the ordeal, he could always go back. Then Half Arrow and Little Crane had waited faithfully on the bank while he crossed. So long as his trail ran by the water, he had seen them still standing on the afternoon side, raising their hands to him in loyalty and affection. But today when he came to the morning side and turned, no one stood watching him from the distant shore. His father was gone. He stood alone in the forest by the river.

Ahead of him ran the rutted road of the whites. It led, he knew, to where men of their own volition constrained themselves with heavy clothing like harness, where men chose to be slaves to their own or another’s property and followed empty and desolate lives far from the wild beloved freedom of the Indian.

The Light in the Forest

Conrad Richter was born in Pennsylvania, the son, grandson, nephew, and great-nephew of clergymen. He was intended for the ministry, but at thirteen he declined a scholarship and left preparatory school for high school, from which he graduated at fifteen. After graduation he went to work. His family on his mother’s side was identified with the early American scene, and from boyhood on he was saturated with tales and the color of Eastern pioneer days. In 1928 he and his small family moved to New Mexico, where his heart and mind were soon captured by the Southwest. From this time on he devoted himself to fiction.
The Sea of Grass
and
The Trees
were awarded the gold medal of the Societies of Libraries of New York University in 1942.
The Town
received the Pulitzer Prize in 1951, and
The Waters of Kronos
won the 1960 National Book Award for fiction. His other novels include
The Fields
(1946),
The Lady
(1957),
A Simple Honorable Man
(1962),
The Grandfathers
(1964),
A Country of Strangers
(1966; a companion to
The Light in the Forest
), and
The Aristocrat
, published just before his death in 1968.