Free The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction by Bernard Malamud Page B

go home!” He tried to grab the umbrella but she was strong and fought him for it. Jozip struggled for breath, vigor, enlightenment.
    “You bastard murderer!” she screamed. “You have killed my husband!”
    He caught the umbrella handle in the dark but she clawed his face. Jozip cried out.
    Two men appeared then in the dimly lit cell. Jozip shouted for
help but there was none. The men beat him brutally. One man held him down while the other hit him until his face was wet with blood. The second man kicked him in the head. He could not recall what had happened after that.
    Jozip fainted and lay on the cold planks until the colonel’s aide came for him in the morning. He was allowed to wash his swollen face before appearing in the colonel’s office.
    “Chief,” said the colonel, looking at him with distaste, “I am sure distressed to hear about your unhappy adventure last night. I had a toothache and took a slug of gin before I went to sleep. I owe you an apology, but this revenge against you was done behind my back. You have to believe that one of your assailants was the wife of Ezra Pence, the settler who was killed by Indians of your tribe. The other was his brother, and with him came a dear friend of Ezra’s. We had all we could do to prevent the brother and Ezra’s friend from cuttin’ your throat and scalpin’ you. I always said that bad leads to worse. I assure you I was dismayed by this incident and am releasin’ you at once. I would have done it sooner but I had my toothache to attend to.”
    The colonel permitted Jozip to wash his face in a bucket of water in the toilet. He looked at the mirror and shrank from the sight of his battered head.
    “This serves me right,” he said to himself, “because I went to the fort and first I did not tell the tribe. This was wrong, to go without a friend.”
    Indian Head was waiting for him on his pony. He let out a shout. “Great God, what has happened to your face? Who beat your head like that?”
    “I made a mistake,” said Jozip, “which I will not make the same mistake again.”
    One Blossom was disturbed by his face but said nothing.
    “Now we must find those braves that they killed the settler,” Jozip said.
    “We know those who killed the settler in the woods,” said Indian Head.
    “Aha,” said Jozip. “Did they confess to you?”
    “Nobody confessed but we know who they are.”

    “I will tulk to them,” said Jozip.
    Windy Voice, Foxglove, and Small Horse assembled with Indian Head in Jozip’s tepee. They stared in surprise at his black-eyed, beaten face but said nothing. Two were young men. Only Foxglove was as old as thirty.
    Jozip shook his finger in their faces. “Why did you kill a white man for nothing, which we have never done such a bad thing before?”
    Small Horse said they had drunk firewater before going into the woods. “The old man had another bottle with him and we drank it and gave him ours. It was a fair exchange.”
    “Except that he is now scolped and dead, and you are all alive. Who took his scolp off?”
    The braves said nothing.
    “Are you sorry you did this terrible crime? If you don’t answer me, then I got to ask you to leave this tribe. Now is not a time for more trouble than we already got. Now is the time to stay together because they want to take away from us our land.”
    “I don’t feel sorry for that drunk bastard,” said Foxglove.
    “I will apologize,” Small Horse said, “because it was the wrong time.”
    “That goes for me too,” said Windy Voice after a minute.
    “I will not apologize,” Foxglove said. “The whites are spying on our tribe. They are trying to force us off the land. I have no love to waste on them.”
    “This is not a question of love, this is a question of justice.”
    “How much justice have they given to the Indians?” Small Horse asked.
    “I fuck them all,” said Foxglove.
    “Who took his scolp off?” Jozip said.
    No one spoke.
    Jozip studied them.
    He told Small