Return of the Indian

“Darling? Do you realize? Isn’t it fantastic? And you never said a single word!”

At this moment his father came in from outdoors. He’d been working in the garden, as he often did, until it was actually too dark to see. Now he stamped the mud off his shoes in the open doorway, but for once his mother didn’t care about the mud, and almost dragged him into the room.

“Oh, do come and hear the news! I’ve been bursting to tell you all day. Omri – tell him. Tell him!”

Wordlessly, Omri handed his father the letter. There was a silence, then his father whispered reverently, “God in Heaven. Three hundred pounds!”

“It’s not the money!” cried his mother. “Look, look what they say about his story! He must be brilliant, and we never even knew he had writing talent.” She came to Omri and smothered him with hugs. “When can we read it? Oh, just wait till the boys hear about this…”

His brothers! Yes. That would be almost the sweetest thing of all. They always behaved as if he were too thick to do anything. And telling them at school. His English teacher simply wouldn’t believe her senses. Perhaps Mr Johnson, the headmaster, would get him up at Assembly and announce the news, and they would all applaud, and he would be asked to read the story aloud… Omri’s head began to spin with the incredible excitement of it. He jumped up.

“I’ll go and get my copy and you can read it,” he said.

“Oh, did you keep a copy?”

“Yes, that was in the rules.” He stopped in the doorway and turned. “I typed it on your typewriter when you were out,” he confessed.

“Did you, indeed! That must have been the time I found all the keys jumbled together.” But she wasn’t really annoyed.

“And I borrowed paper and carbon paper from Dad’s desk. And a big envelope to send it in.”

His mother and father looked at each other. They were both absolutely beaming with pride, as they had when Gillon had come home and announced he’d broken a swimming record at school, and when Adiel had got ten O-levels. Omri, looking at them, knew suddenly that he had never expected them to have that look because of him.

“Well,” said his father, very solemnly, “now you can pay me back. You owe me the price of the stamp.” His face broke into a great, soppy grin.

Omri raced upstairs. His heart was pounding. He’d won. He’d actually won! He’d never dared to hope he would. Of course, he’d dreamt a little. After all, he had tried his very best, and it was a great story to begin with. Imagination and invention, eh? That was all they knew. The real work was in the way he’d written it, and re-written it, and checked the spelling until just for once he could be confident that every word was right. He’d persuaded Adiel to help with that part – without telling him, of course, what it was actually for.

“Stirrup? Maize? Iroquois?”

“Iroquois!” Adiel had exclaimed.

“It’s the name of an Indian tribe,” said Omri. Fancy not knowing that! Omri had now read so many books about American Indians that he’d forgotten that not everyone was as knowledgeable on the subject as himself.

“Well, I haven’t a clue how to spell it. I-R-O-K-W-”

“No it’s not, it’s like French. Never mind, I know that one, I just wanted to see if you did. Whisky?”

Adiel spelt it, and then asked, “What on earth is this you’re writing? What a weird bunch of words!”

“It’s a story. I’ve got to make it as perfect as I can.”

“But what’s it about? Let me see it,” said Adiel, making a grab at the notebook.

Omri dodged. “Leave off! I’ll show you when it’s finished. Now. Bandage?” Adiel spelt this (actually Omri had spelled it correctly) and then Omri hesitated before saying, “Cupboard?”

Adiel’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re not telling about the time I hid your so-called secret cupboard after you’d nicked my football shorts?”

“I didn’t…”

“The time the key got lost and you made such an idiotic uproar? You’re not going to put me into any stupid school story.”

“I’m changing the names,” said Omri.

“You’d better. Any more words?”

Omri read on silently to the next longish word. “Magnanimous.”

“Cor,” said Adiel with heavy sarcasm. “Bet you don’t even know what it means.”

“Yes I do. Generous.”

“Where’d you get it from?”

“‘The Iroquois were a tribe ferocious in war, stalwart in alliance, magnanimous in victory’,” quoted Omri.

“You sound like Winston Churchill,” said Adiel, but there was a trace of admiration in his voice this time. “Don’t make it too show-offy, will you? You’ll only lose marks if your teacher thinks you’ve copied it.”

“I haven’t written that, you berk,” said Omri. “I’m just remembering what I’ve read in a book.” He was beginning to relish long words, though. Later he went through his story yet again to make sure he hadn’t used too many. His teacher was forever saying, “Keep it simple. Stick to what you know.” Little would anyone guess how closely he had stuck to the truth this time!

And now… Imagination and invention…

He paused on the stairs. Had he cheated? It was supposed to be a made-up story. It said so in the rules. Or had it? ‘Creative writing’ meant that, didn’t it? You couldn’t create something that had really happened… All you could do was find the best way of writing it down. Of course he had had to make up bits of it. Vivid as his memories of Little Bull and Boone were, he couldn’t remember every word they ever spoke. Omri frowned and went on up the stairs. He didn’t feel entirely easy in his mind, but on the other hand… Nobody had helped him. The way he’d written the story was all his own. Maybe it was okay. There wasn’t much he could do about it, anyhow.

He continued more slowly up the stairs to his room, at the very top of the house.

3 The Way it Began (#ulink_e0e821bd-b0e5-5042-a2ac-6eef43a770b9)

Omri was rather a private person. At least he needed to be alone quite a bit of the time. So his room, which was right up under the eaves of the house, was perfect for him.

In the old house, his bedroom had been just one of several opening off the upstairs landing, and at certain times of the day had been like a railway station. His new room was right off the beaten track. No one (in his opinion) had any reason to come up here, or even pass the door. There were times, now he had got it all arranged to suit himself, when he forgot about how awful it was living in Hovel Road, when it seemed worth everything to have a room like this.

It wasn’t a very large room, so his father had built a shelf high up under the skylight for him to sleep on. This was great, because he could look up at the night sky. Under this bed-shelf was his desk, and more shelves for his collections of old bottles, key-rings and wooden animals. The wall opposite the window was covered with his posters – a mixture of old and new, from Snoopy and an early Beatles, to the Police and a funny, rude one about a flasher who gets caught in a lift. In pride of place were two large photographs of Iroquois chieftains that he’d found in magazines. Neither of these Indians looked remotely like Little Bull, but they appealed to Omri just the same.

His clothes were stored on the landing, so his room wasn’t cluttered up with those. That left quite a lot of space for his beanbag seats, a low table (he’d sawed its legs half off after seeing a photo of a Japanese room), his cassette radio, and his most recent acquisition – an old chest.

He’d found this in the local market, coated with dirt and grease, bought it for two pounds after bargaining, and borrowed a marketeer’s barrow to drag it round the corner to Hovel Road. He’d cleaned it with a scraper and some sandpaper in the back garden, before hauling it up to his room.

It had ‘come up a treat’, just as the man in the market had promised. The wood was oak, the hinges iron, and it had a brass plate on it with the name of its first owner. Omri had hardly been able to believe it when he had cleaned the layers of dirt off this plate and read the name for the first time. It was L. Buller. L. Buller… Little Bull! Of course it was pure coincidence, but, as Omri thought, If I were superstitious… He rubbed up the brass every week. Somehow it, too, made him feel closer to Little Bull.

The chest was not only interesting and beautiful, but useful. Omri used it for storage. There was only one thing wrong with it. It had a lock, but no key. So he piled cushions and other objects on it and pretended it was a bench. That way nobody who happened to be prying about in his room (it still happened occasionally, mothers cleaning and brothers poking about ‘borrowing’) would realize that it contained a number of interesting and private objects.

Omri knelt by the chest now and shifted to the floor a pile of cassettes, a bullworker (he was bent on developing his muscles), some cushions and three copies of Mad magazine, among other bits of junk. Then he opened the top of the chest. It, too, was untidy, but Omri knew where to burrow. On their way down the left-hand side in search of the folder containing his prize-winning story, Omri’s fingers touched metal, and paused. Then, carefully, he moved some other things which were in the way, and eased this metal object out.

It was a small white cabinet with a mirror in its door and a keyhole – an old-fashioned bathroom medicine cupboard, in fact. He stood it on the Japanese table. The door swung open. Apart from a single shelf, it was quite empty – as empty as it had been when he was first given it, a rather odd birthday present from Gillon, just over a year ago.

Omri sat back on his heels staring at it.