LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe

The Vulgarians

Excerpted from a chapter in Miko Kings: An American Indian Baseball Story by LeAnne Howe. Forthcoming from Aunt Lute Books, 2007.

Indian Territory, September 1904

Henri Day looks across the site where two Choctaw teams have been meeting to knock the sticks since 1850. If there was ever a more sun-blistered, luckless, sticker-infested, snakey ball field, he’s never seen it. Yet, this place annually draws hundreds of spectators for the legendary stickball match between Tobucksy and Sugar Loaf. Indians from across the Choctaw Nation save the entire year to barter on this one game. They place bets with blankets, horses, cows, pigs, calico dresses, fishing poles and rifles. The ball ground on either side of the field is a sea of merchandise.

Henri turns to his cousin Lonnie Johns and sighs. “If only we could stir up this kind of enthusiasm for our Indian baseball team.”

“Gotta allow gambling,” says Lonnie.

Henri winces. “Goddam Naholla. Praise the Lord on Sunday. Place their bets on Monday. I will never understand their pretense against gambling. They all love it so.”

“You said it,” says Lonnie, biting into an apple.

Henri and Lonnie tip their hats toward the two Naholla men standing among a crowd of Indians. One of the white men is the Indian Agent from Muskogee.

“He’s got a big appetite,” says Henri.

“Which one?”

“Our much beloved Indian agent,” says Henri.

“How much did he put down,” asks Lonnie?

“$50.00.”

“Which team,” asks Lonnie?

“Sugar Loaf by two.”

“Figures,” says Lonnie, tossing away the apple core. “You announced your intention to run for Mayor yet?”

“Tomorrow. I paid for an advertisement,” says Henri, watching the tiny leather ball streak past them.

“Falamolichi! Falamolichi,” screams Lonnie.

“Throw it back!” shouts Henri in English.

Lonnie looks at Henri ruefully.

“You want our beloved Indian agent to pay up, don’t you? That Naholla will pout like a child if you don’t translate English for him.”

“You said it,” says Lonnie, grinning.

Henri turns his attention back to the stickball game and momentarily forgets his own fledgling baseball team. For Indians, playing ball is in the blood whether it’s stickball or baseball. But so far under his leadership the Miko Kings have lost all their games. He’s hired some good players – but he’s missing some key elements. These two teams are fearless and they play with one thing in mind: controlling the ball.

Stickball has always been a training game for warriors. Each man wears a short deerskin breechcloth and a wide belt around his waist. Some of the belts are made of cloth, others are horsehide. In September 1904 every player has a horsehair tail attached to the back of his belt, but it is said that long ago the Choctaws’ tails were cut from the hinds of proud stags.

The stickball players are shirtless except for a mane of horsehair fastened around their necks that’s been dyed blue and white for Tobucksy and yellow and green for Sugar Loaf. Players carry kapucha, two ball sticks, that are eighteen inches long and bent into an oblong hoop at the top. A leather string is webbed across the hoop of the stick to carry or throw the ball with. How do they do it, thinks Henri? Is it powerful medicine or something else?

He watches the leather ball flying high above the bobbing heads of the players. A swarm of arms and legs chase after it. For a split second the only sound that can be heard is the knocking together of the kapucha. Henri shouts. “Hokli, Hokli,” to a Tobucksy player.

A Sugar Loaf runner catches the ball and throws it to a teammate who drops it. The crowd holds its breath while several players scramble after the ball. The red dust flies and Sugar Loaf captures the ball, knocking it across the goal for one point.

Himak nitak achukma abi hoke.

“This day is good, we will win!” chant the supporters of Sugar Loaf team.

“Towa intonla achukma abi hoke,” reply Tobucksy supporters.

“The ball is good and we will win it!” laughs Henri. “Ah me, what’s the score,” he asks, turning to his cousin.

“Sugar Loaf by one,” replies Lonnie.

Within minutes the players re-group and both teams score again. When the ball is tossed a third time Malihoma from Tobucksy catches it. Henri watches Malihoma run across the field. All the other men from Tobucksy revolve around this player. Malihoma may be the oldest man on the field, but he still plays like his name. Red Storm. At least seven players from the opposing team, Sugar Loaf, give chase, darting, tumbling, and battling Malihoma for the ball. He leaps over one fallen player, stomps the head of another then hurl himself and the ball across the goal. His point ties the game.

“Wah! Wah!” shout the supporters from Tobucksy.

Malihoma is like watching glory, thinks Henri. Then he realizes what’s missing from his baseball team. Heart. He needs someone like Malihoma. A ball player who’s all heart like Malihoma could lead by example.

Henri turns to Lonnie Johns and shouts. “I think I have a solution to all our problems.”

“Not again,” laughs Lonnie. “What?”

“We need to find a baseball leader like Malihoma.”

“You said it.”

The two men shake their pony bells and chant along with others from Tobucksy. “Towa intonla achukma abi hoke.” Some of his cousins bang striking sticks together. The wives and sisters of the Tobucksy players [S1] trill like Scissortail birds. The birdcalls are meant as a taunt and Henri and Lonnie join in.

Sugar Loaf’s women respond by running onto the field. Seemingly in unison they turn and hike up their skirts to show off their buttocks to the Tobucksy supporters.

The crowd of men standing with Henri and Lonnie belly laugh at the women’s antics. “Wah, Wah. Do us another favor. Show that again,” shouts Henri. “Hump-he, I dare you.”

This time the women of Sugar Loaf lift up the front of their skirts, a double insult to Tobucksy. Now Tobucksy women let out a dreadful war cry and run onto the ball field gathering rocks, water buckets, and broomsticks as they go. Some scream “Ofi tek,” bitch, as they rip off their aprons and attack Sugar Loaf’s women.

Henri remembers thinking that he and Lonnie should run like hell. But instead, he tells his cousin, “Never get in-between Indian women when they’re scrapping.” He believes Lonnie may have said, “Uh-oh,” just as a woman from Sugar Loaf sprints across the field and bashes his cousin up side of the head with her broom.

When Henri finally wrestles away her weapon, she turns and attacks Mary Johns, Lonnie’s sister. The two women deadlock in a war of petticoats rolling around in the sticker grass. Henri pulls Lonnie up off the ground and hollers. “We gotta get out of here!”

Together they watch as the Alikchi from Tobucksy runs past them with a bucket on his head. All around is chaos. Even the stickball players take their kapucha off the field because it’s widely known that a man’s athletic prowess is useless against a woman’s kick to his groin.

Henri can’t remember what happens next because a woman wielding a piece of firewood knocks him out senseless. Hours later when he finally awoke in the back of his mother’s wagon she told him that an elder, a female descendent of Pushmataha, put a stop to the pandemonium. Much to his dismay he was blamed for the event that would forever be referred to as “Choctaw Intermission. ” Even in The Ada Weekly News.

Three days later, Henri Day sits in the dining room of the Early Hotel occasionally rubbing a wet handkerchief over the back of his neck. It still aches from the blow he took on the stickball field.

“Been reading about you in the newspaper,” laughs J.C. van Meter, the hotel’s owner and operator who pours Henri a cup of hot coffee. “Seems like Bonaparte has put it on the line.”

“Goddammit, J.C!” Henri looks up from the editorial page. “I’ll say it again, Sugar Loaf misinterpreted the spirit of my challenge. And since when does The Ada Weekly News report on a Choctaw stickball game?”

“Since Capt. A. Clarke Tonnor, the Assistant Indian Commissioner,[S2] came all the way out to Indian Territory to see the famous match-up between Tobucksy and Sugar Loaf. And especially since he and the Muskogee Indian Agent both lost money on your game,” says J.C. holding onto the metal coffee pot by it [S3] s wooden handle. “While they may have forgotten to mention that tidbit to the editor, they nonetheless remembered the part about the Indian women tearing one another’s clothes off. Reporting on such things as ‘Choctaw Intermission’ only proves to the lily-white church-goers that wild Indians can’t manage their own affairs.”

Henri mutters under his breath. “Goddammit. Choctaws are civilization its own self!”

J.C. slaps him on the back good-naturedly. “Bad timing, that’s all,” he says laughing.

“I guess so.”

“Wanna a slice of hot apple pie? We just took a fresh one out of the stove.”

He opens the newspaper again. “No thanks.”

“Ah, Henri don’t go reading Bonaparte’s letter again. Forget about it.”

When he doesn’t answer J.C. walks away to greet other customers coming in to enjoy an evening meal. Henri is in a foul mood. He ticks off a list of personal disasters that have long swirled around him. For starters, he’s unlucky in love. A widower. Been one for five years ever since Florence, his dear wife,[S4] died of tuberculosis. People don’t trust a man who won’t remarry. Perhaps if he courted again? Henri pauses for a split second, wrinkles his nose at the prospect, and moves on down his bad luck list.

Then there’s his deportment. People in Ada say he keeps his hair wild like a Baptist preacher on Sunday, but the rest of him is “all-wrong,” like some fancy easterner. Instead of dressing in overalls and heeding the arbitrary dictates of ignorant farmers and nasty settlers, Henri prefers high waist dandy pants and suspenders, a white shirt, silk tie, and a waistcoat. Even when riding his bicycle.

That’s another thing. Since his first business venture, Pony Express Glue, failed to attract a single investor, he hasn’t had the nerve to get back on a horse. The glue wasn’t really made from ponies, but seven old nags he bought at a sale and shot. Then he boiled down their hoofs, bones, and hides into a sticky jelly-like substance. The liquid stank so badly that people eight miles away in the town of Fitzhugh protested. When it didn’t harden into a good adhesive, he and Lonnie Johns had to plow the whole operation under, which explains why he rides a bicycle. He shuns horses and will probably have to avoid them for the rest of his life. He must. The isuba will never forgive him for rendering them useless.

“More coffee,” asks J.C. gingerly.

Henri lowers the paper and grimaces. “Only a jigger,” he says, raising his cup.

Why he ever thought of running for mayor of Ada is beyond him. He deeply regrets paying the filing fee to get his name on the ballot. He simply can’t understand what possessed him to do it. Well, on second thought, he does know. He figured if he were mayor he could influence the town council to allow baseball games on Sunday. Then he’d work to legalize gambling. His motives weren’t entirely self-serving. He had a plan to bring more jobs to Ada by setting up gambling booths at the ballpark. But now a citizen of his own tribe has come out against him in the mayor’s race, and it’s likely all been for naught.

____________

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Ada Weekly News

Henri Day is almost completely worthless, noisy, tedious, and slippery when it comes to paying for his meals at the Commercial Club meetings. He’s foul-mouthed, pedantic and self-aggrandizing about his Indian Baseball League, an association that will push for gambling in every business in Ada, if allowed to flourish. He’s totally incapable of speaking in a public debate without purpling the air with such language that would make a jailer faint. Witness what happened (because of his vulgar dare) during the so-called ‘Choctaw Intermission.’ However gifted by education or well intentioned, if a man is ignorant of the customs and requirements of polite society he risks exposing himself to ridicule. Therefore, I urge you to flatly reject Mr. Day’s bid for mayor and instead vote for me on Election Day. I have humbly served this city as Alderman for the past three years. I will protect Ada’s citizens from gamblers and all degrading influences.

Signed Leon Bonaparte

Candidate for Mayor,

Choctaw citizen, land leaser,

Ada businessman, and

Clerk, Ada Methodist Church

___________

The essay is vile. Bonaparte’s letter ran side-by-side with Henri’s advertisement for mayor. How did Bonaparte get his letter published? Is the Ada newspaper editor backing Bonaparte? Henri believed he had a good chance of winning. He belongs to all the right social clubs. He’s member of the 25,000 Club, an influential business association in Ada. He attends the Knights Templar meetings, though just the social hour gatherings, and last year he served on the town council. He also has name recognition. He donated several acres of his own land for Ada’s first city park. He donated another small plot for the new post office. Okay, so part of the deal was that the Ada postmaster would have to hire his spinster niece, Ezol Day. He simply had to get her out of the house and interested in something besides scribbling gibberish in her notebooks. Besides he was right about her peculiar habits meshing with the routines of postal clerks. They tell him that she’s never lost or misplaced a single piece of mail. Now if he can only get his daughter Cora married off, he’ll be free to concentrate on important matters [S5] : Baseball.

Henri takes his last swig of coffee and fingers the newspaper. How to proceed? Bonaparte must want to be mayor pretty bad to concoct this kind of slander. He studies the commentary again. He does have to admit that on occasion he lets fly a curse word or two, but never in the company of women. Oh perhaps, every once in a blue moon he may have said something like, “Daughter please pass me the Goddam salt pork.” Or. “I wonder if those Goddam Black Irish and those Goddam Chinamen are thinking to stay on in Ada once the railroads are built?” But outside of these rare flashes with his daughter and his niece Ezol, and of course his dearly departed wife[S6] , he cannot think of more than a dozen times when he uttered English profanity. He’s certainly never spoken the kind of blasphemy Mr. Robert Burns of Spencer Academy Indian Boarding school used under the most dire of circumstances: “Goddam the Irish, Goddam the English, but God please bless the Scots.”

He glances up just as J.C. is seating more customers. “Egad,” he grumbles under his breath. “It’s that mouthy Mrs. Atkins and her brood of do-gooders.” Henri buries his face in the newspaper and pretends to be reading. He can’t help but hear pieces of their conversation. Finally Mrs. Atkins’ voice booms loudly across the room. “Henri Day is a child in a man’s suit. A notorious layabout and I’ve known his family most of my life. He wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans if his mother, Mrs. Emma Day, didn’t manage their farms and all the proceeds from cotton. She’s a saint. So was poor Florence, his late wife. He’ll never find another like her.”

The airborne words of Mrs. Adkins hit him squarely in the chest and wound him deeply. “I wouldn’t vote for him even if I could vote,” she continues. “Remember that mess he made with the horses?”

She would bring up the horses. Henri lowers his newspaper and scowls at all the Naholla women seated at her table.

Mrs. Atkins glares right back at him. “I spotted that bowler of yours Henri Day as soon as I walked in. I just want you to know where you stand.”

Folding the newspaper, he tosses a copper penny under the saucer. He picks up his bowler off the table and places it on his head. “No hard feelings ladies,” he says, tipping his hat toward them. “I will simply turn the other cheek.”

Not to be undone, Mrs. Atkins nods politely. “My regards to Cora and Ezol.”

Henri saunters out of the Early Hotel feeling slightly superior. He always does when he quotes the Bible to gossipy old hens. “When you’ve been insulted take the high road, boys. Always quote the Bible to the wicked,” Mr. Burns would say. “They need it most.”

Henri smiles thinking of Mr. Burns’ advice. He enjoys the sun’s final warm rays as he walks along the new boardwalk that stretches from Main Street all the way to Oak Street. He resolves to forget about his recent run of bad luck. He’s buoyed by the progress all around him. His new Indian baseball team will benefit by all the commerce going on in Ada. At 6 p.m. Main Street is still choked with farm wagons. Farmers often unhook their trace chains, and leave their teams standing where they stopped. Every house has a peach and apple orchard, grape arbor, pigs and a chicken coop. There’s hay to be made here he can just feel it. The whole town is alive and bustling [S7] , and he and the Choctaws [S8] and the Chickasaws simply must remain at the center of it all.

He stares at the clear evening sky and realizes what must be done: find a manager to help build the Miko Kings’ and his ideas for a Red League. This league of all Indian baseball teams will show Indians that they can own something together. It will be the country’s first inter-tribal business, an alliance that will spread across the whole country. Maybe even the whole Goddamn [S9] continent.

“Naholla can’t take it away if it’s owned outright by Indians,” says Henri softly under his breath. “And solvent.”

The next morning at six a.m.[S10] , Henri awakens to the noise of someone pounding on the back door of his house. By the time he rousts himself, Marshal Bennett is shouting loudly and fit to be tied.

“Hell fire, Henri. We’ve got ourselves an emergency out on your land. We’ve gotta get a move on.”

He quickly dresses as the Marshal paces around the sitting room. He’s never seen Bennett in such a state.

“I’ve had my quota of squalid dealings, but this is by far the worst. Before coming to fetch you, I rounded up two other aldermen. One of them is Leon Bonaparte. Now, I know you two are at odds, but I’m asking you to put your political differences aside. We need plenty of witnesses. A man’s hanged himself from a blackjack out on your pastureland. The rest you’ll just have to see for yourself.”

Henri agrees and jumps in the large wagon with the rest of the men. As Bennett drives his mules, the men sit quietly waiting to find out what has happened. When they reach the outskirts of Ada, Bennett pulls the mules to a halt and addresses them.

“It’s another settler stray incident,” says Marshal Bennett, emphatically. “You fellers know how it is. This time it’s a white man and woman who have unlawfully trespassed on Henri’s allotment land. But the worst of it is that the squatter has hanged himself after his wife found him having relations with a chicken.”

Henri is dumbfounded. He’s never heard of such a thing. He’s certain he’s misunderstood and as he looks at the other men they all seem scandalized. Before anyone can speak Marshal Bennett cuts off a chaw of tobacco and continues his soliloquy. “Every three-legged, blind-in-one-eye mongrel is moving into Indian Territory, and I swear every one of ’em is a simpleton. Frankly, I don’t know what we’re gonna do – if this continues.”

Henri wonders who the “we” is since the settler is on his land. Indian land. But then again, Marshal Bennett has been a good friend to the Choctaws and Chickasaws. Henri looks at Leon Bonaparte and a feeling of great sorrow passes between them. Perhaps they both needed to re-learn the lesson their ancestors learned when the Europeans first came into the homelands: if Indians don’t stick together, they’re doomed to be overwhelmed by the Naholla.

The Marshal snaps the reins and the mules mosey along the bumpy road lined with blackjack oaks. Finally they reach Henri’s land, a plateau covered in tall prairie grass. In the distance they can see half a dozen buzzards circling in the sky. The air smells sickly sweet even half a mile away. Henri recognizes the smell as death. The shack is rough and from the look of things [S11] it was thrown up in a few hours. Next to a hovel hangs a skinny dead man,[S12] his body already bloating with flies. A woman with stringy blond hair sits on a fat tree log, cut down to serve as a bench outside of the shack. She acts as if she doesn’t see them.

Henri and the others get out of the wagon and cover their noses. The dead man is all eyes and ears. Blood leaks steadily out of his nose, as if it were broken shortly before he lynched himself. The man might be fifty, maybe younger, it’s hard to tell now. His face is bluish-yellow; his tongue is swollen and protrudes out of his mouth. His death smell inundates the trees, the purple sagebrush, and the milkweed. Everything.

The bloated body gives a twitch and sighs. Bennett picks up a stick and pokes the hanged man in the stomach to see if – incredible as it seems --the man might still be alive.

“Intestinal gas, that’s all,” says Bennett. “It takes nine months for us to be born, but only seconds to die.” The Marshal then tells the aldermen and Henri that the couple must have been looking for a vacant place to squat. “They probably drifted from town to town living off charity until they stumbled across Henri’s land. She says she caught her husband in the act when she rushed into their shack to investigate the noise. I shot the hen right after the woman told me what happened.”

“What were you doing way out here [S13] that early in the morning?” asks Henri.

“Hunting panther,” says Bennett, spitting his chaw on the ground. “Yesterday Mrs. Timmons said a panther got her billy goat. She said it ran east in the direction of the plateau so I came out here looking for it before dawn. Sometime after daylight I heard this squalling and bawling and rode over to investigate. The old man had apparently tried to strangle her to keep her from talking, but she managed to escape. She’s got bruises on her neck.”

Bennett lowers his voice. “Everything’s eggs in the coffee, boys. We gotta get her out of town and quick. Decent people shouldn’t be exposed to these nasty foreign ways.”

They all agree. Aldermen Tom Johnson offers to buy the woman a railroad ticket out of town. Henri and Leon are appointed the burial duty. When Johnson suggests they ship her all the way to St. Louis, she begins protesting loudly. Her words might be English, but to Henri they sound like, “Attentincion, Attentincion, beef and shoes gatt Faa.”

Bennett picks up the woman, throws her over his shoulder and plops her into the wagon, all the while translating her foul curses. “Listen, listen, you beastly Jews, get fucked.”

Henri is aghast. What does this woman have against the Hebrews? All of the [S14] history lessons he learned at Indian boarding school began with the victory of the Israelites over the Egyptians, Exodus 14: 26. Mr. Burns would begin: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again [S15] upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” When Henri looks over at Leon Bonaparte he can tell he’s praying[S16] softly in Choctaw. Actually Leon is chanting for the dead man’s spirit to find peace on the other side -- and for the crazy woman to find peace anywhere but here. Henri doesn’t bother translating for the white men. It’s none of their business. Besides only Choctaw words can soothe the land and put to rest violent abominations.

The foreign woman ignores Leon’s prayers. She turns to the white men and begins pleading with Johnson. “I work myself. I work myself.” Her English is meager, but more understandable now that she’s calmed down. “In Prussia, I work the man. In America, everyone whores. Same, same,” she says, placing her hand over her heart. “Not send back me.”

Her face is shiny with sweat. She then twists a small strand of her blond hair around her finger, then points at Henri and Leon. “Come,” she says.

When they turn away, she repeats this to Alderman Johnson. The Marshal doesn’t wait for any more discussion but snaps the reins and the wagon lunges forward. He tells Henri and Leon that he’ll send a horse and rider back for them.

“We’ll see that she gets out of town safely,” shouts Johnson, over his shoulder. “She’s as good as gone.”

In no time the wagon is out of sight. Leon Bonaparte walks over to Henri. He says another prayer in Choctaw. This time Henri even takes off his hat. Bonaparte asks Henri to forgive him for writing the letter to the editor. He explains that he’s a Christian and cannot support gambling. “That’s the reason I wrote to the newspaper,” says Bonaparte.

“I understand,” says Henri, as he wipes his face with his shirtsleeve.

“I’ll retract my words about you,” says Leon.

“I’d very much appreciate that,” says Henri, looking around at the mess the foreigners have made of his land. Then, he recalls another one of Mr. Burns’ sayings: Anyone who makes us suffer is undoubtedly suffering, too.

Leon interrupts the silence. “I want you to know that I’d make a better Mayor than you.”

“I don’t doubt that. All I was really trying to do was to get people interested in going to the ballpark and watching the games. I thought gambling would bring them in.”

Leon laughs. “You need good ball players not gamblers. That’s how you get people to buy a ticket to a baseball game. You’ve got good ideas, Henri, but poor follow through. Why don’t you talk to my cousin, Crockett Bonaparte? He plays third base for the Hartshorne team. They’ve got a fellow over there named George Bleen, nicknamed, “The Blip.” Crockett says he’s the best hitter in Indian Territory.”

“We need good hitters,” says Henri, extending his hand. “Say, you wanna become a board member on our Red League Baseball Association.”

“Maybe. But first let’s put that one to rest,” says Leon, pointing to the body still hanging from the tree.

“Ah me,” sighs Henri. “Notice who is digging the grave, and who is riding to the train station.”

“They’re not taking her to the train station,” quips Leon. “I can tell you that much.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Oh for Pete’s Sake, Henri. I bet you they drove her straight to the Corner Saloon. You know as well as I that Tom Bobbitt keeps floozies out at his place. Surely you didn’t believe that Bennett just happened to be out hunting panther when he heard a Naholla gal in distress?”

“You can’t bet on anything, remember?” snaps Henri. “You’re against gambling.”

“You know what I mean. Why do you think Bennett left us here to dig this Naholla man’s grave?[S17] Bennett’s more oily than most,” says Leon. “Always has been.”

Henri picks up the shovel that Marshal Bennett threw off the wagon. He digs into the dry earth and tries not to curse. He doesn’t want to lose his temper while hollowing out a body’s grave. That would be truly sinful. He needs a pick ax; the ground is as hard as granite. He wonders if he’s always been this gullible.

“Panther hunting, indeed,” he mutters. Of course, once upon a time he had seen a she-panther padding down Broadway Street in the wee hours of morning. Must have been three years ago. By now he figures all the panthers have lit out for higher ground somewhere safe from the Naholla. What had Bennett really been up to when he found the woman?

Leon begins gathering large rocks to place on top of the grave. The rocks will hopefully keep the coyotes from digging up the dead man. For the longest time there is silence on the pastureland, nothing but an occasional gust of wind to mark the passing hours. Once the hole is deep enough the two Choctaw men head to the tree and cut the poor man down.

Henri is the first to break the silence. “As soon as we plant him, can you tell me more about the hitter called ‘the Blip?’ Do you think he might want to manage the Miko Kings?”