Authors: Lalita Tademy
Her grandfather broke for the courtyard and Rose kept close. The scene was chaos, aswarm with military, livestock from the brigade train, sutlers, teamsters, commissary authorities, Indian agents, curious idlers, new refugees, and savvy squatters hoping to pilfer
dropped foodstuffs in the midst of such confusion. Her grandfather fought their way through to a position close to the front gate. Some of the arriving party had already passed through, swallowed up into the buildings.
They didn’t see Harry Island anywhere.
“Where’d he go?” Rose asked.
“He’ll turn up soon enough,” her grandfather answered, but his voice betrayed him. He was antsy too.
“Should we make petition rounds?”
“They’ll all be busy logging in supplies and the refugee transfer. We wait.”
Rose couldn’t let go the thought that Uncle Harry was somewhere close. “Maybe Uncle Harry went to find us in Grand River.”
“Then we see him tonight. We’ve no reason to go back with nothing fresh to report or distribute.” Her grandfather found a small space where he could sit, his back against the building. “We sit tight. I’ll welcome new arrivals to Grand River later.”
But Rose couldn’t be still. She ran to the storeroom and back. No Uncle Harry. She ran to the sutler shop and back. No Uncle Harry. In the crowded fort near the stables, Chibona idled in a group of young Cherokee men. This wasn’t the first time, running into him inside the gates. He glanced her way, and she looked through him, her shoulders back and her head held high. He could do her no more harm. She no longer pined for his friendship, nor feared him or his friends, nor sought revenge, nor felt the need for Twin to protect her. Yes, she was a different girl, hard enough to face the likes of Chibona without blinking. Rose had family, and that’s what mattered, the dead spot in her heart sealed over and unavailable to anyone else.
Rose slowed and walked, knowing she was watched, lest Chibona think she ran from him again or thought of him at all. And there he was, finally, Harry Island across the crowded courtyard, riding his broke-down cinnamon mare, the selfsame horse he’d ridden off to Kansas, the poor animal now decrepit.
Harry hollered his old familiar whoop, and waved his hat in the air.
“Brother Cow Tom,” Harry yelled, without regard for stares, though with the din at the fort, he was scarcely heard.
Her grandfather was up and on his feet, leaving Rose to scramble behind him.
Harry had shed all traces of fat, as had they all, his cheekbones sharp in his sunken face, two of his upper teeth missing. He was so dark as to look truly African, small of stature but handsome of face, with eyes like a lizard, heavy lidded and appraising.
He dismounted. No jumping off his horse in a showy flourish like the Harry of old, but a careful dismount, joints a-creak, and a clear favoring of one leg over the other. They hadn’t seen him in more than three years, not since Harry followed Old Gouge Opothleyahola to Kansas and Cow Tom stayed in Indian Territory.
“Brother Harry,” Cow Tom said. “Does my heart good.” He grabbed Harry’s hand in a firm shake.
Harry, unsatisfied with the greeting, caught her grandfather up in a bear’s hug and danced him around the compound. Rose giggled at the folderol.
“Who’s this?” Harry asked. Harry Island spoke with an inconsequential lisp, not enough for him to be considered damaged, but enough to make him overcareful in his speaking, intent on making himself clear. “Too grown to be my little Rose.”
Rose turned shy. “Yes, Uncle Harry. That’s me. Rose.”
Harry reached out and turned her face one way and then the other. “Blamed if it isn’t you after all.”
For the first time in a long while, standing within the warmth of these two men, Rose thought it possible that things might turn to the better.
Chapter 38
“I MADE YOU
for an earlier convoy,” Grampa Cow Tom said to Harry Island.
Uncle Harry became serious, his attention turned from Rose toward her grandfather. “They kept me at Fort Scott as go-between till the ragged end. They’re cleaning the camps of Indians in Kansas,” he said. “Seems we wore out our welcome. This is about the last of us, returned to mother country.”
Uncle Harry looked around the fort and beyond to the valley, taking in the running sewage, the tight press of thousands of bodies for miles in each direction, the rank smell of foul air and unwashed humanity. “Still better than Fort Scott,” he pronounced.
“You think it a contest?” asked Grampa Cow Tom, his temper at instant boil. “Suffering is suffering. No need to assign grade.”
Uncle Harry stopped short at this last. He turned his head, and his voice when it came was muffled. “None do well, but some do better,” he said.
Her grandfather shook off his upset and clapped Uncle Harry on the back. “You’ll see soon enough what work needs done here.” He fell silent, giving Harry Island space to right himself. “Where’s Chief Sands? I thought he required you by his side. Specially surrounded by the white man’s English.”
“Took fever the last days on the trail, the hindmost playing out now. I’ve left him to his bed, and resume duty at the morning. To
night, I’m free to catch up, see what you call home.”
“You’re a welcome guest,” said Grampa Cow Tom. “But home it is not.”
“You and yours?”
“We lost Sarah last year. Pneumonia. And my daughter Maggie and two of her children to cholera six months ago,” said Cow Tom.
“Sorry,” said Harry. He shrugged. “Dinah’s gone. Dysentery. It was quick.”
Rose had never met Uncle Harry’s wife, but heard of her through her grandfather. Uncle Harry clearly didn’t want to dwell on his wife’s passing, which suited Rose fine. Death was hard enough to live beyond without having to talk of it. The two men let the silence build, as tribute.
“We brought supplies,” Uncle Harry finally said. “I thought it plenty, but they can’t last long. We were five thousand in Kansas. Looks three times that here.”
“Problems getting through?”
“A scrape with Confederates near Honey Springs, and a charge by a cattle gang, but the military boys fought them both back.”
“The First Indian spends more time herding cattle to feed military and refugees than they soldier,” Cow Tom said.
“It’s the cattle gangs the bigger threat than Sesech, like small armies,” said Harry. “Once past Kansas, rustlers came at us hard. Musta been insulted we brought back cattle they already stole once from us in Indian Territory and sold to beef contractors in Kansas.”
Her grandfather’s anger flared again. “Nobody beats us as stockmen. That’s why there’s so many African Creeks in the First Indian. But still our cattle disappear into Kansas while we starve here.”
Harry Island played the good friend, letting him rant. He ran his hands over his horse, still sweaty from the ride. “Rose, wouldn’t you think a man fresh off the trail would be offered something to eat?”
“Where’s my head?” Her grandfather beckoned to Harry. “Let’s walk. I’ll come back to the fort later. Amy’ll coax something from the pot. Might be nothing more than roots and water, but what we
have is yours.”
“I can lead your horse, Uncle Harry,” offered Rose.
“His name’s Bucky.”
Uncle Harry handed her the reins and they both followed along beside Cow Tom. They were barely free of the gate when a ragged full-blood Creek woman with a pocked face approached, dressed in a faded flour sack. She waited for them to notice her, and they broke off their talk.
“Micco Cow Tom,” she said. “Thanks be to Amy. My baby got through the night.”
“That’s fine, Jane,” her grandfather said.
The woman proceeded on her way, into the fort.
“Micco?” Uncle Harry asked. “They think you chief here? Don’t that beat all.”
It was as if Uncle Harry complimented Rose herself, the gift he gave her of seeing through new eyes the high regard her grandfather and grandmother garnered.
Her grandfather ignored him, and they continued walking the twisted trails toward Grand River.
“How’s rations work at Gibson?” Uncle Harry asked.
“If wagons get through, might be corn, flour, sometimes cattle to slaughter or dried beef and bacon, canned goods, coffee, calico, candles, shoes, but first mouths fed are officer, then other military, random white, Cherokee, mayhaps Creek, last comes any other tribe and Negro. When I first come, wasn’t Creeks nor Negroes considered to any rations at all, and no protest listened to, though it doesn’t take words to reveal starvation.”
“And now?”
“Now when supplies come, leastways I get somebody to break off a piece. They know I won’t leave them be about the Negroes. I haven’t forgotten our pledge.”
Rose wanted to ask what the pledge was, but it wasn’t her place to speak up in the men’s conversation.
“We’re still bad off,” her grandfather went on, “but get our
little bit. The others, they got their representers in the squabble over rations. Cherokee agents are strongest since Gibson lies in their territory, and Creeks specially forgot, with most chiefs Confederate or in Kansas, but Negroes worst. I watched how other agents done it, and made the same case for Creek. And Negro. In English.”
The smell of smoke hung heavy. They passed campsite after squeezed campsite, successive precincts of idled folks. The cadence of different dialects and languages confused Rose, but her grandfather quickly readjusted his ear and answered back in kind. The more fortunate defined space with a weave of blanket or stretch of cowhide, dung fires burning, open space a premium. There was little occupation or industry, no hunting in the played-out vicinity, no material to card or spin, or equipment on which to do it, and only meager foodstuffs to prepare.
A Creek woman, her naked child on her lap, sat on a sloped patch of ground and called a greeting, holding up her palm to acknowledge their passing. It wasn’t long out of snow season, and the child had no protection, but he’d held to life thus far, and stood more chance of hanging on until spring if he had a scrap of blanket. Her grandfather promised nothing, indicated nothing, answering back with his raised palm to the woman, but Rose had seen this before, and knew he made a mental note of her location, should he prove successful freeing a blanket from the new shipment.
They walked, the vast grounds around the fort a reflection of territories before the war. Cherokees here, Upper Creeks there, Arapaho over there. They crossed one invisible border after another in quick succession—Cherokee, Chippewa, Creek, mostly women and children, since all healthy military-age men were forced to enlist and had disappeared into the war long ago. Her grandfather spoke to legions of people as they passed their camps. To those whose language or dialect he hadn’t mastered, he gestured.
“How many languages you speak now, brother?” Uncle Harry asked.
“Did you go soft in Kansas?” asked Grampa Cow Tom. “Cherokee rules at Fort Gibson among Indian, so it was learn Tsalagi or not understand the dealings of the back room. I muddle Chippewa and Osage to get by, but they aren’t players here. In the rations war, English trumps all else in shaking free provisions, from general to supply clerk.”
“I see why they didn’t pull you into the military,” said Uncle Harry. “You made your place.”
At last they came to a view of the Grand River, squatters inhabiting every space from wood to riverbank. Everywhere they turned was another dirt-crusted body in ragged garb, another pair of heavy-lidded eyes. Rose slowed her pace, falling behind the two men who provoked such interest as they walked, the better to study the faces of those they passed.
From one campsite to the next, people greeted her grandfather, some to complain, some to chat, some in mere acknowledgment.
“Micco.”
“Micco Cow Tom.”
“Micco,” Harry repeated. “Chief. Chief of the wretched.”
“Sometimes, when leadership is not given, it must be taken,” said her grandfather.
Uncle Harry nodded. “It’s a fact,” he agreed.
“They have no one else to represent them. I only plead what is due my people, African or Creek, the way the Cherokee chiefs do, the way the Indian agents do. You fought for Negro and Creek in Kansas at Fort Scott, only you had a Creek chief by your side already in the title. There was no voice but mine here.” Her grandfather stopped. “We’re almost there. Amy will be glad to see you. Run ahead and give the alert, Rose.”
Rose didn’t want to leave them. Their men’s talk made her feel better than she had in a long time. But she did as told, pulling the horse behind her, and her family greeted Uncle Harry, and welcomed him into their camp. Uncle Harry reacquainted with Gramma Amy, and Ma’am fussed over him for a meager supper of
dandelion soup and meal bread.
“I’ll find a way to free added rations,” Uncle Harry assured Gramma Amy.
After supper, Rose took charge of Bucky once more and followed the two men toward the river, where Uncle Harry staked out a sleeping spot.
“You’ve grown ever more useful, Rose,” Uncle Harry said, taking the reins from her and tying a length of rope from the horse’s muzzle. He wrapped the other end around his wrist. “They try to take the horse, they come through me.” He laid his horse blanket on the cold ground and pulled his jacket tighter.
“I’m come to be official interpreter for the U.S. Army here,” Uncle Harry announced to her grandfather. “Chief Sands decrees.” Even in the darkness, Rose could see the tightness in her uncle’s face, as if he was unsure how her grandfather would take this news. “You willing to share the load?”
Grampa Cow Tom laughed, loud and long. The very sound was strange. Rose couldn’t remember the last time her grandfather laughed.
“You think this work a gift, to be hoarded?” he said.
Uncle Harry laughed too. “I’ve missed you, old friend.”
Chapter 39
AS SQUALID AS
Fort Gibson was, despite the unthinkable memories of death and deprivation of the last couple of years, Rose walked through fire and came out the other side a warrior. She missed her Granny Sarah and Aunt Maggie and the cousins, but refused to dwell on them or the sadness pulling her down. Maybe this was the weight Granny Sarah felt when asked about her past, the impossibility of revisiting what could neither be borne nor amended and therefore couldn’t be shared. Rose locked the bad memories away and put other thoughts in their stead.