The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction by Bernard Malamud

slept with his eyes open. He slept staring at the tribe’s documents he had left behind in the Commissioner’s office. They were scattered everywhere. He ran after them in dreams to retrieve the papers, but they were forever flying out of sight. Yozip had lost the documents Chief Joseph had entrusted to him and asked him to return. The ex-peddler woke to punish himself whenever he momentarily slept.
    “The first time they send me on a job I come back without papers and without any luck. Everybody in the tribe will be ashamed and disgusted.”
    At Helena, the train slowed and Yozip considered jumping off and disappearing into the night. But as the locomotive drew to a slow stop dawn was beginning and the new Indian, with a cry of surprise, recognized Bessie herself waiting for him untied at a hitching rail. He looked for Indian Head and some of the other braves and saw none. The horse alone had come for him. Bessie let out a motherly whinny. Either she had been sent to get him or had remembered where to find him, and had gone there by herself. Or perhaps she had waited for him, foraging what she could until his return. Dear Bessie.
    Yozip kissed his horse on the head, mounted her with his meager bundle of clothes, and rode off in the direction of the valley. From time to time he pulled at the mare’s halter, trying to turn her and
go elsewhere, in another direction; but the animal insisted on carrying him toward the long valley. Yozip in anger slapped Bessie with his hand. The horse froze and refused to budge. Yozip gave up and let her bring him back to the tribal grounds. Neither apologized to the other.
    He went, after a while, to the chief’s tall blue tepee, stopping outside a minute to revive his wits. He whistled to himself and waited. Yozip then poked his head into the tepee and saw that One Blossom wasn’t there. Entering, he found the old chief lying on his back on the frozen ground.
    The new tribesman moaned. “So are you all right?” he asked the old chief.
    The chief muttered that he was not far from death.
    “So stay alive, Chief Joseph,” Yozip said. “What will we do without you? If you go away where will we go? What will the tribe do?”
    “Ah, you have called me by my father’s name,” said the old chief. “He was a wise man who taught me in few words the depth of his experience.”
    “In Washington,” Yozip said, “I told them what you said I should tell them, but I didn’t do a first-class job. Nobody wished to tulk to me there. Also I lost the papers of the tribe. I was stupid to let the assistant man take them away even for five minutes. I feel now to cry like a child because I did not protect the property of the People. I was not a first-class manager.”
    “Crying is for children,” said Joseph hoarsely. “And it is not useful, because I had these papers copied by a scribe after I had signed the first treaty for this valley. I did not trust the whites.”
    “That made me a heartache because I thought I had lost them.”
    “We may know where evil begins, but not where it ends.”
    Yozip asked the old chief what he could do for him now. “Should I call maybe the medicine man with the purple feathers that he sometimes makes you laugh?”
    “Keep him away from me. He smells of goat turd.” The old man’s laugh racked him. He coughed brutally. Yozip wished he knew how to help him. It struck him again how ignorant he was.
    He sat on the ground warming Joseph’s head with his hands.

    The chief was dying, his voice was thickly hoarse.
    “Where is One Blossom?” Yozip asked. “Where is also Indian Head?”
    The chief smiled as though to himself. “They speak their words of love.”
    “Now? When you are so sick?”
    “What better time to love? For myself I have no fear. The Great Spirit touches me with his finger. I am warm.”
    Yozip said he would look for them.
    “There will be time for that. Now I want to talk to you. There is something to do for us. Yozip, the council of