Free The Brave by Robert Lipsyte Page A

of both sides.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œThe white side thinks you’re too good to work hard, and the Indian side thinks you’re not good enough to make it.”
    Around them the Reservation stirred, cars growled to life, doors slammed, stoves clattered. Sonny felt naked.
    â€œNow you got to get the best of both sides.” Jake slapped his arm. “Get some clothes on. Make you breakfast.”
    Jake was waiting for him on the back porch with pitchers of water and orange juice and a large bowl of oatmeal. A golden coin of honey stared up from the center of the cereal. “Sootheyour stomach. Start drinking eight glasses of water every day, two glasses of juice.”
    Jake watched him eat. “Walk around the house to digest, then go back to sleep. When you wake up, we’ll go for a little run.”
    He followed Jake’s pointing finger past the auto junkyard to the hills of Moscondaga, green in the morning sun, striped with twisting brown trails. “Each day we run a little more, carry more weight. One day we’ll run up to Stonebird. Leave you there.”
    The oatmeal soothed his stomach. Jake mixed water and juice in a glass. It went down easy. He felt better.
    â€œAfter the solo, you be ready.”
    â€œFor Donatelli’s Gym?”
    â€œTo follow the Hawk,” said Jake.

12
    P AIN CHEWED AT every angle and crevice of his body. His toes hurt, his hips hurt, his eyelids. A hammer pounded his swollen red scars. But Jake pushed him through it. “’S okay, just pain,” he’d say, and they’d jog on along the trail, Jake humming, Sonny gasping. His hands ached from squeezing chunks of tire rubber from the junkyard to build up his wrists and forearms. His insteps were raw from the dawns’ bare-foot stick dances.
    The first week was a blur. Jake shook him awake at first light and dragged him outside to stretch and bend and twist until skin and muscle and tendon burned. Then they would kick the sticks from foot to foot and back and forth between them in ever more complicated patterns. After breakfast and a long walk, there would be word games and string games, then a run. The rising sun softened the edges of his mind, like a flame on wax. He thought only ofhis training now, each day denser, more difficult, more painful. He chopped wood to build up his shoulders and back. He leaped across the creek, from slippery stone to slippery stone, to improve his balance. He sensed they were being watched by others on the Res, he thought of the wolves and mountain lions of Whitmore. Jake didn’t seem to care. Once, when they both noticed the sudden glint of sunlight on the distant lenses of binoculars, Jake just chuckled and said, “Chiefs’ll send someone over soon, check us out.”
    He helped Jake in the junkyard. They prospected through the acres of crumpled cars for an odd part someone had called for, a dashboard gauge from a rare imported car, an antique hood ornament, the motor from a discontinued model. He enjoyed working with Jake, feeling useful. They didn’t talk much, pulling away rotting seat cushions, grunting as small animals leaped out to set the dogs barking ferociously in pursuit, straining together to lift out an engine.
    A good find meant they’d drive into Sparta to deliver the part, then use some of the cash for a load of meat and vegetables and fruit, andon the way back a video cassette, sometimes the karate movies Jake liked, often a boxing tape. They would watch until one of them began to yawn.
    At night Jake sat on the edge of Sonny’s bed, pressing his thumbs into the tender muscles of Sonny’s legs and back, kneading out the pain, crooning stories.
    â€œOne time, on a mission for the Nation, my grandfather got bit on the leg by a rattler. Knew if he kept moving, poison go to his heart. So he shut himself down. Put himself into the ‘little death.’ Closed down his veins and arteries,