Little Brother of War (9 page)

That night I was surprised to see the other team's young player wander into our camp. He made his way over to my tent and introduced himself.

“My name's Mitchell Leonard,” he said, shaking my hand. I told him who I was and where I lived. “How old are you?” he asked.

I answered, “Sixteen. I'll be in the eleventh grade.”

“You're a good player,” he said. “I'm really happy to meet you.” Give me your address. I'll write you. Next year we want to come to your Choctaw Fair in July.”

“That'd be great,” I said. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers.

“I'd wish you luck in tomorrow's games, but I want to win,” Mitchell said. Where had I heard that before?

“Same for me,” I replied. We chatted for a minute or two. Then he put my address in his pocket and left.

I went to bed very early that night. A big day was coming. I couldn't let Mitchell's team win.

By noon on Sunday, storm clouds began gathering in the area. It looked like a thunderstorm was brewing.

“What happens if it rains?” I asked Charley.

“We'll be getting very wet,” he said. “They don't cancel a stickball game because of rain.”

That day we played two of the soggiest, sloppiest games anyone could ever imagine. We slipped and slid up and down the field. The carpet of smooth green grass was shredded. By the end of the first game, mud covered every inch of me.

We had to resort to colored armbands to tell the teams apart. Red for our team. White for theirs. It reminded me of my very first game at the Red Water Community Center.

Once again the experience was exhausting and exhilarating. I had such a great time. And yet I wanted so badly to be clean and dry.

At the end of the day, we had won a game and lost a game. That put the weekend results at three games for Oklahoma and two games for us. We'd never played in the rain. All that mud and water was hard to deal with. On the other hand, they played like it happened all the time.

“We'll beat 'em next year on our home turf,” Charley promised. “For now, they've arranged for us to use the nearby high school locker room showers to get cleaned up. How does that sound?”

That sounded absolutely great to me. A shower and a sleeping bag were all I needed at that point.

During the drive home the next day, I had plenty of time to think about events of the past year.

“We may have lost this tournament,” I told Charley. “But I'll never forget this experience. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.”

“When you're an old man, you're going to have some great stories to tell your grandkids,” he said.

“Whoa, that's too much for my sixteen-year-old mind to think about,” I replied. So I didn't.

Charley dropped me off at my house late Monday night. On the ride back from Oklahoma, I'd heard many tall tales about stickball games of the past. Each one was more unbelievable than the last.

And Mom and Dad almost couldn't believe that we'd played in the middle of a thunderstorm. But they believed it when I showed them the muddy rags that were once my uniform.

“Randy, I'm so proud of you,” Dad said. It made me feel good to hear it. What a difference a year had made.

“Come into the kitchen,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

The three of us went into the kitchen. On the table sat a dusty cardboard box. Written on the side were the words “Gramps' Things.”

“I found this up in the attic,” Dad explained. “I'd forgotten all about it until yesterday. This was your grandfather's stuff. It's been up there since we moved into this house.”

He opened the top flaps of the box. I looked inside. There was an old photo album, a small box, and something long wrapped in an old piece of leather. Dad took out the photo album and thumbed through it. When he found what he was looking for, he handed the album to me.

On the left page of the open album there was a faded old photograph. It was a black-and-white picture of a stickball team. A stickball team! Written on the bottom of the photo were the words “Choctaw Fair 1949.”

“Wow, this is awesome,” I said.

On the right page there was a yellowed newspaper article and a list of the names of the players. Dad pointed to one of the men in the photo.

“That is your great-grandfather,” he said and then pointed to a name on the list. “And over here is his name, R. Jackson Cheska,”
he said. “His full name was Randall Jackson Cheska, but everyone called him RJ.”

I blinked a couple of times. Did I hear him right?

“That's right,” Dad said. “We named you and Jack after my grandfather.”

“How come I never knew that?” I wondered.

Dad reached into the box one more time and came up with a small box. He handed it to me and I opened it. Inside was a small medallion attached to a ribbon.

“I think that was your great-grandfather's too,” Dad said. “Look at the picture and you'll see they're all wearing one of these. Instead of a trophy, I think they all got one of these.”

As I was looking at the photograph, I realized that one of the faces looked very familiar. I looked more closely. What a shock I got! There in the lineup was a man who looked a lot like Albert Isaac, the man who'd made my ball sticks. Actually, he looked
exactly
like Albert Isaac.

I looked at the list of names. And there it was in black and white: Albert Isaac.

“How is that possible?” I asked myself.

I explained to Mom and Dad what I'd found. And I retold the story of the old man in the community center who had disappeared.

Dad read a few lines of the faded newspaper article to himself.

“It says right here that Albert Isaac was their team coach and a ball stick maker,” he said.

“How is that possible?” I asked myself a second time. My mind was reeling.

There was one more thing in the cardboard box. Something wrapped in worn leather. I was curious, so I picked it up.

Unwrapping the leather, I found a pair of well-used ball sticks inside. Though the wood was scarred and worn from use, the sticks were still in good enough condition to use. I turned them over and over in my hands. They were almost identical to the pair of kapoca I'd been using. The pair Albert Isaac had made.

I looked at the base of the sticks. To my great surprise, there was an
A
stamped on the bottom of one stick and an
I
on the other.

“How is that possible?” I asked myself yet a third time. I ran to the living room as fast as I could. In my duffle bag I found my own sticks. I took them back to the kitchen. Sitting side by side, the two sets of sticks were a perfect match. They could've been clones.

“Amazing,” Mom said.

“Supernatural!” Dad said. “Gramps used to say the spirits of our Choctaw ancestors are with us still. I really never believed it before. I do now.”

We were all quiet for a few minutes. I couldn't think. I was too overwhelmed. And tired. I stood up. As I did, I noticed there was one last thing in the cardboard box. It was a piece of paper. It looked like a page torn out of a book. It was yellowed and jagged on one edge. I picked it up.

Printed on the front side of the page was a book title:
The Social and Ceremonial Life
of the Choctaw Indians,
by John Swanton, published 1931.

I flipped the page over. A handwritten message was on the other side. It read, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

I knew somehow Gramps had been with me the whole time. And Albert Isaac. I was grateful to them both. And in awe.

“Thanks, Gramps,” I said. “Thanks, Albert.”

The rest of my life could wait until tomorrow, I thought. I was tired and went to bed. As I was falling asleep I had a thought. We might have to start visiting the preacher
and
the medicine man on a regular basis. Just to cover all bases.

Gary Robinson, a writer and filmmaker of Cherokee and Choctaw Indian descent, has spent more than twenty-five years working with American Indian communities to tell the historical and contemporary stories of Native people in all forms of media. His television work has aired on PBS, Turner Broadcasting, Ovation Network, and others. His nonfiction books,
From Warriors to Soldiers
and
The Language of Victory,
reveal little-known aspects of American Indian service in the U.S. military, from the Revolutionary War to modern times. He has also written two other novels,
Thunder on the Plains
and
Tribal Journey,
and two children's books that share aspects of Native American culture through popular holiday themes:
Native American Night Before Christmas
and
Native American Twelve Days of Christmas.
He lives in rural central California.