“Take the pony. You be back home before the thick of choring tomorrow morning. Hear? That means setting out from Gramma Amy’s ranch before dawn.”
She couldn’t bring herself to mention Elizabeth’s name. She’d had to agree to Eugene’s time with his other mother, but she didn’t have to acknowledge her sister aloud.
“Yes, Mama Rose.”
In spite of the heat, she finished up the afternoon lessons with the smaller ones, guiding them in spelling out their letters or reciting their sums. Rose checked the cow, already separate from the herd. She led her to the barn, slowly, before the animal could lie down in the field, and settled her in a stall. She expected the calf by morning, and set off to the kitchen to oversee her daughters in preparing supper.
Chapter 60
THE HOUSEHOLD QUIETED, supper finished, the hands returned to the bunkhouse, dishes sudsed and towel-dried, the little ones already in bed, and the girls busy at their needlework. Jake was due home tomorrow. Rose missed him, his physical presence, his easy domination of the hands who preferred their orders coming from a man. Rose decided to make one last check on the cow before turning in.
“Kindred,” she ordered, “come with me.”
As hot as the day had been, once the sun disappeared, the air turned cool and a howling wind kicked in. Rose wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders and handed Kindred the lamp to light their way to the barn.
As soon as she pushed open the wide barn door, she heard slow, heavy breathing. Kindred affixed the lantern to a hook on the stall’s hardwood post while she determined what stage the labor took.
“Cow’s still standing,” she said to Kindred. “A while yet.”
To be safe, Rose shoveled clear an area of manure and led the animal there. The cow looked at her, eyes glassy with dismissal. Most cow births required no human intervention, the mother taking the natural course, but Rose worried over this one, for good reason or no she wasn’t yet sure. She settled herself on the milking stool in the corner. Kindred sat on a bale of hay, his legs crossed over each other. Just today, between shooting practice and supper, he’d found the time to add another crude indigo tattoo on his right leg, this one of a vine wrapping round his shin. She made a mental note to assign him more to do.
“Why you so set on dressing that way?” asked Rose.
“This is the way Creeks dress,” said Kindred.
“Don’t forget we’re a little of this and a little of that,” said Rose. “Even most of the full-bloods save the turban and the rest for ceremony. You and me, we think the old way, but you the only one who dresses to it.”
His face betrayed nothing, and they lapsed into silence, save the loud rhythm of the cow’s breathing. Despite the flickering gas lantern, only the fusty stink of manure and disturbing eddy of her mind kept Rose awake. Robbed of chores, and confined with a sullen son, she let her thoughts turn dark. She should have brought embroidery, something to occupy her hands. A crush of worry stole up. She had responsibility for ten children, with her childbearing years apparently not yet done. She and Jake had a fifteen-hundred-cattle ranch to manage, and crops to bring in, and smallpox to guard against, and brutal weather of one type or another always descending on them full force, never safe to predict.
She’d almost forgot Kindred was there, when he spoke.
“Why can’t they leave us be?”
“Who?”
“White boomers.”
The last century had brought blessings, overall, that was certainly true, but not without severe setbacks along the way as Jake took risks to expand the herd and make improvements to the ranch, spreading ever outward on tribal lands along the Canadian River. More cattle, more hands, more fencing, more mouths to feed. More. But now there were white boomers and others from outside the nation, pushing steadily into Indian Territory, laying claim to land supposedly set aside for tribes. Land appetite by noncitizens was unquenchable. The governments, both United States and tribal, forced themselves more and more into their lives.
“We aim to keep living on this land,” Rose said.
“They’ll come after the freedmen first,” said Kindred. “There’s nothing you can do.”
She studied her son in the lantern light, this pale man-child struggling. The boy needed grounding, something gone missing in him, always trying to out-Creek the full-bloods. Rose wrestled with the notion of sharing one of Cow Tom’s good stories with Kindred, here in this barn, tonight. Stories she’d withheld for years. The tale of how her grandfather bought his freedom might spark Kindred’s pride in their family. Or Grampa saving his mother from slavers. Or how he gave an untested girl the courage to shoot a gun at his funeral, and convinced her she could take on anything.
Kindred knew of his great-grandfather by name and reputation, of course, but possessed no sense of how Cow Tom gloried in all parts of himself, Creek and African. All black Creeks knew Cow Tom signed a treaty to protect the freedmen. That he was a chief. Should she describe more than the man of public legend? Break the promise? A story might help Kindred find his way.
“No,” said Rose. “There’s always something can be done. One man’s determination can thread the needle for all that come after. Your great-grandfather was such a man.”
Kindred pulled himself erect on the bale, spine straight. He barely breathed, his surly mood suddenly evaporated. He stared at her, waiting.
Rose couldn’t decide how to begin, where to start. The image leaped to her mind of a black Seminole brave, dead in the Florida swamp, her grandfather’s doing, and the silence grew long.
The cow suddenly gulped at the air, a startling sound, her sides caved, labor finally started.
“Run get a bucket with water from the pump and a bar of lye soap,” Rose ordered.
An eerie quiet except for the cow’s distress folded around them in the barn as they waited for the second stage of labor. Rose couldn’t make herself speak, concentrating on the cow instead, and Kindred didn’t push. Two hours passed, the cow contracting but showing no further progress.
Finally, Rose rolled up her sleeves, lathered her hands in the wash bucket, soaped her arms to the armpit, and slathered on petroleum jelly. She soaped the cow’s hindquarters as well, speaking in a gentle voice. The cow delivered the water bag and began straining. She reached inside the cow with both hands, feeling her way until she found the calf in the birth canal, pinching lightly. Movement. The calf was alive. She felt a leg, and ran her finger down the bones. Only one joint between hock and hoof. A back leg, not front. She’d delivered posterior before, trained the first time by Grampa Cow Tom. The effort had been hard on all three, cow, calf, and Rose, and she’d lost two calves this way. She centered the calf in the birth canal, clasped her hands, and moved her arms in and out for several minutes to speed delivery.
Rose was drenched with sweat. She worked steadily the next half hour, pulling in steady motion whenever the cow pushed, advancing the calf down the canal. With the next contraction, both the calf’s hind feet emerged. Rose continued to pull and guide, and on the next push, the calf’s body came into view, and finally forelegs and nose. Rose picked through the gummy gore to pinch the calf’s tongue. The tongue retracted, the calf fine. Rose stepped back into the shadows to let the cow finish her work on her own.
The cow found her feet again, afterbirth hanging, and began to lick her baby. Her calf shook its head, wet ears slapping, and kicked its feet, and the mother continued her raspy-tongued cleaning. The calf stood unsteadily, then fell, again and again until balancing upright, seeking first milk.
With calf sucking, and cow in satisfactory health, she and Kindred were free to return to the ranch house. But Kindred hesitated, scratching at his owl tattoo, stalling, looking to her.
Rose could not bring herself to open her mouth to speak. She despised herself this weakness, but the weight of the promise trumped the need reflected in her son’s eyes.
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She was so tired. She’d try again some other time. Maybe tomorrow.
The moment was past.
Chapter 61
WHILE THUNDERSTORMS BUILT to the east and the west, and the wildflowers in the meadow competed, coming into their own dazzling displays, Rose dozed in her rocking chair in the full of the day, protected by the shade on their wraparound porch, beans unsnapped in the big bowl at her feet. After her long night in the barn, up to her bloodied elbows in the cow’s delivery, only raw will and stubbornness prevented her from locking herself in her bedroom, drawing the shades tight across the windows, climbing under the quilt, and giving in to sleep until she felt herself again. And she couldn’t erase the image of that last yearning look on Kindred’s face before they walked back to the house in silence.
The thump of horse hooves and squeal of wagon wheels signaled Jake’s arrival from the dry-goods store in Haskell. Only one week gone this trip. She watched him roll barrels of salt and syrup off the wagon, and then shoulder two bags of sugar before one of the hands arrived to help. Together, the men unloaded the rest, toting all to the storehouse in several trips. The wagon emptied, Jake dug out a parcel wrapped in newspaper under the buckboard plank, tucked it under his arm, and joined Rose on the porch.
Jake smiled a knowing smile. “For those beauteous feet,” he said.
He handed her the package, and she carefully unwrapped it, smoothing out the newspaper and folding the edges into a neat square for future use. Inside was a pair of women’s black shoes, new, the style slightly different from her last. They were leather, high-topped, with four small buttons on each shoe and black corded laces. Rose was tempted to kick off her old shoes, run-over at the heels and scuffed, to try on the new, right there on the front porch, but decided to wait until she was behind locked doors, where she could enjoy them at her leisure. Jake watched her.
She nodded her acknowledgment and put the shoes aside, bringing the bowl of beans once again to her lap. She began to snap them into bits.
“The calf?” Jake asked.
“Calf and cow are fine,” answered Rose. She thought again of the long stretches of anxious waiting amid the soak of blood and gore in the barn last night. The moment beforehand when she almost pulled down the walls of the safe house where she kept her memories of Grampa Cow Tom. “For a time, I thought I’d lose both.”
He dragged a chair over close to hers and sat, taking off his leather hat and shaking off some of the dust, running his fingers through his hair. Rose noticed a strand of gray mixed in with the brown. Jake wasn’t so young anymore, but still closer to young than to old, and he yet exuded a powerful attraction. Her husband was eager to talk.
“There’s news,” he said.
She waited for him to get to it. News meant interruption, interference, an unwelcome reaching from the outside world into what they’d built. Rose wasn’t partial to most news.
“Everyone’s in an uproar about the Dawes Roll in Haskell.”
“What’s that?” asked Rose.
“The government wants us to come in and register on the Dawes Roll. They’re listing each person in the nation, every member recorded, child or chief. In town, some are for, some against.”
“We’re already on the list,” said Rose. “Been listed since I was nothing but a girl.”
“That’s Canadian Colored Town payroll,” Jake corrected. He shrugged. “This is different. Payroll is our fair share of tribe money from Washington. Tribal Council decides who’s on that list. Full-bloods tried to outfox the government by refusing to turn over names. Foolish. Now Washington sidesteps the tribes to make their own list. Payroll is by Creek Nation government, the Dawes Roll is United States government. Showdown’s coming.”
“Can’t we sign up on both?”
“Full-bloods claim the right to decide who’s enrolled and who isn’t. They say this is another step by white men in Washington to break down the Indian and take power away from the tribe.”
“Break down the Indian?” asked Rose. Her mind was quick to see the trap in any plan. “Indian or members of the nation?”
“So far, members of the nation,” said Jake. “But the Dawes Roll is to be all citizens of the nation too. Full-bloods, mixed-bloods, and freedmen, according to treaty. Even adopted citizens.”
“Full-bloods would gladly shed us.” She picked out a worm in the bowl of beans and threw the wriggler into the dirt. “More for them.”
“But your grandfather’s treaty holds so far,” said Jake. “Full-bloods aren’t the only ones against. Big cattlemen and land companies weigh against the Dawes Roll too, hiring marplots and boodlers and lawyers to slow the census down, to keep things as they are. But it isn’t working. Agents from Washington swell the towns. Flyers everywhere you look setting dates for enrollment, and men out surveying, making maps of all the land. I tell you, Washington will carry the day this time round.”
“Land maps?”
“That’s what I been trying to tell you. The Dawes Roll comes first, then Washington uses their list to give out land to the people. An allotment. Land not to the tribe like always, but direct to each person, free and clear, belonging to us by name and no other.”
“Free land? What do they need from us to give out free land?”
“Proof. Proof of citizenship in the nation. That’s the only way to get the land. The allotment goes to citizens only. The call’s out to members of all nations, but they start with Creeks first. Some full-bloods threaten harm to anyone accepting allotment.”
“What do you think?” asked Rose.
“That the old ways are done,” said Jake. “One by one Washington will break tribes down and take what we have away. We best make good while we can. First enrollment, then allotment. Government will give out bits of land and keep the rest, surround us with immigrant boomers, and then fold us into their country, force us to give up our territory. That’s the talk, anyway.” He paused. “We’re Indian, and we’re freedman, both. But no one, Creek or government, will look after us better than we look after ourselves.”
Rose admired her husband this. He might not possess formal education, he might have a heart so soft he gave away too freely what was theirs, but his mind was keen and penetrating, and he understood large-scale motivation and trickery long before others did. Things even her suspicious mind didn’t always grasp.
“So we’d do best under a United States list?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Whites always been treating us worse than Indians. Full-bloods are stalling. Not likely to do much good though. Not against Washington.”
“What of allotment?” Rose asked. She tried to shake off a wave of pure panic. “What about the ranch?”
“That’s the root of the fever sweeping town,” said Jake. “For each and every person in a family on the roll, babe or gray-head, the government promises one hundred sixty acres.”
“One hundred sixty acres?” Rose asked. “But we number thirteen, with babies and Laura’s man.”
She sprang from her chair and into the house. Beans spilled from the bowl onto the porch, but she didn’t care. When she returned, she wet the tip of the pencil she’d brought and made the calculation on the reverse side of an old store receipt.
“That’s more than two thousand acres,” Rose figured. “Added to what we already have.” She was dizzy with the thought.
“No,” said Jake. “Allotment starts with land where you already made improvements. They transfer those to your name, and for the rest, you choose plots not belonging to anyone else. No guarantee where additional plots are, but everybody gets their full allotment.”
Rose’s mind was already at work. The oldest boys, Jacob and Kindred and Eugene, would soon need plots of their own to work until the time came to go off to live with their wives’ families. Maybe a distribution of land in the boys’ own names could keep Jacob, a self-declared businessman with a
n aversion to the manual practicalities of ranching, closer to home, could bind Kindred to his freedman family instead of chasing after the ways of the full-bloods, and could vanquish some of Eugene’s restlessness, a man-child caught between Rose as mother and her sister, Elizabeth, as birth mother. Eugene’s increasingly frequent trips to see Elizabeth left him off balance and resentful. Rose worried about slipknots of connection loosening between brothers. Between each of them and the rest of the family. Between them and her.
“You sure? Each?”
“That’s the talk.”
“Under our name? Nobody can take it?”
“Not unless we sell.”
“What of the tribe? We’d be members still or no?”
Wasn’t Grampa Cow Tom’s last official act to ensure inclusion of the freedmen? For decades, her family had been solid members of the tribe.
“Members still,” said Jake.
“There’s some hitch,” Rose said. She couldn’t yet conjure the trick, but whenever something was offered to the Indians by the United States government, something else was sure to be stripped away. “Is our ranch safe?” she asked again. “Can they turn us out?”
“The Washington man said we lose the ranch if we don’t sign up on the Dawes. That once we enroll with them and get allotment, the land is ours,” said Jake. “Unassigned land won’t belong to the Creek Nation in community anymore. Or the Cherokee Nation. Or any of the tribes. That land falls back to Washington, to turn over to white boomers, or do with as they will.”
“We can’t lose the ranch,” said Rose.
“We’re in a trap,” Jake said. “Washington wants more land, and they’ll get it. The Indian is used to giving up land, and in the end, they’ll do like always. My worry is how they treat freedmen. There’s talk of registering by blood quantum. Once they separate us out, they could decide to treat us like State Negroes or too-lates, like we haven’t lived here all our lives.”
“We’re already separated out by town,” said Rose. “We manage.”