Going Down the wrong street

Big Earl telling how he danced with the Devil by the dark of the moon for the very first time. In his own words.

I got lost. Plain, simple and the truth. But sometimes when you get on the wrong street it leads you down the wrong path. I was on my way home and was late. I had to stay after school because I had done or said something the teacher didn’t like. Just in the second grade and already well on my way to being a disappointment to my parents. So, I had to write something on the blackboard fifty times. I did that so many times when I was young I don’t even remember what I was being punished for. I just knew that I was late and that was going to get my ass whipped if I didn’t get home before Pop. I took a shortcut and got lost.

When I figured out I didn’t know where I was, I stopped. There were a bunch of Indian kids coming down the road toward me. I knew they would help me. After all, I was an Indian. Pop had told me and my brothers we were Indians. That is why we weren’t allowed to go to school with white kids. Indians weren’t good enough to go to school with white kids. Hell, Indians weren’t even good enough to go to school with black kids. That is why the Indian schools got their textbooks after the white schools were through with them. And Indians had to wait until after those same books were considered too old for the black schools. That was why Pop said Indians had to stick together. So these kids would help me find my way home. Fat chance. Sometimes you just start out with the wrong idea.

I had no clue anything was wrong. The boys came up and stood in a circle around my bike. I started to ask the oldest boy where my house was. I never got it out. The oldest kid said, “Shut up white boy, you are in the wrong place.” This surprised me so much, that the kid thought I was white, I started laughing. That is when one of the boys hit me from behind and knocked me off the bike. I know the answer to that one. I came up swinging, hitting one and then another trying to get out of the circle of Indians. I fought pretty well for a little kid, but some of those boys were several years older than me and they beat the living shit out of me. They took my bike and dragged me and the bike into the woods near the road. I don’t know how far into the woods we went, but it felt like a long way. I tried to tell them I was an Indian, just like them. I was told Indians don’t have blue eyes, so I was just another lying white kid. We got to a path in the woods and one of the kids found some rope. I got tied up. They went off a little way and talked for a few minutes. Nothing good will ever come out of a group of grade school boys in a conference. A couple of them took off. Every time I tried to talk or move somebody would kick or hit me. I thought the worst thing they could do was beat me up and my father beat me worse than they did. I was wrong.

The two kids that had left came back with a couple of shovels and a coup stick. I laid there watching them dig a hole. A deep hole, just a bit bigger around than me. I wasn’t sure what the hole was for but I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t going to like it. I started struggling trying to loosen the rope. It didn’t do any good. I was dragged over to the hole and lowered in until my feet touched. Then those kids did something I had not even thought of. They started shoveling the dirt back in around me. There is something liberating about thinking you are about to be buried alive. It removes all sense of shame and inhibitions. I peed myself and started screaming for my Mom and begging them to stop. The oldest kid laughed and told me they weren’t going to bury me, they were just going to play a game. He wasn’t lying. They stopped burying me at neck deep. This was just at ground level. Right next to the path. Then I saw one of them on my bike. And I suddenly knew what the coup stick was for.

A coup stick is a wood club an inch or so across with a round head carved into one end. In the old days Indians would ride up to their enemies and hit them with the coup stick. It wasn’t to hurt the enemies so much as to show your skill and courage at getting so close to them. The kid on the bike had a coup stick. He rode at me and went whizzing by. Just as he went by he popped me on the back of the head with the coup stick. I saw stars. The rest of the bunch took turns doing their best to hit me as they went by. If they missed the others would laugh and howl, making fun of the kid with the bad aim. Only one missed more than twice. The one that missed twice is the last one I remember. His third try, he went for my face. I saw it coming and couldn’t move enough to make him miss. That is the last thing I knew until something woke me up, still buried, in the dark.

I woke, thinking I had been dreaming. That’s when I found I couldn’t move. That is also when I heard something coming. Something that was making a lot of noise. Something growelingSomething that wasn’t afraid of the dark. Something that was worse than anything it might meet in the dark. I was afraid to say anything. It might have been one of those Indian kids. I thought I was really scared then. I was wrong. I was oh so wrong.

That is when I heard growling. You have no idea what pure fear feels like until you realize something is coming. Something very big. Something growling. Something hungry. Something that might just eat you alive from the face down. And there is nothing you can do about it. That will put some air in your lungs. I screamed at the top of my little leather lungs. I screamed and kept screaming as a pack of big dogs came up around me. Between screams, I heard a man yell, “He’s over here! The kid is over here!” The man came running up the path. His voice had made me stop screaming for a moment just as he came around a turn and saw me in the light of a lantern he was carrying. The man turned and threw up. I heard Pop tell somebody later that the guy thought he was a few seconds late when he saw my head sitting, covered in blood on the side of the path. I yelled for him to help me and damn near scared him to death. More men showed up and they dug me out and untied me. The bunch of men looking for me included my father. It was one of the few times I ever saw Pop really scared for me.

Eventually, I got to where I could be left alone for a few minutes without thinking I was hearing someone coming after me. I would go into a complete panic attack, yelling and hitting, biting and screaming until I realized I wasn’t in danger. I got over the fear of darkness pretty quick. The darkness was when I was rescued. Darkness became an old and trusted friend. I never did get over the fear and distrust of dogs though. I know intellectually that the dogs are how the searchers found me. And that the dogs were licking me because they were happy to see me. But somewhere, deep inside, I hear that growling and barking and my inner mind tells me that I am about to be eaten alive.

Experiences like that one are liable to leave a mark on a kid who is six or seven years old. They either toughen you up or you end up buying a Mercedes for a shrink. I did both.

I ended up seeing a shrink for a few months when after I was found. Apparently, I was a tad disturbed by being the guest of honor at this particular butt kicking. Go figure. Anyhow, I ended up seeing one of those state funded doctors. One of those guys that isn’t quite good enough for private practice. It didn’t take long to figure out what he wanted to hear. So that is what I told him. He would nod his head when I told him something he wanted to hear. He would stare, shake his head or purse his lips if I said something wrong. Pretty soon I was his star patient. I was his prize cure. After dealing with Pop, that shrink was easy to fool. Not to say El Shrinko didn’t help me. He might have. I just don’t know. After all, I was a little kid when I saw him. And I did learn a lot from the experience. I’m not sure how much of it I got from the good doctor and how much I figured out for myself.

I learned that taking a shortcut is not always the fastest way to get where you are going.

I learned that not everybody you think is your friend, is your friend. And that no matter how tough you are, you are going to lose some fights.

And that running away is sometimes the very best choice.

And that calling on family doesn’t always mean anyone is going to answer.

And that darkness is not always a bad thing.

I even learned that Pop cared about me. That last one is the hardest to believe out of this whole mess.

The biggest single thing I learned while telling that shrink what he wanted to hear was how to lie. I learned how to tell a lie in such a way as to cater to the preconceived notions he already had of me. I learned how to spin a tale that, while having absolutely no basis in reality, sounded more convincing than the actual facts. And I learned that, if you add in just enough verifiable facts, people will believe anything. Almost as important, I learned that you can tell the absolute “God’s Honest Truth” in such a way that nobody will believe a word of it. These, my friends, are handy skills to have even for an honest man. Not that I have ever really been guilty of that particular abomination.

That little side trip down the rough part of reality was one of the pivotal points in my life. It gave me something and it took something in return. I learned to be tough, to rely on myself and to never be the second best armed individual in a fight. All it cost me was a big chunk of trust and a large part of my soul. It seems that somewhere between stopping to ask for help and adulthood, I lost most of my sense of compassion, the capability to completely trust anyone and the ability to love anyone so much that I can’t walk away from them and never look back. All in all, I believe I came up on the short end of the stick.

As soon as the shrink released me as cured, Pop moved us to Texas and got a job. He had our names stricken from the tribal rolls so the Texans couldn’t discriminate against us because we were Indians. Then it turned out Texas doesn’t have enough Indians to make discriminating against them any fun anyway. Texas did, however, have more than it’s share of Mexicans. So Texans treated Mexicans like Oklahoma treated Indians. Seems when Texans played Cowboys and Indians, they played for keeps.

In the end I think the one thing those Indian kids took from me was my humanity. I don’t even have enough left to feel bad about that. You might want to keep that in mind if I ever offer to take you down a path you normally wouldn’t take.

Editors note. There is one more thing. If you ever find yourself down one of those dark paths in the middle of the night, dancing with the Devil; look around and check to see who is leading. It might not be the answer you are looking for.