Cropper's Cabin

by Jim Thompson

  I glanced up into the mirror, and she was still walking just like she had been. Moving in a straight line with her shoulders squared and her head held high.

  I didn’t look back after that.

  I slowed down for the county road, wondering which way I’d better turn. I had less than a third of a tank of gas, and no money. And I knew I wasn’t going to use that shotgun to hold someone up. Anyway, there’d be an alarm out for me in thirty minutes or less—just as soon as someone could get to the Ontime place and telephone. I’d never be able to make a getaway in this car.

  An idea came to me. Not a very good one, but there just couldn’t be any very good ones in a spot like this.

  I turned the car toward town.

  I had to slow down at the school, because someone had kicked a football into the road and a couple of guys had run out and were scrambling for it. They got out of the way, finally, and I went on past. And they waved and yelled at me.

  “Hey, Tom! Where’d you get that baby?”

  “How about a ride, Tom?”

  I waved, and stepped on the gas.

  Just then the schoolbell rang and I knew it was five minutes until nine.

  The town was laid out in a series of squares, like most county seats are. I turned at the first square, the outside one that is, angling around it to the other side of town. I hit the main road there, followed it for about a half-mile and turned off again. Another quarter-mile, and the side-road I was on dipped down to a railroad crossing.

  I pulled the car off into the weeds and got out.

  It was a spur-line road that ran into Muskogee, and there was a train due by on it at nine-thirty—about twenty minutes from now, as I reckoned. This far out of town, it would be going too fast for me to catch. With the tracks down in a cut this way, I couldn’t have made the run for it that I would have needed to make.

  But they wouldn’t know that, I hoped. It would look like I’d caught it.

  I walked down to the tracks, stepped up on one of them, and walked foot in front of foot, east toward the trestle across the creek. And, no, it wasn’t hard to do for anyone that’d walked a furrow as much as I had. It was about a hundred yards to the trestle; and, being below the fields, I got there without being seen. I wasn’t any too soon. The tracks were humming. The train was highballing out of town, whistling for the crossing behind me. I turned sidewise to the tracks, and jumped into the creek.

  I knew it was about five feet deep in the middle, which was more than enough to break my jump. But I’d overlooked the fact that the bed was bound to build up around the trestle joists. I came down in about five inches of water, just enough to cover the sloped up sand, and one foot went down each side of the slope. The jar snapped my head back, then down against my chest. My ankles socked down into the sand and bent under me.

  I yelled out with the pain. I hurt so bad that it was all I could do to pull myself under the trestle when the train passed over.

  I wrapped my arms around a joist and hung on, yelling as the train shook it, making my legs shake. I was sure that my ankles were broken. All I could think of right then was that I’d have to let go, and that they’d find me trapped there in the sand with my head under water.

  But I didn’t let go, badly as I wanted to, and after a while I could feel something in my ankles besides the pain; the sugary numbness began to go out of them. I wiggled and pulled them out of the sand, one at a time. I tested them with my weight. I yelped a little when I did it, but I could do it. There weren’t any broken bones.

  I worked my way from one joist to another, until I was in the shallows near the opposite bank. Then, I left the trestle and headed up stream. This way, of course, I wouldn’t leave any trail for dogs to follow. The creek ran between steep wooded banks, the tree branches curving over it and sheltering it; so, if anyone was out in the fields, they wouldn’t see me.

  The creek swung south and east. I could follow it for about ten miles until it petered out in the hill country. Then I’d take to the hills. There wouldn’t be any people there, since the land couldn’t be farmed and the blackjack and scruboak wasn’t worth cutting. So I’d go on through the hills to the Kiamichi River, steal a boat and drift south.

  Down to Texas, maybe. Over to Arkansas, maybe.

  Somewhere. I’d figure it out when the time came.

  Right now I had ten miles of creek to walk. That was job a-plenty for me to work on.

  The shallows kept curving down, making me walk with my weight thrown sideways on my ankles. Branches and bushes poked out from the stream banks, and I had to keep dodging under them or moving out into the water around them.

  By the time I was a couple of hundred yards from the trestle, I was winded and pain was running up and down my legs in a way I didn’t like to think about.

  I rested a little while, hanging on to an overhead branch to ease the weight from my feet. I went on again, plodding through the water and sand and pebbles. A strong cold wind was working up, rattling and shaking the trees. I tried to walk faster, hoping my body heat would dry me.

  I had pretty good going for the next half-hour or so. The stream curved sharply in and out, cutting away the banks until the shoreline was flat instead of sloping. I must have covered all of a mile without having to stop and rest.

  Then I hit a bad stretch, a really bad one.

  It started with an overhang that was so low and bush-covered that I had to duck-walk to get under it. I finally worked my way through it, and there right ahead of me was a real poser: an arrow-shaped wedge of land that poked out about ten feet into the stream. It was covered with thorn bushes.

  I eased forward until I was facing it, then started to walk around it sideways. I got around to the point of the arrow, flopping my arms to keep my balance. Then my feet shot out from under me, and I went down in about eight feet of water.

  I came up and I grabbed those bushes, thorns or no thorns. I pulled myself around the wedge, and got to a little sandy flat where I could sit down. I took out my old knife and began digging out the thorns, so doggone mad and upset that it’s a wonder I didn’t whack a finger off.

  And right up above me—not more than twenty feet away, it sounded like—a man hollered:

  “Hi, fella! Where you think you’re headin’?”

  I went stiff as a board and the knife dropped from my hands. There wasn’t any place to run down here, and I couldn’t run anyway. It was all I could do to walk. I turned my head slowly, opening my mouth to call back to him—because the news would be all over this end of the county by now, and he probably meant business.

  Then he spoke again, and he was quite a distance away now. He’d moved back into the field, and I could only make out a few words of what he was saying:

  “Reckon you’re… the news…?”

  “… damned shame”—another man’s voice—“hard to…”

  I let out my breath. My heart was pounding like a Model-T with the bearings burned out.

  The first man, I reckoned, had been up there in the brush setting a snare probably, when he’d spotted a friend cutting crossfields. I listened, trying to hear what they were saying.

  “… care if… Indian. Fine a… a real gentleman and I’ll…”

  “Well… catch him, all…”

  “… nut the bastard!”

  I got up and took to the creek again.

  They all had their minds made up. Now it was just a matter of catching me and nutting me: sentencing me to the chair. I thought, I wished I’d brought that shotgun. I’d do a little nutting myself.

  I made it another mile or so, and then I just caved in entirely. I was blue with cold. My ankles felt like chunks of ice with hot wires running through them. I fell face forward on a stretch of sand, another place where the bank had washed out. After a few minutes I got up enough strength to roll up into the weeds and pull them around me. I rubbed myself with them. A little sunlight drifted down through the trees, and it helped a lot. Some of the chill began to leave me.

>   Now, I thought, it’s time to do some thinking. Real honest to gosh thinking. So far you’ve just been running, and—

  I went to sleep.

  I waked up to the smell of smoke and cooking corn, and it was all so much like the way I was used to waking that I thought I was home. I lay there smiling for a second, thinking I was sure going to have to do some work on that roof. I started to sit up and my whole body seemed to have been starched stiff. And I remembered where I was. Then I plopped back down in the weeds. Because I hadn’t dreamed that smell of smoke and corn. That was real.

  The fire was on the other shore, down in a wash almost opposite where I lay, and there was an iron pot boiling on it. Seated around it in a half circle was a dozen Indians. Full bloods. The old oldtimers who wore store clothes but still kept their hair in braids. They were having some kind of ceremony, I guessed.

  I watched them, peering through the weeds. I couldn’t leave until they did. After a few minutes, one of the old men got up and dipped a piece of bark into the pot. He brought it out, covered with something white, and licked it. He grunted a word or two in Creek language to the others. They all got up and began dipping into the pot, grunting and gesturing.

  It was pashofa, corn fixed something like hominy, and they acted like it was pretty good. They ate steadily for all of a half hour, and I watched with my mouth watering. I hoped they’d leave the pot when they left, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t. Indians always clean up good after themselves. At any rate, I didn’t see how I could get across to scrape it if they did leave it.

  Everyone except the man at the pot—the medicine man, I guess—stooped over the creek. And each of them got himself a little rock or pebble. They laid them down in a pile on the sand; then two of them walked back up into the bushes and disappeared.

  Nothing happened after that for maybe two or three minutes. They all just sat silent, still as statues. Then the bushes started rattling and rustling again, and the two Indians returned, pushing another man ahead of them.

  His ankles were hobbled and his hands were bound to his sides. His chin was bowed down against his chest. The medicine man began grunting at him, faster and sharper, and slowly, like he could hardly bear to do it, the man brought his head up.

  It was Abe Toolate.

  12

  Even standing in the shadows, and at the distance I was from him, he looked pale. He was just about the scaredest-looking man, white or Indian, I’d ever seen. His lips moved, like he was about to say something, and he sure shouldn’t have done that, it seemed, because the medicine man began shrieking at him; and the two Indians at his side threw him down on the ground.

  He lay on his back, with the wind knocked out of him, maybe. Anyway, he didn’t move or try to speak again.

  The semi-circle spread out. The medicine man took two clamshells from his pockets, and handed them to the Indians nearest him. They passed them on, to the men nearest them, and those two passed them on again. They moved from man to man, until they reached the two men sitting next to the creek.

  One of them made a pass at the creek, making out like he was filling the shell with water, but not actually doing it. He started it back up the line again; and the Indian opposite him waited a minute, then went through the same motions and passed his shell back.

  The medicine man squatted down at Abe’s side. He grabbed him by the nose and forced his mouth open. One of the shells had reached him by this time, and he snatched it and “emptied” it down Abe’s throat and handed it down the line again. Then he took the other shell and “emptied” it into Abe and passed it back. He reached for the first one again.

  It went on and on, the shells moving at just the right speed to keep the “water” pouring down Abe’s throat. And I knew they weren’t actually doing it—only going through the motions—but it all seemed so real that I found my breath coming hard. It was as though I were being executed by drowning in the old tribal way, as they were “executing” Abe.

  The medicine man stood up, and put the clamshells back in his pocket. He walked to the pot, scooped out some pashofa on a strip of bark and carried it back to Abe. He offered it to him, pushing it out at him then jerking it back. And Abe stood up—somehow, in all the goings-on, his bonds had been untied. But he didn’t touch the pashofa, of course.

  Dead men don’t eat.

  The medicine man laid the bark strip on the sand. He squatted over and reached for the pebbles which the others had gathered. And the others drew in their semi-circle until Abe was standing outside of it.

  The medicine man covered the bark with the pebbles, laying them over it one by one—making a tiny stone wickiup. That wickiup was Abe’s grave. The bark was his body.

  Everyone stood up again in that tight semi-circle, and Abe was shut off from sight. Then the semi-circle broke up, and they began scraping out the pot. The execution and burial were over, and they got ready to leave.

  But Abe was already gone. He’d vanished while they’d turned their backs on him. And I wasn’t any Indian, of course, but I knew that what had happened to him—though he hadn’t been harmed physically—was about the worst thing that could happen to a man.

  A few years ago, during a smallpox epidemic, an Indian died up in the old Osage Nation. The doctors pronounced him dead, and all his kinfolks and friends came to his house and began mourning. And he wasn’t really dead—just in a state of coma—and all the racket snapped him out of it. He sat up in bed and asked them what the heck was going on. And no one heard him—no one would admit hearing. They just got up and walked out.

  From that day on, as far as the Osages were concerned, he didn’t exist. He’d “died” and the dead don’t come back to life. No one would speak to him. He’d try to stop them on the street, and they’d just look right through him and keep on going.

  He was one of the wealthiest men in Oklahoma—had all sorts of oil holdings. And when he really did die, of loneliness, I guess, there was a big turnout for his funeral. But not a single Osage came. To the Osages, all his kin and friends, and anyone he cared anything about, he’d been dead for years…

  And Abe Toolate would be dead from now on. To all the full-bloods, and all the part-bloods who came under their influence. Practically every Creek of any degree. They wouldn’t be told what he had done to be “executed”—the old full-bloods would keep that a secret. Otherwise, the white men would take over Abe’s punishment; and the old Indians preferred their own brand of justice. They wouldn’t side with the whites against their own kind.

  But the part-bloods wouldn’t need to know why he’d been “executed.” They’d know that it wouldn’t have been done without a darned good reason, that they’d better steer clear of him and let him stay “dead.”

  I watched the Indians leave, walk up through the bushes and disappear, dragging the pashofa pot with them. And I wondered what the heck Abe had done, anyway, and how the old men had found out about it. Of course, they had ways of finding out things—nothing much happened that they didn’t know about. And, of course, Abe had been bringing disgrace on the tribe for years; stealing, lying, getting drunk. Probably, I decided, they’d just let everything pile up and then paid him off for the lot by “killing” him.

  I sat up, pushing the whole matter out of my mind. I tried to stand up and my legs crumpled under me. I looked down at the water and shivered. I knew if I tried to walk in that creek another ten feet, I’d just fall over on my face and never get up.

  I looked up through the trees, trying to estimate the time of day. I figured it would be all of two hours until dark; and I’d have to wait until it was dark.

  I took off my shoes, and began chafing my feet and legs. I scrubbed and pounded them with my knuckles, and they started aching like anything; but the blood came back into ’em and they felt warmer. I stood up and began stamping them into the weeds, flapping my arms at the same time. Then I rested a little and started in all over again. Something told me I’d better if I wanted to keep on living. And I did wan
t to.

  I hadn’t been kidding when I’d warned Pa that I’d be to see him. I was going to live long enough to do that if I never lived any longer.

  I concentrated on him, thinking of how, as soon as they gave up looking for me, I’d go back. I’d go back at night, or, early in the morning, say. I’d stay in the woodshed until they got up—I’d wait until they had the fire going and were sitting down to breakfast. Then I’d take the axe, I’d have it sharpened up good by that time, and sneak across the yard.

  I’d creep up on the porch, not making a noise, and—and then I’d move in front of the door. And they’d raise their eyes, real slow. And I’d grin at them. Grin and twirl the axe, and bring it back over my shoulder.

  I was going to do it. I knew it—like you sometimes do know things—and I knew it was going to be exactly like I was planning.

  It got dark.

  I crawled and pulled my way up the slope to the field above. I rested a few minutes, then started back toward the trestle.

  It wasn’t nearly as far back as I’d thought, but if it had been much farther I couldn’t have made it.

  I crawled across the trestle on my hands and knees and tumbled into the cut on the other side. I lay there for a while—I think I must have passed out for a few minutes. I crawled up the slope of the cut and under the fence. I got my hands on top of a fence post, pulled myself up and staggered across the field.

  It was a dark night, and that was good, of course. But it made walking twice as hard as it would have been. I kept stumbling and going down, and each time it was a little harder to get up. I didn’t seem to have any joints in my legs or ankles. I had to push myself up, kind of from the hips, and along toward the last I was plopping down on my face a half dozen times or so before I could make it.

  I got to the fence on the other end of the field, crawled under it and pulled myself up again. And I was sure glad she lived on the edge of town. I was glad she had this orchard.

  I stumbled and staggered through it, pulling myself along by the trees. I went across the yard at a staggering run and fell down on the back steps.