Charlie Blackbear

Chapter 1

Chapter 1April 4, my eighteenth birthday. Took its own sweet time rolling around. Talk about Indian time! They was pretty good years, till a drunk ran my old man off the road two summers back. They always talk about drunk Indians killing white folks. Well, this whitey wiped out my mom and dad, two brothers, and an aunt. Only reason I not laying over in the graveyard with them, I was out to my uncle’s place helping him catch a pony. Been with him ever since. My aunt was his woman, and since they didn’t have kids, him and me was all we had left.

At first, things was okay with him, but then he took to the bottle to make the hurt go away. Damned near everything went but the hurt. His old pickup broke down and was rusting away on blocks in front of the house. His job dried up. They couldn’t abide never knowing when he’d show up. His horses got sold for bottles of booze and cases of beer. The last thing to go was him caring for me, but that was dead too. We was nothing but a habit now. Oh, we got along okay…except when I tried to steal his bottle. And that was whenever I could.

Only reason we’ve still got a roof over our heads is we live way out in the boonies on this little Indian reservation. When the pickup went down, I scrounged a bicycle from the dump and fixed it up enough to get around. It’s got harder to do lately, because things leaned up a bunch last winter, and riding that bike sure worked up an appetite.

Toweling off from a bath, I examined myself in the cracked mirror. What I saw looked Grade-A-Choice-Prime. I’d been fed good till the accident, so I was filled out like a full-grown man. My belly was sorta gut-shrunk since coming by a meal got harder, but my chest was deeper than most guys I know. I like my face and thick black hair, and from the way girls came on to me they must like it too.

I figured out my c**k was good for something besides pissing the year I turned thirteen with Mazie Longbow out behind the scrub bushes at Rock Springs. It was big even back then. Pretty soon I heard it going around that I had the biggest one in school. After that, I got my candle lit pretty much whenever I wanted.

In fact, the big fucker kept me in booze and groceries last spring when I ran onto this white woman in town looking for somebody to take care of her yard. I piddled around in her lawn grass until she invited me in for a cold drink. After that, I took care of her belly grass for the summer. She couldn’t believe it when I told her I was just seventeen; course, I look a couple of years older’n I am. She claimed I looked and screwed better’n any man she ever knew. I was sorta sorry when she’n her old man moved out-of-state, even if I was getting kinda tired of showing up once a week. Too much like a job.

Funny thing. I’ve never had a steady girl. Never did form a real attachment to one. I’d latch on real tight for a couple of weeks, making her feel real special, and then start looking around for another one.

Most of my buddies was guys who’d hang around and drink with me after my folks was gone. Couldn’t get away with it when they were around. Not too hard to get hold of alcohol even if this is a reservation and I’m underage. I got real close to a couple of guys—drinking buddies—but it only lasted till one got serious about a girl. Then I’d forget him and go hunt up another best buddy.

I have to admit, getting taken care of nowadays wasn’t as easy as it used to be. My own fault. I’ve been through all the available girls on the reservation and in Blue Valley, the town just outside the rez. I had a reputation now…love ‘em and leave ‘em. So except for three or four who always give it to me when I’m desperate, my wick wasn’t getting dipped much without going to new territory.

Well, today Charlie Blackbear was going to new territory. Charlie Blackbear, that’s me, eighteen-year-old-Plains Indian super stud. There was a powwow over at Flynn’s Corners about a hundred miles down the road, and I was gonna find me something new. If I was lucky, I’d latch onto a white woman who liked red meat so I could put something in my pocket alongside the lone dollar bill already there. Then I’d hunt me up some of the Native fluff I liked and treat myself to a birthday present.

I worried over which would work up more of a sweat: riding the bicycle or walking the long, sunny mile from the house to the highway. I ended up riding the bike and hiding it behind some rocks. It was a good hour before a car passed. That one ignored my thumb, but the next one, a new Buick, drifted to a halt. The driver was a white man in his late twenties. I always look at them close, sizing them up in case of trouble. He had good muscles, was better’n six foot, and carried forty pounds on me. I’d have to mind my manners with this one.

“Hop in,” he said. “My name’s Bart. Where you headed?”

“Charlie,” I said, briefly shaking his outstretched hand. I was right; he was strong. “Flynn’s Corners.”

“Heading for the powwow? Saw a flyer back down the road,” he explained.

“Yeah, thought I’d go scare up a girl.”

“A young fellow like you ought to have a steady one.”

I gave him a grin. “Rather get lots of them once, than one of them lots.”

He laughed and slapped his knee. “And I bet you get lots too.”

A little macho bragging would probably go over with this guy. “Run through most of them around here. Looking for new territory. Bet you had your share.”

“I guess I have at that.”

He bought us steaks at a truck stop between Blue Valley and Flynn’s Corners. I’m not bashful, so I really stuffed it down. Hell, I didn’t know when I’d get to eat again. Old Bart kept right up with me. Before we left, we went in to take a leak. He stood at the urinal right beside me, and I was feeling funny about sneaking a peek when he snorted.

“Damn, Charlie! You’re hung like a horse.”

I got embarrassed for some reason, even though I been hearing that s**t ever since I was in junior high. I shook it off and stuffed it back in my pants. “You ain’t no slouch, neither,” I said in an offhand kinda way.

“No, but I’m a bigger man than you are. If I had one as big as you built to my scale, I’d put a mule to shame.”

We laughed our way to the car and talked about a lot of stuff that didn’t mean nothing. Bart was an architect on his way back home to Santa Fe, New Mexico from a business trip. I told him about my folks and staying with my uncle who lived in a bottle nowadays. Come to think of it, I hadn’t laid eyes on Uncle Jim in a week.

When he let me off at the powwow, Bart asked about a good motel. He thought he’d stay overnight and take in some of the powwow before heading on home tomorrow. I told him about the fanciest place I knew.

There was already a pretty fair crowd milling around the fairgrounds, but I couldn’t find a woman, red or white, that looked like she had some money. I wasted time on a gal gussied up in a fancy jingle dress, but when I put the moves on her she backed out because her boyfriend was in town.

Managed to rub up against another pretty little thing a couple of times in the crowd so she’d get an idea of what I was carrying. She didn’t seem to mind, but her folks hunted her down, and her dad looked mean as hell. It didn’t seem like that was going nowhere, so I split.

When I went in the rest room to take a leak, I kicked a wallet somebody had dropped. There was fifty dollars in cash and some credit cards in it. I didn’t want trouble, so I just took the cash and tossed the billfold back where it was.

Since I had a little money now, I ate two burritos and had a soda pop, using the time to find out the bootlegger was hid out back behind the rodeo stables. A dozen guys was hanging around the area pulling on bottles or draining cans and trying to ignore the smell of horseshit. I knew a couple of them. One was Homer, a guy I used to pal around with till he got married. I ransomed a bottle and moseyed on over to where he was sitting against a fence talking to another guy. I gave him a handshake and joined them.

I don’t know where the rest of the night or my money went. I remember Homer hauling me to my feet, saying the fairground was closing, but I thought about him deserting me for some woman and shook him off. I got sorta snorty, so he just left. I hunkered back down to finish my bottle and get a little sleep.

The cold woke me up in a dark and deserted fairground. Cussing, I climbed over the fence and stomped out to the highway. It musta been a good mile, and it was freezing! I was shaking like a quaking aspen by the time a car came by. Thought it was gonna pass me up, but it pulled over a way down the road. I tried to run, but nearly fell on my ass, so I just plodded along, halfway expecting it to lose patience and pull off. It didn’t though, just sat there blowing little white puffs out the tailpipe like it was sending smoke signals. I thought it was that Bart fellow, but it was a ‘97 Caddy, not a Buick. The inside was nice and warm. Either the guy had a blurry face or else I wasn’t seeing too good. He was a white man—who else would have a new Caddy—in his thirties. First thing I asked was if he had anything to drink.

“Had enough already, haven’t you?” he asked.

“f**k no!” I shook my head, and it kept on shaking like it had a mind of its own. Ha! My head had a mind of its own! That was funny.

“I’ve got a bottle, but it’s packed away in my suitcase.”

“Bar,” I slurred at him.

“Closed, partner. It’s two-thirty in the morning. My name’s John.”

“Charlie.” I held out my hand. He took it.

He wanted to know if I was from around here. When I shook my head again, he asked if I had a place to stay. When I said no, he invited me to stay at his motel room so we could break out his bottle and have a party. Sounded good to me.

John got a room with one of those great big beds. Wished he’d of got one with two, but it wasn’t the first time I bunked with some guy at a party. He unpacked a quart of bourbon. Not my favorite, but it’s alcohol. He went in the bathroom to clean up, so I got right down to drinking. Breaking the seal on the bottle, I sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed and took a big swig before remembering this was a white man. He’d probably get his ass in an uproar over drinking after an Indian. So I found one of those little plastic glasses and poured it full.

A chunk of the liquor was gone before he came back out, but it didn’t seem like he minded. After he claimed his share of the bottle, it disappeared kinda fast. Once it was gone, there wasn’t anything else to do but turn in. I sorta remember stripping down to my skivvies, but that’s about it.

I had weird dreams. I was doing it to this girl I rubbed up against at the powwow, and she was great. No, that wasn’t right. She was doing it to me, ‘cause I was just laying back and enjoying it without doing none of the work. I was gonna cream all over myself if I didn’t wake up, so I started struggling up out of the pit. I came semi-conscious about the time I busted my balls. I felt my jism shoot, and it wasn’t any dream! My c*m was squirting out into something wet and warm.

That John guy was blowing me. Son of a b***h! The bastard was sucking my d**k! I oughta get up and beat him to a pulp, but I just didn’t have the energy. I’d beat on the bastard tomorrow. I drifted off again while he was still sucking on me.

The next morning, the sound of a key in the lock woke me up. A maid came in, saw me, and scooted right back out. Then I found forty bucks and the note saying how much he liked me. Sucker had sense enough to clear out before I came to.

I showered in a rage. I’d of killed him last night if I hadn’t passed out. When I came out of the bathroom, the same maid who woke me up was peeking in the door. I stopped, holding the towel in front of me.

“Want your room cleaned?” she asked, staring at the towel.

“Yeah, you can come on in, but I’m gonna get dressed.”

She came inside and closed the door, so I figured she liked what she saw. She wouldn’t of been bad, but I just didn’t have the energy. She looked kinda disappointed when I boogied out before she finished making the bed.