I was born close to the summer of 1840.

The Echota treaty had been executed, and the Cherokee were removed to Oklahoma. Andy Jackson and his supporters benefitted from the millions of acres of land that were now in their hands. This was all said and done before I came along.

Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado were all territories. Once Indians had been removed from the east, they were resettled west of the Mississippi River for as long as the rivers flow and the grass grows,

Times were difficult during the Martin Van Buren presidency. I learned these things from Mrs. Taylor in the school where she taught in Colorado territory. All schools were white schools then, but I was not white, and I didn't belong in Mrs. Taylor's class.

I appeared to be white, and being white was everything at that point in time. I knew I wasn't white, but thanks to the prophet, Father Kelly, and his church, I was named Kelly and lived on a farm the prophet bought to keep Maw, and mostly Paw, out of sight and out of mind.

I never felt like I belonged on the farm or in the school, but I was warned to never tell anyone about the truth of my not being white as white could be.

There was always a piece of me missing. I knew it was missing. I didn't know what to do about it. I lived on the farm, slopped the pigs, fed the chickens, and went to school for nearabout fourteen years, or thereabouts. I didn't remember going to school.

It was the gift I was given on my fourteenth birthday that begins my journey into finding the missing piece of me. Up until then, I was a boy who done exactly what I was told to do.

This was all I knew, and I did what I was told because it was how it was. I had a powerful hankering that there should be more than this to my life.

I was who Maw and Paw, and especially The Prophet, told me I was, even when I wasn't what they told me I was. This is in the way of saying, once I was let out of Mrs. Taylor's class, I went about figuring out how to prove I was a man.

On my fourteenth birthday I was given a gift that changed everything. Most especially, it changed my mind about who I thought I might be.

It was peaceful in the valley where the river runs.

Comes an evening, once dinner's done, I took to sitting on the front porch because it's what Paw does. Maw would be cleaning, once we was out of her way. It would often be the first time in a day we'd be at the cabin together since early in the morning.

I hadn't given up on doing something that might win my father's approval. The cabin in the valley where the river runs sits on high ground. When the spring rain comes, we might be surrounded by water for a week or more. With spring rain and melting snow from nearby mountains, it fills the river to overflowing.

From our front porch, we can see the mountain peaks, the lower pasture, the river, and the wide-open pastureland spreading out beyond the river fifty weeks or so each year the water don't come up to the house.

When it floods, Paw leans on one of the support posts, holding the roof up off the front porch, looking out at the water and fretting because he can't get out of the cabin. Paw can't see the river, because the water is just below the porch, but he can see the mountain peaks. They have his attention on most days.

Paw don't have much to say to me. It goes best if I let him be. If I have a question, I takes it to Maw.

"Maw, what is it about the mountains keeps Paw watching them?"

Maw knew everything about Paw. I knew he was a hard-working farmer, working Maw's father's farm. He didn't have much to say to me. I disappointed Paw something fierce. I knew what I done, and there was no undoing it. Things was the way they was.

Maw would say, "Let it be, Gregory. Don't do no good fretting over what you can't do nothing about."

I took to watching the mountains for my own reasons just before I turned fourteen. Those mountains were going to figure into how I proved to Paw that I was a man. I wasn't sure what it might take to get the message across, but those peaks would figure into it. This I somehow knew even before I turned fourteen.

Maw gave me the answer to how the mountains would figure into proving to Paw I was a man on my fourteenth birthday. Actually, her father, Father Kelly, gave me what I needed to prove my manhood to Paw, but he didn't know it. I didn't know it at first, but like so many things, it came to me what it was I was going to do.

I had to leave to prove to Paw, I was a man. That piece had been in place since I was ten. It occurred to me without much thought being required.

Paw wasn't a talkative man. He hardly said nothing to me, except when we was hunting. We go each year about this time, after harvest is in and once autumn sets in. We usually bring back enough deer meat to last the winter.

"It's time, Gregory. Get your gear ready. Clean your squirrel gun."

We'd be gone for three days.

Paw wouldn't leave Maw alone for more than three days in those parts. Because of something that happened to Paw when he wasn't much older than me, he wouldn't leave her for too long. This was Indian country. Our farm was a ways from town. We lived about as far from town as anyone did, and Paw would be on his way home by the third day, after we hunted mostly deer.

Paw always got a buck along about the second day we was out. He knew where we were going before we left. It was never the same place two years in a row. Paw knew the land as well as anyone, and he knew where to find the deer.

Once harvest was in, Paw was a different man. Something about the hunt kept his mind off the farm and the never-ending work. He treated me as though we were doing this together. He taught me things and explained things to me when we went hunting. I looked forward to going hunting, because that's when Paw treated me like I was his son.

"Gregory, a man who can hunt, will always be able to put food on the table."

The only other thing Paw and I did together was go to town for supplies.

"Gregory, hitch Dobbin to the wagon. We got us a list your maw made up."

We'd leave off in the morning, so we'd be back before Maw put supper on the table. Dobbin wasn't what you'd call a good wagon pulling horse. He was the horse we had. He got us to town and he'd get us home. He took his time doing it.

Going to Lawrence's store was an adventure that neither of us liked much. We would buy sugar, flour, and coffee once a month or so. I went with Paw because he couldn't read and I needed to make sure we got what Maw put on her list. Paw rarely talked on these trips. He knew trouble wasn't far off when we was in town.

Going hunting and going to town was the only time I left the cabin, except for school, of course. Just before I turned fourteen, Mrs. Taylor, the teacher, let me out of school. I had gone as far as I was going with her teaching me.

One time, after watching Paw watch those mountains for a spell, I asked Maw, "What's Paw looking for, Maw? He stares at them mountains like there's something there he's trying to remember, or maybe forget?"

I was about ten and I'd been watching Paw for a long time by then. I hadn't decided to leave the cabin at that time. From time to time, I'd ask Maw about Paw.

"His people are from there, Gregory," Maw told me.

This set my mind to wandering.

"Ain't his people our people, Maw? How come we don't know them?"

"It's a long story, Gregory. One day, when you're older, I'll tell you. It ain't no easy story for me to tell. I'll tell you what your paw told me."

My imagination could take off when Maw said something like that. I couldn't have imagined what happened to Paw's people in a hundred years.

Later on, true to her word, Maw did tell it all to me. It was a hard story for her to tell, and it was no less hard on my ears. It didn't change nothing between Paw and me, but I learnt I had a brother who was kilt. Paw had another wife. She was kilt. There was a lot of death Paw left behind on the far side of the mountain.

It all happened before he met Maw and when I came along. The mountains fascinated me after that. When Paw stood on the porch looking at them, I sat nearby looking at them too. Those mountains separated Paw's past from his present. I had a hankering to know more, but Maw said, "That's all there is. Your Paw was shot chasing the men who done the killing, and I nursed him. We got fond of each other and we was married in your Grandpa Kelly's church."

"He never went back to see his people, Maw?"

"Nothing to go back to. Everyone was killed and their villages destroyed. It's not a good subject to be asking your Paw about. It took him a long time to tell me. It's why he is like he is, Gregory."

I wondered if things might have been different between Paw and me if my brother didn't die? I wondered if I'd be close to my brother, like boys at school are close to theirs. I admired how brothers stood together when there was trouble.

There weren't no children near our cabin. There wasn't nothing near our cabin but the river, the pastures, and those mountain peaks I watched for signs of snow on top. Once there was snow on top, that's when I planned to leave.

I wasn't what Paw wanted. I didn't know how to please Paw, because I seemed to be "under foot" when I was around him. The only time he didn't run me off was when he needed a good pair of hands to help him get a job done.

I don't know what he thought of my brother, but he didn't think much of me. Maybe Paw just didn't like kids. Maw treated me fine. I never went hungry, and even in the bitter cold, my bed was next to the big stone fireplace in the cabin in the valley where the river runs.

I never got cold, except while doing chores, but I went back into a nice warm cabin. I didn't care for it when it got too cold.

The heat was a different story. We had trees to shade the cabin. Being built on high ground, we caught any breeze around, but hot was hot and the summer heat was hard to escape. At ten or eleven, I discovered there was a might nice answer to the worst heat.

The river was right out our front door, and I took to soaking in it often during the summer months. It was about the best thing there was to do while I was out of school, but the summer I turned fourteen, I had been let out of school.

I made up my mind I was leaving a year or two ago. I wasn't old enough to go when I first thought of it. This year I turned fourteen. I figure I'm old enough now. I've been planning it for some time. I want to wait for the snow to be on the mountains. That would mean cooler weather was close.

Shortly after the snow appeared, Paw would say, "Get your gear ready. Clean the squirrel gun. We'll go to hunt soon."

This was good and bad by this time. Because of how Paw treated me while we hunted, it was a good time for me. Except for when we hunted, it wasn't all that good. The hunt only reminded me of how useless Paw figured I was the rest of the year.

I didn't want to move in the heat of summer. I would wait until autumn to leave, but this was the year I would go. I was fourteen. I was ready now.

After dinner, as Paw and I sat silent on the front porch, an elk or moose would wander along the bank on the far side of the river. Paw told me what they was before I knew anything. Giving me the names of things was nice.

I saw a big powerful brute of a critter two times. As they moved into view. I never seen anything as powerful looking as those two grizzly bear.

I asked Paw, "What's that, Paw."

"Wondering how long it would take you to see it. That's a grizzly bear. Not an animal to fool around with. You see a griz, you get gone," Paw told me.

The second griz I saw, I knew what it was.

"Look, Paw, a griz," I said, using Paw's word for the bear.

"I been watching him for ten minutes. You just now seeing him?"

That was Paw. I was always lacking in Paw's opinion. I thought I knew why.

Paw didn't educate me on things he knew. He told me about the land. He told me about animals. The main thing was to respect all living things. Paw remembered the things he told me. He never told me the same thing twice. If he told me something, he knew I would remember. He didn't usually say much.

I was ten when I saw me my first griz. Two years ago, I saw the second. Since I saw the first griz, I never saw another animal that looked as fierce.

"Where's he going, Paw?" I asked, after seeing the second griz.

Only the griz knows. He has got some hankering in his mind. Only a fool gets in a griz's way. They don't like it much when a fool gets in their way."

The second time I saw a griz, I had a hunch, me and the griz hadn't seen the last of one another. Our destiny would bring us together. This wasn't clear to me until my fourteenth birthday. By then I'd forgotten Paw's warning about griz.

I was fourteen. What I didn't know wasn't worth knowing. I weren't no different than any fourteen-year-old boy I knew.

When I saw a griz, I saw a creature that was free and powerful enough to do what it pleased. There was no school, no parents, no anything that was going to tell a grizzly bear what to do. That excited me deep inside.

I knew I aimed to be free like the griz. I wanted to go where no one had a say in what I did. Being free was appealing. Being free had been on my mind.

The summer I turned fourteen, I knew I was leaving the cabin in the valley where the river runs soon. I began putting things together I took when Paw and me went hunting. Paw would think I was ready to go deer hunting with him.

I would be gone before it was time to go hunting with Paw.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

It took ten minutes to walk to the river from the cabin. That time of year, I went to the river every day, stopped off and took cool comfort from the refreshing water. I would do my chores, and once I was smelling myself, I knew to rinse off before I went in for lunch. If I didn't rinse off, Maw would send me to rinse off as soon as she smelled me. No one needed to tell me to rinse off these days.

It was so nice at the river, I built it into my day. It wasn't much of a river by August. The rain was a month off if things went as usual. Paw ain't gone to get Simon yet, his hand for harvest. They would need three to four weeks to get the harvest in.

I could have done what Simon did, but I was a might disagreeable once I knew I was leaving. Paw wouldn't have me under foot no longer. When I left the cabin each morning, I was heading to feed the pigs, goats, chickens and Dobbin. I cleaned up after our critters, and by the time I finished with the pigs, I was ready for a good rinse in the river. I was both hot and sweaty by the time I took to leaning on the fence at the pig pen to watch Paw lean on what was handy. Following his eyes, I knew where my eyes would end up.

I knew his story by the time I was ready to leave. I knew what happened to his people and my brother. It helped me understand things going on inside of me, but it did nothing to close the distance between Paw and me. I gave up on Paw liking me. Only when we hunted did he relax enough to teach me what he knew, and this was the year Paw would go hunting without me being under foot.

My teacher asked me once, "What do you do at home, Gregory."

She wasn't picking on me. It's what she asked all her students at one time or another. I didn't have any difficulty telling her what I did.

"I feeds our pigs, chickens, and goats," I tells her. "I keep their pens clean."

"Gregory?" Mrs. Taylor asked. "How do you keep a pig pen clean?"

Mighty good question. I had no answer. I did what I did and since no one took me to task, I figured I was doing fine. The pigs did what they did, and there was no use telling them to do different, because they did what they did.

The cabin was built on the highest ground around. I knew about floods since I was little. I would stand on the front porch and look out and see nothing but water. The field on the far side of the river was flooded. The floods came in the spring. The rains came and the mountain snows melted.

It met in the valley where the river runs. I can't say how far the river flooded beyond the cabin, because there was no way to get out of the cabin.

For a week, maybe two, I would be in knee deep water going to the barn to take care of the critters. The barn was built on high ground too. The goats and chickens stayed high and dry, not so much the pigs. Pigs do what pigs do. Standing in water was fine. Just don't forget to dump the garbage into their pen.

"How do you keep a pig pen clean?"

It wasn't cold when it flooded. It wasn't warm and I couldn't find the river, because I was standing in it, and by the time I got back to the house, I was soaked. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace, which is where I stripped out of my clothes. I hung them up to dry near the fire, and I let the fire dry me out.

Paw stayed in the house. He stood at the front door, or he stood at the back door, but he didn't go out. He couldn't do anything until the water went back in between the riverbanks. So, Paw stood at the door watching the water.

One year, I was maybe ten or eleven, Paw said, "Boy, put some clothes on. You're too old to be standing around like that. Ain't you got no sense?"

I suppose I didn't. It's how I did it as far back as I remembered. I was growing hair in places hair never grew before, and it was about this time I noticed a smell that was downright annoying. It was coming from me. I never noticed it before. My body was changing. My brain had started getting big ideas. I figured I was becoming a man, but when I saw other boys my age, they looked like boys.

I didn't know it was part of becoming a man. I looked like no man I saw.

When I went to talking in school, sometimes I sounded like a bullfrog croaking. Other times I sounded like a girl squeaking out my words. I got laughed at when these sounds came out of me and filled the classroom.

I wasn't the only boy croaking and squeaking. Billy Bogs began to sound like he was speaking with his head in a barrel. Even I got a laugh out of his voice, but once he got into that barrel, his old voice never came out. He had the deepest voice I think I'd heard. He was twelve and a little older than me. I had company with the changes, but all the boys who avoided girls like they had pox started hanging around them looking like they hadn't eaten in a spell.

At the house, nothing changed. Paw and I got along less and less. He rarely had anything to say to me, but if I done something he didn't like, he would bring it up over dinner. He couldn't tell me what he had to say while we was out, he had to wait until we was in the cabin and make me about as angry as I got.

"Maw, why don't Paw like me? What did I do?"

"Gregory, your Paw is a difficult man. It's not you. You've done nothing. When a thing is like it is, it's easiest when you face that it ain't going to change."

I couldn't ignore Paw's anger. I was becoming a man, and I intended to prove to him that I was a man and that was that. If he didn't treat me like it, I could go for good. I didn't need to stay where I wasn't wanted.

The only time Paw let me help him was when he needed an extra pair of hands, and then he'd only ask me if Simon wasn't there. Paw worked well with Simon, a slave who came west to get himself free. He lived close by and Paw used him a couple of times a year. Maw sent baked goods home with him, and when we butchered, Simon always got a share. Paw had no money and this is how Simon got paid.

I could of done what Simon did by that time, but he didn't need my help, and Maw give me my chores, and it was always working somewhere Paw weren't. Maw never had nothing to say when Paw and I had words. That made it worse.

I would do something to prove I was a man. I would be every bit as good a man as Paw was. I weren't going to treat my kids the way Paw treats me. Paw ain't never hit me, and I'm powerfully proud of that. He could probably kill me if he did. I ain't no match for him, but I got some pride and my patience has run out. I'm watching the mountain for snow.

I would already have gone if it weren't so dang hot. I knew better than going on a hunt before the first freeze. It was a rule if you expect to stay healthy.

Maw said once I was grown, Paw's see me differently, and I could look forward to that, but I can't grow no faster than I done. Once I proved myself, I would be willing to shake his hand and start a new, if he would.

It's like other thoughts I has. They make me feel good, but they ain't going to be happening and I knows it I made up my mind. I'm ready to go.

Waiting is the worst. Now that I'm grown, I don't want to wait no longer.

I been too young up to now. I had school I wanted to finish. I was let out of school just short of my fourteenth birthday. Nothing left to keep me here. All I am waiting for is to see snow on the mountain.

Mrs. Taylor said, 'You gone about as far as I can take you. Most other boys don't go as far as you've gone. No more I can teach you, Gregory. It's time you learned to do whatever it is you intend to do. You'll do fine."