3 Chapter 2 The Rampage

Chapter 2 The Rampage Maria's father was not wealthy, but he was well-to-do. "We didn't live in a teepee," Maria often told people who asked about her life on the reservation. "And we were never hungry." Maria's father owned a movie theater and a pool hall on the main street in town, but those businesses did not earn much money for the family. Instead, her father depended for money on the oil companies. They paid him for the right to drill oil on his land. Often, when a check for hundreds of dollars arrived, he pocketed the money and disappeared for days. Ruth Tall Chief did not know where her husband was, but she knew what he was doing: drinking. As much as a week might pass before he returned home.

Maria remembered how frightened her mother became during those "binges." When Maria's father drank, he got mean. "The walls seemed to shake and the air seemed to fill with the thunder of his fury," Maria remembered. Her mother tried to reason with him. "You are throwing away the money your family needs to live!" How was she to feed her daughters? she asked. The giant towered over his wife. His dark eyes were not kind now. They were angry. "I'm tired of

hearing about money!" he shouted. He swung his arm, sweeping a stack of books from the table. They crashed to the floor. Maria grabbed Marjorie's hand, and together the sisters ran down the hill to Grandma Tall Chief's house. Maria cried for her to come quickly and save her mother! Her father's "rampage," as Maria called it, ended without violence. She never once saw her father strike her mother. Still, a few months later when the next oil check arrived, her father disappeared again. Oil might have saved the Osage from starving, but it could not restore her father's lost pride. Maria did not know what dark thoughts clouded her father's mind during his binges. In time, however, she came to understand what her mother already knew. Her father was an alcoholic.

One day Maria would write a book about her life. "I idolized him," Maria wrote about her father. "But while we were growing up, he was often unbearable."