The Victor and the Vanquished

Chapter 3

Chapter 3There were a bunch of Mexican kids at my school. One, named Enrique Marquez—Enrique was their way of saying Henry—hadn’t been here in America too long, so he was having trouble keeping up. He found out I liked to whittle when I brought some of my carvings to the school’s crafts display. After that, he started going out of his way to speak to me. At first, it was only “Hello” or “How’s it going?”

One day between classes, he showed me some pieces he’d carved. They were mostly Mexican things like burros and sombreros—stuff like that. They were pretty good though. So we talked a little about how we worked and got friendly enough for him to go along with me one afternoon to check on my sisters after school. The girls were okay, so we sat outside the door on some plastic milk crates and whittled together.

“You like it here?” I asked as we worked.

“Yeah. But wish I do better in school. My English, y’know.” He spoke in sort of a singsong that reminded me of some of the old folks back on the rez.

“You speak it as good as me.”

“I do okay with talking, but reading—not so good.”

So I started working with him on his lessons. Tutoring, the English teacher called it when she learned I was helping out. His grades started picking up, but the funny thing was—mine did too. Not only that, but when I started correcting his English, my talking started getting a whole lot better. I’d gotten lazy about saying things sloppy. It didn’t seem like such a big deal around home, but when I took on the chore of helping Enrique, that put some kind of obligation on me to do better.

He returned the favor by taking me down to the New Mexico State Fairgrounds where they had this big flea market every weekend except in September when the fair’s on. He introduced me to a bluff, red-faced Anglo named Ben Ames who had a booth there. Actually, it was more like a couple of card tables shoved together with lots of doodads on them—mostly glass, but some wood. Ben sometimes bought Enrique’s carvings.

“Show him your stuff,” Enrique said after they’d finished dickering over his work.

I hauled out a balsa wood whitetail deer with long, delicate legs from the grocery sack I’d brought along.

Ames examined the carving carefully, turning it over in his hands several times. He seemed to like it all right, but his expression never changed.

“Okay, what else you got?” He looked at the bristly porcupine I handed over, but barely glanced at the other three pieces. “You always work in balsa?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes pine or oak. Whatever I can get my hands on.”

“Mmmm.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“I’ll give you three for the deer and two and a half for each of the others.”

“O…okay. Can I bring you some more stuff?”

“Sure. Don’t guarantee to buy them. Depends on how your stuff moves. Bring me something in a harder wood, next time. My customers prefer that. Some of them can’t tell the difference between stained balsa wood and walnut, but some of them can. What’d you say you name was?”

“William. William Greyhorse.”

“You Indian? What’s your tribe?”

“Yes sir. I’m Pinoan.”

“Never heard of them. Course, that’s not surprising. I guess yawl got four or five hundred tribes, and nobody knows any of them except for big ones like the Navajos and ‘Paches.”

“We’re a little band from up north of here.”

“Okay. Bring me some more stuff, and maybe we can do business.”

Enrique and I left the fairgrounds and headed down Louisiana, me with thirteen dollar bills burning my pocket. For the first time since coming to Albuquerque, I had a little money.

My buddy peeled away on business of his own before we got back home, leaving me on an emotional low. My sudden affluence didn’t do me much good. I couldn’t let on to my folks I had any money. I’d give it to them if they’d spend it on food and clothes and rent. But it’d go down a bottle for one or the other of them. My dad drank with Tolliver and a couple of others; Mom didn’t need any drinking buddies. She mostly drank by herself.

I bought Nola a jacket for three dollars at the thrift store and claimed somebody’d left it on the schoolyard. My old man didn’t give a damn if I stole something, but he would have been on me in a minute for making an honest dollar and not turning it over to him.

After Ben Ames bought the next bunch of pieces—even though they were still balsa wood—I bought little Junie some clothes, claiming I did errands at the thrift shop to pay for them. One day when we didn’t have any food in the place, I bought some staples and didn’t tell them anything. Nobody bothered to ask, so I kept it up. Soon, I was the only one bringing in groceries. Matthew helped out some, but he wasn’t around most of the time.

I started whittling hard, and Ben took everything I brought him. My knives were good enough by now, but I invested in better wood, the hard kind that wouldn’t break the first time it got a hard knock. That almost backfired on me because different woods take different techniques, and I had to learn all over again. Still, at three and four dollars for the hardwood pieces, I was bringing in a steady income. I never spent any of the money on myself—except for the supply of wood I needed. Instead, I hid everything I didn’t spend on the girls or for food in a hollow behind a baseboard I pried loose. I made sure Nola knew about it in case something happened to me, but I didn’t tell anybody else.

Before long, there was a nice little sum hiding there—some twenties, four or five tens, and a few fives—more money than I’d ever seen before. I was scheming on how to buy the girls Christmas gifts without tipping my hand when I came home to find Matthew waiting for me.

“Man, where’d you get all that money?”

My heart sank right down into my shoes. “What money?”

“The old man found your stash.”

I let out a cuss word. “Did he take it all?”

“What do you think?”

“Is he in there now?”

“With that kind of loot? Don’t talk crazy. He’s down at the bar. Mom talked him out of twenty dollars for groceries, but she already spent it on booze.”

I started to brush past Matthew, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Two hundred dollars, pissant. He thinks you stole it.”

“Don’t you?”

He shook his head. “No. My little brother doesn’t steal. Not even coats and clothes for his sisters. Or food for the family. I figure you’re selling your carvings.”

“Yeah. Found a guy who buys them from me.”

“Down at the flea market, right?”

I looked up at him. “How’d you know?”

“Me and Myra were over there roaming around one weekend, and I saw this guy with a lot of wood stuff. I thought I’d tell you about him, but I started looking at some of the pieces and recognized a couple of things.”

“Yeah, Enrique took me to him.”

“You know, I admire the way you handled things. That was smart doling it out for groceries. If you’d spent the money on yourself, the old man would have noticed. By the way, he won’t take after you because he thinks you stole it, but he’ll probably tear you a new one for not handing it over.”

“I don’t give a damn. Let him do his worst. How’d he finds it, anyway?”

“Little Junie.”

“Aw, shit.” I remembered the last time I added money to the stash. I’d turned around and saw the baby standing there watching me. I made some lame-assed comment about fixing a loose baseboard, but she was a curious little cuss and took to pulling on it. It was bad luck the old man was there when she managed to tear it off.

“At first, he figured the people who had the apartment before us left it behind,” Matthew said. “But he finally figured out it was yours when Junie kept saying, ‘Wilum.’ Sorry, man. You got any money left?”

“Not if he found it. I don’t carry any on me.”

“I can spare a twenty.”

He’d been working on a construction crew for the past couple of months, but he was living over at Myra’s place, and most of his paycheck went to support the two of them. Knowing how much he liked to hit the bottle, I was surprised he held onto the job. He wasn’t as bad as Dad or Mom, but I tried to warn him he was on a slippery slope. Every time I did, he’d just get his back up and claim he wasn’t a sot and never would be.

I shrugged away his offer. “Thanks, but I’ll be okay. I’ve got some stuff for the flea market. But if they don’t sell, I’ll let you know. You know, for grocery money.”

We slapped hands, and I don’t ever remember feeling as close to Matthew as I did right then, not even when he bought me a piece of tail. I watched him walk out of sight around the corner heading for his girlfriend’s place, and then I went inside. Little Junie let out a whoop and ran for me, yelling “Wilum” like she always did. I picked her up and gave her a buzz on the cheek. No use holding it against her. She was too little to know what she’d done.

Half the baseboards were ripped out in the living room from where my dad had rooted around trying to find another hidey-hole. There wasn’t one, of course. Nola, sitting on the couch sewing up a hole in her favorite skirt, wouldn’t meet my eyes. It was her way of letting me know she was feeling bad for me. I went over and patted her on the head to ease things up.

“Don’t do that.” She aimed an elbow at me. She didn’t mean it. She just didn’t know how to handle my loss. I flicked her on the ear, and she stabbed at me with a needle.

“Mom!” she called. But it was a feeble yell. She wasn’t really asking for help. I gave her a smile, and she couldn’t resist giving up a little one in return.

Mom was at the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey clasped in both hands. There wasn’t a glass in sight; she’d been drinking straight from the bottle. I went in and kissed her on top of the head. She looked startled like she hadn’t even noticed I’d come in. She stared up at me, but her eyes weren’t focused. She looked like she wanted to ask me something but couldn’t remember what it was. I knew what it was, all right. She wanted to ask for some more money. I just eased the bottle out of her hands and put it in the sink.

The basin and the counters were clear of dirty dishes. Nola was responsible for that. My little sister, coming up on fourteen, was more of a homemaker than our mother. Cora looked like somebody’s grandmother, and she was only somewhere in her thirties. She’d had Matthew when she was sixteen, but I wasn’t up to figuring out how old that made her right then.

* * * *

I thought I was handling things pretty well, you know, like a grown-up. But when I heard the pickup screech to a halt at the curb outside the door sometime after midnight, I turned into a scared little kid. I cowered in my covers on a pallet beside the sofa. The old man hit the door like a hurricane. He flipped on the lights and looked around, bleary-eyed. I could smell him from clear across the room. I pretended to be asleep, but he headed straight for me.

“Wilum.” He tore off my blankets. “I need some more money.”

“I ain’t got any more. You took it all.” My English grammar usually went to hell when I was under stress. And being scared of this unpredictable bastard was big-time stress. Strands of his black hair stood out in all directions, the streaks of gray in it looking like snakes twisting in the darkness. If he’d braided his hair like he usually did before leaving this morning, it’d come undone—or some doxy had taken it out. Frantic black eyes with a fevered shine moved restlessly. The two-inch scar under his right eye from a childhood knife fight was livid, a sure sign of rage.

“Don’t gimme that s**t. Gimme the money. I got people waiting on me.”

“I don’t have any more. You took it all.” If I said it enough times, maybe he’d believe me.

He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out of my bedroll. He had me standing up in my undershorts in front of the girls before I knew what was happening.

“Then, by God, go steal some more. I need it.”

He was just ranting. He thought I stole it, all right, but he knew I couldn’t go find any money right then. So I kept my mouth shut.

He slapped me with the back of his hand. The blow whipped my head around. My hands flew up to protect my face, and he got me hard in the belly. I went over onto the floor trying to suck air. Quicker than a snake, he had his belt off and started whaling on me. My back. My legs. My buttocks. Still winded, I huddled there protecting my belly and took it. Through my pain, I could hear Nola sobbing and Junie crying aloud.

When he turned on them, I grabbed him around the legs, but I was too weak to do anything but hold on. He tripped, and that refocused his fury on me. I don’t know when he quit hitting me. The next thing I remembered was Nola bathing my face with a cool cloth. When I opened my eyes, she lifted my head and fed me a glass of water.

“Are you all right?” The voice surprised us. Mom stood across the room with a tattered old housecoat clutched around her.

“No, he’s not all right!” Nola shrieked. “He’s beat to a pulp.”

“It’s…it’s all right,” I muttered, trying to muster a smile. “I’ll be okay. We all need to get some sleep. Uh…where is he?”

“He left,” Nola said. “And I hope he never comes back.”

“Don’t say that, honey. He’s your father. He didn’t mean it, son.” Mom’s wheedling voice set my nerves on edge. “He won’t even remember it when he sobers up. Everything will be all right.”

Lord, how many times had I heard that tired old line? It wouldn’t be so bad if Dad just whipped me and let it go at that, but when he started hitting, he got to liking it so much he forgot to stop.

“Everything will be all right?” Nola yelled, setting little Junie to crying again. Mom just looked confused. “Stop making excuses for him. He’s a monster. Go get the police. Wilum needs help.”

Mom’s eyes widened. She shook a step backward. “Police? Why would I go for the police?”

“All right, then. I will.” Nola stood her ground.

“No, honey.” I clutched my sister’s arm. “I’m…okay. It’s just bruises. Mom, go…on back to bed. Nola, settle Junie down. Okay?”

After everything was more or less calm, I lay on my blankets flexing my arms and legs. Nothing seemed to be broken, but my back burned and smarted. The blanket scratched more than it ought to. My legs cramped and my breath felt hot. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I went to the bathroom and sat in the tub, letting the cold shower drench me. It was a quarter of an hour before the sting from the cuts and bruises faded and my nerves settled down enough to relax the cramps in my legs.

I didn’t get much sleep after that. I kept listening for the old man to return and wondering how I was going to get through my classes at school when the sun came up.