I didn’t bother to say that was the only thing of any beauty at the remote and tough little Blackfoot reservation school where, around Dwayne Left Hand and Vern Rides Proud, I wisely kept my trap shut about my Red Chief nickname and endured being called Brookie for the freckles that reminded them of the speckles on eastern brook trout. That Heart Butte schoolyard with its rough teasing and impromptu fistfights was at least as educational as the schoolroom. But if Herman was gaga about things Indian, here was my perfect chance to confide the Red Chief nickname to him.
He was impressed, more so than he really needed to be, I noted somewhat apprehensively when I was done. “Up there with Winnetou, you are,” he exclaimed, slapping his knee. “Young chiefs. No wonder you got the fancy moccasins.”
“Yeah, but”—I stole an uneasy glance at the pile of Karl May books—“who’s this Winnetou anyway? What tribe he’s from, even?” If he was Blackfoot, my Red Chief tag might as well shrink back to Heart Butte invisibility in comparison.
Herman puffed on his cigar, maybe seeking smoke signals, as he gave it a think about how best to answer. Finally he said, “An Apache knight, he was.”
I tried to sort that out, never having heard of an Indian clanking around in a suit of armor, and said as much.
Herman laughed. “Not iron clothes, hah. Leather leggings and a hunting shirt, he dressed in, and, best yet”—he nodded approvingly at me—“fancy moccasins.” Turning serious again, he went on. “Karl May calls him a knight because he was honorable. His word you could trust. He fought fair. Like a chief supposed to, yah.” He nodded at me gravely this time.
“Uhm, Herman, you better know.” In all this Indian stuff, I didn’t want to end up chewing more than I could bite off. “I haven’t had much practice at any of that, see. I mean, with me, you can tell where the Red came from”—I flopped my hair—“but the Chief thinger is just from my dad. Sort of kidding, in a way, is all.”
“Maybe not all.” He gave me one of his cockeyed glances through the thick glasses. “Maybe he thought the name fit more than”—he kept a straight face, but it still came out sly—“your scalp.”
11.
ONE THING ABOUT hanging around with Herman, time went by like a breeze. That noontime, with Aunt Kate gone to canasta, the house was without commotion as Herman assembled lunch, laying out the kind of store bread that came sliced and without taste, but announcing we would have plenty of sandwich meat, which to me meant good old baloney slathered with mayonnaise and had me licking my lips, after the menu in this household so far. I stayed out of the way by reading the funnies in the newspaper until he called me to the table. “Meal fit for an earl.”
When I looked blank at that, he winked and said, “Earl of Sandwich, invented guess what.”
Some sense of caution caused me to peek under the top slice of bread, revealing a gray slab pocked with gelatin and strange colonies of what might be meat or something else entirely. “Is this”—I couldn’t even ask without swallowing hard—“headcheese?”
“Yah. A treat.” Herman took a horsebite mouthful. “The Kate won’t eat it,” he said, chewing. “She calls it disgusting, if you will imagine.”
I was entirely with her on that, for I had seen the ingredients of headcheese, each more stomach-turning than the next, come off the hog carcass at butchering time when the animal’s head and feet and bloody tongue were chucked in a bucket for further chopping up. But at any mealtime, Gram’s voice was never far distant—If it’s put in front of you, it’s edible at some level—and by not looking at the jellied pork rubbish between the sandwich bread, I got it down.
This Wisconsin incarceration evidently requiring digestive juices of various kinds, I stayed at the table stewing on matters, trying to assimilate what all had happened since my arrival into this unnerving household, while Herman pottered at washing up our few dishes. When he was done and hanging up the dish towel in a fussy way not even the Kate could criticize, I ventured: “Can I ask you a sort of personal thing?”
“Shoot, podner,” he responded agreeably enough, pointing a finger and cocked thumb at me like a pistol, which I figured must be something he picked up from a Karl May western.
“Right. How come you don’t go by the name ‘Dutch’ anymore?”
He pursed his lips a couple of times as if tasting the inquiry, then came and sat at the table with me before answering, if that’s what it was. “Down with the ship, it went.”
He appeared to be serious. Oh man, I thought to myself, first the Gitchy something or other, walking around dead, now this. Was this some squarehead joke?
“Sounds funny, yah?” Herman conceded. “But when the Badger Voyager sinked, my name ‘Dutch’ was no more, after.” Again he made the pthht sound. He folded his big hands on the table as he looked straight across at me in that uneven gaze of his. “Onshore, ‘Herman’ got new life.”
I still didn’t grasp that swap, and said so.
Herman grabbed for the sugar bowl with sudden purpose. “You know about ore boats any, Donny?”
At the shake of my head, he instructed, “This is ore boat. Badger Voyager, pretend. Table is Great Lakes. Gee-oh-graphy lesson, hah?”