Raymond Moses, Early June

So a truck comes this morning to haul away two abandoned cars
from the big open space overlooking Tulalip Bay, the big open space where
Indians set up fireworks stands every year and
sell to townspeople for celebrating the fourth of July.

Walking from the longhouse to the school,
tribal elder Raymond Moses pauses to watch the junkmen maneuver
their wrecker’s towing crane into position and hoist both of the
beat, windowless hulks, one at a time, onto a flatbed trailer.

Raymond owns a little bit of July fourth, having been decorated for
bravery in Korea, fighting for the same army that killed so many Indians.
“Ironic, enit?” He grins, “But just like in World War II,
the other side would’ve done us even worse.”

Hitching at his Levis and tugging the bill of his “Korea Veteran” cap,
the old brave spits through stained teeth into the gravel and strides
slowly across the road, onto the parking area shared by tribal court,
tribal assistance and the tribe’s alternative school for Indian kids.

Inside the school office, Raymond Moses glances out to
see the truck and trailer heading to town with the two wrecks and
those old eyes that watch the tribe’s children daily in school,
those old eyes take on a familiar expression.

A horizon-gaze, brows compressing, almost squinting as when
a voter sees the same old politics, or a laborer looks at his paycheck and feels ripped off,
or like when the mother greets her teen daughter
coming home disheveled, just after dawn.

Some kids call Raymond “Teatmus,” storyteller or teacher in Lushootseed,
the pre-invasion language, and he watches them grow through childhood
when he’s not busy taking care of the tribal longhouse where one day,
those who stay may dance the rites of passage.

Raymond sees grandchildren of his contemporaries outgrow the
elementary school, middle school, high school, he watches dark eyes
peek through straight black hair at the sad path of parents who
bought at the carry-out because they weren’t welcome at the bar.

Raymond Moses grins at hiphop clothes, juvie detention haircuts
he acknowledges resigned faces and he looks off when kids
make fun of the old ways, because he knows, when these kids
go into town they pass dozens of mute road signs naming their relatives.

At every curve, every crossroads on the road to town,
signs stand black and white and silent alongside the old road
“DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE (in memory of Jones, Hatch, Young,)
“DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE (in memory of Williams, Cleveland, Zackuse)
“DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE (in memory of Hillaire, Parks, Fryberg, Henry)
“DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE (in memory of dad, mom, uncle, auntie…).”
And long before legal age they drink on the way to town.

Raymond knows the signs along Tulalip Road, the road to town, built
decades ago by braves caught speaking their language or their beliefs,
braves on a chaingang along Tulalip Road where nowadays
signs name Indians who drank their way along that road — eased their pain, enit?

Painful how the land was taken, the language was taken, the old names
were taken and the old ways were taken and folks hung on to poverty
cause it was all they had left besides the pain of being unwelcome along
streets built on their ancestors’ ten thousand year homeland.

Raymond’s old eyes show that loss, that resignation of witnessing the
drunken, mistaken exit of a loved one who may soon be named on a new
sign along Tulalip Road, or who may someday return to slowly fall apart
like these two abandoned wrecks on their last ride to the junkyard.

A while after the truck disappears up Tulalip Road, children
wander in to begin their schoolday, and Raymond Moses greets them
by name, greets them with a smile, with old eyes full of high expectations,
expectations that some will grow up strong and the tribe will survive.

©Thomas Hubbard
Fall 2000