“G
RANDSON, I NEED SOME whiskey. Take this money and get some for me.” The hand dropping the five-dollar gold piece in mine was firm and steady despite the knot of gray hair tied tightly behind the old man’s head, a thin boney face, and deeply wrinkled skin that anywhere else might have passed for fine leather. It was not the hard, scowling face I remembered when we were on the run with my father in Mexico. Now, twenty years later, I worked in Custer’s old regiment, the 7th Cavalry, and had not seen Geronimo for many moons. A break in winter weather brought the People and White Eyes out to Lawton for supplies and to socialize with neighbors. The old man had come to sell bows and arrows he and his friends had made. Apache children would have thrown the souvenirs away as too weak or too crooked for hunting or shooting contests, but he made good money selling them to curious White Eyes wanting a remembrance from the most feared Indian in captivity. For an extra fifty cents he autographed the bow. Most were sold that way, even if he didn’t personally make them. When we met that day in Lawton it was the middle
of the afternoon. Geronimo, from his eighty-six years of living and having sat outside wrapped in his blanket this day in the near freezing air, was cold, and his joints were stiff. When he saw me, he immediately knew who I was and with a puffing grunt pulled himself up to speak so he could look me straight in the eye. Years ago he had married my grandmother, Francesca, after she had escaped from five years of slavery in Mexico and my blood grandfather was gone. Geronimo knew who I was. As a boy I was able to escape going to the Industrial School at Carlisle, but I had learned to read from labels on cans and to do arithmetic on supply orders when I worked in the fort sutler store helping George Wratten. I had become popular among both Apaches and soldiers during our imprisonment at San Augustine in Florida, Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama, and now here at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for my play with the soldier baseball teams. Sometimes I had won big games hitting homeruns or by catching long hits made by the other side. Geronimo didn’t waste time in idle chatter and asked for the whiskey to warm his insides and to reward himself for a good day of taking White Eye
