Citizens Creek

by Lalita Tademy

  “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.

  At Fort Gibson, by the end, she walked chin high around the fort, inside and outside the gates, acknowledged as the African Creek chief’s granddaughter, the one he so often brought with him as he went about his duties. She couldn’t witness the Micco ceremony when Chief Sands, the big chief over the Creek tribe, officially bestowed the title her grandfather had already claimed. No women were allowed, but Grampa Cow Tom’s added prestige and respect from that day was like healing water, running downhill to cleanse her as well. And her uncle Harry was the official translator for all the Creeks. Rose was somebody by connection.

  And then, not long after her grandfather was named a Creek chief, the war was officially over. They were declared on the winning side and told to strike off into the wilderness to make a new home for themselves. If this was winning, Rose couldn’t imagine how it felt to lose.

  The family endured a painful separation from Harry Island, who decided to head toward Grand Fork. Cow Tom led them all south, deeper into Creek territory, with a few iron pots, some hides, an ax, a shovel, the ragged clothes on their backs, and a thin stack of headright money issued by the government to get them started. What they carried in greatest supply was hunger—an unquenchable hunger for food, hunger for peace, hunger for someplace where the family could settle and rebuild their lives. Both Gramma Amy and Ma’am were clever with roots and herbs, and the farther they traveled away from Fort Gibson, the more they were able to forage from the forest and even hunt game. They headed toward the last place they’d called home.

  But the closer they came to their old ranch along the Canadian River, the more a dull pain burrowed deep in Rose’s chest. None of them could know what they’d find at their old homestead, but all Rose could think of was Twin, whether he was still there, and what he might do.

  They approached the familiar land from the north side, where the gristmill used to be, and Rose was pulled to the past, when the family gathered so long ago, just before their flight to Fort Gibson, waiting in the tall grass for Grampa Cow Tom. She expected a surge of longing for the place she’d been born to, where she’d grown up, but none came. She bit at the inside of her cheek as the group walked along the Canadian, passing her grandfather’s favorite thinking spot. The bois d’arc tree still reached in a delicate arch over the river, and she remembered the exact curve of the river where crappies used to run in abundance, though the stream looked narrower than she remembered. There was a small Indian boy there now, Creek, his pole in the water. When the boy saw them, he ran in the direction of the ranch house.

  By the time they reached their old house, the group mood was sour. The log cabin itself was half a house, most parts burned completely or at least charred, left to seasons of neglect, as well as wind, snow, and rain. A majority of the stones of the central chimney still held, but the roof was caved or gone completely. An outdoor cooking fire blazed, with a large black kettle suspended on a tripod of branches. By the looks of the people about and the newness of some sections of the house, several families, all women and children of assorted age, had claimed this land, and begun the work of restoration, splitting trunks of pine for logs, hauling large branches, ­replacing missing stones with substitutes dragged from the river. The area around the house was free of weeds, and the dirt was swept. A small patch of corn was already put to ground.

  The new occupants gathered as one in front of the ruined ranch house, the small boy to one side. There were eighteen.

  “We can’t house any more here,” one of the women said. She was taller than the rest, and burly, like a man. She had a rifle by her side, though she made no show of using it. But still.

  Grampa Cow Tom stepped forward. “We lived here. Before the war.”

  “The land was abandoned. We took it up.”

  “This was our home.”

  “Everyone was somewhere before. And starts again now,” she said. “We start here.”

  Rose thought of all of her secret hiding places and the familiar pastures. She imagined them now, either overgrown or in the hands of others.

  Her grandfather must have made the same calculation.

  “If you were men, I’d challenge,” he said.

  She nodded, unfazed. “And we plan to have the place ready for our men when they return.”

  “There are those who’ll come looking for us, now war is done. Tell them Chief Cow Tom is downriver. Still along the Canadian.”

  Just that quickly, her grandfather had bargained away their old ranch. Rose was relieved. This place wasn’t what she remembered, no longer what she wanted, somehow spoiled.

  “We don’t have much, but you’re welcome to share from the pot before striking off,” the woman said.

  It was odd, being hosted by these people who took their land, but Rose was grateful for the thin soup, hot and flavored with the flesh of some small animal.

  “We have business in the graveyard near the woods,” said Grampa Cow Tom after the food was through, “and then we go.” The woman agreed.

  Rose ran ahead to the old family graveyard, and found the entire patch choked with thistle. Weeds and vines tangled in the dirt close to ground. The dull pain in her chest deepened as she cleared them away. Her hands stung with the plant’s needles, but beneath, Rose found the three smooth river stones on Twin’s grave, unmolested.

  She waited, stretched tight, afraid of the coming bright blue light that was Twin, and the finality of his presence washing over her, taking charge of her. She heard the rest of her family coming up behind her, and still she waited. There was nothing. Twin wasn’t here in this place.

  Ma’am fell upon the grave, as if the thistle was nothing.

  “I can’t leave him again,” she said. “I won’t.”

  Gramma Amy went to her daughter, lifting her up from the ground to standing, but it was Grampa Cow Tom who spoke with authority, the voice that couldn’t be challenged.

  “This place holds nothing for us anymore. We can’t stay. But wherever we go, we make a new family plot, and honor all those who’ve passed over beyond our reach. We won’t forget them. Twin. Granny Sarah. Maggie. Emmaline. Lulu.” He lifted one of the smooth stones, leaving two in their place. “We carry this stone with us for Twin’s new grave.”

  Rose kept close watch on her breath. If this didn’t rouse Twin, the taking of his headstone, nothing ever could. Nothing.

  Ma’am grew docile, and the family set out again following the Canadian downstream. After the first confusing wave of disappointment and loss, Rose wasn’t as sorry as she thought she’d be. Every travel day they put between themsel
ves and the fort, and away from their old home, the better she felt.

  They traveled south following the river until Grampa Cow Tom raised his hand and called for them to stop. There was nothing but prairie grass and dirt and rock and shrub and close-grown trees in a nearby forest, uncultivated, and a narrow creek with slow-running water dotted with cane plants. Her grandfather gathered a handful of red dirt, lifted it to his nose to smell, and tasted a bit, letting the mass play on his tongue.

  He planted his feet with purpose and gathered them all round in a circle.

  “This is home,” he said.

  He pointed out where the house would be, and a barn, and a corral, and where the family plot would dwell. They placed Twin’s stone there first thing, before any of the real work began.

  All of them, regardless of age or condition, spent hard months breaking ground and claiming the new patch of land, again along the Canadian River, but much farther downstream, south of Muskogee.

  Chapter 40

  ROSE WOKE.

  Gramma Amy’s gait was heavy on the packed-dirt floor of the temporary tepee at their new homesite along the Canadian River as she shuffled outside into the approaching dawn. Despite the closeness of their bodies, squeezed together like carelessly thrown pick-up sticks atop the hard ground on pallet hides, head to toe or side to foot or knee to back, they were fortunate for shelter at all, the land so stripped and scarred from the war that both timber and cowhide were hard to come by. So her Grampa Cow Tom often said and so Rose believed, having survived the horror of Fort Gibson.

  Rose knew it was time to stir, but lay nevertheless, eyes closed. Snores, labored breath, and peculiar coughs punctuated the quiet of the early morning. There were eight of them in all in the tepee when Grampa Cow Tom was there, and Rose could identify the owner of each sound. Most of the smaller children stayed in the other tepee with her mother and aunts and uncles. Older, fourteen now, Rose slept in her grandparents’ tepee, along with four other siblings, ­including her younger sister Elizabeth.