Icepick by Philip Depoy

Author:Philip Depoy [Phillip DePoy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2018-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Tecumseh, Oklahoma, was named after a leader of the Shawnee. He had a war named after him, against the United States, aligning him and the Shawnee with the British in the War of 1812. The Shawnee were originally from around the Ohio River, but sometime in the early 1800s, a lot of them came to what was called the ‘Indian Territory’ now referred to as Oklahoma.

One of Tecumseh’s main beefs with the government, as I had heard it, was that he considered all so-called ‘Indian’ land to be owned in common by all tribes. But he also had a brother known as The Prophet. His given name was Lalawethika, which means ‘He Makes a Loud Noise’. His noise was that white people were all children of the Evil Spirit and all the tribes in the Midwest ought to fight them, but that went to hell when Tecumseh was killed.

The town itself wasn’t very noisy at all. It had been a cotton town until the Depression. After that, the population dropped and it was a pretty sleepy burg, under five thousand people. And the outskirts were a lot of flat land; dry dust.

The group of houses where Harjo thought the women were kept would have given the word shack a bad name. Three of them, each one worse than the other. That crappy asbestos shingling, pale green, all falling down and rotting wood. About eight hundred square feet apiece. Windows boarded up. The front doors had padlocks on them.

And there were men with guns wandering around, looking mean and hot and hungry. About ten of them.

The sky was high and pale blue, no clouds, too much sun, when my black T-Bird pulled up a little too close to the first house. Behind me there was a caravan of at least thirty other vehicles, mostly pickups. Every one of them had at least two guys inside. And I use the term ‘guys’ generically, as nearly half were women. Pissed-off, steely-eyed Seminole women. With very big guns.

As they drew closer, these cars and trucks gathered by Eddie Harjo, they formed a circle around the three houses, pointed in, headlights on, engines roaring.

The guards, the Caucasian men who were supposed to be guarding the three houses, turned even whiter than they ordinarily were. Guns up, hands shaking, eyes wide and bloodshot.

I stepped out of the car, along with John Horse, and smiled at one of the guards.

‘I don’t like your chances here,’ I said to him. ‘Just put your guns down and walk away.’

‘You–you’re trespassing,’ he managed to say. ‘Private property.’

He aimed his gun at me.

‘You don’t really have much of a choice,’ I told him sympathetically. ‘You’re, like, surrounded.’

Then John Horse called out a single word, and every car and truck door opened. Out came Seminole men and women, guns pointed, glaring. Silent as the grave.

‘I’ve never really been a part of anything like this,’ I said a little louder. ‘And I have to tell you, it feels pretty cool.’

‘Trespassing!’ the guard repeated in a very shaky voice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.