by Tim Tingle
I must not cower before him.
His breathing suddenly stopped. Roberta heard the splintering pop of a glass bottle breaking, followed by a grunt and three quick shuffling steps. She turned and broke into a run in the direction of the church.
She ran straight into a clump of scrub oaks, holding one arm in front of her face to protect herself. As she neared the church, she heard his footsteps behind her. Her breath shot out in fire-hot puffs and she shook the tears from her face. He was almost upon her when she reached the front steps of the church building.
She reached for the doorknob, but her fingers slipped from the shiny brass knob. A heavy hand struck her in the ribs and sent her flying against the doorjamb. She kicked backwards at her assailant. He grabbed her ankles and jerked her legs out from under her. She fell against the top step, dropping the rock.
His hand gripped her shoulder and strong fingers seized her upper arm. He flung her on her back and a hot river of strength surged through her. He was massive and his figure blocked the sky. For a brief moment the moon shone behind him and Roberta looked up at a dark silhouette standing over her.
Marshal Hardwicke.
His hand held the broken remains of a bottle and his arm was raised and poised to strike. She smelled his breath, sweet and rancid with whiskey. His warm spit fell on her cheeks.
“You think you safe here, girl?” he said, slurring his words as he spoke. His jaws hung fat and loose and his eyes were bloodshot. His breath came short and heavy. He shook his head and reached out his hand to steady himself on the door, dropping the bottle.
When his head cleared he looked at her in confusion, squinting his eyes and saying, “You not that girl. Who you? Look at me.” He put his palm to her chin and lifted her face. She trembled and drew herself into a crouch in the doorway.
“You the preacher’s daughter. Oh, mercy Lord. What I goin’ to do with you now? Look what I gone and done. Oh, Jesus, no.” He buried his face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want you. I want that old man’s girl, his granddaughter. You got her jacket. Why you wearing her jacket?”
The marshal shook his head and stared hard at her. His voice grew deeper and Roberta sensed a new level of meanness.
“You stay right there. You got to unnerstand I never wanted you in this bidness. Now I got to kill you. Don’t you go nowhere, you hear me? I don’t want to chase you.”
Roberta moaned. The marshal lurched down the steps. He squatted to pick up a large chunk of limestone, one of a dozen by the church entrance.
“No, they gonna find your body right here on the church steps tomorrow morning. Sunday morning.”
Roberta lay still, calming herself as her fingers searched the ground for the lava rock. When he returned, his blood-red eyeballs seemed ready to burst from his head.
“You shouldn’t ought to be here. Not my fault you here. But maybe it’s best. The preacher’s daughter. Dead on the steps of the church. They never gonna forgit that, hon. You be remembered. How you like that? Long as there are Choctaws living here, they gonna talk about how you died. And they gonna know who’s in charge.”
He lifted the stone with both hands, hoisting it high over his head and almost falling backwards from the weight of it. With a few stumbling steps he steadied himself. Roberta saw his face redden and his cheeks swell as he put all of his strength behind the stone, whirling it downward, aiming at her skull.
She rolled aside, and when the stone smashed through the thick wooden door, she struck him above the eye with her black lava rock. Hardwicke fell hard and blood gushed down his checks and neck, darkening the collar of his shirt. His hands flew to his face.
Roberta leapt to her feet and sped past the marshal. She took the worn dirt path to the road. With the moon now fully above the pines, she knew he could clearly see her, were his eyes not filled with blood. But hiding was not in her thinking––fleeing was, fleeing with all the speed her lithe young legs could gather.
She rounded the bend in the road and only then did she dare to look over her shoulder. An empty road greeted her, and above it a bright quarter moon tilting over pointed treetops, surrounded by a sky ablaze with stars.
She ran for half an hour, pausing to look behind her every few minutes. She neither saw nor heard any sign of the marshal. Rose’s house was closer than her own and Roberta turned in that direction. She dipped into the woods to cross the creek at the back pasture of the Goode homestead.
She slowed to a fast walk, hearing nothing but the sound of her own breath, hot and stinging. These woods were thinned, kept clean by Rose’s father to discourage wolves and predator cats from hiding so close to his best pastureland. Soon the creek came into view, its rippling waters flashing in the moonlight. Roberta stepped from the woods and knelt beside the creek, cupping her hands. She eased her fingers through the water and felt the coldness on her palms. She never tasted the water.
A strong hand grabbed her collar and dragged her into the woods.
Koi Chitto Comes to Life
Rose
It was eleven o’clock that evening and all but the night critters had found a place to curl up and sleep. Samuel was too shy to step on the porch without being asked, so he just stood in the front yard and hollered.
“Rose! Rose! Is Berta Jean here?”
Momma parted the window curtains and squinted her whole face.
“Samuel,” she said, opening the door. “Come on in, son. What are you doing out this late at night?”
“Momma sent me to come get Berta Jean. She wadn’t ’spossed ta be spending the night.”
“Hon, we ain’t seen her since late afternoon. She stopped by to visit is all. She was on her way to Pokoni’s gravehouse. Had a gardenia bush she was meaning to plant.”
“She ain’t come home and Momma’s all worried ’bout her,” Samuel said. “I better run go tell her Berta Jean’s not here.”
“You ought to stay here,” my father said, rising from his chair by the fireplace. “No sense two of you wandering ’round at night.” He pulled his boots on and told me, “Rose, light the lantern and go get Amafo up. Tell him Roberta Jean never made it home. We going looking for her. Tell him we ’bout ready to leave.”
Momma boiled water for coffee while I was waking Amafo up. By the time he made all the necessary stoops and bends to get himself dressed and make his stiff walk down the stairs, she had a cup for everybody, myself included. The night air had turned chilly and the coffee cup felt warm and welcome. I tried sipping careful but the coffee still burned my tongue.
I hoped Roberta Jean was not still out. If she was, it meant trouble. She thought too much like a parent to be doing anything foolish.
“Daddy, I want to go.” I couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but I knew he was considering letting me, so I took the opening.
“She is my best friend. She was doing something for Pokoni. Let me go looking for her, please.” Before he answered, Momma pulled a pair of Amafo’s old britches from her sewing box.
“You can wear these,” she said, holding them up for inspection. “Yes, I believe you big enough to get into these skinny britches.”
“Let’s go, hon. We not gonna wait on you,” Daddy said. While I pulled the britches on and slid my dress over my shoulders he told me, “Stay with Amafo, back from the lantern light. We not ’specting no trouble, but it’ll be safer if you cain’t be seen.”
He turned to Samuel and said, “You best stay here. If Roberta Jean comes here, don’t go nowhere till we get back. We just going to the church. Won’t be gone mor’n a hour.”
When he headed out the back door, I knew we were cutting across the pasture and through the back woods where the underbrush was mostly cut or burned out. He took long strides and it was hard for us to keep up, but halfway across the pasture I saw Amafo come to life, like he was remembering––or his muscles were remembering––what it had been like to go hunting at night, like in his younger days. He was soon matching my father
stride for stride.
Daddy was also in on this secret way of thinking and doing things nobody ever talks about. He had asked Amafo to come along so this manly way of going would maybe come back to him. It had happened and I was glad to see it.
Daddy held the lantern to his side and it swung an easy arc, casting a wide yellow circle on the ground. I covered my eyes from the lantern’s full light and kept it in the corner of my seeing. We slowed down to a careful walk and crossed the creek bridge.
As we neared the trees, Daddy hollered loud, “Roberta Jean! Roberta Jean!” He paused to see if any sound would come echoing back. Hearing nothing, we entered the woods.
Daddy soon turned north towards the church. We had only gone a few steps in that direction when we heard a panther scream, high-pitched and long, an icy call that cut the night in half. Amafo put his hands on my shoulders and I thought I would faint from fright. I was panting and breathing hard.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, hon,” he said real soft. “No need to be scared now. This a holy time, a night like this,” he said, and I thought of his rocking on the day of my grandmother’s funeral, his sweet rocking. I turned and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“It’s gonna be alright,” he said. “Just hard to see sometimes.”
Daddy hung the lantern on an overhanging branch and stepped back to join us. We crouched down for a long while, looking and listening. The panther’s call seemed to silence everything else in the woods, save a small fluttering of leaves.
We waited for maybe twenty minutes, plenty of time for the panther to seek out the source of light. Twice Daddy moved us, when a shift in the wind put us upwind of the panther or at least upwind of the panther’s call. I didn’t hear any movement, just the sound of our own breathing.
Amafo whispered, “Let’s go up yonder way. Back where she hollered. I hear something kicking. Sound to me like a animal in a trap. Not no panther.”
Daddy nodded and picked up the lantern. We walked maybe a quarter hour when we saw a thick oak tree with layers of rope wrapped around it. The rope was clawed and torn, but still clung to the tree like an old woody vine.
When the light struck the tree, there was a flurry of motion. Daddy held up his hand, telling us to stay still. He moved closer to get a look.
“It’s Roberta Jean,” he said. “Come help get her loose.”
A rope was strung across her mouth and pulled tight around the tree trunk so she couldn’t call out. Daddy cut it quick as he could and Roberta Jean said, “He’s coming back. He means to kill me.” Her eye caught mine and she started sobbing. Her whole body shook. “Help me get away from him. Please help me,” she said.
When the ropes were cut and hanging from the tree, Roberta Jean reached out her arms to me and I hugged her tight. She clung to me like I was keeping her from drowning.
“Who you talking ’bout?” asked Daddy.
“Marshal Hardwicke. He’s drunk…he tried to kill me.” Her voice trailed off into more cries and her eyes looked blurry, like she was looking at pictures none of us could see.
“Let’s get her home,” said Amafo. “If the marshal does come back, we don’t want these girls anywhere around.”
Amafo and my father lifted her to her feet.
“Can you walk hoke?” Amafo asked. Roberta Jean nodded. With Daddy leading and carrying the lantern and Amafo guarding us from the rear, the four of us hurried the short distance through the piney woods to the creek crossing. Daddy stepped easy-like across the plank bridge and hung the lantern on a fence post.
I walked sideways crossing the narrow single board, never letting go of Roberta Jean. The lantern flickered in the water two feet below us. I remembered falling off the plank and into the creek when I was seven. I could stand up in it even then, so I was not afraid of the water.
I was afraid for Roberta Jean. If she fell into the cold water, dragging me with her, I thought she might sink into her lonely nightmare and maybe never come back.
The plank was slick and rose and fell with our every step. As we eased from the plank to the ground, we heard a quick movement in a clump of sumac bushes near the water’s edge. Daddy lifted the lantern and we caught sight of a dark shape leaping to the shadows.
“Koi chitto,” Amafo said. “Panther.”
Once we stood in the pasture and turned to the lights of our house, Roberta Jean seemed to realize she was safe. For this night, at least, she was safe.
Marshal Hardwicke had crossed a line in taking after Roberta Jean Willis, daughter to Preacher Willis and known and loved by every Choctaw in the territory. He had awakened the eye of the Lord, the vengeful eye, and I felt sure somebody would die for this—maybe and most surely the marshal, maybe others as well in the playing out of it all.
I cried myself to sleep that night, thinking how lonely and frightened Roberta Jean must feel. I lay looking at the yellow slice of moon, stubbornly clinging to my own sadness.
A grey cloud floated across the moon, leaving behind a world of blue, the blue of breath when all hope for warmth is gone, blue trees, blue earth, blue stars, a world cast in deep grey blue, a world as cold as moon flesh.
Vengeance Is Mine
Though his daughter lay safely wrapped in the quilts of her own bed, Reverend Willis never thought about retiring that night. He went through all the familiar motions. He tucked the children in and took his final walk of relief beneath the sycamore in the backyard. Afterwards he cracked the bedroom door open and whispered to his sleeping wife, “Just a little while and I’ll be along,” which always meant, “I am praying and might be a while.”
Reverend Willis was not praying. In truth, he was avoiding prayer, for he knew the Lord would lead him to the usual path of turning the other cheek.
“Yes, Lord, I’ll turn that other cheek. And then you watch while it gets slapped and kicked and stabbed and burned till finally it gets buried in a holy grave while we all sing your sweet praises. Yes, Lord, while my daughter fights off her attacker with a rock, right on the steps of your house. Oh, Lord, I am grateful, you know I am, that she is alive, but for how long, Lord? How long before they kill us all?”
Henry Willis spread his elbows apart on the table, grabbed his hair to the scalp, and whispered, “We are dead already, Lord. We are helpless and dead. You make us that way, helpless and dead.” His eyes glowed like hot coals and his leg muscles flexed over and over.
“Helpless and dead,” he said, gripping his fists and watching his forearms rise and fall to the rhythm of this new hymn. His body quivered.
“Helpless and dead.” The wind picked up outside and he heard an owl call from deep in the woods. He hung his head and rose, feeling his full height. The kitchen seemed small and foreign.
“On your doorstep, Lord, if that’s what you want, maybe on your doorstep. But not my daughter. You may be the Lord but you cain’t have my daughter. No more helpless and dead,” he whispered, his eyes mean with the mocking of the words.
As he was considering what course to take, the memory he was seeking finally came. He turned his hands over and over in the blue light of the kitchen, staring at the cracks in his skin till dark blood seemed to ooze from the pores. Stirred by the sight of blood on Roberta Jean’s dress, Reverend Willis now sank into a deep den of memory, childhood memory, the kind best left behind.
He saw his uncle watch as Union soldiers took what cattle they could comfortably herd, then kill the rest. The family was ushered into the house and told to remain indoors. Unafraid and flaunting it, the soldiers camped within sight of the farm on the banks of a nearby creek. Huddled in the house and too scared to light a lantern or a cooking fire, the family sat in the dark and listened to the laughter of the soldiers. Their roasting fire threw sheets of blazing orange and yellow through the leaves of the cottonwoods lining the creek. The evening breeze carried the smell of cooked beef, his uncle’s beef.
“Henry?” his wife called. Henry stood in reply and moved to close the bedroom door.
Returning to the kitchen, he stood over the sink. His eyes moved to the basin, where he discovered, hiding beneath a pile of plates, the long blue blade of the knife used to cut the meat for every meal. He moaned and sought the wooden handle of the knife.
He saw his uncle rise from the table and open the drawer by the kitchen sink. His hand disappeared into the drawer and emerged holding the carving knife aloft, turning the blade over and over in the light of the moon through the window. His uncle was a thin man and the blade of the knife seemed as wide as his arms. He sheathed the knife in his belt and moved through the house, exiting unseen through the front door.
Henry waited till he saw his uncle crawl through the rails of the back fence before he dashed through the door. His aunt rose to stop him, but Henry knew she would not call out for fear of endangering her husband. He crept in the shadows fifty feet behind his uncle.
He watched as his uncle found a safe spot in a cluster of sand plums. Resting on the root of a cottonwood, Henry began a three-hour vigil. He saw his uncle bite down on a chew of tobacco. He saw the soldiers slice hot chunks of beef from the turning spit and eat the dripping meat with their hands.
He watched as one by one the soldiers wrapped their blankets and rolled into a dozen tight cocoons of sleep. Henry wondered if his uncle had fallen asleep.
An hour later he watched a young soldier lift himself on his elbows and roll a cornhusk cigarette. His uncle stared intently at the soldier. The young man threw his blanket off and struggled into his boots. He stepped over his sleeping comrades and made his way to the creek.
Henry watched as his uncle rose to follow. When the soldier stood up from his drink, Henry’s uncle buried the carving knife in the man’s throat, flung him against the nearest cottonwood, and pinned him to the tree trunk with the blade.
Henry watched in fascination as the soldier flailed and flopped against the tree, the blood gushing from his neck. He felt a violent churning in his stomach and ran creekside to vomit. He tripped over a log hidden among the high grass at the creek’s edge and stumbled into the creekbed.
