Our American King by David Lozell martin

Author:David Lozell martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

That night Tazza talked to the one hundred and sixty-eight soldiers, walking among them, a hand on their shoulders, an arm around their necks, working his magic, whatever inborn quality he possessed that made us love him and made us want to be loved by him, making Tazza a king. In small groups and one at a time he advised these soldiers to leave in the morning. In fact, he said, I need you to return to your units. He said he feared for them if they stayed here at the Arboretum with us—they would be shot as traitors. He didn’t ask the soldiers to spy for us or go easy on us if there’s a battle, but Tazza knew that those hundred and sixty-eight would return with stories that might make other American soldiers hesitate if given an order to kill us. He knew this because he knew how they would be treated tonight.

“For now, for tonight,” Tazza said, “accept our hospitality. We have barbecue. Music. The moon’s bright, spend the night. Enjoy the company.”

At the fire, I sat near Corporal Oliver Eric Mor, as he formally introduced himself to me, ma’am. With him was one of our young women whom we called Cap. Their sticky talk made me feel fraudulent…I who had a husband to whom I had given my Lakota pledge of fidelity and I who had become pregnant by a perfectly formed king. These adult complications in my life made me sick when I heard a teenage soldier telling an adolescent girl how it felt to touch fingers with her.

“They instructed us back at the base,” says the soldier Mor, “that the women hanging around this guy, your King Tazza, that they were all, you know, easy, it was a cult and the women had to sleep with King Tazza and the women had diseases and would try to get us to, you know, do it with them so then the diseases would knock us out of action.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be holding my hand—God knows what you might catch.”

He’s mortified she took him wrong. “No, I was just saying what they told us, to show you the kind of lies we’ve been told about you people and your King Tazza.”

She laughs softly. “You people? We’re just regular Americans. I was in junior high when the calamity hit.”

“Yeah, me, too. Well, just started high school.”

She suggests they move away from the fire, too hot here and too crowded. “I promise not to seduce you and give you a disease.”

“I shouldn’t have even said that,” he says as they walk away in the night, two fingers of his hand intertwining two fingers of hers.

“Do you like the night?” she asks.

He must wonder what answer will please her, this soldier prepared to despise the night and curse its darkness or, if that’s the wrong answer, he will declare love and eternal devotion for this black-browed night.

She is an American teenager, she has a large mouth and large smiles and she laughs easily; a national calamity and months of starving didn’t throttle the coquette in her.

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