A Boy Named Sioux

Kevin L. Van Dee

Kinross Middle School housed both fifth and sixth graders, and I was the younger. The year was 1970—a year of change and turmoil in America. The Jackson 5 first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, Nixon secretly invaded Cambodia, the first Earth Day flopped, the Beatles disbanded, four students were shot dead at Kent State University, the Apollo 13 disaster transpired, Vietnam languished on, Janis Joplin overdosed, and the proudest injustice I ever endured befell my American Indian friend and me. The battle began before the start of the school day while being bussed to Kinross that brisk autumn morning in early October, but racial and class warfare led to the event against my blood brother and me.

For rural Iowa kids, bussing was a fact of life. When the government began closing down our outdated country schools in the 1950s, we were integrated into the city schools. Bussing was the vehicle for that change.

Getting ready for school meant dragging myself out of bed early in the morning as we were one of the first families on the route. My brothers and sisters and I took turns hurriedly scouting out the first-floor west window of our big two-story square white farmhouse for Bob Hervey’s black and yellow bus to reach the McGuire’s home about a mile up the road. Then we knew it was time to trek down our long, gravel lane—sometimes in the mud, snow, rain, wind, heat, or cold—to synchronize our arrival so as to not upset the man. If we were tardy, we felt his wrath as it slowed him down from his appointed duties.

Bob was a tall, slender, handsome bachelor who kept his bus neat and orderly. He had a self-installed, immense, red square radio dialed to the KIOA-AM station (there was no FM radio back then) out of Des Moines, Iowa, where they played the best rock and roll music of the day. The DJs played mostly top forty music like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and The Rolling Stone’s “Honky Tonk Women” along with cutting-edge music like Desmond Dekker and The Aces’ “Israelites” and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Woodstock.” For this street-wise ten-year-old kid with hip older brothers and sisters, I knew my rock and roll. The music was a part of the times. My brother-in-law had just been sent to Vietnam, and we were all worried sick for his safety. The daily number of dead being reported on the nightly news was staggering. Yet, CSN&Y’s lyrics from their song “Woodstock” that ”the bomber jet planes riding shotgun in the sky, turning into butterflies above our nation” allowed us to hope that peace might somehow be possible while their lyrics that “we [were] ten-billion-year-old carbon” also put our insignificance into perspective.

Bob had three basic unwritten rules: never disrespect the music, never get his bus messy, and never fight. I liked all three. However, during my fifth-grade year, I had to agonize through a second bus trip with a different bus driver. During one day in particular, it was anarchic.

Mike Little and I met a year or two earlier. He was a year older than I. One of the first things I remember about my friend was his affirming to me that “I’m an America Indian,” and I proclaimed back to him, “I don’t care.” He gave me that slight, upturned grin I learned later rarely crossed his normally stoic face. It was a nice face—honest, strong, trustworthy, smooth and square. I often went to his house to hang out when we weren’t running around town. Mike lived just west of North English in the country with his mother and stepfather. His parents frequently got drunk on cheap whiskey and fought. Mike also had three younger sisters he rarely talked about. However, one time they all laughed that the ketchup splattered on the false ceiling wasn’t actually their mother’s blood. I wasn’t necessarily convinced.

When classes began in 1970, I was bussed to North English from my farm home eight miles west of town where I then waited to be bussed to Kinross, an even smaller town in our school district about ten miles farther east. We students formed a line to get on the Kinross bus, but there was no supervision and the environment often got chaotic. Lots of pushing and shoving. Country kids were used to being bussed, but it was new to many of the city kids, and some imposed their dominance as the year progressed. I tried to get along, but Mike wasn’t aways that way. He stood up for himself—and for me.

I normally liked that time of year. Being a farm kid, I was close to nature. I liked the changing leaves from green to yellows and browns, the harvesting of crops. Some of the activities going on that time of year were my favorite pursuits —football, hunting and Halloween. Autumn gives me a sense of melancholy that some people don’t like. It’s comforting to me somehow. Both Mike and I shared that love of nature. It was in our blood.

As we boys jostled for position while waiting in line—and the girls looked on in disgust—it happened. Mark Ackerman butted ahead of me from way back. He broke a rule that we all knew crossed the line. I knew it as well, but I didn’t know what to do. The whole world seemed like they were fighting at the time without successfully resolving any issues, so I decided to just let him get away with his aggression.

I looked like a coward to all the other boys, and then Mark turned and laughed in my face! Immediately, I heard Mike’s soaring howl from behind me. “That’s a bunch of shit, Kevin!” I’d never heard Mike cuss before. Then it began. Their bantering over me, both literally and figuratively. It was like something I’d never heard or seen. I’d known Mark a lot longer. He went to our church. His younger brother, Paul, was in my class and was a good friend, but Mark was the black sheep of a well-respected family. (Later in life he would get into a little trouble, but that’s another story).

Suddenly, I hoped my problems might end when Smokey Stoner’s bus pulled up, but after we all got on board the prairie wars not only persisted, they escalated.

Smokey’s reputation preceded my first encounter with him. His driving strategy was the exact opposite of Bob Hervey’s. He was short, chubby, dirty like his bus—with holes in his clothes and in his vinyl seats—and, even if he played music, it wouldn’t have been heard above all the mindless and ceaseless chatter. By the time we staked out our places on the bus, sides had been drawn. There was Mike and me and Mark and several of his gang. I was so scared I cannot remember to this day who the other boys were, but they were the same kids I grew up with. They were good people, just not that day.

Mark and Mike strategized over their conflict. Mark was all mouth, shouting, “Go back to the reservation, Geronimo!” and “You’re ugly, you stinking red man!” while Mike worked on his cold, steely stare like a wild animal stalking its prey ready to strike at a moment’s notice. I was terrified for Mike and myself, but I also feared for Mark. There had been a turf war earlier that summer between Mike and my cousin, a tough city kid, and Mike easily stood his ground. I knew Mark’s lip was dangerous.

All I really knew was that we were surrounded by several of Mark’s sixth-grade friends who were reveling in the battle, and there was no one there to intervene. If we had been on Bob’s bus, none of this would have been happening. I looked up at Smokey’s face in his mirror for some sort of intervention. I could see he had no interest in what was going on behind him. His gaze was solely on the road ahead. Smokey was like so many “good” Americans who were oblivious to the problems going on in the country, and he was oblivious to the merciless injustice we were facing from these “good” American kids.

When we arrived in Kinross, the entourage flowed into the school, seemingly unnoticed by all authority. Somehow we worked our way to the second-floor boys’ bathroom. Time passed quickly. Mark continued jawing while Mike glared him down. The other boys were like a crowd at a yard fight, cheering their leader on to victory. Mark continued to hurl insults. The bell rang, and then it happened. Like an overpowering prize fighter, Mike sprung with a blizzard of punches to Mark’s face, and in a matter of seconds it was all over. Everyone grew silent—stunned. We left the scene, awed by what we’d just witnessed. Such finality. Such dominance. Such brutality.

When Mark emerged from the bathroom, Mrs. Hammes, my homeroom teacher, was right there and shrieked, “What happened to you?” while looking at Mark’s blue and swollen eyes. He immediately declared, “They did it to me!” somehow being able to make out both Mike and me. We were whisked to the principal’s office in front of the West German immigrant, Mr. Columbus. Mark repeated his one-sided account of our guilt while neither Mike nor I were allowed to testify. The schoolhouse injustice was swift. Mr. Columbus extracted his instrument, a thick, broad board with a handle that perfectly fit his formidable grip. We were bent over and cracked across our buttocks forcefully, first Mike and then me. We were ordered to bellow, “I will not fight in school!” at the top of our lungs with each wallop.

Our teachers escorted us back to our separate homerooms without further incident. I sat down sorely at my desk and began to cry, not from pain or shame or humiliation, but with pride—pride from of the punishment I shared with my stoic blood brother who had endured this injustice throughout much of his life.

Mike and I never talked about that day, but we bonded even more from our experience. A few weeks later, his mom suddenly left her husband, Keith Seaba, with Mike and his sisters, and I never saw my friend again. (My brother, Duane, and I recently took a drive on some backroads, and we went by his friend Keith’s place. I asked my brother if he knew anything about Mike’s story. Duane claimed “Keith was the one who kicked them out because he and his wife got drunk one night, and she told Keith that he might end up some morning with a knife stuck in him. He believed her and told them all to get the hell out.”)

Mark and I were never great friends, but one summer night several years later when we were in our early 20s I was partying with the usual gang on Main Street in North English when Mark showed up. We decided to hang out when everyone else went home. As the sun came up while parked along a dusty gravel road, Mark played Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.” We sang along together to “I knew you’d have to get tough or die, and it’s that name that helped to make you strong…and I came away with a different point of view.” I thought back to that day at Kinross Middle School, and, looking into Mark’s eyes, I wondered if that day was on Mark’s mind as well. But we never said a word. I’ve thought a lot about why we fought, because, for all Mark’s faults, he was still a really nice guy.

Mark recently died of cancer. I thought again about that cold October day in 1970 when all those boys emboldened Mark and Mike to fight. I played football with some of them in high school. We struggled during the highs and lows of trying to find an identity for our community with one of the longest losing streaks in state history. We eventually fought to win two games my senior year. I was proud to be a part of those battles. The fight with Mark haunts me to this day.