Three Bears Pt. 01

I would like to thank the many followers and others who graciously comment on my stories and send emails. I try to put something in each story to please as many as possible, but like the old Ricky Nelson song says, "you can't please everyone, so you have to please yourself."

There are no ten-inch dicks, triple F breasts or instant debauchery in this story. It has a slow start and builds gradually, if you're looking for a quick stroke story this isn't it. Though the story is about a black girl and an American Indian it is meant to be a romance/first time story and not an IR story. Hopefully, the powers that be will see it as such. The word nazi's will pick apart terminologies and references to different cultures, but then that's what they do best. This is a three-part story with all three parts finished and edited, they will be released a week apart. I trust you'll enjoy the journey.

Three Bears part one

It was another Friday night with me sitting at the far end of Gleason's Grocery Store parking lot eating salted in the shell peanuts throwing the shucks into a bucket on the passenger side floor. The "cool" kids of our small Appalachian town all drove trucks jacked up with big tires and names like Ram or Silverado with 3" tailpipes that spewed large clouds of black stinking diesel exhaust. Driving my late granddads hand me down 1961 Dodge pickup with a slant six instantly excluded me from that crowd.

Being Native American, or American Indian, whichever you prefer, and not a part of the local white or black culture I was considered as 'one of those hill people'. Which lent to me sitting on the upper end of the lot away from those guys, which kept me from getting into fights and hurting other people. I wasn't there to hang out with or hurt anyone, I was there to watch Hannah Johnson walk from the store to her car after her shift was done. Only in my dreams did I think the adult version of Hannah would ever speak to me or consider accepting an invitation to do something with me. For you see, we lived in different worlds.

Our town may call itself integrated, reality was a bit different, it was still as racially divided as it had ever been, just a bit more subtle. Oh sure, folks got along and worked together, but where they lived was another ball game altogether. The west half of town was nearly all black homes whereas the east side was nearly all white, the majority of homes on both sides of town were well-kept and modern. There was a third class of citizens that neither black nor white people tended to associate with. People like me who lived back in the hills, not off the grid, but close.

The ones people made snide remarks about family trees having no branches, all of us were supposedly uneducated worthless mooches living off the backs of others collecting welfare checks every month. To be sure there were some exactly like what I've described, however, the majority of those people living in the woods simply wanted to avoid all the noise and hubbub of town. There were no politics or drama where I lived, most of us were too far apart to care what the closest neighbor was or wasn't doing.

Then there were people like me who are even more despised. The original owners of the land, the Native Americans, my ancestry is Shawnee. Though tribes were rounded up and shipped to Oklahoma in the 1800's, some returned to re-settle in their beloved woods. Such was my great-great grandfather Black Hoof, a great Shawnee warrior chief. Though the bureau of Indian Affairs attempted to change Indian names, very few accepted them. To the best of their ability they maintained their Shawnee names, culture and ways. Of all the tribes in North America, the Shawnee have maintained and taught their language and culture to a greater degree than the rest.

My grandfather told me many stories as I grew, he had the facial features of a proud American Indian you might find on a long-ago postcard, my facial features were quite similar to his. Government officials claim there is no animosity toward indigenous people, but it still exists, as I learned when I first attended school. Having a full-blooded Shawnee mother and a half white/half Indian father didn't help things either. I was in a scuffle of some sort nearly every school day, it always had something to do with me being poor and an Indian. Or as most kids called me, a worthless half breed.

I first met Hannah when I was six years old. There were no school busses for kids who lived in the hills, if we were going to get to school, we walked. Though my folks were poor, mama saved enough money selling eggs and doing other odd jobs for people to buy a few school clothes at the thrift store and register me. She could read and write some but had only a rudimentary understanding of arithmetic. It wasn't because she was stupid, in fact she was quite smart in her own ways. Being dyslexic made learning for her extremely difficult, school systems being what they were then, she kept getting bumped to the next grade even though she was failing miserably. She left school at 16 feeling defeated and useless.

She met my old man a year later, they married, and I was born eight months after they'd said I do. My dad was a stereotypical redneck drunk, a worthless good for nothing waste of humanity who blamed everyone but himself for his miserable existence. His only redeeming quality is that he held a job at the local sawmill doing basic labor. The owner made sure my mom got half his pay every week which was just enough to keep us afloat and pay the real estate taxes each year. He drank the rest of his pay, I never saw him hit mama, but I hated him just the same. I remember the day mom came home all smiles as she hugged me.

"Three Bears, I done got you signed up in that school yonder, over by Punkin Holler. You gonna learn to do numbers and everthin."

Three weeks later at the age of seven I set out with a peanut butter sandwich in a brown bag and a few pencils in a backpack that had been thrown out because a strap was broken. Mama picked it up off the roadside, sewed the strap back on and I was on my way, trudging the three miles to school on my own. I was about a half mile from the school when I encountered a young black girl walking with an older woman. I would later find out it was her grandma. The older woman stopped and looked at me.

"You by yo'sef boy?" She asked.

"Yes'm, I live yonder by Crandall Ridge."

Holding the girl's hand tight she made a face, "Mmm, hmm, I be Granny Grace, you hill folks always was a hardy bunch but you cain't be trudgin round by yo'sef, come walk wit me an Hannah. I be a-waitin to walk wich you young-un's when school be done."

My first day of school was a pisser, my tribal name is Three bears, my English name is Jace. They couldn't decide what to call me. The Weeks boy calling me a stinkin injun during recess brought about my first school yard fight. It would not be my last by any stretch of the imagination. I was sent home early that day, the Weeks boy said I had started the fight. With a scuffed up face I met Granny Grace and Hannah the next morning where I had encountered them the previous day. As we walked Granny asked a few more questions.

"Wat happen yo face bo?"

"Got in a fight with a kid that called me a stinkin injun."

She grabbed me by the ear and made me look up, "Listen boy, you don't go fightin wit dem no count white boys. Lotsa otha kids hang out wit, neva mind dem boys. Dey git you kicked outa school."

I took her words to heart, "Yes'm."

"Wat yo mama name?"

"Mary Beth ma'am."

"Who she be from home?"

I knew what she meant, what was my mom's maiden name.

"Don't rightly know miss Granny, she comes from over Milltown way. I aint got no grandparents I know of."

"Uh-huh. She be Shawnee then aint she boy?"

"Yes'm, she's full, my daddy's half."

Granny stopped and looked me over, "Mmm-hmm, so den you be mostly Shawnee huh? I thought you was Indian. You say yo mama call you three bears? That aint gon do son, we gon call you Bo. White folk aint gon cotton to nobody named three bears. Where you say you live boy?"

"Up by Crandall Ridge."

A gentle smile came over her face, "Yo mama be da egg lady den aint she boy."

I would discover over the next few weeks that Hannah's dad would drop her off at his mother's every morning before school. Granny Grace would feed her and walk us both to school. That went on for the next three years until Granny Grace died over the summer. In all that time Hannah and I were friendly with each other when we walked, but we were never close friends. She was quiet and I was always too afraid of saying or doing something wrong, most days I was as quiet as she was.

With Granny grace no longer alive Hannah's folks arranged for an elderly neighbor to watch and get her to school in the morning. We started fourth grade together the fall after Granny died, but it wasn't the same. We would see one another in class or at recess, we'd say hi but that was all. That didn't last for more than a few weeks after school started. She had black friends who didn't want to be seen with no Indian, she chose them over me. I didn't blame her, after all, I was anything but liked at school. I wasn't white, I wasn't black, all the other Indian kids were in the upper classes, to put it mildly, I didn't fit at all.

Without Granny Grace to encourage and push me along I struggled with school, by the time I was advanced to seventh grade I was so far behind everyone else I should have been held back. But I wasn't, I failed eighth grade and was held back a year, which turned out to be a good thing. It not only gave me a second chance at education, I excelled, even if it put me a year behind the class I had been a part of. Freshman year however was a disaster, things did not click for me, I basically had no friends and whereas there had been grade schoolteachers to help. There was no time for that in high school, I was basically on my own, all of that only added to my frustrations in life.

Two months after the start of my sophomore year I turned 16, with a constant haranguing from the old man to get a job I dropped out of school. It was that winter mother went home to Jesus following a nasty bout with pneumonia. Which left me on my own for the most part, though I applied everywhere I knew, no one was interested in hiring a 16-year-old high school dropout.

I continued on with mom's chickens and egg deliveries, a few of those people enquired as to whether I would be willing to cut, split and stack firewood for them, work I gladly accepted. I had an equal amount asked if I might be willing to deliver firewood, for which they would gladly pay. Word of mouth travels fast in the back woods of West Virginia, in no time I had more requests for firewood than I could keep up with. Our property butted against four hundred acres of woods with dozens of trees that had either fallen during storms or were old enough they'd fallen over, and an owner who was happy as pie for me to cut and clear all I wanted.

With what little money I had and some bargaining I was able to buy a mule and some old harness to skid logs. I picked up a used Stihl 031 chainsaw at an auction and was officially in the firewood business. I didn't own a splitter, I spilt everything by hand with a maul and wedges, to say my body toned quickly would be understating the obvious. My biggest issue was delivering wood, I was using the mule to pull a small wagon, but it was slow going, I was missing out on sales.

With mama gone the old man took to the bottle heavier than ever before, I was on my own all the time when I turned 17 the following November. By spring he wasn't much more than a pickled human being, by summer he'd lost his job. Two months after my 18^th birthday as I headed out on a delivery, I found him lying dead on the road leading to our property. His life ended the day mother died, it had taken him a little over a year to finally kill himself. When we buried mom there had been a dozen or more people at her funeral, when they chucked my worthless father in the ground, other than the grave diggers, it was only me and the preacher.

By most folks' standards my mother wasn't an educated person, but she must have foreseen the future. Before she died, she convinced the old man to make a living will leaving everything to me when both had deceased. Mind you it wasn't much, a small run-down house in desperate need of repairs, 57 acres of land and my granddads 1961 Dodge pickup which hadn't run since pa lost his job. I traded two cords of wood to have it tuned up and was able to begin delivering firewood more quickly and further away from home.

Though the world and our little city had advanced into the twenty first century, it was as though the backwoods areas were still thirty years behind. Town people had most of the amenities they wanted, beyond town, things were not the same. There was no cell coverage where I lived, I felt lucky to have electricity, the internet was as foreign to me as outer space. I would hear people talk about it, but I didn't miss what I didn't have, to me it was no big deal. I had a landline phone, power, and after the toilet was repaired, I was no longer walking to the outhouse to relieve myself.

The kids I'd gone to school with were due to graduate that spring, I went and sat in the bleachers watching those I knew walk across the stage receiving a handshake and diploma as their reward. It was there that I saw Hannah again for the first time in over two years. As the afternoon sun shown on her burnt sienna skin I remembered how much I loved to look at her when we walked together. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen of any color or nationality, now she was even more beautiful as a young woman.

Knowing I wouldn't be welcomed by anyone following the ceremony I quietly exited toward the parking lot. I had let my coal black hair grow since leaving school, it was in a braid part way down my back, much like I'd seen in a picture of my great grandfather. I was almost to the truck when I felt a soft tug on my hair, normally that would have brought an ass kicking, but when I spun with my fist cocked and ready to nail whoever had pulled my hair, my eyes lit up.

Hannah was smiling as she spoke, "Bo, is that you? Oh my gosh, how long has it been?"

I smiled as she said the only name she had ever called me, Bo. Never halfbreed, or a half dozen other nasty names, always Bo.

"Hi Hannah, I watched you cross the stage, you look beautiful as ever. Your all growed up, I reckon you'll be goin to a big college now."

I knew how to speak properly but didn't do so purposely, people thinking I was ignorant gave me an advantage. With no TV reception where I lived my time at night was filled with books and an occasional Cd I watched on the sixteen-year-old TV. I didn't graduate from high school, but I also hadn't ignored the process of learning just because I wasn't in a classroom.

She smiled as she responded, "Actually, I'm going to the tech school, Doc Walton's dental assistant is retiring, he promised the job to me after I finish. I might go on to be a hygienist later, I'm not sure. I just started working after school and weekends at Gleason's over the winter, I thought I might have seen you there by now."

"Yeah, if I need groceries I usually go first thing when they open at seven. Doesn't take me long to get what little I need, that's probably why you haven't seen me."

I could hear someone calling her name, so did she but ignored them.

"What are you doing these days Bo? Sorry to hear your mama died, do you still deliver eggs like she used to?"

I shook my head, "Nope, when the last hens stopped layin I decided to focus on just my wood business. Doin okay, I make enough to pay utilities and buy groceries. I watch what I spend so there's enough left over to save for property taxes, lotsa hours, but what the heck, I'm young."

I watched as two rather large black guys walked up behind her, she must have seen the direction of my eyes change and turned around as they got close. The taller of the two was anything but pleasant.

"Why you talkin to that tree nigger Hannah? Come be with yer own people and leave this fool alone."

Over her shoulder she said softly, "I'll see you Bo."

The tall one took her elbow and while looking back at me proclaimed, "You won't be seein nobody girl."

I'd been called a tree nigger before, Tonto, Geronimo, Cochise, red skin, half breed, and a plethora of other racial tropes, most times it didn't bother me, but for some reason this time it did. Had it been just the two of them and Hannah not around I'd have gone nose to nose with both. I may have gotten my ass kicked but they damned sure would have known they'd been in a fight to the finish. I never went looking for a fight, but if someone was dumb enough to start one, I was more than happy to finish it. Say what you like about the difference in people, but I had come to realize there was as much hatred in some blacks as there was in some whites. I once had an older black lady say to me after delivering and stacking her wood.

"I only like nice white folk, you be one a dem."

I replied, "Well that makes two of us, cuz just like you I only like nice white people. I can't imagine you like every black person you've ever met."

She smiled and handed me a small zip bag with cookies like she usually did, "You be right boy.

These be for you, enjoy um."

Sitting in my truck following the altercation in the parking lot I watched as Hannah received hugs and cards from relatives and friends. I envied her that luxury, I was happy for her, she deserved all the accolades they were willing to heap on her. At that moment I made the decision to shop later one evening just to see if I might catch a glimpse of her. A few nights later as I entered her checkout lane I saw the light turn off and a lane closed sign appear. When I looked up she was surprised.

"I'm sorry Bo. I didn't see you, my shift is over and I'm done for the day."

I nodded and moved behind the lady in the next lane, as Hannah got to the door she was met by the same tall guy that had been in the parking lot the day of her graduation. I heard her say in a disgusted manner.

"You need to stop coming here, I can get home just fine. Go be with your wife and kids."

As I was checking out I enquired what the confrontation at the door had been about. Lois looked at me and hurrumphed.

"Her brother is here every night when she gets done, the girls near 19 and he still thinks she's a little girl. There's such a thing as being protective and then there's what that idiot does. I'm as black as she is and been workin here ten years since high school, aint nobody ever messed with me anymore than they would mess with Hannah."

I decided I had enough drama in my life to not get involved in a family shit storm and stayed away. I went back to shopping in the morning and didn't see Hannah for several weeks. That is until a Saturday morning. I had neglected to shop earlier in the week while I concentrated on completing deliveries before the cold set in and was in need of some basics that I thought I could get quickly. Hannah was standing at her register looking at the door when I walked in, she gave me a timid wave and turned back to the register. I tried to engage her in conversation as I checked out, to no avail. As she was handing me the change she said soft enough that only I could hear.

"I shouldn't be talking with you, if my brother finds out it won't be good for me or you. He says I can only talk with black guys. Sorry."

Never knowing what her schedule was I started the ritual I mentioned at the beginning of my story. Sitting in the parking lot eating salted in the shell peanuts, hoping she might be working. Even if she wouldn't or couldn't talk to me, I could at least catch a glimpse as she went to her car. This would be one of those nights, when she was about thirty feet from her car one of the souped-up trucks that generally set on the other end of the lot where they drank beer and talked smart rolled between her and the vehicle. I knew who the guy was, it was the Weeks boy and two of his miscreant friends.