Citizens Creek

  “Take the girl,” said Malinda. Her tone, flat with fatigue, was edged with sorrow, and it wasn’t clear who she talked to, whether herself or Amy or Cow Tom or God. “Take the girl away. I release my claim on her, only bring back my son in her place.”

  Cow Tom expected some rebuke of their daughter from Amy at this crazy talk, that she would take charge as she always did to coax reason from calamity, but Amy said nothing. His wife had yet to take her eyes from the mother and baby, or to acknowledge his presence at the threshold. Cow Tom had to believe that Malinda spoke from her exhaustion, and with time would weather Edmound’s death, but if Amy set adrift, they were all lost.

  “Did you prepare the boy?” he asked his wife.

  His daughter’s mouth clenched when he referenced Edmound, a slight shake to her shoulders as if chilled. Cow Tom became suddenly aware of three generations of women unfolding before him here, each under his protection, and his worry shifted from one to the next. His lot was to see after all three. Malinda was a strong girl, practical-minded and dutiful. She’d get beyond this. She’d lost the boy, but would come to accept the girl. The baby girl had already shown to be more warrior than her twin, and she would survive or not, as destined. Amy rubbed his heart most, her behavior puzzled him most.

  Again Amy avoided his request, and Cow Tom forced his gaze to the back corner of the tepee. His grandson’s body remained untouched, exactly as when Cow Tom left to dig the grave.

  The thought was slow to come to Cow Tom’s mind, but once it did so, there seemed no other way. Malinda was still too weak for practical matters, he had banished Maggie from the tepee in hopes Amy would come to herself, and now Amy was of no use. Unthinkable, and yet. Edmound hadn’t managed to draw breath for more than the time it took the sun to rise and set, and now he must be set to ground. Custom be damned. What should fall to one of the women still needed doing.

  Cow Tom entered the tepee, ignoring the looks of shock and disapproval from both daughter and wife. He lifted the corpse-child from the blanket where he rested, holding him close to his chest. The hole waited. He made one more appeal to Amy, but she folded her arms in defiant helplessness. He seized her arm to pull her to standing, made awkward by the child, and led her out of the tepee. She didn’t fight him; she didn’t help him.

  “There is no curse,” he said, although he wasn’t convinced. “The girl still fights, and Malinda is young yet. No one knows what is to come.”

  They met Maggie on the foot-worn path outside.

  “The family waits by the elm,” she said.

  “Go to Malinda and the baby girl,” Cow Tom instructed. “See no harm comes to the girl.”

  He stopped at the supply shed once more, this time for a precious length of white cotton muslin he knew Amy saved for a special purpose. He grabbed up the material and headed for the river, pulling Amy along as best he could with his free hand, and when he was sure she would follow on her own, he went ahead with the boy in his arms, trusting her to come behind.

  Once at the riverbank, he expected Amy to take over the duty from him, but she did not, watching him carefully, his every move recorded. She neither stepped up to clean nor to touch the small bundle, standing along the riverbank as spectator.

  Cow Tom ripped the cloth into strips and cleaned the child, wiping those smallest of toes and smoothing down the fuzz at his head, and he wrapped the stilled body in the white muslin until the exact form could no longer be determined.

  Chapter 28

  COW TOM CARRIED the white muslin bundle through the muddied pasture to a pinch of land he reckoned forevermore would be the family graveyard. Amy followed at his heel. He was oblivious to the ribbed globes turned deep orange on the ground, pumpkin time, his thoughts pulled too tight around loss. Unlike so many others in the tribe, black or red, Cow Tom had yet to bury one of his own here on this stretch of soil along the Canadian River, and that it should be thus, not of starvation or epidemic or someone’s natural time, but before life even had a chance to blossom, weighted him like an anvil. The tiny body in his arms was light, shockingly light, a still, transient thing, and he tried not to imagine what could have been. Edmound.

  Amy’s step was close behind his own. She slid in the mud once, a slippery footfall, but righted herself without going down, and carried forward without comment. His arms were full. He couldn’t help her.

  “The girl still lives,” Cow Tom reminded. Amy didn’t answer, yet trudged along after. “And Malinda will come round,” he added.

  The family waited on them at the clearing, standing in a circle round the hole Cow Tom dug earlier that morning. Edmound’s father, Faithful, wore his cloth meeting jacket, but atop his head, slightly askew, was the ceremonial red turban, the soft cotton soiled and fraying along the edges, but majestic nonetheless, and draped around his neck on a leather strip, his shell gorget necklace. Faithful did his best to rise to the formality of the occasion, but even standing still, he swayed in place, his head seemingly too heavy for his body, his red eyes blinking against the light, the reek of alcohol escaping from his pores. He carried his old hunting rifle resting stock down, barrel up at his shoulder, as a military man would on parade. Next to him stood Sarah, filled out and more matronly than those days so long ago on the Monmouth. Concern deep-etched her face like the carvings on Faithful’s gorget shell, and she rushed over to throw her arms around Amy’s shoulders and lead her into the bosom of their circle. Amy seemed to take comfort. Sarah didn’t let go her grasp, and Amy didn’t drop Sarah’s hand as she took her place by the graveside.

  Cow Tom knew how Amy would want the ceremony to transpire, full of her own distinct mix of ritual, Creek and African. He could give her this.

  He took the lead, placing the form in the hole, laying strips of elm bark over the small body until the white of the cotton muslin was almost lost from view, stealing looks at Amy the while. Still, she seemed not ready, her face rock hard, which he expected, but her spirit too far from his reach, which he did not.

  After, he motioned to Amy and Faithful, and they each threw in their handful of dirt, the farewell handshake. The rest of the family members followed, from youngest, barely able to form a credible fistful of dirt, to oldest, Bella/Sarah, who wept silently, even after her return to Amy’s side. When they’d all had their turn, he finished the task, shoveling heaps of earth as cover and packing the soil down with his hands, careful not to stomp on any of the new dirt around the gravesite. Amy would accuse him of bringing sickness back to their own house if he had not done such.

  He’d found three smooth stones, each the size of a winter squash, and placed the markers carefully at the top of the bulging mound, glancing over to Amy’s bowed head the while for a sign.

  Cow Tom had his musket, loaded and ready to fire, and Faithful his rifle. The boy would go with the proper send-off. He fired the first shot in the air to the north, and Faithful, though shaky, fired the second, west. Cow Tom rammed the next load in and shot south. Faithful shot east.

  “Old Turtle watches after the boy now,” Cow Tom said.

  He sought to give Amy a vision, his vision, to make the letting go easier. They’d made their start under Old Turtle’s eye. Cow Tom looked again to Amy, hopeful.

  Amy met his gaze, the struggle plain. He could do no more.

  She brought her hands together slowly, palm to palm. At first, Cow Tom feared she sought to rid them of the red, clinging soil. But she repeated the motion, again, and then again, until, with great relief, he knew it to be clapping. Solemn, she picked up the pace, and changed the tempo, lifting her head. With considerable effort, she smiled. A bit of a disquieting smile to be sure, laced with stiff and grimace, but born of her clear attempt to appear gay, to conform to her abiding belief in the public banishment of sadness. She stared him down as she continued her constant beat until he too clapped along with her, until he too forced a smile where nothing but hollow lived beneath.
/>
  When at last she stopped the strange percussion, he knew it time to build the shelter. With stout branches for poles and a canopy of elm bark, he built a little cover over the mound to keep the rain from soaking down in the new dirt, protection until the soul had time to depart.

  They went back to the tepee then, and Amy scattered some of her medicine around, both inside and out, in the far corners, along the seams of the cowhide, low-talking under her breath. She killed the old fire, still usable, scattering log and ash in every direction before building another, all new, and only then did she concentrate on Malinda and the baby.

  “No,” Malinda said, pushing the baby away.

  “She seeks you,” Amy said, and placed the girl baby once more in her mother’s arms.

  “No. The boy.”

  The girl baby whimpered, searching, prelude to a cry. Amy secured the child and positioned her at Malinda’s nipple.

  “The girl is here, not the boy. No use disrespecting fact,” said Amy. Her voice had grown stern, the voice of Cow Tom’s memory after Old Turtle’s funeral, when he took to his bed and Amy coaxed him from his dark place. “You will mother her.”

  Now the mother was weary and unconnected to the girl at her breast, and Amy, who worked with them both, encouraging the baby to suckle and the mother to nourish.

  Cow Tom, already intruded in this women’s business more than natural, made his decision. He never should have allowed the foolishness of the boy’s name. They’d gone too far afield of themselves in Edmound. The girl would have a simpler name, a grounded moniker, neither too Indian nor too white. The boy had let go his grasp of the world, but the girl still battled for her place. Cow Tom appreciated such a spirit. A flower came to his mind, a special flower, able to defend itself. A flower thorned.

  “Rose,” he proclaimed to the startled household.

  “Her name is Rose.”

  PART II

  Rose

  –1863–

  Chapter 29

  THE AIR GUSTED bitter cold, and Rose envisaged the sky pitting the Oklahoma mud with icy pellets and setting the Canadian a-sleet. Spring was reluctant this year, late in coming, but from her eleven years watching seasons come and go, Rose knew warmer weather could descend any day. The chill attacked every section of the ranch, from cow pasture to horse corral, from red barn to open fields. Even the crowded kitchen in the log cabin, Rose’s normal place alongside her mother, Malinda, and grandmother Amy and great-grandmother Sarah, was nippy enough for a wrap over her long checkered dress and apron as she tended cooking pots and fires in the never-ending preparation of meals for twelve, including family and ranch hand.

  “Baby’s sick. I need life everlasting and slippery elm,” said Gramma Amy to the kitchen at large. “Rose goes.”

  Ma’am looked for a moment as if she would challenge, but Gramma Amy cut short the possibility. “Malinda, the child has the connection. Twin will keep her safe. She can sweep the gravestones on the way. Off you go, Little Warrior.”

  Gramma Amy’s word was law in the kitchen, grandmother trumping mother. Ma’am, rendered mute, forced the dough for Indian fry bread with the heel of her hand, underscoring her displeasure. Ma’am always was tetchy about Twin, prone to upset if Rose didn’t keep the grave clean, but equally unhappy if Rose spent too much time there.

  Rose grabbed up her moccasins from the puncheon floor, laced the buckskin tight around her ankles and calf, and chose one of the empty woven baskets by the door.

  “Don’t go too far,” Gramma Amy called after her. “Pay attention.”

  Most neighbors fled long before, and yet, her family remained almost untouched on the ranch, tucked away from war. But just last month, chasing a quail, she almost stumbled over two white soldiers in the woods beyond the pasture. Lucky for her, they were Union, but they could just as well have been wild Indian or wild white or wild black, soldier or civilian, from one side of the war or the other. Men from both sides could be dangerous, but Lower Creek Confederates most threatening of all.

  Rose ran all the way to the copse of trees along the south pasture, with the wind in her face and frozen sun at her back, the mud spongy and giving beneath her feet, the moist stalks of prairie grass so tall they whipped against her cheeks. She ran because the day was cold and running helped keep her warm. She ran because there was nothing but grass and sky to contain her. She ran because she knew Gramma Amy was impatient for her return to the kitchen and worried if she took too long. She was free of pots and pans and baby Elizabeth and Cousin Emmaline and Cousin Lulu and her scowling mother.

  But still, the world was open to her, and she was ready to ­receive. Already she was considered an excellent cook, and Gramma Amy pushed her to master all of ranch life. She had assisted once at the birth of a baby, could grind seed to powder for medicines, shoot both bow and gun, lasso a small calf, ride a pony. Rose ran because she would be twelve years old tomorrow, and because she didn’t like to keep still, and because the sky was big. But once Rose came to the lip of the woods, and the family graveyard, she slowed and entered the sacred place.

  She cleared dead leaves and loose dirt with her hands from the three smooth river stones at the head of the sunken patch of rectangular earth, and brushed after with the stiff needles from a pine branch until the area looked groomed.

  Twin. Her shadow, but male. Gramma Amy said Rose carried Twin’s spirit in her, and she could see the glow with her special eye. Grampa Cow Tom said a little piece of Rose was rooted in the ground alongside Twin, allowing her a deeper understanding of the land. Ma’am said Rose snatched Twin’s spirit from him so she could live in his place. But the others didn’t understand Twin at all, not like she did, even Gramma Amy. Only Rose knew how wicked Twin could be, how reckless and disobedient.

  When Rose sat on the bank of the river with her fishing line in the water, and she’d already caught enough fish for supper, and the sun felt warm on her back, Twin counseled her to pretend she didn’t hear them calling her to come back to the house for her other chores. When her squirmy, bawling baby sister was born, and Ma’am and her new husband made such a fuss over what a pretty child Elizabeth was, Twin dared her to find the tender spot of new flesh on her little sister’s bottom and pinch hard until Elizabeth shrieked. Twin put thoughts in her head. But he listened to her too, none of her complaints too small or petty. He was her best friend.

  Rose sat cross-legged at the edge of the grave.

  “Ma’am told Gramma Amy this morning I’d never find a husband,” she said aloud to Twin. “War or no war.”

  If Twin had a physical self, he might have shed sympathy tears, or pulled the legs from a centipede one at a time. But Twin occupied a middle space, and could express himself only through her. Ma’am’s words cut, but Twin did what he always did, and removed the sting. Rose relaxed into the pale blue light of Twin.

  “If Papa hadn’t died, Ma’am wouldn’t be so mean,” Rose declared. She didn’t remember her father, not really, his face all but faded in her memory, but sometimes she could still summon the dense crimp of his kinky black hair, or the tart dampness of his smell. No one talked of him, as if he never existed.

  Rose’s features came together in a peculiar way, just like her grandfather’s, severe and at odds with each other, her expression seemingly harsh and judgmental, when that wasn’t her disposition at all. She was small, very small, like a tiny female version of Grampa Cow Tom. But whenever her mother called her Scrawny Chicken, her grandmother was quick to call her Little Warrior right after. She would grow prettier in time. That’s what Gramma Amy said, and her grandmother knew many things others didn’t.

  “Just wait. I will have a husband and he’ll be so strong he’ll live almost forever. And it’ll be me who saves the family from the curse. We’ll have boys and girls both, not just girls. My ranch will be twice as big as Grampa Cow Tom’s. And then you’ll come live with us, Twin, but Ma’am c
an only visit.”

  The blue light around the gravesite grew deeper, darker. It was always like that with Twin, taking the pain into himself, and leaving her with new resolve.

  “I have to go. Gramma Amy counts on me to find her herbs.”

  The grave clean, she left Twin behind and entered into the woods softly, paying close attention to sight and sound. It was easy to go unseen in the pasture, to anticipate surprise, but the forest was a different story. She searched for a suitable tree.

  She welcomed the prospect of the woods under the dripping umbrella of trees. A slippery elm was easy to find, and she selected one quickly, pulling her knife and stripping two long pieces of bark, checking the color of the inner layer to make sure it was cool gray, not red, perfect for boiling down to make a poultice. Satisfied, she tucked the strips in the basket and began her search for the more elusive yellow flowers of life everlasting.

  Aunt Maggie’s baby cried and coughed the night, and Gramma Amy used the last of her stash of the healing herb, and now the baby suffered spiking fever. In this search too, Rose was fortunate. Not far from the clearing where she picked with Gramma Amy last season, she found the same patch, and stepped carefully, searching the base of trees until she found the tiny yellow flower of the life everlasting plant. Despite the cold, there were fresh buds of new growth, and she added several shoots to her basket, careful not to damage the root in its removal or disturb the others in the ground. Her grandmother would be pleased.

  What Rose knew of the outside world beyond the ranch she mostly learned from Grampa Cow Tom. Her grandfather was a man who knew the world, and carried the marks of his journey with him, using his two-fingered hand as deftly as anyone with the full complement of five fingers, as unmindful of that as of his ear nub, which Gramma Amy stroked for luck. He protected them and the land, whether from Confederates or predator or pest, and every time she looked at the jagged scar down his cheek, delivered by a Confederate Indian’s knife, she felt safer. Most other men were gone, her uncles, the younger ranch hands, Chief Yargee, all run off to Kansas or serving in the Union’s First Indian Home Guard army.