Kickapoo

Hendrik E. Sadi

Description

This novel explores the problems of trying to redeem an inherited guilt, and the consequences faced by those involved.
This is a story of a group of teenagers coming to Oklahoma in the late 1950s to redeem an inherited guilt by building a meetinghouse for an Indian tribe and evil, in the form of a comical old man, trying to stop them.

Sujets

• Historical
• Meeting house
• Workamping
• American Indian
• Old man
• Observer
• Evil
• The Observer
• Innocence
• Fiction
• Oklahoma

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 17 octobre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780595722525
• Langue: English

Extrait

Kickapoo
Hendrik E. Sadi


Kickapoo
 
 
Copyright © 2001 Hendrik E. Sadi.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-0-5952-0313-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-0-5957-2252-5 (e)
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  10/14/2022
Council, Oklahoma
Even from where he was, walking up the wide main street from the highway with two others, slouched over, with his hands in the pockets of his black chino pants and scuffing up the red-brown dust with the motorcycle boots he had on, in a town that seemed to be living a past, with wood post railings running up and down in front of the squat-like two story clapboard houses, whose upper windows eyed the wide expanse of the street like some guarding sentinel being on careful watch, he could see the hands moving above the head of the small childlike figure, sitting in the rocking chair on the porch floor.
There moving and striking, no snatching out it seemed to him, at some imagined air born figure; or just at the very air itself, he thought, coming closer to the long extension of the porch floor. Then he mounted the sagging wood steps leading up, and saw the childlike figure was an old man moving his small, thin, grimy looking hands above the straw weaved cowboy hat that he had slanted down over his forehead. Then he saw the flies and knew why.
But another thought came to him, looking at the way he was striking and snatching out at the flies he saw come and buzz in front of him, teasing and testing him in a wingspan, circular movement. And he thinks.
‘There is something else besides those flies that has him moving those hands of his like that, so spastically.’
“Not the flies, but his own anger,” he says, stopping the two who have come with him, the few feet away from the old man sitting, curled up, in the rocking chair, reading himself now for the fly.
And he sees the fly buzz in and land on the sunken face, and as quickly fly off before the thin, grimy looking hand could come down and claim it, hearing the smacking sound of flesh and skin meet with some angry words, mad without any meaning to him.
“Slop! Slop!” he hears.
He smiles then, looking at him, seeing the fly poised and buzzing in front of him again, in that teasing, testing wingspan venture, about to strike, he thinks when it suddenly turns and flies up the street to the north end.
And he hears him cursing it with those same two words he had heard before, while his small, thin, grimy hands, keeps striking and snatching at only the air now.
‘Yes,’ he thinks once more. ‘This old man looks to be fighting more than those flies that have been bothering him.’
“He looks to be fighting something, something more personal,” Ranen says to himself and moves on, with the floorboards sounding his presence.
And he sees the old man jerk around in the rocking chair and look at him with more than the tinge of blue that covers the gray of his eyes, and there focuses in him something old of evil, he feels while he looks at him, feeling the hold he has on him. Then he sees the smile suddenly move across the toothless, sunken face, welcoming him.
“Hidy,” he says as the two with him turn, wondering why he was not walking on towards the general store they had been heading for.
“Say, com’on, what’s holding you?” the taller of the two says, loud enough. “Com’on, we got to get back to camp soon.”
So, he tears himself away from the old man and the evil he has felt coming from him and scuffs the floorboards with his heavy looking motorcycle boots as he moves on, feeling the air suddenly being disturbed when he sees the thin, grimy looking hand at his side.
“Wah’ch you want old man?” he says in the street slang he has brought down with him. “Wah’ch you want with me?”
It stopped him then, the voice. And he stood there, a small childlike figure blinking its gray-blue eyes rapidly up at him, with his toothless, sunken face spread in a smile, wearing a pair of bib-overalls that have ironed out stiff from wearing them too long, he sees.
“Suppose, suppose now ah try nd guess now?”
“Wah’ch you wana guess old man?” he says, putting his hands back in the front pockets of his black chino pants.
“Suppose, suppose now. Ah spect Misigan?”
“Michigan! Hell, you’re way off old man,” he tells him, playing his game as he stands there looking down at him, with his pink shirt collared up in the back.
“Suppose, suppose now. Ah spect Colado?”
“No old man, not that either.” And he catches the screen door on the rebound, and turns in the doorway, his eyes meeting the gray-blue blinking eyes of the old man. “Tell, you what. I’m just going in to get me a cowboy hat like the one you got. It’ll give you time to think about it some more,” he says, and turns, and crashes the screen door behind him.
He goes into the store, not sensing or hearing the other one entering it. But there inside, the small, childlike figure is soon tagging along with him as he goes touching and smelling the store clothes lying on the counter.
“Suppose, suppose now. Ah spect Califoni?” he says, looking at his pink shirt.
“No. Not that one either old man. On the other side of the continent,” he just says, picking up a straw weaved cowboy hat. “Wah’ch you think of this one?” he asks him, setting the hat on his own head.
“Suppose, suppose now. Ah spect Naew Yark?” he says, thinking now he has it right. Then he skips about the store, voicing. “Naew Yark, Naew Yark. That where yah’all get them shirts?”
“Yeah, that’s right old man, that’s where we get these here shirts,” he tells him, seeing her coming towards him.
“Mr. Pea. Mr. Pea. I’ve told you lord enough times now not to bother the customers,” she says: A large, warm looking woman standing now in front of him.
“Slop! Slop!” he just says, and turns and hurries out of the store, crashing the screen door behind him, and sits again in the rocking chair, curled up in it.
“You mus’n mind Mr. Pea young man,” she says, turning to him. “He is someone we all have to live with down here. Lord knows he’s trying sometimes.”
“That his name?” he asks her, feeling the smile, even the laughter working its way to his mouth.
“Mr. Pea? Lord no. We just call him that,” she says. Then she is quiet and thinks again about it, about him.
‘Yes, he will want to know that, the reason, the many years. I can’t recall myself how many of them he was up in that institution at Permount and how he just came back no better than he had left. Yes, so they said they just couldn’t do anything for him, or with him, and sent him back home. So now he’s kind of our little responsibility, you might say.’
“So now you mus’n pay any attention to Mr. John MacGrath,” she tells him. “He’s what you might call impaired.”
“You mean he’s crazy?” he says.
“Oh, ah wouldn’t call him that. He’s what you might call difficult at times,” she says and goes and busies herself in the store.
“John MacGrath,” he voices.
And they step back out onto the porch floor. He, and Hubert Gorman, a taller, heavyset fifteen-year old boy, his own age, who walks like, no rolls in a way that reminds him of a penguin, and Krantz Morgan, also Junior, who has come down with him from Waincross, New York, to this place called Council, Oklahoma: A forgotten place lying somewhere in between Shawnee and Pawnee, Oklahoma.
From the porch, they jump down onto the red-brown dusted street, wondering why it had not been paved and poured with cement like any other city street, and see the brick laid school house up at the north end, while he observes the dust motes of sand grains spinning a late sun colored light about his boots, and the eyes of the old man following them as they go back down the wide expanse of the street to the highway.
And there he turns, and sees again the small, thin, grimy looking hands striking and snatching at the flies above the straw weaved cowboy hat that he has slanted down over his forehead, in the late afternoon sun that holds and bathes him now with a bronze-colored light.
*        *        *        *        *
He was still sitting in the room on the bed near the two windows he had covered enough of the glass with paper to keep the sunlight from entering. And he sat now in this semi-darkness, propped up at the head of the wide iron bed, with his hands, thin and long, suddenly moving to his eyes when he heard the screen door opening. So, he sat stiff, watching them entering, with his dark, deep-set eyes moving rapidly behind the long, bony looking fingers covering his thin, pale, colorless face like bars.
“Di did did, you you, get them?” he stutters at one of them.
“Get what Will?” the other one shot back, holding a smile back.
“You you you, know, wha what!”
“You know, I almost forgot,” the other one then tells him, walking over to his bed, pulling something out of his pocket. “Here,” he says and