Chapter 32

So, of course, all of us set our books aside and talked to those around us. Cheryl Hawthorne was sitting next to me. I didn’t know her; she was a new transfer in. We introduced ourselves then spent the time chatting.

She was kind of cute, being tall, thin, dark-haired with the largest eyes you could imagine. Her face would be described as fine-featured with high cheekbones. She had not made my list of the twenty best looking girls because I hadn’t thought of her, but she wasn’t bad.

I asked her what she had done to get detention. It appears she was late to one of Miss Bales English classes. I told her I had been busted daydreaming in Latin. She commented at least I wasn’t just plain dreaming, she thought that must be the most boring class in school.

I told her that having Latin was turning out to be a good underpinning for Spanish as you could see where words had come from. She rattled off a phrase in Spanish.

“Do you speak it very well?”

“Not that good but a little.”

“Where are you learning it?”

I proceeded to tell her about Mrs. Hernandez. She became a little excited.

“My mother is in Spanish. Dad married her in Spain when he was stationed there in the Air Force. She would love to meet someone who can speak Spanish. Her English is pretty good, but she would love to hold an adult conversation with another woman.”

“Why don’t you bring her over to my house and I will introduce them.”

“Could we do it tomorrow?”

“I will check tonight. What is your phone number?”

“513-555-6693; let me write it down for you.” As she handed me her phone number Mr. Hurley came back into the room. The phone number was on a plain sheet of paper that she hadn’t folded so he saw it as he walked by.

Mr. Hurley shook his head and said something about fast workers.

When I returned home I planned to start the project of typing out the letters from the various Presidents, Kings, and high officials that had been written to Chief Blackhoof. They all had a common thread. We will be your friends forever. We respect your land, till the grass is no longer green and the sun doesn’t rise, and oh, by the way, can we have this little bit?

Dad used the term, “Nibbled to death by ducks.”

That is what happened to the Indians, it took two hundred years but the eastern tribes were nibbled to death.

Mum told me she had the address of the Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma so I could write that letter anytime. I did that first. I let the photographs speak for themselves. I told the Shawnee that I had come across papers and medals by accident and gave a brief history of how it came about.

I told them that since they appeared to be the rightful owners and to avoid all the legal problems that I would prefer to hand them to the Shawnee directly.

I addressed it to, “The Office of the Chief of the Shawnee.” I had no idea what they called the head person of the tribe but this would get it to the right people. I signed the letter. I asked Mum to review it before I sealed the envelope. She thought it was fine and would get Dad to drop it off at the post office tomorrow.

I told her about Mrs. Hawthorne wanting to meet another person who really spoke Spanish and asked if she could stop over tomorrow to meet Mrs. Hernandez.

“It is fine with me, but does Mrs. Hernandez want to meet anyone? You had better ask her.”

As soon as Mrs. Hernandez arrived I asked her. You would’ve thought I had given her an extra birthday present.

“Oh yes, Rick. I would love to talk to another woman in my native language. You don’t know how hard it is at times to be alone like I am.”

We read the Cuban newspaper. Our papers were dated. On December 19 Che Guevara’s brigade captured the city of Fomento. Mrs. Hernandez had brought a map of Cuba and we had been following Castro’s progress.

She was very concerned about the whole situation. She understood why the U.S. government had stopped supplying arms to Batista but in doing so they had opened the door to the communist Castro.

She didn’t understand why the U.S. newspapers all supported Castro when everyone knew he was a Communist. He was getting his money and arms from the communist revolutionaries who had just taken over Venezuela. She wanted Cuba to be free, not to exchange one dictator for another.

After Mrs. Hernandez left I called Cheryl and invited her and her mother over tomorrow after school to meet Mrs. Hernandez. I was looking forward to Cheryl coming over. She seemed very nice and I thought that maybe she should be on my list.

Tuesday was clear and cold, below twenty degrees, with very little wind. If this kept up we would have the best ice skating ever. The pond would have no snow and the ice would be smooth as glass, at least until we started skating on it.