Sister Sally Sees, the predictor of fortunes both large and small, the revealer of pasts both noble and ignoble, had said to me the week before, “Daniel was meaner than a snake when alive, and the equal of the red devil himself after death.” This came from the former circus woman who claimed she could see straight into hell with that cloudy eye of hers.
I was snatched from my thoughts by the sound of pain—terrible and true. I peered into the darkened corner by the pickle barrel where I spotted Old Red Hound, bloody and whimpering. Out of reach from a comforting hand, I could not make my way to him without leaving Miz Myrtle’s side. I did not know what to do. Every choice felt wrong. I thought to soothe him with a voice that some called pleasing, but the unfamiliar shrill pitch I emitted slapped my ears like a teacher’s quick hand, which I remembered from childhood. The sound coming from me could not have comforted even the least troubled, much less my two dear friends brought low by red violence.
Perhaps it was that very thought that ignited my skin like a fire. All I know is that a contagion of scarlet hives covered my hands and arms fully, and by the feel of my face, welts had covered it as well. Maybe it was my scream of terror when I heard footsteps rushing and the slam of the backdoor that robbed me of my beautiful singing voice. I know I felt a rip down my throat like fabric must feel when torn asunder. A grievous felony had been committed. I swelled with an anger sweet as strong honey. I knew it to be nothing less than murder interrupted.
A fierce anger caused me to tear out of that store running faster than Skedaddle, the fastest horse in Choctaw County, but not before I invoked the name of Jesus. Thinking Jesus might need assistance, I also called on the Holy Spirit. And then, just in case, I made special invite to God, the Father Himself. “Watch over these my loved ones while I’m gone, and if the fiend that did this comes back, strike the bastard with lightening. Amen.” I let out a blood-curdling yell as I ran in search of medicine and law, Dr. Joseph Watkins and Sheriff James Winston Baxter, the first, a man of considerable healing talent, the second, a man with only a modicum of brains.
Chapter 2
I caught up with Sheriff James Winston Baxter in front of the “Cross Tie Saloon.” He said to me, “Look here, and settle on down. Talk slower mister if you want me to follow you. Yes sir, just you slow it on down, I’m telling you. Don’t you hear me, boy?” Sheriff Baxter was a man of many words. A slow thinker, in my humble opinion, but backed up by facts that I’m not inclined to divulge. When he made as if to grab my shoulder, I shrugged him off and hopped around like someone speaking in tongues. I didn’t need him touching me. No sir, ain’t needed that to add to the equation.
Miz Myrtle Harrington had seen right through me the first day I’d arrived in Hugo when I went into her store and bought myself a pickle and a saltine cracker. She’d asked me to set a spell, as she might have a business proposition, even though the two of us had just met. Well now, not even met at that point, as there had been no introduction of one to the other. She directed me to the chair behind the counter where I could eat without getting crumbs over her just swept floor. And so I did.
I watched Widow Jenkins come in for some thread, a sack of flour, and a peppermint. She paid a right mighty sum for those three items, at least it seemed to me, who had an empty pocket after the pickle and the cracker.
Donnie’s my name. The kind of name that works well for a young man, which I am not. Me, I’m just a cotton picking pretender, nothing more. Miz Myrtle saw it right off—despite the fact that I’d cut off every lick of my fine brown hair the day I’d left the orphanage to make my way in the world. World’s not a safe place for a young woman alone, but I intended to see as much of it as is possible. You see, I’m a reader, and the Indian Territory was published to me in a book by the name of Indian Territory—World of Frolicsome Adventure. A fine book it was too, hard and exciting, and just about anything was open to a young man with some gitty-up. It was that hope of adventure that caused me to don these manly clothes, to bind my bosoms almost flat, shorn my hair, and make my way from southern Missouri, to Hugo. At the time, my “will and way” to go one step further, had plumb tuckered out.
On the day I had arrived, hunger knotted my stomach tight. Hence, I’d gone into the store immediate upon my arrival. When the folks cleared out, there was a passel of them as I recall, Miz Myrtle looked at me and said, “Young man, humph!” And I could not keep the shock of her keen observation from my face. I know my confident determined look crumbled like a day old biscuit.
“Tell me your story so I can decide whether I’m moved to help you, or if I’m better off to report you to the Sheriff. Start with your proper name. I’d say that would be a good beginning.” She eyed me with her gray squinty eyes that were magnified by a pair of gold rimmed glasses that tended to scoot down on what I called a refined nose, not too small, not too big, no humps, and just a hint of tilt at the very end which could be exaggerated when there was a need to be snooty. On occasion I’ve had to be snooty myself, but I hold that in strict reservation, as I’ve no fondness for a snob.
“Yes, ma’am. First, might I ask who I’d be addressing, ma’am, so our conversation would be mutual, so to speak?” I said this with my eyes just downcast enough so as to appear humble, not brazen. Brazen could have sent me straight to the Sheriff. Perhaps if I’d known it was Sheriff James Winston Baxter, I’d have been less concerned, but I could only speculate on the single one I’d ever dealt with, Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith. I’d guess him to be the quickest thinker I’d ever met, a man to be feared. So, with that, I waited.
Miz Myrtle, helpless with a penchant for kindness as I later came to know, reached down, as she was tall for a woman, and lifted my chin. “Well then, my name is Miz Myrtle Jane Harrington, I’m a woman alone, much as yourself, and this is my store, although it once belonged to my Beloved, Mr. Daniel Harrington, now dead for some months.” As I learned later, Miz Myrtle had her reasons for calling him “Beloved,” as I had my own reasons for telling my story the way I told it that very day.
“Well, ma’am, my name is Rebecca Donna Summersdale, but my friends have always called me Songbird cause I’m thought to sing pretty as a songbird, although I would not be able to say if that is true or false.”
She looked at me and advised me that if she ever heard me sing she’d give me her honest opinion, as honesty was about the only thing a poor woman could own with impunity. I’d never heard the word impunity, but I came to know that Miz Myrtle was far from poor. Now once I learned the “impunity” word, I couldn’t help but think that Miz Myrtle was the most “impugn” person I’d ever met. But my acquaintances being few, no one is likely to be impressed with that observation.
Miz Myrtle learned from me that I’d grown up in the orphanage, my parents having taken the typhoid fever and died when I was but six years old. I had no relatives other than ones in Ireland, a fact that I’d not shared, the Irish being looked down upon by many. I advised that since I was alone, I’d thought to protect myself by proclaiming myself a man, well, really a boy, since I’m too small and too young to dare to manhood. I told her that before I became a boy, I’d loved the finer things in life, although that might have been pretentious on my part as I’d rarely seen anything fine. But to prove my point and to give myself some credibility, I went inside my bag and pulled out the cup, a teacup, of the finest China, fragile as a new chick not yet able to fly, and sure to die if tumbled from the nest. The cup, I told her, was a remembrance from my Ma, a woman fine as silk.
Miz Myrtle was rightly impressed, and hired me on the spot to stock her store, to clean, and then to clean some more, a matter of which she was too fond, in my opinion. She allowed as how I could sleep in her extra room. The very room she had intended for her own daughter, but married late in life, she and Beloved had not been so fortunate and the room had remained unoccupied.
She agreed to keep my secret, but insisted that when I was at her home I should at least speak with my girlish voice and respond to my name.
We reached a compromise. She called me “Songbird” just like my two best friends in the orphanage. I missed them awful bad. Miz Myrtle, no doubt, would have corrected that poor use of language if she could have known my thoughts. Still, it is the best description of my feelings that I know, and both myself and Miz Myrtle have an abiding appreciation for honesty as to matters of the heart. I grew to love her deeply.
Now you can see that her loss was my loss. Love is honest, if nothing else. It knows to hurt when the one you love is compromised in any fashion, and my Miz Myrtle was compromised, so that I could hardly speak without crying. But boys don’t weep.
Instead, I looked into the pleasant face of Sheriff Baxter and said in my best boy voice, “You got to come quick, Sir. Someone near killed Miz Myrtle and Old Red Hound.” I could feel my eyes beginning to swell as the hives took them over having already conquered the rest of my face. “Whoever did it made bad with them both. Put a dead crow in Miz Myrtle’s lap, stole her money, and she barely breathes. Her eyes look, but they don’t see me no more. And not just her, but Old Red Hound is a bloody mess too, and howling from pain.”
When I saw that vacant stare take over Sheriff Baxter’s face, I knew sure as I knew the sun would rise in the morning that I must set about myself to find out who had tried to kill Miz Myrtle. I shuddered from the responsibility I had taken on, because the one thing most folks don’t know about me is, “I ain’t a quitter.”
Somebody had wanted something more from Miz Myrtle than money. That dead crow was a personal desecration. Think Songbird, think. Who could’ve of done this? That question brought Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith to mind. So I just outright asked him what he thought, though as far as I knew he was still in Missouri where I had left him. I shut out the nonsense that Sheriff Baxter was prattling. I went deep into the quiet where I first went when Ma and Pa died. And then it came to me. Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith strongly suggested that the why of it would be the better question to ask.
Chapter 3
Doc Watkins and Banker Clyde Perkins arrived just moments after Sheriff Baxter and I got back to the store. While the Sheriff looked around in wonder, at least Doc Watkins got about his business. “Clyde, see to the boy while I set about the care of this poor woman.” Doc didn’t waste words like some I knew.
Banker Perkins eyed me and I eyed him back as best I could, hampered somewhat by the rapid swelling of my eyes. Uncertain of what he expected, I excused myself to close the blue gingham window curtains of which Miz Myrtle had been right proud. Then I went directly to Old Red Hound, sat down and put his bloody head in my lap, and with my lightest touch I began to rub the top of his paw, a place that did not look to be hurt.
“Hey feller, no cause for alarm. I’m going to take good care of you boy. Nothing to worry about now. I’ll make it right for you.” I meant to speak strong words like a cowboy would’ve spoken, but to my deep shame I began to blubber. Tears and snot ran over my red welted face. I rubbed hard as if the pressure of my hand could stop the leak. Everything had become a blur through the slit of my swollen eyes.
“Son, you know there’s hope for a dog that can still wag its tail,” Banker Perkins’s deep voice penetrated my blubbering long enough for me to hear the thump, thump, of Old Red Hound’s tail against the wooden floor. That sound stopped the tears. By golly if Old Red Hound could still thump his tail, then I, by gosh, could act the man. I straightened my shoulders, but straight shoulders did little to help me see.
From Sheriff Baxter I heard, “Doc, she going to be all right? You think, Doc, she could talk to me, gol dern it, and tell me who tried to kill her and the dog? I mean, Doc, there ain’t much to go on here.” I could imagine the Sheriff scratching his head, but I didn’t look at him so as to confirm that picture. “The boy says he didn’t see nothing, just heard someone running out the back. This here celebration going on, it ain’t likely that anyone paid a bit of attention to this store or the goings on inside. Tell me, Doc, am I going to be able to talk to her? I need to know, Doc, what you’re thinking.” I could hear the whine in Sheriff Baxter’s questions. I suspected he knew there weren’t a spec of possibility that he could find the culprit lessen the man turned up on the doorstep and announced to the Sheriff, “It was me. I done it.”
“Baxter, would you hush a minute so I can tell you? This woman’s in deep shock. We got to get her home and into bed. She’s not going to be talking to anyone now, and I’ve heard tell of cases where the speaking don’t ever return. Clyde, you see if you can get Sister Sally Sees to come over and sit with her. I hear tell, Sister Sally and Miz Myrtle have taken a likening to each other. Besides, most of the womenfolk have families and such.” Doc Watkins never rushed his words. They came out slow as if there were all the time in the world. I felt that death couldn’t be too close by, else Doc would have hurried his speech some, and that thought felt good to my core. Sheriff Baxter’s hurry-up talk didn’t hold no sway with me, being who he was, and all.
“I can’t leave Miz Myrtle and Old Red Hound, Doc. I got to stay with them.” I turned my head toward the last sound of Doc’s voice. “And we don’t need Sister Sally Sees coming to stay with us neither. I’ve a bad feeling toward the woman. Not a week ago, she filled Miz Myrtle’s head with some cock-eyed, morning-glory fortune telling, but Sally Sees didn’t say one thing to Miz Myrtle about almost getting killed.” I paused to see if there was something else I could add to make Doc see the truth of it. “Don’t seem right to get Miz Myrtle’s hopes up so that she sings when she makes the coffee and cooks the eggs. Sides that, Sister Sally Sees is always messing with them crows. I don’t trust her a lick, given that dark bird in Miz Myrtle’s lap. Hear me Doc?”
“Son, you can’t take care a no one with your eyes shut tight like that.” Doc was a practical man.
“I’ll put me a hot rag on these eyes and they’ll be good as new, Doc. I promise.”
Banker Perkins chimed in, “Joe,” That’s what a banker can do I thought. Call a doctor by his first name just cause of the jingle in his pocket. Then Banker Perkins came up with his own good idea, “My sister and I will stay with the boy and Miz Myrtle till we can sort some of this out. Lucinda May will be glad to help.”
Dang. How the heck would I be able to keep my secret with folks right up in my face like that. I didn’t need Banker Perkins with his fine looks and gold rich voice in the same house. I suspected that he could cause a flutter in me, and I’d been warned of those kind of flutters in the orphanage. Still, when faced with the specter of Sister Sally Sees, I guessed that there wasn’t nothing for it but to go along, she being the worse of two bads.
I didn’t even bother asking Sheriff Baxter what he intended to do. Whatever it was, I felt sure it would be wrong, and if it did happen to head in the right direction, he’d bungle it.
I closed everything out and started about the task I’d set for myself. I began to sift for suspects, like a miner sifts for gold. After a thorough shaking, what was left shining in my pan was Sister Sally Sees, who’d recently left off the circus life and was a come-lately citizen of Hugo, Oklahoma. I’d a mind to go see her and inquire as to her whereabouts this morning.
I think it was then that I heard the whisper of Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith’s voice, “Don’t shut the gate until all the horses are in.” And I knew he was right, cause it wasn’t so long ago that Mr. John Bowden had inquired about buying the store from Miz Myrtle. And truth be told, several fellers had come a courting Miz Myrtle after the death of Beloved, the most fervent one was Deputy Harris Suggs. I touched my eyes again, then instructed them.
“You best be getting well, cause I have serious work to do and I can’t do it blind.”
Chapter 4
He moved in despite me, Banker Clyde Perkins did, and he’d brought his sister, Lucinda May, too. I had seen the look between Doc Watkins and Banker Perkins. Unmistakable in what it said, though not one word was spoken by either of them. An unfinished murder, a helpless woman, and a green boy is just asking for tro
uble. But they was mighty careful not to hurt my boyish pride. I’d seen it before, how men stuck together and covered for each other. I considered it quite an accomplishment that I’d been taken into the manly fold by no less than a man of medicine, and a man of money.
“Son,” Doc looked at me direct as was his way. “Miz Myrtle needs a woman’s care. No offense but a boy can’t do what Miz Myrtle needs, plain and simple.”
He meant that me being a boy, I couldn’t change them bandages I know he put under Miz Myrtle’s dress, so that the broken ribs could mend themselves good and right. And from a manly perspective, he was nothing but correct.
I had no guide to direct me to the path of wisdom in what I faced. This was beyond Sheriff Bob Freedom Smith’s know-how. Should I reveal myself as a girl so that I could tend to the woman who had tended me so well these two years past? I knew that Miz Myrtle, a most private woman, would have hated the thought of delicate Lucinda May looking upon and touching Miz Myrtle’s naked self. Would she want me to confess and spare her mortification, or would she want me to find the culprit who did this and see he came to justice?
My stomach knotted up tight as I pondered the question. Revealed, I’d be tossed back into the female pile of helplessness; deprived of the male freedom I needed in order to discover the identity of the wicked person bent on killing Miz Myrtle. I felt the sinking sensation of loss, knowing that all adventure would be gone to me forever, once I was revealed as the girl that I was. I’d be groomed for the wifely duty of submission. No right or wrong shouted itself to me, just choices that could go either way.
“Donnie, you can go in now.” Lucinda May beckoned me from Miz Myrtle’s bedroom door, delaying for a moment, my decision. Lucinda May smoothed the skirt of her blue shirtwaist, then paused to put her hand on my arm. “Did you know, Donnie, that Miz Myrtle is so right fond of you that she mentions you before all else when I inquire, ‘And how are things with you today, ma’am?’”
Foxy Statehood Hens and Murder Most Fowl (The Foxy Hens) Page 10
