“How old was The Navajo Kid when the Apaches killed his father?”
“Two or three, I think.”
“Then the Navajos found him and he was raised by them?”
“Right. His father was the Indian agent for the Arizona territory. The Apaches moved back and forth across the border with Mexico. Mescaleros, I think.”
Roy and Jimmy Boyle were walking to school together discussing the movie they’d seen on TV the night before. They were in the same fourth grade class.
“The guy who played the Kid after he was grown up also played a killer in a Bogart movie. He punched Bogey in the face holdin’ a bunch of nickels in his fist.”
“That must hurt.”
“Knocked Bogey out.”
“Didn’t The Navajo Kid have a mother?”
“She was never mentioned. Maybe she was already dead.”
“I read a book about a white boy who lived with an Indian tribe but his mother was an Indian. He had blue eyes and blonde hair so he always felt like he didn’t belong.”
“I bet. The full blood kids musta picked on him.”
“Yeah. When he got old enough he went away to find out the truth about what happened to his father.”
When Roy got home late that afternoon he found his mother in bed with bandages wrapped around her neck. He’d seen her this way numerous times applying ointments prescribed to treat her frequent outbreaks of eczema.
“Hi, Ma, your skin’s bothering you again, huh?”
“It’s pretty bad, Roy. I’ve been upset ever since I heard about cousin Norma having to go back into the sanitarium. I’m sure that’s what triggered this attack. Norma’s always been good to me, especially in the time after your father died.”
“Do you need me to bring you anything?”
“Not right now. My back is getting itchy. I might ask you to apply the salve to my back and shoulders if it gets any worse.”
“Sure, Mom. I’ll leave the door to my room open. Just call me, I’ll hear you.”
“I didn’t have a chance to go to the grocery store, Roy. If you want to get something take money out of my purse, it’s on the dresser.”
Kitty often talked about moving back to Florida to get away from the freezing cold Chicago winters. Her eczema bothered her in Florida, as well, but the sun made her feel better, she said, as if it were caressing her skin. Roy and his mother had lived in Key West from soon after his birth in Chicago until he was six. They had moved north so that Kitty could take care of her mother, Rose. Rose died the following year from heart trouble and Kitty decided to stay to be closer to Norma and a few other members of their family. Roy missed his friends in Key West, mostly Cuban kids, and being able to play outside year round, but he had good friends in Chicago now and didn’t want to leave.
About an hour after he’d returned, Roy got hungry. He went into his mother’s bedroom and saw that she was sleeping, so he quietly removed two dollars from her purse and left the house.
Roy’s father died when Roy was five but Roy had never been given a satisfactory explanation as to how or why. Rudy had been twenty years older than Kitty, Roy knew that, but his mother told him only that his father had just collapsed one day and not recovered. Roy identified with The Navajo Kid. He had not been adopted by an Idian tribe but he needed to know more about his father’s life, in particular what he did for a living. His mother said that Rudy was a businessman who helped out other people in their businesses, and that as a child he had come to America from a faraway corner of Eastern Europe when he was ten years old.
“Your dad didn’t go to school, Roy,” Kitty told him, “he always worked, doing all kinds of jobs because his family was very poor. I think it was because he had to work so hard that he died young.”
Roy had light brown hair and blue eyes, unlike his father, who had black hair and brown eyes. Roy looked more like his mother. The Navajo Kid did not resemble the Navajo boys and girls, he knew he was different, and he wanted to know what his real parents looked like and where they had come from before they—or at least his father—were in Arizona.
On his way to Pooky’s hot dog and hamburger stand it began to rain, lightly at first, then harder, so Roy stopped under the awning in front of a Chinese laundry. A heavyset, middleaged woman came out of the laundry carrying a green duffel bag. She took a look at the rain and stood next to Roy.
“Wattaya think, kid, this a real storm or only a passin’ cloud?”
“Probably if I were an Indian, I’d know,” said Roy, “but I’m not.”
The woman looked at him. Her hair was tied up on the top of her head with a pink bandana and she had bright red lipstick smeared unevenly around her mouth.
“I just get through arguin’ with them overchargin’ charmers and then I get a smartass punk answer from you. Am I in hell yet or only dreamin’?”
The woman slung the duffel bag over her right shoulder and walked off in the downpour. Roy had not meant to be rude to her, he didn’t know why he had spoken to the woman that way. The rain continued coming down hard. Did it rain like this in Arizona? Or in the part of Europe his father had come from? He wondered why he had wound up here in Chicago standing in front of a Chinese laundry watching raindrops the size of bullets beat into the sidewalk. What if he just kept going and never saw his mother again? What would happen to him? Suddenly the rain slacked off, then stopped entirely. Roy put up the collar of his jacket and continued on his way to Pooky’s.
Roy remembered when he was little and used to stand next to the piano in the livingroom and sing while his mother played. One of her favorites was Autumn Leaves. “The autumn leaves/drift by my window/the autumn leaves/of red and gold.” Roy sang the words softly out loud as he walked. His mother didn’t play the piano often any more; sores on her fingers made it too painful, she said. Roy’s grandmother used to play the piano and sing, too. Rose and Kitty sometimes played duets and Rose taught Roy how to read notes on the sheet music. He missed singing along with them. From now on, Roy decided, whenever anyone asked him about his parents he’d tell them his father had been murdered by Apaches in Mexico and that his mother was part Navajo.