Another Name for Red

His name wasn’t really John. He told me that soon after he took an interest in me. What his real name was I don’t know—I’m not sure if anyone but John himself knew. I suppose he liked it that way. Liked the mystery of it. Liked knowing that he could get away with nearly anything because if we went to the cops and told them a white man in red cowboy boots who we called John but who wasn’t really named John had done such and such, the cops would be more likely to lock us up for falsifying a police report than to search for some mystery white man wearing red cowboy boots. stop

I knew of John for the first twenty-two years of my life only through rumors. He was a recluse of sorts and had become more legend than actual man—at least that’s how he seemed to me. I grew up with family stories about him, yet I knew barely anything about him. I still know barely anything about him.

The gossips said that John had moved to our reservation in Minnesota some twenty-three years ago from an unknown land—though it was assumed he was from somewhere in the States since he didn’t really have an accent. When he arrived, he’d been wearing a wedding band that he had long since taken off. My uncle told me that John lived on land that had been stolen by the state years ago during Allotment from my great-great uncle’s family. Rumors said that John killed any rez dogs that walked onto his property. He would string their bodies up in trees, necks hanging at wrong angles. The Crucifixion of Rez Dogs, some called it. Others said he was Lincoln and all them rez dogs were the Dakota on December 26, 1862.