House of Purple Cedar

by Tim Tingle

  She stepped to the sink, saying, “Now. I’ll wash, you dry, and let’s make up for lost time.”

  Ten minutes later my nineteen year-old cousin Wilbur burst through the front door. “We know where the marshal lives,” he shouted. “Let’s see how he likes a board upside the head.”

  Everybody grew nervous thinking about Wilbur taking a board to the marshal. They knew the marshal would kill him and go unpunished.

  My grandmother looked at me.

  “If we’re going to town, we better bring guns,” said Wilbur’s little brother Zeke, who had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday. I saw my grandparents trade glances to hear Zeke talk so brave.

  The older folks just let the young ones go on with their blustery talk. Even when they called for guns and warring, Amafo kept his hat low and sipped his coffee. Their words, he knew, would fall like hot embers on a coldwater lake. But other words, spoken by elders, caught Amafo’s attention—and Pokoni’s as well.

  Mister Pope, a neighbor and a good man for shoeing horses, said, “Maybe we all should stay here, camp out here. We’d be here to protect your family. They wouldn’t dare try anything if we was all here.”

  “I’ve got nothing to do that cain’t wait. I’ll be glad to,” someone said.

  “We’ll all be here if any trouble comes,” Mister Pope said. “I’ll drive into town tomorrow and buy enough ammunition for us all. Shells, gunpowder. We’ll divey it up and reckon the money later. I’ll keep good account of everything.”

  Hearing this, Amafo lifted his hat and looked at Pokoni. Pokoni filled a coffee cup to overflowing and crossed the room to hand it to Mister Pope.

  “Here’s a fresh cup for you,” she said. Mister Pope took the cup without looking at it and promptly spilled it on himself.

  “Yow,” he hollered, dropping the cup and splashing hot coffee all over his britches. His wife ran to his aid. In the laughter that followed, everyone seemed to forget his idea of a makeshift army, an invitation to trouble. Truth was, our yard was already overrun with an army, the army of Colonel Tobias Mingo.

  Colonel Mingo

  Forty-eight children, Colonel Mingo’s Army, gathered in the woods east of the house. A highly-respected veteran, Colonel Mingo had fought with a Confederate calvary brigade during the Civil War. The day following a fierce battle, he had lost his left arm to a Yankee sharpshooter as he crouched over a pan of frying ham.

  He spent several months after the amputation recuperating from typhoid fever at the Veterans Hospital in Talahina. Colonel Mingo’s left sleeve now hung limp at his side. It flopped when he moved, like happy laundry bobbing on a clothesline.

  During Choctaw gatherings, Mingo’s assigned duty was to keep the children safe. Though soft-hearted, he served his duty with a military bearing that appealed to the older children. Overlooking a few hundred lost teeth, a dozen broken arms and legs, two snakebites and fifty bee stings—he was moderately successful.

  Knowing this night was likely to stretch into morning, Colonel Mingo supervised the building of a small campfire. He began by settling himself against the trunk of a two-hundred-year-old oak. My talking tree, he called it.

  He then appointed seven of the older children—never the same children, but always seven—to be his officers. Colonel Mingo not only built the fire following this chain of command, he conducted the entire evening’s affairs through these seven officers.

  “Let’s begin by getting us some wood. Will, Mary, Ken, Arch, you folks get enough kindling and small branches to get it started. Nita, Boyd, Samuel, you folks start gathering logs, ’bout two, three-foot long logs.”

  “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the officers yelled, scattering into the woods. Colonel Mingo pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the bowl and pressing the tobacco down lightly with his thumb. Cupping his hand over the bowl, he struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit his pipe. Soft puffs of sweet, aromatic tobacco smoke filled the clearing. His officers soon returned with the wood.

  “Small wood over there, logs over here,” he said, waving his right hand in one direction and pointing in the other. “Keep the center clear for now. Good job, officers. Keep it up. Gonna need a lot more wood than that. Let’s get going, everybody but Samuel and Will.”

  “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” the remaining five yelled on their way to the woods.

  “Will, scratch out a circle on the ground with your boot heel, right there in the center of the clearing. Make it ’bout big around as a washtub.”

  “Yessir!” said Will.

  “Samuel, find us some stones. You and Will are gonna build us a fire circle, one we can use every time we come to this clearing. So build it good.”

  “Yessir, Colonel Mingo!” they said in unison.

  “If you want to pick you out some helpers, some of these other children might be big enough to help out. But you got to keep a watch out for ’em. Make sure they don’t step on a snake or get covered all over with ants.”

  Soon most of the children were involved, gathering stones or firewood.

  “Girls,” Colonel Mingo said, “you’ll find buckets on the wall of the chicken coop. Fill ’em up with red clay from the creek bed. That clay will be the mortar for our stone fire circle.”

  “Yessir,” sang the young ladies, dashing to the chicken coop.

  In less than an hour, the fire circle was built and enough wood for a week of winters was stacked at the edge of the clearing. Soon everyone found their own listening spot, where they would spend the next several hours till they drifted off to sleep.

  “Samuel,” Colonel Mingo said, “I want you to take this match and light the fire. Notice which way the wind is blowing. Put your back to it soes it don’t blow out the flame. Git your kindling just how you want it, and git real close to the fire ’fore you strike that match, ’cause you only got one.”

  Samuel was tall like his father—Brother Willis—and thin like his mother. He almost never smiled. Samuel listened intently to Colonel Mingo, then nodded and furrowed his brow to let everyone know he realized the seriousness of the situation.

  He picked up a handful of dried leaves and tossed them in the air, watching which way the wind carried them. Then he stacked dried kindling at the base of the logs. He struck a match and held it to the kindling. The sticks burst into flame, but Samuel stayed with the fire till a small log caught fire.

  Seeing the firelight fill the clearing, a tiny three-year-old started clapping, but the seven officers shooshed her. Colonel Mingo turned his slow gaze to the children. He waited till the embers were popping lazy-like and the flames burned low—yellow and blue hypnotizing flickers.

  Some children sat cross-legged, some leaned against a nearby hackberry stump. A few rolled fat logs close to the fire to use as pillows, folding their hands behind their heads. Everyone drew close, for Colonel Mingo always told his stories in a barely heard sleep-if-you-want-to voice.

  And they drew close for another reason. Safety in numbers, for Colonel Mingo always began his stories with the same warning.

  “Now you children know there’s no reason to be scaired ’bout anything I tell you. None of these creatures is still living. And if they are still living, they aren’t living in these woods. And if they are still living in these woods, they’re probably asleep by now anyway. But just in case they’re not asleep, we outta be reeeeel quiet, ’specially if you hear something in the woods, something maybe prowling around attracted by the fire. In fact, maybe we should put the fire out.”

  “No!” screamed a dozen voices.

  “Well, now,” Colonel Mingo said, “if anything was asleep in the woods, I ’spect it’s awake by now.”

  Colonel Mingo paused to puff on his pipe. A pink glow rose from the pipe bowl and tiny clouds of smoke floated around his face. With every eye watching him, Colonel Mingo set his pipe against a stone, sipped his coffee, and waited for the night sounds to take over. They floated down from the trees, fluttering sounds of winged creatures taking flight and
the soft whistling of pine trees tilting with the wind. The distant croaking of frogs washed up from the creek.

  Colonel Mingo lifted his eyebrows. His eyes grew wide and he turned his head slowly, ever so slowly, as if he’d heard something but didn’t want it to know he was there.

  “I’m scared,” came a wee voice from behind the hackberry stump.

  “Well, I was just trying to tell you children why there’s no reason to be afraid,” Colonel Mingo continued.

  For half an hour, he entertained the young children with tales of friendly alligators and silly rabbits. He told them of tiny men called Bohpoli, who teach the herbal cures. Twice he paused and sent Samuel to the house, once for a refill on his coffee and again to borrow a bowl of pipe tobacco from your daddy, the reverend.

  When the younger children were mostly asleep, he leaned close to the fire. “You know it’s wrong, real wrong, to hit somebody,” he whispered. “You all know better than to do that. I’m gonna tell you ’bout a girl that knew better but did it anyway.”

  Jezebel Jezzy

  “Don’t ever go to striking another person, not with a stick, not with your hand, not with nothing,” he said. “There was once an old Negro man who was married to an old Indian woman,” he began. “They children was grown and done left home. Then one day the old woman told her husband she was gonna have another child. ‘I been thinking we wuz too old for that,’ her husband told her.

  “Well, the old woman was thinking the same thing, but sure ’nuff, in the usual time come a baby girl born to this sweet old man and woman. The girl was very beautiful. She had the shiny black hair of her father, but it hung in long curls, like her mother’s. Her skin was a little bit of both, dark brown and red. She grew to be long-legged and walked real graceful-like. All the boys would stop and stare at her when she walked by. Her mother didn’t seem to notice much, but her father did not like it one bit, the way those boys looked at his daughter.

  “And how you think the daughter took to all this attention? Well, she liked it just fine, though she never let on. She was shy and wouldn’t look at the boys, like a girl ’spossed to be, when she was a young’un. But ’bout the time she come to being a teenager, that all changed.

  “They called her Jezzy, from her Bible name Jezebel, and why a daddy gonna let his baby girl be named Jezebel, I’ll never understand. Soon as she turned teenager, she started living up to her no-good name.

  “The trouble really started when Jezzy took a liking to a boy named Cecil. Cecil was long and lanky too, and he kept his hands in his pockets and hardly ever talked to anybody. But ’bout the third time he followed Jezzy home, like a lonesome puppy dog, she realized she had a fish on the line.

  “Jezzy finally took to passing by his house whenever she had a chance. Now Jezzy’s momma made baskets, river cane baskets, and she was good at it. Since she was old, she’d sit in the doorway when she worked, hardly moving at all. Jezzy brought her water and some little something to eat when she asked for it. Now this old woman sold every basket she made ’fore she made it, ’cause she’d color her baskets any way anybody wanted. She never had to leave her doorstep to make all the money she needed.

  “One day the woman saw Cecil hanging around the house, just leaning up against a tree over yonder nearby. That night she told Jezzy’s father, and next time Cecil come ’round, Jezzy’s daddy had a talk with him, told him to go away and not come back.

  “Jezzy was getting old enough to talk to boys, but her parents were too old to know it. So maybe Jezzy had a right to be upset. But when it’s your parents, being upset and doing something about it, they two different things. You still got to show respect. And that’s what Jezzy didn’t have. She had the good looks, but she didn’t have no respect, not for her parents.

  “One night Cecil come ’round her window real late, and Jezzy and him took off to the lake. They stayed for way too late. Next day her daddy, who was old but he wadn’t no fool, he saw the foot tracks by Jezzy’s window. He was waiting for ’em that night, till Jezzy was crawling out the window and Cecil was helping her.

  “When they turned to go, there stood Jezzy’s daddy. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘you come anywhere near this house or Jezzy, you gonna get a whipping you’ll never forget.’ And the old man waved a cane in Cecil’s face.

  “Jezzy tried to talk, but her old momma pulled her towards the house. Jezzy jerked away. ‘Take your hands off me!’ she shouted. When her mother reached for her again, Jezzy reared back and slapped her mother right on the face.

  “But when Jezzy tried to take her hand away, she couldn’t do it. Her hand was stuck to her mother’s face and she couldn’t pull it away. Her daddy and Cecil, they all just stood there and couldn’t believe what was happening. Jezzy’s hand grew into her momma’s cheek till the two were joined.

  “Nothing they could do about it. Jezzy slept next to her momma’s bed that night. When morning came they called the medicine man.

  “Medicine man said he’d never seen nothing like this. He tried with his medicine, but he couldn’t do no good. After a day or two, Jezzy’s momma went back to making her baskets, sitting in the doorway, with Jezzy trying to hide just inside the house. But everybody heard what had happened and they come by to see. ‘Cut my hand off!’ Jezzy finally said. ‘I can’t live this way.’

  “And that’s what they did. A doctor come by one day and real careful-like cut Jezzy’s hand off, ’bout wrist high. It bled something awful. He wrapped a bandage around it, even tried burning the stump, but nothing would stop the bleeding.

  “Jezzy died that night, bled to death in her own bed. With all the attention going Jezzy’s way, nobody noticed, up to now, what was happening with her mother. Jezzy’s hand still clung to her face, like Jezzy’s fingers were part of her momma’s skin.

  “As the months passed, Jezzy’s hand shrank till it looked like a dried hand of some little animal, like a dead raccoon.

  “Her momma still made her baskets. She sat in the doorway, facing her good cheek to the outside and hiding Jezzy’s hand. Sometimes when she first woke up, she’d forget about it. But when she washed her face, she’d feel her daughter still hanging on.

  “Cecil moved to the other side of the lake, all by himself. But finally come ’round the anniversary of when all this happened.

  “The moon was full and so was Cecil’s heart, full of memories. He rowed a canoe to the center of the lake and just sat there, with the waves washing gentle. He laid back and stared at the moon, round and pretty yellow. He was almost asleep when the waves started rocking the boat. Cecil sat up.

  “Rising out of the water, not twenty feet from him, come Jezzy, the ghost of Jezzy. She floated over next to him and held out both her arms, just to let him see her wrist was whole, now that she was dead. And every year after that, long as Cecil was alive, he’d row that canoe to the center of the lake to see his Jezzy.

  “And long as they were alive, Jezzy’s momma and daddy never forgot their daughter. They remembered how nice she was as a little girl, how pretty she grew to be. But mostly, they remembered the day Jezzy did what it’s even hard to talk about—the day she struck her momma.

  “Some things you just never ’spossed to do, and striking a innocent person, somebody weaker, is one of ’em, ’specially not if they be your own momma.”

  All but the oldest children had fallen asleep sometime during the Colonel’s story. They listened like it was all a dream, drifting in and out, but when Jezzy struck her mother, everybody sat up. Colonel Mingo had their attention when he wanted it.

  “Don’t never,” he repeated, “go striking a innocent person. That’s when real trouble gonna start.”

  Mingo and Hardwicke's Men

  Samuel Willis waited till everybody else was asleep before he rose, carried a bucket to the creek and drowned the fire, sending a smokey sizzle over the clearing. Younger children snuggled close to older ones.

  Even Colonel Mingo napped and woke up off and on, till Samuel touched his shoulder, s
aying, “Colonel. Wake up, sir, please.”

  “What? Samuel. I am awake.”

  “Some men, four of ’em, rode up not long ago. They been watching us, just out of firelight. There.” He pointed to a clump of trees in the direction of the house. Mingo eased quietly to his feet and said, “Sam, you stay here and keep a close eye on these babies. Don’t let any of ’em know about these strangers. No need scaring the children.”

  “Yes. I’ll watch ’em, Colonel.”

  “Good, son. I know I can trust you.” Samuel saw his hand move to his hip, to the carved antler handle of his Bowie knife. Mingo moved through the woods away from the men, as if he were going to the corn patch to relieve himself. Samuel shook his head at the savvy ways of his friend and teacher and turned to his promised watch over the children.

  Once out of eyesight, Colonel Mingo double-backed on himself and made a wide circle around the woods, creeping low among the surrounding bushes and trees. Lying close to the ground, he studied the men. Four men, just as Samuel had said. He watched their mannerisms, their tense and ready way of crouching, saw the gear lying beside their ponies.

  Small ponies for quick getaways, he noted. He waited till the sound of laughter from the house caught the men’s attention, then crept close enough to hear them speak.

  “If Hardwicke was here, we’d already be on our way home,” said a short stout man. “He’d start with the barn, I’m telling you. He’d torch it from all sides, then nail the door shut soes they couldn’t follow us. Them horses would die from the smoke.”

  “Ain’t no way we could get to the barn without them seeing us,” said another.

  “Besides,” said a third, “the marshal said to just let him know if they’re planning anything. He didn’t say nothing about no burning. Not tonight, at least, not till he knows which way the new Indian agent is gonna see things.”