I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang

by Leonce Gaiter

  Parker surveyed the object of his judgment. “He is the son of our crimes, the spawn of the injustice and incivility we tolerate.”

  Buck stopped fiddling with a piece of string dangling from his sleeve as the drone of Parker’s voice, so much like Callahan’s, ceased. He looked up at the bench and saw the old man staring meaningfully down at him, as if he wanted something from him. Rufus shrugged, dismissive and questioning, wondering why he stared like that. He literally heard nothing more until the Judge said, “…return once you have reached your inevitably just verdict and sentence, up to the maximum of 90 days in the Ft. Smith jail. That might provide sufficient time for him to ruminate on the course his life might take, on whether he, knowledgeable of Christian ways, will tread God’s path, or continue a journey that leads to lawlessness and damnation.”

  Rufus guarded a smile. Judge Isaac Parker had condemned the great outlaw Cherokee Bill to death. Bill sat on Murderer’s Row on the first floor of the Ft. Smith jail; and the same Judge had now condemned him—Rufus Buck—to that same jail. Rufus could have danced and jerked like the woman in the Freedman church. It took everything he had to hide the glee tugging at the sides of his mouth. He was going where bloodstained black angels dwelt—larger and grander than ordinary men, so much larger than this judge and his jury, the fools who thought they punished him but had no idea that they fulfilled a dream so big it smacked of destiny—bloodstained black angels; and Rufus would walk among them. Bells should have tolled… Choirs sung…

  ~ ~ ~

  The Fort Smith jail smelled of unwashed men and their piss, shit, liquor and vomit. Marshals marched Rufus upstairs to the third floor, which housed the whiskey peddlers, the petty thieves, and anyone with a sentence of less than one year. He counted the cells he passed—twelve in all. He saw another prisoner turn at the end of the hall, so he imagined there were more cells on the other side. The floor below, he figured, would be exactly the same, except he knew it held the thieves and robbers. And the first floor housed Murderer’s Row; just a few feet below him… Cherokee Bill.

  He continued down the boisterous corridor, awed at the brown and yellow streaks dripping down the walls as if they had, in some pitiable past, wept dirty tears. He had never chewed tobacco, but seeing the squirt like so much madly spattered paint, he figured he’d have to take it up. In their cells, men insistently scratched their heads and privates in tribute to the omnipresent lice. Flies attacked the shit buckets in the corner of each cell.

  “How do you get to the first floor,” he asked his guards.

  “Kill somebody,” the guard replied and doubled up laughing.

  Rufus regarded the laughing man with a pallbearer’s mien.

  Part II

  Luckey Davis was a short, coal black Negro; Lewis Davis a light-skinned Indian half a year younger but half a foot taller. Random children roamed the streets of Okmulgee, colliding off of one other like marbles. They met, teamed up for this or that mischief, and went their separate ways. Lewis and Luckey, on the other hand, met when they were fourteen, each an only child, and despite their differences—one black, one tall, one short, one Creek—they stuck.

  They both knew it had something to do with their names. It was a permanent source of wonder. They would stare at each other and just grin with the outrageousness of it. Their meeting had to be more than coincidence. Both alone. Both “Davis…” And soon, their friendship exuded an import befitting its downright preternatural inspirations. They drifted from their respective homes and grew to rely on each other. “Home” became where they mutually laid their heads.

  “So we brothers, right?” Lewis said, stirring a fire as they sat, soon to sleep beneath a star-gilt sky.

  “The Davis brothers,” Luckey replied, his white teeth contrasting black skin in a rare smile.

  Their bond instilled courage that neither knew he had. With the other behind him, each could be a bigger man. Lewis loved horses and Luckey wanted to drive a train. Unable to decide between the two, they settled on owning a farm. They would graze cattle and raise crops—on land smack in the railway’s path. They’d lease the land to the railroad at exorbitant rates with the caveat that Luckey got to drive a train. Dreams cost, so they took to thievery. They stole food to eat or anything else they could grab risk free. They stole 20 scrawny hogs from the small George ranch near Tulsey Town. The idea was to fatten them up and sell them good and plump.

  “They ain’t getting’ any fatter,” Luckey said after one week. The hogs had grazed down to nothing the small patch the boys had fenced off. They thought about moving the fence so the hogs could get some fresher grass, but the fence wood was so spindly and the whole so flimsy that Lewis said that there wouldn’t be “enough o’ nothin’ left to keep nothin’ inside.” They sat to ponder the problem and decided to sell the hogs right away. Using their hats, they herded the 20 hogs through Tulsey Town to Olcutt’s store. The old proprietor looked askance at the Negro and the Creek with an unusual wealth of hogs.

  “Where’d you get ‘em?” he asked.

  “We raised ‘em out in the woods,” Lewis said.

  “From pups,” Luckey added. Lewis kicked him.

  Mr. Olcutt was not above larceny of his own. He offered the boys $21 for the hogs. Before their protestations grew too loud, he said he’d make up another $40 in store merchandise.

  The boys did some counting on their fingers and grudgingly accepted the deal. Both immediately scanned store shelves from top to bottom to identify the items they’d take. Both stopped at the same spot—a shelf of Hostetter’s Bitters. Promoted for the cure of “dyspepsia’s pangs that rack and grind the body and depress the mind; slow constitutional decay that brings death nearer day by day…,” the substance was spiked with bitters to give it medicinal airs but remained 47% alcohol. The boys took all the Hostetters they could carry, not realizing or not caring that it was worth only $12. Olcutt gave them each a sack to put it in. They scrambled back to the woods where they drank themselves insensible.

  Unfortunately for Mr. Olcutt, the hogs’ rightful owners arrived at his store, recognized their livestock and marched it away. However, Olcutt knew providence was with him when a good citizen brought in a cartridge belt he had found in the woods. Olcutt immediately recognized it. Reaching into an inside compartment, he pulled forth the same $21 he had given to Lewis and Luckey. To Olcutt, it was a fine days’ work. He sold $12 worth of Hostetter’s for $21.

  When the boys ran out of bitters and sobered up, they realized that they had nothing left but aching heads. They looked at each other. Grins split both their faces. That’s when they decided to traffic in liquor.

  That’s when they met Rufus Buck.

  ~

  Rufus watched like a bored referee as Maoma July, a full-blooded Creek just a little younger than he—all bones and angles from head to toe—frenetically kicked a bleeding white man who lay on the ground in a self-protective huddle. Maoma’s sidekick, Sam Sampson, a slow-witted Creek teen, injected an occasional boot of his own, but mainly encouraged with head thrusts and fist pumps. Spotting the melee, Lewis and Luckey hid behind some barrels and watched, both sensing the scene to be profoundly instructional.

  “You owe us the money,” Rufus insisted in a reasonable tone. “You know you do ‘cause you drank the liquor.”

  At “liquor,” Lewis and Luckey’s were hooked.

  “I ain’t got it, you goddam thievin’ nigger.”

  Maoma’s boot met the white man’s head several more times.

  “I know you ain’t got it,” Rufus rationally explained. “If you had it, Maoma wouldn’t be kickin’ you, ‘cause I woulda taken it. You gotta get it. You got to give it to us.”

  Throughout most of this speech, Moama kicked with such frantic speed and increasing fury that he risked both comedy and his own exhaustion.

  “Okay. I know. I know.”

  “Hold on Maoma,” Rufus said, but the boy continued his mad, lightning-fast kicking.

  “Maoma!” Rufus ye
lled. “Hold on.”

  Maoma stopped, panting furiously and licking his lips. The man was an Okmulgee drunk known for his predilection for young Indian girls and his loud ridicule of Indian men for the amusement of other whites. The drunk pulled his hands from his face.

  “I’ll get your goddamned money.” He spat blood on the ground.

  “How you gonna get it?” Rufus asked.

  “I’m gonna steal it. How you think I’m gonna get it?”

  “Who from?”

  He looked at Rufus quizzically. “I ain’t gonna tell you.”

  “Kick him some more.”

  “From Pinch’s. The boarding house. I heard her boarders say she keeps money in there.”

  Rufus had asked in case he could rob the place himself before the drunk got to it. But Pinch’s was a white woman’s house smack in the middle of town. He couldn’t rob it without making a big commotion and getting every law in Okmulgee after him.

  “Okay. Tomorrow, right here, same time, you bring what you owe, or,” Rufus paused and straightened his back to the point of tipping backwards, “… or be gone from the Territory,” he intoned.

  The drunk wobbled to his feet, spat again, and with a hand to his battered head, stumbled from the alley.

  “Be gone, you hear me!?” Rufus hollered after him, reveling in the Biblicality of it, the stentorian authority.

  As the drunk passed, Lewis and Luckey revealed themselves and watched him retreat. Both their faces bright lanterns of admiration, they turned in unison to Rufus, Maoma and Sam. Rufus stood a little taller as they walked eagerly, yet warily toward him.

  Ever the loyal Lieutenant, Maoma took his place at Rufus’ side, thrilled that these newcomers had seen him in his glory—giving a white man the tip of his boot. Slow-witted Sam stood a dutiful half step behind.

  Luckey and Lewis stopped a few feet from the trio. Nobody spoke. Lewis, towering over all of them, nodded his head slightly in a greeting that could have been mistaken for a twitch.

  “Whatchu want, then?” Maoma finally demanded.

  “I’m Lewis and this is my brother Luckey.”

  Sam’s brow knitted.

  “He’s your brother?” Rufus asked.

  “Uh huh,” they replied in unison.

  “You don’t look nothin’ like brothers.

  “We is,” said Luckey.

  “Like real brothers?” Maoma asked.

  “Yep,” Lewis replied.

  “You got different Mas or Daddys or somethin’?” Rufus asked.

  “Both,” said Lewis.

  “Then you ain’t goddamn brothers.” Maoma insisted. “You ain’t nothin’.”

  “Is to!” Lewis growled.

  “You ain’t nothing,” Moama mocked.

  Lewis took a threatening step forward. Maoma matched it.

  All heard the hammer cock. Luckey had pulled a Colt revolver and straight-armed his gun at Maoma’s head.

  “Take it back,” Luckey demanded.

  Maoma stared down the barrel and at Luckey’s dogged black face. “I take it back,” Maoma said dejectedly. “You’re goddamn twins if you want,” he muttered as he took his place behind Rufus.

  Lewis and Luckey smiled at each other. Luckey uncocked his gun and placed it back in his belt. Rufus rushed toward him.

  “Lemme see,” as he reached for the weapon. Luckey proudly handed it over. Rufus felt its heft, checked the bullets in the chamber, closed one eye and aimed down his arm at passersby who momentarily filled the narrow gap between the two buildings.

  “Where’d you get it?” Rufus asked.

  “He stole it,” Lewis replied. “Off a dead man.”

  “If he was dead you didn’t stole it,” Maoma said.

  “Can I see it?” Sam asked as he joined the assembly. Rufus handed it to him. He had time to grin foolishly before Maoma snatched it from him.

  “We gotta get guns,” Rufus said, almost to himself. “You just ain’t outlaws without guns.”

  ~

  To commemorate the capture of the notorious Rufus Buck gang—for bringing to heel the territory’s most sadistic rapists and murderers—Parker’s clerk, Virgil Purefoy, innocently presented the Judge with a bound copy of a book entitled The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. He did not know that his gift might have been venom for all of the anguish it would reap. Having planned it as a birthday gift, Virgil had taken great care with its selection, and had ordered it all the way from New York City. The capture of the Bucks seemed as auspicious an occasion as any for the presentation.

  “It was the talk of cultured people everywhere,” Virgil told Parker. “At least that’s what I hear from friends in the East. I haven’t read it myself, but I knew it would be fitting for a man of your education and reputation.”

  The gesture touched Parker. “What is its subject?” he asked as he thumbed the introduction.

  Purefoy knitted his brow. “I have heard that it tells how creatures become what they are—over time… birds and beasts, over hundreds or thousands of years. Some say that maybe even humans… how we’ve grown from lower things…”

  That made no sense to Parker, but he smiled appreciatively nonetheless.

  A sudden commotion sounded outside the door. Purefoy left to investigate. Parker read a bit of the page to which he had thumbed.

  After remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy an immunity from certain tropical diseases, he observes, firstly, that all animals tend to vary in some degree, and, secondly, that agriculturists improve their domesticated animals by selection; and then, he adds, but what is done in this latter case “by art, seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit.”

  Virgil returned with Deputy N.B. Irwin and Marshal Samuel Haynes. They greeted the Judge and reported that the Buck gang had been safely delivered to the Ft. Smith jail. They had even apprehended Lewis Davis, the fifth gang member, a Creek Indian who had gone missing after the fire fight. Mindful of Purefoy’s watchful eye and tender feelings, the Judge placed his new volume carefully on his desk as he listened.

  A middle-aged woman barged into the room half-dragging a dirty girl.

  “She must be seen to immediately!” the woman insisted. “You can see the state she’s in. You can imagine what she’s endured…”

  “This is Mrs. Pinch,” the Deputy said. “She chaperoned the girl here from Muskogee.”

  “Who is she?” asked Parker, eying the girl.

  The Marshal coaxed the Parker to a discreet corner.

  “She must be seen to immediately!” Mrs. Pinch again demanded.

  “This was the girl with the Buck gang,” Irwin whispered.

  Parker ogled the child.

  “She wasn’t a victim?”

  “We’re not sure. No one’s talked to her. Thought you might be the one to do it, sir.”

  Parker hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl. She stared back like a wolf.

  “Leave her here with me,” Parker replied.

  Irwin and Haynes herded the protesting Mrs. Pinch from the room. The door shut. Parker and the girl each took a moment to absorb the sudden silence. When it grew heavy, Parker moved slowly and deliberately to his desk. Theodosia watched him. Just as slowly and deliberately, he picked up the glass pitcher and poured himself some water. She watched. At first, he didn’t realize that he was moving as if he’d been left with a bobcat instead of a girl.

  “What’s your name?” he finally asked, forcing himself to behave naturally.

  Words broke her blinkless stare. Her attention darted around the room like that of any child.

  “Theodosia.”

  “Where are your mother and father?”

  “My mother’s dead. I don’t know where my daddy is.”

  “How did you get so bruised up?”

  “My Daddy beat me.”

  “Why did he do that? Were you bad?”

  She giggled. “Yes.” She giggled s
ome more. “I was very, very bad.”

  2

  After one week of his 90-day sentence, Rufus had settled into the dull, dirty prison routine. He slept. He ate when they brought him food. Since the guards snuck liquor to the inmates who could pay, half the prisoners were drunk at any given time. Most days, the third floor guards opened the cell doors to minimize fights and provide somewhat less fetid air; inmates freely wandered the halls. But what Rufus most wanted—travel between floors—was forbidden. After a while, though, he noticed that some prisoners did climb up and down those all-important stairs at will. These were the prisoners who fetched and carried for the guards, brought food and hauled the waste buckets outside.

  “How come they get to do that?” he asked his cell mate, a middle-aged thief named Otis Wiggins.

  “They’re Trustees,” he replied. “They pass slop… haul shit.”

  “How’d they get that?”

  Wiggins smiled knowingly. He’d heard it before. “Ain’t gonna happen. They don’t escape. None of ‘em do so you can forget about it.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Rufus replied, “’cept the first floor.”

  “You gonna kill somebody?” Wiggins laughed and slapped his knee in mirth.

  “How do you get to be a Trustee?” Rufus repeated.

  “You got any money?”

  “No.”

  “What you want so bad on the first floor? And what you offerin’ for tellin’ you how to get there?”

  At first Rufus didn’t want to say it out loud. A Destiny was a sacred thing to be closely guarded. But then his pride kicked it.

  “I got somethin’ for Cherokee Bill,” he boasted. He grandly turned his back on his cell mate, imagining his respectful envy. At the sound of dismissive laughter, he wheeled around.