Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

  “Alleh, alleh, alleh, Chishke apela...” Mother help me. Anoleta wakes up with a start, and indeed she is wearing her mother’s white deerskin dress, but standing over her is Red Shoes, his naked torso painted for war. He holds a war club in one hand, a heavy killing tool made from a cypress tree, with the skeletal head of a gar lashed to its top.

  “Get out! Am I to be your next victim?” she shouts with such ferocity that Red Shoes backs out of her cabin.

  She leaps up and chases him after him, yelling, “Wait! How can you show your face to me after what you did?”

  He stands partially hidden among the oak trees, a few feet from her cabin.

  “I heard you scream. Are your dreams so terrible?”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I have nothing to hide,” he says. “I came to the bone-picking ceremony to honor your mother, along with the others who have died in the past months. Now I am gathering many warriors to fight against our Inkilish okla enemies with Bienville. At last I will be able to prove that I had nothing to do with your mother’s death.”

  He steps toward her with a calm face, presenting an image of goodwill. She’s heard that he’s fallen into debauchery, but he looks as good as ever. Straight-backed, tall, and muscular. Self-confident. She pulls her knife from its sheath and holds it taut against his belly. “All you have ever proven is that you will fight in the pay of anyone who gives you muskets.”

  He neither flinches nor moves; rather, he uses his height to peer down at her like a bird inspecting carrion. “That is true, but it is part of my plan. I believe if our warriors have enough muskets and powder we can rid ourselves of both the Filanchi okla and Inkilish okla.”

  Anoleta hesitates, the knife feels heavy. Right now she should slice him open before anyone can intercede. Working efficiently she could hang his intestines in the trees, watch them quiver in the wind as they grow cold outside his bloodless body. Instead she cuts him, a scratch really. It could have been an accident, though he knows it isn’t. She wants his blood on her mother’s dress and she makes a big show of wiping the knife on it, then she walks away and nonchalantly begins to hack off small sprigs of an oak tree for kindling. She looks up at Fichik Issi, the Deer Star. If only Red Shoes would drive out the foreigners. That is what they promised each other. Push the Filanchi okla and the Inkilish okla out of their region. Once she believed he would do it, but now she knows that was never his intention. Already, warriors of Yanàbi Town worship their muskets as if they were children, and he continually fills their heads with dreams that there are more where those came from.

  “Where are my sisters?” she asks, across the darkness.

  “I don’t know, probably singing with your relatives at the dance grounds. I was only interested in seeing you,” he says, examining the wound she has given him.

  She looks at him again, quickly. She must find out what he is going to do, but she doesn’t want him to think she’s overly concerned.

  “Come inside,” she commands.

  “Some of the men say that you are going to take Choucououlacta for your husband.”

  “Yes,” she says, placing the kindling over red coals to keep them from dying. She wants her cabin to glow with warmth.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Do you want him very much?”

  “Very much.”

  “You’re sure he’ll be a good husband?”

  “Better than you.”

  “What is it about him you want?”

  “He will fight against the Inkilish okla. He also hates the Red Fox for killing my mother. And Choucououlacta does not have any other wives.”

  “My wife from the Red Fox village is dead. Someone cut out her heart, remember?”

  “It wasn’t me, or any of my family, who killed your Chickasaw wife.”

  “You knew it was my mother’s wish that I marry her. I could not disobey my mother,” he says.

  “Nor can I!” she says, bluntly. “I am no longer your wife. I renounced you. The words were spoken a long time ago, and you heard them. Now get out.”

  “Then I would like us to be married again,” he whispers, pitifully.

  Silence.

  “Why? So we can make each other suffer like before?”

  “Yes, but it was good pain. The kind that made us cry out for each other.”

  “Maybe this pain will finally kill us,” she says, looking at him with all her strength.

  “It is you who I have protected with my life,” he says. “I had a dream. We are very old and living together. Our children and families are all around us.”

  His voice lingers in her head, and Anoleta wants to hold it there forever. The night pulsates with songs, the call of insects and tree frogs. Smoke coils around them. The scent of memory, erotic, makes her drop to her knees. She shakes her head no, and cries softly. Says she can’t keep from crying for what is going to happen.

  Red Shoes sits down on the cane mat next to her, gives her hand a squeeze, buries his face in her breasts. “I’m wanting you again. You will never know how much.”

  She says he shouldn’t say that.

  He promises never again.

  She runs her fingers across his tattooed face. Gives him her mouth and tastes what he is saying. Then she says it to him, the same way.

  When Anoleta opens her eyes, Red Shoes is gone. She must have fallen asleep for a few moments, long enough for him to slip away. He had promised her that they would share a meal together before he left to fight the Inkilish okla. She searches her cabin. His travel bundle is still beside her bed; he will return to her before leaving.

  She quickly puts on her mother’s dress, then begins to pull dried plants out of her baskets to make this special meal. She has learned how to brew healing plants into medicines. It is a skill that women of Intek Aliha learned. But this will be the first time she has used her knowledge to kill rather than cure. After the brew is made she pours it over some meat, then goes out to find Red Shoes.

  In the center of the grounds, she finds a Blackrobe making a ceremony for the men in his group.

  Hoc est corpus. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. She remembers some of the foreign words, but they are empty to her now. She has seen the performances of Blackrobes before, when she and her mother visited Bienville’s house. The Filanchi’s speech always sounds sweet and wet, like a mouthful of peaches, but she will never admit to liking it.

  Anoleta looks at the older Blackrobe and imagines that he’s a giant opposum; his skin is so pale, and his brown eyes never seem to blink, even in sunlight. Poor thing, he’s so pitiful looking. How his Mother must have suffered when the other children taunted him. The younger Blackrobe, the one with hair on his face, isn’t as ugly. He has kind eyes. But she must remember—they are all the same—Filanchi okla only come to beg for land, food, and anything else they can carry off.

  “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Alvarez De Paz, Luis de la Puente, Antoine le Gaudier ... Compañia de Jesus.”

  When will his words end? As a child she was taught to never interrupt the speeches of elders because it was ill-mannered. However these men are not elders, they are foreigners.

  “Auferatur hic abusus de medio vestrum...”

  Now the younger Blackrobe is all stirred up, his eyebrows continually arch as he talks to the men. Anoleta stifles a smile, a swarm of flies thwarts his speech causing him to stop and shoo them away. Why don’t Blackrobes wash themselves daily in the river like her people do? It would keep them from smelling so badly.

  “...deus faber.”

  The men of Filanchi okla smile and exchange glances, as if they agree with what the young Blackrobe is saying. Finally, when he puts something in one of their mouths, Anoleta decides that she no longer wants the foreigners to hold ceremonies in her presence. She is tired of having them around, tired of their dirty faces, and she blames all of them for her mother’s death. She steps forward and stares at the men defiantly. If they were Choctaw warriors, she knows h
ow they would react. They would leave. Warriors will not stay around when women want them to leave. But since these are men of the Filanchi okla, she does not know what to expect.

  For a while the three Blackrobes do not move. Finally one of them calls her by name and begins speaking in her language.

  “Anoleta, I tell you again most solemnly, if you do not eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on that day. For my flesh is real food, my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him!”

  When she walks closer to him, he backs up, as if he thinks she might stab him.

  “Anoleta, if you let Father Renoir instruct you, you too will have life everlasting. Please let us teach you about the one true God. He is your God also but you must believe in life everlasting.”

  By this time Haya has arrived, and stands next to her. Other Choctaw women walk closer to hear what is being said. She can tell that the three Blackrobes of the Filanchi okla are afraid. They are unaccustomed to having Choctaw women stare at them, so she speaks softly and slowly, as if they are children. She hopes the foreigners can comprehend what she is saying.

  “Did you not see my mother, the one called Shakbatina, raised up from the scaffold this very night? Did you know my mother’s flesh was food? Her blood was drink? Alive, we use the animals. The animal is consumed. In death, the people are consumed by the animals.” Pointing to herself she says, “We are life everlasting. Filanchi okla, we will pick your bones after you are gone.” Then she repeats the expression Father Baudouin used. “Life everlasting, we are it!”

  She turns to walk proudly through the crowd, and passes the temporary shelters made of palmetto leaves and brush for the men of the Filanchi okla. As she looks back, she sees Haya grab the cup from the Blackrobe’s hands and greedily swallow its contents. Then her sister tosses the cup into the air and runs away.

  Haya giggles loudly as she enters the cabin.

  “Why did you drink from the Filanchi’s cup? I told you not to do that,” says Anoleta, trying to look stern.

  “I love it. It makes me dizzy and I like it. I want this bah-andi,” says Haya, trying to pronounce the foreign word. “Why do you waste your time on the Blackrobes? They didn’t understand what you were saying. Some of the elders say the Blackrobes are cannibals because they speak of eating the bones and drinking the blood of their honored dead in their ceremonies. But when we tested them, they ate food. If it’s true they pray to die, perhaps we should give Red Shoes to the Blackrobes. They might pray him into death and save us the trouble.”

  “No. I promised our mother that I would finish Red Shoes.”

  “Where is he now?” asks Haya.

  “At the stickball field. He’ll come soon.”

  “Will you still take Choucououlacta for your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Neshoba told me that the young Blackrobe, the one with all the hair on his face, has passion for her. She smelled it on his body,” says Haya, casually.

  “Does Neshoba want him very much?”

  “She didn’t say.” Haya pulls a small strand of blue glass beads from her leather pouch. “Look at what the one with sore feet gave me. I love his presents.”

  “How did you get that?”

  “I took him. His body is covered with soft, tiny white hairs. He feels like a baby duck. He is not a cannibal.”

  “You live four paws up,” says Anoleta, “always wanting men.”

  “So do you. I saw Red Shoes leave your cabin.”

  Anoleta puts a hand over Haya’s mouth. “And he will come here again tonight, but I tell you, it is not what you think. I will end his life and keep my promise!” Then she spits to show she is putting her words in the ground.

  Just then a man from the Filanchi okla enters her cabin. He carries a large bundle wrapped in white deerskin. He greets her and her sister in their language, but his pronunciation is babyish. Anoleta recognizes his accent at once.

  The man places a small cane mat on the ground and sits down in front of her fire. Then he takes a red stone pipe and a long wooden stem out of his bundle. He attaches them, and fills the pipe with tobacco. He offers it first to Anoleta because she is the oldest. She politely takes it from him, and after taking a few puffs she passes it to Haya, who does the same. Once they finish smoking, the man begins to talk casually with them, as if he is family.

  “So, you no longer recognize me,” says Bienville sadly, taking off his cloak and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt. “After visiting my house when you were children, you have forgotten your old friend, no? Was it not I who you once called Uncle? Was it not I who held you on my lap and fed you from my own plate? So this is how you repay your relative. You insult the priest I have provided for you? Why did you talk with Father Michel Baudouin like he was a cursed thing? Is this the result of your mother’s teachings? I do not think so.”

  He shoves an exposed forearm to Anoleta. His tattoo is the same design as her uncle Nitakechi’s. “I have carried your family’s symbol halfway around the world. I knew your mother well. Shakbatina was my dearest friend and I will speak of her. I don’t think she would like the way you are conducting yourself,” he says, at last making eye contact with her.

  Bienville waits for Anoleta to respond. When she doesn’t speak, he sighs deeply. “Ah yes. It is a sad situation that I have returned to. Faire la bouche en coeur, no?”

  Anoleta doesn’t understand the last phrase, so she cannot acknowledge it. She no longer comprehends his language. Once she had known a few of his words and phrases. She and her mother stayed in his house every spring when they were collecting the trade goods he owed them. On one occasion Bienville pulled a small bird out of his shirt and presented it to her. Before she had a firm grip on the bird’s tiny legs, it flew away. She couldn’t tell if he let it go on purpose, so the next day she retaliated by putting a green snake around his neck that crawled down the front of his shirt. He laughed and said, “good snake, go home.” Her mother scowled and sent her away. There was a strong bond between Bienville and her mother. Anoleta never understood it. What had her mother seen in him? He could never measure up to her father, Koi Chitto, nor her uncle Nitakechi. When her uncle adopted Bienville into his iksa, he found a cousin willing to marry him, but Bienville declined, saying that since he could not have the woman he wanted, he would have none at all. Anoleta refused to believe he loved her mother as he had proclaimed to her uncle. She believed their commitment to each other was based on an exchange of trade goods, nothing more. Anoleta had to admit though, her mother had treated Bienville like a pet. Strangely enough, he seemed to like it. She had always teased him, saying when he first arrived he was like a baby, only able to express himself with cries of wonder, mad leaps, or with objects he took from his bundle. Anoleta may have been jealous of him when she was a child, but the main reason she’d grown to hate Bienville was that he’d constantly spoken to her mother against Red Shoes. “That savage will one day kill you all. He’s a traitor!” Now Bienville had come to smoke with her tonight just to shame her into admitting he’d been right.

  Finally Haya speaks up and smiles. “Hello Uncle, how is your life? Are you well?” Then she turns to Anoleta. “He speaks our language perfectly, doesn’t he? Better than even me.”

  “Yes,” smiles Anoleta, pleased that her youngest sister is complimenting Bienville’s language ability, practicing her diplomacy skills. Quite necessary, because Haya will one day be trading goods between the towns in their region.

  “Tell me,” continues Anoleta, “have you smoked with my mother’s brother, Nitakechi, and our father, Koi Chitto?”

  “Of course,” he answers, his eyes mocking her. “After all, we are family.”

  Haya fetches water and offers them both a drink from her gourd. They oblige her because it is the proper thing to do. Then there is more silence.
/>   Haya tries again to make conversation. “Uncle, I understand that you went far away when you left us.”

  Anoleta and Bienville smile ironically at each other, amused by Haya’s remarks. Now they seem almost friends. He takes up Haya’s polite tone in his reply.

  “I never wanted to leave here, but my chief ordered me to return to Paris, a town that exists across the sea.”

  “So you cannot live where you want?”

  Bienville laughs. “I’m afraid not.”

  “We live where we want,” says Anoleta, haughtily.

  “For a time,” answers Bienville. “But once your husband Red Shoes bargains away your towns to the Inkilish okla you will have nowhere to go. He is ruthless and resourceful. Only three months ago, he said in open council that anyone who attacked the Chickasaws were his enemies.”

  No one speaks for a long while.

  Bienville takes a deep breath and begins putting away his pipe and tobacco, gently folding a piece of cloth around them.

  “Red Shoes is no longer my husband, you should know that. I will soon marry Choucououlacta.”

  “A good leader, Choucououlacta,” says Bienville. “I approve.” Again he looks at her, but says nothing more until he stands up. “You are in great danger. Red Shoes will not go to war against the Inkilish-supported Chickasaw towns as he did two years ago at the battle of Akia. Besides, I know what happened, I was there. Although I arrived too late to save your mother’s friend Pierre D’Artagurette, I was able to bury his charred remains after the Chickasaws burned him at the stake. No, Red Shoes went, not to help the Filanchi okla, nor to help the warriors from your town. He was there for the Red Fox, his true allies. Had it not been for your leader Miko Chitto, my men would have been left on the battlefield to die by his deeds. For no matter what Red Shoes is telling you, he conspires to kill us all. The man is a demon. I believe he would slice you in two if it meant he could profit from each half.”

  Suddenly Anoleta is fighting off tears. “No, Red Shoes will never harm Yanàbi Town. I will prevent this.”