Lewisham Half-Breed

LEWISHAM HALF-BREED
by Mark Say

As far as I know I'm the only Apache in Lewisham. Not a full blooded
redskin, more an SE13 half-breed. My mum came from Penge and lived
there for most of her life, but my dad was from Arizona, some place
called Butte Rock. That was how I came to be driving through the
desert, wondering what kind of creatures could live out there and
beginning to feel nervous. Five hours driving couldn't have helped. I
had left Tucson at seven in the morning, and as noon approached I was
feeling stiff and sweaty. We were staying with my Maureen's cousin;
Maureen comes from a big Irish family which is scattered everywhere
from Gravesend to Santa Barbara, and the cousin and her husband had
moved to Tucson earlier that year. It had led us to break the month in
California with the uncle for a few days in Arizona, and it was only
when he had made that plan that I began to think about Butte
Rock.
I suppose the journey had begun twenty years before that, when I had
begun to look for my real parents. It was nothing against Alf and Renie
- they had given me a happy childhood and told me from an early age
that I was adopted - but I had always been curious and I felt at the
time that my life was unfolding, with the business doing well and
Maureen having our first kid. I felt I had to know more about myself to
fully appreciate what I had achieved. Tracking down my real mum wasn't
too difficult. The social services were co-operative, confirmed she was
still alive and, after she had been unsure about meeting me, suggested
that I write her a letter. It told her that, whoever she was, she
didn't have to feel any shame or guilt. Nothing happened for a few
weeks, but then I received a reply that we could meet.
When the time came there was no great show of emotion. It's weird
meeting someone who's so close but also a complete stranger, and the
meeting was cordial but awkward. She was in her early fifties and
already suffering from the first stages of the cancer that took her a
couple of years later. It must have been hard for her to suddenly find
me in her life, especially as she had married and had a couple more
kids, and I suppose it was brave to face up to her past. At first we
just told each other a bit about our lives, my business, her husband's
job, the kids' names, and I didn't press for any details about how I
came along. We carried on seeing each other maybe once in six weeks,
and although we never became really close we did some sort of
relationship, and she began to reveal her secret.
It turned out that I was illegitimate, which was no great surprise, and
that my father had been a GI stationed near Croydon during the war. At
first that had surprised me. My features are regular Anglo-Saxon but
skin has a pale brown tinge, and I had always supposed that one of my
parents was from North Africa or Asia, maybe Arab or Persian. Then she
told that she had had a fling with an American private who was an
Apache Indian. She was still living with parents in Penge, it would
have been 1943, and working in a factory near Croydon, and sometimes
she would go for a night out near work and stay with a mate. It was a
usually a dance hall packed with GIs, a long way from home and ready to
spread the charm and empty their pockets in search of female company.
That's where she met her Apache, swept off her feet by the illusion of
a noble savage who rode bare back, worshipped the land and fought to
the death against the Cavalry - in other words the old bull she had
seen dozens of times at the pictures.
They went out with each other for a few weeks, and I suppose they
couldn't have done the act many times. Obviously I never pried into
that detail - who wants to hear about their mother getting a knee
trembler behind someone's bike shed - but enough went on to create me.
When she realised that she was carrying she did a runner, told everyone
at home she was joining the Land Army and would be away for a while,
then got a train down to Sussex and the home of an old school friend
she could trust. I can understand her wanting to hide it from the
family; it was a serious stigma in those days and, whatever she thought
of the father, the Indians weren't regarded as regular GI Joes in those
days. They were practically segregated along with some Mexicans in the
camp and were allocated all the filthy jobs that no-one wanted. The
white soldiers used to put it about that decent girls didn't go with
blacks or Spanish types or redskins, and some English people began to
repeat it. When she had been dating my mum had been brave, turned up
her nose at the other GIs and told herself that her man was special,
but being pregnant frightened her. The thought of giving birth to a
half-breed took her over the edge.
She never actually saw my father again. She wrote to him from Sussex,
told him she was pregnant and asked him to go and see her, but there
was never any reply. She didn't know if he ever got the letter, whether
he remained in ignorance or took fright, but she found out later that
he company was shipped off to Italy soon after she left for Sussex. By
the time I was born her dangerous romance was all over. I was given up
for adoption and she went back to Penge, where her parents were kept in
blissful ignorance for the rest of their lives.
For a long time she wouldn't tell me the GI's name - I reckon she
didn't want me digging any further while she was still alive - but when
she knew that she only had a few weeks she let on. His official name
was Jeff Caliente, but his Apache name was Grey Eagle.
A couple of months after she died I began to make enquiries. I
contacted his old Army outfit, but after six months and letters to four
officers all they could tell me was that he survived the war and was
demobbed in 1946. The American Embassy wasn't much help, and it took
the best part of a year to obtain a contact in the States. Finally
someone gave me the address of an office for electoral registration on
the Butte reservation in Arizona and told me its population was almost
entirely Apache. A few weeks later I received a courteous letter from a
clerk telling me that a Jeffrey Caliente had been registered on the
reservation in the early sixties under an address in Butte Rock, but
that the name had not appeared on any more recent registers. He also
gave me the address of a town clerk there and said it may be worth
writing. I sent two letters three months apart, but there was never any
replay. I thought the most likely reason was that Jeffrey Caliente was
not there, and I know from business that plenty of people don't bother
to reply if they can't help. Soon after that our younger daughter was
in a car accident, although she recovered completely the hundreds of
hours we spent in the hospital, and the thousands worrying about
whether she would walk again, drew too deeply on my emotions. I
effectively gave up looking for my father. It was only when we made
plans for the holiday and decided on a few days in Tucson that I began
to think about it again.
The plan was drive over for the day and nose around. To get to Butte
Rock I had drive about forty miles on a tarmac road after I left the
freeway, then another five or six on a dirt trail sprinkled with
pebbles and the odd pothole. I had half-expected a bumpy ride and
prepared myself to find that Butte Rock was just a collection of
shacks, but it turned out to bear a passing resemblance to a town. It
had one of those signs announcing 'Welcome to Butte Rock', but the
flaked paint and chipped woodwork didn't make it look very welcoming.
Behind it was a street around a hundred yards long line with buildings,
none of them more than two storeys high and all in need of a coat of
paint, and behind them other buildings and a few side streets. At the
end of the street was a massive corrugated iron shed, like an aircraft
hangar but with a couple of chimneys sticking out of the top. I drove
along the road slowly, noticing outdoor toilets in the alleys between
houses, cars that looked ready for a breaker's yard, chickens in front
yards and windows that threatened to fall out of their frames. Half-way
along I came to a building which was cleaner than most, with a porch
out to the road and a sign which read 'US Post Office'. Next to it was
a scruffy little diner with a Budweiser sign missing the 'w' and people
inside. I figured it was as good a place as any to start.
As soon as I got out of the car I felt awkward, conscious that it was
months old with just a couple of thousand miles on the clock and the
contrast against the tatty surroundings. A few people were sitting
outside houses along the street and I felt eyes on me, a stranger at
best, an intruder if their mood was sour. I walked into the diner
trying not to look like a tourist. A young woman with shoulder length
hair a cold sore was behind the counter, two young guys in jeans and
white T-shirts sat at the counter and an old man, his face a mass of
wrinkles below a patterned headband, sat at one of the tables. All of
them had pale brown skin, jet black hair and boney, hungry faces, and
none of them pretended not to look at me.
The girl asked if she could help with something resembling a smile, and
although I wasn't hungry I asked for a hamburger and a coffee and took
a seat at the counter. They all looked away but no-one spoke. The
silence said they didn't welcome the unfamiliar and I was worried that
I would be violating some local code to speak first. Someone had left a
newspaper on the counter, and for a minute I glanced over a story
speculating on whether a guy named Clinton could knock off President
Bush in that year's election. After a minute I couldn't keep up the
pretence and decided I had to break the tension.
"Excuse me, I wonder if you can help?"
"Maybe," said the girl, still short of a smile.
"I'm looking for an old man. I understand he may live around here, if
he's still alive."
"We got a lot of old men."
"I ain't old!" The wrinkles in the corner was looking out of the window
but it was clear he was speaking to us. "Only seventy-two!"
"Never said you was."
"I heard ya nodding toward me."
It raised a laugh from the girl and the two young guys, enough to make
me feel easier.
"His name's Jeff Caliente, or Grey Eagle."
The girl shook her head and looked at the two young men, who shook
their heads.
"Is there anyone who may know?"
"Everyone knows each other here I guess, but there's a few people,
mainly old folks, who live around the old mining camps in the canyons.
Some of them drift in sometimes. Tell you what, the clerk in the post
office might know."
I stayed at the counter when the hamburger came up, even though the two
guys didn't look to be in the mood for conversation. I realised I was
tolerated but not welcome. While I was eating the girl started chatting
with them again, something about a cousin getting arrested in
Albuquerque, although when she noticed my cup was empty she topped it
up without asking. The hamburger disappeared quickly but the coffee
kept me for a few minutes, long enough to be around when another
character entered. He was middle aged, dressed in a clean white
open-necked shirt and pale blue cotton trousers, with hair much shorter
than the others and a smile for everyone in the diner, including me. He
sat two seats along and called for a sandwich and coffee.
"Sure Burt." The girl caught my eye. "He's the guy."
"I'm the guy?"
"The guy from the post office. This guy's looking for someone he thinks
lives around here."
He told me his name was Burt Aracko and leaned over the empty seat to
shake my hand. I told him my real name but didn't want to tell him the
real reason I was there. Instead I came out with a story about
delivering a message from a friend in Tucson, that I had volunteered
because I fancied a drive in the desert. It was vague but feasible, and
Burt was too polite to pry for details. I gave him the names of Jeff
Caliente and Grey Eagle. He looked up the ceiling and was quiet for a
few seconds before speaking.
"Oh yeah! Caliente. That's old Lock-Up's real name."
"Lock-Up?" The girl smiled. "I never knew he had a real name."
"Yeah. He's been called Lock-Up for as long as I can remember, but
there must have been a time when they called him something else."
"LockUp?" I was trying to get my head around the name.
"Yeah, it goes back to his young days, probably just after the war. He
and some other guys from the reservation were working up in Socorro, in
the railyards, and he picked up a reputation for going on some wild
drunks. Seems he used to most Saturday nights for two or three years
locked up in the sheriff's cells."
"My mom told me he used to work in the sorting sheds," said the
girl.
"From the time it opened, round'bout 1950. That was when he settled
down, got married and had a couple of kids. Worked in the sheds until
the closed in '72." Then he looked at me. "How does your friend know
him?"
"Socorro," I said. "An old guy who knocked around when he was younger.
Lives in Tucson now."
Then Burt told me that old Lock-Up lived by himself in a shack at the
end of the street, but that he still hung around his old shed a lot,
"'cos he ain't got nothing better to do". After that we made polite
conversation for twenty minutes, mainly satisfying his curiosity about
England, and at the end of the meal we both insisted on picking up the
bill until he let me pay. We left the diner and shook hands again, and
as he turned towards the post office I turned the other way, towards
the big shed.
Walking along the street I wondered how many people were left in the
town. A couple of washed out old men lingered in doorways and I heard
shouting from inside one of the shacks, but the place reminded me of a
ghost town from an old western; apart from the inside of the diner it
looked like a place waiting to die. There was a wire fence about ten
yards in front of the big shed, and I had to walk half the width to
reach the gate. Above it hung a metallic sign that had gone grey with
dust, but on which I could still read SOROCCO MINING CO., Butte Rock
Plant. I pushed open the gate - it couldn't have had a lock on it for
years - and went towards the doors. It was one of those massive doors
which open at the middle but have a smaller one cut into one side, and
I could see that was slightly ajar. Maybe the sight exaggerated the
sense of the unknown ahead, because I felt my chest tighten a little
and wondered, just for a second, if I should turn back. Then I pushed
gently and looked inside. At first it was too dark to see and I felt my
nose tickled by a stale, tinny smell tickled my nose, but I pushed the
doors a little wider and became aware of frosted windows high at the
far end of the shed. My eyes settled into the gloom, and for a few
minutes I nosed around. The shed has less life than the rest of Butte
Rock. Three metal frames ran from end to end, nothing that I recognised
but enough to suggest lines for making or sorting stuff, and there were
rectangular patches on the ground where crates or bins must have stood.
I didn't have a clue what they had done in there, but I guessed they
hadn't done it for a long time. At the far end was a long room running
crossways, maybe for storage, and the pitch black inside deterred me
from looking too closely. Two offices looked out into the working area,
one empty except for a table, a carpet which was literally curling at
the edges and a dirty yellow calendar from 1969. The other was still in
use. It was dark and tatty, but there was a chair pulled up at a desk
with a battery lamp, a magazine and a Coke can too clean to be a relic.
I had a quick look, saw that the magazine was a 'Newsweek', recent
enough to have a picture of Clinton on its cover, and shook the can to
find it was empty. Suddenly I felt unsettled, as if I was intruding in
another person's space, and reckoned it was time to go. I was
approaching the main door when the old man appeared in its frame.
"Hi!"
I jumped, but one look at his face told me that I wasn't going to get
any stick. He was old alright; he stood about five foot seven with a
mild stoop, as if he had once been bigger, his light brown skin was
twisted into a rug of wrinkles and his eyes and cheeks were shrinking
back into his face. Although his white hair was down to his shoulders
it was thinning in large patches. There wasn't much of an expression
among all that, but I could make out that he was curious. I managed to
mutter a hullo and wondered what on earth I could say next.
"You interested in this place?" he asked.
I was dumb for a few seconds, but he was patient.
"Yeah," I said finally. "I'm doing a survey, mining history in New
Mexico. It's for a university in England."
I lied without thinking about it, as if instinct was telling me to
conceal who I was.
"You look after this place?" I asked.
"Could say. Not that there's much to look after, but I hang around. Got
a room in the back."
"You didn't mind me looking?"
"No. D'ya see much?"
"Not really."
"Not surprised. The company took all that was worth taking when they
pulled out. Step back inside. I'll show ya what there is to see."
He walked me around and told me what used to go on, while I pretended
to be interested and asked a couple of questions. "Ask his name," I
kept thinking. It was only when the tour was over and we stepped
outside that I found the courage.
"Most people call me Lock-Up," he said.
"You must have another one then."
"Yeah, Grey Eagle, that was my Apache name. And there was a time I was
called Caliente."
A big sinking feeling hit my gut. Forty-nine years and I had finally
found my father, and I didn't have a clue what to do next. I followed
him towards the gate and dragged some words out of my mouth. Had he
always lived there?
"Near enough. Had a few years away in the forties, but came back when
the plant opened. For a while we thought this place was gonna be a
proper town. You're English, aren't ya?"
"That's right."
"I was there for a while, when I was in the Army."
"You like it?"
"It was okay. The beer's brown and it rains a lot, but most of the
people were fine."
"Stay in touch with anyone from there?"
"No."
I tried but couldn't read in his face whether there was a memory, a
regret that I had touched. He didn't seem inclined to say any more on
the subject and I couldn't think of a discreet way of prodding, so as
we walked away from the shed, aimlessly I thought, he started talking
about the reservation. As far as he was concerned there had never been
much there apart from the mining company, and now it was gone there
never would be anything there.
"So why have you stayed?" I asked.
"It's home."
We turned into one of the side streets and he pointed to what looked
like an outsized garden shed with a porch.
"My place is there," he said. "You want coffee?"
"That's nice of you."
I kept trying to find something in his face, but now even the curiosity
seemed to be subsiding. It struck me that he was much the same as one
of those lonely old pensioners at home, the type who shuffle around
quietly, making it easy for people to ignore them. The red check shirt
and jeans didn't quite fit the image, but the dried out face and
stooped walk matched perfectly, and the state of his shack was no
surprise. Even from outside I felt the atmosphere of decay, and as he
opened the door I was hit by a stale smell, a mixture of dust, old
cooking and the faint tinge of piss. It was nearly as gloomy as the
shed, but an old rug was on the floor, its pattern sinking beneath a
layer of dirt, and a formica topped table and wooden chair stood
against the window. A bed was against the wall, covered with a quilt
almost as dirty as the rug, and a small TV stood on a stool in the
corner. A door led to a kitchen, but I didn't even want to think how
that appeared.
He told me to sit down, so I placed my backside on the bed while he
went into the kitchen. I noticed that on one side of the front door was
a tall wardrobe, though I couldn't imagine that he had many clothes,
and on the other was small table with three framed photos, the details
hidden in the poor light. I told myself three or four times, "That's my
father in there", but the thought didn't strike any note of reality.
All this was too alien to me.
After a few minutes he shuffled back from the kitchen and gave me a cup
of black coffee, not asking if I liked milk, then sat on the chair by
the window. For a minute we sat in silence, long enough to make me
uneasy.
"You must be retired now," I asked.
"Nearly everyone around here is retired, even the kids."
I realised it had been a bad question, but couldn't think of a good
one.
"So what have you done in your time, apart from work in those
sheds?"
He told me he got shelled while he was in the Army, but never actually
attacked anything. The only time he ever got hurt was in Rome, when he
tried to use a brothel and some white boys from Texas dragged him into
an alley for a beating.
"That was something I used to good at. Getting beaten up."
It was the only thing either of us said that made him laugh. He had
been beaten up in Socorro a few times, usually the result of playing
the Apache brave when drunk. Always five or six white guys ready to
take him on, and a deputy ready to make sure it was him not them who
spent the night behind bars. I realised he hadn't had much of a life,
not when the most remarkable memories were beatings. It probably came
with the brown skin and Indian name - lousy education, lousy jobs, and
taking shit from whoever was in the mood to dish it out. The fighting
had been knocked out of him by the time he returned to Butte Rock and
started sorting the rocks in the shed.
"Not much of a job," he said, "but it kept the wife and kids for a few
years."
"You've got family then."
"Wife died four years ago. That's when I moved out of the old place
into here."
He got up, shuffled to the table in the corner and took one of the
pictures to show me. It must have been almost forty years old, a grainy
black and white with clothes long out of fashion, but it was clear
enough to recognise him. He was taller then, and although his face was
already worn it had the life to make his smile convincing. He was
standing in front of a house with one arm around a woman. She also had
the brown skin, thin cheeks and dark hair, but it looked fresher; not a
beauty but a young woman who would have been pursued by plenty of young
men.
"Her name was Ilara," he said. "I used to call her Desert Bird."
A flicker of a smile again, and I realised that there was still some
emotion behind those shrinking eyes - but it was all tied up in the
past.
"Beautiful woman. She was eighteen then, and still beautiful when she
died."
It was clear that she was what had counted in his life, and I suddenly
wondered if he even remembered my mother. Then he held the picture in
his hand and began to talk about his wife. I can't remember much of
what he said, just that he had stopped boozing and fighting when he met
her, and he had nursed her for over a year when she had developed some
condition and died. By the time he had said enough to satisfy himself I
had finished the coffee.
"You said you had kids," I said. If I was going to tell him about me
this was the way in.
"Yeah, two boys."
He walked back to the table and swapped the photos for the other two.
As he offered them I took one in each hand and let my eyes move between
the two. Both were little more than kids, around eighteen, dressed in
smart US army uniforms. Both were upright with smiles not quite wide
enough to break the decorum of their uniform, probably posing on the
day they passed out of training. Both looked like Apaches, except for
the short hair, but there was something in their faces, especially
their eyes that reminded me vaguely of what I saw when I looked in the
mirror.
"Brothers." I kept the thought to myself. "I've got brothers."
The old man pointed to the picture in my left hand.
"That's Terry, the oldest." He pointed to the other. "And that's
Cody."
"They got Apache names?" I asked.
"Nah. No-one bothers now. Not here anyway. We ain't got no tourists to
impress."
"Where are they now?"
"Both dead."
The blankness slipped over his face again.
"How?"
"Vietnam. Terry got it in seventy. He'd only been there two weeks,
musta been his first time in the field. Cody lasted three months, then
he trod on a mine. They couldn't even find enough to put in a body
bag."
There was no sorrow in his voice, it was empty of emotion, but I felt
my stomach turn in reaction to something I couldn't explain. Everything
he had told me sloshed together and rose in an emotional nausea.
Suddenly I was conscious of having a dad, that he had never known me,
that now he was a sorry old man who had lost everything, and that I had
two half-brothers who had been wiped out before they had the chance to
become men. I wanted to cry and I wanted to throw up, but I kept my
mouth shut, my eyes dry and my stomach locked.
"I'm sorry, " I said after a while. "It must have been hard for
you."
"Yeah."
He took the photos from me and moved slowly back to the corner. If
there was anything he could say he wasn't going to say it to me,
probably not to anyone. He placed the pictures back on the table, moved
over to the window and stood with his back to me looking outside. An
awkward silence settled. I was still churning up inside, but for a
second I realised that if I was going to tell him about me it had to be
right then.
"Thanks for the coffee," I said. "I've got to be going now."
He looked round at me, a shrivelled little figure from another world. I
reckoned that he couldn't grasp the truth if I told him, and I knew
that I couldn't handle it.
"That's okay," he said. "Nice to meet ya."
As I stood he came towards me and offered his hand, then surprised me
with a question.
"What's your name?"
I told him, but it was my foster parents' surname I used. Then I
stepped into the street and began walking, still suppressing the
churning in my stomach. After a few steps I turned and looked back
towards the shack, but the door was already closed. I began to walk
more quickly, fighting the urge to run. I noticed the post office just
beyond the car and hoped that Burt Aracko didn't see me. Sooner or
later he would run across Grey Eagle and ask if I had found him, and
probably learn that there was no message and wonder why I had told them
different stories. He would probably guess that both had been lies.
They would think I was strange, but it didn't matter, as long as I
wasn't around.
When I got to the car I turned it around and pulled away quickly. My
mind was already beyond Tucson, running all the way back home to
Lewisham.