CIDER

There in the woods. In the night. A lantern made enough light to illuminate the cards in the hands of the Indians that held them. The remainder of the glow was reflection from the only two white faces by the fire. The crickets chirped the chant that was the percussive background for this predawn poker game. Sweat slid like egg whites down the faces of the would be winners, the only breeze in this Oklahoma heat was the wind from the cards being shuffled and fanned so quickly that even an eye sharpened by the hunt would capture only a blurry black or red streak like a cheap camera. Though, on this black night,the only winners were predestined. This was no game of chance! This game had been fueled and driven fast by the marked deck of two young okies in a buggy. One of whom was Cider Wood. My Grandmother's brother, Walter. Nicknamed for the cider he would sell to the Indians who had been rounded up and corralled in Oklahoma Territory, late in the nineteenth century, by a government hellbent on gobbling up an entire continent, and the proud people who occupied it. That night, that hot, sweaty night, the Indians did not become quite as drunk as on previous visits. Then it began to rain. Small sprinkles at first. As the raindrops grew exponentially larger,so did the awareness of the dazzled and duped. What poured out of the sky that night was wrath. Chasing Cider and his accomplice on foot, at first the drunken pursuit seemed pointless. The footrace was one that,against a horse and buggy, seemed doomed; that is until in the murky mud, the horse slid and fell in the pouring rain, in the craggy woods. Wild, drunk and enraged, the cheated pursuit of men humiliated to themselves and each other, seemed as if Lady Luck had finally smiled on them. But that wasn't the case. The two young gamblers, cloaked by darkness and the woods and the rain camoflaged themselves until the hunters were discouraged by their prey. Cider, despite the danger, remained a gambler the rest of his life. Our small town had an underground poolhall,where Cider spent his later years,gambling at dominos, staying alive, and treating his daily pilgrimage like an occupation. On a good day. he would stop at the bakery and bring home a sugar cookie for me. Old men would stop by to visit with him, and talk to Cider about the old days.

HEIRLOOM 1A

As far back as i can remember, i stared daily at a photograph of my uncle, who stared back from a shelfs' in my grandmother's house. Legendary, he had reached an elevated status in the heart of the family fabric. Tales of his valor, courage,leadership and most of all wild card turned dedicated father. The family's "Great White Hope." Our family's Joe Kennedy, who embodied the collective American Dream, at a time when anyone who was able to raise his head above the dustbowl depression that our homestate of Oklahoma had become forever linked. That was all before the photograph was taken. That was before his fate was sealed in the second world war. In the picture,wearing the classic uniform of a fighter pilot, he could been interchanged with any of the Hollywood heartthrobs of the 1940's. Even now, his dashing good looks would "fly" at the box office today. Drafted, married, and a dad at 24, victim of a revenge against my grandfather's retaliation on a man who had peppered another brother with buckshot, for having stolen a watermelon from his garden, a boyhood prank gone wrong. So wrong. My grandfather went to the police station, paid a fine for assault, and proceeded to lay in wait for the shooter, surprised him, and beat him within an inch of his life. A costly mistake in the sharp eye of retrospect. That same man, down the road, had become head of the local draft board, and then was able to deliver a counter blow from which our family never fully recovered. The jackyll teeth of the government then ripped uncle Bill from the arms of his family. From the arms of his young wife and 4 year old daughter. Washed out of the air corps by yet another political prodding. Out of 5 sons, Bill became the family martyr. They were notified of his death at the battle of the bulge at Christmas. Christmas for my grandfather was never the same. The guilt that brought on the migraines that brought on the pervasive atmosphere that surrounded a man in perpetual grief. Recently, I inherited large vintage frames containing the handcolored portraits of each of the sons.My wife hung one because she thought it was beautiful. It was. For staring back at me, beneath the Buster Brown haircut, were those same crystal clear green eyes, were the same eyes I gazed into everyday of my boyhood. The eyes of a man that would become the measure of every man in our family, was uncle Bill.

INDIANS

Oklahoma. Indian territory. My birthplace. Where proximity has created a melting pot,a co-mingling of races, of breeds,of people thrust into a life undetermined by a single bloodline or common cause. A place where cultures fuse into a stew whose flavor is affected by ingredients that include cowboys, Cochise and crude oil. A place where,as noted by Rogers and Hammerstein, the wind comes sweepin' down the plain. But what that wind blew in was a people whose world would forever change once they became placed in the boundries of a prison without walls. Driven here likes herds of reluctant cattle. Forced at gunpoint, to trudge hundreds of miles, men,women and children. An entire continent overtaken, defeated and humiliated. History books that spin a collective tragedy into an American victory.