It said, “I need a good drover.”

He talked it over with his mother,

but she was ready to go back to her people,

so he took her home to Oklahoma,

where he met his brother

and Mama and went back to Texas

with his new bride, a job

and a life this side of respectable.

And so they lived that way for fifteen years.

Grandson and grandfather,

who couldn’t put asunder the divisions of race.

Papa gets up. He walks to the gate,

opens it and just waits

for God knows what,

then he steps back and shuts it.

He remembers again the Christmas presents

sent from the ranch house,

always one for him, nothing for his mother

and smothers the urge to kick in the door

of the ranch house

pour gasoline on the Old Man, light it

and watch him burn to a cinder

with a smile on his face.

The same kind The Old Man wore

the day they first came face to face

and The Old Man rode off.

It had no love in it, it had no hate,

but it had kinship.

THE SAGA OF CHARLIE SMITH

For my great-great-grandfather

I had my first Choctaw woman when I was seventeen,

got tired of her, got me another.

I wasn’t like my father, who settled for one wife,

and like him, she was Scotch Irish.

They were Catholic, but in desperation,

they had me baptized

by a hellfire and damnation preacher who evangelized

but I wouldn’t break my pact with the Devil

who made my desire for red women

such a raging fire.

They almost died when their boat capsized

on the Red River.

They were going to Texas to get away from the Indians and me.

I wouldn’t leave, nosiree.

I was born in Choctaw County, Oklahoma.

Back then, it was Indian Territory.

That’s what counts in this story.

In those days, you lived the Indian way.

It was easier if you made peace

with the red man, give him a hand

when he needed it and he’d give you one.

You took a wife, raised a bunch of half-breeds.

Nobody made much of it,

unless you made somebody mad

and things got said,

things that could leave you dead,

but by and large, you worked the land

and tried to live like a Christian.

Sounds simple, don’t it?—

a few rules to follow

before you got dropped into the ground,

but my second Choctaw wife

wouldn’t do nothing I said.

Had to hit her sometimes, hit her in the head,

so she’d understand

what I was trying to teach her.

Nickname was Annie.

She had an Indian name I can’t remember,

but I do remember how she would sit on my lap

and bounce up and down on it. What a girl,

but she was wild.

Packed up her rags one day and left me.

I come in from checking on the cattle,