Citizens Creek

by Lalita Tademy

  “Enough,” Ma’am said to Elizabeth. “Go look after the bread. See it doesn’t burn.”

  “We’re just all glad to have Rose home for a few days,” said Gramma Amy. “Why don’t you set the table, Rose? We’ll visit over supper.”

  Rose grabbed an apron and made herself useful. The stew was soon ready, and dished up, and though it felt good to sit around the table with family, Rose was restless, as if unsure now where she fit.

  Later that night, after the dishes were scrubbed and they’d sat with their needlework long enough to signal bedtime, she and Elizabeth were finally alone in their own room.

  “Please don’t leave me again, Rose,” Elizabeth said. “Please. It’s harder without you here.”

  Elizabeth began to cry, and Rose gathered her up and rested her little sister’s head on her chest, as she hadn’t done for years.

  “Don’t waste what time we have,” said Rose, but the girl’s tears began to loosen her resolve to go back to the Pennymans. Still, she kept firm. “I’ll come visit, but tomorrow, you’ll help me pack up. I’ve only a few days before I have to go back to Okmulgee.”

  “But you don’t have to,” Elizabeth insisted. “You can stay here, like always. Ma’am says you’re just a cook for a family of rich Creeks. What do they have that we don’t?”

  Rose felt the years between them, a girl’s perspective versus a young woman’s. She wanted to try to make Elizabeth understand.

  “It was impossible here after Grampa died. I was drowning. They’re not my family, the Pennymans, but there’s a place for me there. A simple place, without weight, without secrets, where I can breathe again.”

  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “What secrets?”

  “Not secrets.” Rose tried to laugh off her blunder. Her promise to Grampa Cow Tom needed to remain safe. “You know how tight-lipped Ma’am and the rest are with family stories. That’s all. The point is I miss you terribly,” she said. “I think about you all the time. Okmulgee seems far, but I won’t be gone forever.”

  She almost said “I promise,” but she held herself back. She wasn’t at all sure what would happen in the city, a city without her family around her. Rose remembered all of the promises she’d made to Elizabeth when they were girls and fleeing in the night to Fort Gibson, how she’d said anything that came into her mind to keep Elizabeth moving. They weren’t girls any longer, but despite the difference in age, they were connected. Elizabeth wasn’t a shadow from beyond the grave, like Twin, but Rose’s flesh-and-blood shadow in this life.

  “We’ll always be sisters,” Rose said, “and I’ll always be there for you. That I can promise.”

  PART III

  Rose

  –1880–

  Chapter 50

  ROSE ONLY JUST secured the lid atop the simmering pot of beef stew on the stove when she heard the knock at the back door. Possibly a hungry ranch hand returning early for supper, or a stray cowpuncher begging scraps, or an itinerate salesman. Her employers had plenty, but they weren’t particularly generous to those they didn’t know. She’d been warned to provide something, as was the way, but not waste too much on the inevitable passerby arriving at the back door, tired from traveling the plain, eager for food, drink, and rest. But Mrs. Pennyman knew Rose as likely more begrudging with a handout than she was, and left food distribution to her cook’s discretion. Rose took the time to set the cucumbers to soak for cabbage and dried her hands on her apron before answering the knock. Whoever, it most likely meant more work for her.

  She found a gangling Indian man, young, hat in hand. At least she thought him Indian. By feature, he might even have been white, but her guess was mixed. He carried himself with a confidence not matching his age. Not even out of his teen years, he stared openly at her before he spoke, a look bordering on familiarity, if not insolence. The startling color of his eyes reminded her of the spindly-vined wildflower that grew in the pasture through the summer and into the fall on her grandfather’s ranch, with flamboyant blue flowers lasting only a day, petals shaped like mouse ears. His eyes held her fast, but Rose didn’t look away. He intruded on her domain, on her kitchen. More precisely, the Pennyman kitchen, but by extension of responsibility, her own as well.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “You must be Rose.”

  His grin was impish, as if he knew her, both puzzling and rankling.

  “Yes.”

  She waited for him to state his business, impatient. He was a cocky one, blue eyes or no. She was probably ten years his senior, and while she didn’t expect deference, she did expect something more than this attempt at casual chumminess. He bordered on disrespectful, and made her nervous, though in the last six years, after her grandfather passed, she’d fortified herself, refusing to let anyone, family or stranger, bully her. The young man was definitely a cowpuncher. He wore the telltale high-heeled boots that kept his feet from slipping through the stirrup on a saddle, and chaps to protect his trousers, and carried the bow of leg identifying so many of the cowpunchers she served meals to since a small girl on her grandfather’s ranch or now, around the Pennyman table. He’d mixed personal touches in with the typical cowpuncher outfit—a small white feather tucked in the large brim of his high-crowned hat, a checkered, sweat-soaked handkerchief around his neck tied with a fancy double knot. He’d made an attempt to brush the trail dust off his long-sleeved shirt, heavy and bright red to shield against both sun and insects, and although Rose was sure she smelled the remains of lye soap, she also caught the deeply embedded scent of cattle dung and sweat that clung to his clothes and his dark hair.

  “I heard you’re the best cook in the territory and I’m come to meet you,” he said. “My name is Jake Simmons.”

  “The Pennymans sent you round?”

  “No, ma’am. You underestimate your reputation. You fed a household of men from the Lazy U a couple weeks back, and when they visited my employer up in Haskell, that’s all they talked about, that amazing supper the African woman cook served at the Pennymans’. I had to see for myself.”

  “This is a private home,” said Rose, “not a boardinghouse.”

  Jake laughed. “Which is why I wrangled an invitation to supper here tonight through my boss,” he said. “I thought I’d introduce myself to you first so you know who I am.”

  “And who are you?” asked Rose. She was confused by whatever game he played, and had too much work to do preparing the evening meal to waste time on a stranger. And yet, she found herself transfixed by those blue eyes, as if she couldn’t turn away.

  Jake stepped back and looked Rose over. He cocked his head, and again produced that maddening grin. “A man come courting,” he said.

  “Courting who?”

  Jake went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’ve been on my own since twelve, and look now for a wife. My father was a white man, Scottish, adopted Cherokee, and my mother Negro and Creek. I been interested in the cattle business since a little boy, and plan to study every part before I’m through. I don’t have much interest in farming, and aim to get my own ranch soon as I can.”

  Rose was a practical woman, able to tally her plusses and minuses as well as her prospects with a clear eye. She knew some called her a childless old maid, twenty-eight, unappealingly tiny and trim while other women of the tribe were large and voluptuous, and a glance in the mirror confirmed her probable future. Rose had no illusions. And yet, over the years, she’d seen other tribe women who weren’t beauties selected as wives, but those women were at ease with socializing, able to talk about small subjects, able to flatter and cajole. Not Rose, more traditionally Creek than American, like her grandfather. She’d carved a place for herself in the tribe’s busy capital town of Okmulgee, having left the family ranch to forge her own way in the world, using her culinary skills in a wealthy Indian family’s kitchen.

  But neither was Rose so blinded by her shortcomings she couldn’t appreci
ate those things in her favor. Everyone sang the praises of her cooking, she could weave and card and sew and stand in as midwife and herbalist. She could shoot a gun, had a head for fancy figuring, and could run a ranch given the chance. Her grandmother taught Rose how to be independent even while under a man’s protection, and how to stretch a dollar, and Ma’am taught her how to can and pickle and preserve. Gramma Amy insisted all her grandchildren get an education, and Rose, as oldest, had looked after her sister and taken her to the integrated school every day. And her ace in the hole was her grandfather. Grampa Cow Tom had given her his looks and his resourcefulness. And an inheritance. She was relatively wealthy, both in her future portion of land and the successful settlement of her grandfather’s claim with the government. She was confident that fact alone had brought Jake Simmons to her.

  Rose gestured for Jake to come into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.

  “Who says I’m looking for a husband?”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not saying you’re looking. All I’m asking is if you’re open.”

  Rose paused to gather her wits, the pace of this conversation too fast for her. She wished she wasn’t wearing her stained apron, and had on her Sunday dress. She even thought about removing the plain scarf covering her cornrows.

  “I’m Creek,” she volunteered. “And Cow Tom was my grandfather. I assume you know that.”

  “I do,” answered Jake, without pause. “His ranch was on Cane Creek, about a thousand cattle a year, branded with a half-moon and mule-shoe X.”

  “How do you plan on getting this ranch of your own?” Rose asked, as calmly as she could manage. She cared more than she wanted to admit that he quantify his expectations of her land and her finances with honesty, and not insult her by treating her like a young, impressionable girl ripe for the fleecing with a few flattering words and the promise of passion. Better to get things in the open quickly, before other distractions came into play. Already she’d begun to think about those blue eyes in a different way than she had when he first knocked on the kitchen door.

  “I have a sponsor, my employer, willing to get me started,” Jake said. He pulled out one of the kitchen chairs for her to sit, but she shook her head and remained standing, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Jake took her refusal in stride, twirling his hat in his hand. “When I was ten, I landed my first paying job on a ranch. Earned me six dollars. I worked hard, and learned, and got me ten dollars. And so on. Over the years, I got to know my cattle and became buyer. I’ve bought thousands of head of cattle for my boss, running them from Texas to Kansas, and now he depends on me. Next step is do the same for myself.”

  “And what is that to me?” Rose asked. “Surely you could court someone closer your age, Indian or black.”

  “When I marry, I’m going to marry me a black-skinned lady,” Jake said. “I been knowing that always. The closer to African, the better. None of my children going to grow up with slave ways, thinking they’re less than anyone else.”

  There was something about Jake that reminded her of her grandfather. Not looks, one dark as a crow’s wing, the other pale as fresh-wove cotton, but in such easy acceptance of who she was, who she could be. Six years gone, and still she thought of her grandfather every day, the contradiction of him, the unfairness of handing her his shame alongside the bedrock of his righteousness. Most times she thought of Grampa Cow Tom as inspiration, replaying his stories in her mind, first as building blocks of grief’s recovery, and then to propel her into the world. Other times she resented him, a tainted man she was forced to protect.

  “Sounds like you have hereafter all figured,” Rose said.

  “Coming up, I moved from place to place, shuffled from one relative to the next when my mother couldn’t manage, one tribe to another, near starving most of the time. Early on, I made my way, but I’ve no interest in scraping by. I’m going to build a big ranch, and run cattle, and keep my family in one place. A big family. My wife has to help with all that.”

  A family in one place, Rose thought, afraid to believe this stranger’s goals could match so closely to her own impossible dreams. She slowed down her breathing, brought herself in line. She composed her face, as she had so often seen her grandfather do when he negotiated. But she couldn’t believe her grandfather ever had to stare into eyes the color of wildflowers.

  “What kind of help?”

  “Whatever it takes,” said Jake. “A sensible woman wanting the same things I want, not afraid of hard work.”

  “I don’t tolerate lazy,” Rose said.

  “Me neither,” replied Jake.

  Rose tried to tamp down the hopefulness blooming in her chest, spreading as fast and dangerous as Russian thistle on the prairie. She saw potential in this young man—likable, even charming, but rough and unsophisticated. Yes, he was young, but he came to her, as no other man had. Jake Simmons was intrigued enough on the basis of her pedigree and stories he’d heard about the unmarried black woman with money in Okmulgee to ride all the way into town to offer himself up, and he hadn’t scared off once he saw her.

  “Can you read?” she asked.

  A defensive flicker crossed Jake’s face. “I never had a chance for school. I get by on the trail. Not many cowpunchers read.”

  “Maybe not, but running a ranch is different. People cheat you in a minute unless you let them know they can’t,” Rose said. There was no point to coyness. Charm wasn’t what she possessed to win him over. “I could teach you to read and write. It’s not hard. You probably know some basics from branding letters on cattle.”

  Jake nodded. He stared again, his eyes on her in a new way. A small smile lifted the edges of his lips, and he looked even younger than before. “So, should I come back again to see you?” he asked.

  Rose fought back a schoolgirl simper, dazzled anew by the intensity behind his eyes and the magnetism of his quick grin. A heavy door to an undreamed future swung wide to her, in the space of a single hour, miracle enough, but her heart’s pounding had surprisingly little to do with ranchland and cattle. Jake himself triggered this deep and unexpected longing, the lean-bodied hunger of him, the rich man-smell of him standing close.

  She couldn’t gather herself to answer. After a life of guardedness, she was fallen, so fast, so hard, and dizzy with the possibility she could open her arms wide and reach for everything she wanted. How easy and wondrous it would be to slide and lose herself completely. Rose knew, with certainty absolute, that this was the beginning at last, the passageway to the life she’d waited so long to clarify. Jake.

  Rose forced her thoughts to Grampa Cow Tom, and the command required for any successful negotiation, the need to hang on to oneself and mask inner thought in favor of outward deportment. She imagined herself surrounded by hostile Seminoles, facing a sure death, while Jake held her bloody ear aloft. Rose found her voice.

  “If that’s what you’ve a mind to do,” she answered softly, with as much control as she could muster, “I’ll be right here.”

  Chapter 51

  ROSE WATCHED JAKE trace his finger under each line as he read the newspaper by lantern light, a slow and laborious procedure. Sometimes, he moved his lips in determination as he sounded out a sentence until it fell into place. If they were alone, just he and Rose, he’d call out to ask her what a certain word meant, and Rose would drop whatever she was doing to answer. She considered these moments among her favorite times with her husband, but there were so many pieces of her life with him she cherished, she couldn’t confine her joy to only one. Teaching him to read had taken years, not because he was slow, but because they had so little time left after the avalanche of building a life together. He’d been a good student once he settled into the process, putting in the effort no matter how tired he was, but in the years since they married, there were long stretches when reading had to take second place to
all the other demands—scrimping, saving, buying land, erecting a house, building a herd, cattle drives, crops, mending fences. Not to mention the children, who came quickly, one after the next, two girls in as many years, more Rose’s responsibility than Jake’s, though they adored their father.

  As Jake promised Rose at their first meeting, they started a small ranch of their own half a day’s ride from Cane Creek, and managed in only a few years to grow and add improvements—house, barn, corral, fencing, garden. Cash money was always tight, but Jake often joked he could ride onto a stranger’s ranch sometime in the late afternoon, stay overnight in an unwilling seller’s barn or camped on the prairie, and by the next morning, have a handshake deal and cattle exchanged with all parties smiling.

  Jake put aside the newspaper, closing his eyes and massaging the bridge of his nose. Reading by the flicker of the lantern light took its toll.

  “Say, Rose,” Jake said. “What say you and me go to the church supper Sunday?”

  “That’d be all right,” answered Rose.

  “But I know something to make it better than all right. Hold on.”

  Rose put aside her needlework. Jake was up to something, and sure enough, he disappeared into the back room, and returned with a loaf-sized bundle wrapped up in old newsprint. He presented the parcel to her, watching the expression on her face.

  Rose peeled back the edges of the wrapping. Inside was a pair of high-top black leather shoes, fancy. A curved row of covered buttons ran up the side, each in its own buttonhole, with a small sateen bow at each toe, and dainty little heels. The shoes were so beautiful, Rose was almost afraid to touch them. She set them down carefully.

  “Jake! So many things we need. We don’t have money for this kind of foolishness. What were you thinking? What if the crop doesn’t come in?”

  Jake pulled back. “I knew you’d fight me on this,” he said. “But I was thinking it time my scrawny chicken shows the other ladies a thing or two.”