I asked if I could go look at the tracks.
She told me to hang on a minute. “Where’s Ben?” There followed another scramble. Ben was missing. Someone said that Adam was up mowing the ditch. He could show him. Somebody else said that Adam wouldn’t know about the tracks. Susan gave me Ben’s phone number, and then Richard’s mother said Ben wasn’t born and raised here, to which Susan responded, “But he knows about it, Momma.”
A woman named Paula came up. She looked skeptical. She shook her head when Susan told her about the wagon tracks. “Where did you hear this? Ben said I knew where it was?”
“No, Ben does.”
“Well, call Ben. He should be home.” She was shaking her head at the boundlessness of human folly.
“I’ve been down in there and seen them, Paula,” Susan said in a low earnest tone of voice. She sounded slightly hurt.
“Well, there are lots of tracks down in there, but that doesn’t mean they’re wagon tracks.”
Susan got on the phone.
“Hey. Can you still see the old wagon tracks that went through there up in the field?” There was a pause. “You can’t? Okay, okay, I’m a retard then.” She looked at me and shrugged. A long pause. “Okay, then I’m not a retard. Okay. Well, you said I was a retard. Okay, thank you. Bye.”
Susan put down the phone and reported that Ben had said, yes, a few years ago we could see them but you can’t see them now. It’s grown up too much.
Then Paula said, “That’s tick heaven, back up in there.”
I thanked Susan and Paula and Richard’s mother for their trouble and made to leave. Susan stopped me and asked if I had a camera with me. She sent me out to the car to fetch it. When I returned, she took me into the dining room and showed me a fascinating map of the Three Forks, a “sketch map” by someone named Tom Meagher. The map, which appeared to have been engraved by hand, showed the confluence of the Arkansas, Grand (Neosho), and Verdigris Rivers and nearby landmarks, including Houston’s wigwam, which was across the Neosho from Fort Gibson, the Osage Agency, and the Texas Road. Susan’s mother-in-law had owned the original, and Susan donated it to the Three Rivers Museum in Muskogee. She gave me directions to the monument, put up by the Muskogee–Indian Territory Daughters of the American Revolution, that memorialized the Texas Road, and the Irving Trail, and other items of historical interest.
More interesting than the monument, which was simply a roadside historical marker, was the Three Rivers road itself, which seemed to follow more or less the exact route of the Texas Road through a broad V-shaped bottomland, defined by the three rivers and narrowing to a point, known as French Point, at the mouth of the Neosho.
The bottoms, according to Meagher’s map (which I later acquired and discovered was composed in collaboration with Grant Foreman, the historian), were in the 1830s and thereabouts the site of a scattering of Indian villages. Today they are largely covered with beautiful meadows filled with wildflowers or fields under cultivation and irrigation. Some of the fences I saw had irregular pieces of what looked like firewood as fence posts. Trees flowered everywhere. There were ruined falling-down shacks and fences grown over with blooming honeysuckle, its thick scent heavy in the air. A hand-fashioned wooden signboard depicted an American flag, with the word FREE where the field of stars would normally be, a lone star in the upper portion of the R. Below the flag, stenciled in black spray paint: KEEP AMERICA FREE OF TERRORISM. Down the road a bit was a burned-out mobile home adjacent to a large field, waist-high with a yellow-topped grain crop, filled with feasting crows.
I came to the banks of the Neosho, which was spanned by two beautiful rusty metal bridges, one with rails, the other a single-lane auto bridge. The rail bridge was supported by stone and concrete towers; the auto bridge by mere concrete. I turned in to the Ray Clinkenbeard Memorial River Park, got out of my Ford, and walked along the bank. As near as I could figure, Houston’s wigwam was located right here. Or across the road in what was now an impassable thicket. I stepped into an outhouse made of a single large sheet of corrugated steel, rolled in on itself and set up on its edge. It was like entering a tunnel of shit. I quickly exited. At the edge of the park, where I was cautioned against illegal dumping, I saw a broken-down sign for the Jean-Pierre Choteau (sic) National Recreation Trail, which had fallen into a state of neglect and after about a hundred yards was completely overgrown. Families stood along the bank, fishing for catfish. When I returned to my car, it was covered in butterflies, their long curly proboscises unfurled, drinking pollen through their tubular tongues from the smooth, warm silvery metal surface.
At Fort Gibson, I met a group of men dressed up in mid-nineteenth-century U.S. Cavalry uniforms. Most were late 1840s and 1850s, but some were Civil War. They worked for the Oklahoma Historical Society. I asked if they were reenacting something.
Near the site of Sam Houston’s Wigwam Neosho
“Yeah,” one replied. “Here in a few minutes we’re going to reenact taking that flag down there.”
We chatted about the Texas Road, and I listened to the friendly costumed historians compare uniforms and the heft of their swords. They were obsessed with the small details of garrison life. I admired their rigor as the flag descended to the elegiac bugles and drums of the evening colors.
I found Sam Houston’s wife near the circle of honor at the Fort Gibson National Cemetery. The stone read
Talahina R.
WIFE OF GEN.
SAM HOUSTON
Her name was actually Diana Rogers. She was a Cherokee, and like many other Cherokees her name did not sound particularly Indian. The graves extended as far as I could see: John P. Decatur, Sutler, 1832; Charles O. Collins, Assistant Quartermaster; Unknown, no date; Billy Bow Legs, Captain, Indian Territory, no date. A large iron cross at the center of the circle of honor listed 2,123 interments. Known 156. Unknown 1,967.
In Tulsa, I had dinner with some writer friends at a fine restaurant and drank too much wine. A couple of women from Durant, Oklahoma, were eavesdropping on our conversation and told me that I should be sure to stop there on my way to Dallas and see the world’s largest peanut. They said I’d be driving through the hometowns of Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood and that I should be sure to stop at the big Choctaw casino.
Driving through Oklahoma, I noticed that even the rest stops had casinos, sad smoky little square rooms filled with slot machines. You take a break from driving and play some slots. They reminded me of the video arcades of my youth, where I played games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Defender, and Stargate. I visited one at the Choctaw Travel Plaza, in Atoka. There were old folks, young folks, people wearing trucker caps and jeans, faded dirty T-shirts. Overweight people with bad complexions and spreading bottoms sat in front of these weird digital slot machines in an atmosphere of stale cigarette smoke. Across the street was a shuttered store with a sign that said SHEFFIELD’S and a defunct bank. Just down the street, past a long row of empty stores, was a Walmart with a parking lot jammed with cars. I drove on past, past a pretty old field with a green tractor and a red barn, then an odd architectural confection up on a hill that resembled a Swiss chalet, with stone paths winding down to a pond. Just off the highway was another dead armadillo amid a patch of pink wildflowers.
While listening to Ryan Seacrest, apparent heir to Casey Kasem, hosting America’s Top 40 countdown, I saw the first patch of prickly pear cactus. Texas was near. A flying dinosaur with a mouthful of teeth perched atop a pole in front of a yard full of derelict dump trucks. A broken-down Stay Inn motel flashed by; it looked like a good candidate for freelance meth cooking.
Growing bored, I tuned in to a country music station. “Real life, real feelings, real music,” said the announcer. Banal generic guitar rock belched from the speakers, sung with a vague southern drawl. Sweet-faced country people were getting up early to get to the Church of Christ, back in our town; small-town redneck boys sat around talking shit and picking fights, where it’s all for one and one for all, with a seasonal
refrain about those boys that rhymes with “appall,” which I won’t quote for fear of copyright persecution. One nostalgic kitsch crime followed another as city-dwelling entrepreneurs sought to entertain their largely urban audience with slick ballads about getting out of the concrete jungle, back past a couple of little shacks, where the crickets sing and you can hear somebody’s mother’s uncle plucking at a banjo, with a blonde who’s hotter than a Georgia summer wearing Daisy Dukes and dancing barefoot on a tailgate near a pond. That’s America, by God, love it or leave it, the Stars and Stripes are the best, but the rebel flag’s okay too, small towns are beautiful, you ought to be able to pray in schools, and you better watch out for that tidal wave down on the border.
The happy, happy, sappy-slick country music was bringing me down, so I decided to listen to a radio preacher deliver a sincere sermon about empty pleasures and sour grapes while I watched a group of young people on the other side of the highway climbing up on big round hay bales and taking pictures. I looked for the giant peanut in Durant but couldn’t find it, but I did come upon the giant Choctaw Casino Resort. The parking lot was enormous and almost completely full on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I noticed that Merle Haggard would be playing there soon; too bad I couldn’t find his songs on the radio.
I found a parking space and got out. Inside the casino was a crazy din of competing bells, alarms, beeps, and jingles. A band played somewhere in the neon distance. It was just like the rest-stop casino only much, much bigger. I saw a woman playing two slots at once, her two casino cards slotted in with personalized lanyards hanging down; one machine was adorned with the smirking image of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and the other with Red Hot Ruby. The player just sat there on a stool, pressing both buttons at once, her face slack. When I first saw Red Hot Ruby, I thought she was the Little Mermaid but soon realized my mistake. Ruby was a devilish girl, with much larger breasts than the Disney character and red flames caressing (or perhaps emerging from) her backside. Red Hot Ruby was all over. Sometimes she appeared as Hot Red Ruby. I couldn’t bring myself to play with that sexy, ravenous devil girl and her bottomless coin slot, so I retreated to the safety of the parking lot, which was patrolled by armed security guards on mountain bikes. Hall and Oates sang “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” as I drove south toward home.
When I came to Colbert, site of a famous ferry across the Red River, I inquired at the Texas Info Center and was told that the ferry was just about where the railroad bridge now spans the river, just east of the highway bridge. The nice woman there gave me directions, and I drove back across into Oklahoma. I found the River View RV park and made my way down to the bank.
In 1858, the Butterfield Stage first passed through this place. It was a speculative enterprise, a government contract secured by an old stage driver from New York named John Butterfield; he was friendly with President James Buchanan and a founder of the American Express Company, along with Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, who also founded Wells, Fargo & Company to bring mail and banking services to California. It was a big contract for the time, $600,000 a year to establish roads and stations and biweekly mail service between St. Louis and San Francisco. The first stage left Missouri on September 16, 1858, with a single through passenger named Waterman L. Ormsby, a newspaper reporter for The New York Herald. The stage arrived at Colbert’s ferry on September 20, thirty-four hours ahead of schedule. Ormsby describes Benjamin Franklin Colbert as “a half-breed Indian of great sagacity and business tact,” with a white wife and a large gang of slaves hard at work cutting down the banks of the river, pushing away the sand, and improving the approach to the ferry. The ferry itself was little more than a raft pushed across the shallows by stout slaves wielding poles. “He is nearly white, very jovial and pleasant, and, altogether, a very good specimen of the half-breed Indian.”
Standing on the bank, looking across the shallow river at Texas, I could picture the scene. Both sides of the river were bound by red bluffs that dipped low near the river, and it was easy to imagine the wagons lined up on the north side, waiting to make their crossing from Indian Territory into the promised land beyond.
A family of campers wandered nearby, and a man named Santiago fished for catfish with a hand line, twirling his hook and sinker, baited with a worm, over his head like a lasso and tossing it into the channel. He was from Plano and drove about forty-five minutes to get here, not so far to travel for a good fishing hole. I told him I had come all the way from New York. He said that today the fishing was not good. Just then he got a bite. We both laughed when the fish got away.
—
I had John Stambaugh’s address right, fortunately, so I found his apartment on Sandhurst Lane in Dallas, despite his bizarre directions, and I managed to locate the gate he was so concerned about. It was one of those low-rise garden-style apartment complexes with separate entrances for cars and pedestrians. I pressed the apartment number on the keypad and waited. Several minutes passed. I tried again. Through the steel bars of the gate I could see the grassy courtyard with its tasteful trees and orderly sidewalks linking redbrick dwellings. After about two minutes I heard a voice through the intercom. It was John. He said he’d be right out. Several minutes passed and I began to grow uncomfortable. Then, just as I was about to ring him again, I spied a small hunched man making his slow, painful way toward me. He was naked except for a pair of pale yellow shorts that hung low on his hips. As he approached, I could see that shaving cream covered much of his face. There were dribs and drabs of shaving cream on the parts of his face that he’d shaved and on his neck, ears, and shoulders.
John and I introduced ourselves, and he apologized for his appearance. I had caught him shaving. He said he hadn’t known when to expect me, though I had spoken to him every day that week, and I had spoken to him earlier that morning. He seemed to be in some pain. His feet, which appeared to be flat, were puffy, turned out slightly, with long yellow toenails. He was bent over in the shape of a banana.
He said his feet were swollen and that it hurt to walk on the sidewalk. I offered my arm as a support, and we proceeded slowly through the grass toward his home. John winced with each step, especially when he had to cross the sidewalk. His back was densely freckled and his skinny bottom, exposed by his drooping shorts, was pale. A large mole protruded from his shoulder.
Inside his apartment, mail and papers were scattered over every visible surface, including card tables that were set up in the living room. A blue theme predominated. There was a blue floral couch and a painting of greenish-blue horses galloping over a featureless blue plain, pursued by a blue-gray storm cloud. Another painting was a blue fantasia of a blue lake, a dark island silhouetted against dark blue clouds, ringed by the misty blue-white clouds of memory. In the foreground was a clump of white lilies. Unread rolled-up newspapers in plastic sleeves littered the floor. In another room I saw a painting of a dirt road bounded by bluebonnet flowers; in the background was a metal ranch gate and a live oak tree.
I noticed a couple of old telephones in the living room and remembered that Patricia had told me John possessed a remarkable collection of antique phones. In a wood-paneled den, there were by my count twenty-eight ancient telephones mounted on the walls. The wall phones were wooden cabinets of various shapes with wooden ringer boxes mounted on them, metal receivers hanging on the hook and transmitters projecting near the top. No two were alike in design. There were Northern Electrics and Kelloggs and phones from Sears, Roebuck. Some had dialers, but most did not. At least thirty-five old metal candlestick telephones from the second and third decades of the twentieth century crowded the surfaces of a sideboard and the side tables adjacent to another blue couch, which was also covered with papers.
That’s a lot of phones, I said, marveling at the collection. “They’re beautiful.”
“I think so,” John replied. “Don’t know if anybody else does. But then I don’t really care.”
I had come to see John because he was the most serious and accomplish
ed genealogist in our family. He was descended, I knew, from Perry Wilson’s sister Lydia. He had offered, through Patricia, to show me around Collin County and point out the ancestral Wilson and Adamson properties. Or so I thought.
We were driving through Dallas to a restaurant. Patricia had warned me not to let John drive, but he insisted. He wasn’t doing a bad job, though he occasionally made a wrong turn. I asked him how he got interested in genealogy. Was it something he’d always been interested in?
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. I really don’t know. Just trying to think. I don’t know.”
Seems like you did a lot of work on it, though, I prompted.
“Yes, I did at first. But I just don’t remember how I got interested in it.”
It turned out that John not only didn’t remember how he became interested in family genealogy but didn’t remember what he had learned. He had written several books, but their contents had simply disappeared from his memory. He thought maybe Patricia had got him into it, but he wasn’t sure. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember how or where he had met Pat either. He wondered if maybe she saw his name on something. I said she probably saw his name on one of his works of genealogy. Trying to stimulate his memory, I asked him if he was descended from Perry Wilson’s sister.
“Ah.” He paused. “I should know.” Another long pause as the lights of the city played on the windows of his Buick. “Yes, that’s right. Lydia Wilson, she was my great, my great-great-grandmother. Esther Wilson was her mother. Lydia was next. My ancestor was one of Lydia’s daughters. I got really deep into that for a while, but it’s been so long that I don’t really remember a lot of it now.”
Texas Blood Page 15
