Citizens Creek (35 page)

For the first time in her life, Rose harbored anger toward Grampa Cow Tom, his forcing her to question what kind of man he really was. Yet, she missed him as a fierce ache. She’d made it through the morning so far, through the preparations and the ser
vice and the condolences, unwilling to call on Twin again. He’d helped shore her up in Grampa Cow Tom’s tepee, but she’d taken care not to summon him since, especially not during these last bittersweet days when her grandfather’s hoarse voice spun stories of his life she’d never before heard, including the one that sent her reeling, tarnishing her image of the man she thought she knew. And she’d stood strong, and fired the gun despite Ma’am’s disapproval, without Twin’s aid.

But by early afternoon, her mood had fallen so low and the hurt was so crippling, Rose left the busyness of the ranch house and made the short trip back to the graveyard, to conjure Twin there. All family and visitors had left, once the hole was filled, and she was alone with the new, loose-dirt grave that was her grandfather and the false grave that was Twin. She dropped to her knees in front of Twin’s smooth river stone, and closed her eyes.

“Twin, help me,” she said. “Help me know how to keep on.”

She waited for the signs, but there was only nothing.

“Stand with me, Twin,” she implored.

She tried to make her mind clear, to give her brother room, waiting for so long she felt the shift in the air as the day advanced toward evening. Still Twin didn’t come. What if Twin was escorting Grampa Cow Tom to wherever he needed to go? What if he sought revenge for shutting him out at Fort Gibson? What if she could only call him to her once, and no more? Had he abandoned her too, in this time of all times?

Emptiness threatened. She was alone.

“Damn you, Twin. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.” Granny Sarah’s words came back to her, and she forced them into the hostile air. “What’s done is done and gone.”

As if to refute her claim, images crowded in on her with the immediacy of warm flesh, spilling out faster than she could sort, a jumble of quick flashes in no particular order, one after the other. She had to open her eyes and hard-press her palms to the dirt to stop the dizzying array. A boy with a cow named Hadjo. A smashed
fiddle. A bloody ear flap held aloft by a murderous Seminole. A young slave mother stolen on horseback. Creeks drowning by the hundreds. Black men signing Indian treaties. A dying black Seminole brave. A sweet courtship.

Twin might have abandoned her again, so soon after his return, she didn’t know. But all she had left of Grampa Cow Tom were his stories and the promise she’d made him, and she resolved she would hold his revelations close, hoard them, lock them deep in her heart to keep what should be hidden safe. The stories were hers now, to keep her whole. Hers and no one else’s. Her burden, but her refuge too. Some things weren’t for sharing.

She didn’t bother to brush the mud from her tunic after she found her feet, a little afraid to believe. She stood taller.

Not yet, she told herself.

She returned to the ranch house, and served the visitors and ranch hands until the last of them straggled back home or to the bunkhouse.

Not yet.

She scrubbed out all the pots and set them to dry before pulling out her evening sewing.

Only then did she give herself over to the sorting out of heroics and shame, to the slow healing, to the stories, as if Grampa Cow Tom himself was still talking to her in the tepee. She vowed to mend herself, alone, no matter how long that might take, through what he’d left behind for her.

His voice was strong.

Chapter 49

TIME SLIPPED PAST,
some months at a crawl, but most vanishing in a blur, disappeared as fire smoke carried off by the wind. Looking backward, Rose characterized each year since her grandfather’s passing. Year one, when rolling stabs of grief surprised and engulfed her whenever her mind fixed too long on Grampa Cow Tom’s airy laugh in the death tepee or a stray recollection of the familiar hitch to his walk. Year two, and that moment of unspeakable panic when she couldn’t remember whether it was her grandfather’s right or left ear that bore only a stub. Year three, when she let her mind go blank, and ranch chores washed over her like one of the numbing potions in her grandmother’s medicine bag. And year four, when her Gramma Amy shook her awake early, before the dawn’s light.

“Let’s go,” Gramma Amy whispered. “Horse is already hitched.”

Her grandmother bent over her, and Rose brought Gramma Amy’s face into focus only inches from her own.

“Go where?” asked Rose. She rubbed at her eyes in confusion, not yet fully awake, her brain sluggish. On the other side of the bed, Elizabeth still slept soundly, her soft, whistling snore uninterrupted.

“Okmulgee,” Gramma Amy whispered. “I got our breakfast in a basket.”

Gramma Amy was gone as quickly as she came. Rose stumbled out of bed, threw on her day dress, laced her shoes in the darkened room, and grabbed a thick shawl. She trailed the light of Gramma Amy’s lantern ahead of her toward the barn, almost slipping once in the darkness, sidestepping some small scurrying animal, prob
ably a prairie dog. She could hardly see, but took in the crisp smells of morning, musty hay, steaming cow patties, dew. The chickens hadn’t yet roused themselves, still quiet. In front of the barn, the buckboard was hitched to one of the ranch’s horses, and her grandmother held the reins. Rose hurried, scrambling up the other side to sit next to her on the hard plank, gathering the folds of her dress around her.

Gramma Amy clicked them forward, and they rode for almost four hours in silence, well past first light, north along a main road. Gramma Amy finally stopped. Rose’s stomach churned, both from hunger and from not knowing where they were going or why. She helped her grandmother down from the wagon. In the back was the breakfast basket and a large carpetbag satchel, fastened. Her grandmother came round to the wagon bed and reached for the basket.

“What’s in the satchel?” asked Rose.

“Enough of your things to last a month,” said Gramma Amy. “Should you need.”

Rose’s breath almost stopped in her chest. “Are you turning me out?”

“Never. You’re always free to stay home or come home.”

“Why won’t you tell me what’s in Okmulgee?” Rose couldn’t keep the panic from her voice.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Gramma Amy picked through the contents of the wicker basket, and pulled out a firm green apple. At Gramma Amy’s demand, Rose had been baking for the past three days, and inside were four of her loaves wrapped in cloth—one each of shuck bread, sour bread, pumpkin bread, and fry bread. Rose started to unwrap the sour bread, her favorite, but Gramma Amy stopped her.

“That one’s not for us,” she said. “Only the fry bread.”

Rose was an excellent cook, so good that Gramma Amy seldom bothered her in the kitchen anymore, having taught her all she could, but for the last few days she had fussed and hovered over Rose as Rose baked, ordering her to make batch after batch until
the loaves came out perfectly.

Gramma Amy ate her apple quickly, core and all. Discomforted by the silence, Rose picked out an apple and bit into the tart fruit, and wiped away the juice that dribbled down her chin. The only thing she was sure of was that her grandmother would never do anything to hurt her. They finished off the fry bread and
puska
balls, and only then did Gramma Amy first belch and then clear her throat.

“He’d want more for you,” Gramma Amy said. “From you.”

“Who?” asked Rose, but she knew.

“Your grandpa set great store by you. He always bragged on the fire spirit in the girl who warned us to run to Fort Gibson.”

“I’m doing my part on the ranch,” said Rose, defensive. She could neither describe how much she missed Grampa Cow Tom, the heaviness of each day, nor reveal that Gramma Amy didn’t know as much about her grandfather’s past as she thought. She didn’t want to talk of him.

Gramma Amy brushed her comment aside as if it had no import.

“Time to choose, girl. Try to be the Rose he thought you could be, or play out your days like you been doing.”

“Why are we going to Okmulgee?” asked Rose.

“To get you a future,” she said.

Okmulgee wasn’t what Rose expected. The dirt streets were wide, and though the single-story houses were mostly built of wood and sturdy, they were haphazard, as if a random tornado deposited one here in the middle of a grassy field, and another over there by the creek. They stopped the horse at a small building with a hand-painted sign over the narrow door that said General Store. Three old Indian men slumped outside, idle in mismatched chairs, and Gramma Amy called out to them.

“Morning,” she said. “You know where the Pennymans stay?”

“Just round the bend, third house down, double-log, two stone fireplaces. You can’t miss it.”

They had no trouble finding the house, bigger than the others they’d seen, and Gramma Amy grabbed the basket and marched toward the front door. Midway, she called, “Rose,” and Rose clambered down to follow.

An attractive, middle-aged Creek woman answered Gramma Amy’s knock. She was both full-figured and stiff-backed, dressed in European clothes, a cotton blouse high around the neck and long dark skirt, and she didn’t smile, her plump face betraying nothing of what she thought to find these two women on her front stoop. She waited, the door open halfway.

“Mrs. Pennyman?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Amy. You been buying our beef and our preserves from Cane Creek for years. We’re here to make good on our new arrangement.”

The woman swung the door open wide, and moved to one side so they could pass. “Come in then. I been expecting you.”

Mrs. Pennyman led them back into the kitchen. Rose caught glimpses of the house as they walked. The rooms were small but well kept and clean, and someone had bunched a bowl of fresh purple windflowers on a little wooden table in the front room.

“This her?” Mrs. Pennyman asked once they got to the kitchen.

“Yes,” said Gramma Amy. She took three of the loaves of bread out and arranged them in a line on the table. “You’ll want to try these. Just a sample of what she can do.”

Mrs. Pennyman pinched off a small piece of the pumpkin loaf and tasted. She nodded once in satisfaction. She repeated with the shuck bread, and again, she seemed pleased. But when she tasted the sour bread, she made a noise deep in her throat, broke off a much larger piece, and closed her eyes as she chewed. They waited silent until she finished, and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin.

“She talk?” asked Mrs. Pennyman.

“Rose?” Gramma Amy urged.

“Yes, ma’am. I talk and I cook both.” Rose tried to keep the challenge out of her voice. She still didn’t understand. What exactly was the new arrangement, and how could her grandmother bargain without explanation?

“We have a small room in the back,” said Mrs. Pennyman. “Your grandmother tells me you cook just about anything, and we can see if this works out for the next month or so before we all decide. It’s me and my husband and two boys and a girl. We entertain a fair amount. Room and board included. Wages go direct to you. You ready to work?”

Rose looked to Gramma Amy in alarm, but her grandmother just returned her look with a level stare.

Suddenly, Rose wanted nothing more than to be back at the ranch, buried underneath an avalanche of chores she’d repeated thousands of times before, and would repeat thousands of times again, sleepwalking, invisible. Her safe haven.

But another voice rose in her head, and she thought of Grampa Cow Tom’s words to her, that she should go away for a time, and figure how to carve out her own life, and make her own traditions. She thought about Gramma Amy, and how disappointed she would be if they took the buckboard ride back to the ranch together, and she left the Okmulgee position without trying. A month. Hard work was a given no matter where she lived, and she’d survived a war, burned-out homes, hunger, the death of people she loved. She’d always had her family around her, but a single month unmoored from constant reminders of the past held its own appeal. She’d managed to stand up for herself and shoot the gun south for her grandfather. She could do this.

Rose found Gramma Amy’s gaze again and held fast until the drumming of her heart quieted. She trusted she could go or stay, of her own choosing.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m ready,” Rose said to Mrs. Pennyman. “My satchel is in the wagon.”