The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction by Bernard Malamud Page A

thought he was lying.

    “No,” she said. “You and I are good friends. I want us to stay friends, but I don’t want you to try to push me to marry.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” Indian Head said. “We have known each other since we were children.”
    “I was not clear in my own mind,” One Blossom said. “I thought I was but I wasn’t. I learn more slowly than I thought. I have told you that often. That’s true, isn’t it?”
    “I am not pushing you to do anything, but I want you to be honest when we talk. Have you given me up for Chief Jozip? If this is true in your thoughts, don’t hide them from me.”
    “No,” said Chief Jozip. He said it twice.
    Indian Head did not hear it twice. He said to One Blossom, “If you don’t want me to feel my feeling for you, you must tell me why, and who you want instead of me.”
    One Blossom said, “I will ask the chief of our people to speak now. Jozip, do you feel in your heart any feeling for me? Speak truly and earnestly.”
    “Yes, I have my affection for Indian Head, I also have in my heart affection for One Blossom. But I have more feeling for the Indian people than I have for either of you. This is my honest answer.”
    One Blossom grasped her horse’s mane and turned him quickly. “We are running from the blue coats,” she said. “I can run from them but I won’t run from Jozip, and I don’t want Indian Head to run after me.”
    “Please,” Chief Jozip said, “please don’t tulk anymore on this subject. Let us say we all have affection and maybe love each for the other, but nobody should tulk now—when we are running away from an army of white soldiers—about questions of love and marriage. Not now, please. We got to keep our mind on what is the important thing. Now is the time to move first to Canada. Indian Head, is this right?”
    “It is right,” said Indian Head, “but you ought to stay away from One Blossom.”
    One Blossom did not hear him because she was galloping away on her white pony.

    Then Long Wind, on a black steed, came thundering toward Chief Jozip and Indian Head. “There is bad news,” he said in the People’s tongue. “Our messengers have seen white soldiers riding toward us, only two days away.”
    “We got to hurry to make it four days,” Chief Jozip said.
    “Why don’t we just stand and fight?” said the young brave. “Our hatred for the blond soldiers will make us fight like battle gods.”
    “Like the warriors we are,” said Indian Head.
    “First we will tulk, then if they don’t listen maybe we will have to fight,” Chief Jozip said.
    “There are no maybes,” Indian Head said.
    “Not maybe,” said Long Wind.
    That he was a vegetarian suddenly preoccupied and worried Jozip. “So how can I fight a war without the experience of a war?” he asked himself.
    His war experience, thus far, had been to practice using the implements of war, bows and arrows, lances and rifles. Of course he had also shot at buffalo, some the size of a small railroad locomotive. Jozip had blessed the beasts as they thundered to their doom, and he did not eat their flesh. He silently explained these thoughts to his grandfather the shochet, long since dead and buried, and thus to himself.
    He might fight, he thought, because he was an Indian, and Indians, more than whites, had to fight for their lives.
    Later Jozip threw up and searched his vomit for barley grains, of which there were more than a few.

THIRTEEN
    What Does the Dead Pigeon Say?
    ONE NIGHT One Blossom feared death and screamed aloud. Indian Head came running to her tent and said there was nothing to fear.
    “I am a child in my sleep,” One Blossom said.
    An old squaw appeared in the tent and told One Blossom she would stop screaming once she was married. “It is the screaming alone in bed that is hard to do,” said the old woman. “I stopped when I was married,” she said to them, “but now that my brave is dead I scream again like One Blossom.