Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

  He nods and slides it back in his pocket. “But it’s your history too.”

  “I know.”

  “This is my favorite place in the whole world,” he says softly, looking around the room.

  “Mine too. This is where we first met the day I came to visit Nowatima. I don’t have to tell you what it means to me to be sitting next to you again. Tell me a story,” she urges.

  “A long time ago a lonely frog fell in love with the Sun.” Isaac pauses, then raises his voice playfully. “I have been telling you stories for years—I hope your big ol’ Indian ears have been singed off!”

  She laughs. “On occasions, I’ve heard your fiery words floating through my windows.”

  “I’ve cursed you, that much is true, but I’ve always sent along words of affection, sometimes when I was in the tub, sometimes on the road in my truck. Over the years I’ve kept you informed of what’s been happening to me. What the cows thought of the coastal hay I once bought by mistake. The color of my latest Choctaw warrior shirt.”

  He sighs. “How much I still want you. What we’ve missed Delores, what we’ve both missed.”

  She leans over and touches his chest. “Hardly anyone recognizes the most important events of their life at the time they happen. So I’m telling you now, this is our moment. Oh, there will be more time, Isaac, but it’s short.”

  His gaze matches hers, he is aiming himself into her. For the first time in nearly fifty years there isn’t any pain in his eyes, she knows. There is only hunger.

  “In that case,” he says, clearing his throat, “maybe you should try asking me a straight question.”

  “Marry me tonight. I want you to marry me,” she says bluntly. “I’m eighty-one, and you’re sixty-six, I know it’s my turn to ask—”

  “Ia lish, Ohoyo.”

  She puts her hand to his brown face, her fingers caress the flesh of his cheek. “With Auda in such bad shape, it may seem selfish to some, but we’ll make it up to her for being away for a few hours,” she says tenderly.

  “Okay,” says Isaac, thoughtfully. “Delores, I also know what is coming.”

  She rests her head on his shoulder. “For years, I had this recurring dream ... I never told anyone, not even Dovie. It is a long time ago. We are ourselves, but different. You are a monthly visitor to my town and we marry. I become pregnant, then I die. Somehow, I watch as you place a blue necklace of glass beads around my neck so I’ll remember. Then I am dancing beside you in a dress made of fichik hika, shooting stars—you know, the little stars who sacrifice themselves when they fly to the ground to unite Earth and sky.”

  He holds her closer, as if trying to protect her from what will come. “I’ve had that dream too,” he whispers. “I knew we’d be going together to Mississippi. You are Imataha Chitto, the prophesied leader who will reunite our two tribes.”

  Delores decides not to consider what he’s just said. She doesn’t want to worry about the future. She wants it to be like this always. They continue sitting together and look at each other like lovers at a reunion, happy in each other’s company. She sips the inky black coffee, which puckers her mouth. Then Isaac kisses her gently.

  11 | Black Time

  HASH KOINCHUSH

  HEART OF THE PANTHER

  JUNE 21, 1747

  I have carried the severed heads of the three Filanchi okla for months. Rot so strong, our unwashed bodies, and the putrefying carcasses we haul of our own felled iksa brothers cause the air around us to thicken with flies.

  As expected, an emissary from the nearby village arrives at our temporary camp. Her long shadow tells time. This will be a drawn-out day. She has a fierce appearance mixed with wild sorrow. She stares at us for a moment then makes a step forward. If my iksa brother, Imataha Pouscouche, hasn’t been here with the Inkilish okla trade goods we are done for. They will surely turn us away, we cannot bargain for their support with empty baskets.

  A knot of warriors appears from behind the canebrake to support their emissary. A gaunt man with half an arm gone begins talking. The woman continues looking straight ahead, but seems to be agreeing with him.

  I am bitterly offended. People once thought I was the Imataha Chitto, the greatest war leader, and they would sing my praises as I walked into the councils of the Natchez, Alibamu, Chahtas, Talapoosas, and Abihkas. Now I must hide myself among my warriors like a starving dog.

  The one-arm leader moves with grotesque jerks. “Wishia cha,” he keeps repeating. He wants us to clear out. No pack trains have been through here, we are not welcome. There is no food. Their corn was burned last month by a town of warriors on the side of the Filanchi okla. He says they await their new trading partners, the people from Yanàbi Town, who will provide them with corn and beans in exchange for information. They desire peace.

  I can see the cage of his ribs moving in and out. His mouth is wide open; it gives him an eerie ravenous appearance, as if he wants to swallow our camp. He says Yanàbi Town people will not like it if we are here when they arrive. He must be shouting, but his voice is weak and I cannot clearly hear all he is saying. He falls back suddenly, a helper catches him.

  Above, a black smoke cloud dents the blue sky, but I do not see the fire. The sunlight is thin; unripened peaches fall from the trees and break my concentration. A bad sign. I will not wait for another. Stinking of excrement and sweat, I step through the crowd to address the speaker.

  “Only the hands of a killer do not tire,” I say. “Here are the killed by me.” I toss the three Filanchi okla heads at his feet. “Old friends,” I say. “Your new friends.” I pause and let my actions tell the story of what kind of warrior I am. They must see that I will not hesitate to make the path run red with their puny blood.

  “That one,” I say, “sliced at me with his bayonet, but he missed. I knocked off his head with my war club, the one I had chiseled from a cypress tree when I was but a child.” Pointing to the second head with my lips, I explain how I caught my enemy unaware, then axed his shoulders and neck. “His blood,” I say, “moved slowly across the land like the branch of a river. He staggered with his hanging head then wheeled to the ground. The third head I hacked off quickly, but it lay in the mud for many days. A crow had dug out Filanchi’s eyes and was yanking at a fat neck vein with its beak when I returned, saving me the trouble. I transformed Filanchi into something useful: food for birds,” I say, my voice full of irony. “After all, do not our traditions teach us that alive we are the consumers, in death we are the consumed? We are life everlasting,” I say, earnestly touching my chest as I have seen Blackrobes do. “To be consumed by our relative the crow, it is a good end, huh?”

  The one-arm leader is deliciously flawed, an egg of a man. Breakable, I mean. I relish his anguish too much, until the woman emissary begins chanting:

  “Red Shoes, do you hear, do you understand? Do not forget the dead are helping the living. The villages who have supported you, the Couechitto, the Nushkobo, and the West Abeka, will be totally destroyed after your head is broken. You are a dead man. The words have been spoken and attach themselves to you like leaves on trees. Blood, a gorget you wear. Red Shoes, you are the walking dead.”

  Just then the wind, an agent of the emissary’s voice, sends out her words. They buzz around the trees, dress in the forest, and come out a spirit, Shakbatina. Her spirit dances across the sky. She wears a list of wounds. Her deerskin dress is bloodied at the neck and hem. Smoke rises from her turtle shells and forms a black cloud that she holds in her palms before flicking it upward to Hashtali. She touches the porcupine sash tied around her waist and says it will someday tell the story of what happened to me, too. I am not consoled.

  “Give it up,” she says, floating above my head. “The time has come for you to sacrifice yourself, as I once did.”

  “I will not,” I say. “The Inkilish okla already do my bidding. Soon the Filanchi okla will work only for me. Anoleta, my heart, will return when she realizes I was not the cause of your death. Toget
her she and I will drive out the Inkilish okla and Filanchi okla. I am Imataha Chitto, the greatest leader since Tuscalusa.”

  Only the hands of a killer do not tire. The wind echoes my words back to me.

  “Painful,” says the spirit of Shakbatina. “Greed has conquered you.”

  Something reaches out of the gloom and grabs the lower part of my jaw, pulling my head to the east, toward the future. I yelp and mill my arms until the thing goes away. I have no idea what it is. A lie. I am in the clutches of a vision. Whirling across oblivion, I take comfort in knowing that for ten years after my death, I am all my warriors speak of. All Filanchi okla will speak of. Most important, the month in which I am killed will forever be known as Luak Mosholi, Fire Extinguished. It will be rubbed out of the seasons, blotted out of memory as too horrific.

  “But,” I ask, my heart full of remorse, “what of the story of my death?”

  Silence.

  “Since there is no reply,” I say, “I will tell you now.”

  “We leave the village that will not host us. My warriors and I travel fast, downriver ten leagues, and make camp on a stubble plain outside of the Alibamu Conchatys village, supporters of the Filanchi okla. My men meet up with Red Fox warriors who have pledged to trade only with the Inkilish okla. All are quite exhausted. In the morning we will plunder their storehouses and distribute Filanchi okla muskets to our iksa. Throughout the night we lie quietly on the dew-laden ground to wait for daylight. Black grasshoppers couple in frenzies. Even they sense that time is short. They cover our bodies as the chill of the swamp penetrates our bones. We do not dare swat them or make a fire which might alert the village. The moon and stars are hidden from us by clouds, in league with my enemies, no doubt.

  “An hour after dawn the village still rests in slumber under a blanket of white smoke. It is then we rouse ourselves and advance toward the Alibamu Conchatys. My feet crunch as I walk slowly over the bodies of the mated. There are tall heaps of cane we hide in as we creep toward the village. A child is the first to spot us; he runs a few steps, then stands still and cries out in a tone of astonishing strength, ‘Don’t hit me, Uncle.’

  “I fling myself at the boy to quiet him, stumble kneeling in the grass. My suddenness frightens him and he throws up in my arms, then tries to scream, but instead drops in a heap of blood rushing over his little body from my knife that has killed him. I look into the child’s eyes as they go dead; hardened flat. I think they probably look the same as mine. Seconds ago he was alive, now he is among the killed by me. My corruption complete, I regret it all, but know there is more.

  “I lay him gently in the grass. I cannot help but remember that this is the same Alibamu Conchatys village that judged the dispute between my people and Yanàbi Town nine years ago. I lost both wives that year—the Red Fox woman by my own hands and Anoleta, payment for the Red Fox wife. An irony I have had to live with. I raise my shirt and examine the scar Anoleta gave me. My fingers need to touch what she has touched. I yearn for what has not been between us. How she sneered at me for running away the night I was told she intended to poison me. She kept her word and married Choucououlacta. I finally had him killed in the month of Hash Bissa, but I was told they made a child, a girl called Chunkashbili, Heart Wounder. I believe Anoleta named her for me. With that in mind I rush headlong toward the Alibamu Conchatys, cutting down women, men, children, the youngest of warriors, even the village animals. It is glorious.”

  The wind talks back. See Red Shoes with his tattooed face half fried off. His life will be forgotten.

  “But my story is not finished,” I argue. “I will caress the inevitable coming to life in front of me. My head on a pole branches like the red leaves of autumn pruned too late to heal. On the longest day of the year when the eye of the Sun finally closes, an assassin will set fire to my body, then remove my head. Then nothing, not even breath, can come between Anoleta and me in a place where the net of air and earth have been rearranged for this purpose. It is she and Haya who will track me down on the road to Couechitto. After the slaughter at the Alibamu Conchatys, after the hundreds dead, I decide I do want to sacrifice myself. I will help in my own death, but when heat rising from the fire makes me vomit the last bit of moisture out of me, I don’t want to end. Red smoke sizzles on my tongue. A hot tingling runs over the top of my head, I am being roasted alive. Flesh oozes down my cheek, tears of light run down my face. I am no longer one who is here, yet I am here. A chorus of frogs, deep voices, announces my departure, and I understand, there will be no birds coming for me. Everything around me is moving away, unsteady. I am raining down on the ground, dissolving in a blood clot of sadness. In my last solemn moments I pray for a reflection, a shape that will defy the astounded dead. I will not be a stone without eyes. I will not live where no one sees me or knows my name. I will return, I sing. I will return, I sing. I will return.”

  You are raving, says the wind.

  “Huh! A road does come for me. There is a whistling sound, searing. A meat-whistling that shrivels everything.”

  ON THE ROAD TO ALIBAMU CONCHATYS

  JUNE 21, 1747

  Nitakechi and a young warrior squat by a rack of deer meat on a spit in front of his temporary shelter. Neshoba, his niece, walks toward them. She puts on a somber face for the boy.

  “The Blackrobe is very well, Uncle, he does not carry the sickness.” Neshoba turns her back to the boy and winks at Nitakechi. “Good gamble.” Then she walks away toward a cluster of other temporary shelters.

  “Huh! Pay up. You lose. I win,” shouts Nitakechi as he fingers a haunch of meat.

  “You old shit,” laughs the boy. “You have fleshed this hen. Here, take my knife. I have nothing else to gamble.”

  “I told you the Blackrobe was not sick, just scratching with his feather brush. He calls it ecrire. It’s like body tattooing, or like the drawings we make on our deer hides. Each drawing means something. Filanchi okla doesn’t understand our meanings. We don’t understand his ecrire. You know what I think, Filanchi okla must ecrire every day because he cannot remember anything. He does not know where he is so he scratches to remember where he has been. It makes me sad, but I must say it, the Blackrobes are simple-minded. I tried to tell you, but you would not hear of it. This is a lesson, young one. Listen more closely to your elders.” Nitakechi reaches for the knife, but the boy stops him.

  “Yes, take my knife. The one I traded fifty deerskins for. The weapon that has killed many men. The knife that has skinned one thousand deer. It is yours, Uncle. Be proud when you draw it in battle, and remember that it once served a brave warrior.”

  Nitakechi examines the metal blade a second time. He smiles. “A thousand deer? Really?”

  “Yes, it is good to gamble with such a knife,” the boy says arrogantly, brushing the twigs from his leggings. Suddenly, though, he grabs his chest and falls on the ground, face first.

  Nitakechi watches the boy playfully act out his death scene. Was he ever so young and bold, he wonders.

  “Hekano, I am finished,” says the boy, rolling over on his back. “I am now impoverished. This night you have sincerely fleshed this innocent hen.”

  Nitakechi picks up the knife and throws it in a pile of things next to the fire. He laughs and decides to teach the boy how to speak the language of Tuscalusa, the old code, Mabilia. Just the insults at first. Eventually, he makes another bet in old code. This time he loses his black horse to the boy who belly laughs until he farts.

  “Let’s go find my niece, Neshoba,” says Nitakechi, standing up with as much dignity as he can muster. “I’ll walk. You ride.”

  “Uncle, I have heard that more than twenty of our towns voted to kill Red Shoes. Tomorrow when we arrive at the Alibamu Conchatys council, will you recommend me to be the assassin?”

  Nitakechi thinks for a long time before speaking. He’s horrified that a boy from the Inholahta is considering murder. Times are changing too fast. “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Eighteen w
inters.”

  “What are you called?”

  “Hopaii Iskitini,” answers the boy. Little Prophet.

  “Hopaii Iskitini, an Inholahta warrior holds the traditions of our clan in his heart. We are the ones who do not make the path run red with blood. A prophet-in-training, an Inholahta, should know this.”

  No sooner have the words left Nitakechi’s mouth than Koi Chitto hurries toward him with a grave face. “A runner has just come. Voices in the wind told the elders of the Conchas that Red Shoes and his Red Fox warriors, and the Inkilish okla, intend to lay siege to the Alibamu Conchatys.”

  His oldest friend tells him the war clans are preparing to break camp and fight in the pay of their cousins. “We have a covenant to support one another. Choucououlacta’s iksa is also on the move. They bring ten towns of warriors. Together we will fight at the beard of our enemy. We are too old to miss this battle, will you come?”

  Nitakechi looks down at his trembling hands. He puts them behind his back so as not to reveal his secret—that he wants to use his hands to squeeze Red Shoes by the throat until nuklamolli, he strangles him. He keeps his voice low when he responds. “I am ready, but first you must promise to let me try and speak with the Osano. Perhaps I can stop the bloodshed.”

  The boy jumps off the horse and offers him the rope. Nitakechi waves them away. “From here on out,” he says, “I do not want my feet to leave the ground ... prematurely.”

  The three of them walk to the center of camp. Warriors are already taking turns striking the post in the ceremony that allows them to tell of their past heroisms in battle. It energizes them for what is coming. Nitachechi stands by as his relatives paint their faces with streaks of vermilion meant to resemble lightning bolts. Warriors believe they are the storm that blows across land. All his life, he’s had to fight the urge to grab a club and make tushka panya. By this time tomorrow he will have given into it.

  When the Swiss soldier approaches, Father Renoir ignores him and continues writing feverishly. He must finish his account of the past nine years before he leaves it behind for those who will want to read it.