If All Else Fails by Craig Strete Page B

staring at the old table. "Can't there
some way you stop this foolishness. Can't there some way you keep this boy from going?" say the
old lady.
    Nila shake her head
no, not lifting her eyes. "If he wants to go, let him. It is his life." Still staring at that
table.
    Horseboy been
looking at her out of corner of his eye and
    IF ALL ELSE FAILS
... 85
    when he hears her
say that, his shoulders sink a little and he turn to the door and open it.
    Horseboy and Leon
go out the door and then Horseboy stops and look back through the screen door.
    "You got a white
girl, don't you?" says the old lady, look­ing at Horseboy through the screen in that clever way
she have when she find the truth in things.
    "Yes," say Horseboy
very softly. "In Austin."
    "Gone marry her?"
ask Nila, holding back tears.
    "Maybe," say
Horseboy and then he turns and is gone, him and Leon is gone and in their car and going
away.
    Nila and the old
lady silent there for a while and then Nila run to the door and shout through the screen. "I'll
scratch her eyes out!"
    But her words only
reach out through the dust of the car as it leaves and fall like wingless birds in that hole
Horseboy was digging.
    Nila stand there
and her hands reach up there, feeling where all that hair used to be. She touch the corners of
her eyes and the black makeup comes away on her fingers. Then, then the tears start.
    The old lady comes
over to her and puts her arm around her shoulders. "Once my daughter, Sky, went and cut her hair
for a man. He went off and married white then any­ways, thought he wasn't Indian no more, like
that. Horseboy don't be knowing this. Joseph Eagle was name of that mans. White woman leave him,
so he come back here Indian, die Indian, even if couldn't live Indian."
    "I cut my hair for
him," say Nila, crying. "I thought he would like it."
    "You ain't stop
being Indian, hair ain't stop growing. It get long again. It don't matter. It don't matter, mind
what I say, you just be true what you are, be Indian." The old lady give her a hug and Nila just
against her, crying soft on her shoulder. "You hush crying up now. You lucky to be knowing who
you are. Horseboy ain't learn that yet."
    "But I love him,"
cries Nila.
    "And he loving
you," says the old lady, "and he be back, you wait see, back before hair all get long
again."
    "Do you really
think he be back?" ask Nila, hope on her face.
    "Sure," lie the old
lady, looking away from Nila's face, "they always come back."
     

Who Was The First Oscar To Win A Negro?
    No help from the
audience, please!
     
    The tour guide
pulled the curtain aside. The tour members waved their antennae with astonishment. Peter Renoir
was removing his clothes. He looked up startled as he heard the shower curtain rustle. He saw the
aliens staring at him from the bathtub.
    "You will note the
clothes that bind, the jaws that snap," said Raffi the tour guide. "Also you will note,"
continued Raffi, "the accouterments which denote that this culture limits tactile
communication."
    "Communication with
the self by masturbation is no doubt universal," suggested a little Koapa.
    "I note that he is
rather pale, so unlike the black one we saw last week," said a larger Koapa.
    "Visual
identification," said the tour guide. "Who to avoid and what not to touch."
    "What keeps them
from becoming universally poignant, a heart-throb for the galaxy?" asked the little Koapa. "They
seem so frail, so tragic."
    "It has no
appreciation of sculpture for one thing," said the tour guide. "There are social restraints
against touching art objects, for another."
    "How would it feel
if we touched it?" asked the little Koapa, carving himself into a beautiful hand.
    "Better not," said
the tour guide. "They are used to the il­lusion of separating art from life. We might confuse
it."
    Peter Renoir
fainted dead away.
    "You see," lectured
the tour guide, "we've already con­fused it."
    "Is it dead?" asked
the little Koapa, forming