Spell Me a Song

CHAPTER FIVE—RIDES WITH THE GENERAL
The 1970 Chevy truck ‘The Gen’ral’, according to Tully, had lots of interesting true stories stored under his hood. He guessed the Gen’ral’s memory was in the engine because, he said “In-gin is wat runs things”. Billy and Beau were beginning to think this was factual. There would always seem to be some ‘evidential’ proof to substantiate the stories Tully told of adventures he had traveling with the Gen’ral, for instance, the two bullet-size holes in the truck cab rear window from the thief who tried to steal Tully’s truck
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On their next visit to Tully’s cabin the brothers helped him with some yard clean up. The boys had brought some trimming tools and went straight to work on the thigh-high clumps of weeds everywhere. As they swung weed cutters to clean out the tall and tangled growth from around the old truck, Beau noticed the busted out headlamp, with a shout, “Hey, look here! The General has a bad eye like you, Billy; it’s the right one, too. What a coincidence.” The crushed headlight had been covered with black tape, and even resembled the black eye patch that Billy wore on his right eye.

Billy asked “Hey, Tully, are you sure this truck won’t run”? Tully shouted “Hell yes, I’m sure it won’t! Gen’ral’s RE-tired. That word means he’s been tired over ‘n over ‘n over agin. But if’n Gen’ral doen haf to x-ert his-self, he’ll allow us to keep ‘em company. Let’s pile in this old rust bucket to git otta this boilin’ sun. See if’n can ‘member a good story to tell ya ‘bout.” The boys did not need much encouragement to drop their weed cutters and scramble into the truck. Tully pulled himself up behind the steering wheel and said, “Let’s git goin’, heh, heh.”

One time he could remember now, in ‘pa-tick-oo-ler,’ as Tully put it, was out west after he was discharged from the Veteran’s hospital. He told them the Gen’ral looked real fancy back then, brand new, shiny and full of get up and go. He and the Gen’ral picked up two Navaho Indian hitchhikers in Nevada who were headed to their reservation in New Mexico. The hitchers had been to Las Vegas and they bragged that their Great Spirits helped them win some big money. Tully asked them why they didn’t buy a car or bus tickets with the money they won. The two Indians just laughed and said they met more interesting people when they hitched and were able to hang on to their money. That, and they added, people look them funny everywhere they went as if they were thinking, “Oh-oh, looks like wild Indians running away from the reservation." Besides, neither man had a driver’s license; they didn’t say why. “They were friendly injuns”, Tully remembered. “They told in-tres-tin’ stories I never heard bee-for, or maybe did ‘n jest doen ‘member.”
Tully learned that one Indian was the son of a Navaho chief and talked about how his people, many years before him, were some of the ‘first people’ of what we call America. His Indian name was Long Feather; and sometimes he felt like a prisoner living on the reservation, but he wouldn’t leave his people because he was in line to be the next chief. “The white man tried to destroy our people so they could take over the land ‘bout couple hundred years ago”, he told Tully, “but a few of the strong survived. There have been some that wonder if it should be called luck or damned luck to have survived the Indian wars and broken treaties. The white soldiers and hunters killed the buffalo that the Great Spirits created to give us food and comfort, drove us from our lands and made many false promises. We lost because there were just too many hungry, crazy white eyes with the firesticks. The other big reason we lost was because of the railroad-- iron horses that rode on the ribbons of steel, coughed up strange smoke signals we could not understand, and had rock-hard skin that broke our shooting arrows. Our fathers must have thought white men were from outer space because they had such powerful weapons.

Long Feather was quite a talker and seemed to like that Tully was a good listener, so he kept talking for most of the trip. It was sort of a history lesson of American Indians according to the words of Long Feather. As night was falling around them like dark drapes being drawn down, he parked the truck off-road next to a fenced cattle lot out a considerable distance from any town. He and the two passengers stretched out on the ground and lay on their backs looking up at the stars. Long Feather’s companion was Little Fox, but Long Feather told Tully everyone called him Fibber, for the reason you would think. He was a sly fox who told unbelievable stories, Long Feather tattled. Fibber had to get back at his partner for that remark, so he squealed on him by telling Tully that his partner’s nickname was Turkey because he did dumb, turkey-brained things. Fibber slapped his knee and howled in fun at his payback. They all heehawed. The conversation continued for a spell about the Indians’ Las Vegas luck and all sorts of stories, then the talk slowed down until they were all stone quiet and asleep under a dark blue sky ‘blanket’.

The peaceful sleep was interrupted with a head jarring explosive snort and wet spray in Tully’s face that made him spring, with slingshot speed, upright into a sitting position. The sun had come up and was nearly blinding him, causing him to squint and shade his eyes. “I thought I musta been dreamin ‘cause I was lookin’ into a wet, slobbery jaws of a giant steer n’ his hot stinkin’ breath jest ‘bout knocked me out!” He shouted at Turkey and Fibber, “GOD ALMITY, GIT UP. We gotta get otta here or get chopped to bits!” Surrounding the truck as if they thought it was a hay feed wagon were a dozen huge, smelly steers.