THE GOOD BOY

MICHAELXAVIER

When I was a boy, I lived in a small town in Idaho that was founded next to a river that bordered an Indian reservation.

The tribe was the Nez Perce, and as children we were always warned to stay away from them.  We were told that they were drunk and dangerous; that they would run us over with their bright shiny Cadillac’s and use our teeth for necklaces---that their women were dirty and loose, that their men would cut our young pink throats if given half a chance.  The people that raised me were Christian and clean and white, and never let me forget that I was a bastard son of a fifteen-year-old runaway; that I was born under a dark star, or so they would say, and blessed to be in their presence.  That only an act of divine providence and daily beatings would wash me clean and make me a better boy.

Once when I was ten I tried to run away from my town. I was too young to realize that I was too young. I only knew that what demons then that were laid out to me in myth and legend beyond my neighborhood, were much better odds in my head then the reality within the walls of the house where I was living.

So I escaped out of my ten-year-old bedroom window one early summer morning.  I started riding my bike to the end of town.

To the south side of things.

To the bad part of it.

To the side that smelled like trains and whores, and to the words I wasn’t allowed to say.

Yes even then, at that age, alone.

Far beyond the factory--where the Indian reservation was hidden from the rest of my guarded white community. I knew they where there.

Everybody did.

I saw them at liquor stores on the edge of the reservation while heading out of town in shiny new station wagons on family vacations. And my father seemed to walk differently around them while in this part of town. I remember him walking like I walked around him when I passed by his room when he had that particular look in his eye.

That look that let me know that I was about to get hell, and that he was the one that was bringing it to me.

I set out that summer morning to find out why he walked like that around those men.  I had had enough hell by his hand, and I figured from what I had been told, if I was going to be torn limb from limb by anyone, it wasn’t going to be from him.  And it was going to be on my terms, not his.

Yes. Even at ten. My terms. Not his.

I rode to the edge of town, to where the slow green Clearwater River meets the road.  And then I road the 3 miles past that.

The sun in the sky crossed over me, and fell to the west side of the valley, and I arrived to the edge of the reservation.

It was dusk. I was afraid. But I was not going back.

I saw the drunk Indian men with their eagle feathers sticking out of their drunken cowboy hats taunting their drunken Indian women, howling and laughing back at them.  Stumbling out of bars in the end of daylight. Leading each other around the outside of the bar to the big grass field behind it. I only imagined what evil mysteries they were planning back there.

But I was still focused on the cars. The Cadillacs, and the front parking lot was full of them.

I sat outside on the front steps and stared at the chrome on the cars in the parking lot.  Their bright emblems called out to me. I walked over to one and my ten-year-old limbs could not resist. I reached out and touched my face in the reflection and followed my fingers along the curves.  I was mesmerized by the world’s reflection in the warpiness of the curves. I didn’t see or hear him walk up behind me. . . .

“Hey,” he said, as my fingertips met the chrome.

Behind me stood a man. He was Nez Perce, and he seemed fifty feet tall to me.  He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and perfect black Stetson with a tall feather jetting out from the side of it.  He had a bag of whiskey in his hand, and he didn’t smile.

“You like cars?” he asked, and I turned to face him. The sun was setting behind his head and it looked like its rays were being born from his ten-gallon hat.

“I like eagles more.” Is all I said, and pointed at the feather on top of his head.

He paused. And then he grunted. And then he laughed (just a little).

Then he reached up to his hat and plucked the thing and handed it to me.

“Good boy.” He said to me. “Good boy.”

I hadn’t heard those words used before to describe me, and I suspected it was a trick.  I abandoned everything that moment, my bike, my cards, and I ran into the woods as fast as I could, clutching my teeth to keep them safe as I ran.

The sound of distant drums announced my narrow escape.

2.

I ran into the forest, clutching the eagle feather in my hand. I ran and I thought I could hear his footsteps behind me. I ran until I saw the moon.

I sat underneath a large pine-tree and I cried from fear. Not from fear of the man or of my father or of the unknown. I cried from the fear of not having somewhere to run to. And when the tears were gone, I slept. I slept and I dreamed of drums and songs and eagles and forests. And when I woke the man was standing next to me. He still was not smiling, but I was not afraid. He was holding a stick and he held it out to me. I held on to it, and he helped me to my feet.

He led me through the forest and I thought I was still dreaming. The sound of drums still growing in my head. And then I saw the distant flash of fire.

The Nez Perce man with the Cadillac led me and my feather to the grassy clearing behind the bar and I saw what they had been heading to earlier that day. It was fire alright-- as bright as the sun and reached as high as the sky. But the women were not loose, or drunk. They were tall and proud, and they held their children around it. And the men were painted and circled there too; dressed like they were going to war. The man led me to the circle and we stood, and I saw why I heard drums. Men and boys were gathered at the edge of the shadows, beating the skins of animals over wood with sticks, there together and their sweat flashed like diamonds in the light of the fire.

And then all sound stopped.

Everyone sat, including me, all of us in a circle. And a very old man stood by the fire and he spoke. And as he spoke he motioned to the ground, and to the forest, and to the sky, and to everyone sitting around.

He looked at everyone as he said his foreign words. Even me.

He raised his hands to the sky and I saw the moon bend to his will. It moved for him and it made a sound.

Then I saw what my father was afraid of.  I saw why he walked a little softer on this side of town.  He and others like him passed out blankets and whiskey and rumors to try and defy the fantastic truth of what cannot be suppressed. And at ten, yes, even at ten, I saw the hypocrisy in his cowardice.

And then what I thought was the sight and sound of war, what I was told was savage and cruel, became simply a dance under a full and moving moon.

I sat and I watched the old man move his body against the air. Pulling up the power of the earth through his feet and watched it fly from his limbs to his people. My heartbeat became one with the drum and my young pink throat swelled with the sound of his chants. My body swayed like the trees at the edge of the forest.

Everyone stood and stared at the sky, and my body began to move with him. The heat from the summer night and the heat from the fire made the sweat on my body a separate animal. It moved across me. I tore off my t-shirt to set it free, exposing in the firelight the bruises that covered my back from the brown leather belt used by the hand of the man who called himself my father. But I didn’t care, I was not containable. I was not in fear of reprisal that night. I had come for my end and if this was it, then this was going to be it; Sweaty, primal, and without constraint.

I felt a hand run along my back where the bruises lived. I knew it was the Nez Perce man. He hadn’t left my side. Through the song and fire and dance and drums, he was still there, and I heard him grunt as he touched me.

Then I felt a shove by his stick, and suddenly, I was in the middle of it--in the thick of things, next to the old man dancing with the moon.  It was the two of us, and I didn’t stop.

I bared my chest to everything---everything that had not loved me that night.

I raised my chin and showed my throat. Exposing everything that I was taught to hide.

I bared all and banged my perfect sternum against the world.

I became the moon and the not the moon.

I became the earth but not bound to it.

I was not the stars. I was the one behind them.

Pushing them out of the Idaho sky.

Making them fall, just for you—

You, who are like me. You who need them to fall into your chest, on the nights when you feel like the bastard son in the house you’re living in.

I burned my hands, pushing stars out of the sky and I smiled knowing the scars would always be there.

I shook heaven with everything I was to see what would fall; to see what would land on me, to get it done and over with, so I could end it or move on.

I stared into the fire and I saw my future. I saw that I would return to my neighborhood and endure until it was time to leave---and I didn’t care.

I saw the man I would become and I was ashamed, and proud,

and I forgave him for forgetting me.  I loved that he would someday return to me, and we would shake hands and become friends.

I danced with the tribe under a summer moon, my feet pounded the ground.  Pounding out the hate, the grieving, the forgiveness.

At that moment I was half of everything less than what I was taught was superior; what I was led to believe was less than good and white and perfect.

I danced. And I became that.

I became half Nez Perce,

Half Kalispell,

Half Lapwai,

Half Coeur d’ Alene,

Half Paiute.

Half black,

Half Jew,

Half bastard son,

Half dark star born.

And all of these lesser halves came together and finally made me whole.

3.

I stood at the edge of the fire long after it had faded from being the sun. I stood there long after everyone else had gone. I watched the embers smoulder and wave goodbye to the flame.

I stood there and thought of my father.

I felt the now familiar hand of the Nez Perce man rest upon my shoulder, and I looked up at him. The sun was rising above his head and its freshly born rays sprung from behind him. The sliver of orange crept across his body then struck me gently on face. The feather, still in my hand, began to vibrate; like the sun and sky was beckoning it home.

And all I know is for the first time in my young life, everything felt perfect.

“Let’s go good boy.” He said, and started walking across the field towards his Cadillac in the liquor store parking lot.

He handed me a blanket, and I covered my back and I tried to match his perfect long native strides.

He opened his car, flipped a switch, and the flawless white soft top folded back and disappeared behind the back seat. He pointed at my bike, still leaning against the front steps of the store, and I brought it to him and he stuck it behind the front seats.

“Show me where you live.”  He said, and I pointed down the river towards the north end of town.

We drove along the Clearwater River as the sun made its way over the valley wall, reflected off the red hood of the car, bouncing and swirling along the chrome. The warm morning wind whistled through the car and picked up my blanket like a wing.

I stood on the front seat and abandoned the blanket, setting it free to be what the wind wanted it to be. I raised my hands into the morning air and I laughed, letting the wind, and the hope, and the adventure from the night before fill my body till it was full; finally spilling out of my fingers and toes and shoulders and face to the rest of my ten-year -old world. I slid back down into the soft white seat and smiled as I led him to my house.

We pulled onto the street where I lived and came to a slow stop in front of my house. Sleep was starting to take me over, and my half- opened eyes were searching for war.  It seemed to me to be a strange land now. Familiar yet foreign. Like I had returned to the scene of the great escape and was walking back into it the moment it happened.

“Stay here.”  It was the Nez Perce man.  He spoke as he exited the car, and I sat and I saw him put his perfect black Stetson. He put it onto his head and he walked towards the door. Up to my house, and he knocked.

My father answered in his robe and slippers, and I could tell by the buckle in his knees and the look on his face that he thought the man was fifty feet tall too.

I slouched in the front seat of the Cadillac till my eyes rested just above the top of my car door. I sat and looked at the man standing in front of my father. And I realized then,

Yes, even at ten

What was different about the two men.

What made them move about the earth in such different ways.

One was in fear of anything that was different, or bigger, or more than he believed himself to be.

And the other was in celebration of all things bigger, and more and different than he knew himself to be.

It was, and still is, as simple as that to me.

Yes, even now, many years later,

As simple as that

Indeed.

I don’t know what he said to my father, I didn’t hear any voices.

There were no grand gestures, no loud words; nothing more threatening than a slight lean towards my father as the native touched my fathers back and shook his head before he turned and walked back towards the car, took out my bike, and opened my door.

I clutched my bike in one hand and handed him the feather with other.  He pulled off his hat and put the thing back where it belonged, walking to the other side of the car and smiling as he turned.

“Good boy,” He said, and started up the engine. “Good boy.”

And then he drove away.

I would like to say that I walked back into the house and was never touched again until I was old enough to leave for good. I would like to tell you that, but I can’t.

A lifetime of good and white and perfect could not be changed with a native at his door, nor would I have ever wanted it to. Change, you see, takes time and effort and marrow and bone, and I don’t think he ever understood that.

But, what I can tell you, is that the times when it got bad while I was there, the times when I saw that certain look in his eye. I became the earth and the moon and the thing behind the stars. Falling back into the night that my halves became whole, and I would tear off my shirt, and I would pound my feet on the ground, and cry out in whatever primal tongue my throat could muster.

And he would always back away. The look would fade from anger into fear of the unknown native that lived inside me.

I’ve been punished and beaten and bruised from life, you see,

but I take hell from no mans hand. And he saw it. Yes, even then, that he had lost that power over me.  And even most importantly, that I would never give it back to him.

It has been far too long since those days for me, to recall the moment that set me free to find my way into the world. I am “big city” now, or so you might say. I found my tribe, the others like me, collecting them in my travels, as I’m sure they would say that they have collected me too.

I only speak to them of stories like these, and how I still remember how the large smooth stones of the Clearwater and Snake rivers felt under my feet. And how the color of the high planes in its majestic rolling hills rivals any seven wonders the world claims to have shown me.

I tell them these things because they are the only ones I’ve found that understand what drives me. What makes me pause in the middle of Los Angeles night and look up to the sky at any given moment to find my place beneath the stars.

The only souls I have found, other than the tribe that I ran to when I was ten, that understand why the Nez Perce have the same word for the sun and the moon . . . . . and why they beckon us to dance.

Hinmató·wyahlahtit (Joseph),

Peo peo Hix hiix (White Bird)

Ala' limya Takaniin (Looking Glass).

For Murph, Randy, and Julia