REGGIE POLATKIN WALKED DOWN the country highway. A hundred miles from Seattle, a thousand miles away, maybe more, maybe less. The sky was cloudy. It could have been night or day. Fields on either side of the road, though the crop was indiscernible. A cold breeze. Dead skunk smell saturated the air. So isolated. Reggie was startled when the car suddenly pulled up. A red truck, smelling of exhaust and farm animals. Reggie leaned into the open passenger window and saw the driver, an elderly white man. Gray hair, gray eyes, blue overalls. Chewing-tobacco stains on his large teeth. The old man smiled when he spoke.
“Hey, do you need a ride?” asked the old man.
Reggie nodded, climbed into the truck. He looked at the smiling farmer.
“Where you headed?” asked the old man.
“I’m running,” said Reggie.
“I figured that.”
“You ever hear of Captain Jack?”
“Can’t say that I have. Was he a Navy guy?”
“Oh, no. He was a Modoc Indian. His real name was Kintpuash.”
“Are you Modoc?”
“Nah, I’m Spokane. Little tribe that didn’t do much fighting.”
“Was Captain Jack a fighter?”
“Oh, yeah. He led about two hundred Modocs from a reservation in Oregon and set up camp in northern California, where they were supposed to be. Modocs aren’t Oregon Indians. They’re California Indians. Yeah, old Captain Jack had about eight warriors and the rest were women and children. Anyways, the Cavalry came after Jack. Captain Jack ran from them and hid in these lava beds, you know? Great hiding places. Miles and miles of tunnels and mazes. Captain Jack and his people fought off the Cavalry for months, man.
“Man, there was this one Modoc named Scarface Charlie who attacked a patrol of sixty-three soldiers and killed twenty-five of them. All by himself. You hear me? All by himself.”
“He must have been quite the fighter.”
“He was, he was. But they couldn’t fight forever, I guess. They gave up. Captain Jack surrendered. I mean, he had all those women and children to worry about. So, Captain Jack surrendered and they hung him. They hung him, cut off his head, and shipped it off to the Smithsonian.”
“The Smithsonian Museum?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? They displayed Jack’s head like it was Judy Garland’s red shoes or something. Like it was Archie Bunker’s chair.”
“That’s a terrible story.”
“Yeah, isn’t it? And I’ll tell you what. Captain Jack should never have surrendered. He should’ve kept fighting. He should’ve kept running and hiding. He could’ve done that forever.”
“Is that why you’re running, son?”
“That’s right, old man, I’m not Captain Jack.”
“So, where you running to?”
Reggie pointed up the highway, pointed north or south, east or west, pointed toward a new city, though he knew every city was a city of white men.