Citizens Creek

  In the beginning, years before, Rose had been sorry she’d told Jake about her mother’s careless comments as she grew up. But somehow, Jake had turned the insult on its head, and when he called her scrawny chicken, she felt bigger and bolder. And safer. Rose was Jake’s scrawny chicken, his anchor, and Jake was her freewheeling cowboy.

  “Surely you can take them back to the store and get our money?” asked Rose.

  “I could,” answered Jake. “But I won’t.” He was working himself into a state. “We been squeezing every penny till there’s nothing left, but this once, you’re going to show out. You can wear them to church, and whenever we visit Cane Creek. And you tell Ma’am I got them for you.”

  If the gift were any other extravagance, Rose would have been able to resist, easily, but shoes were her weakness. Jake knew as much.

  Rose marrying Jake provided everyone an opportunity to be nicer to one another. Even Ma’am had come round, charmed by her daughter’s new husband, and then by the grandchildren as they appeared. Rose was happiest when Jake was home, but he was often gone away, chasing their fortune, buying or selling or both, that was his part of the bargain. Hers was to make a home for him to come back to. Home meant everything to him. And to her. Who could have believed the two of them fit so hand in glove? That the dead spots in her heart could soften, and give rise to new bloom?

  Rose picked up the shoes again, and ran her finger across the smooth surface of one of the sateen bows. She sniffed the leather, a raw, heady smell that filled her with satisfaction, and placed the pair in her lap, picking up her needlework again.

  It was impossible to imagine keeping such a firm hold on her book of dreams without Jake on every page.

  Chapter 52

  ROSE MISSED JAKE, gone away this time along the Old Texas Trail in search of ten steers to add to the herd before winter set. With Jake away over two weeks already, the almost-baby occupied her thoughts most days and nights. Jake wouldn’t be much help with woman’s business even if he was home, but at least she could talk to him in Mvskoke. The bluntness of the language suited the occasion, and Rose always thought in Mvskoke in the days before a birth. Sometimes she’d rather live in the calm of no talk than navigate the trickeries of words, but she spoke to the little ones in English nonetheless. She and Jake agreed Mvskoke acceptable only between the two of them, their secret language. The children would be brought up with the language of the wider American world.

  She rubbed her belly, soothing, stroking, the far end protruded like one of the overripe watermelons in the north patch. The baby was active, and already dropped. This one didn’t feel like the other two she’d carried, so she hoped for a boy, but the all-girl family curse had held true thus far. She wondered if she was destined to break the string and finally produce a son in this, the third generation, or if she tempted fate by asking for too much. Whatever, the child was due soon, very soon.

  When the knock came on the front door, she had just put down the oldest for her afternoon nap and turned to putting a stew to boil for dinner for the ranch hands. She’d heard neither horse hoof nor wagon. The nearest neighbors, several miles downstream, seldom visited, and when they did, they knew to come to the back, where she would most likely be. Transients weren’t frequent, but common enough, black, white, or Indian, asking for water or bread or a hayloft to sleep in, and Rose always complied, unless she sensed danger, in which case she shooed them off, her rifle never too far from reach.

  “Can you spare water?” the stranger asked. “I’ve come far.”

  The woman at the front door was young, too young to be carrying such a bundle. She was taller than Rose, as were most women, full-bosomed, her straight, black hair in a long, single-plaited tail down to her waist, tall moccasins visible beneath her dusty, sweat-stained cotton dress, her fawn-colored skin blemished but aglow. Her clothes, speech, and carriage indicated a woman from an Indian family. Rose wasn’t sure which tribe, maybe Cherokee, maybe Creek, neither well-to-do nor brothel, but something in the middle. Most probably a farm girl, but with some little education. Clearly she’d walked a distance, and she leaned on first one foot and then the other, finding relief in neither. As much as Rose would rather shut the door and go about her business, she invited the woman inside, helping her sit on the upholstered chair, Jake’s chair, and rest. Rose brought her a bowl of sofki and water from the pump, and waited until she drank down the last of the cup to inquire the reason for her visit.

  “I’m Angeli,” the woman said. “From Cow Hollow.”

  Rose had never been there, but she knew of the town, as described by Jake, one of many small clusters of tiny, remote ranches and wide-open spaces where he bought up cheap cattle one or two at a time to increase their herd. Sometimes he struck up partnerships and ran the ranchers’ cows along with their own to market, for fee of cash or cattle.

  “I know of it,” said Rose.

  “I’m looking for Jake Simmons,” the woman said. “Some directed me here.”

  Rose felt her baby kick, once, twice, a demanding claim. She held her side in counterweight to reassure it. “Jake’s gone with the cattle drive,” she said.

  “Is he soon back?”

  “No way to know,” said Rose.

  “You the wife?” Angeli asked.

  “I am,” said Rose.

  Angeli looked around the front room for the first time. Both of Rose’s daughters slept, the oldest, three, in a crib in the corner, the youngest, sixteen months, in a woven basket nearby. Rose didn’t believe in the waste of fancy, but they’d built the ranch house large, to accommodate the life they intended, and she had decorated, albeit sparely, with needlepoint headrests on Jake’s stuffed chair and braided rugs on the floor. She worked each day to keep grime and dust outside where it belonged, and not on her inside possessions.

  “This baby is your husband’s work,” the young woman said.

  Rose was caught with a polite smile frozen on her face. All turned muffled inside. She stood, not sure why or where she could go, and turned her back to the woman as she tried to find some thought to latch to. Other than that she was a fool. A fool. If the woman said something more, she didn’t hear.

  She searched for some anchor place in her mind, something to stop the shattering. She’d called on Twin years back as Grampa Cow Tom lay dying, but he’d never appeared to her again. Only that once had he come at her beckoning. He was gone, almost forgotten completely, pushed aside by the blue of Jake’s eyes. She fixed on her children. On her home. But thinking thus only sent her further into her despair. What would happen to them now? Grampa Cow Tom had gone from Gramma Amy for days and months and years on end, but there were never any babies finding their way back to his ranch door.

  For no reason, she thought of the cast-iron cook stove they’d just bought for sixteen dollars, she and Jake together, plotting like children until they had the money saved, how proud and happy they’d both been. There was no anchor there. She couldn’t think on Jake. Not yet.

  She thought of Grampa Cow Tom, spiriting his mother onto the ship bound for Indian Territory, under the nose of the slave catcher. How her grandfather had turned disaster into advantage, in defense of his family. She could learn from his boldness.

  A familiar voice asserted, stronger than any other, stronger than her own.

  Make your own family.

  Grampa Cow Tom’s words came to her, and she felt a slight loosening, a small clearing of mind. Her family was what mattered, the family in her power to make. She pulled herself back from the brink, composing her face as she did so. Composing her resolve. Never show your enemy your true face. Grampa Cow Tom taught her that.

  She turned to Angeli. “Why should I believe you?” Rose asked.

  “His name is Jake,” Angeli said, as if revealing a winning poker hand.

  “That proves nothing.”

  “Look at him then. Look close.”

/>   Rose accepted the baby, settling him into her arms, balancing him on the curve of her belly, and she pushed back at the flimsy blanket wrapped round his body, obscuring his face. He couldn’t have been more than two weeks old, a weak, defenseless thing. He opened and shut his eyes, unfocused, but already they reflected back Jake’s eyes, and the jut of the infant’s jaw followed like a tracing the jut of Jake’s jaw. A ruddy baby, more Creek than black, dark hair sleek and plentiful. A boy child, in a family that didn’t produce sons.

  “I can’t keep him,” the woman said. “They’ll throw me out, and where would I go? You have plenty here.”

  Angeli cried at this last, making no attempt to hold back. This young woman had walked to the ranch with her birth wounds still fresh, and the math of the situation worked, coinciding with Jake’s road-time schedule. He had, indeed, passed through Cow Hollow last fall. Who could deny Angeli’s story?

  Rose thought about Angeli’s words. It was true. She did have plenty. She had food and shelter and late-life babies of her own and a growing ranch with a husband she was bound to in ways she never expected. But what did this young thing know of the devastation of their very first crop nearly destroyed by hailstorm and the bank’s threat of default? Of Jake’s early scramblings for cash the year after they married, cutting rails for twelve hours a day on remote ranches farther and farther away while Rose tended cotton, corn, and children alone? Angeli saw the house now, but not as when first constructed, a twelve-by-fourteen-foot log cabin built on a foundation of borrowed money. What could she know of the harshness of the early years, before they made their first purchase of forty head of cattle and two horse teams, and their first hires to help bring in fifty-five acres of corn and ten of cotton?

  Yes. Now was plenty. And she intended to keep it all. Children, husband, ranch. Her domain. She intended to claw out a life side by side with Jake, a bold cowman with a man’s strong nature, and he would come back to her, regardless of his doings on the road. Her heart might shred now, but she would keep it intact with the force of her mind.

  “Leave the boy, then,” said Rose. “Leave him and go on your way. I’ll pack up food for your trip home.”

  Angeli seemed taken aback, as if she hadn’t expected the exchange to go so quickly, so smoothly. “You’ll raise Jake?”

  “Rest for awhile to get your strength, and then be on your way,” Rose repeated. “There’ll be no coming back for the boy later. Never.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Rose left Angeli in the front room for a last moment with the child while she made her preparations from the larder. But Angeli waited no longer than it took Rose to fashion a basket with big bean dumplings to take with her. The woman set out as abruptly as she appeared, a determined figure becoming smaller in the distance as Rose, from the front porch, watched her retreat down the path. Rose stood for a time, holding the baby, staring toward the copse of trees at the edge of the prairie, until she realized the front of her dress was wet, and her milk had come down.

  “Kindred,” Rose whispered to the newest addition to the household, stroking his tiny face with her finger. Was this the only way to break the curse of no boy in the family line? “Your name is Kindred.”

  He was fast asleep, peaceful, and Rose put him in the basket-bed she’d already fashioned for the new baby coming. Tomorrow, she’d construct another from the elm branches that grew behind the bunkhouse.

  She rang the supper triangle, just one go-round. They’d know the time wrong for noonday dinner, and only one of the hands would come in from the pasture to see what she wanted. An old cowpunch came, and she sent him with a message for Gramma Amy’s place on the Canadian River, one half day’s trip going, and a half day back. Elizabeth would read the note to Gramma Amy.

  She needed her sister. Elizabeth must come here to live, now, to help her. She wasn’t worried about the delivery, but what came after. Four babies less than four years old. She had support from the sister of a ranch hand, a recent widow living on the property, but the woman had given notice of her intent to move to Okmulgee, where more people passed through, and she might have more chance to build a life than on a remote ranch in the middle of nowhere.

  Rose moved through the rest of the day slowly, her chores mechanical, but as soon as darkness fell across the prairie, she lay down. She cried quietly in her room, out of sight, her heart an alien enemy that raced one minute and went numb the next. The wind kicked up, rattling the roof shingles, so strong she worried how many might blow off. She brought Kindred into the bedroom with her, and for the second time, opened her top to feed him.

  He took to her quickly, as if he knew no other way.

  Chapter 53

  IN THE NIGHT, the pain bit into her, refusing to let go. Almost a relief, such physical pain that it sometimes drove out thoughts of Jake. Rose wrapped her hands around the bedpost and squeezed so tight her fingernails sank into her own flesh, carving deep half-moon craters of dark blood. She made herself calm, willing herself not to cry out. This delivery would be easier than the others, she decided. This baby wouldn’t fight her. She had endured much worse with the other two, and determined to stay on her feet and deliver Creek-style, squatting, half standing, letting gravity draw the baby out.

  Her first, Laura, was physically perfect in every way when she finally appeared, but the girl had taken sixteen hours to come out into the light of the world, as if Rose’s womb was where she wanted to hide forever. Despite Rose’s early skill as a midwife, and all the birthing she witnessed or aided, the force of those stabbing pains still surprised her when the assault came to her own womanly parts. Her second, Lady, another girl, came quicker, but she was working in the orchard and couldn’t make it all the way back to the house. She delivered two miles from the ranch in a field of hay, using an upright pitchfork she anchored into the ground to steady herself as she squatted. But she knew her body now, she knew how and when to demand, and she knew what she was capable of. Everyone on the ranch accepted that she would shut herself in her room to deliver alone. Not once had she called for help and she wouldn’t for this one either.

  With calm, Rose reassured herself that her tools were ready. She’d held the pair of newly whetstone-sharpened scissors over the open flame and wiped them down with alcohol, and now they lay on the stand beside the bed on a pile of clean rags, in place and waiting. The widow would have to look after the babies, and cook for the hands, and bring Rose food and water if the birth dragged on too long. She considered letting the widow cut the cord when the time came, but in this one thing, Rose was selfish. She loved the cutting herself, that first separation of mother and child, and could boast, if she had been so inclined, at the perfection of the belly buttons of both her daughters. No ruptures, no protrusions. Kindred’s had been a sloppy cut. She’d inspected him for defect, and all save that seemed satisfactory.

  She passed the night in fits and starts of waiting, with the contractions continuing to promise, falsely, an imminent birth, and she watched through the little glass window in their bedroom as the sun began to rise in the sky. When tempted to dwell on Jake’s betrayal, she shut those thoughts out as best she could, making plans for all that needed doing instead. She heard the familiar commotion of the ranch rumbling to life, the fires started, water pumped, the coffee set to boil, the grease spitting in the pan, the horses married to saddle, the ranch hands clanging dishes, doors banging. Finally, a moment of complete quiet passed, blessed quiet, but then Rose heard a baby’s sudden squeal somewhere in the house, an outrage of hurt, and the swift movement of a comforting rescue as someone picked her up. The widow was on task.

  As the sun climbed higher, she knew the ranch hands were outdoors doing the daytime chores, tending the animals, mending fences, harvesting crops. But the babies were left behind, and Rose was confident the widow wouldn’t stray too far, hovering nearby the closed bedroom door, careful not to intrude, even as she prepared noon dinner for th
e hands and oversaw the girls. Only Kindred was allowed in the bedroom with her, and his mere presence comforted her, in ways she didn’t quite understand.

  She gasped at the next sharp contraction, her time near, her baby finally impatient. She suddenly remembered last night’s windstorm. Someone needed to ride out to the east gate to check the fencing. She didn’t want to risk her milk cow wandering off again beyond her protection. As soon as she finished here, she’d have the widow run the order to one of the ranch hands. She had to be on top of them every minute.

  Rose bore down. She couldn’t hurry the process, but she still had a ranch to run. Their ranch. Hers and Jake’s. They built it, and they’d hold on despite drought or flood or rascals or soulless bankers or human weakness, their lives intertwined. She was still his scrawny chicken. He was still her cowboy. They would pass the ranch to their children and grandchildren, preserving and improving. Rose would make sure of that.

  Once the pushing started, the baby came fast. He was a big boy, long, featured like her grandfather, like her, Africa-based, sturdy of body and broad of face. In this baby, she saw more of her than of Jake. His eyes were brown, his hair dark, thick, and frizzled, his skin the shade of caramelized sugar in the pan. Rose was exhausted, but she relished the first astonished cry, the chest-to-chest contact of skin on skin, the wiping of the body, the ceremony of cutting, the gentle wrapping of layered protection within the blanket she’d scrubbed clean in the washtub and dried in the sun, set aside for just this moment.

  “Jacob. My Jacob,” said Rose.

  The curse was broken. And now there were two sons to protect.

  Kindred woke in his basket, hungry, searching for her, and as if in response, Jacob began rooting too, so quickly after birth.

  It took some getting used to, positioning first one and then the other across her body at the proper angle, intertwined, each at rest on the other and dependent on Rose to support the heaviness of their heads, but Rose gave the first breast to Jacob, waiting for him to latch. Once he did so, she offered the other to Kindred.