The Son Read Online Free PDF

Indian was lying across the sill. I was grabbing for his feet, intending to pull him in and clear the doorway, when he kicked me under the jaw.
    When I came to there were trees waving in the moonlight and one loud noise after another. Indians were standing on either side of the doorway, leaning to shoot into the room, then ducking back around the corner. My sister said, Martin, I think they’ve shot me . My brother was just sitting there. I thought he’d taken a ball. The Indians took a break for the powder smoke to thin so I jerked the rifle from his hand, checked that the hammer was cocked, and was swinging it toward the Indians when my mother stopped me.
    Then I was on my stomach; at first I thought the house had fallen, but it was a man. I grabbed at his neck but my head kept chunking against the floor. Then I was outside under the trees.
    I tried to stand but was kicked and tried again and was kicked again. Now a man’s feet, now the ground next to them. Now a pair of legs, covered in buckskin. I bit his foot and was kicked a third time and then my hair was being pulled like it would come out at the roots. I waited for the cutting.
    When I opened my eyes there was a big red face; he smelled like onions and a dirty outhouse and he showed me with the knife that I would behave or he would cut my head off. Then he lashed my hands with a piggin string.
    When he walked away, he did not look like any Indian I’d ever seen. The aborigines living among the whites were thin, light bodied, and hard wintered. This one was tall and stocky, with a square head and fat nose; he looked more like a Negro than a lathy starving Indian and he walked with his chest out, as if taking everything we owned was his natural right.
    There were fifteen or twenty horses outside the gate and as many Indians against our fence, laughing and making jokes. There was no sign of my mother or brother or sister. The Indians were stripped to the waist and covered with paint and designs like they’d escaped from a traveling show; one had painted his face like a skull, another had the same design on his chest.
    Some of the Indians were rummaging the house and others rummaging the stables or outbuildings but most were leaning on the fence watching their friends work. All the white men I’d ever seen after a fight were nervous for hours, pacing and talking so fast you couldn’t understand them, but the Indians were bored and yawning like they’d just come back from an evening constitutional, except for the man I’d shot, who was sitting against the house. There was blood on his chest and his mouth was frothing. Maybe he’d jumped sideways when the cap popped—they said the aboriginals had reflexes like deer. His friends saw me staring and one came over and said taibo n u w u kupat u?i , then knocked me in the head.
    I had a long dream where I was brought before a man to judge me for my sins. It was Saint Peter, only in the form of the teacher of our school in Bastrop, who had disliked me over all the other students, and I knew I was going to hell.
    Then most of the Indians were standing looking at something on the ground. There was a white leg crooked in the air and a man’s bare ass and buckskin leggings on top. I realized it was my mother and by the way the man was moving and the bells on his legs were jingling I knew what he was doing to her. After a while he stood up and retied his breechcloth. Another jumped right into place. I had just gotten to my feet when my ears started ringing and the ground came up and I thought I was dead for certain.
    A while later I heard noises again. I could see the second group of Indians a little farther down the fence but now I could hear my sister’s voice whimpering. The Indians were doing the same to her as my mother.
     
    F INALLY I REALIZED I was in bed. I was having a dream. It was nice until I woke up all the way and heard war whoops and saw I was still in the yard. My mother was naked and crawling away from