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9.

Anishine remembers: I was seventeen. I'd been with grandmother Emma to the store many times. It was a nice walk. She enjoyed it, seeing other peoples' yards and homes and flower gardens and vegetable gardens. The road was narrow. We'd get on the side and stop if we didn't feel safe to let cars pass. If they slowed down and acted like they had some sense I'd just fall back single file behind her and we'd keep walking.

One day... some boys, older boys, men really, started hooting and carrying on as we left the store. Emma didn't pay any attention, told me, "Don't pay any attention to those. They do this all the time."

But they came across the street from a beer joint to in front of the store and I didn't know why they were bothering us. We kept walking.

Then one of them said, "We don't want no red niggers around here!"

All the others laughed so uproariously I thought that must be the focus of their complaint. Emma is full-blood Cherokee. She kept walking, that slow stepping patient walk she did everywhere. She didn't look back at them. They followed us, kept hooting, jeering, just a couple of them chanting, "Red [naughty word removed]! Red [naughty word removed]!"

I got madder every time they did. They followed us all the way to The Red House. One of them came around me, up on the grass and around and in front and reached and grabbed Emma's paper bag! Apples and oranges fell out all over the road! A car stopped to keep from running over them.

"Anishine," Emma said, "go in the house and get us another bag."

Those boys, those men were just laughing and talking to each other. Emma ignored them, went about the business of getting the fruit out of the road. The man in the car didn't get out to help, rolled his window up, in fact. Finally she had her fruit out of his way and he went on. She reached in her apron pocket, handed me the keys. I knew we hadn't locked the door. I started to say, 'It's not locked,' but thought maybe she wanted me to pretend to unlock it. She told me later that was right. We started locking the doors after that. She went about gathering fruit out of the roadway, bringing it back by the steps. I ran in, put my groceries on the floor by the newel post, laid the keys on top of it, and ran up the stairs! I went straight to grandfather's room, got his double barrel shotgun, broke it down like he had shown me, checked that the two shells had not been fired, and headed for the stairs.

I came out with that shotgun, clicked it straight, and raised it, and three of those boys turned and ran. The two that still stood there acted like they weren't scared. I kept coming right to them and one tugged at the last one's arm and then ran himself. And finally I was as close as you and me and I cocked the hammers. That was his final ounce of courage. He turned and walked back the way he'd come. He got to the top of the hill there and yelled "Red [naughty word removed]!" and I pulled the triggers!
They ran and I don't know if buckshot got them in the feet or not.

Emma said, "Anishine! You shouldn't have done that. You could hurt someone."

I laughed, told her, "Yes. I could hurt someone." My shoulder was bruised for a month.

If they ever bothered her again she never told me. Some of those guys are still around. They like to stare at me but they don't say anything.

That was the first I ever knew that we were Cherokee. My hair's been as much red as brown all my life. I started looking closer at pictures and I can see how we all have a lot of common features. You're more Cherokee than I am. I've seen pictures of your mother. She looks Cherokee.

"Does she?" I ask. "I don't know. "When I found out we were Cherokee I couldn't wait to see Grandmother and ask. She looked at my father and said, 'You told them? The Government will come and take them away and sell them to the Catholics!"

My father just laughed. He said, "Ain't nobody takin' nobody away any more."